The MBA Is Dead

Today is an exciting day as we will be recording our 10th episode! And for this special edition, we are hosting Sara Leth, Head of Organisational Development at Nordea Asset Management. Sara could be described as a hybrid between an entrepreneur/ a business developer/ a design thinker and an executive leadership coach. She has spent 5 years working at  Startupbootcamp and Rainmaking, two well known organizations focused on innovation. With them, she went all around the world advising startups, corporates and governments, doing stuff like helping startups to build scalable business models and also teaching corporates how to act like entrepreneurs. She is Head Coach with Seth Godin's altMBA, a fascinating program that is much more impactful, in my opinion, then a traditional MBA program. She also has recently launched her new course on visual note-taking. All that while holding a role as Head of Organizational Development at Nordea Asset Management, Europe's leading asset manager.

Today's episode is a bit unique. As a series we haven't completed even 10 episodes yet, and we are already bringing on our first repeat guest! A few weeks back, we hosted Fabio Chiaramonte,  Chief Technology Officer at a startup called GymCraft. Among other stories, he shared with us the crazy events behind the first amount of seed money he raised. It was fascinating stuff, but we also had a time limit and didn't get to hear about his current passion which is his Venture Builder called Cinque Monti. Venture Builders are kind of like startup accelerators, but with a slightly different model, something we will learn about on today's episode!

Today on our show we are hosting Lu Li, founder of Blooming Founders, an award-winning company that helps early stage entrepreneurs grow their businesses through content and training. Before that , Lu had a career in corporate,  launching FMCG products for Procter & Gamble across Western Europe. She also  worked on several consulting projects for McKinsey, BMW and T-Mobile. In 2016, Lu published the book Dear Female Founder which contains 66 personal letters of advice written by female entrepreneurs from 20 countries.

Today on our show we are hosting Fabio Chiaramonte Chief Technology Officer at a startup called GymCraft. Among other stories, he's going to share with us the crazy events behind the first amount of seed money he raised. If you know anything about early stage investment, you know that it normally it takes founders months, sometimes years to get their first cash investment. Well, Fabio did it in under 48hours. I kid you not. Fabio also has the title of Chief of  Moonshots at Cinque Monti Venture Builder. For those of you who aren't aware of the term, in tech startups a moonshot is a very very large type of goal for a company. Think inventing the cure for cancer or landing on mars. Stuff that is so incredible that you can't even believe it's possible. That said, it is sure you to be a fascinating conversation, so let's please welcome to the show Mr. Fabio Chiaramonte!

Today we have on the show Kathleen Fritzsche, who was the cofounder of 2 pivotal organizations in the Stuttgart startup scene: StartUp Stuttgart and Accelerate Stuttgart, the latter being the first privately funded accelerator program ever in that city. More recently Kathleen has worked as an Innovation Consultant for a tech firm based in Berlin, a role which surely provided her with insights on how to bring the wisdom of startup to corporates.

In today's episode, we are hosting Sam Ahmed, Head of Marketing & Communication at Nauta Capital which is a very well known London based Venture Capital firm. They invest in European B2B software startups from the seed stage all the way up to Series A. Sam has over 10 years of experience leading marketing & communication initiatives and she's done this at an incubator, startup accelerators and is currently doing this at Nauta Capital. In her day-to-day, she does literally everything from copywriting to press relations to managing relationships with creative agencies to running events, brand development, social media, community building, and web marketing. She literally does it all. At her various positions, she has worked with Europe's most innovative founders, investors, and ecosystem players.

On today's episode we are hosting Elena Sinel, a multi-award-winning entrepreneur on a mission to inspire young people across the world to use Artificial Intelligence for good. Elena's organization Teens in AI has for a mission to help develop underrepresented talent, thereby improving diversity and inclusion in Artificial Intelligence. It offers young people aged 12-18 early exposure to AI for Social Good through a plethora of activities.  We are talking mentoring, talks, workshops, education on human centered design and ethics, hackathons, accelerators, company tours and networking opportunities. Elena's dream is for Artificial Intelligence to be developed by a diverse group of thinkers and doers advancing AI for humanity’s benefit.  Since 2018, Teens in AI partnered with Microsoft to scale Girls in AI across 150 countries.

On today’s episode of The MBA Is Dead we will be hosting Anna Jagric. Anna has held roles as Operations Director for two mental health focused orgs, Better Space and the Psychosynthesis Trust and was also previously Finance Manager for Startup Weekend Europe.  Anna has over 10 years experience in administering businesses, scaling small enterprises and growing startups. After training as a bookkeeper, her passion for continuous learning took her to a plethora of places, projects, and jobs. She is now an accredited facilitator, mentor and coach who is passionate about supporting social enterprise and helping individuals and groups create impact.

In this episode of The MBA Is Dead, we speak with Jana Stevanović, Sales Specialist at Strategyzer, an innovation powerhouse (founded by Alex Osterwalder inventor of Business Model and Value Proposition Canvases). She holds a Bachelor of International Relations from Political Science University in Belgrade as well as an MBA from WU Executive Academy in Vienna. After finishing her MBA, Jana was on her way to conquer the corporate world, but then decided to trade that for a career in innovation. She first worked on developing the startup ecosystem in Serbia, connecting corporates with startups and now is a part of a startup herself. At Strategyzer, Jana is helping Fortune 500 companies to create an innovation culture.

Today we speak with Amalia Agathou, who has 15 years of experience in the European startup ecosystem and the creative industries as an entrepreneur and innovation consultant.  A firm believer in innovation fueled by cross-border and and cross-industry collaboration, Agathou has designed and worked on numerous open innovation international programs like EDF Energy Awards, Global Fashion Battle and CFE's FashionTech accelerator.  Agathou is also an active mentor and advisor at several entrepreneurial communities and accelerator programs like Blooming Founders, NEF and Techstars.