The Startup Onion

In this episode, Oli Littlejohn speaks to Linda Grant, Chief Marketing Officer at Valla. Valla is on a mission to make legal support affordable for everyone. Our revolutionary new product helps people to take their employer to tribunal — even if they cannot afford a lawyer. Valla was founded by two senior women from the tech industry who were tired of seeing marginalised people being treated unfairly by their employers and not being able to afford justice.

In this episode of The Startup Onion, Anais Guillemaud talks to Eilidh Mutch, founder of Your Spin Limited. During university, Eilidh Mutch noticed that on-trade drink promotions lacked excitement. Thinking brands could better connect with Gen Z, she started Your Spin post-pandemic to aid struggling hospitality. Your Spin enhances brand-consumer interaction at the point of order through innovative tech and entertainment. Real-time data proves its immediate impact, boosting brand sales, customer engagement, and staff satisfaction. Whether you’re launching new products in-venues, wanting to increase on-trade sales, gather real-time consumer data and feedback, or create immersive brand experiences, Your Spin leads the way in redefining brand activations.

In this episode, Oli Littlejohn - VP of R+D at CodeBase - speaks to Alex Gordon-Furse, the co-founder and CEO of Playmaker. They catch at Techscaler's pop-up San Francisco hub to talk about Alex's startup journey so far and the problems Playmaker is trying to solve. Alex Gordon-Furse is the Co-Founder and CEO of Playmaker, a data activation platform that solves the complicated problem of making increasingly fragmented customer data more accessible and usable. This saves time and money for Data and Revenue Operations teams, and provides customer-facing teams with real-time insights for informed actions and workflows that drive revenue.

This week, Anais Guillemaud, Head of Online Community at CodeBase, speaks to Chris Hughes, the founder of Estendio, whose mission is to unlock potential through inclusive technology for all. This episode was recorded at Techscaler's hub in San Francisco. Created out of his own experience as a student with dyslexia - Chris created the Present Pal App to support disabled students deliver more confident and prepared presentations. Since launching in 2018, the software now supports disabled students in over 150 universities across the UK and North America. Outside of Estendio, Chris sits on the board as a Non Exec for Dyslexia Scotland and has delivered keynote speeches at MIT's Assistive Technology Hackathon, Harvard and the BBC. Chris was also named as no 8 in Insiders 35 under 35 and winner of the Disrupter Award at The Great British Entrepreneur of The Year Awards 2022. 

Aleksandra Czech-Seklecka, founder of Vanfill Ltd, an app which helps reduce carbon emissions and transportation costs for transport providers, joins Steven Drost, CSO of CodeBase, for the latest episode of The Startup Onion. Hear Aleksandra talk about her experiences as a minority, woman founder and starting a company while dealing with chronic pain.

Richie Wan is the founder of Refermyjobs, a job board which incentivises people to refer their contacts to companies who'd love to employ them. He has 13 years' recruitment experience focusing on senior management up to director level vacancies, both in the UK and international markets. Listen to his chat with Steven Drost, CSO of CodeBase, to find out more about how his startup journey is going.

In the first episode of The Startup Onion, we had a great chat with Omar Tufayl, Founder of Loopsio.com, a student-driven tech agency. We'll hear all about his most and least favourite parts of startup culture and why his startup exists. Omar also shares some interesting insights on the importance of diversity in tech and how important it is that every group of people gets a seat at the table.