Imperial Business Podcast

#12 Investor/VC - Chris Corbishley - Forward Partners

Forward Partners is an early stage VC based in London, investing in Applied AI, e-commerce and marketplace startups. Forward Partners recently raised a second £60million fund.

Chris Corbishley is currently an investor with Forward Partners, previously founded data science platform growthsquared.io, enabling e-commerce businesses to apply advanced analytics to their data. Before that, as Head of Analytics at Swoon Editions, he championed the "zero stock, zero lead time” model in online furniture retail. He has a PhD in organisational economics from Imperial College London, where he worked with the Grantham Institute to incentivise institutional investment into renewable energy infrastructure.

He also worked part-time on the London Stock Exchange ELITE programme, supporting UK scale-ups - including brands such as Skyscanner, graze.com, Vision Direct and MedicAnimal - with the exciting nightmare of rapid growth. He has coached early stage tech entrepreneurs and deep science spinouts from Imperial College, and produced a series of case studies on common startup challenges.

This is the first ever episode of the series that is off-campus, Chris was kind enough to invite us in at the Forward Partners office.

You can watch this video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/r3P7W0DG6Cg

The main website of the podcast is here at http://BusinessPodcast.co

#11 Women in Business - Sarvi Ahmadi, Natasha Lakhani & Linda Liu

This episode was recorded on the week of "International Women's Day" and specifically the Women @ Imperial week.

The guests are Sarvenaz (Sarvi) Ahmadi (GMBA), Natasha Lakhani (MBA) & Linda Liu (MSc) all current students of Imperial College Business School.

On this episode we candidly discuss topics related to women in the world of business and each of my dear guests shared their stories & insights as well as advice based on their experiences.

You can watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/rIBJDsRcM1A

The main website of the podcast is here at http://BusinessPodcast.co

Women @ Imperial Week is an annual celebration of the achievements of female staff and students at Imperial, past and present. The Week is focused around International Women's Day (8th March) and helps raise awareness of the support College provides women.

#10 Quiqup Co-Founder - Bassel El Koussa

Bassel El Koussa is the Co-Founder of Quiqup, a "Last mile delivery services for businesses of all sizes". Quiqup has raised a total of £24m so far, have 160 employees in London and Dubai as well as thousands of drivers. If you're in London you would have most likely seen Quiqup delivery bikes and motorcycles whizzing around the capital. Bassel is also an alum of Imperial College Business School.

You can watch to this podcast episode on YouTube on https://youtu.be/BNGttl6kBGY

The main podcast website is http://businesspodcast.co

Please leave a review and a comment if you enjoyed this episode and make sure you're subscribed to the podcast as there are many more episodes to come.

#09 Cambridge, Imperial & London Business School Roundtable Discussion

In this - first ever - round table discussion we have 3 student entrepreneurship society presidents from Cambridge University, London Business School and Imperial College Business School. 

Peter Choy is the president of Cambridge Entrepreneurs (CUE). 

Alexandria Ponomarenko is the President of the London Business School Entrepreneurship Club.

Simon Seibold is the President of the Imperial College Business School Entrepreneurship Club.

Amin Siala is an MSc student and host of the Business Podcast @ Imperial College Business School.

The core focus of the discussion was how can universites and educational institutions as a whole harbour a more innovative and entrepreneurial culture?

We also asked the question, 'Can entrepreneurship be taught?' - and many more interesting discussion points!

You can watch the full episode on video on YouTube https://youtu.be/U3TGBCpXYXU - Check out the official website http://businesspodcast.co

(We apologize for the low quality of the audio as we faced some technical issues with the microphones)

 

#08 Student Investment Fund £100K - Imperial College Business School

In this episode I talk to 3 student members of a team of 7 who founded a student managed fund worth a £100K. Davide Scuito, Jan Rinck and Edoardo Pediconi are student at Imperial College Business School.

Listen to the extradordinary journey they took to secure the fund as well as their plans to maintain it, manage it and pass it on to future years.

Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

To listen to more exciting episodes go to BusinessPodcast.co

If you want to get involved with the podcast get in touch through our main website on http://businesspodcast.co

#07 Professor Jonathan Haskel - Author of Capitalism Without Capital

Capitalism without Capital is a new book published by Princeton University Press and authored by Professor Jonathan Haskel of Imperial College London and Stian Westlake of Nesta.

