Shows
23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard Bits15-Year Overnight Success How Amber Bootstrapped a Side Project to an 8-Figure Exit to PhilipsMost founders start businesses as a means to getting rich so they can retire happy.But Amber Vodegel found out at the end of a very rare, successful exit that it's not the case.In her words: "I can guarantee you money brings zero happiness."She bootstrapped Pregnancy+ to 12 million users which culminated in a sale to Philips in an 8 figure deal, with her still owning almost 100% of the company.It wasn't all smooth sailing as her first app with a friend fell apart, and she had to work Pregnancy+ as...
2026-05-111h 1023mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsWhy Your Exit Strategy is Your Best Fundraising Tactic: Charlie Fletcher, Mischon De ReyaCharlie Fletcher advised on over 100 M&A and fundraising deals in 2025 as Partner at Mishcon de Reya.In this episode, he explains how to run exit conversations while fundraising without killing your round, the legal mistakes that destroy founder economics even when deals close, and how to model your exit waterfall at each funding round so you understand what you'll actually make at different valuations.You'll also learn why £20M+ growth rounds became harder to access after 2021, how to position dual-track strategy to boards that resist it, and why 85% of VC-backed exits happen through M&A...
2026-04-2349 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsHow to Raise Venture Capital and NOT Destroy Your Startup: Lessons from an Ex-VCThe wealthiest people Kiran knows never raised venture capital. They built businesses, owned 80-90% of the equity, and exited for 7-8 figures.Kiran Mehta spent four years as a VC at Mercia Ventures. He invested in 11 companies, sat on every board, and reviewed thousands of pitch decks. Then he walked away to work directly with founders through Catenae Advisory.In this episode:Why the wealthiest founders he knows never took VC moneyThe maths VCs won't show you: why your exit needs to be £500m+Why s...
2026-04-0153 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom High-Earning Professional to Failed Tech Founder - The Gung Ho Propaganda | James GreenJames Green lost $3 million falling for the gung ho propaganda of the tech world. He describes the end of his startup as a period of grief that took 18 months to process. In this episode, James breaks down why Scaled Networks failed, highlighting a 30% worker turn-up rate, and why building software before proving behavior was his primary mistake. He now advocates for the rational startup: building for multi million dollar outcomes and autonomy rather than the venture capital treadmill.In this episode, you will learn:Gung Ho Propaganda. Why survivor bias leads professionals to ignore the 90...
2026-03-0357 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom Failed YC Fundraise to Life-Changing Exit | Matt WilliamsonMatt Williamson and his co-founder James targeted $1.5M for their seed round during YC Demo Day. They walked away with just $750K.At the time, it felt like failure. A year later, Matt realised it was the best thing that happened to them.With under $1M raised, zero marketing spend, and a 4-person team, they scaled Vizzly to a life-changing exit to WPP's Gain Theory in under 3 years.In this episode, Matt breaks down the 100% customer churn that forced a pivot six weeks before Demo Day, why Tom Blomfield told them to stop...
2026-02-1954 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsWant to Raise VC? Here's What LPs Actually Look For | Sion EvansMost founders don't understand how venture capital actually works. Sion Evans does. He sits at the top of the capital stack, picking the VCs who pick the founders.Sion is Managing Director at VenCap, a fund-of-funds that's been in the game for almost 40 years. $2 billion deployed. 500+ fund commitments. Exposure to Google, Airbnb, Stripe, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic.In this episode, Sion breaks down the venture maths that most founders never see: why top funds lose money on 60% of their deals and still outperform, what a "fund returner" actually means for your startup, and why the top 1...
2026-02-0359 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsNo Pretty F*cking PowerPoints: How Rachel Sold for £13.3m in 1,000 Days"Give me 50% of the shares and we'll get this thing sold for eight figures within five years."That was Rachel Murphy's pitch when she joined a small recruitment firm in 2017. Most people would call it delusional. She called it a plan.1,000 days later, she sold Difrent for £13.3 million. Her team had built the NHS Jobs platform and delivered the UK's COVID home-testing service in just 8 days.Then came the part she hadn't planned for: the exit left her empty. Her identity was gone. She went to war zones, did plant medicine, and eventually b...
