McKinsey on Start-ups
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McKinsey on Start-ups is an original podcast series from Fuel, McKinsey’s startup practice. In each episode, our experts cut through the noise to help startups and investors accelerate growth. We feature conversations with founders/leaders, investors, and industry experts to share the latest perspective across borders and sectors.
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Mar 16, 2023
Creating a clean water supply from the air and sun
On today’s episode of McKinsey on Startups, our guest is Dr. Cody Friesen, the founder and CEO of Source Global, a sustainability-focused startup that is working to help solve the planet’s drinking water scarcity issues. The company’s flagship product is the Source Hydropanel, a solar-powered, self-contained piece of technology that turns the plentiful water vapor in the atmosphere into a clean, renewable water supply. Source Global has done both commercial and residential projects in more than 50 countries worldwide, and expects to produce and sell tens of thousands of them this year, growing to a few hundred thousand in 2024. Friesen, an MIT-educated material scientist and professor at Arizona State University, has raised close to $300 million in funding since originally founding Source Global in 2015. The company is a Public Benefit Corporation (or PBC), making it focused on both shareholders and stakeholders broadly defined. Friesen sees no tension between “mission and money,” and hopes to help foster what he calls “conscious capitalism” as he pursues his company’s ambitious goal of making drinking water an unlimited resource.
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Feb 16, 2023
Fueling Mexico’s startup ecosystem with an equity-free helping hand
On today’s episode of McKinsey on Startups, our guest is Camila Lecaros, the Managing Director of MassChallenge Mexico, a start-up accelerator that is part of a global network with other outposts in Boston, Texas, Israel, and Switzerland. MassChallenge uses a relatively unique model in its work with budding entrepreneurs. It takes no equity in the start-ups it helps get off the ground over an intensive, 3-4 month program; its offering is completely free to the very early stage companies that are chosen after a competitive judging process. Camila has been with MassChallenge Mexico for several years; she started her career in entrepreneurial outreach in Latin America working at local accelerator Endeavor Colombia and then VC firm Nazca Ventures. She has an abiding passion for working with founders just starting to try to turn their ideas and visions into reality; in her more than a decade career doing so, she has seen the region’s ecosystem similarly take flight from a nascent state to a vibrant, burgeoning entrepreneurial environment. As she told me, her greatest professional motivation is that “entrepreneurship is the only way we can create sustainable economic development.”
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Jan 26, 2023
Base10’s Ade Ajao: A data-driven approach to funding more diverse founders
On today’s episode of McKinsey on Startups, we talk to Adeyemi Ajao, the cofounder and Managing Partner at Base 10 Partners. The San Francisco-based VC firm focuses on startups bringing automation technology to a variety of sectors in what it calls the Real Economy, including logistics, retail, healthcare, finance, and food. Its investments have included Nubank, Instacart, Figma, and Rappi. While Ade and his co-founder TJ Nahigian take a particular, data-driven approach to choosing their investments, that is far from the most distinctive thing about Ade or Base10. Last year, with the closing of a new $460 million fund, Base10 became the first Black-led venture firm to hit the milestone of having more than $1 billion in assets under management. Ade is half-Nigerian and he grew up in Southern Spain, where he co-founded and eventually sold a company called Tuenti, a social networking site often called the “Spanish Facebook”. He relocated to the West Coast to get his MBA and Stanford, and before co-founding Base10 in 2018, he co-founded and sold another startup, Identified, and was an active investor, helping to launch such successes as Cabify and JobandTalent. Base10 is not formally a diversity-focused investor, but a large share of its investments do happen to be with minority founders, and Ade and the firm spend a lot of time thinking and working to grow the pipeline and increase opportunities in tech for Black and other underrepresented populations. Its Advancement Initiative is a $250 million growth-stage fund that donates 50 percent of returns to HBCUs to fund scholarships for minority students, with several HBCUs also acting as LPs.
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Jan 12, 2023
Investing in transformative tech: EQT Ventures’ long view
On today’s episode of McKinsey on Startups, we talk to Gautam Nadella, an operating partner at EQT Ventures in the Bay Area, where he drives M&A, fundraising, and partnership efforts within their portfolio of more than 100 companies. EQT invests in a wide range of companies in both Europe and the US; in November of last year, it closed what it described as Europe’s largest VC fund committed to early-stage tech startups, with commitments of 1 billion euros, putting its total raise since launching in 2016 at 2 billion euros. After a challenging macroeconomic year that brought an abrupt halt to more than a decade of gravity-defying valuations and funding rounds, we are excited to have Gautam join us to offer his broad, thoughtful perspective on the state of startups and venture capital in this new era, the power of transformative tech, and much more.
