New series of beepurple startup podcast released

The second series of the beepurple podcast, Founder Chats with beepurple, has just been released on Spotify, iTunes and Anchor to name a few. beepurple is the University of Brighton’s entrepreneurship support service.

In this series our focus is on business growth, and we’ve interviewed the founders of some well-established businesses.

First up is Darren Fell of Crunch Accounting. In 2007, having already had success with his email marketing startup Pure360, entrepreneur Darren Fell created a fairly priced, all-inclusive accountancy service for freelancers, contractors and small businesses. It united easy-to-use software with unlimited in-house support. Today Crunch is a top 100 accountancy firm and employs over 170 people from its headquarters in Brighton.

In episode two we meet Kerry Watkins, a social media business expert and founder of training and consultancy company Social Brighton. Kerry is a University of Brighton alumnus who spent 20 years working in the hospitality industry before going it alone. She now helps big brands use social media for maximum results with bespoke, cost-effective strategies. Kerry employs an experienced team of social media strategists, consultants and trainers to help deliver training. She talks to us about how she has grown the business since first starting up.

Lancia Consult’s Group Managing Director Jeff Cronkshaw joins us in episode three to share his founder story. Jeff is another Brighton graduate who founded his own business after several years in industry, in this case working for Fortune Global 500 company Accenture. Lancia Consult is a multinational IT consultancy with staff in Singapore, Hamburg, Hong Kong and the UK. Discover how he made the leap and hear the lessons he has learned so far, on everything from leadership to recruitment.

Rosie Sherry of Brighton-based Ministry of Testing is the guest in episode four, explaining how she built a software testing community that has become a £1m revenue business in a little over ten years. Rosie’s success has been achieved while juggling, along with her partner, the responsibilities of home-schooling her children.

Kelvin Newman joins us for episode five to talk about the rise of legendary digital marketing conference BrightonSEO. This free event runs twice a year in the 5,000-capacity Brighton Centre, but famously started in a room above a pub in the city centre. Kelvin shares his journey and explains the business model that has enabled him and his team to grow what is perhaps the biggest search engine optimisation event in the world.

We end this series with Vanessa O’Shea, another University of Brighton alumnus and author of the book ‘Shaping your Workplace Culture: A practical guide’. Vanessa joins us to discuss how to create a healthy culture in your startup from day one, avoiding the kinds of problems that impact morale, performance and, ultimately, organisational success. Vanessa can be found at Culture Shapers.

PLUS! Catch up with the first series of Founder Chats with beepurple

We’ve re-published all of Series One, which focussed on the early stages of startup. It features illustrator Dan Woodger, print business owner Beki Gowing, Faik Aktulga of Wild Fangs, Bee Adamic of Liberty Music PR, Phil Carr of My PT Hub, crowdfunding expert Kelly Angood, Matt Turner of The Creative Group and Cat Rose, The Creative Introvert. You can find them all at Founder Chats with beepurple.