ScaleApp Podcasts with Prof Dan Isenberg

Episode #38 - Robert Wessman - Master of Scale 25.05.2026 38min

I have been writing cases about entrepreneurs since 2005 - close to 50 HBS cases published. None is so interesting as the three cases I (some with my HBS colleague, Bill Kerr) I have written on Robert Wessman, 57, Icelandic, founder of SEVERAL multi-billion dollar companies - Actavis (formerly ACT) is now one of the top three generics companies IN THE WORLD. Alvotech (ALVO) is one of the leading biosimilars makers. Robert has scale-up down-pat as a well-honed, time-tested system: Start with a...

Episode #37 - Rupesh Kumar, CEO/Founder Ariqt - 130 AI Engineers and Scaling Fast 27.04.2026 37min

In Episode #37 of ScaleApp Podcasts, I sit down with Rupesh Kumar, founder & CEO of ARIQT Global Technologies. Rupesh left a top-1%-earning developer job in India to move to the Netherlands out of what he simply calls “curiosity,” founded ARIQT in June 2020 and has scaled it to 130 colleagues across India, the Netherlands, Australia, and Ireland, breaking $5M in revenue. In Scalerator we used ARIQT for a small but complex project of our own — which is how I came to know Rupesh, and which ...

Episode #36 - One Brain, Infinite Robots. Ashish Kapoor Scales Up General Robotics 13.04.2026 41min

What if the robots are already there — but nobody can get them to actually work, inexpensively and at scale? In this episode, Ashish Kapoor, founder of General Robotics and former head of the Microsoft Research robotics initiative, discuss how General Robotics is powering the usefulness of robots, immediately and at scale. Ashish has spent his career at the intersection of frontier AI and real-world deployment — and what he found when he surveyed the enterprise robotics landscape was startlin...

Episode #35 - Natech - The bank behind the banks. €11mm and GROWING global - Natech Banking Solutions and Thanasis Navrozoglou CEO/Founder 02.04.2026 40min

What does it take to build a global fintech platform from a small Greek city — and end up powering banks and fintechs across Europe and the Middle East? Enter Natech, headquartered in Ioannina, Greece. Founded in 2003, Natech builds core banking systems, digital channels, and regulatory technology for financial institutions — primarily smaller, agile banks that need to move fast. Their front-to-back platform deploys in 90 days, future-proofing banks so they can focus on what they do best: ser...

Episode #34 — 3D Printing America's Manufacturing Future — Jay Rogers, CEO/Co-founder, Haddy.life 07.03.2026 36min

Jay Rogers is a serial entrepreneur who doesn't just learn from failure — he codifies it. His previous venture, Local Motors, 3D printed autonomous vehicles and deployed 150 of them across 29 cities and three continents. The technology worked. The pricing worked. They raised $100 mm or so in capital. Regulation slowed everything down and they never learned how to sell. The company failed as an investment, but the genetics survived. Between Local Motors and Haddy, Jay sat down and wrote ...

Episode #33 - Kevin Kilty/Hubpay - From "too early yesterday" to "$100 mm tomorrow" 13.02.2026 31min

In Episode 33 of ScaleApp Podcasts, Kevin Kilty and I unpack the messy, honest reality of building a cross-border payments platform from the UAE — one of the world’s fastest-growing trading hubs. HubPay is now approaching $10 million ARR (already at a $10mm run rate), profitable, with 58 people across Dubai and London, and a Series B in motion. Kevin launched HubPay in 2019 with a clear vision: a one-stop-shop for businesses to move money globally — fast, cheap, and simple. The problem?...

Episode #32 - Sam Smith, SuperScalers and £50 million finnCap 28.01.2026 38min

In Episode 32 of ScaleApp Podcasts, Sam Smith and I unpack her 24-year scale journey: building FinnCap from an in-house corporate finance desk into an IPO-listed £50 million revenue financial services firm, staying profitable throughout. At 24 – “I literally had no clue what I was doing” after painstakingly building to £3 million revenue, a step change along with a management buyout created real ownership, a clear vision, and the freedom to scale. After leaving FinCap, Sam built Superscalers ...

