#48 Year In Fin-Tech Ft. Tal Sharon, Managing Partner, Equitech

Heidi is a venture capitalist, a corporate director, a Stanford lecturer, and at heart, always an entrepreneur. She co-founded the software company T/Maker and served as its CEO for over a decade until its acquisition by Deluxe Corporation. After a stint as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple, She entered the VC industry with Softbank, and currently is a partner at Silicon Valley-based Threshold Ventures. She is a corporate director for a bunch of public and private companies such as Memphis Meats, Lumity and Polarr. And most importantly she is known for her strong and warm professional relationships.

In this episode of Startup Garage, dive into the opulent world of luxury watches as we bring you an hour of wit, wisdom, and wrist candy magic with Khaled, the visionary founder of Timepiece360, and Ismail, a passionate luxury watch enthusiast and a friend of the brand. Episode Highlights: Origins of Timepiece360: Discover the captivating tale of how Khaled turned the ticking dreams of luxury watches into reality, all with a touch of humor and entrepreneurial flair. Luxury Market Laughs: Uncover the quirks, challenges, and sheer joy associated with buying and owning luxury timepieces. Spoiler alert: It involves more than just telling time! Wristful Thinking: Ismail shares his personal journey into the world of luxury watches, spills the beans on his favorite pieces, and regales us with anecdotes of being a Timepiece360 aficionado. Time Traveling Trends: Get a front-row seat to the latest trends in the luxury watch market, the quartz crisis, from moon-phases to the art of balancing tradition and innovation.

In this episode of Startup Garage, we dive into the world of venture capital and startup success with our guest Florent, a General Partner at Teampact Ventures. With 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, product management, and executive leadership, Florent brings a unique perspective to the world of investing in startups that are tackling critical challenges in climate and health. At Teampact, they're not just your typical venture capital firm. They're pioneers of a new kind of investing, one that's high-impact, operator-run, and founder-centric. But what sets them apart even more is their use of principles borrowed from elite sports to help their portfolio companies deliver exceptional results. Florent shares insights into how the team building approach used in sports can be a game-changer for startups. We explore how the competitive spirit, discipline, and collaboration found in the world of sports can be applied to building and scaling successful businesses. Additionally, Florent leads Tremplin Capital, a pre-seed vehicle that empowers French entrepreneurs from underrepresented and under-networked backgrounds. He also coaches and mentors CEOs and CPOs, helping them excel at product leadership. Tune in to gain valuable perspectives on impact investing, the sports mindset in business, and the essential ingredients for startup success. If you're an entrepreneur or investor looking to make a real impact, this episode is a must-listen. Co-hosted by Surabhi Verma

For the premiere episode of the third season of Startup Garage, we explore how this British expat turned his passion for bikes into a global success story, with One Moto headquartered in Dubai and spreading its influence across 10 countries. From his early career in the UAE's media industry to his bold entrepreneurial pursuits, Adam's path to autonomy and creativity is a testament to the power of perseverance and innovation. Get ready to be inspired by Adam's incredible journey from branding and publishing to pioneering the electric vehicle industry. #StartupGarage #EVInnovation #OneMoto #Entrepreneurship #EVRevolution #DubaiStartups #AdamRidgway #GlobalSuccess #InnovationStory In less than two years, One Moto is already producing a remarkable ~10,000 fully modular electric bikes and vans every month. Their recent $150 million financing deal is a testament to their potential. Visit One Moto's website (www.one-moto.com) to witness their groundbreaking products and innovations firsthand! Join us on this electrifying journey by watching the full episode, and don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to keep up with the latest stories of success in the startup world! Listen to more than 50 episodes of Startup Garage on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts: Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3kpqY1B iTunes: https://apple.co/32IBWcN Google Podcast: https://bit.ly/3igRASy

Sarah Toukan comes from a family of entrepreneurs in the middle-east. She attended Stanford for her bachelors and masters in mechanical engineering, post which she worked in real estate and food and beverage industry and currently is the co-founder and leads the product at Ziina. As the UAE’s first licensed peer-to-peer payment app, Ziina is on a mission to simplify finance for everyone. She has been named as one of the Top 10 Women In tech by Forbes. In this episode, we speak with Sarah about design thinking, conducting user-interviews, the beginning of Ziina and among many other things about how fin-tech founders should think about blockchain and the concepts of decentralized finance. 