2026-01-201h 0223mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsI'm Retiring at 40: How Lloyed Lobo Turned Community Into a Life-Changing ExitFor 10 years, Lloyd Lobo told his wife the same thing: "I'm retiring at 40." She thought he was delusional. He'd already burned through $6M on failed ventures.But Lloyd understood something about neuroscience: when you repeat something in present tense obsessively, your brain rewires to spot the opportunities that make it real.In 2020, the wire hit his account. Week of his 40th birthday. Exactly as predicted. He'd built Boast AI to $10M ARR with $0 spent on ads. Community replaced his entire marketing budget.Then 2 weeks later, he was in the ICU unable to breathe.
2026-01-0658 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsZombie Startups: How Losing a $1B Fintech Platform Inspired a Contrarian Bet on VC FailuresKrista Morgan built a fintech company that processed $1 billion in transactions and scaled to $10M in revenue. Then it collapsed in 90 days due to fraud. Instead of walking away, she turned that painful experience into a contrarian investment thesis: buying the "venture orphans" that VCs leave behind.As CEO of Edited Capital, Krista has completed 13 acquisitions of B2B SaaS companies stuck between can't raise and won't die. Her firm buys at 1x revenue multiples and transforms unprofitable venture-backed startups into sustainable, profitable businesses.In this episode:How Krista raised $18M equity + $120M debt...
2025-12-0451 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom £1,000 to Over £1Million: How Sally Wynter Bootstrapped MUHU to an Exit in 5 MonthsSally Wynter achieved what most founders only dream of. Remarkably, she did it without connections, capital, or a single penny spent on advertising.Growing up on free school meals in North London, Sally had to Google "what is an entrepreneur?" before launching MUHU, the UK's first CBD-infused gin, from her bedroom. Using her journalism background as her secret weapon, she bootstrapped her way to two acquisition offers and sold to Next Frontier Brands at age 25.In this episode, Sally shares the tactical playbook: how she staged product photos with a house plant and sparkling water...
2025-11-1344 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsHow Eric Peck Piloted Swoop to a $100m Offer, Crashed, and Took Off AgainHe raised $30M. He got a $100M acquisition offer... and turned it down.When a second M&A deal that could have saved his company was rejected by the board, it crashed.But like a true pilot, Eric managed a "soft landing." He restructured and split the company, finding new owners specifically to save his team's jobs, before walking away. This is the story of a founder who turned a dream into incredible achievements including the very first company in the world to deliver life-saving vaccines by drones.Eric endured the "...
2025-10-2859 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsBuilding a Company That Gets a Buyer Excited: The Private Equity PlaybookWhat does it mean to build a startup that "can sell, but doesn't have to"?This week, we sit across the table from David Czarny, a private equity buyer who's closed 10 software acquisitions. Unlike VCs hunting moonshots, David needs every deal to work—and he reveals exactly what that means for founders.You'll learn what makes a software company irresistible to buyers, why gross retention matters more than net retention, the red flags that torpedo deals, and his contrarian take on M&A advisors: "As a buyer, I prefer no bankers. As a seller, I'd al...
2025-10-2148 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom Wall Street to 2x Exited Founders: How these Siblings Built and Sold the Same Startup TwiceWhat happens when your startup gets shut down right after a life-changing exit? You buy it back and sell it again.Former Wall Street analyst Ziyaad Ahmed shares the wild story of building Spotii—the Middle East's pioneering Buy Now Pay Later platform—with his sister, selling it to Australian giant Zip after 18 months, watching it get shut down, then reacquiring their own company and flipping it again just 3 months later.From bootstrapping in a pandemic to landing Amazon as a client, from Citadel hedge fund to Silicon Valley to Dubai entrepreneur—this is a master...
2025-09-0944 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsGaming the System: An M&A Banker's Playbook for Engineering the Perfect Exit | Mike BankMike Bank once quit his high-paying M&A job at Citibank. When his boss asked why he was leaving, his answer was an epic: "I have no idea." That leap into the unknown was the start of a career built on a powerful philosophy: understanding and "gaming the system" to win. As a two-time venture-backed founder, a VC, and an M&A advisor, Mike has sat on every side of the table.In this episode, he shares his unfiltered take on the realities of venture capital, the hard lessons from his own startup failures...
2025-09-0248 min
23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsEdwina Sharrock: The Midwife Who Delivered Her Own Life-Changing Startup ExitEdwina Sharrock’s founder journey is a powerful lesson in trusting your gut and taking control. After appearing on Shark Tank Australia and securing a deal, she made a bold move. She rejected it. She later bought out her external investor to regain 100% control of the company she had built from scratch.This is the story of a midwife from a small regional town who bootstrapped a national health-tech platform by saying "yes" and figuring it out later. In this episode, she shares her playbook for funding a...
