ScaleApp Podcasts with Prof Dan Isenberg

Professor Daniel Isenberg
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ScaleApp is chock full of content and interviews with successful scalers that will help you grow your company better. DO NOT LISTEN IF YOU ARE A STARTUP: ScaleApp is for growing ventures, not starting them. (But if you are a startup with serious growth aspirations, ScaleApp IS for you).

  1. 3D AGO

    Episode #32 - Sam Smith, SuperScalers and £50 million finnCap

    In Episode 32 of ScaleApp Podcasts, Sam Smith and I unpack her 24-year scale journey: building FinnCap from an in-house corporate finance desk into an IPO-listed £50 million revenue financial services firm, staying profitable throughout. At 24 – “I literally had no clue what I was doing” after painstakingly building to £3 million revenue, a step change along with a management buyout created real ownership, a clear vision, and the freedom to scale. After leaving FinCap, Sam built Superscalers to address a stark gap in the UK’s scale ecosystem. Using data to track outcomes, Superscalers connects and equips underrepresented founders already past £1M revenue to push through the next doublings — and to create more businesses that break through to £50M and beyond. Favorite Quotes “It was literally a desk, a phone, and me.”“We built from there to over 50 million revenue and IPO listing.”“Those patterns are the doubling principle.”“It doesn’t come with 0.2 of a person.”“Who started here is not going to be who ends here.”“Assume everyone becomes an alumni.”“I’ve not worried about competitors, I worry about customers!"Key Themes Why ownership, vision, and incentives mattered — and how the MBO unlocked the next chapter of scale. The ‘doubling principle’: Why growth compounds in leaps (1→2→4→8→16) and why teams/capability can’t be built in tiny increments. Culture through constant change: Hiring for growth mindset — and accepting that different stages require different people and skill sets. Exits as alumni, not endings: A practical approach to protecting culture by treating departures as ongoing relationships.

    39 min
  2. Episode #31 - Clarity Pediatrics - Upping the Care for Childhood Disorders - Christina LaMontagne

    12/21/2025

    Episode #31 - Clarity Pediatrics - Upping the Care for Childhood Disorders - Christina LaMontagne

    Christina LaMontagne on Scaling Healthcare with Conviction Scaling in healthcare is never just about growth—it’s about trust, discipline, and conviction. In this 31st episode of ScaleApp Podcasts, I sat down with Christina to unpack what it really takes to build and scale a healthcare business that works for patients, parents, providers, and payers alike. Christina’s journey is grounded in first principles. Before chasing growth, her team doubled down on unit economics, playbooks, and proof points. As she puts it, you have to “understand exactly how your model works before you deploy your Series A capital to scale it.” That discipline shaped every expansion decision that followed. Rather than spreading thin, Christina embraced a land-and-expand strategy. The focus was narrow and intentional: one condition, one state, executed exceptionally well. Only once the model was proven did the company raise capital to scale further. This approach reduced risk, built credibility, and created a repeatable engine for growth. A central theme of the conversation is the flywheel of trust. Expansion wasn’t just geographic—it was relational. By delivering consistently for pediatricians, the company earned trust that translated into referrals, relevance, and long-term value for families. Growth, in this model, compounds not through marketing spend, but through reliability. Christina also challenges conventional thinking around Total Addressable Market in healthcare. With nearly half of U.S. children enrolled in Medicaid, she argues that true scale is impossible without serving the full population. Big outcomes require inclusive models—anything less leaves both impact and opportunity on the table. Underlying it all is founder conviction. Christina doesn’t frame success around exits, but around inevitability—the belief that a solution must exist and therefore will exist. That mindset deepens over time, turning ambition into responsibility. Her advice to her younger self captures the spirit of the episode: the audacity to build a completely different life is a founder’s superpower. Healthcare, she reminds us, offers no shortage of meaningful problems—and a lifetime of opportunity for those willing to solve them. 🔑 Key Themes Scaling with Unit Economics FirstLand-and-Expand as a Risk-Reduction StrategyTrust as a Growth FlywheelRethinking TAM in HealthcareFounder Conviction Over Exit ThinkingHealthcare as a Career-Long Opportunity Space

