Advice for business owners: European startups going global
AuthorNina Tudor
DateSep 16, 2021
Welcome to Highway to Scale – a podcast in which we explore the ins and outs of business success.
In each episode, we sit down with CEOs, executives and managers from young successful companies. What they have in common is that their companies are making it big on the market. They raised millions in capital and had a massive growth in recent years. We’ll dig deep into their business beginnings, their ups and downs, management styles and how they are able to sustain their growth.
In this blog post, we’ll go over the first three podcast episodes in which we talked to:
So, without further ado, let’s get into the episodes!
Episode #1: How to handle a 30x platform usage and 7x revenue growth
Interview with Gilles Bertaux — CEO of Livestorm
Gilles is an active member of the tech scene and a frequent speaker on startups, growth, and remote company culture. He is a first-time entrepreneur, and in 2016 he co-founded Livestorm, an end-to-end video engagement platform that enables organizations to create meetings and webinars at scale. With Livestorm you can promote, host, and analyze your events in one place.
The company quickly grew, and today has over one million monthly users on its platform. In 2020, when most of the world was slowed down, they experienced massive growth and were able to raise $30M in series B. They also had a 3000% increase in platform usage and 7x revenue growth.
Strive to build a healthy company, because companies and brands that ultimately win are the ones that stay.
— Gilles Bertaux, CEO of Livestorm
Livestorm shapes the future of end-to-end video communication and we can’t wait to see what they’ll come out with in the future! But for now, watch the episode, and learn what advice Gilles shared with the new business owners who are just starting the journey of growing their companies.
Episode #2: Why is sales the first problem a CEO needs to address
Interview with James Isilay — CEO of Cognism
James Isilay an expert in lead generation, sales management and alpha discovery using algorithmic technologies, natural language processing and machine learning. He is the co-founder and CEO of Cognism, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the UK.
Cognism is the world’s best global sales intelligence platform. Powered by patented AI technology, they provide salespeople, growth marketers, RevOps professionals and Go-To-Market leaders with complete, intelligent, actionable, compliant data to find and deliver new revenue, faster. Cognism was voted as one of the UK’s Top 25 Startups by LinkedIn.
This company was founded in 2015 but it has already turned into a global powerhouse that raised more than 38 million dollars in funding and grew to a couple hundred employees. In this podcast, James will tell us more about his mindset when it comes to raising outside capital and why is it important for CEOs to always hire people that are better than them.
Hire people who are smarter than you. This will enable you to focus on the strategic aspects of running a business.
— James Isilay, CEO of Cognism
James has a lot of advice for new startup owners. Check them all out by listening to this podcast episode!
Episode #3: Why will a strong focus on local enable you to go global
Interview with Evgeny Chamtonau — CEO of Spoko.app
Evgeny Chamtonau is the Co-founder and CEO of Spoko.app. He is a serial technology innovator with vast expertise in financial and tech industries. Evgeny was always fascinated with technology and entrepreneurship, so it’s not a surprise that he launched his first startup when he was just 18 – it was Finchways, an AI-driven trip planner app.
Spoko.app, which Evgeny launched in 2017, is the global financial disruptor that’s providing instant money transfers around the world. It operates transparently and its users know immediately what the transaction costs are. Spoko.app is one of the fastest growing companies in the financial industry worldwide.
Since they launched, they raised more than 7 million dollars of outside capital, their active user base grew to more than half a million – and they are on their way to becoming a major player in the remittance market. In this podcast, Evgeny tells us what kinds of investors should new startup owners look to attract and we discuss the importance of being local when it comes to tailoring your services for users in a new market.
His advice is that you don’t always need to be an innovator. Follow others and detect what their solutions are lacking. Create your version and succeed!
Get more business advice from Evgeny by checking out the full episode!
Check out all the other episodes
We have many more podcast episodes out, and you can go and listen to them on all major podcast platforms.
- Apple Podcasts -> https://bit.ly/AppleHTS
- Spotify -> https://bit.ly/SpotifyHTS
- Google Podcasts -> https://bit.ly/GoogleHTS
- Buzzsprout -> https://bit.ly/BF-HTS
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