Dimple Patel didn't arrive at the CEO chair via the usual route. She grew up on a council estate in the north of England, the daughter of immigrants who had their house burnt down and opened the shop the next morning anyway. She got to Cambridge on scholarships, traded through the 2008 financial crisis at Goldman Sachs, scaled a coffee chain to 37 stores and sold it to private equity, pivoted into tech, exited a second company days before the consumer market collapsed — and then walked into the biodiversity space to lead NatureMetrics, one of the most important science and technology businesses operating in the natural capital economy today.
This is a conversation about what it actually takes to build something from nothing. About the work hard fallacy — why grit alone isn't enough and what you need instead. About what happens to your identity the morning after you sell the business you poured everything into. About why you should never tell anyone your company is for sale. About the real cost of debt funding, aggressive investors, and signing commercial leases without reading the small print. About building a culture that bridges world-class scientists and commercial operators. And about the one piece of advice Dimple would give her younger self — not to believe in yourself, but to trust your conviction that you'll find a way through.
If you've ever built something, tried to build something, or wondered what separates the people who make it from the people who don't — this one is for you.