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Dec 15, 2022
What it takes for successful startups to keep growing
In recent years, the pressure from investors on already successful start-ups to keep growing faster and faster has been intense. Reaching a $100 million valuation, a notable achievement in its own right, left little time to celebrate; the venture capital (VC) firms that invest in these companies expect their value to reach $1 billion or more—and to do so quickly. Yet less than one in ten manage this feat in under four years.Earlier this year, a McKinsey team featuring Kim Baroudy, Giacomo Dolci, Sid Ramtri, and Harry Schiff set out to better understand that dynamic, to learn why it is that so many already successful start-ups struggle to maintain their rapid pace of growth. The result of that research is their recent McKinsey article, “Hard choices: How Europe’s fastest-growing start-ups become unicorns.” On today’s episode of McKinsey on Startups, one of the co-authors, Associate Partner Sid Ramtri, explains the key findings of the research, which identified principles to guide leaders of European scale-ups through some of the critical trade-offs and decisions that mark this period in their development.
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Dec 1, 2022
The keys to framing a winning investor pitch
It wasn’t very long ago that venture capital was so free-flowing it seemed as if any entrepreneur with a half-decent idea could raise an initial round of financing. Those halcyon days are clearly now past us, with inflation, rising interest rates, and slowing economic growth (or full-fledged recession) ushering in a radically different macro funding environment. VCs, angels, and other early-stage investors are much pickier about what new companies they will support, as a renewed focus on profitability and efficient growth is now the order of the day. That means, of course, that the founder’s job of selling their vision to prospective investors is more critical (and arguably challenging) than it has been for a long time. In today’s McKinsey on Start-ups guest episode from the McKinsey Israel on High Tech podcast, host Peleg Dekalo, a consultant in McKinsey’s Tel Aviv office, speaks to two experts about what it takes for entrepreneurs to achieve investor pitch excellence. Carmel Yoeli is the CEO of Atreo, one of Israel’s most successful B2B brand agencies, who works with tech start-ups to develop their strategic narratives and the brands that follow. Luisa Russwurm is a consultant in McKinsey’s tech hub in the firm’s Tel Aviv office, who spends a lot of her time helping young start-ups shape their investor stories. In this discussion, the two of them go deep on a four-part framework to structure an effective investor pitch, the importance of a clear strategic narrative, and other keys to success in selling the start-up vision.
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Nov 17, 2022
Indonesian unicorn Ajaib: Building a nation of new retail investors
Today’s McKinsey on Startups guest is Yada Piyajomkwan, cofounder and Chief Product Officer of Indonesian digital investing unicorn Ajaib. It was only a few years ago that Yada and her fellow Stanford MBA, Anderson Sumarli (now CEO), launched Ajaib with the goal of bringing investing to the masses in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country. Until recently, stock and mutual fund investing there were primarily reserved for a very small elite, roughly 1 to 2 percent of the entire population of some 280 million. It hasn’t taken long for Ajaib’s new approach to investing to take off. By focusing on financial literacy and investing education, Ajaib has quickly developed a growing following of more than one million investors who are drawn to its simple and affordable platform. The company has already raised more than $200 million in Series A and B rounds, and by some metrics is the fastest-growing unicorn in Southeast Asia.
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Nov 3, 2022
Versatile’s Meirav Oren: Building the data-driven future of construction
Today’s McKinsey on Startups guest is Meirav Oren, the co-founder and CEO of Versatile, a startup that is working to bring the power of AI to the construction job site. Founded in Oren’s native Israel back in 2016 along with Danny Hermann, Barak Cohen and Ran Oren, and now headquartered in Silicon Valley, Versatile has won plaudits in the construction and investment community with its first product, CraneView, which the company rolled out just as the pandemic was starting in early 2020. As the name suggests, Versatile’s flagship offering turns the construction crane into the lynchpin of the data collection process. The company raised more than $100 million in Series A & B funding over the last two years and its product has been adopted by more than 40 percent of the leading general contractors in the US; it has also moved into the insurance space, helping carriers assess and manage risk in the high-stakes construction field. As a female founder/CEO in the largely male world of construction, Oren doesn’t view her gender as an obstacle, or really any issue at all. “I think it's a mindset more than anything else. I wholeheartedly believe that if you're solving a really big problem, if you're executing and doing it in really good ways, then your record, your company, your market, and customers speak for you.”
