Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Aleksa Vukotic is the CTO @ thestartupfactory.tech and former CTO @ BankiFi Aleksa is also the founder of Pragmatic CTO, a guide for founders and investors to find the right CTO for their tech company. Advice for aspiring CTOs by one of their own. Definitely worth checking out! During this podcast, Ben and Co-host Georgia sat down with Aleksa to discuss his philosophy around strategy in the startup world, who to hire and when, and his involvement within the tech community in Manchester.

Simon is the Founder & Director of Gravitywell During this episode, Simon talks to Ben about his experience of Gravitywell becoming B Corp Certified, the unique culture they foster at Gravitywell, and some of the amazing projects they are working on.

Sacha is Head of Engineering at Growth Kitchen An IT professional with 14 years’ experience in several sectors building highly-available, scalable, customer-facing, complex distributed web applications.  Growth Kitchen helps forward-thinking restaurants prioritise their delivery network in the best locations to change the way the world eats. During this episode, Ben and Sacha discuss his interesting technology career and path to success, advice for people looking to progress their careers, and the current state of the employment market in this space.

Irina is CTO & Founder at Cordless Cordless combines the best parts of voice and text communication to create a delightful customer support experience. Irina was previously at Monzo Bank when they started with just 80 colleagues and left when they have over 1000. Throughout this journey at Monzo, Irina gathered a wealth of knowledge about leadership, scaling a tech business, and how to hire at scale whilst still maintaining great company culture, as well as balancing user needs with company priorities. During this episode, Ben sits down with Irina to talk about the key learnings that have impacted her career, how to embed company culture throughout the hiring process, and future plans for Cordless.

Denise E. White is the Founder and CEO of SPATIALx and BLANK XR; solving problems and creating value in XR. We’re on a mission to embolden and reinvent physical and virtual experiences through Mixed Reality with a portfolio of brands in entertainment, communication and commerce. During this episode Ben, Jacob and Denise sit down to discuss the definition of The Metaverse, what Extended Reality is, the definition of the overarching term XR which encapsulates: VR - Virtual Reality, AR - Augmented Reality, MR - Mixed Reality and IRL - In-Real Life / Replicated Spaces; As well as the future of this space.

Kaoru is Strategy Lead at MBition GmbH In 2017, Mercedes-Benz founded MBition GmbH, the subsidiary working on developing software for all Mercedes-Benz cars. MBition is a fitting name for the young company. To achieve the goal of shaping the future of mobility, one thing above all is essential: Ambition. MBition makes a decisive contribution to this future: Software being developed for their vehicles is achieved through close cooperation with their colleagues in Sindelfingen and in Mercedes-Benz's worldwide development network. The MBition team currently consists of around 400 software developers and continues to grow exponentially. Kaoru talks to Ben about the future of Autonomous Vehicles, how Kaoru and his team at MBition are staying ahead of the curve with cutting-edge technology that will affect how we live our lives, and what the autonomous car of the future will look like.

Thiago Ghisi is Director Of Engineering at Nubank | Ex-Apple & Ex-ThoughtWorks. He has over fifteen years of experience in the Software Industry, working for Large Corporations and Startups in Brazil and the US, as Software Engineer, QA, Project Manager, SRE, Agile Consultant, and lately as Engineering Manager and Director. During this roundtable, Ben Malloy, Frank DeLeo & Gabrielle Harrison sit down with Thiago to discuss how to progress in the tech industry. We wanted to say a huge thank you to Thiago for hosting this podcast recording in his office in NYC and coming on our podcast for a second time!

Richard is VP Engineering @ Proximie Proximie saves lives by sharing the world’s best clinical practice. Proximie is a technology platform that uses a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence and augmented reality to allow clinicians to virtually ‘scrub in’ and collaborate with each other from anywhere in the world. In this episode, Ben sits down with Richard to discuss how to set yourself up for a strong career in tech, and once in the industry, how to progress. Links to books mentioned in the recording: Cracking the Coding Interview: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cracking-Coding-Interview-6th-Programming/dp/0984782850 Elements of Programming Interviews in Python: The Insiders' Guide: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Programming-Interviews-Python-Insiders/dp/1537713949/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Kris is President @ Demosphere, leading a very talented team on a mission to provide authentic, industry-leading technology solutions for organized sports, accommodating the needs of all levels of organizations, and all levels of users, with an ethical approach in how to impact the greater community. Demosphere has catered to the management needs of sports organizations for over 30 years, from scheduling and registration to communication and websites. Demosphere’s mission is to provide authentic industry-leading technology solutions for organized sports, accommodating the needs of all levels of organizations and all levels of users, with an ethical approach to how it impacts the greater community. During this episode, Ben chats with Kris about the current landscape of hiring and recruitment in technology, how Kris finds and retains top tech talent.