    36 min
  3. Episode #30 - Sahar Hashemi "Two-Time Scaler" - Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy (UK)

    12/08/2025

    Episode #30 - Sahar Hashemi "Two-Time Scaler" - Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy (UK)

    From Immigrant Teen to Scale Up Pioneer: The Sahar Hashemi Story What does it take to build one of the UK’s fastest-growing retail brands, lose it, rebuild yourself, and then reinvent entrepreneurship for an entire generation of women founders? In this episode, I sit down with Sahar Hashemi OBE, co-founder of Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy, and founder of the movement Buy Women Built. Sahar’s journey is a masterclass in how entrepreneurial culture is born, how it dies, and how to protect it as you scale. She shares moving reflections on immigrating to the UK at age 12, how her parents instilled “evidence-based self-belief,” and why being a frustrated customer has always been her superpower. From a single London coffee bar to 110 stores, Coffee Republic scaled at breakneck speed — only to lose its soul as “the grown-ups” took over. Sahar describes, with rare honesty, how bureaucracy can slowly extinguish customer focus, what she learned from watching her own company collapse eight years after she left, and why founders must fight to preserve agility, instinct, and scrappiness. Key Themes •Evidence-based self-belief: why childhood pushes create adult resilience. •Scaling culture: how processes, titles, and silos quietly kill innovation. •Founder relevance: the outdated belief that entrepreneurs have a “sell-by date.” •Customer intimacy: the founder’s instinct as a strategic asset, not a liability. •Women entrepreneurs: why empathy, resourcefulness, and personal problem-solving make women natural founders. •Leaping before you feel ready: Sahar’s enduring motto for starting anything new. Favorite Quotes •“Self-belief is evidence-based — you build it by doing difficult things.” •“A startup culture can quickly put on a corporate mask.” •“Back then they thought passion was flaky — today every big company wants it.” •“Women start businesses from personal need — and that’s where many great ideas come from.” •“Leap and the net will appear.” 🎧 Listen to the full conversation: https://scaleapp.buzzsprout.com

    34 min

  4. 11/16/2025

    Episode #29 - Scaling Global Services from Puerto Rico to the World - Jorge Rodriguez and Paciv

    Jorge Rodriguez, founder of Paciv, built a world‑class industrial automation and computer systems validation company from a small warehouse in Puerto Rico to a global player serving Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other pharma giants. The son of Spanish immigrants who arrived on the island with nothing but work ethic and discipline, Jorge translated family lessons about integrity, paying suppliers first, and “keeping the machine running” into a business that became a trusted partner inside some of the most demanding plants in the world. Paciv started as Jorge leaving a safe job at Johnson & Johnson with a single client contract and a laptop. Within months he was billing 80–90 hours a week, combining deep technical know‑how in control systems with an insider’s understanding of pharma’s regulatory pain points. The insight was simple but powerful: if you can deliver the same validated process in Puerto Rico, you can clone it in Indiana, Ireland, Singapore, or the UK—exactly what global quality and regulators expect. Favorite Quotes • “Don’t let go of something until you have something else secure. I quit Friday and started selling services Monday.”   • “Clients spoon‑fed me growth—‘we have a larger project, but you can’t do it alone… hire a few engineers and we’ll give it to you.’”   • “To drive customer intimacy, first you model it. I was 100% billable for the first 13 years.”   • “If you stop growing, you start dying.”   • “I was riding a Ferrari in second gear. If I could speak to my younger self, I’d say: take more risk and grow faster.”  Key Themes From Immigrant Household to Industrial Specialist  Becoming an Entrepreneur from the Inside  Customer Intimacy as Competitive Advantage  Scale Globally Through Clients, Not Campaigns  Radical Transparency and Trust  Professionalizing the Business: From Mom‑and‑Pop to Scale‑Up

    34 min
  5. Episode #28 - Raspberry Pi's Just Desserts - How to be a $250 million category creator