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Oct 20, 2022
Plotting an alternative foods revolution
It’s no secret that plant-based foods and alternative meats have been soaring in popularity in recent years. On today’s McKinsey on Startups podcast, we learn more about this dynamic entrepreneurial sector in a guest episode from The Venture, the podcast on business building from Leap by McKinsey. Earlier this year, McKinsey’s Andrew Roth spoke to Eat Just CEO and cofounder Josh Tetrick. Founded in 2011, Eat Just has been a pioneer in the sector, producing eggs using mung beans and cultivated meat made from animal cells. Tetrick talks about his ambitions to transform conventional meat production, his understanding of consumer preferences and purchasing behavior, and getting the timing—and technology—right to reach scale.
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Oct 6, 2022
Operator’s manual: QED’s approach to investing in fintech
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 27:29) > On this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, our guest is Mike Packer, a partner at QED Investors, a boutique venture capital firm focused on the fast-growing fintech sector. QED was co-founded by Frank Rotman and Nigel Morris, who was one of the co-founders of Capital One, and QED has taken a similar, data-centric strategic approach to its investing in the next generation of financial services disruptors. With more than $3 billion under management, QED invests in the US and UK but also has a growing presence in Latin America and other emerging markets in Asia and Africa. It has backed well-known fintech players and unicorns, including Credit Karma, SoFi, NuBank and Remitly. Like QED founders as well as other partners, Packer has a background in financial services – at Capital One, where he spent ten years in a variety of roles, including running small business lending. It’s that kind of operational experience that QED believes gives it a distinct advantage in choosing its investments and taking an active role in helping them succeed. Underlying the firm’s philosophy is a belief it can help fintech startups increase their odds of success by reducing the number of contingent probabilities or dependencies involved in the business plan. QED calls this fighting the tyranny of .8 to the power of 5.
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Sep 22, 2022
Bringing Latin American micro-business into the fintech age
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:43) > On this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we speak with Lluís Cañadell, the co-founder and CEO of Treinta, a Colombia-based fintech startup focused on helping Latin American microbusinesses transition into the digital era. Across Latin America, there are some 50 million micro-merchants or microbusinesses, typically sole proprietors or those with less than 10 employees, the vast majority of which are still relying on pen and paper for record-keeping and inventory management. Treinta’s super-app helps this class of merchants use their smartphones to take on those tasks, as well as receive digital payments, create online stores, and access a B2B marketplace; the company’s name comes from its original selling point of saving micro-merchants 30 minutes a day and increasing efficiency 30 percent. Launched by Cañadell and co-founder Man Hei Lou in 2020, Treinta now has around 5 million active users across 18 countries; earl…
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Sep 8, 2022
How harnessing human data could reinvent drug discovery
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:44) > On this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we talk to David Berry, the founder and CEO of Valo Health, a human data-driven startup hoping to fundamentally alter the drug discovery and development process. Berry, a serial entrepreneur who has founded more than 30 companies (five of which are publicly traded), believes the industry’s longtime approach to generating new drugs is too costly, slow, and ineffective to keep pace in the battle against disease. Valo is one of scores of AI and machine learning startups emerging lately that aim to use human datasets to reinvent the drug discovery and development process, but Berry feels his company’s distinctive approach gives it an advantage. Instead of targeting just a single therapeutic and disease category at a time, Valo relies on its Opal computational platform to simultaneously pursue potential treatments for multiple conditions in an integrated fashion. Valo’s wealth of l…
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Aug 25, 2022
The next test for edtech
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 26:15) > Since the pandemic began, educational technology (or edtech) and remote schooling have gained traction. Growing numbers of students and adults were initially forced to rely on virtual classes and teaching, and since then many have chosen to stick with this relatively new method of learning. In this back-to-school guest episode from the McKinsey Israel on High Tech podcast, senior partner Andrew Goodman and Aviel Lazar of edtech company Chegg discuss the evolving edtech market and what lessons it holds for both current and prospective entrepreneurs and investors in the space.
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Aug 11, 2022
Getting remote work(ers) off to a good start
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 37:13) > Chris Herd is the co-founder and CEO of Firstbase, a remote-work infrastructure provider that helps both new ventures and large established companies onboard and serve their growing ranks of employees no longer venturing into the office. Chris and cofounder and CTO Trey Bastian actually launched Firstbase a year before the pandemic fueled the rise of remote work; as they were attempting to get their fintech startup off the ground, they learned firsthand how challenging it can be to get new remote employees set up with the right equipment and provide them an all-around positive experience at the outset. Since they made the pivot to Firstbase, their business has taken off; earlier this year, they raised $50 million in a Series B, bringing the total funding to around $65 million.
