Spotlight on Founders

Faris Zaher on following intuition, having trusted advisors, and revolutionizing the music industry (#7)

Today's guest is Faris Zaher, CEO and co-founder of Sonomo. Faris is a second time founder. His first company grew to become Palestine's largest startup and the first to attract venture-capital into the country. He is now based in Amsterdam, building his second company: Sonomo, an app that puts music investing at the hands of everyone. It recently closed its pre-seed round with Peak Capital in the lead and has been making Dutch headlines because of its disruptive nature.

#6: Gernot Schwendtner on intrapreneurship, career transition advice, thinking short- and long-term, and seeing opportunities in challenges

Today's guest is Gernot Schwendtner, co-founder of weGrow International. weGrow International is a hands-on advisory partner, specialised in helping tech startups and scaleups achieve fast and sustainable international growth in Europe. Alongside its core teams in Amsterdam, Berlin, London and Paris, they work with a network of around 100 experienced scaling-experts, to offer a comprehensive suite of services in all areas of internationalisation and they have clients all over Europe and the USA. Previous to weGrow International, Gernot was responsible for marketing and international market expansion at a Dutch travel scale-up, managing director of an Austrian travel business, and founded and successfully ran a corporate venture-studio for a media company as intrapreneur for many years.

#5: Charlotte Ekelund on the importance of finding the right co-founder, creating work-happiness, and the remote-working reality

Today’s guest is Charlotte Ekelund, an entrepreneur committed to creating everyday work happiness for people, anywhere. In September 2019 Charlotte co-founded Teemyco, your office online. After having worked in strategy and marketing in Fortune 500 firms as well as interviewing and helping various companies hire people as a recruitment consultant, she joined the Antler startup generator program where she met her technical co-founder Oleg. With 2 business related Masters and a strong passion for people, leadership and psychology, Charlotte is all for driving cohesion, fun and performance in teams. Charlotte has lived in six countries, so it is no surprise that Teemyco is an international company since day one - uniting co-workers and leaders across the world.

#4: Zeno Keilhacker on following your vision, doing business in unconventional places, and the benefits from diverse teams

Today’sguest is Zeno Keilhacker, an entrepreneur who has devoted his life to creating new businesses and doing it all on his own. With his background in international management, and speaking seven languages, Zeno is the owner and CEO of “Blue Travel Iceland”, “Blue House B&B”, and “Gròtta Northern Lights”. He is all about sustainable, and responsible businesses which is why these days he has dedicated his complete attention to SiciliaMia, a multifaceted startup he is creating with a focus on tourism, agriculture and their co-relation with developments of regions in the south of Italy. Having travelled the world and met diverse groups, Zeno has chosen to work with young international groups of people, and has every intention of guiding and pushing them towards their true potential, and moulding them into the next generation of leaders they are destined to be.

#1: Tejas Nerurkar on Idea Generation, Finding Mentors, Optimism and Gratitude

Our first guest is Tejas Nerurkar. Tejas is interesting because entrepreneurship is really the only career he has known. Today, Tejas loves thinking long term, he loves product design, and he loves software that reduces paper and material usage. As a kid though, Tejas was mostly obsessed with his computer; he was always building and tinkering. After university, he turned that tinkering into a business and today, his firm, Optimum Output, supports hundreds of companies around the world. Optimum Output's primary product is a paper-free visual training app for enterprises called The BPR. But more than the details of his business, what we want to understand about Tejas is something we are going to focus on in this podcast journey. What is the mindset of an entrepreneur as they start? And more importantly what makes them tick?