How to Successfully Scale Your Business with Danae Shell

Today we welcome Danae Shell to the podcast. Danae is Co-founder and CEO of Valla, the UK's first legal platform for employees. We talk about:How to scale your businessWhat to consider when building a teamWhere to find help if you're having problems at workAbout Danae ShellDanae Shell, originally an immigrant from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, taught herself to code on a computer her family bought at a garage sale. With these skills she built websites to fund her college education then immigrated to Scotland to work as a programmer and social researcher. On the side, she created Knickers, a lingerie blog that became the #1 online publication for lingerie in Europe and ranked #1 for the term “knickers” on Google for five years.Danae put her newfound marketing skills to use as a digital marketer at a number of startups, helping to scale successful startups like FreeAgent and Care Sourcer, running award-winning campaigns and helping to raise £1.2m in an equity crowdfunding round. In her work, Danae saw far too many examples of workplace discrimination and harassment, and experienced a few herself. She and her friend Kate Ho got fed up with people having no power to fight back, so they created Valla, the UK’s first legal platform for employees. As Valla’s CEO, Danae has been awarded as a “Disruptive Innovator” and “Rising Star” in the tech industry, and most recently launched Valla’s new Discrimination First Aid training course, a first in the UK. Key TakeawaysIf you're a founder in an early stage company you have to be close to the coalface. You have to be close to your customers. You can't outsource things like sales and marketing. You can have them on board but you need to have the picture of the whole processHow to build a team - Look at what experience and skillsets you have and what you need to bring in to the teamChoose people for your business who can innovate over people who have just done it beforeFocus on process, innovation and collaboration within a teamNetworking and introductions are the key things to do to find investorsTreat seeking investors like a pipelineThe highest performing teams are the teams that feel comfortable sharing their mistakes with each other without fear of being punishedBringing up issues is almost the raw material of innovationThe more representation you have in a company, the higher performing the company isQuoteThe smallest unit we should be thinking about when we're thinking about innovating through uncertainty is a teamMentioned in This EpisodeVenture DealsFundraising BootcampLunch ClubThe Fearless OrganisationConnect with Danae ShellValla - A New Platform for Getting Your Employment Issue SortedLinkedInConnect with Victoria BennionBook your free podcast guesting strategy session today.To learn more about working with us visit https://victoriabennion.com/