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Jul 28, 2022
How Veho aims to deliver on last-mile logistics
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 31:17) > Itamar Zur is the cofounder and CEO of Veho, a next-generation logistics startup that is out to reinvent the delivery experience for e-commerce brands and their customers. In just two years, Veho’s delivery and return logistics platform has grown to 900 employees and is on track to be operating in 50 US markets by the end of year. Earlier this year, only a few months after its Series A raise of $125 million, Veho raised another $170 million, bringing its valuation to around $1.5 billion. By focusing on technology that gives customers more control and transparency over the shipping process and experience, Veho promises to build loyalty and increase customer lifetime value for ecommerce brands. The last mile delivery market that it plays in is already worth more than $100 billion globally, and estimated to reach close to $150 billion by 2025.
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Jul 14, 2022
Activate’s Ilan Gur: Bridging the science-to-market gap
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 27:51) > Ilan Gur is the founder and CEO of Activate, an innovative non-profit organization that offers two-year entrepreneurial fellowships to scientists to try to bridge the gap in the US innovation ecosystem between the research lab and the startup world. Activate offers a wide range of resources, knowledge and networks to its fellows so they can begin to turn their cutting-edge ideas and technologies into real-world practical solutions, and businesses. The fellows are primarily focused on climate tech and the hard sciences, working to develop sophisticated, sustainable approaches to help a wide range of traditional industries – including agriculture, chemicals, energy, manufacturing and transportation – contribute to the fight against climate change. So far, Activate has supported almost 150 fellows, who have launched more than 100 startups and raised close to $900 million in additional public and private funding.
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Jun 30, 2022
The emerging use cases of the metaverse
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 23:52) > In two recent McKinsey on Start-ups special guest episodes, we examined the emerging contours of the metaverse. Today we are pleased to feature the third and concluding episode in the special three-part series from At the Edge, the new podcast from McKinsey’s Technology Council. McKinsey senior expert Richard Ward talks to Mina Alaghband about a number of near-term metaverse use cases in the industrial, consumer goods and retail sectors, as well as even more innovative applications for further down the road and the potential size of the metaverse market.
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Jun 16, 2022
The emerging shift to responsible product management
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 24:32) > Once primarily focused on execution and on-time delivery, product manager roles have been heavily transformed. They are now expected to serve as a mini-CEO, acting as the glue that binds the many functions that touch a product, from engineering, design, and customer success, to sales, marketing, operations, and finance. And amid growing societal concerns about responsible stewardship, product managers are having to incorporate privacy, sustainability, and inclusion into their already complex jobs. A recent McKinsey article examined this increasingly important issue, and today on McKinsey on Start-ups, we’ll be speaking to two of the co-authors, partner Martin Harrysson and associate partner Rikki Singh.
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Jun 2, 2022
Exploring the true potential of the metaverse
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 18:08) > Back in April, McKinsey on Start-ups featured a special guest episode exploring the meaning and potential impact of the metaverse with tech futurist and advisor Cathy Hackl. The episode was the first in a three-part series from At the Edge, the new podcast from McKinsey’s Technology Council. Today, we are pleased to feature the second episode, with noted metaverse investor and author Matthew Ball. In his discussion with McKinsey’s Mina Alaghband, Ball offers his perspective on the dynamics of the shift to the metaverse economy, as well as regulatory questions, architecture issues, and how executives can begin to prepare their organizations for this new era.
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May 19, 2022
How marketplaces are reshaping ecommerce: Mirakl cofounder Adrien Nussenbaum
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 33:46) > Adrien Nussenbaum, cofounder and co-CEO of Mirakl, joins McKinsey executive editor Daniel Eisenberg on this episode. Mirakl, the leading SaaS platform provider in the rapidly growing enterprise marketplace sector, was started in France about a decade ago by Nussenbaum and cofounder and CEO Philippe Corrot, who had sold their previous start-up, a digital gaming marketplace, to French retailer Fnac. The company helps both B2C and B2B companies set up their own online marketplaces, where they can leverage third-party vendors to offer their customers a much wider range of relevant products or services. It now counts more than 300 of the world’s biggest and most well-known enterprises as customers, including Macy’s, Target, Carrefour, Toyota, Siemens, Airbus, and L’Oreal. With more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue and more than $4 billion in transactions conducted over its platforms last year, Mirakl has raise…
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May 5, 2022
Finding faith in apps: Glorify co-founder Ed Beccle
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 26:21) > Apps that aim to provide on-demand emotional, mental or spiritual support have soared in popularity in the last few years, some explicitly religious, others tied to meditation, psychotherapy or mindfulness. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the stressful world we live in, especially more than two years into the pandemic, when many people haven’t been able to regularly seek out their normal refuges in person. One startup helping fill this need is Glorify, a freemium, subscription Christian daily worship and affirmation app that offers biblical passages, devotionals, prayers, guided meditation and Christian music. So far, the app has amassed more than 2 million loyal users, and in just the last six months, it has raised $85 million in Series A & B funding. In this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we speak with Glorify co-founder and co-CEO Ed Beccle.
