Mastering Tech Growth

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Matthew Stafford, managing partner of Build Grow Scale, who has helped hundreds of e-commerce stores hit eight figures, including brands like Organifi and Pink Lily. They unpack taking e-commerce businesses from traffic-burning money pits to revenue-generating machines.

Matthew shares data-driven strategies, smart conversion optimisation techniques, and a customer-centric approach that has taken numerous businesses from zero to six figures without additional ad spend.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Traffic without conversion is a money pit.

Data-driven decisions are always effective.

Collect, collate, and present yo...

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Tim O'Hearn, a software engineer, former Black Hat growth practitioner, and the author of Framed a Villain's Perspective on Social Media. For many years, Tim’s been inside the system, building tools that successfully manipulated feeds, scaled fake social media engagement and exploited attention at a mass scale.

It is fair to say Tim has his finger on the pulse when it comes to what works on social media and what doesn´t. Yet, the approach he now advocates may surprise you.

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For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Amir Barsoum, who is the founder or co-founder of multiple highly successful businesses including Vezeeta, a leading digital healthcare platform, and In-Vitro Capital. Instead of looking for founders to invest in, Amir starts with a problem, looks for a solution, finds the right experts to solve that problem, and then builds the company. 

Amir walks us through how this works, why most people get things wrong and what it takes to build scalable AI-powered companies from scratch.

If you enjoyed the show, please do me a favour - h...

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Michael Schank, the founder of Process Inventory Advisors and the author of Digital Transformation Success. For over two decades, Michael has helped companies clean up the way they work so they can grow without the chaos. Today, Michael walks us through his process and inventory framework. He breaks down the simple steps most startups skip which lead to small bits of waste within their processes that have a huge impact on their growth.

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Do you want to know what separates the startups that get funded from the ones that don´t? Today, Mike is joined by Alexandra Nicoletti, a partner at Camber Creek, one of the leading VC firms. Prior to this, Alexandra was in real estate and private equity at Apollo and worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. 

Alexandra has seen every version of a pitch you can imagine. Today she breaks down exactly how to target the right investors, prepare a winning pitch, deliver it and follow up.

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If you're serious about scaling without relying on paid ads, this episode is for you. Today, Mike is joined by Ben Sharf, co-founder of Platter, creator of 160+ Shopify storefronts, angel investor, and host of Turning Pro. He breaks down how shifting from company marketing to founder-led storytelling can be your biggest growth hack.

Founders don’t win because their posts are perfect—or because they pour money into ads. They win because people buy from people, not logos. In 2025, founder-led content is the fastest, leanest way to build trust, drive growth, and scale—without breaking the bank. Ben sha...

For today´s episode, Mike is joined by Mike Todasco a visiting fellow at San Diego State University and former director of Innovation at PayPal. Mike holds over 100 patents and has a passion for leveraging AI to get things done fast. If you are a solopreneur who wants to scale quickly without building a team, this episode is very much for you.

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Today, Mike is joined by Quentin de Quelen the CEO and cofounder of Meilisearch, one of the fastest growing open-source search engines, which can easily be integrated into websites and applications. Quentin helps companies create fast, customisable, typo-proof search experiences.  

Today, for research, 46% of Gen Z prefer Instagram and TikTok. YouTube is now the go-to for tutorials and reviews, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, Voice Assistant, etc. are also popular. In an environment like that, you have to ask yourself, "How are people going to find me and find what they need from me?" This episode has the answers.

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcus Fontoura, Azure Core CTO, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, holder of 50 patents and the author of A Platform Mindset. Marcus is certainly a man who knows how to scale tech without breaking it.

If your startup is taking off so fast that you can’t keep up or are drowning in bugs and relying on hot fixes and workarounds to hold things together, this episode is for you. It teaches you how to stop scaling your technical debt and redirect your energy and resources into scaling success.

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For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Graham Riley, a LinkedIn strategist, speaker, and founder of LinkedIn Enterprises. For 20+ years, Graham has been helping B2B companies generate millions in revenue using LinkedIn. His strategies don´t just get you likes; they drive deals.

He and Mike discuss how you need to respond to drastic algorithm changes, why your execs need to engage on LinkedIn, quickly create content, take advantage of LinkedIn visitor data that many people are not even aware of, and much more.