    11/10/2025

    Episode #28 - Raspberry Pi's Just Desserts - How to be a $250 million category creator

    Eben Upton, co-founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi, turned a Cambridge lab experiment into an intriguing scale-up stories. What began as a mission to create more programmers in the world by empowering kids to program, became a $250 million public company that has shipped over 70 million units worldwide and helped redefine accessible computing.    At its heart, Raspberry Pi is a simple but revolutionary idea: a fully functional computer the size of a cigarette pack, priced under $35, and designed to spark curiosity with extensive hardware interfaces. Eben describes it as a modern-day Lego brick—the glue between software, peripherals, and imagination. The company’s first batch of 100,000 units sold out on launch day.  Favorite Quotes  • “We sold 100,000 Raspberry Pis on the first day—and none to target market, kids. We dropped the product in the market to see where the market was.”   • “Licensing gave us a global footprint from day one—but the unit economics were brutal.”   • “We build our products at Sony in South Wales—40,000 a day, right next to two handmade broadcast cameras.”   • “Never wait—if you can grow capability without risking the organization, do it now.”    Key Themes  1. From Education to Global Scale: Raspberry Pi started as an educational charity project but when hobbyists and engineers discovered it, the product jumped from classrooms to factories and embedded systems across the world.    2. Product-Market Fit by Accident: The team didn’t find a market through focus groups—they discovered it by “accidentally dropping a product into blue ocean demand.” The first-year sales hit one million units.    3. The ARM Model and Beyond: Inspired by Cambridge’s own ARM, Raspberry Pi began as a licensor of technology and brand IP. But to capture more value, the company evolved into direct production, partnering with Sony to manufacture at scale while maintaining the agility of a startup.    4. Culture and Retention: Upton built an engineering-driven organization that balances autonomy with structure—“a startup’s flexibility with a corporation’s resources.” With nearly 100% retention, Raspberry Pi proves that culture can scale when people love what they build.

    47 min
  6. Episode #27 - Capturing the Caribbean - Reshma Advani Rojas (Advanced Commercial, T&T)

    10/29/2025

    Episode #27 - Capturing the Caribbean - Reshma Advani Rojas (Advanced Commercial, T&T)

    Reshma Advani Rojas, CEO of Advanced Commercial Equipment (ACEL), has turned a family legacy into the Caribbean’s most respected restaurant supply companies. Based in Trinidad & Tobago, ACEL serves 14 countries across the region and generates approximately $30 million in revenue. In this episode of ScaleApp Podcasts, Reshma shares how leadership, culture, and clarity drive scale—not just capital. Favorite Quotes ·       “Soft skills are not optional—they’re the foundation of company culture.” ·       “Scaling starts when you know exactly who you are as a brand.” ·       “Our diversity in T&T gives us a groundbreaking view of the world—we’re not trapped by one culture.” ·       “Breaking and rebuilding your business process and structure is hard—but it’s how real growth happens.” ·       “One big win from ScaleratorT&T was alignment—we all finally spoke the same language.” ·       “I asked my 10-year-old if she’d take over the business. She said, ‘Yes—but I also want to own a hospital.’ I love that ambition.” Key Themes • **Legacy Reinvented:** Reshma inherited a legacy company from her father but reshaped it into a modern, scalable venture with international reach. • **Culture and Soft Skills:** In a world of automation, she champions empathy and communication as a competitive edge. • **Women Leading Change:** As a woman of color in a male-dominated industry, Reshma redefines what authority and expertise look like. Her success challenges outdated cultural and gender assumptions. • **Scaling with Identity:** ACE’s success stems from deep brand clarity and consistent follow‑through. Service excellence and relationship‑based selling are what set them apart. • **The Scalerator Effect:** Through ScaleratorT&T, Reshma and her team built shared understanding and focus, aligning on what success truly means. The result: a stronger, smarter organization ready for the next level.