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Apr 21, 2022
Making sense of the Metaverse
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 20:14) > For all the often-breathless talk in the tech sector these days about the metaverse, no one quite agrees on how to precisely define it. But there seems to be a growing consensus that whatever it is exactly – virtual and augmented reality on steroids, the convergence of our physical and digital identities -- it is poised to become a major factor in both our personal and professional lives. In this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we begin to explore the metaverse with a guest episode from At the Edge, the new podcast from McKinsey’s Tech Council, which recently launched with a three-part series on the topic. In this inaugural pod, tech futurist, author and corporate advisor Cathy Hackl shares her informed perspective on what the metaverse is, how it’s currently manifesting, and what it might evolve into in the future.
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Apr 7, 2022
What’s Fueling Pakistan’s Emerging Startup Ecosystem
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 39:00) > Based on demographics alone, Pakistan is a country whose start-up ecosystem should have been thriving for quite a while. It has, for starters, the fifth largest population in the world, approaching 230 million. And that population is both overwhelmingly young, with a median age of 22, and bi-lingual, with the fourth largest number of English speakers in the world. Add to that one of the fastest-growing middle classes, more than 100 million mobile broadband subscribers, and hundreds of thousands of tech professionals, and you have all the makings of a fertile market for new enterprises and digital services. Yet until recently, venture or growth funding in Pakistan was barely a trickle compared to similar countries in the Middle East/North Africa region or in other parts of Asia. In the last couple of years, however, Pakistan has begun to live up to its entrepreneurial potential. To gain a valuable understanding of the changi…
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Mar 10, 2022
Building a “digital operating rhythm” with OKR software
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 40:24) > Deidre Paknad, co-founder and CEO of Workboard, is the guest on this episode of the podcast. Workboard is a leading platform provider in the fast-growing space of OKR software, a sub-category of enterprise planning software that helps customers manage and track their progress on Objectives and Key Results, the increasingly ubiquitous corporate planning method invented by Intel and popularized by Google. Paknad is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose prior start-up had been acquired in 2011 by IBM, where she then oversaw a high-growth information governance business for 3 years. It was during that period that she realized how many organizations had no digital tools to provide what she describes as a “single source of truth” around a company’s strategy, alignment, execution, and outcomes. Instead, they have tended to rely on an unwieldy, largely manual and labor-intensive process full of meetings and slide decks…
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Feb 24, 2022
What makes the difference for Europe’s top start-ups
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:46) > In the past two decades, as technology and startups have radically reshaped our daily lives and the global economy, Europe could be forgiven for wondering if this new moment might pass it by. While still a global economic power, Europe’s relative lack of innovation and entrepreneurial success has become a major source of concern as it contemplates its future economic and technological competitiveness. In just the last few years, however, there have been encouraging signs that the tide is starting to turn. Greater amounts of foreign and domestic venture capital have flowed into both early and later stage startups to help close the funding gaps, and the pace and number of unicorns being created has accelerated. For both aspiring entrepreneurs and investors, the recent momentum raises the question of what exactly it takes to become a European Tech Champion. A team at McKinsey recently examined that issue in a report titled W…
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Feb 11, 2022
Quick commerce pushes the limits on grocery delivery
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 29:37) > It is no secret that the pandemic has fueled a boom in food delivery, but it isn’t just the sheer volume of orders that is soaring. The speed with which groceries or other household products can arrive at your door has really taken off, as a number of well-funded start-ups in the quick- or q-commerce space promise to deliver within just 10 or 15 minutes. One such leading player is Getir, which started in Turkey back in 2015 but now offers more than 2,000 everyday items to users in parts of Europe and the US. Joining us to discuss the company’s journey and the challenges and opportunities in the dynamic sector is Berker Yagci, the company’s regional general manager in Europe.
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Jan 27, 2022
Giving developers a leading role in cybersecurity
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 37:19) > Cybersecurity has become so challenging and complex that the work of protecting against vulnerabilities is increasingly starting earlier, when developers are first building software and applications. This move to developer-first security is an extension of the broader shift known as DevOps, now practically the industry standard, in which the once siloed worlds of development and operations work together to build and iterate at a much faster and productive pace. Snyk, a leading platform provider of developer-first security tools, is one of the companies driving this approach, and Guy Podjarny , co-founder, chairman, and president, joins us. Guy previously served as the CTO of Akamai after selling his first startup, a web performance venture called Blaze.io, to the company. Earlier in his career, he built web application security products at startups as well as at IBM. He co-founded Snyk back in 2015, and it has been growing…
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Jan 13, 2022
Next on the menu for food delivery
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 35:25) > Any number of companies and industries have been upended by the pandemic of the past two years, but few consumer sectors have been more radically reshaped than food delivery. At the outset of COVID, lockdowns and physical-distancing requirements gave the category an enormous boost, as delivery became a lifeline for the ailing restaurant industry. Two years later, food delivery has gone from a steadily-growing but still small piece of the restaurant (and grocery) business to a major growth driver, worth more than $150 billion globally and having doubled in the US. Whereas restaurants largely used to handle the limited delivery options that existed, these days a complex ecosystem of players is involved, led by delivery platforms such as DoorDash, GrubHub, PostMates, and Uber Eats, just to name the dominant ones in the US. The fact that the sector has largely remained unprofitable hasn’t diminished the appetites of investors…
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Dec 16, 2021
Turning India into a SaaS Power
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 26:25) > Over the last decade, the rise of software-as-a-service (or SaaS) has dramatically transformed the software industry and the myriad enterprises it serves. As the pace of digital transformation and growth of cloud computing has accelerated, SaaS has rapidly become the software-delivery model of choice and preferred alternative to legacy, on-premise products. This paradigm shift to an on-demand, subscription-based model opens up a number of opportunities for new entrants and start-ups to make their mark in the sector, and India is one market particularly well positioned to do so. Earlier this year, SaaSBOOMi, a community of founders of Indian SaaS companies, released a report, Shaping India’s SaaS Landscape, that sought to quantify the country’s opportunities in SaaS and identify specific measures for how the industry could reach its full potential. Today, two guests who were involved with the report join us to discuss th…
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Dec 3, 2021
Fintech off the shelf: Making an all-in-one approach pay off
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 37:48) > When it comes to start-up fundraising these days, new records seem to be broken practically every quarter. But few digital sectors are booming as much as the business of money known as fintech. Globally, the industry raised more than $90 billion in funding in the first three quarters of this year, almost double the pace in 2020, with 42 new fintech unicorns minted in the third quarter alone. Helping fuel this massive growth is the desire of so many different kinds of companies to be a fintech player, to one degree or another. As Arik Shtilman, the co-founder and CEO of Israeli fintech unicorn Rapyd, explains on today’s episode, companies “understand that the way to monetize on the relationships that they have with their customers is through payments.” Shtilman, a serial entrepreneur, founded the global fintech-as-a-service platform provider to make it relatively easy and simple for any digital business to do embed a w…
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Nov 18, 2021
What tech innovation means for the business of fashion
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 39:42) > When you think about the pandemic’s impact on fashion, what comes to mind? For most people, the answer is probably sweatpants or jeans and t-shirts, really any super casual attire or cozy athleisurewear that so many of us around the world started wearing every day as our homes suddenly became (and have remained) our offices. But behind the scenes the business of fashion has been undergoing a much more serious, technology-fueled makeover. This has impacted not only how the customer interacts with brands and retailers, but just as critically, how the industry operates far from the spotlight, whether managing its inventory, pricing and supply chain or designing and producing its products. A growing wave of fashion tech startups is both driving and benefitting from this shift, and venture investors’ interest in the sector is likewise growing. To help us understand how technology is fundamentally reshaping the business of fa…
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Nov 11, 2021
Can fintech fuel Nigeria’s economic resurgence?
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 33:13) > Like several countries in Africa, Nigeria was already enduring tough economic times even before the pandemic. Yet one of the real bright spots in the economy of the continent’s most populous country has been its burgeoning fintech sector. Nigeria has a large, young population, accelerating digital and smartphone adoption, and a focused regulatory drive to increase financial inclusion, conditions that create a strong foundation for fintech to become a major economic engine. Between 2014 and 2019, the fintech sector in Nigeria raised more than $600 million in funding; in 2019 alone, it attracted fully 25% of the nearly $500 million raised by all African tech startups. In an episode of the McKinsey Africa podcast from earlier this year, Kerry Naidoo, McKinsey Director of Communications for Africa, spoke to two partners based in the firm’s Lagos, Nigeria office, Topsy Kola-Oyeneyin and Mayowa Kuyoro, about the state of fint…
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Nov 4, 2021
How online marketplaces are making secondhand fashion a first choice
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 39:39) > Buying used clothes is far from a new phenomenon; a certain segment of every new generation of teens and 20-somethings invariably gets drawn into spending time combing through the racks at thrift shops. But in the last decade, the emergence of online, peer-to-peer fashion resale marketplaces has turned the act of purchasing and selling used clothes into a much more mainstream activity. Even before the pandemic, the growing interest in sustainability and the circular economy had helped increase interest in this brand of grassroots-driven ecommerce. Once Covid-19 began, more and more people forced to stay at home found themselves going through their closets to see what potential merchandise they had to offer. Vestiaire Collective is one of the top start-ups helping to drive this trend, and its CEO, Max Bittner, joins us to talk about the challenges and opportunities in the thriving space.
