In the 4th episode of the second season of Frog’s How to Scale podcast, Senior Partner Mike Reid speaks with Dawn Marriott, Partner at Hg Capital, about effectively developing the leadership team as you progress through the different stages of scale-up.

Dawn focuses on the CEO community at Hg Capital, driving growth and operational effectiveness within their portfolio. She acts as a serial Exec Chair with a particular emphasis on driving change, growth and C suite succession. Previously she headed up Hg’s Portfolio team and was CEO in Hg investments Kinapse and Azets. Prior to that she was Group COO at Capita plc; where she was part of the team for almost 20 years who grew the business to being one of the largest companies in the UK at that time.

In our conversation we cover:

• The right skillsets for different stages of growth
• Confident leadership through difficult conversations
• The Scars and Stripes Brigade - Building an experienced network you can trust for guidance
• Building out the right team by identifying blind spots
• Asking for feedback to grow self-awareness in your team
• Authenticity and kindness when exiting people
• The chair as a tool to help the CEO be successful
• Communicating your purpose effectively to find the right fit when recruiting

We cover these topics and many others extensively in How to Scale, Frog’s library of Scale-Up insights, including further episodes of the podcast and Scale-Up toolkits from our Frog Operating Partners. Subscribe to our podcast or follow us on Linkedin to ensure you never miss a new episode. We welcome all feedback, questions or topic suggestions for us to cover in future episodes, so please email us. We’d love to hear from you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 3rd episode of the second season of Frog’s How to Scale podcast, Senior Partner Steven Dunne speaks with Matthew Elson, CEO of Evotix, about how entrepreneurs can create a purposeful business that builds sustainable profitability through the scaling journey.

Matthew has been CEO at Evotix since buying the business for £1 in 2011 and has continuously grown 30-40% year-on-year under Matthew’s leadership, transforming how companies manage Health, Safety & Risk, and engaging with their employees to deliver safe, nurturing and compliant workplaces. Frog invested in Evotix in January 2020 when they had reached £6m ARR and were acquired in May 2023 by which time they had reached profitability and passed £20m ARR.

In our conversation we cover:

• The use of unit economics and the ‘Rule of 40’ to monitor performance
• Tracking gross retention to ensure you are building a profitable customer base
• Splitting the business in two, where the margins from the profitable customer base funds the growth of the loss-making part acquiring new customers
• Using recurring revenue per full time employee as a key metric for driving long term sustainable profitability
• Entering new markets as a value creation strategy
• Investing in operational capability to avoid bottlenecks and add value
• Fulfilling purpose in the business to drive long-term growth
• Selecting an acquisition partner with aligned values

We cover these topics and many others extensively in How to Scale, Frog’s library of Scale-Up insights, including further episodes of the podcast and Scale-Up toolkits from our Frog Operating Partners. Subscribe to our podcast or follow us on Linkedin to ensure you never miss a new episode. We welcome all feedback, questions or topic suggestions for us to cover in future episodes, so please email us. We’d love to hear from you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 2nd episode of the second season of Frog’s How to Scale podcast, Senior Partner Mike Reid speaks with Dale Murray CBE about how entrepreneurs can work as effectively as possible with their boards and how they can mentor and coach their own senior teams to collaborate at board level.

Dale is an experienced board director to global technology businesses and a successful tech entrepreneur. She is currently on the board for 6 companies, including Xero, the cloud accountancy software business. Earlier in her career, Dale co-founded Omega Logic which launched mobile phone “top-ups” in the UK in 2001. Within 5 years their gross transaction revenue reached £450m p.a. and she completed the sale of the company to First Data Corporation.

In our conversation we cover:

• How should entrepreneurs approach introducing and working with a board?

• Building relationships inside and outside the boardroom

• Shifting from ‘reporting’ to collaborating

• Utilising the board’s experience to spot weaknesses and threats

• Communicating effectively to ensure trust is built between all parties

• Using the chair as a bridge between the board and the management team

• Ensuring alignment of your company’s values with the board

Dale also shares some of her own boardroom experiences from her time as an entrepreneur.

We cover these topics and many others extensively in How to Scale, Frog’s library of Scale-Up insights, including further episodes of the podcast and Scale-Up toolkits from our Frog Operating Partners. Subscribe to our podcast or follow us on Linkedin to ensure you never miss a new episode. We welcome all feedback, questions or topic suggestions for us to cover in future episodes, so please email us. We'd love to hear from you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.