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For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Chris Silvestri, the founder of Conversion Alchemy. Chris helps B2B SaaS companies break through the noise, reach more would-be customers and show them why they are the obvious choice. Chris’s carefully honed approach uses the alchemy of copy, UX, and decision-making psychology to turn browsers and visitors into loyal, paying customers.

He digs deep into customer research, pulls out real insights, who your real buyer is, what their buying decision making process is and determine what language will resonate with them, so that your message lands and conv...

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Lukas Gentele, CEO and co-founder of Loft Labs, to discuss how to ensure that your open-source project doesn’t end up being one of the 80% that fail. Lukas has successfully launched multiple open-source projects and turned them into profitable businesses. Through this episode, he provides the bones of a framework you can use to do the same.

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Today, Mike is joined by Sam Piliero, founder of The Moonlighters, a marketing agency helping brands scale profitably. Sam and his team break down why most brands struggle to scale their ads, and how small fixes in strategy can make the difference between them running ads that are burning cash and ads that enable firms to scale profitably.

Sam explains how to use AI for marketing, work out what strategy is right for your company and which ad platforms are providing the best exposure and ROI, right now.

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For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcelo Calbucci, the author of PRFAQ Lab. He has been successfully growing startups for 18+ years and is a former Amazon exec. His book PRFAQ Lab breaks down the framework Amazon uses to determine whether an idea is viable and how to develop it. This framework has helped to ensure that in a world where 92% of start-ups fail, most of Amazon´s succeed. As do other start-ups that use the framework.

If you want to learn how to de-risk your startup and build with confidence before you write a single lin...

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Jonathan Mast, the founder of White Beard Strategies. He is a leading voice in AI prompting mastery with over 400,000 followers. Jonathan has helped 1000s of business owners and entrepreneurs unlock AI's full potential using his structured four-step framework. Enabling some of them to experience a 5,000% uptick in their ROI.

This episode is a must listen if you want to stop wasting time with bad AI outputs and start getting results that actually move the needle. 

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Mike speaks to Aditya Jain, the co-founder of Passion Fruit and a leading SEO growth strategist who has helped companies move beyond vanity metrics and generate income from their SEO efforts. They discuss why most businesses get SEO wrong and spend too long chasing rankings instead of revenue. Many are targeting high volume low intent keywords.

Aditya Jain is going to change the way you think about and use SEO. He provides truly practical advice that works in the modern marketplace. Including how to use AI to improve targeting and speed up content creation and data analysis.<...

Mike speaks to Peter Kaliuzhny, the founder of GetSales.io, who is an expert on B2B sales. He has closed numerous six figure deals with Fortune 100 companies. Peter leverages LinkedIn and can turn any profile into a lead generation machine, which is free to use.

Peter explains how to optimise your LinkedIn profile, create break-through first connection messages and generate inbound profile links. He shares how to understand your customers and use that knowledge to generate massive leads and sales.

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Today, Mike is joined by Sabir Semerkant, a top E-commerce growth strategist, with 25+ years of experience. Over the years he has helped brands like Coca Cola, Canon and Tommy Hilfiger to achieve massive growth. Sabir has turned that expertise into his 8D Method - a step-by-step framework for unlocking scalable, profitable e-commerce growth. His rapid 2x program has helped brands grow by an average of 108% in just 21 days

In this episode, Sabir breaks down pricing, marketing, product research and profitability strategies that will transform your online business. He also shares what not to do, his e-commerce sins.<...

Mike speaks to Pranav Dalal founder and CEO of Office Beacon, a leader in remote staffing solutions that has grown the company from just five employees in 2001 to 5,500+, without any VC funding. He and Mike talk about how to identify your competitive advantage, leverage it, and how to automate successfully. They also discuss how to create an irresistible hook to break through the noise and get your conversion rate into double figures.

Pranav also explains how you can try Office Beacon´s fully managed remote staffing free of charge for an entire month.

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Mike is joined today by Katrena Friel to discuss how to turn your expertise into 7 new streams of income. Katrena is a business mentor, TEDx speaker and award-winning author who has spent 25 years helping professionals turn their skills into thriving businesses that give them real freedom.

Katrena reveals how you can turn what you know into 7 new income streams and do so within the next 90 days.

