Mastering Tech Growth

For today´s episode, Mike is joined by Mike Todasco a visiting fellow at San Diego State University and former director of Innovation at PayPal. Mike holds over 100 patents and has a passion for leveraging AI to get things done fast. If you are a solopreneur who wants to scale quickly without building a team, this episode is very much for you. KEY TAKEAWAYS AI genuinely can super charge your business. Experiment to get the most out of AI. When it comes to mastering tech growth experimentation is key. According to McKenzie, businesses can use AI to eliminate 60 to 70% of their tasks. Use an AI bracelet to record what you do each day. Eliminate the tasks that are no longer necessary and aim to automate the rest.  Use tools like make.com to start automating app-based tasks. It may take time to get each task automation to work, so you need to be persistent. You can outline a task to Zapier, and it will create a workflow of automation for you to tweak. Find a space or activity that lets you switch off fully and really think e.g. running or driving. That´s when the ideas flow. Pick an AI tool and go with it, learn it throughly. Once you´ve done that you will be able to master other AI tools far faster. Automate tasks that are expensive to outsource. Mike shares some surprising use cases. Empower the people who work for you with AI tools.  Explore Notebook LLM for content creation. It relies solely on the sources you give it. Use reinforcement learning to get the most out of AI. The more feedback you give it the better. ChatGPT can now remember your previous chats, which means it can now learn about you, your preferences, what you are working, the language you like to use and more. Use AI in your day-to-day life e.g. to create your training routines BEST MOMENTS 00.57 "The majority of solopreneurs use AI without a system, no workflow, no structure, no AI leverage."  5.23 "Embrace your inner child, you need to experiment, you need to try stuff, you need to fail. That´s how you work with these AI tools."  13.08 "If you are not occasionally adding steps back into your processes that means you are not removing enough."  26.24 “The thing that kills ideation is having a phone. You just think oh god I´m so bored, I need to go on TikTok.” 38.26 “Just pick one AI tool and go with it. All of them are so darn good.” 52.16 “According to MIT Sloan, AI systems perform much better when they are treated as collaboration partners.” 1.02.16 “Find the tasks which are low hanging fruits, quick wins, which should not be done by hand.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/todasco https://www.bee.computer – AI bracelet ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.  This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Today, Mike is joined by Quentin de Quelen the CEO and cofounder of Meilisearch, one of the fastest growing open-source search engines, which can easily be integrated into websites and applications. Quentin helps companies create fast, customisable, typo-proof search experiences.   Today, for research, 46% of Gen Z prefer Instagram and TikTok. YouTube is now the go-to for tutorials and reviews, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, Voice Assistant, etc. are also popular. In an environment like that, you have to ask yourself, "How are people going to find me and find what they need from me?" This episode has the answers. KEY TAKEAWAYS How people search and the evolution of the tools they use changes monthly. Most of the time, you can still impact how you appear in the various search interfaces. Consumers are increasingly in discovery mode; they are no longer simply looking for one specific thing. E.g. They are less likely to type in a specific trainer; they want to know what is available and choose from there. Meilisearch is very good at ascertaining the intent of the search and delivering results based on that. The structure of our website data will change to facilitate LLMs, Quentin explains why MCPs are likely to play a role. Having very intentional pages on your website helps to better control what content ChatGPT etc uses to answer users’ questions. There is very little difference between how you target voice searches and LLM searches, but the response needs to differ. To glean invaluable information about your customers, analyse all of your user queries and their search intent. Meilisearch is particularly good for this. Use your query results to create better adaptive content. Keep your data clean to make it easier to search. To build user trust, be transparent and provide sources. Schema still helps to organize data. Consider using LLM.txt. In the LLM age, c**p site content is even more damaging. Use as many formats as possible for your content, including video. BEST MOMENTS 3:42 "Search, today, is moving quite fast…now it´s changing every month."  6:48 "Whatever the medium, there is always transcription to a final search that will be made."  14:07 "You don´t want to let ChatGPT call your website, find whatever results and showcase it all to users."  21:44 "One intent, one page…works best." 28.33 “Know when not to answer.” 44.11 “People can choose whatever model they prefer …it’s easier to be trusted.” 50.13 “Think about what your user expects and manage your data to look like what your user expects.” 57.01 “Split your pages into relevant segments.” 1.07.25 “Write content that is mindful, content people want to read.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.meilisearch.com ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.  This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcus Fontoura, Azure Core CTO, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, holder of 50 patents and the author of A Platform Mindset. Marcus is certainly a man who knows how to scale tech without breaking it. If your startup is taking off so fast that you can’t keep up or are drowning in bugs and relying on hot fixes and workarounds to hold things together, this episode is for you. It teaches you how to stop scaling your technical debt and redirect your energy and resources into scaling success. KEY TAKEAWAYS Marcus helped to shape some of the planet´s fastest scaling systems, including Google and Yahoo. Disconnected systems slow you down more than missing features. Decide on the technology, platforms, and tools early and get everyone to use them. When you tell developers which tools they will use from day 1 it frees up bandwidth for them to create faster and avoids resentment when you have no choice but to standardise the platforms used. Recognise when it is time to move from the validation stage to the professionalisation stage. Invest in infrastructure and tools that are easy to scale as demand rises. Avoid over engineering. Make sure all of your systems integrate to avoid silos and repeating work. Marcus explains how. Most startups (75%) fail because they scale too fast. On average, a day per week per developer is wasted fixing poorly planned and implemented code etc. Creating a high performing team culture is the key to fast and efficient growth. People don´t change easily that is why you need to cultivate sound cultural values, communication, trust, collaboration, willingness to take feedback etc.  Protect your company values even when hyper scaling.  Don’t hire brilliant jerks, they pull everyone down.  