AGENDA 2024

DINNER

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Eight Club Moorgate, 1 Dysart Street, EC2A 2BX London

MAIN DAY

Wednesday 15th May 2024
Claridge’s, Brook Street, W1K 4HR London

08.00
Breakfast & Networking

09.00
Host
Uday Singh
CEO, Fast Growth Icons

09.10
Opening Remarks
Ben Fletcher
Founder & Chair of Fast Growth Icons

09.30
Welcome Address by our Lead Sponsor
James Peterson
Managing Director, Rothschild & Co

09.35
Tessa Clarke
Co-Founder & CEO, Olio
Launch 2011 I Staff 663 I Funding $309m I Valuation $1.5b

Challenging the conventional wisdom
As a founder, you get a lot of advice thrown at you – from peers, investors, podcasts and social media. In theory it all sounds good, but the reality is always more complicated and is often highly situation specific. This session will examine some of that advice and show how applying it in practice isn’t as simple as you’d hope.

10.00
Rishi Khosla
CEO & Co-founder, OakNorth
Launch 2011 I Staff 663 I Funding $309m I Valuation $1.5b

Leading in uncertain times: the war time CEO
We’re all been on a bit of a rollercoaster recently. Covid, wars, and the drying up of funding. This feels like a tough time to be building a business. The reality is that it’s always been hard. This session will look at the fundamental skills you need as a CEO to be successful. How you motivate people to succeed, how you make sure you get the fundamentals like margin and profitability right, and how you maintain the flexibility to deal with whatever the market throws at you.

10.25
Roundtable networking and discussion session

11.10
Morning Break

11.35
Angie Ma
Co-Founder, Faculty

Building the machine: professionalising the HR function
In the early days, you over index investment in product and go to market and under index on operations and processes. Eventually, you reach a stage where this threatens to negatively impact growth and you need to build stronger foundations. This session will use a case study on hiring for the people function to discuss how you know when the time has come to invest, how you decide what the right hire is, and how you manage the process.

12.00
Roundtable networking and discussion session

13.00
Seated Lunch
Enjoy three courses from Claridge’s exclusive menu

14.30
Welcome address by our Champagne Sponsor
Oliver Cardigan, Managing Director, Investment Banking, Investec

14.35
Alessandro Petazzi
Co-founder & former CEO, Musement

Life after the exit
Musement’s acquisition by travel giant TUI represents the most important exit in their sector in the last decade, Alessandro talks about why and how they pivoted to gain competitive advantage and vie for attention from a limited pool of potential buyers. What the process was like and the unforeseen challenges they faced in the run-up. Then, how he felt immediately after the win, what it feels like on the other side and why you should ‘be careful.

15.00
Facilitated discussions

Coffee served to the tables

16.00
Daniel Shakhani
Co-founder, Salary Finance
Founded 2015 | Staff 230 | Funding £100m

The ups and downs of growth: US expansion
An early (maybe too early) call to prioritise the US lead to some major challenges. Daniel will discuss why they went early, the challenges of operating multiple territories, how they hired, and the growth strategy.

 16.25
Closing Address
Uday Singh
CEO, Fast Growth Icons

 16.30
Champagne Reception

17.30
Close