Episode #31 - Clarity Pediatrics - Upping the Care for Childhood Disorders - Christina LaMontagne 21.12.2025 35min

Christina LaMontagne on Scaling Healthcare with Conviction Scaling in healthcare is never just about growth—it’s about trust, discipline, and conviction. In this 31st episode of ScaleApp Podcasts, I sat down with Christina to unpack what it really takes to build and scale a healthcare business that works for patients, parents, providers, and payers alike. Christina’s journey is grounded in first principles. Before chasing growth, her team doubled down on unit economics, playbooks, and proof p...

Episode #30 - Sahar Hashemi "Two-Time Scaler" - Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy (UK) 08.12.2025 34min

From Immigrant Teen to Scale Up Pioneer: The Sahar Hashemi Story What does it take to build one of the UK’s fastest-growing retail brands, lose it, rebuild yourself, and then reinvent entrepreneurship for an entire generation of women founders? In this episode, I sit down with Sahar Hashemi OBE, co-founder of Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy, and founder of the movement Buy Women Built. Sahar’s journey is a masterclass in how entrepreneurial culture is born, how it dies, and how to protect ...

Episode #29 - Scaling Global Services from Puerto Rico to the World - Jorge Rodriguez and Paciv 16.11.2025 33min

Jorge Rodriguez, founder of Paciv, built a world‑class industrial automation and computer systems validation company from a small warehouse in Puerto Rico to a global player serving Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other pharma giants. The son of Spanish immigrants who arrived on the island with nothing but work ethic and discipline, Jorge translated family lessons about integrity, paying suppliers first, and “keeping the machine running” into a business that became a trusted partner ins...

Episode #28 - Raspberry Pi's Just Desserts - How to be a $250 million category creator 10.11.2025 46min

Eben Upton, co-founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi, turned a Cambridge lab experiment into an intriguing scale-up stories. What began as a mission to create more programmers in the world by empowering kids to program, became a $250 million public company that has shipped over 70 million units worldwide and helped redefine accessible computing. At its heart, Raspberry Pi is a simple but revolutionary idea: a fully functional computer the size of a cigarette pack, priced under $35, and...

Episode #27 - Capturing the Caribbean - Reshma Advani Rojas (Advanced Commercial, T&T) 29.10.2025 39min

Reshma Advani Rojas, CEO of Advanced Commercial Equipment (ACEL), has turned a family legacy into the Caribbean’s most respected restaurant supply companies. Based in Trinidad & Tobago, ACEL serves 14 countries across the region and generates approximately $30 million in revenue. In this episode of ScaleApp Podcasts, Reshma shares how leadership, culture, and clarity drive scale—not just capital. Favorite Quotes · “Soft skills are not optional—they’re the foundat...

Episode #26 - 30 Years of Scale - Jerry Jendusa (EMTEQ $250 mm, Breakthru) 22.10.2025 46min

From garage to a $250 million global aerospace supplier—and then do it again and again as an investor and mentor. In this episode, Jerry Jendusa, founder of EMTEQ and now head of Breakthru, shares how a mix of listening to customers, discipline, and people-first leadership drove his growth journey. From bootstrapping to $100 million in sales and $250 million exit, Jerry reflects on lessons learned: people trump processprocess trumps productcustomers trump capitaldebt trumps...

Episode #25 - Raphael Afaedor - Jumia (NYSE), Supermart, Kyosk - Unicorn Entrepreneur in Africa 09.10.2025 46min

From Ghana to Czech Republic to Harvard Business School to the frontlines of Africa’s digital economy, Raphael (“Rafi”) Afaedor's career is a masterclass in vision, immersion, and execution. Having co-founded Jumia—the first African e-commerce giant to list on the NYSE—and later Kyosk, a B2B platform connecting fast-moving consumer goods producers to informal retail shops and end customers, Rafi has learned firsthand how to scale in large, complex markets. As Rafi explains, Afric...

