Mentors

This week we sit down with Venetia Archer, Founder and CEO of on-demand beauty booking platform, Ruuby. Venetia left her career as a Geopolitical Risk Analyst to launch Ruuby in 2015, with a £25,000 start-up loan. Since then, Venetia has raised £2.5 million from backers including former Bulgari CEO Francesco Trapani and Henry Lane Fox’s accelerator Founders Factory. In the episode, we deep dive into Venetia’s journey as an entrepreneur, including having 5 other business ideas before starting Ruuby, from carbonated coffee to nicotine gum! We hope you enjoy the episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week’s episode of Mentors, we chatted to Dominic McGregor, Founding Partner of Fearless Adventures and Founder & Ex-COO of Social Chain. Dom dropped out of university to co-found Social Chain, growing the company to 550 employees with group revenues of nearly €200m per year, before a successful IPO in 2021. Dom has since founded his own fund, Fearless Adventures, which intends to grow the "next generation" of direct-to-consumer (D2C) success stories. In this episode, we discuss Dom’s journey and how that has impacted his mental health, the best advice he’s had along the way, and why Social Chain’s IPO isn’t even his greatest achievement. We hope you enjoy it!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Freddy Ward and Charlie Bowes-Lyon, founders of Wild Cosmetics, a D2C sustainable, natural deodorant brand. Wild generated eight-figure revenues in its first full year of trading, recording 400% year-on-year growth in 2021 and selling 2.5 million of its gender-neutral line of compostable deodorants. They have also received over 6,000 5* star reviews on Trustpilot. In this episode, we discussed how the idea for Wild began, where the company plans to go in the next 12 months and everything in between. We hope you enjoy the episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week’s episode, we talk with Nick Beighton, previous CEO of ASOS. We discussed everything from ASOS’s acquisition of Topshop, to his advice on leadership, to creating culture and values in an office whilst integrating some purposeful chaos too. Nick resigned as CEO of ASOS in October 2021 and it was great to hear what he’s been doing since, as well as his plans for the future. We hope you enjoy it! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In today’s episode of Mentors, we talk with Eshita Kabra-Davies, founder of By Rotation, the world's first social rental app. Eshita started By Rotation as a side hustle whilst working full-time at a hedge fund but when By Rotation hit the targets she’d set, Eshita finally left her seven-year career in investment management. Here, we discuss what it took for Eshita to make that move, as well as her best advice; from saying yes to everything to the importance of working for someone else before starting your own company. We hope you enjoy it! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the third episode of Mentors, we sat down with James Connelly, co-founder of Charlie Oscar Group and ex-Chairman and co-founder of Fetch Media, which he sold to the Dentsu Aegis Network - the third-largest marketing services network in the world. In 2019, James left Fetch to take a ‘gap year’ from the industry. Here, we discuss what James has been up to since, how he dealt with the transition period after he exited, and his best advice for dealing with the negative elements that come with running a company. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this week’s episode of Mentors, we chatted to Jamie Laing and Ed Williams, co-founders of vegan sweet brand Candy Kittens, the fast-growing confectionary brand which sells a bag of sweets every 12 seconds! We discussed everything from the role that Jamie’s time on the reality TV show Made In Chelsea has played on the brand’s success to why running a business in order to sell it means you inevitably won’t succeed. Enjoy the episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

During Web Summit, we recorded an episode with Michele Romanow, Michele is a serial entrepreneur who started six companies before her 35th birthday. A "Dragon" on the Canadian hit TV show Dragons' Den (Canada’s Shark Tank), Michele is the co-founder of Clearco, a performance financing company that’s invested $2.5 billion into 5500+ e-commerce and SaaS companies to date. She previously co-founded SnapSaves, acquired by Groupon and was Co-Founder of Buytopia.ca. A prolific investor, Michele was recently named Fortune’s 40 under 40, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women and Canada’s Angel Investor of the Year. We discussed everything from dancing on tables with Richard Branson to how to do hybrid working successfully. As Michele would say “Stay scrappy and humble”. Enjoy the episode!! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.