Cultural skills are hard to teach, but most tech skills can be taught in months. The CEO needs to be a good role model. Build trust and collaboration between teams. BEST MOMENTS 1:09 "The fix? It starts with the platform mindset."  4:30 "Tech growth equals preparing for scaling."  16.33 "Developers waste 23% of their time…reworking bad past solutions." 30.00 "Recognise what you don´t know and pull in people who can actually help you."  43.12 "Understand the phase you are in… and scale accordingly."  50.11 "Any system you build should have inbound and outbound APIs."  54.25 "The culture enables a lot of efficiency when teams trust each other."  1.08.11 "When you are ready for hyper growth…hire the best talent you can get."  1.16.30 “Have a growth mindset to build a culture to leverage platforms for impact.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusfontoura Multipliers Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Liz-Wiseman/author/B00369WNUW Ideal Team Member - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Patrick-Lencioni/author/B001ILFMB2 ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Graham Riley, a LinkedIn strategist, speaker, and founder of LinkedIn Enterprises. For 20+ years, Graham has been helping B2B companies generate millions in revenue using LinkedIn. His strategies don´t just get you likes; they drive deals. He and Mike discuss how you need to respond to drastic algorithm changes, why your execs need to engage on LinkedIn, quickly create content, take advantage of LinkedIn visitor data that many people are not even aware of, and much more. KEY TAKEAWAYS The majority of LinkedIn advice is out of date. LinkedIn is not just another social media platform or a resume repository. It is a sales generator. Engagement is the key to leveraging LinkedIn. Respond to your comments and do it properly. Comments that elevate what was said and add value are the most effective. 75% of visitors to Graham´s profile visit after reading his comments. Your execs' silence is hurting your brand visibility. Execs want to hear from thought leaders, from other execs. LinkedIn enables your execs to connect, build awareness, trust and belief. With LinkedIn, you have to take a strategic approach. Use business impact language. Say the right things to the right audience at the right time to generate curiosity in your ability to solve the problem. Create a great LinkedIn profile by consistently doing a series of little things right. Marketing, sales and product delivery are all a part of acquiring a customer and turning them into a repeat customer. Recently, the algorithm changed. If your posts have no interaction, they will not be seen. Engaging with comments the right way is essential. Train AI train well, use the right AI tools and do it well. Take your business whitepaper, distil it and turn it into snackable content. Keep repeating your messages. If you don´t, people forget. BEST MOMENTS 1:47 "Graham is the only guest who has managed to get 400 people tuned in for this LinkedIn event, normally it is about 200 people."  5:30 “People trust people…content from individuals especially executives builds more trust."  10:53 "The power comes when all of those components are working in harmony with each other, just like in a car." 32.44 “LinkedIn is telling you that you should care about how much your comment is getting seen.” 46.00 “How you behave and communicate with me is shaping my perception of how much attention I should pay.” 1.03.04 “Somebody with a free profile can generate opportunities, but it’s much harder.” 1.06.12 “Use your LinkedIn profile to mimic the professional behaviours that you would have at a trade show or conference.” 1.11.14 “ Around 75% of the people who visit my profile have come from the comments that I've made.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamkeithriley ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Chris Silvestri, the founder of Conversion Alchemy. Chris helps B2B SaaS companies break through the noise, reach more would-be customers and show them why they are the obvious choice. Chris’s carefully honed approach uses the alchemy of copy, UX, and decision-making psychology to turn browsers and visitors into loyal, paying customers. He digs deep into customer research, pulls out real insights, who your real buyer is, what their buying decision making process is and determine what language will resonate with them, so that your message lands and converts. KEY TAKEAWAYS Mastery is about going deeper than your competition. Invest in customer research. You can't write copy that converts without it. Build a repeatable research process. There are layers to research.  The surface layer of research is reviews and competitors’ products. The deeper layers include the customer experience while using a product like yours and why customers behave as they do. Focus on the individual decisions customers make during their buying journey and why they make them. Uncover your unique narrative by asking customers what they think existing providers are doing wrong.  Use reviews to understand the language your customers use. Your copy needs to resonate with – daily users, the purchasing decision maker and the check signer. Use AI combined with human data to simulate personas. Chris explains how and which tools to use. According to HubSpot, 72% of SaaS websites fail to clearly explain what they offer. Get your value proposition right. Blend features with benefits. Test and tweak your copy. To truly connect with people, use their language, their pain points and their motivations. Be clear on what you do, how you do it and who you do it for. BEST MOMENTS 1.14 "People underestimate the power of good copy when it comes to conversions."  3:25 "Invest more in research."  6:36 "The deep-seated layer tells you why customers make the decisions they make and how they make them."  15:24 "To uncover your customer´s pain points….reviews are a good starting point." 31:00 "You can make sure that everything it gives is accurate and that it doesn´t hallucinate."  40:40 "You can simulate personas with AI, but not real customer behaviour, at least not yet."  47:73  “Imagine that your copy needs to continue the phrase "I want to … that's your valuable position."  59:00 "The right message basically has the right positioning with the right language for the right audience."  1.05.36 “The best copy is copy that doesn´t look like copy.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://conversionalchemy.net https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophersilvestri https://www.amazon.co.uk/Demand-Side-Sales-101-Customers-Progress/dp/1544509987 ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Lukas Gentele, CEO and co-founder of Loft Labs, to discuss how to ensure that your open-source project doesn’t end up being one of the 80% that fail. Lukas has successfully launched multiple open-source projects and turned them into profitable businesses. Through this episode, he provides the bones of a framework you can use to do the same. KEY TAKEAWAYS Open source needs to solve real problems, ones that people are willing to pay to have solved. Your open-source product needs to solve problems, but not to the point where nothing is left to build a commercial product that will still attract buyers.You are building 2 tools. Avoid interdepartmental rivalry - don´t silo the development of the two products. The build it and they will come mentality doesn´t work. Write and continuously publish content to increase the chances of your product taking off. Create communities of your own. Use them to better understand who your customers are and what their pain points are now and in the future. Fully engage with users to turn them into contributors. Value ideas and usage insights just as much as coding. Don’t expect your community to build a lot of code. They will, but it will be limited. Recognise those that contribute. Years on, continue to engage with your users, release enhancements and new content to maintain momentum. Continuously update your readme, include a demo video, don´t skimp on the support docs. Without these using your tool becomes too difficult and your reputation suffers. Offer a free trial for paid features. Make the transition from open source to your paid product a no brainer and easy. BEST MOMENTS 00.30 "80% of open-source projects ultimately flop."  02:52 "Focus on the right problem in the right market."  07.47 “When you ship new features and talk about them, you create more and more opportunities.” 22.04 “ There needs to be a balance between what's open source and what's commercial.” 25.32  "That's the beautiful effect of open source; people actually want to work with the folks that built it." 30.12 "You are effectively building two different tools. One is open source, one is enterprise. ." 34.27 "If we had just launched a commercial offering, I don't think we would have a company today." 35.29 “There's a balance between what you open source and what you don’t. You don't want to tip the scale either way." 39.23 "Over 90% of users are consumers, not contributors." 45.29 "These people feel even more engaged with the product. They feel part of this community. They feel part of the project." 58.00 “Your success will equal other people's successes.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.vcluster.com https://github.com/loft-sh/vcluster https://slack.vcluster.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gentele https://x.com/lukasgentele https://www.loft.sh ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Today, Mike is joined by Sam Piliero, founder of The Moonlighters, a marketing agency helping brands scale profitably. Sam and his team break down why most brands struggle to scale their ads, and how small fixes in strategy can make the difference between them running ads that are burning cash and ads that enable firms to scale profitably. Sam explains how to use AI for marketing, work out what strategy is right for your company and which ad platforms are providing the best exposure and ROI, right now. KEY TAKEAWAYS Small changes in strategy can take you from burning cash running ineffective ads to spending a lot less while seeing sales soar. AI combined with manual oversight is now an effective way to craft, monitor and tweak ads. The new Meta UI is going to be transformative. The number of campaigns you should be running changes as you evolve. Nurture your existing customers but dedicate most of your budget to customer acquisition. Setting up your pixels and using that data is vital.  At the start, be everywhere. Gather the data, then focus on the platforms that work best. Leverage all of the channels in the G Suite (Google). Right now, there are lots of opportunities on X for small businesses. Include as many formats as possible in each ad campaign to increase your placement levels. People resonate with stories. Analysing your ROI is essential. Sam explains exactly how to do it. Drill down into what times of the day/week convert best for you. BEST MOMENTS 3:19 "he next six months, we're going to see an acceleration of the use of some of the AI tools."  5:46 "You have to really focus on what's actually functioning the best today, and then focus on six months, nine months, then a year from now."  7:22 "Allow the market to iron things out, be a little bit later in adopting these new things."  9:55 "Companies that scale successfully evolve their customer acquisition model." 12:38 "Early days, it's okay to have even just one or two campaigns."  17.20 “Facebook and Google are the best converting platforms, period, right now.“ 21.01 “Almost every time the geo-located campaigns are outperforming the E-com side because we are targeting a specific cohort of people.“ 25.35 “Whenever big advertisers remove themselves from an ad platform, the cost of advertising decreases drastically.” 26.43 “If you spend the same amount across the board, e.g. $1,000 you would typically be seeing Facebook and Google outperform.” 32.05 “The more value you put in a piece of content, the more views it gets.” 33.16 “Virality is not only unique, it is actually earned.” 42.00 “Don't overreact to slight adjustments in the ad account.” 51.29 “Always focus on minimizing wasted ad spend and reallocating that ad spend to the best possible place.” EPISODE RESOURCES https://themoonlighters.com/techgrowth https://www.youtube.com/@SamPiliero Social - @SamPiliero ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcelo Calbucci, the author of PRFAQ Lab. He has been successfully growing startups for 18+ years and is a former Amazon exec. His book PRFAQ Lab breaks down the framework Amazon uses to determine whether an idea is viable and how to develop it. This framework has helped to ensure that in a world where 92% of start-ups fail, most of Amazon´s succeed. As do other start-ups that use the framework. If you want to learn how to de-risk your startup and build with confidence before you write a single line of code, listen in and turn your ideas into validated and fundable billion-dollar products, services and businesses. KEY TAKEAWAYS 92% of startups fail.  Amazon start-ups use a simple framework called PRFAQ to validate their ideas, align their team and get investors. An approach that has been highly successful, with the majority of their start-ups succeeding. PRFAQ stands for Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions. Using the 7 step Press Release format enables you to identify the problem, who is experiencing the issue, your solution, how it works and how people can get your product.  Writing a press release as if you have already launched the product opens your mind and improves understanding. Manually write your PR. Writing has been scientifically proven to help you think, it activates different sides of the brain. The FAQs you need to include are those that help you to define vision and strategy. Validate your idea before you start coding. If the market does not exist, don´t build it. Understand the job the customer is trying to complete and what steps they are currently following to get it done. Don´t guess. Understanding where to find your customers is a vital part of your research. PRFAQ also works well for services and businesses. It is a great way to align a team and share the vision in an undiluted form. PRFAQ is good for pitching. BEST MOMENTS 3:40 "You have to wear your archaeologist or anthropologist hat and really observe how people work through the problem that you're trying to solve."  7:13 "The best way to address that problem is to eliminate the problem."  12:43 "According to Harvard Business Review, startups that validate … market need for their solution are 2.5 times more likely to succeed." 