Real Founder Stories
Real Startup Lessons
Your Hosts🎙️: Yvonne Bajela and Maria Rotilu
LATEST EPISODES
Maria Rotilu & Yvonne Bajela
🚀✨ Conversations with Maria and Yvonne on "The Startup Leap"
Shazam. Nala. Gravity Sketch. What do they have in common? They were born in classrooms, dorms, and MBA projects. This episode reveals how student founders turned late-night experiments into world-changing startups. For anyone sitting on an “unpolished idea,” this is proof that action beats theory. Start where you are—your empire could be next.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Tessa Clarke - OLIO
🚀✨ Conversations with Tessa on "The Startup Leap"
From corporate leader to global disruptor. She turned surplus food into a movement with MILLIONS. But here’s the kicker: it all started with tears, a toddler, and a relocation gone wrong. In this candid conversation, Tessa takes us from corporate boardrooms to WhatsApp experiments, through brutal fundraising rounds, and into the trenches of scaling a mission-led startup. If you’re a founder wrestling with how to blend resilience, experimentation, and purpose, this is the story you need.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Africa’s WISE
Benjamin Fernandes - NALA
🚀✨ Conversations with Benjamin on "The Startup Leap"
When Benjamin Fernandes got into Stanford on a full scholarship, he was broke, 21, and eating salad to survive Palo Alto dinners. Fast-forward past 5 Y Combinator rejections, a last-minute co-founder exit, and hundreds of early users stored in WhatsApp—and he’s now building infrastructure to power financial access for the next billion. In this episode, you’ll learn what it really takes to lead with conviction, scale from scratch, and build in markets where trust, grit, and faith matter more than pitch decks.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Coen Jonker - TymeGroup
🚀✨ Conversations with Coen on "The Startup Leap"
This isn’t your typical startup story. Coen Jonker left a cushy law career to fight financial exclusion, and wound up building Africa’s first global digital bank. Discover how TymeBank scaled to 17M+ users, beat the odds, and redefined digital banking in emerging markets. This episode is packed with rare lessons on grit, strategy, and humility.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Riham Satti - MeVitae
Dhiraj Mukherjee - Shazam
🚀✨ Conversations with Riham and Dhiraj on "The Startup Leap"
One’s a legend in music tech. The other’s promoting fairness in the workplace using artificial intelligence. What happens when they sit down to trade startup battle stories? You get raw, energizing lessons on building with purpose, pivoting with conviction, and staying true to your mission, even when an exclusive deal with a tech giant tempts you to sell out.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Dare Okoudjou - Onafriq
🚀✨ Conversations with Dare on "The Startup Leap"
Why would someone walk away from a secure job at MTN to build a cross-border payments startup from scratch? In this episode of The Startup Leap, Dare Okoudjou shares how he went from almost losing his house to building Onafriq—Africa’s largest digital payments network. It’s a crash course in risk, relationships, and radical focus.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Josh Sandler - Lori & Truetax
🚀✨ Conversations with Josh on "The Startup Leap"
Building a startup is rarely glamorous—it’s demanding, unpredictable, and deeply personal. In this episode, Josh Sandler, co-founder of Lori and founder and CEO of TruTax, shares a candid look behind the scenes of launching three companies across emerging markets. From high-stakes decisions and team burnout to scaling intelligently and exiting with intention, this is an essential listen for founders navigating the real-world complexities of entrepreneurship.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Victor Alade - Raenest
🚀✨ Conversations with Victor on "The Startup Leap"
Victor Alade’s story isn’t just startup inspiration—it’s a bold blueprint for self-driven execution. In this week’s episode, we dive into how he used his non-traditional background to create Raenest, a fintech platform simplifying payments for African freelancers. From MVP to product-market fit, this conversation is full of practical gold.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Ida Tin - Clue
🚀✨ Conversations with Ida on "The Startup Leap"
Behind every great tech movement is a founder who didn’t wait for permission. Ida Tin, founder of Clue and coiner of “FemTech,” turned personal frustration into a $60B industry. This week’s Startup Leap episode is your tactical blueprint for scaling with heart—and ethics. Tune in if you’ve got an idea that keeps haunting you. That might be your calling.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Yvonne Bajela and Maria Rotilu
🚀✨ Conversations with Yvonne and Maria on "The Startup Leap"
In this week's episode, we asked founders: "What would you tell your past self?" It isn’t just about hustle culture—it’s about real founder insight that could spare you burnout, bad hires, or a branding identity crisis. Whether you’re about to launch or trying to recover from launch regret, this is the insight you didn’t know you needed.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
Abu Addae - LifeCheq
🚀✨ Conversations with Abu on "The Startup Leap"
What happens when a corporate high-flyer swaps spreadsheets for startups? You get Abu Addae—and a fintech platform that’s changing lives. In this episode, Yvonne and Maria dissect the moments that made him jump ship and what it took to stay afloat. Not your average founder story. This one comes with actuarial tables, philosophy, and a lot of grit.
New episodes every Tuesday! ✨
ABOUT THE STARTUP LEAP
Real Founder Stories & Startup Lessons
The #1 Podcast For Early Stage Founders. Candid conversations with real tech entrepreneurs who’ve gone from idea to launch, first customers to millions in funding.
Learn from real founders on how they build products, find co-founders, raise capital, and scale teams, plus the wins, failures, and lessons they picked up along the way.Whether you’re starting your first business or scaling a tech startup, get proven tips on fundraising, go-to-market strategy, team building, and sustainable growth.New episodes on Tuesdays.
Subscribe for weekly startup insights and real-world founder advice
MEET YOUR HOSTS
YVONNE BAJELA
Yvonne is a Partner at LocalGlobe, EMEA’s leading seed-stage venture capital fund.
Prior to LocalGlobe she was a founding member of Impact X Capital and had invested over $200m in companies such as Revolut, Wise (previously Transferwise), Flutterwave and Marshmallow.
Previous roles include investment banking at Goldman Sachs and representation on the board of HarbourVest Global Private Equity.
Outside of investing, Yvonne is a mega foodie, a hiker, and, when she’s not in mum mode, she's reading financial reports for fun.
MARIA ROTILU
Maria is the Founding Partner at Openseed.VC - first investors of up to $150k in experienced operators as they start their technology companies in Europe & Africa.
An Operator turned Investor, Entrepreneur at Heart. Prior to investing, Maria scaled startups like Uber as Country Manager and Branch (AI/ML Neo bank for emerging markets), as General Manager to millions of users.
Prior to Openseed VC, she was one of two Fund Managers who built, invested and managed Octopus First Cheque Fund - a £10m Pan-European Fund. She has an MBA from University of Oxford, and a Computer Science Undergraduate degree and is a Certified Chartered Accountant (ACCA, UK)
On lazy day, you’ll find Maria reading a book, watching a sci-fi TV show, cooking up a storm, or tinkering on some low-code workflow to avoid repetitive tasks.
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