The introvert who was told he looked too free-spirited, and whose software now runs ordering for the UK's biggest food brands. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/founded. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.

"This poor lady had to say to me, 'There are concerns that you look a bit free-spirited.' They were worried I was suddenly gonna disappear and become a yoga teacher in Goa or something."

Simon Bos has spent more than 20 years building other people's startups at Gravitywell, his Bristol venture studio, watching entrepreneurs' hearts break over cheap builds that couldn't be rescued, and learning exactly what separates the products that work from the ones that die. Then he found his own gap: one of the UK's largest food-to-go manufacturers taking thousands of daily sandwich orders through a call centre. "Three BLTs, two chicken and bacon... no, three chicken and bacon." On the phone. Every day.

That absurdity became Mezze, the B2B ordering platform for food manufacturers. Since we recorded this conversation, it has grown into exactly what Simon describes planning here: the platform now handles over £10M of orders a month for names like Samworth Brothers, Pieminister and The Real Wrap Co. It has expanded into AI features and the US market. The playbook he lays out in this episode is the playbook that worked.

Along the way: a prime example of being an introvert founder, from months without networking to discovering that one-to-many content is the introvert's cheat code, plus the no-suit mantra, the three-month reset in Laos, and the client work (including the ADHD Love app) that reminds him why any of it matters.

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Cheap builds break hearts. Simon has had to tell founders "there's no way of fixing this, it's gone." Under-investing in your foundation doesn't save money; a bad build is often unrescuable, and rebuilding costs more than doing it properly once.

2. Introversion is a design constraint, not a defect. Simon went months without networking and felt guilty. The fix wasn't forcing himself into rooms; it was one-to-many: content, talks, a strong product. Build the version of visibility that suits your wiring.

3. Perspective is a tool you have to schedule. From regular stakeholder mapping to three months in Laos, Simon's pattern is to step back deliberately. When the day-to-day consumes you, you can't see the business; distance is what shows you where you actually sit in the ecosystem.

WHAT WE COVER
- 25+ years of Gravitywell: what building hundreds of products teaches you about founders
- "Entrepreneurs' hearts breaking": the truth about unrescuable builds
- The call-centre absurdity which became Mezze
- Spotting your place in the supply chain instead of trying to be the big thing
- The introvert founder: networking guilt, one-to-many, and deep 1:1s over room-working
- "You look a bit free-spirited": appearance bias, procurement, and the no-suit mantra
- The ADHD Love app, body doubling, and the messages that say "it changed my life"
- Three months in Laos and what stepping back showed him
- Asking for help with an explicit ask, and failure as raw material
- Simon's question for you: is introversion a barrier or a gift?

💬 Answer Simon's question in the comments or vote in our LinkedIn poll.

Guest: Simon Bos
Mezze: https://mezze.io | Gravitywell: https://gravitywell.co.uk | LinkedIn: Simon Bos https://www.linkedin.com/in/sibos/

Hosted by Ollie Collard and Dr Becky Sage.

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Meet Greg, the adviser who built a career on saying what 1,000+ founders didn't want to hear. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/founded. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.

The opener to this episode tells you two things about Greg McCallum: he's funnier than most business advisers, and he's more honest about the cost of the founder life than almost anyone we've had on the show.

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Ask strangers, not friends. The most common founder mistake is failing to ask prospective customers whether the idea is good. Do it early and you're not just validating, you're building a pipeline, learning the language that sells, and writing your first sales playbook for free.

2. Sales is listening, not pitching. Professional sales hires get a three- to six-month ramp before anyone expects a deal, so give yourself the same grace. Never ask for the sale. Understand the need, demonstrate the solution, and let them ask you.

3. Honesty is the strategy. With customers, with investors, and hardest of all with yourself. Audit the skills you actually lack before you buy the domain or design the logo. Self-awareness is cheaper than failure.

Greg got kicked out of school at 15. By 16, he was running a restaurant floor. By 18, he'd quietly consulted for almost every bar and restaurant in Oxford. By his mid-twenties, banks were asking him into the boardroom. Then he deliberately took a soul-destroying telemarketing job for a year, because nobody would take his sales advice seriously until he'd done the hard yards himself. That decision led to sales leadership at Booksy (now unicorn status), C-suite roles across startups, and a mentoring practice that has helped over 1,000 founders worldwide, under a name he's turned into a brand: The No Bullshit Adviser.

In this episode, Greg gets honest about the mistake almost every founder makes, why working in sales won't teach you founder sales, the AI industry's dirty data secret his new startup Peer is built to solve, and the part nobody talks about: the anxiety, the dark years, and the alliances entrepreneurship never lets you make. Because when it all goes wrong, the question that matters is who you actually call.

