In Episode 11 of Frog's How to Scale podcast, we rejoin Senior Partner Mike Reid and Phill Robinson for Part 2 of our conversation about the critical components of building, scaling, and sustaining market-leading companies.

With over 35 years in the software industry, Phill has held pivotal leadership roles, including CEO of IRIS Software Group and Exact Software in the Netherlands, and CMO at Salesforce.com. Now the founder and CEO of Boardwave, a networking community for European software CEOs and investors, Phill offers a wealth of insights drawn from decades of industry experience.

In part 1 Phill talked about the European Software ecosystem and the importance of sharing culture, knowledge and ideas to help more businesses scale faster, followed by a deeper dive into his experience in product.

In part 2 Phill talks about:

• The difference between management and leadership
• Executive team diversity
• The power of simple strategy focusing on core customers

We pick up from part 1 with Phill talking about struggling with what we’d now call burnout.

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In episode 10, we are delighted to bring you a special two-part episode of Frog’s How to Scale podcast. Senior Partner Mike Reid sits down with veteran software leader and founder of Boardwave, Phill Robinson.Phill and Mike discuss the critical components of building, scaling, and sustaining market-leading companies, with the first part focusing on software and the second part on strategy.

With over 35 years in the software industry, Phill has held pivotal leadership roles, including CEO of IRIS Software Group and Exact Software in the Netherlands, and CMO at Salesforce.com. Now the founder and CEO of Boardwave, a networking community for European software CEOs and investors, Phill offers a wealth of insights drawn from decades of industry experience.

Part 1 covers:

• Product Leadership – Phill affirms that at the core of any successful software company lies a robust, customer-focused product. Achieving product-market fit and continually addressing customer needs are essential for growth
• Scaling at Speed – From expanding in competitive U.S. and European markets, Phill discusses how rapid growth demands adaptable leadership. He explores the importance of evolving both teams and strategies to scale effectively
• Balancing Leadership and Management – Shifting from hands-on management to strategic delegation, Phill explains how fostering team independence enables growth while maintaining a vision-focused leadership style

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In episode 9 of Frog’s How to Scale podcast, Senior Partner Steven Dunne speaks with Frog Operating Partner, Andrew Betteley and Frog’s Head of Marketing at Frog, Dominic Rodgers, about our recent experience of building an AI search engine.

With the speed at which AI capabilities has been advancing in the last couple of years, the landscape of what is possible is constantly changing. This means that it is hard to know how best to approach utilising AI technologies in your business and how to execute them effectively.

Having developed a customised large language model (LLM) trained exclusively on Frog’s extensive library of toolkits, podcasts, videos, and articles, Andrew and Dominic discuss their own experiences, the challenges of the process, why they have done it, and how businesses should approach using AI both operationally and within their product(s).

Andrew is an experienced CTO with over 20 years’ experience in software development in companies from startup through investment, private equity and onto exit.

Dominic has over 15 years’ experience in content strategy, sales and marketing, working across publishing, technology, and financial services. He produces the Frog Operating Partners’ How to Scale toolkits, podcasts and articles, helping software leaders overcome the challenges they face through scale-up.

In this episode we cover 3 focus areas:

• The vision – What are the reasons for deciding to use AI and how do you decide upon the vision for your application.
• Ensuring integrity – Many AI technologies have been employed without great success. How can you manage the process to ensure your end-result has integrity and matches your company’s values.
• Lessons learnt through the process – When and how to start using AI, what to look out for when managing an AI deployment project and avoiding the pitfalls involved.

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