30.53 “It's not really a customer discovery framework. PRFAQ is a framework that helps you discover what you don't know and helps you to capture and think critically about that.” 47.34 “So, your slides don't have the typical gaps that most pitch decks have.” 48.53 “According to Forbes, startups with well-structured pitch documents are 60% more likely to secure funding.” 52.31 “Every product you know that Amazon has launched over the last 20 years was backed by a PRFAQ.” EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.theprfaq.com ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Jonathan Mast, the founder of White Beard Strategies. He is a leading voice in AI prompting mastery with over 400,000 followers. Jonathan has helped 1000s of business owners and entrepreneurs unlock AI's full potential using his structured four-step framework. Enabling some of them to experience a 5,000% uptick in their ROI. This episode is a must listen if you want to stop wasting time with bad AI outputs and start getting results that actually move the needle.  KEY TAKEAWAYS Technology is there to be leveraged to make your life and that of others better. Adding value for your customer is where the growth is. Most people are using AI wrong and blaming the tool when they get poor results. AI can´t read your mind, you need to give it context and invite it to ask you for clarification. Give AI an avatar to write as e.g. You are an expert copywriter who specialises in …. One prompt is rarely enough, you need to provide a framework e.g. To write a book, you need to provide hundreds of prompts. It is still hard to get AI to only use the body of knowledge you give it to create content. Mike shares his method for doing this. AI works with a limited amount of memory, so if you give it too many instructions in one go, it soon loses the thread and goes off track. Johnathan shares several ways to get around usage caps and gain access to all of the AI models. Make using AI a win for your team. Learn how to leverage AI. Doing so turns you into a sought-after employee. Do something new each day with AI. To overcome the hallucinations issue. Trust, but verify. When brainstorming with AI, use your voice. Weirdly, you get much better results. It is also good at transcribing. AI does a great job of organizing and contextualizing what is sometimes a very random stream of thought. The fastest way to learn AI is to use it consistently. BEST MOMENTS 00:55 "It´s not AI that´s broken, it´s your prompts."  7:12 "Give the AI permission to ask you clarifying questions.." 21.15 “If we give it too many things to do, it's simply not going to follow through on that… it works best in a prompt if we give it 1, 2 maybe 3 things.” 38.59 ”When you're rolling it out at first, make it a win for your team, not just a win for the company.” 44.29 “Trust but verify.” 46.03 “By giving it (AI) permission to ask you questions, it'll avoid most of those hallucinations.” 51.18 “Have a conversation with AI. Don't expect to give it one prompt and get perfection.” 53.17 “We make too many assumptions that AI will figure it out. In other words, we don't give it enough context.” 57.53 “We are not at a point, nor do I see us ever getting to a point, where AI is that proverbial money tree in the backyard.” ABOUT THE GUEST Personal Website: https://jonathanmast.com White Beard Strategies: https://whitebeardstrategies.com AI Prompting Mastery: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aipromptsforentrepreneurs/    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathanjmast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanjmast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jonathanmast_withai Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonathanmast Threads: https://threads.net/@jonathanmast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathanmast/ ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Aditya Jain, the co-founder of Passion Fruit and a leading SEO growth strategist who has helped companies move beyond vanity metrics and generate income from their SEO efforts. They discuss why most businesses get SEO wrong and spend too long chasing rankings instead of revenue. Many are targeting high volume low intent keywords. Aditya Jain is going to change the way you think about and use SEO. He provides truly practical advice that works in the modern marketplace. Including how to use AI to improve targeting and speed up content creation and data analysis. KEY TAKEAWAYS Companies waste months chasing rankings instead of revenue by optimizing for high volume, low intent keywords that never lead to sales.  Position yourself to solve your customer’s pain point and target those in your SEO. Regularly review this, Aditya shares some of the tools and framework he uses. Ask your customers what their problems are. Use Aditya´s method to ensure you get honest answers and insights. When it comes to building your website, your North Star is matching user intent Your pages also need to be search engine and AI LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT and Perplexity) friendly. If they are not, your content will not be found online. Write with the intent of answering your customer´s questions, especially when using AI. If you don´t, you will get a high bounce rate, and your traffic will crash. Measure how each page is performing, including the sales generated. Use SEMrush, it is a cheap and quick way to get started. AI enables you to dig deeper into your data and sometimes that of your competitors. Don´t just follow trends, you need to focus on what you really do and want to do. BEST MOMENTS 0:18 "High traffic doesn't pay the bills, conversions do."  00:28 "Understand which keywords actually drive revenue and how to adjust SEO in real time to capture more business."  2:24 "What drives growth is your customer’s pain point, figure that out and position yourself to solve that problem."  7:40 "We actually have a living, breathing document of all the common questions and concerns etc that our customers have."  10:16 "90% of pages receive no organic traffic because they optimise for broad, low intent keywords." 13:28 "Your North Star is not just revenue, it’s actually – am I matching my user's intent and am I building topical authority?" 15:10 "The readability of your code base, etc., is increasingly important." 33.10 "Any marketing strategy that involves producing content or doing SEO just comes down to delivering on customer needs.” 