Please note: this episode contains strong language throughout. Greg is called the No Bullshit Adviser for a reason.

WHAT WE COVER

- Kicked out of school, child of immigrant entrepreneurs, and managing hospitality floors at 16

- Accidentally becoming Oxford's teenage restaurant consultant

- A year of telemarketing to earn the right to give sales advice

- Booksy, C-suite roles, and 1,000+ founders mentored

- The one bad Trustpilot review that's secretly a five-star review

- Why psychometric tests are (mostly) bullshit, and skills audits beat personality labels

- Founders Unplugged: the podcast born from client calls that ran three hours over

- Peer and the dirty secret of AI: the data ceiling nobody talks about

- "Stop preaching work-life balance": Greg's unfiltered take

- Anxiety, depression, CBT, and becoming your own therapist

- The real sacrifice: friendship, founder loneliness, and why your support network is a survival mechanism

- The SaaS bubble, the bootstrapping comeback, and his one piece of advice: two words

💬 Greg's story got us thinking: when it all goes wrong, who is the one person you'd call? Tell us in the comments.

Greg also offers a free one-hour, no-strings advisory session to founders and executives. Details on his site below.

Guest: Greg McCallum

The No Bullshit Adviser: https://www.gregrcmccallum.com/the-no-bs-session

Founders Unplugged: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/founders-unplugged/id1688034102

Peer - https://peerlab.ai/peer

Hosted by Ollie Tiramuragan Collard and Dr Becky Sage.

🎧 New episodes every fortnight. Search "Founded and Grounded" on your favourite player.

👍 If you got value, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It genuinely helps the show grow.

#FoundedAndGrounded #StartupPodcast #Entrepreneurship #Sales #FounderAdvice

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The ex-model who turned an exploding kitchen of cauliflower into the pasta brand. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/founded. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.

"My husband was just like, 'What's happening?' The kitchen was just an explosion of cauliflower."

That's how Sunny & Luna started, and this episode opens with it.

Giulia Berretti spent her teens modelling in New York on as little as 800 calories a day, inside an industry that treated food as the enemy. The daughter of a winemaker and a restaurateur, taught to make pasta by her nonna, she walked away. When COVID hit, she rebuilt her relationship with food into a business: vegetable-packed fresh pasta, born in her own kitchen.

She sold her first batches to neighbours on Nextdoor, pitched at the Bread & Jam festival with four gnocchi in a plastic bag, and Whole Foods and Planet Organic loved it. She then spent six months knocking on the doors of Italian manufacturers who kept asking "who are you?" until one said yes. When we recorded this conversation, Giulia was days from her first national listing and closing a £500K angel round. Today, Sunny & Luna is on the shelves of Sainsbury's, Ocado, Whole Foods and Planet Organic. Proof that everything she talks about in this episode worked.

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Never compromise on your non-negotiables. When the Ukraine war sent costs spiralling, Giulia held her quality line and raised prices instead of cutting corners, and customers rewarded her for it. Know what you won't trade, and price accordingly.

2. Passion plus authenticity beats playbooks. She built a standout brand in a category nobody had disrupted (fresh pasta) by staying close to what she genuinely knows and loves. Innovation came from her story, not from copying someone else's.

3. Persistence needs patience. "When the train is coming, you don't have to jump straight away." Ups and downs are the job. The founders who make it are the ones who keep going without rushing decisions that compromise the long-term vision.

WHAT WE COVER

- Modelling in New York at 18: the money, the pressure, and restricting to 800 calories a day

- Nonna's kitchen: the pasta-making childhood that became the business

- Testing demand on Nextdoor, and pitching retailers with a plastic bag of gnocchi

- Six months driving around Italy to find a manufacturer, and selling them the dream

- Why she'd never compromise on quality, even when costs exploded

- Two days of maternity leave, pitching Ocado ten days after giving birth, and the lesson in slowing down

- "A company fails when the founder is tired": mental health, therapy, and switching off

- Funding: bootstrapped on modelling savings, then a £500K round from angels who back her

- The future of food: real ingredients over fake meat, and Sunny & Luna as a lifestyle brand

- Why the business is named after her cats

💬 Giulia has a question for you. See the pinned comment and tell us your favourite.

Guest: Giulia Berretti

Sunny & Luna: https://sunnyandluna.co.uk | Instagram: @sunnyandlunaeats

Hosted by Ollie Tiramuragan Collard and Dr. Becky Sage.

🎧 New episodes every fortnight. Search "Founded and Grounded" on your favourite player.

👍 If you got value, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It genuinely helps the show grow.

#FoundedAndGrounded #StartupPodcast #Entrepreneurship #FoodStartup #FemaleFounder

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