Adventures in Ventureland

Meet Marketing Tech founder Karoline Gross, as we unpick her journey to create Smartzer. Smartzer solves one key challenge- making videos shoppable and interactive. Here we cover Smartzer's journey from side project to SaaS platform catering for huge brands like LVMH, Bulgari, Harvey Nichols, Addidas, Sephora, and many more. In this episode, hosted by Hattie Willis, we dive into the power of developing a "niche" proposition, moving from custom development to a scalable business model, retail trends to watch, and what's coming next in the marketing space. This episode is a great reminder of the power of reducing one key friction in the user journey to carve out space in a hotly contested industry.

Melissa is a serial founder worth learning from. She started her first startup at 23, and today, she's building 2 high-growth businesses in parallel at Rem3dy Health. Nourish3d offers 3d printed, hyper-personalised supplements; while Script3d provides 3d printed prescriptions in custom doses. Interviewed by Hattie Willis, this episode tracks Melissa's entrepreneurial journey across FinTech, FoodTech, HealthTech and MedTech; with multiple business models, and a dozen patents along the way. Here, Melissa shares her lessons learned, and predictions for the next waves of innovation and spaces to watch.

How do you start building new ventures, investing in startups and training in-house talent to innovate? The answer for Alex Manson: all at once! Standard Chartered Ventures was set up in 2018 to help the bank reinvent its DNA and drive innovation across the group. In this episode, Hattie Willis interviews Alex, who has taken on this challenge as Head of SC Ventures. He candidly shares his learnings so far on everything from talent, to CEO buy-in, governance to incentivisation, what's worked and what hasn't and how their approach is still evolving.

Olio are on a mission to tackle household waste, one of the biggest contributors to our carbon footprint. In this episode, founder Tessa Clarke shares how they created a marketplace used by millions of individuals, grocery giants and coffee chains worldwide. We talk about how they rapidly tested their product and evolved their business model, built liquidity in the marketplace, and why they waited to prioritise revenue.

Stephen has founded 5 of his own startups, including an acquisition by Airbnb, and VC backed Pact Coffee. He's also worked as a corporate innovator, as VP for Disruptive Innovation at Unilever. In this episode he shares his lessons learned as both entrepreneur and intrepreneur, including how he's approaching his latest startup!