In this episode I talk to Professor Jonathan Haskel about the intangible economy ahead, its properties as well as the consequences that await us. We also discuss the recent INDIGO prize won by Professor Haskel where he proposed a new way of thinking about GDP in a 5,000 word essay.

Financial Times Best Books of 2017: https://www.ft.com/content/838ecc26-d62c-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9

The Economist Review of the book: https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21732512-phrase-you-will-hear-lot-more-years-come-intangible?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/businessesinvestmentdecisionscanhaveunexpectedconsequencescapitalinthe21stcentury

Find the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Capitalism-Without-Capital-Intangible-Economy/dp/0691175039

You can watch this podcast episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/xiKY6-u07Tc

Thank you for watching and listening. Feel free to share this episode and subscribe for future episodes on all things business right from Imperial College London.

#06 Modular Smartwatch Founder of Blocks Serge Didenko

Serge Didenko is the founder of Blocks which is the world's first modular smartwatch. Blocks raised $1.6m on Kickstarter on October 2015 and has since then raised ~$5m worth of funding. Blocks offers owners the ability to add and remove modules to the smartwatch with ease.

Serge holds a PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College London as well as an MEng in Biomedical Engineering.

In this episode we talk about the idea of modular technology as well as the journey of Blocks through crowdfunding including how Serge keeps his community of 100,000 fully engaged.

You can watch this episode on YouTube here https://youtu.be/JmED1xwODdU

You can check out the official website for Blocks on ChooseBlocks.com and see the completed Kickstarter here http://kck.st/1QowbBU

Hosted by Amin Siala at Imperial College London. 

Thank you for listening.

#05 Textbook Subscriptions - Perlego Founder Gauthier Van Malderen

Gauthier Van Malderen is the founder of Perlego which is subscription service for textbooks primarily for students and professionals. Currently boasting more than 70,000 e-books and 90,000 publications, they are growing month by month. Raising just under £1m so far, they are looking to tackle the publishing vertical and become the ‘Spotify of textbooks’.

Gauthier has a postgraduate in Entrepreneurship from Cambridge Judge Business School and in this episode we discuss specific topics regarding Perlego but also delve into the world of entrepreneurship in general and what his recommendations are based on his experience. Gauthier also discusses the Netflix model and compares it to Spotify.

Thank you for watching (or listening) to the business podcast at Imperial College London hosted by Amin Siala (MSc student) and recorded only a few meters away from the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington.

http://businesspodcast.co

Make sure to subscribe and rate the Business Podcast @ Imperial College on iTunes.

#04 Smart Wearables Founder of LYS Technologies Christina Petersen

Christina Friis Blach Petersen is the founder of LYS Technologies and has a succesful and over-funded Kickstarter campaign for her new wearable device which tracks light and takes care of your circadian rhythm. The device promises to help you fall asleep faster, wake up refreshed, feel energised and boost your concentration. Christina talks about her journey through studying a double Masters at Imperial College London as well as the Royal College of Arts. We discuss crowdfunding campaigns in general as well as get into some detail regarding the technicalities of the device and what the future plan of LYS Technologies are for the future.

You can subscribe to the Business Podcast @ Imperial College on iTunes here: http://businesspodcast.co/itunes 

All the episodes are recorded in video at the Imperial College Radio station in South Kensington, London and can be watched on YouTube. Just head over to http://businesspodcast.co/youtube

#03 $20m ICO Blockchain Founders Alan Vey & Annika Monari from Aventus.io

Alan Vey & Annika Monari are the founders of Aventus.io which is a B2B ticketing infrastructure which uses Blockchain and Artifical Intelligence to solve multiple problems in the industry. They raised the equivelant of $20m on a recent ICO (Initial Coin Offering). Both graduates of Imperial College London from highly quantitative courses.

In this episode I talk to Annika & Alan not just about their journey in business but also about their sudden rise to scrutiny and how they handled it. We also talk about the near future of Aventus as well as dig deeper into the ticketing industry and what major issues are currently not solved.

You can check out Aventus on http://aventus.io

To watch this episode with Aventus on YouTube, just head over to http://businesspodcast.co/YouTube

You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: http://businesspodcast.co/soundcloud

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