The StartUp to ScaleUp Game Plan

Luca Pagano - CEO @ BeMyEye

Luca Pagano is the CEO at BeMyEye, Europe’s leading crowdsourced in-store data as a service provider who closed a $10.5m Series C funding round in late November 2017. Previously Luca held leadership roles at Glamoo, Electronic Arts and Buongiorno.
Luca discusses: 
The tricky challenge of replacing both the founder-CEO and his co-CEO at BeMyEye
Successfully leading Buongiorno into a diversity of mature and emerging markets and aggressively launching BeMyEye in 20 new countries
As a soccer aficionado, how he recruits “passionate employees who wear the jersey with honour”
Why you'll never be an exceptional company or an exceptional leader unless you understand “why” you do what you do
How being a chameleon has put him in good stead when dealing with diverse business cultures and personas
Head over to https://www.bemyeye.com for more details on BeMyEye and check out http://alpinasearch.com for advice on scaling your enterprise software venture.  

Tom Bradley - Partner & Head of Ventures at Oxford Capital

Tom Bradley is Head of the Ventures Team at Oxford Capital. Tom, previously a partner at both DFJ Esprit and DN Capital, has been involved with successful scale-ups like Performance Horizon, Shazam and Neteconomy. The Oxford Capital Ventures portfolio includes promising startups and scale-ups like import.io, Ultrasoc and Redsift.
In this week’s episode you’ll hear about: 
The mindset that the founders of European enterprise software startups must have if they are to succeed globally
Tom’s key criteria for investing in enterprise software ventures
Advice for pre-product and pre-revenue start-ups on how to engage with investors and VCs
How European entrepreneurs can leverage US VCs to successfully break into The States
Head over to https://www.oxcp.com/investments/venture-capital/ for more details on Oxford Capital's venture portfolio and check out www.alpinasearch.com for advice on globally scaling your software venture.

Wolfgang Allisat - CCO @ Unbabel

Wolfgang Allisat is the Chief Commercial Officer at Unbabel - "The World's Translation Layer". Unbabel - funded by the Notion Capital, Google Ventures, Faber Ventures, Matrix Partners, Schilling Capital and Caixa Capital - utilizes artificial intelligence to enable translations between companies and their customers.
Wolf has previously held international sales leadership positions at a number of successful software scaleups including Omniture where he was the first international employee and grew the European business to more than 1,100 customers and 200 employees.
Wolf discusses how enterprise software ventures can successfully expand their sales and marketing teams internationally including:
The research and planning required to support successful overseas expansion
How to recruit your initial sales hires with the characteristics to evangelise your offering and drive customer successes in new markets 
How to adapt your business culture to succeed in each local market
Wolf also discusses the way Unbabel have created a unique culture to resonate with the millennials they typically hire - including weekly company-wide surfing sessions!
For more information on Unbabel's AI-powered translation solutions head over to https://unbabel.com and check out http://alpinasearch.com/clients/ for advice on recruiting A-players to globally scale your software/SaaS venture
 

Joshua Wohle - Co-Founder @ SuperAwesome

Joshua Wohle is the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Series B funded SuperAwesome backed by Mayfair Equity Partners, IBIS TMT, Hoxton Ventures and a host of other VCs.
SuperAwesome's technology powers the kids digital media ecosystem. Their products are used by hundreds of kids content companies and brands to provide kid-safe digital functionality, authentication and advertising.
Joshua is a serial entrepreneur having founded several tech start-ups - since starting his 1st venture whilst at school - including Targetz: a mobile, real-time, location-based community marketplace for services.                   
In today’s episode you will learn:
 
How Joshua launched his first startup as a 16 year old at school – even as a teenage entrepreneur he was selling to large enterprise clients like the private Swiss banks 
How he was introduced to his co-founder at SuperAwesome…by an algorithm!
About the need for founders and entrepreneurs to have the resilience to bounce back from failure and to dig really deep, emotionally and mentally
How, as your software venture evolves, you must also evolve to ensure you’ve the skills to continue to drive the business forward
How to find and engage with mentors with valuable insights to help you handle the challenges of scaling-up a business
For more background on SuperAwesome, check out https://www.superawesome.tv and head over to http://alpinasearch.com for advice on scaling your software venture.

How to scale sales & marketing in your deeptech software venture and deliver an $85m exit, Shirin Dehghan - Arieso & OpenSignal

Shirin Dehghan was the Founder CEO at Arieso and is currently Chairwoman at OpenSignal.
Arieso provided subscriber experience geo-location and network optimization solutions for wireless operators and service providers. Funded by Qualcomm Ventures and Oxford Capital Partners, Arieso expanded across EMEA, Asia Pacific and The Americas before being acquired by JDSU for $85m in 2013.
Shirin now Chairs the board at OpenSignal, Funded by Passion Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech and Qualcomm Ventures. OpenSignal crowd-source data on the performance and coverage of wireless networks around the world and use that data to produce independent and unbiased coverage maps for any network around the world.  Since launch, their mobile app has been downloaded over 20 million times and billions of data points have been collected in over 200 countries.
In this week's episode we’re focusing on the importance of sales and marketing for technical founders and the challenges of international expansion for startups and scaleups. You will learn:
The lesson that all technical founders must learn – sometimes the hard way - about the importance of creating a strong sales and marketing machine
About a blueprint for international expansion for enterprise software ventures
How Shirin resurrected her start-up from “near death” to achieve a 6x exit just a few years later
About the need to treat VCs like customers when you’re approaching them for funding
For more insights into OpenSignal check out https://opensignal.com and for advice on successfully scaling your software venture head over to http://alpinasearch.com

Rory Stirling - BGF Ventures

Rory Stirling is an early stage investor with BGF ventures who’s invested in high growth UK technology companies like NewVoiceMedia, Masabi and Reevoo.
BGF Ventures invests in early-stage entrepreneurs with bold ambitions and is an influential new entrant to the VC market with a $200m debut fund. In just 2 years BGF have concluded over 18 investments building a portfolio that includes the likes of Triptease, Aimbrain and NewVoiceMedia.
In this week’s episode you will learn:
• Which types of company, and indeed which types of people, VC funding is most appropriate for• How to go about raising venture capital for your start-up or scale-up• How value in a technology start-up can be created - or potentially destroyed – depending on the synergy between the investors and the company’s leadership team• About the character, drive and vision required of successful enterprise technology venture founders
For more insights into venture investing head over to www.bgf.co.uk/ventures/ and for advice on successfully scaling your enterprise software start-up check out alpinasearch.com/market-insights/