Businesswoman, serial entrepreneur and advisor, Joy Ajlouny is a powerhouse of the startup ecosystem. Born and raised in California to Palestinian refugees, Ajlouny has built a reputation for her success in startups and ventures worldwide, all the while aggravating the status quo of women in business. In 2015 Joy Ajlouny co-founded Fetchr, the Silicon Valley-backed tech company that was created to tackle the Middle East’s “no address” issue, which has been long been a hindrance to growth in emerging markets. She facilitated $52 million in initial investments in Fetchr, as well as $41 million in a Series B round in 2017. The company now successfully operates in five countries with a 3500-person staff and was dubbed the number one startup in the Middle East by Forbes. In this episode, Joy talks about the mindset required for being a successful founder, to raise money and the various facets of managing investor expectations. 

In 1958, Joe and Jeff left the Foster business to set up a new sports shoe company in an old brewery building in the UK and 30 years later it became the biggest sports brand in the world, Reebok, grossing over $4BN USD in revenues.  This is a special episode where we had the honor of hosting the legendary, Joseph William Foster, the founder of Reebok (1958). Joe lives and breathes Reebok. His stories, anecdotes, the thrill and the lessons are timeless and wisdom in its purest form. Joe has recently also released his life story as a book, Shoe Maker, and is also doing university tours talking about his life.  The episode is co-hosted by Pankaj Rai, Chief Data Analytics Officer, Aditya Birla Group who also is an athlete, a marathon runner and loves sports (and sports shoes!). In this episode, Pankaj and Joe talk about Joe's family, childhood, the beginning of Reebok, the scaling to a multi-billion dollar business and about the lessons to bring to the contemporary business.  Recently, Aditya Birla Group acquired the distribution license for Reebok India and South East Asia and hence Joe is excited to impart history and love to the next generation carrying the legacy forward.  

This episode features Tal Sharon, Managing Partner, Equitech, a fin-tech consulting organization based in the ME region. Tal has been leading dozens of engagements between fin-tech companies and global financial institutions, consulting regulators and government bodies in fin-tech transformation and market education, and supporting the growth of these companies.  In this episode, we first look at the broad trends of the year 2021 in fin-tech, the year marking a huge funding appetite for startups and investors. The second segment of the podcast takes a quick dip into various sub-segments of fin-tech: digital banking, lending, payments (B2B and B2C) and wealth management. Equitech's YouTube channel has in-depth sessions on each of these sub-segments and more that you can refer to.

After spending over 18 years in the corporate, leading large sales teams at HUL, Airtel and Vodafone, Harish Bali started experimenting with travel and food vlogging. At the age of 42! Used up his life-long savings to document his travels, barely breaking even and worked hard to understand his target audience. Today, Visa2Explore has over 1.2M subscribers and more than 300 videos.  His story is simple yet truly inspiring, a story of sheer persistence! Listen to Harish Bali on this episode of Startup Garage, a first in our mini-series of Hinglish episodes. 

Karen Gabriel has had a fantastic career working with high impact teams across the world. She was a part of the team that launched the Windows phone at Microsoft, she lead program design, development and execution at Dubai Future Foundation, ran 7 cohorts with over 150 startups from around the globe with one of the most ambitious governments in the world, the UAE government.  In this episode, Karin talks about why large organisations are moving towards innovation as the driving agenda for transformation, what should they consider before getting into these waters, how should they think about and work with startups and also talks about designing founder friendly innovation programs.