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Oct 21, 2021
Insurtech stakes its claim
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 31:07) > In our information-driven era, no sector is immune to digital disruption, and this includes the once staid world of insurance. Just as financial services has been forced to grapple with a slew of new potential competitors (and partners) from fintech, established insurance giants have seen their business impacted by insurtech upstarts. In a recent episode of the McKinsey on Insurance podcast series, a panel of McKinsey leaders discussed how insurtechs are driving innovation and disruption in the insurance industry. Senior partners Pradip Patiath and Tanguy Catlin, along with partners Alex Kimura and Simone Kaesler, weigh in on rising valuations, examine how insurtechs can learn from established insurance companies, look at both the benefits and challenges of collaborations, and comment on trends impacting insurtechs in various markets globally.
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Oct 14, 2021
Driving motors into a digital, sustainable future
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 34:39) > For a technology that powers so much of today’s global economy, the electric motor hasn’t really advanced all that much since it was invented in the mid-to-late 19th century and helped to usher in the industrial revolution. That may explain why today fully a quarter of global electricity consumption is wasted by legacy, inefficient electric motors. Many people think that plotting a truly sustainable future that can slow climate change requires a new kind of mechanical revolution in electric motors. Ryan Morris believes his company, Turntide Technologies, is poised to lead that revolution. As chairman and CEO, Morris heads a start-up that has developed and is commercializing what it calls a Smart Motor System, which is more energy efficient and cost effective than traditional motors. Combined with automation, intelligence and features such as remote monitoring, Turntide’s technology is already starting to be installed…
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Sep 30, 2021
Can Japan Finally Become a Start-up Power?
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 32:50) > Once known for technology innovations such as the Walkman, gaming systems and bullet trains, Japan has long been a laggard when it comes to venture capital and startup success. The world’s third-largest economy has produced just a handful of tech unicorns, and funding for new businesses has been a relative pittance compared to the massive flows in the US, Europe or other parts of Asia. More recently, however, there have been encouraging signs of change in Japan’s startup ecosystem. Several major western VCs and other institutional investors, as well as a growing number of domestic players, have been funneling money into new ventures. To help understand the evolving environment in Japan, we talk to Paul McInerney, a general partner at Incubate Fund, a leading seed-stage investor in Japan with over $840 million in assets under management.
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Sep 23, 2021
Electric Commerce: Volta Trucks’ vehicle for sustainable, urban freight delivery
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 36:18) > If you have noticed what seems to be even more delivery trucks crowding streets these days, you’re not alone. Ecommerce was already growing at a healthy clip before the pandemic, but the explosion in online shopping ushered in by COVID has left city streets often feeling more traffic-clogged than ever before. Whether idling at the curb or slogging through traffic, those commercial trucks are a major source of the emissions and pollutants that contribute to global warming. Carl-Magnus Norden is one of the people trying to change that. Norden is the founder and executive chairman of Volta Trucks, a Sweden-based electric truck manufacturer and services provider that has developed what it describes as the world’s first purpose-built, full-electric 16 ton commercial truck, designed specifically for freight distribution in city centers. Norden’s goal isn’t just to improve the sustainability of cities, but also the safety…
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Sep 16, 2021
Keeping pace with ecommerce deliveries: Ninja Van’s CEO on express logistics
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 47:08) > Ecommerce success isn’t just about getting more folks to order more products online; the ability to deliver the soaring volumes of orders in an efficient and customer-friendly manner is, of course, an essential ingredient. That’s where a company like Ninja Van, a Singapore-based express delivery provider with operations throughout Southeast Asia, plays a key role. In a recent episode of McKinsey’s The Venture podcast, Ninja Van’s CEO and Co-Founder Lai Chang Wen spoke to Associate Partner Andrew Roth about innovation drivers in the express logistics sector, the importance of excelling at your core business before branching out, and the challenge of maintaining a competitive differentiator. Please enjoy this special guest episode of McKinsey on Startups.