Kai is Managing Director at Planisware. Tech leader with over 20 years’ experience working in start-ups, mid-sized and enterprise organisations delivering award-winning solutions to customers in multiple sectors. MBA qualified with international experience - including managing programme delivery operations delivering to the US and Japan.  Kai’s passion is people, more precisely, seeing people be the best version of themselves whilst working collaboratively inter and intra organisations to deliver on joint objectives based on a cohesive set of goals. Currently leading the start-up and growth of the UK office for Planisware, a global leader in Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management software, in MediaCityUK as Managing Director with oversight across all aspects of the business in the UK.  Planisware is a global provider of software solutions for project portfolio management. Planisware solutions are specifically designed to support product development, engineering and IT business processes. Ben sits do

Ahmad is Engineering Manager @ Indeed Flex (formerly Syft) Indeed Flex is a market-leading flexible staffing platform. They unite job seekers and employers in the hospitality, industrial, retail, care, and facilities management sectors, to smooth the recruitment process of part-time and temporary employees. They currently support more than 6,000 employers and 50,000 jobseekers. In this episode, Ben and Ahmad chat about Mental and the cultural differences between corporate and start-ups. Tolerance and adaptation in a start-up environment and how this is very important when scaling upwards aggressively and successfully. Technology: 'Log the world', how being data-driven is essential in terms of company strategy, but not to forget that being data-driven is not there to replace the human element and input.

Drew is CEO @ Upp Technologies Upp is the only Connected Retail Performance platform in the market that automates your Google Shopping and Performance Max management through a data-led approach powered by cutting-edge AI and Machine Learning technology. Our customers include brands and retailers such as Charles Tyrwhitt, Nordgreen, Poundshop.com, Equus, Bombinate, Ridgemont and Nkuku. In this episode, Ben and Drew chat about how Upp Technologies uses a data-led approach with market-leading AI and Machine Learning technology to truly disrupt the space, and the most important things to consider as an E-Commerce brand in the market today.

Chris is Head of Development @ River Island. With over 60 years of fashion retailing experience, River Island is one of the most well-known and loved brands on the High Street.  Chris is an influential leader that seeks to address root causes while focusing on strategic vision and the needs of the business to enable development of effective plans and operations that deliver organisational goals while empowering and motivating teams to achieve their full potential. During this episode, Ben sits down with Chris to discuss what he has learned through past experiences and life and how that's applied in his life today.

Fabian is CTO at 7Mind GmbH. With more than 2,3 million mindful users across all of Europe, 7Mind is Europe's most popular mindfulness app. The 7Mind App is based on the idea to help easily integrate the practice of meditation and mindfulness into daily life. Ben sits down with Fabian to discuss Agile coaching, the challenges of scaling a business, and what a CTO position looks like.

Ella is Product Manager at Solana Labs. Solana Labs is a technology company working to help advance the Solana ecosystem. The Solana blockchain is a new architecture for a high-performance blockchain. Up to 710,000 transactions per second on a 1-gigabit network without data partitioning. Solana is the fastest blockchain in the world and the fastest growing ecosystem in crypto, with thousands of projects spanning DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and more. During this episode, Ben sits down with Ella to discuss what Solana Labs does differently to other businesses in this space, crypto, and the incredible Hacker Houses that Solana hosts. Articles and further reading from things mentioned on the recording: Solana whitepaper: https://solana.com/solana-whitepaper.pdf Proof of History: https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 and https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-explained-by-a-water-clock-e682183417b8#:~:text=A%20Proof%20of%20History%20(PoH,thousands%20of%20transactio

Tom is Ceo at Geckoboard Geckoboard's software makes it quick and easy to build live TV dashboards, which focus teams on the metrics that matter to a business. During this episode, Ben sits down with Tom to hear about his interesting career path to CEO, his motivations and influences as a leader, and how this affects the culture in the business.

Marcio is Chief Architect @ Nuri During this episode, Ben sits down with Marcio to discuss how companies can pragmatically manage their technical debt and non-functional requirements in general and achieve sustainability. Nuri is a financial services business, and is the app to manage, save and invest your money. An easy gateway to the world of investing: Get started with cryptocurrencies or investments in the stock market – directly from a German bank account. Here's the relevant links to topics mentioned in the chat: 1) How to perform architecture control of a TypeScript codebase: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/javascripttypescript-code-does-have-mess-marcio-marchini/ . This is what they are using at Nuri - Structure10.com for TypeScript.   2) Erich Gamma’s interview where he talks about the need for proper layering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLPtXeCC82k  3) How they did proper architecture control for other languages, with a maturity model program, also controlling at the “micro” level: https:

Maurin is Director of Engineering @ Alteryx The Alteryx Analytics Automation Platform delivers end-to-end automation of analytics, machine learning, and data science processes that accelerate digital transformation. During this episode, Ben sits down with Maurin to discuss the future of data transformation/BI, how to enable more business users (data citizens) to have access to the data. They also spoke about ELT architecture.

Adarsh is Artificial Intelligence Lead at Credera UK Credera is a consulting firm focused on strategy, transformation, data, cloud, and engineering.  During this episode, Ben sits down with Adarsh to discuss how he has navigated his career to become AI Lead @ Credera, what his role entails day to day, and the emergence of AI/Machine learning and it's exciting potential.

Brian Powell is Chief Operations Officer @ TalentNow.  Brian has built himself a spectacular reputation on building up tech teams in various industries and is now leading 20 different companies within a massive portfolio for Vora. During this episode, Ben sits down with Brian to talk about team building in terms of scaling, and his agile process – a proven 8-week breakdown of solutions and prototyping.