Episode #24 - Metis Construction Ohio - Breaking $30 million with Resilience, Trust, and Systems - CEO/Founder, Julie Brandle 03.10.2025 43min

I believe that one of the biggest challenges in going from a few millions to a few tens of millions is building systems and processes that enable scaling. We have seen this challenge in the majority of the ScaleApp Podcast discussions, Giscad is just the most recent example. As Julie Brandle explains, one aspect of their scaling challenge was to bring on more specialized professional services - legal, accounting, HR etc. Metis is also a great story of resilience - recession, Pandemic, and now...

Episode #23 - Giscad of Trinidad & Tobago - A rapidly growing Caribbean venture. 16.09.2025 37min

Background In this episode, I welcome our first Trinidad & Tobago venture to ScaleApp Podcasts: Giscad, co-founded by Desmond Dougall and Sudesh Botha. What began 22 years ago as two engineers suddenly out of work has grown into a 50-person regional powerhouse operating across nearly numerous Caribbean markets. Giscad is a ScaleratorT&T alumnus. Academics in the entrepreneurship space often make a stark dichotomy between so-called “opportunity entrepreneurship” and so-called “necessit...

Episode #22 - Positron AI - Attacking NVIDIA's Market - CEO Mitesh Agrawal 09.09.2025 38min

Do we need to re-define "Chutzpah" = "Positron?" Mitesh Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Positron AI, is leading one of the most audacious ventures in the tech world today: building silicon to compete directly with NVIDIA. Backed by over $70 million in funding from DFJ, Valor, Atreides, Oakseed (disclosure: I am an LP) and others, and already shipping product within 18 months of founding, Positron’s bet is that the market for inference—the part of AI that actually generates text, images, code, ...

Episode #21 - Ketryx! - Accelerating Regulatory Compliance for Pharmas and Device Makers - CEO/co-founder, Erez Kaminski 04.09.2025 31min

Background / Introduction What is the biggest bottleneck keeping the stream of drugs and devices from getting to market? R&D? Capital? Maybe, but managing regulatory compliance is right up there. Safely speeding time to market for pharmaceutical and medical device makers is huge.... IF you can pull it off. 50% of time to market is in regulatory compliance. Enter Erez Kaminski and Ketryx. Managing AI for Amgen, Erez saw first‑hand how slow, costly, and error‑prone compliance work is for sa...

Episode #20 - FactoredAI 70% YOY Growth and Leading the AI Revolution - CEO/Founder Israel Niezen 26.08.2025 36min

Background / Intro FactoredAI was incubated in 2019 by Israel Niezen out of Andrew Ng’s AI Fund with $2.5 mio “we didn’t really need,” and today has over 300 of the top 1% of talent in LATAM solving complex data problems by building world-class AI and ML/LLM solutions. Factored went from $.7mio in 2020 to $3mio to $8mio to $13mo to $18 mio in 2024, and will break $30mio in 2025. Their plan is to break $100mio in 2028. Clients include global leaders in retail, car rental, dating apps, and heal...

Episode #19 - Mrs. Dunster's Scales its Home Style Baked Goods - Co-CEOs Rosalyn and Blair Hyslop (Scalerator Alums!) 22.08.2025 34min

Introduction Rosalyn and Blair Hyslop met as teenagers Atlantic Canada in Junior Achievement and from the start dreamed of running a business together. That dream became reality when they acquired Mrs. Dunster’s, a beloved regional bakery known for its authentic donuts, garlic cheese buns, and grew it to offer hundreds of other homestyle baked goods. At the time, the business had about $7M in revenues and 50 employees; today it is 6–7x larger, with over 250 employees, multiple bakeries, and r...