50.17 “Reviewing the data actually just tells you what type of customers want you, and then you choose, is this a customer I actually want?” EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditya-j-985a92108/ https://www.getpassionfruit.com ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Peter Kaliuzhny, the founder of GetSales.io, who is an expert on B2B sales. He has closed numerous six figure deals with Fortune 100 companies. Peter leverages LinkedIn and can turn any profile into a lead generation machine, which is free to use. Peter explains how to optimise your LinkedIn profile, create break-through first connection messages and generate inbound profile links. He shares how to understand your customers and use that knowledge to generate massive leads and sales. KEY TAKEAWAYS Greatly boost your earning potential by creating LinkedIn content that showcases your expertise. LinkedIn is a powerful lead generation and sales tool, not just a place to find a job. Tech growth is about leveraging technology to get better results and generate sales. LinkedIn marketing is free. Optimise your LinkedIn profile to gain 30% more views and 3x more engagement. An effective profile reflects your values, your goals and outlines how you can help. LinkedIn marketing is not about spammy DMs that will get you blocked. Make true connections and turn those relationships into sales. Peter doesn’t use LinkedIn SEO – he explains why. Actively drive inbound links to your profile. Peter explains how. Consistently create high-quality content that solves your customer´s pain. Be careful when using automation with LinkedIn. Peter shares how to do it properly. Start slowly and use the same IP. You have seconds to make a positive first impression. Peter shares how to compose your first message. AI can be helpful when creating your initial messages. Humour triggers emotions which helps build a connection. Personalise your message and make it truly relevant to your prospect. Ask people you already know well who they think might be interested in your service. Regularly review and re-balance your network. BEST MOMENTS 1:00 "Master the art of safe and effective LinkedIn outreach." 8:50 "Test, see how the conversation goes…. Don't just pitch something right away, explore it instead."  14:37 "Really connect … if you want to sell, you never sell. You have to think about how you can help them resolve their problem."  15.05 “Optimise your profile, fine tune it so that it is aligned with your goals.” 27.02 “Post really good content, consistently. content that helps them to solve that pain.” 31.46 “You have to identify those leads and understand what you really want …once you do that, you can go for automation.” 48.01 “Never send a wall of text.” 59.29 “Don't ask for a call.” 1.11.03 “Create content related to your job, to your expertise, it is super cool.. you increase the value of yourself….” 1.11.18 “They will be paying you more later on, if you show your expertise.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliuzhnypeter ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Today, Mike is joined by Sabir Semerkant, a top E-commerce growth strategist, with 25+ years of experience. Over the years he has helped brands like Coca Cola, Canon and Tommy Hilfiger to achieve massive growth. Sabir has turned that expertise into his 8D Method - a step-by-step framework for unlocking scalable, profitable e-commerce growth. His rapid 2x program has helped brands grow by an average of 108% in just 21 days In this episode, Sabir breaks down pricing, marketing, product research and profitability strategies that will transform your online business. He also shares what not to do, his e-commerce sins. KEY TAKEAWAYS 90% of e-commerce startups fail within 120 days. Sabir knows why and how to stop that from happening to you. Be sceptical, there are a lot of scammers actively selling things that will kill your business e.g., toxic backlinks that will mean your business disappears from the search results. Sabir teaches his students to take care of all of the 8 dimensions an E-commerce business needs. Step 1 is optimising your site for customer attention. You have 1.7 seconds to stop the scroll. Landing page speed is critical. Optimise it for your market and the devices they use. Be laser focused and tackle one vital thing at a time. After addressing customer attention, your bestselling product landing pages are next. Master marketing across multiple platforms. Use your data to understand your customers and turn them into repeat buyers.  You need to get people to buy from you at least once every 6 months. Your product pages need to be optimized structurally, for SEO and content. For e-commerce, SEO is vital. You have to put your face on your brand and tell your story. Couponing works, but constantly using promos will bankrupt you. Even small incremental improvements can have a massive cumulative impact, e.g. If you improve by 40% your sales actually increase 3x. BEST MOMENTS 00:39 "E-commerce in 2025 is a battlefield." 02.14 "Tech actually is the thing that helps you elevate and accelerate your growth profitably."  13:25 "As an entrepreneur, you need to have a healthy dose of scepticism.."  21:00 “Don't dwell in the past, … the realities of 2025, are very different from the realities of 2020, and 2022 ." 30.00 “What is the consumer attention span in 2025? - 1.7 seconds.” 41.03 “Most Shopify owners don't know the behaviour of their consumers.” 54.30 “If you're not correcting these problems, it's de-ranking you.” 1.01.36 “When you are doing couponing to that extent, you're robbing yourself of your future.” 1.20.23 “I'm Mr. Miyagi … I'm telling you how to wax on, wax off.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://growthbysabir.com/masteringtechgrowth Harvard Business School article - https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=62855 https://www.luckyorange.com ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Pranav Dalal founder and CEO of Office Beacon, a leader in remote staffing solutions that has grown the company from just five employees in 2001 to 5,500+, without any VC funding. He and Mike talk about how to identify your competitive advantage, leverage it, and how to automate successfully. They also discuss how to create an irresistible hook to break through the noise and get your conversion rate into double figures. Pranav also explains how you can try Office Beacon´s fully managed remote staffing free of charge for an entire month. KEY TAKEAWAYS Businesses that increase customer retention by 5% can boost profits by 25 to 95%. Service is just different levels of speed and price - you can get that anywhere. You've really got to think about those unique things that you can provide. That is your competitive advantage. Your hook has to be unique. If you use the same software as others, your email and LinkedIn titles will look the same as theirs and not get opened. When your hook is right your conversion rate will be in double figures instead of 1 or 2%. Businesses that automate at least 30% of their sales operations experience higher scalability and profitability. But automate gradually. Focus on building trust with your consumers. At Office Beacon, they only automate if they can get payback within a year or so. Work with customers as you make changes, test carefully and roll out gradually. To master tech growth, stay on top of trends and understand how the global climate could affect your business model. Pranav shares how he does this using his Horizon method. BEST MOMENTS 1:54 "Business leaders need to make sure that they stay aligned with their vision, along with industry and consumer trends."  5.45 "Businesses should be looking forward and asking how we gonna position ourselves within the market."  16.17 “It's just different levels of service, speed and price that you can get anywhere. You've really got to think about those unique things that you provide.” 31.49 “Make your initial messaging as short as possible.” 37.59 “Don't invest in automation or big technology until you're sure that that process is ready for it.” 45.14 “The biggest mistake I see is that business owners look at the sales funnel as just a transaction. What you're actually selling as a business is trust.” 1.08.48 “We are hiring top talent in these countries and our pricing is in the range of providing at least a 50% ROI to customers here in the US.” 1.09.19 “If they want to try out our service, we'll give them one month free to test it out (Office Beacon).” – how to sign up is explained ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.officebeacon.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/officebeacon/ https://www.facebook.com/officebeacon https://www.instagram.com/officebeacon/ Blue Ocean Strategy - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491 ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike is joined today by Katrena Friel to discuss how to turn your expertise into 7 new streams of income. Katrena is a business mentor, TEDx speaker and award-winning author who has spent 25 years helping professionals turn their skills into thriving businesses that give them real freedom. Katrena reveals how you can turn what you know into 7 new income streams and do so within the next 90 days. KEY TAKEAWAYS Personal growth is the powerhouse behind any business growth. Whether you are actively developing it or not, you have a personal brand. People already have an opinion about who you are. Your brand walks in the door before you. Having a strong personal brand does not require perfection. To achieve that you would need to constantly wear a mask. That is exhausting, so you need to be authentic. Before you can be yourself, you need to know who you are.  When deciding what to change, focus on what is causing the most pain. Leverage one on one contact opportunities to make true connections that turn into investments and sales. Teach what you know through books, training, coaching, mentoring, facilitating and consulting. Ideally, you want to take people through each of those formats. Writing a book does a lot of the heavy lifting for you and it is not that difficult to write. Use your book to get on stage and connect with people who will buy your course and hire you as a coach, mentor or consultant. Offering a free discovery session is a highly effective way of attracting coaching and mentoring clients. Katrena explains the difference between being a trainer, coach, mentor, facilitator and consultant. Following Katrena´s approach you can publish your book and set yourself up as a public speaker, coach, mentor and more in just 90 days. BEST MOMENTS 2.18 "Personal development is just as important as professional development."  3.55 "Tech people are missing the people piece."  10.30 "Your brand is out there and it's there in their perception of you. That's happening regardless.” 13.55 "To hold that mask up of perfection is burnout waiting to happen."  15.21 "The more authentic you are, the more endearing you become."  34.48 “Speak to educate. Don't speak to sell or market yourself, be genuine, authentic, real, and your tribe will find you and connect.” 41.27 “The book still has gravitas, you're not the expert, until you've got a book.” 51.03 “Create a signature program for people, one that creates transformation. An end-to-end solution.” 55.30 “These online programs just aren't cutting it. People want personalised.” 1.04.38 “You need to mentor people, and other times you need to facilitate some sort of change.” 1.23.43 “I just teach you the bit that you need to know and when to do it.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.becomingtheexpert.com.au ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For this episode, Mike sits down with Jade Pruett, an award-winning SEO specialist and founder of HelloSEO, with an impressive client list that includes CNN and Business Insider. She uses AI to create authentic and effective content. Doing so in a fast and effective way that was just not possible pre-AI. She shares several in-depth techniques that you can start using immediately. Learn how to turn AI from a shortcut into a secret weapon for building trust and winning customers. KEY TAKEAWAYS Truly understanding your customer´s pain points is key to mastering tech growth.  SEO is still essential for reaching customers online. AI is making it far easier to write content that appeals to the right type of potential customers, while also pleasing the ranking algorithms. Google and other algorithms prioritise content created by Experts that have Authority and are Trusted (EAT). Jade explains how to leverage this. When you give AI an exclusive body of research to work from, it produces unique and more accurate content. Re-hashing what the AI finds online isn´t enough. Jade shares a keyword research technique she uses to better understand the users pain points and the questions they need answered. You always have to edit what AI produces. If you publish AI content you will break trust with the reader and Google. Learn how to use canonical links. SEO has a better ROI than most lead generation. You have to constantly produce new content. Authentic backlinks and digital PR will boost your ranking. Use your network to create guest post backlinks. Podcast backlinks are powerful. Track and understand your metrics on all platforms. AI will potentially replace traditional search engines. You need to evolve. BEST MOMENTS 00:35 "Using AI the wrong way can hurt your credibility and waste your time… but when used right, AI generated content can become your secret weapon."  1:58 "Really understand your users, what their pain points are… interview your users."  8:32 "EAT… Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, that's what Google is looking for."  10:01 "We increased her traffic by 400%, in a month."  19:34 "There's no one prompt you can put in and get something great … it is time consuming."  22.08 “You want to be pulling from your own information, otherwise, you're just getting information that already exists online.” 25.52 “Breaking trust with your users .. is going to hurt you in the rankings.” 40.56 “You never want to stop maintaining your SEO processes …it´s like watering a plant.” 43.41 “There´s no quick fix to backlinks.” 50.22 “Google Analytics is going to give you more than you need, and it's free.” 55.53 “By the time it's gone through human hands, you can't tell that that AI had a part in it.” ABOUT THE GUEST SEO is Jade's superpower. A skilled SEO Specialist, she has empowered hundreds of brands and businesses to gain visibility in Google and connect with their ideal clients. As the Founder of HelloSEO, Jade works 1:1 with small businesses to develop SEO strategies and achieve killer ROIs. Her client partnerships are customer-driven, insight-led, and fully transparent. Empowering businesses to grow and flourish never gets old. With Jade, you don’t just get an SEO specialist. You get a long-term brand advocate and support system.  https://helloseo.com/seo-report-card-tool ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Eran Friendinger the cofounder and CTO of Voyantis, a company that helps businesses grow using AI. Including big brands like Lennar, Miro, and Figma that have used his strategies to get 20 to 50% better results from running their ads.  Scaling in 2025 isn't about doing more. It's about working smarter with AI. If you're not using AI to help you, you're wasting time and money while your competitors are speeding ahead - The right AI deployed in the right way helps you to make you better decisions and predict what your customers want. Freeing up your time to focus on what really matters. KEY TAKEAWAYS Companies that foster data driven culture are 3x times more likely to outperform competitors.  Understanding the right KPI to measure an outcome is essential. If you are not measuring the right thing the insights will be worthless. Budget for experimenting with AI. Set your company culture up to accept and work with AI and to be data driven. AI can be used as a natural extension to your gut feeling, your intuition. You can´t effectively crunch the data to confirm that gut feeling, AI does it in seconds. Predictive analytics works for every industry. You have to spend money on working out how to use AI in your company. At some stage the data pipeline will break, and the AI will fail. You have to monitor output, spot issues, have contingencies and fix things fast. You can tell AI to write 100 SQL queries, show you the results and highlight which ones are most interesting. Automating business processes can reduce operational costs by 30%. AI is good at running marketing campaigns, but it needs some human input. Providing Google and Meta with as much consolidation information as possible will improve your campaigns. AI is great for customer support, but make sure it knows when to send the person to a human. BEST MOMENTS 00:40 "If you're not using AI to help, you're wasting time and money while your competitors are speeding ahead.." 5:57 "We were in the dark and we had a flashlight, and we were looking for those interesting nuggets of data points or KPIs, and then AI just turned on the light."  6.58  "AI could be the missing link to scaling smarter, not harder." 15:12 "Choose what's important to your business."  22.25  "The data will break. Don't expect that it is going to continue performing… Do some risk management."   32.17 “You can create automations by sending the right feedback to the AI."  42.22  "Automation can handle repetitive tasks, but businesses still need to maintain that human touch."  53.08  "Look far enough into the future .. there´s nothing to stop AI from mimicking all human behaviour ."  GUEST RESOURCES https://www.voyantis.ai https://www.youtube.com/@Voyantis-ai https://www.linkedin.com/in/eran-friendinger-5b38506 ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Today, Mike speaks to David Hirschfeld, a seasoned entrepreneur who has worked on 30+ tech and software startups to discuss why developing a founder mindset is critical. David explains why founders need to switch from a creative to a managerial mindset. He shares why taking a clinician's approach, testing and measuring results, embracing failures as learning experiences, and being open to pivoting are all so essential. David also explains how you can use AI to automate and improve workflows while generating revenue early and keeping the cost of customer acquisition below one third of their lifetime value. KEY TAKEAWAYS An evidence-based approach is essential. Generate revenue from your customers early. It makes you less reliant on investors and you quickly learn what your customers want. If you are not out there in front of your potential customers from the start, that is a sign that you do not have the right founder´s mindset. David explains why and how to address this issue. You need to generate revenue from your customers early on. It makes you less reliant on investors, as well as more attractive to them. Look for a way to quickly produce something simple and get it in front of potential customers. At the founder stage, you need to switch from a visionary mindset to a managerial one. Value stream mapping will help you identify bottlenecks. As soon as you have a workflow that is generating decent results, create a playbook for it. BEST MOMENTS 2.52 "Clinicians don't believe in anything. They just test and measure, then make a plan based on the results of those tests." 7:58 "Founders often exhibit an obsessive leadership style and autocratic decision making, which can lead to poor decision making and strain team dynamics."  13.08 “ Founders shouldn't love their product. They should love their customers' and be committed to mitigating their customers problems."  30.37  “I looked to see where my business flow was kinked ... and focused my energy on (removing) that restriction."  34.41 “It starts to become very obvious where to focus your effort based on your cashflow.” 45.39 “When you're ready to bring someone in … give them the playbook. 55.03 “Predictability means if I spend more money in that area, I should see an equivalent return, in terms of what we're producing.” 1.03.17 “Make sure that they follow the playbook.” 1.04.49 “Founders that are really successful don't think of them as failures. They think of them as tests.” 1.07.14 “They (highly successful CEOs) are brilliant contingency planners.” 1.21.17 “If you want to accelerate through investment, having a conversation with an investor is a completely different discussion, because you've got a growing customer base.” EPISODE RESOURCES https://tekyz.com https://tekyz.podbean.com/ - Scaling Smarter Episodes. www.scalingsmarter.net - Schedule an interview https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://x.com/tekyzinc  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/  https://www.facebook.com/dmhirschfeld  David Hirschfeld is a 35-year software development veteran with a unique perspective on startups, technological innovation and business growth. A former physics student from UCLA, David's career spans leadership roles at tech giants like Computer Associates, Texas Instruments, Intel, and Motorola, before launching his first startup—which grew to 800 customers across 22 countries and was successfully sold in 2000.  Since founding Tekyz Inc. in 2007, David has emerged as a strategic advisor specialising in AI-driven workflow transformation for scaleups and in the design & development of startups. David's expertise bridges cutting-edge AI technologies, workflow optimization,  and startup ecosystem dynamics.  ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

This episode is all about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by 1 million+ users including tech giants like Airbus and Wal Mart. Mike speaks to Tanmai Gopal the CEO and co-founder of Hasura that enables users to easily build, run, govern and evolve high-quality APIs for all types of data. Reliably providing them with accurate real time data that can then be used in numerous ways to serve customers effectively and drive growth. Tanmai shares the story of Hasura’s development, how to scale effectively and how to use PromptQL to turn AI from a flaky assistant that regularly lets you down into a tool you can rely on. KEY TAKEAWAYS ●      Getting the timing right is crucial. Understand your market and product to work out what to focus on when and launch when the right tech and demand is there. ●      The Hasura team started out by offering consultancy services and made good money, but they stopped doing this to focus on product development. You can´t spread yourself too thin. ●      Identify the problem that is at the front of your customers minds, solve that and you will attract the product champions you need to gain momentum. ●      Be cautious about how you use AI. Even with access to live data it still hallucinates. Prompt QL is making AI far more reliable. ●      Letting the AI figure out how to achieve your objective and build its own program to achieve it is a far more effective way of using AI. ●      If you are tempted to build your own product, just do it. You will soon know whether entrepreneurship is for you. ●      Failing fast is still the most effective way to create a product that solves people's problems   BEST MOMENTS 2:39 "This episode is about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by tech giants." 25:20 "To have the experience of the best kind of products and have access to high quality, instant, secure data is essential." 32:34 "What´s really important is to be aligned to how people think about a particular problem – What is hot for them?" 48.17 “For AI to become a part of our day-to-day lives, it needs to become a part of our processes and our workflows.” 52.03 and 54.08  “We actually tell the AI to first plan what it wants to do with the data, then write a program to extract the right data, aggregate it and present it.” 56.23 “The business logic was the actual automation flow.” 1.13.28 “To be aware that there is a right time where things happen is very important.” 1.16.40 “You create the perfect timing by doing proper market research and just understanding the biggest problem spaces. You create a product when people are ready for that product, so the adoption is just simply there.”   ABOUT THE GUESTS https://hasura.io https://promptql.hasura.io   ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.  

If you are juggling too many ideas and do not know which one to focus on or are stuck because you are overthinking everything, this episode of the Managing Tech Growth podcast is for you. To discuss how to navigate your way out of that situation and avoid it in the future, Mike is joined by David Boice.  David is a serial entrepreneur who, at just 22, founded his first business. Today, it is worth hundreds of millions. His current companies employ 500+ associates who are mainly engaged in developing and providing technology for several transport industries. KEY TAKEAWAYS Achieving growth takes time, but once you have it, maintaining momentum for a few years is relatively easy. Once you demonstrate growth, attracting capital becomes much easier. Focus on solving a problem that exists. If you solve a problem only you and a few others believe is an issue, you will go nowhere. Constantly striving to improve your understanding of your customers and their problems is a growth essential. Set up a customer advisory board of 12 to 15 engaged clients, a mix of big and small.  Identifying your exit strategy before establishing your business is counterproductive. Be careful with automation. Often, to ensure that the customer gets the best service possible, you will need to insert humans into your systems  Be positive publicly. Regularly congratulate people for their achievements. Discuss problems, but primarily in the context of solving them. You will meet resistance to change regardless of whether it is good or bad.  Put in place systems that enable you to step back. If you don´t you will burn out. Not every founder should automatically become the CEO. BEST MOMENTS 5.46 “There's a whole category of private equity firms called growth investors.” 8.36 “Just make sure you're solving a problem before you start looking at anything else.” 22.18 “We kept thinking, and kept staying curious about, what could we do next? What do our clients need? What problems are we solving?” 25.08 “We weren't as prepared for how profitability was really going to drive the ultimate value of the company.” 26.59 “I am very much against pre-planned exit strategies.” 36.19 “The customer advisory board is a great way to have a constant focus on where you want to go.” 44.36 “Because clients don't always know what's possible… our job is to come up with the really big, visionary ideas.” 47.51 “Bring in people that have the skill sets that you don't have.” 1.00.36 “If you manage your downside, the only outcome that is left is positive.” 1.14.22 “Change, whether good or bad, is going to be resisted with equal intensity.” 1.22.49 “You can be aligned at the head, and you can be aligned at the heart, but the best alignment is at the wallet.” EPISODE RESOURCES https://teamvelocitymarketing.com ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Today, Mike is joined by Ivan Gekht a Siberian Aerospace Engineer and CEO of Gehtsoft, a custom software development powerhouse. For the past 20 years, he has delivered complex solutions for numerous industries. Ivan has led transformative projects at both startups and billion-dollar enterprises. He explains why, regardless of the industry you are in, developing and delivering products at speed is essential. Ivan explains how the need to move at speed impacts the way you structure your business, go through development, deploy it, market it and more. Ivan covers using Agile, value stream mapping, decision making, creating a robust and sustainable team and much more. KEY TAKEAWAYS Prioritize speed and the ability to solve problems quickly. If you can´t move fast, you will fail. If it takes just a few days to create the product, then it takes 6 months to bring it to market, you lose.  Not using Agile well will slow you down. Using examples, Ivan explains how to fix that issue. Use value stream mapping. Take a holistic, value stream-based approach to identify and address bottlenecks. This approach improves efficiency by 30%. Don´t end up with just a few go to people. If they leave, the project can fail. Empower cross-functional teams and the product owner to make decisions. You can´t 100% solve every problem, you just need to solve it enough to get to the next level and bring your product to market. Be truly customer-centric Often, asking 8 potential customers the question is enough to validate an idea. Achieve sustainable performance by providing a safe, learning-oriented environment. You need to learn to fail and do it safely. BEST MOMENTS 00:38 "Slow teams don't just lose, they get wiped out."  10:17 "If you know exactly what needs to be done and the outcomes are predictable, you don't need Agile."  17:52 "The majority of the time is wasted not on doing the work the wrong way, but rather on doing the wrong work."  21:35 “They (the product owner) should be trusted … to make these decisions."  31:20 “Harvard Business Review reports that organizations using value stream mapping can identify bottlenecks that lead to 30% improvements in operational efficiency."  51:04 “It's not about perfection… it´s about making it good enough to hit the market … that's where you get the speed."  57.12 “For the user stories … your personal opinion doesn't matter. It's not about you, it's about the end user.” 1.05.30 “That emergent knowledge and emergent decisions come up through the teamwork process to be able to deal with the complexity.” 1.27.24 “Make sure that everything you work on brings value to the people who are paying for it and make sure to shorten time to market.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-gekht https://www.gehtsoftusa.com ABOUT THE HOST Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals. As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.