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For this episode, Mike sits down with Jade Pruett, an award-winning SEO specialist and founder of HelloSEO, with an impressive client list that includes CNN and Business Insider. She uses AI to create authentic and effective content. Doing so in a fast and effective way that was just not possible pre-AI. She shares several in-depth techniques that you can start using immediately.

Learn how to turn AI from a shortcut into a secret weapon for building trust and winning customers.

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Mike speaks to Eran Friendinger the cofounder and CTO of Voyantis, a company that helps businesses grow using AI. Including big brands like Lennar, Miro, and Figma that have used his strategies to get 20 to 50% better results from running their ads. 

Scaling in 2025 isn't about doing more. It's about working smarter with AI. If you're not using AI to help you, you're wasting time and money while your competitors are speeding ahead - The right AI deployed in the right way helps you to make you better decisions and predict what your customers want. Freeing up your t...

Today, Mike speaks to David Hirschfeld, a seasoned entrepreneur who has worked on 30+ tech and software startups to discuss why developing a founder mindset is critical. David explains why founders need to switch from a creative to a managerial mindset.

He shares why taking a clinician's approach, testing and measuring results, embracing failures as learning experiences, and being open to pivoting are all so essential. David also explains how you can use AI to automate and improve workflows while generating revenue early and keeping the cost of customer acquisition below one third of their lifetime value.

This episode is all about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by 1 million+ users including tech giants like Airbus and Wal Mart. Mike speaks to Tanmai Gopal the CEO and co-founder of Hasura that enables users to easily build, run, govern and evolve high-quality APIs for all types of data. Reliably providing them with accurate real time data that can then be used in numerous ways to serve customers effectively and drive growth.

Tanmai shares the story of Hasura’s development, how to scale effectively and how to use PromptQL to turn AI...

If you are juggling too many ideas and do not know which one to focus on or are stuck because you are overthinking everything, this episode of the Managing Tech Growth podcast is for you. To discuss how to navigate your way out of that situation and avoid it in the future, Mike is joined by David Boice. 

David is a serial entrepreneur who, at just 22, founded his first business. Today, it is worth hundreds of millions. His current companies employ 500+ associates who are mainly engaged in developing and providing technology for several transport industries.

K...

Today, Mike is joined by Ivan Gekht a Siberian Aerospace Engineer and CEO of Gehtsoft, a custom software development powerhouse. For the past 20 years, he has delivered complex solutions for numerous industries. Ivan has led transformative projects at both startups and billion-dollar enterprises. He explains why, regardless of the industry you are in, developing and delivering products at speed is essential.

Ivan explains how the need to move at speed impacts the way you structure your business, go through development, deploy it, market it and more. Ivan covers using Agile, value stream mapping, decision making, creating a...

Today, Mike is joined by Ian Myers, founder and CEO of Oceans. He is an expert in building high-growth companies by hiring the right global talent, delegating effectively and creating a company culture which enables everyone, including remote workers, to thrive.

Ian and Mike discuss the best way to source talent from across the globe while avoiding common issues. Including, fraud, inadvertently breaking labour laws, and people working full-time for multiple companies and not delivering. They also discuss how to improve communication and inspire people to successfully work proactively.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

When you...

Today, Mike speaks to Michael Nicastro who is the VP group, director of technology and head of accessibility at Digitas. They discuss a very overlooked aspect of scaling tech ventures - digital accessibility which is not just a compliance checkbox. It is actually a growth strategy that unlocks new markets, drives revenue and helps your product reach its full potential. 

Michael is passionate about ensuring that digital products are accessible to everyone and uses quality assurance and automation to drive growth without sacrificing inclusivity.

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1.3 billion people worldwide face barriers when using d...

In this episode, Mike speaks to Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube. Using cutting-edge Brand SEO, he shapes brands on Google to reflect a growth-driven vision. Jason unpacks strategies for controlling your brand story in Google and all of the AI engines so you can take full control of your online reputation, be easily found by potential customers and convert them into clients.

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When it comes to tech growth your brand is the most influential factor. 

Your personal brand is just as important as your business brand.

The way both G...

Mike speaks to Alex Levin co-founder and CEO of regal.io a leader in customer journey optimization through understanding customer intent, Alex has guided companies to go beyond reactive strategies and meet customers exactly when they are ready to engage. He shares how anticipating and responding to customer intent can unlock untapped growth. 

