“Entrepreneurship feels like a process of torture sometimes because no matter how hard you try and how much you work and how many evenings or weekends that you sacrifice, you’re still only at the very bottom of the hill.”  Today’s 40 Minute Mentor is Deirdre O’Neill, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial & Legal Officer at women’s health startup, Hertility.  With a background in corporate law and VC law, Deirdre took the leap into entrepreneurship in 2019, alongside twin sister Dr Helen...

“If we’re not seeing outcomes, we need more visibility. Does visibility mean someone being physically in front of you? Probably not.”  Today’s 40 Minute Mentor is Natasha Ratanshi-Stein, the Founder of Surfboard - the next generation planning tools for customer service teams.  Before building Surfboard, Natasha spent several years as an Operator and Investor, including her roles as Principal at Piton Capital and Chief of Staff at Bulb.  We had a fascinating chat with Natasha, exploring her...

“I think we over index on the significance of education at the cost of other important parts of the social mobility conversation.”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Gary Izunwa, Co-Founder and CEO of Tangent.  Tangent is an employee referral platform that makes referrals accessible to everyone and NOT just the privileged few with the best networks.  Prior to Tangent, Gary worked at LinkedIn and the British Council leading programmes for ‘Generation UK’, a multimillion pound campaign,...

“You work so hard for something you’ve dreamt of for so long and then you achieve it and it’s nothing like you imagined it would be…”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Lottie Whyte, Co-Founder and CEO of MyoMaster, the home of sports recovery and a brand on a mission to unlock every athlete’s greatest performance.  If you’re an avid BBC Dragons Den watcher, then you’ll have seen Lottie and her Co-Founder and husband, Joe, on the most recent series, where they won an incredible £100,000...

“It’s never felt easy. There’s never been a single day where it’s felt easy. The winds are always hardwired for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun.”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Morgan Fowles, CEO of popular sustainable activewear and athleisure brand, TALA.  If you’ve been listening to 40 Minute Mentor for a while, you would have already come across TALA, when we caught up with Founder, Grace Beverley in Season 5.  In this episode, we find out more about...

“They say all the best businesses in the world have nearly died three times. It’s an inevitable journey you go on when you're creating a high growth business.” This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Radha Vyas, Co-Founder and CEO of adventure travel startup, Flash Pack.  Flash Pack is on a mission to create 1 million friendships through connecting solo travellers in their 30s and 40s to go on adventure trips they'll never forget.  Since inception, Flash Pack has been on an incredible journey -...

“Sometimes entrepreneurship is about bending the odds of success and being willing to take on the risk even though it doesn’t make much sense. It’s about going ahead anyway and changing the odds yourself.”  In our first episode of Series 11 of 40 Minute Mentor, we’re joined by Richard Robinson, Founder and CEO of Robin AI.  Robin AI is a leader in legal AI and empowers legal teams and lawyers all over the world to make contract processes effortless.  In today’s episode you’ll find out how...

“Sometimes entrepreneurship is about bending the odds of success, and just being willing to take on the risks…” Welcome back to Series 11 of 40 Minute Mentor - your pocket-sized career mentor.  We’ve got 13 weeks of non-stop mentorship from some of the best in the industry, coming up for you.  Before we kick off the series with our first 40 Minute Mentor next week, we thought we’d share a few soundbites with you of what’s to come…  In this series trailer, you’ll hear from:  ⭐ Gary Izunwa,...

“We scaled way too fast…and the result was that we mis-hired quite a lot. It was not a sustainable way to scale.” This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Peter Specht, General Partner at Creandum, one of the leading early stage VCs that have invested in over 120 companies, of which 20 are unicorns today.  Following career chapters at Rocket Internet Group, Google and Bain, Peter joined the firm as Investment Manager in 2017, as one of the firm’s first hires in the DACH region, building out its...

“Team sports are a great proxy for working in companies, where often the power of the collective is way stronger than any individual.” This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Davor Hebel, Managing Partner at Eight Roads Ventures, the global VC firm backed by Fidelity.     Eight Roads backs and partners with game-changing tech and healthcare companies across Europe, Asia, Israel and the US. The platform has 50+ years of venture investing experience, $11bn in AUM, over 300 portfolio companies and...

“If you’re not ready to commit to VC for at least 10 years, it’s just not worth trying…”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Masha Bucher, Founder & General Partner at Day One Ventures.  The firm backs Founders from AI and Climate, to future of work and Deeptech, helping customer obsessed and mission-driven Founders win, by harnessing the power of storytelling.  With a background in communications and PR, Masha is pioneering a new model in VC by spearheading public relations in Day One...

“You need to figure out what you really need. Not just the role now, but looking at the future and at the competencies you need in your organisation. Figure out how you build a very complementary team, rather than having people who are all the same.”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is Sandra Schwarzer, VP C-Suite/Board & EU Talent/Community & Insights Team leader at Index Ventures.  Sandra works with Founders and executive teams on people related issues, including talent strategy,...

