With me today is Mike Quinn, the founder of Zoona, one of Africa’s startup darlings for a period of time. He and three other cofounders built Zoona, a money transfer and remittance business, to over 3000 agents transactacting $2.5Bn across two African markets - Zambia and Malawi. They earned $86 million in revenue along the journey. He was one of the first founders on the continent to ever raise venture money and raised through Series B before their Series C and ultimately the future growth of the company went into a death spiral. He wrote his reflections in a book titled “Failing to Win” and he is now on to building his next venture, Boost. Hear on this episode: 1) Learning from Failure - The Startup CEO & Founder Reality We are All Failing All the Time The Difference Between Having Failed and Thinking You Are a Failure Navigating Self Doubt in Tough Moments Making the Decision to Leave Your Own Company You are Not Going through the Founder Journey Alone if You Do it Right How Being a Dad and Husband made Mike a Better Leader 2) Managing Your Board Managing the Culture of Your Board as You Would Your Team Reduce the Drag Coefficient of Your Board Talk about What Actually Matters at Your Board vs Reporting and Updates How to Communicate to the Board When You Are Disappointing Them 3) Exiting a Key Executive Deciding to Exit A Key Executive Who Doesn’t Fit Your Culture When Your Culture Is Misaligned Internally and How You Know When Someone Breeds a Different Culture Internally to What You Have When International Expansion Fails in a New Market after it Worked in Others 4) Team and Culture How to Hire The Fewest “Right” People Culture Exists Whether You Care About it or Not Managing Culture and Morale When Contracting not Scaling Behaviours not Values are What Matter Finding a CoFounder Who Complements Your BlindSpots Find Mike's book on Amazon and Audible. Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here with me today is Clara Odero, who has been an employee at three unicorn companies, Flutterwave, Rapyd and Neum and is now founding her own company Credrails, doing open banking in Africa. Here more about her learnings and specifically: 1) Fundraising as a Minority Statistic How do you Mentally Prepare for a Fundraise?  What does it Feel like to Raise as a Black, Female Founder? The statistics versus the reality Can you build a VC network from Scratch? The Realities and Pros and Cons of Warm Introductions in Venture? How to Build Real Relationships with Venture Capitalists? Leaving the Door Open for the Next Generation of Underrepresented Founders 2) Learnings Across Three Unicorn Journeys Clara’s Journey Into the Startup World Her Personal Growth Across each Unicorn Journey Why Being Resilient is Key to Startup Success Learning from THE BEST of the BEST What does Good Leadership Actually Look Like The Power of ESOP and Equity - Rewarding Early Employees 3) Building a Startup on the African Continent Is there Enough Good Local Talent or are you Exporting Talent in? How to Assess Talent and Interview for a Learning Mindset Finding People who are Eternally Curious What Will the Ecosystem Look Like in 10 Years 4) The Founder Reality Instilling a Good Culture From Day One How to Calibrate Your View on Talent How to Keep Yourself Refuelled as a Founder Imposter Syndrome - Remembering No One Else Has Two Heads Never Being THE BEST in a room actually helps you be YOUR BEST Life Is An Internship - Stay Self Aware, Humble and Constantly Improve Find out more about Clara at https://www.credrails.com/ Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here with me today, is Michael Rangel, Co-Founder and CEO of Novo, a challenger bank focused on small businesses. It’s currently valued at $700 million, and serves over 150,000 small businesses. Novo had kicked off their Series A fundraise in late February 2020, just as the COVID pandemic was hitting everywhere. The situation was very dynamic and Novo’s cash position was getting tighter and tighter as the process went on. You will hear more from Michael in this episode on: 1) Raising in both good markets and bad What did it feel like to kick off a Series A right as COVID hit the US? As a founder, how should you think about raising in good or bad markets? What does it feel like to look at failure as an option square in the face and feel like you might let everyone down? What did Novo do to maintain cash position and minimize burn in order to survive? 2) The Mentality to Keep Going as a Founder How do you maintain confidence through all the tough moments? How Michael’s personal experiences built resilience and perspective Why Adaptability is such an important trait for founders 3) How to survive the startup journey How reducing burn in the pandemic actually opened up new acquisition channels vital to the future of Novo Why the pandemic actually spurred more small businesses Optimize for survival and nothing else The benefits of bootstrapping in the early days 4) Building a business in the small business segment Can you really build a profitable segment serving the S of SMB (small-to-medium sized businesses) Why are you so passionate about serving this audience? Why VCs, banks and others discount this segment 5) Why Be a Founder? The challenges of fundraising and scaling pains Why do you choose to be a founder? What do you give up on the journey? Who do you have to have around you to stay sane? What motivates you to keep going on this challenging journey If you are looking for a new job and want to join a great culture of underdogs, or are a small business looking for a new bank, check out novo.co Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George Bevis, founder and former CEO of Tide Bank. As many of you may know, Tide delivers better business banking for small to medium sized businesses. It’s currently valued at $650 million, serves over 400,000 businesses, and has tens of millions in revenue. George is now running his own venture studio, Can Do. In 2015, in Tide’s early days, an employee ran off with their code base and they almost ran out of money in the first year. In this episode, you will hear more from George about:  1) The Psychological Journey of Failure as a Founder? What does it actually feel like when your company goes under? When do you actually feel a sense of relief? How do you know when it’s time to call it quits on your startup? How do you treat the staff the right way as you wind down? 2) THE Metric for Any Startup Why LTV/CAC (Lifetime Value/Cost of Customer Acquisition) is THE Metric and Not a Metric to Live by in Your Startup How did George get to this conclusion after multiple businesses? Should you rethink your business model before you even start? 