They cover capturing and analysing customer data, including doing it in real time and incorporating contact centre interactions. As well as the current role AI agents are playing and how they are likely to develop.

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The ra...

For this episode, Mike´s guest is Nick McEvily a product leader and a startup advisor who has raised over $40 million for tech ventures. They discuss why so many startups fail and how to stop that from happening. Including why so many startups inadvertently end up building a product that their customers don´t want. 

Nick shares the validation methods, human-centred design, rapid product testing, de-risking and pre-sale strategies the startups he works with use to ensure that they build exactly what people need and sell it in huge numbers.

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Even goo...

In this episode of Mastering Tech Growth, Mike looks at the challenge of scaling tech operations without compromising growth. To do this he is joined by Andrew Parsons, an industry veteran who, for decades, has been transforming operations for Vive Bank, HSBC, MasterCard, Admiral Group and more. Andrew shares his insights on achieving operational excellence without slowing the pace at which a startup grows and evolves. A critical but often overlooked factor of tech scaling. 

Whether you're in a fast-growing startup or managing an established venture, this episode offers actionable strategies to help your operations grow.

Mike speaks to Jinesh Patel, co-founder and CEO of Uptime Health, to discuss the importance of strategic partnerships in scaling a tech business. Jinesh used 15+ strategic partners to grow from £1 million turnover in 2023 to £10 million in 2024. He explains how they found the right partners and built effective relationships with them to sell an innovative product that those involved in the dental industry had never heard of or thought about using before.

He explains how to put together deals that are so good for the partners that they will not be able to resist working alongside you.

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For this episode, Mike speaks to Gautam Hazari an influential TED speaker and the visionary CTO of sekura.id. He is at the forefront of developing innovative security solutions that tackle the complex challenges of identity management and fraud prevention.

They start by looking at the impact fraud is having on businesses and why the situation is about to get a lot worse. Before discussing what you and the tech industry can do to mitigate fraud. Including being ready for when the fraudsters start using AI bots to work on an even larger scale than they are...

For this episode, Mike is joined by Keith Harrison a seasoned software development leader with 24 years of commercial experience. They discuss the intersection between community building and tech innovation and how it catapults your personal and business growth. 

Keith explains how to set up your own tech community. Including, securing sponsors attracting high-quality speakers, pricing, finding venues, and more.

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Mike speaks to Nathan Yeung, a seasoned fractional CMO with a keen interest in using consumer psychology to drive marketing success in the tech industry. Nathan explains how it should inform your marketing strategy and campaigns. Including creating a network effect, building trust, social proof, case studies, repackaging, anchoring, the impact of AI and why so much unethical marketing still works.

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Mike speaks to Greg Rog a serial entrepreneur and expert in AI-driven automation and streamlining who co-founded easy.tools, easycart, Automation House, and Zencal. His latest innovation, Alice, is an AI assistant that works seamlessly with your apps to simplify tasks—a daily tool Mike uses.

Greg explains how Alice solves the automation challenges you are having including, dealing effectively with AI hallucinations, and being able to use your custom APIs as well as the automation you have already created on platforms like Make and Zapier.

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Alice enables you to...

Mike speaks to Jothy Rosenberg an incorrigible entrepreneur who has sold 9 of his tech startups for millions of dollars each. In this episode, Jothy explains how he does it and how you can do the same.

During this episode, Jothy covers assessing the viability of your idea, how to get the attention of investors and raise funds, honing your pitch, self-financing, building a team, the impact of dilution on equity, and much more.

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Today, Mike talks with Maarten Ectors, an award-winning innovator in AI, Web3, and next-gen tech, known for launching the world’s first blockchain reinsurance solutions. They discuss the transformative impact of AI on society and the future of work. Including what developers, coders, and technical architects can do to position themselves now to take advantage of the wave of AI innovation and new technologies. 

He also shares how AI is likely to impact the lives of less technical people like your parents and drastically change the way society works.

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Today, Mike speaks to Krista Neher about the increasingly critical subject of personal branding. Krista is an award-winning digital marketer, bestselling author, social media specialist, speaker, trainer & CEO.

Regardless of the tech work you do, how you present yourself makes a huge difference to the opportunities you attract. Your personal brand builds credibility and makes you attractive, so the information in this episode is critical to your success.

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