    39 min
  7. Episode #26 - 30 Years of Scale - Jerry Jendusa (EMTEQ $250 mm, Breakthru)

    10/22/2025

    Episode #26 - 30 Years of Scale - Jerry Jendusa (EMTEQ $250 mm, Breakthru)

    From garage to a $250 million global aerospace supplier—and then do it again and again as an investor and mentor.    In this episode, Jerry Jendusa, founder of EMTEQ and now head of Breakthru, shares how a mix of listening to customers, discipline, and people-first leadership drove his growth journey. From bootstrapping to $100 million in sales and $250 million exit, Jerry reflects on lessons learned:  people trump processprocess trumps productcustomers trump capitaldebt trumps equity.A proud Wisconsin native, Jerry also discusses building bridges in polarized times through shared purpose and growth.  Favorite Quotes “We learned, sometimes the hard way, to prioritize people and process—but learned fast. At the end of the day, people create the process, so people always trump process.” “We set out to raise customers, not capital. We wanted to live inside customers’ value stream: their minds, habits, and pain points.” “Equity is far more expensive than debt. The smarter you are about leveraging debt, the faster your equity can grow.” “I still meet $5-million companies who brag, ‘I pay cash for everything.’ My reaction? ‘Are you serious?!?’ That’s not strength—it’s stagnation.” “To my younger self: don’t start a business—buy one.” Key Themes People over process: Sustainable scaling begins with the right team, not the right manual. Customer intimacy: The best capital is customer trust, not investor cash. Smart leverage: Knowing when (and how) to use debt accelerates equity growth. Scaling culture: Values, discipline, and a bias for listening build companies that last. Key Takeaways Growth follows focus—on people, customers, and disciplined risk. Process matters, but only when people buy in. Debt, used wisely, can be a growth engine. Entrepreneurs don’t need to invent something new—they can scale what already works better.

    46 min
  8. Episode #25 - Raphael Afaedor - Jumia (NYSE), Supermart, Kyosk - Unicorn Entrepreneur in Africa

    10/09/2025

    Episode #25 - Raphael Afaedor - Jumia (NYSE), Supermart, Kyosk - Unicorn Entrepreneur in Africa

    From Ghana to Czech Republic to Harvard Business School to the frontlines of Africa’s digital economy, Raphael (“Rafi”) Afaedor's career is a masterclass in vision, immersion, and execution. Having co-founded Jumia—the first African e-commerce giant to list on the NYSE—and later Kyosk, a B2B platform connecting fast-moving consumer goods producers to informal retail shops and end customers, Rafi has learned firsthand how to scale in large, complex markets.    As Rafi explains, Africa’s so-called ‘difficult markets’ are actually vast opportunities for those who learn to adapt to local realities rather than impose foreign business models. From repackaging fertilizer in much smaller, 1kg bags to rethinking online payments, his story is about listening, learning, and building systems that work for real people—not just spreadsheets or foreign VCs. Favorite Quotes · “Capital reaches Africa last—and dries up first. Choose investors who have patience and understand the terrain.” · “You can’t change customer behavior. It’s much easier to work with what already exists than to try to replace it.” · “Africa’s customer service works—it just works the African way.” · “Think in decades, not exits. The continent will reward those who stay the course.” · “Leadership isn’t formal authority. It’s when people still call you ‘boss’ even after you’ve left.” Key Themes · Adapting Global Models to Local Realities: Western e-commerce assumptions often fail in Africa; success means redesigning for local buying patterns and logistics. · Leadership through Respect: Rafi’s philosophy—‘you can’t be a leader if you don’t have followers’—underscores the power of informal authority and dignity. · Venture Capital Fit: Choosing investors who understand Africa’s pace and volatility can make or break a scaling journey. · The Long Game: True scale takes patience, persistence, and alignment among partners for the long haul. · Repackaging for Affordability: A consistent lesson—from fertilizer to consumer goods—is that smaller, accessible SKUs unlock massive new markets.

    47 min
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ScaleApp is chock full of content and interviews with successful scalers that will help you grow your company better. DO NOT LISTEN IF YOU ARE A STARTUP: ScaleApp is for growing ventures, not starting them. (But if you are a startup with serious growth aspirations, ScaleApp IS for you).

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