2025-08-1955 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom DJ Decks to Seven Figure Exit: Scaling a Tech Startup With the Help of a Six-PackAfter his dream restaurant was crushed by a corporate giant, Dhilon Solanki hit rock bottom. His response? A six-month fitness journey that forged a level of discipline so powerful, it convinced a board on the other side of the world to hire him as a tech CEO, even though he had zero tech or sales experience.That comeback was the catalyst for an incredible career that started behind DJ decks and led to a seven-figure tech exit. In this episode, Dhilon shares his powerful story of resilience, the hard lessons learned from failure, and how a personal...
2025-08-1248 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom Teenage Founder to Scaling a $250M Business: Dan Schiffman on Building, Exits, and PivotsDan Schiffman founded his first tech startup at 15, almost 25 years ago. Since then, he has built a playbook that covers every stage of the founder journey: bootstrapping an e-commerce startup to a $1 million exit, co-founding a VC-backed trailblazer (TVision) that has raised close to $60 million, and leading the transformation of another business from $50 million to $250 million in just 18 months.In this episode, Dan breaks down the lessons from his unique career. He shares the strategic differences between bootstrapping and raising venture capital, his counter-intuitive rules for building a company...
2025-08-0543 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsScaling to 8 Figures after Rejecting VC: Maarij Rehman on How to Win by Nailing Enterprise SalesWhat happens when you raise $250,000 and get into Techstars... only to realize the venture path is a trap? Maarij Rehman, Co-founder & CEO of Envoi, shares the unfiltered story of how he rejected his investors, returned their capital, and bootstrapped his logistics company to an 8-figure powerhouse.In this episode, Maarij reveals why cash flow is king, and how his proudest achievement wasn't landing Walmart as a client, but getting them to agree to Net 15 payment terms. From dropping out...
2025-07-1546 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsYasen Dimtrov | From Slow-Starter to $100 million Fortune 500 ExitWhat does it take to turn a startup into a $100 million exit? For Yasen Dimitrov, the Co-founder of IntelligenceNODE, the answer is one word: patience.In this episode, Yasen shares the unvarnished story of his 12-year journey, which began after leaving a promising career at Boston Consulting Group with a simple mantra: "if you're not learning, just leave." He recounts starting IntelligenceNODE with a former colleague, living in a one-bedroom Mumbai apartment with the grand vision of being the "Bloomberg for Retail," only to face a market that wasn't ready.
2025-07-0840 min23mile Podcast | Founder Exits, Scaling & All the Hard BitsFrom Opera to Owner: Frances Simowitz on Buying an Accelerator and Guiding Global Startups into the USIn this kickoff episode, we're joined by Frances Simowitz, a CEO whose path to success was anything but linear. From aspiring opera singer to teacher, nanny, and airport retail associate, Frances shares how she found her passion in the startup world and rose to CEO in just 18 months.This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to forge their own path. Tune in to hear:How the discipline of the arts and the psychology of sales can translate into business leadership.The inside story of her management buyout of NUMA's US operations, a...
2025-06-3043 min
Not My First GuessMake the earth move: how to build a sustainable sextech business with Farah Kabir, Co-founder of HANXToday I’m joined by Farah Kabir, Co-founder of HANX.One day, while enjoying a stable career in Asset Management at Goldman Sachs, Farah stood in line at her local Boots ready purchase a box of condoms when she realised her boss was standing behind her.Utterly mortified, Farah felt the very relatable pang of shame rise within her until… she suddenly thought “actually, why should I be embarrassed about this?” and so over a bottle (or two) of wine, she decided to jump into bed with her best friend Sarah (who also happens to be a doc...
2023-07-2556 min
GEORGE FOX TALKSLEADERSHIP | Celebrating Adversity and Co-Creating With GodIn this episode, our host Dave Tussing meets with finance professional Kayode Odeleye to discuss relationship with God, integrity, and adversity as they relate to career building. What kind of adversity is helpful, and how does faith in God speak into the way we lead and plan our lives?Kayode is the Founder and CEO of Caena.io, a financial technology company building tools to simplify the fundraising process for startups and private investment firms. Before Caena, he worked for 14 years in financial services across retail banking, strategy and investment banking. His most significant stint was in i...
2021-10-2645 min