3) The Elusive Product/Market Fit (PMF) Why George disagrees with the famous Marc Andreessen blog post on product/market fit (PFM) Is PFM a myth? does it exist? What does it actually feel like to achieve PMF? Do you still need marketing even if you have PMF? 4) His Decision To Step Down From His Own Company What drove George to decide to leave Tide as the CEO? The one thing he really misses since leaving What he is up to now and why? 5) Humility - The Underrated Trait for Employees and VCs You Surround Yourself With How Tide’s company values and humility translated into their consumer experience Why you need to choose a VC with humility? How you figure out if a prospective VC has humility? The power of cold references on VCs How many terms sheets should you actually expect when fundraising for your startup? After tasting success as a founder, George is now running his own venture studio, Can Do.  Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After BlockFi had raised their Series D in 2021, the state of New Jersey issued a cease and desist order to shut down its interest bearing product. The management team had to navigate regulatory uncertainty in the crypto world and also manage a team through a time of great uncertainty in their business. Today - Flori Marquez, the co-founder and SVP of Operations at BlockFi, will tell us about this and many more aspects of her scaling up journey. BlockFi has a current valuation in the range of $4-5BN, more than 600,000 retail clients, 350 institutional clients and 850 employees, Specifically, in this episode you will hear more from Flori about:  1) How to manage a company through regulatory uncertainty What does it feel like to scale from 0 to 850 people? How do you manage through uncertainty and keep a motivated team? What is the difference between leading in times of uncertainty versus leading in a hypergrowth phase? How should founders in regulated spaces engage with regulators? What does the SEC resolution mean for the broader crypto/bitcoin/web3/ethereum/solana landscape? 2) Key Leadership Decisions as you scale your startup How do you ensure people understand your vision as you scale quickly and remotely? Why did you choose not to give yourself the COO title when you could have? How do you take on new tasks but stay aware of where you need to develop? 3) Diversity within the startup, tech and crypto space As one of the few females who have scaled a unicorn in the crypto space, how do you think about your representation as a role model? How do you get other diverse founders inspired to go on their own startup founding journey? How did being from a family of immigrants and speaking multiple languages affect you as a startup leader? 4) Fundraising for a crypto startup in crypto winter? What were those early days of fundraising like? What does it feel like to get so many no’s? Did fintech and crypto venture capital investors understand what you were trying to do in those early fundraising days? 5) How do you stay sane as a founder of a startup? Do you ever get to take a break as a founder and how do you sustain your energy? What do you give up by being a founder? How is being a founder different from working for a startup? Follow more of Flori’s founder journey on twitter or instagram at @FounderFlori And sign up to earn money on your crypto currencies with BlockFi  Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the outside, it probably seemed that Tom was living the founder dream life, but the reality was that towards the end of Tom’s time at Monzo, the emotional journey of being a founder was taking its toll - he was under a lot of pressure with many sleepless nights and wasn’t sure he wanted to continue the journey. Tom grew Monzo from 0 to over 2,000 employees and was one of the youngest CEOs of a UK regulated bank ever. He raised over $500M on the Monzo journey and the product they built at Monzo is used by over 5 million people. Tom was also a co-founder of GoCardless. Today, Tom Blomfield is a prolific angel, and a visiting partner for YC.  In this episode you will hear more from Tom about:  1) The reality of the startup founder journey What did the end of the Monzo journey feel like for him?  What does burnout feel like? Why doesn’t he think the word burnout is the right description?  How do you maintain headspace as a founder? What could he have done to make the journey more sustainable? Would he still be running Monzo if he’d done those things? 2) How do you know your startup is living its values? How do you see/feel values in real life? What were some of Monzo’s core values? How did he as the CEO encourage and discourage certain behaviour when it was or wasn’t aligned with the values? 3) Tom’s Leadership Style and Lessons Why showing vulnerability is important in leadership Why crying or showing emotion as a leader is a strength, not a weakness What’s the difference between leadership versus management? How do you know if your team is growing at the pace the company needs during startup hypergrowth scaling? What do you do when someone is not fitting in? 4) Fundraising and Who You Need by Your Side in the Startup Founding Journey What does it feel like to fundraise? Why you actually might want VC naysayers and doubters in your corner and not just venture capital cheerleaders. Check out more from him, including his famous fundraising guide, at tomblomfield.com. Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices