This week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Vanessa Marcié who is an expert on leadership and humour and a guest lecturer at the Cambrige Judge Business School and HEC Paris amongst others. She holds a PhD in Management and Marketing Communications from the Univeristy of Côte d’Azur and an MBA from the Cambridge Judge Business School. We spoke about how leading with humour can be an effective leadership style and what steps we can personally take to utilise it more.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Denis Kaminskiy who is the co-founder and strategy director of the Cambridge-based digital transformation firm Arcus Global. Denis holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge and has previously held roles at Cadbury and Rolls-Royce. We spoke about how he got into Govtech, the work Arcus does for the UK government and how the UK government is doing at adopting technology.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Taavi Kotka, an entrepreneur and the first CIO of the Estonian government. He started his career as a programmer and became the CEO of Webmedia (now Nortal), the region's largest software company before working with the government and is now back in the private sector, helping start-ups develop and consulting on digital transformation.
We spoke about the process of the digital transformation of Estonia, the challenges faced during it and how other countries might follow suit.
This week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Adam Medros who is the ex-President and CEO of edX, a non-profit online course provider. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and has previously held roles at TripAdvisor and Amazon. We spoke about the impact of COVID-19 on online learning, the advantages of modular education, and the future of online learning amongst other things. Adam also shared his advice for startup founders running EdTech companies.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Jonny Clifford who is the General Manager at Entrepreneur First London, a company that invests in potential entrepreneurs pre-idea and helps them to find co-founders. Jonny has previously been a teacher as well as worked within sales at Show My Homework, an Edtech startup. We spoke about how EF identifies talent and what the programme entails. Amongst other things, Jonny also touched on how to know if founding a company is for you and gave his advice to early-stage founders.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Niklas Hebborn who is a partner at Freigeist Capital, a German deep tech VC firm based in Bonn. He holds a degree in business administration and has a background in consulting and private equity. We spoke about how he got into VC, how Freigeist Capital choose which companies to invest in and support them, and the outlook for the European tech ecosystem.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks we are speaking to Mark Shmulevich, the Senior VP at TAIGER - an AI software company in Singapore. He is also the founding director of the Zimin Institutes in Israel which helps commercialise promising research with the potential to generate solutions to pressing problems in the world. Additionally, he has been the Deputy Minister of IT in Russia. We spoke about his experiences in the government and the private sector, his work to help the commercialisation of high-impact research and briefly about how AI and deep tech applications may develop in the future.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Sir Menelas Pangalos, the VP of BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCL and has previously worked at Wyeth and Pfizer. We spoke about the importance of collaboration with academia, how AstraZeneca’s drug development success rate has increased in recent years and how they make sure medicines are accessible to all.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Jeremy O’Hanlon, a Cambridge alumnus, who has worked as a corporate attorney in the life sciences and tech industries. He’s also held roles in business and corporate development in the life sciences as he currently does at Gilead Sciences in California. We spoke about M&A deals he’s worked on at Gilead, the skillset required in M&A and his insights from working with VCs.
This week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Richard Lucas, a business and social entrepreneur as well as an early-stage investor. He has also been heavily involved in teaching entrepreneurship and fostering entrepreneurial communities via CAMentrepreneurs and other initiatives such as TedXKazimierz. We spoke about how Richard approaches investing, entrepreneurship education and mentorship. He also shared his perspective on how the environment one finds themselves in can fuel entrepreneurship.
This week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Christopher Kong who is the co-founder and Head of Business development at Better Nature, a tempeh-focussed food-tech company. Chris holds a masters degree in biochemistry from the University of Oxford. We spoke about the story behind Better Nature and challenges he and his co-founder had to face to build the company. Chris also shared how Better Nature has prioritised sustainability in business decisions and his thoughts on the long-term outlook for the alternative meat industry.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Dr. Kai-fu Lee who is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a leading Chinese technology venture capital firm. He was also the founder of Microsoft Research Asia and the president of Google China as well as authoring the bestseller ‘AI Superpowers’. Kai-fu shared his journey into AI and gave an overview of the entrepreneurial landscape in China. He then went on to give insights into how governments can support AI, how humans can adapt as AI adopts certain tasks and how AI can revolutionise education.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are talking to Kate Hamer and Louis Saha, co-founders of AxisStars - a business which connects sports and entertainment stars with select partners via a mobile app. Louis is a former professional footballer and played for Fulham, Everton and Manchester United amongst others, whilst Kate has vast experience in the marketing world and has her own marketing and digital consulting company. We discussed how Louis and Kate met and how they were each able to utilise their previous experiences when it came to building the platform. They also shared lessons they’ve learnt along the way and the impact of mentors on their careers.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks, we are talking to Nigel Lambe. Nigel is the CEO of Sussex Innovation, an incubation network for start-ups, owned by the University of Sussex. He has also been an investor and/or co-founder in several food and drink start-ups including Small Batch Coffee Company and Brighton Gin most recently. Prior to this he worked in areas such as sales and supply chain management at various companies. Nigel told us about how he transitioned from working in the corporate world to working within start-ups and the challenges he overcame. He also shared the ways in which his current company, Sussex Innovation, helps support start-ups and university spin-offs alike. Lastly, he gave tips for current and aspiring founders based on his experiences over the years.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks we are talking to Jonny Everett, co-founder of The Chat Shop and current Programme Manger and Entrepreneur in Residence at Entrepreneur First. Jonny told us about the advisory work he does with startups via Entrepreneurship First and shared his candid experiences with mental health as a founder. He also gave advice on how founders can achieve greater balance in their lives and on how to cope with mental health struggles they may encounter.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks we are talking to James Hawkins, co-founder of PostHog, an open course product analytics software, which recently went through Y Combinator and has raised a $3M seed round. James shared some tips for budding entrepreneurs who might not have enough experience to start their own business yet. He also shed some light on the different business models of open source companies, taking examples from RedHat, MongoDB and Gitlab. He firmly believes that there seems to be a trend of open source software taking over SAAS system in recent years. He also explained how PostHog pitched their open source business models to various investors. Lastly he shared about their recent seed funding round with Y Combinator and the experience of working with the firm.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks we are talking to Dr Mark Goulston. Mark is an American trained psychiatrist, author of seven books including, "Just Listen" Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, has contributed to Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Fast Company and hosts the My Wakeup Call podcast. He is also the creator of the field of Surgical Empathy in which people learn to let go of their personal agenda, and instead go to where another person is coming from, and then reveal their most important, critical and urgent needs and desires and then serve those.
Read MoreThis week on CUTalks we are talking to Tim Brears, CEO of Evonetix. Evonetix is a synthetic biology company developing a desktop platform for scalable, high-fidelity and rapid gene synthesis. Tim holds a PhD from Cambridge University and has an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Tim recently led a $30M Series B round. Tim introduced synthetic biology and its immense potential in the industry. He also shared about some strategies that his company used in order to differentiate themselves from the larger players. Tim also talked about his experience raising fund from a different continent i.e. the US, while growing the company in Cambridge, UK. Lastly, Tim gave some career advice for PhD students who might want to work outside of academia.
This week on CUTalks we are talking to Marcel Gehrung, CEO and founder of Cyted, a startup using digital diagnostics to revolutionise the early detection of cancer. Marcel is currently finishing his PhD at the University of Cambridge and is an Enrichment Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. Marcel talked about the various types of cancers that Cyted has to deal with, and how they picked the target market. He also spoke about his experience being a technical co-founder and gave general advice for people with technical backgrounds on what to watch out for.
Read MoreThis week on #CUTalks we are talking to Professor Muhammad Yunus, a social entrepreneur who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution in microfinance and Grameen Bank. He talked about the future of social business and his newest book, A World of Three Zeros.
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