Shine is a self-care app for millennial women - the largest growing share of the workforce. Shine operates in the wellness space in over 165 countries. Leveraging the power of text to reach people with a 98% open rate, Naomi and March found a way to recreate the feeling of a hand on your shoulder every morning.
“Align yourself with marketing efforts that can be repeated and if you see something that's working, press that button as fast as possible.”
In a world of access not ownership, Nisha co-founded a Classpass for co-working spaces in NYC to empower users to work from anywhere. Born out of frustration with nowhere to work on ideas at the weekends, teaching herself to code and tired of overpriced pastries - this startup story is the modern day version of Friends. Croissant now has over 200 spaces signed up across 10 cities and has been through the 500 Startups school.
“The feeling of being a migrant is a universal one” explains Mohsin Hamid, the award-winning novelist of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
With the rise of technology, globalisation and fake news, we’re living in an absurd present and uncertain future. In this episode, we journey through stories from Mohsin’s books and his writing form to explore the concept of migration being a fundamental human right. The interview provides a fresh and diverse voice on the state of international politics today, the global immigrant crisis and highlights the role of fiction as the human species evolves from storytelling around campfires to glowing screens.
“I know the power of finding a book that changes someone’s life.”
Tired of having to justify his seat at the table, Nikesh Shukla wrote a book curating 21 essays from upcoming writers from diverse backgrounds. They unravel British culture, explore self-identity and question the legacy of imperialism to provide an open space to discuss race. Against the backdrop of increased hostility to immigrants at a global scale, it sold 50k copies and accidentally became a reference pillar in the post Brexit debate. Crowdfunded by Unbound.
“Artificial intelligence will move software from being passive to active, the software will be expected to make decisions on our behalf.”
Dennis counted he had scheduled 1,019 meetings in a year! With big data startups under his belt, he deployed artificial intelligence techniques to create Amy, a virtual assistant and is on a mission to harness the power of AI to increase human potential. Hundreds of thousands of meetings have been scheduled automatically and it’s raised of $40m of Venture Capital investment. In this episode, he divulges the technology underpinning Amy, jobs of the future, and the the morals and ethics behind bots - from bad behaviour, empathy to personalities.
“For one client, we improved the prediction power from 23%, worse than chance, to 86% confidence on what people were going to eat for dinner.”
With a bout of microfinance experience in India, a PhD and a client trying to invent a new tea flavour, Tugce founded Streetbees to give consumers a voice when brands design new products. Today, Streetbees is a UK startup disrupting the $45bn market research industry by providing grassroot insights for global clients with access to over a million ‘bees’ on the platform in over 80 countries.
Against the backdrop of Airbnb, citizenM has come to the fore as a boutique hotel for the modern mobile citizen. Born out of the frustration of the fashion traveller, this startup hotel deploys user centered design to solve for modern luxury. 12 hotels later, 40% repeat business and artwork such as Andy Warhol casually placed around the sites, citizenM is a fresh burst in the hotel industry.
“With education, the people you learn from aren’t just your teachers, it’s your peers as well.”
Refusing to lose the magic of his Harvard business school network after graduating, Beri embarked on creating a social university for adults. It facilitates lifelong learning with access to the leading minds of our time with events across the globe.
Firing off an irreverent note to attract non-techies to an event, Sam Parr had never envisaged he would resurrect email to start a media company - The Hustle - a daily email newsletter. A young gun set to be the next media mogul uncovers bumping into Tim Ferriss walking his dog and writing amazon romance novels to journey through The Hustle’s own hustle. Today, The Hustle has over 0.5m subscribers, a cash positive balance fuelled by advertising and over $1m in funding.
Available as podcast in iTunes (Apple), Spotify and Stitcher (Android).
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The podcast that brings you interviews with reckless dreamers and their stories of entrepreneurship, innovation and impact. Each week, we’ll talk to dreamers from an eclectic mix of fields- the arts, sciences, education, digital, social enterprise, sport, retail- you name it! We’ll weave through their professional and personal journey to uncover the secrets to their success but sure to talk about failure too! You’ll pick up the business education you need, from funding, strategy, and operations to marketing. It’s all to help you follow your own reckless dream so if you’re curious, creative and ready to make an impact on this world then this is for you!
Inspired by StartUp, TED and Desert Island Discs.
www.samirastalks.com
"In the UK we find failure harder to accept than in the US".
We hear from Taymoor Atighetchi- a serial entrepreneur- on building a digital brand in personalised goods, Papier which is looking to disrupt the cards gifts and stationary space in the UK.
We’ll hear his commitment to being a serial entrepreneur, starting from selling art as a child, building a media company, The Tab, at university to the launch of Papier itself.
We discuss how he bucked the Silicon Valley trend of being a sole founder without a co-founder partner in crime and lastly his views on the new school wave of the more risk averse entrepreneurs that are bubbling up.
"Love is proportional to will power..."
Stemming from a throwaway Instagram photo of strangers on a plane talking about what love means, Chrissie - a change-making fashionista- has created the LOVE IS bracelet. It follows a Toms' type model- produced by Maasai tribes and distributed on mass scale by American Eagle and Whole Foods.
We’ll hear her story of how her passion for concept design, a sabbatical and how she was keen to create jobs rather than charity through this work.