“This is not necessarily a one-way transaction. Look at fundraising like it’s dating. The VC you’re going to choose, you’ll be stuck with for quite some time, so don’t play games and be honest, the whole way through…”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is the brilliant Abhishek Lahoti, Head of Platform at Highland Europe, a growth stage Venture Capital firm based in Geneva and London.  Within his role at Highland Europe, Abhishek’s focus is to build a strong network of advisors and experts to...

“The whole industry is full of very successful people who have had this very standard path. It’s hard to look at your own [different] background and put yourself on an even level with them.”  This week’s 40 Minute Mentor is the brilliant Hannah Leach, Partner at Houghton Street Ventures and Co-Founder of VentureESG.  Hannah moved into the venture space after a squiggly career in and around the venture and entrepreneurship ecosystems, including building accelerator programs, teams within...

“I think 2024 is a great opportunity to back fantastic people and get more attention on things that are undervalued or don’t get enough attention to invest in.”  Described as the ‘Queen of British VC’ by Fortune magazine, we are kicking off our new VC feature series with the brilliant Eileen Burbidge MBE. Eileen is a Founding Partner at Passion Capital, the pre-eminent early-stage technology venture fund based in London, where she backed some of the most successful Tech businesses,...

“Founders often don’t have someone outside of the business that they can be really vulnerable with…that’s where an advisor can help.” For our final episode in our career spotlight feature series, we’re taking a deep dive into an increasingly popular, yet often unspoken about role - the advisory role.  To help us cover the ins and outs of the role, how you can land your first gig and the benefits to Founders, we’re joined by JBM Principal, Marina Maxwell and Chris Seigal, Advisor to D2C...

“You need to be able to own what you do have, but even more so, what you don’t have.” Following last week’s episode on building a stand-out CV and personal brand on LinkedIn, we’re now focusing on the next crucial stage in the recruitment process - the interview. Very often, the interview stage can feel quite daunting, but a lot of it comes down to preparation and doing the work upfront.  In today’s episode, we’ll hear from our wonderful JBM team who lift the curtain on the secret to nailing...

“The CV is not the one thing that will or will not get you hired, there is a whole interview process…” New year, new job? January is a month of reset, refresh and for many, the time to scope out a new opportunity…  No matter whether you’re in the middle of hunting for a new role, are just starting to think about it or are looking to hire into your team in 2024, our ‘Career Spotlight’ feature series has something for everyone.  For our first episode, we sat down with JBM's team to share...

Just like that we’re closing another year of 40 Minute Mentor.  This year, we surpassed our 200 published episodes mark and are fast approaching 1 million downloads.  Before we kick off a brand new feature series in the new year, we asked some of our biggest 40 Minute Mentor fans for their nominations for the best episode of 2023. From scaling teams to Founder mistakes and investment advice, our guests may range across industries but they all align on one thing - sharing pocket-sized career...

As we’re nearing the end of the year, your 40 Minute Mentor Host, James Mitra, takes a moment to reflect on the last 12 months of podcasting and what the year ahead may have in store.  A huge thank you for all your support over the last 12 months - we wouldn’t be where we are without you!  If you have any feedback, topic or guest ideas for 2024, please get in touch on [email protected] - we always love hearing from you!  For now, all that’s left to say is - Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas (if...

“The thing I love a lot about startups, it’s like a personal self-development course at a rapid rate.” For our final episode in our Replay series, we’re joined by Sharmadean Reid MBE, Founder of The Stack World, a platform for the women’s creator economy to buy and sell from each other.  In this candid episode, we chat about Sharmadean’s Founder journey from a nail salon to a global mecca for aspiring entrepreneurs, and ultimately starting The Stack World.  We discuss the lessons she learned,...

“The importance of the team around you, having focus and discipline and the awareness of facing setbacks… it’s been great to bring the things I’ve learned from sport into the business world.” From the 2012 Olympic poster girl to Founder of FemTech brand, Jennis… today’s 40 Minute Mentor Replay episode is with none other than Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill. In this episode we talked about the ins and outs of Jess’s phenomenal sporting career and her pivot into the business world with Jennis - a...

“I was most unhappy at work when I was making the most money and the biggest amount of success.”  From a successful career at Google, to the journey of making 1 billion people happy.That is the story of Mo Gawdat, the former Chief Business Officer of Google X, author of Solve for Happy and Founder of One Billion Happy.  It’s an episode full of wisdom, honesty and candid reflections.  In today’s 40 Minute Mentor Replay, Mo shares his incredible story, including spending 25 years in tech and...

“Globally, a third of all the food we produce each year gets thrown away. Meanwhile, 800 million people go to bed hungry, who could be fed with a quarter of the food we waste in the Western world.”  Did you know that roughly one third of the world's food is wasted? Meanwhile, 1 in 9 people on our planet are either starving or malnourished... This is something today’s 40 Minute Mentor is on a mission to change.  In today’s replay episode, we’re joined by Tessa Clarke, the Co-Founder and CEO of...