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Aug 26, 2021
Material matters and climate change: Giving goods a sustainable future
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:06) > The scope and severity of extreme weather events seems to be increasing exponentially these days, with the devastating impacts of climate change and global warming never far from our minds. Yet for all the attention this existential threat to our planet rightfully receives, the myriad causes of it don’t always get the focus they warrant. While the well-known use of fossil fuels for energy produces more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions, another, less well-known source is responsible for a sizeable portion of the problem: the materials traditionally used to make all manner of both consumer and commercial goods and products in our world, which today account for close to half of emissions. On this episode, we talk to John Bissell and Rich Riley, co-CEOs of Origin Materials, a more than decade old start-up that is on a mission to solve this urgent environmental challenge.
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Aug 18, 2021
From existential threat to change agent: Airbnb’s Brian Chesky on navigating the pandemic
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 43:25) > For Airbnb and its co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, the pandemic crisis was a crazier roller-coaster ride than almost any other organization experienced. The online lodging marketplace went from predictions that it might not survive the COVID-19 crisis to staging a successful IPO less than nine months later. In this special, guest episode of McKinsey’s Inside the Strategy Room podcast, senior partner James Manyika, who chairs the McKinsey Global Institute, learns from the Airbnb leader what that ride was really like.
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Aug 5, 2021
Fueling innovation and filling gaps in Latin America
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 29:25) > Both Lara Lemann and Monica Saggioro have long been interested in the prospect of helping to spur more business innovation, and economic development, in their native Brazil as well as in other parts of Latin America. They both felt that a lack of early stage funding was severely limiting opportunities for entrepreneurs, particularly female founders, on the continent. In 2018, they decided to tackle the challenge head-on by creating their own venture capital fund focused on early stage start-ups, MAYA Capital. On this episode, Lara and Monica talk about the hands-on approach they take with their portfolio companies, what they look for when making investment decisions, the issues facing the broader Latin American start-up ecosystem, diversity in the start-up world, and more.
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Jul 21, 2021
Raising the odds of success for corporate/start-up collaborations
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 42:36) > On the face of it, a collaboration between a nimble, high-growth start-up and a large, established corporation seems like a good pairing. The capital-hungry start-up gets the benefit of funding as well as access to corporate resources and potential customers; the corporation gets insights into innovations, and access to the technology and talent which have the potential to transform their industry. But while the number of such engagements has been growing in the last decade, the reality is making these marriages work can be very challenging, and the results have been decidedly mixed. In this special guest episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, McKinsey’s Tawanda Sibanda, Miao Wang and Tobias Henz join host Sean Brown to discuss what it takes to make these partnerships work for both parties.
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Jul 7, 2021
Vital signs: The growing impact of digital health innovation
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 33:15) > The quarantines and lockdowns that came with COVID have forced many new patients to access medical care digitally, through such tools as telemedicine or remote patient monitoring. That trend is expected to continue to grow over the coming years, and a bevy of start-ups are hoping to tap it by developing digital tools and solutions to help improve healthcare outcomes and reduce spending at the same time. In this episode, we take a broad, macro view of digital health innovation, speaking with two McKinsey partners, Jennifer Rost and Tobias Silberzahn, about the challenges and opportunities in this rapidly emerging space.
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Jun 16, 2021
Can gamification help patients take better care of themselves?
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 36:53) > Technological innovation plays a critical role in healthcare, from MRI and CAT Scan machines to electronic medical records, e-prescriptions or pacemakers. These days, a growing number of health start-ups are focusing on using digital tools to improve the quality and availability of care, especially for chronic conditions that account for a large share of rising healthcare costs. The pandemic has in many cases only increased demand for these kinds of products, as quarantines and lockdowns made services such as telemedicine and remote patient monitoring often the only way to obtain medical or mental health care. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Tryggvi Thorgeirsson, co-founder and CEO of Sidekick Health, an Iceland-based start-up that works with pharmaceutical companies and insurers to provide gamified, digital care and therapeutic programs to help patients with disease management and treatments.
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Jun 2, 2021
The state of start-up ecosystems beyond Silicon Valley
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 43:37) > The digital acceleration brought on by COVID has only added more momentum to the ongoing boom in start-up financing and innovation. While Silicon Valley and the United States have traditionally led the way in venture capital and start-up development, other parts of the world are making great strides in developing their own thriving start-up ecosystems. In this episode, McKinsey senior partners Kim Baroudy and Massimo Mazza talk about the state of entrepreneurship in Europe and beyond, exploring the challenges and opportunities in this broadening of global value creation.
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May 14, 2021
VC View: Funding start-ups in the next normal
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Listen to the podcast (duration: 31:52) > Venture capital and start-ups have been enjoying a major boom in recent years, and the pandemic has only fueled demand for digital products and services. Two prominent global venture capitalists, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital and Par-Jorgen (PJ) Parson of Northzone, offer their perspectives on the sustainability of this era and the changes and challenges the industry is experiencing.
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