Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, but expanding the audience set to include more folks. This episode is Founder Chats - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Max Denevich, Co-founder and CRO of LoyaltyPlant. Max is going to share with us to road he travelled, entering into this industry, his go to market strategies, scaling across geographic region - and much, much more.

Questions

• Before we talk about products and scale, tell us a bit about your path to this point. What experiences shaped the way you think about business and leadership before LoyaltyPlant?
• At what point did you realise you wanted to work with complex, traditional industries rather than consumer apps or “easy” tech?
• Why foodtech, and specifically Quick Service Restaurants? What made you believe this industry had deep structural problems worth solving with technology?
• What made you decide to join LoyaltyPlant, and what potential did you see that others might have missed?
• You’re often referred to as a co-founder today. How did the transition happen from an executive role to shaping the company’s future at that level?
• LoyaltyPlant was close to running out of investment at one point. What were the first decisions that fundamentally changed the company’s trajectory?
• What were the key milestones that turned LoyaltyPlant from a struggling company into a global enterprise business, from the first major client to scaling across 30 countries?
• You’ve worked across the US, UK, MENA, Europe, and CIS. What did you learn about scaling the same product across very different markets, and what absolutely doesn’t translate?
• You built new go-to-market strategies that now generate over 90% of new sales. What did you change compared to a classic SaaS sales playbook, and why did it work in enterprise QSR?
• Margins are shrinking, aggregators dominate, and costs are rising. What’s actually happening on the ground right now in QSR and foodtech, and how should companies adapt?
• Tell us about a decision you got wrong. What did it cost the business, and what did it teach you as a leader?
• What advice would you give founders building B2B products for traditional industries today, especially around scale, partnerships, and staying relevant?

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• Braingrid
• .TECH Domains
• Mezmo

Links

• https://loyaltyplant.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/denevich/

Nouran Farouk grew up in Egypt, which she notes the culture has a deep root in family. She and her sister have always been drawn to social entrepreneurship, being drawn to building but also positively impacting the world. In addition, Nouran has a medical background, which taught her that good intentions are not enough - you need good systems. Outside of tech, she loves to travel and visit cities. She frequently observes how people move throughout the world, and how systems influence their daily life.

Nouran and her sister wanted to learn to drive scooters. In doing so, they were immediately greeted with inequitable opportunities for women in this arena. They wanted to change this situation, and deployed a back of the napkin idea into a fully operational platform.

This is the creation story of Dosy.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://www.dosybikes.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/nouran-aly-farouk-msc-mbbs-31637b195/

James Davies lives in the Maryland area, and started his career at the crossroads of tech and the auto industry. His first girlfriend's father owned some car lots - so he went to work there, wrote some software, and propelled his success at those dealerships. He notes that the auto industry was fun and has a lot of moving parts, but was pretty taxing personally. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He grew up around construction, so he enjoys getting his hands dirty and building things. In fact, he is fixing up the barn of the recent home he bought - framing, doing the plumbing, and making it livable.

James was working for the state department as a consultant, and was a customer of his current venture. He was chosen to implement the solution, which turned out to be a successful project. Post that project, he was approached by the company to lead projects on the east coast and eventually landed in the CEO role.

This is James' creation story at Kinetic Data.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://kineticdata.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswdavies/