From Immigrant Teen to Scale Up Pioneer: The Sahar Hashemi Story

What does it take to build one of the UK’s fastest-growing retail brands, lose it, rebuild yourself, and then reinvent entrepreneurship for an entire generation of women founders? In this episode, I sit down with Sahar Hashemi OBE, co-founder of Coffee Republic and Skinny Candy, and founder of the movement Buy Women Built.

Sahar’s journey is a masterclass in how entrepreneurial culture is born, how it dies, and how to protect it as you scale. She shares moving reflections on immigrating to the UK at age 12, how her parents instilled “evidence-based self-belief,” and why being a frustrated customer has always been her superpower.

From a single London coffee bar to 110 stores, Coffee Republic scaled at breakneck speed — only to lose its soul as “the grown-ups” took over. Sahar describes, with rare honesty, how bureaucracy can slowly extinguish customer focus, what she learned from watching her own company collapse eight years after she left, and why founders must fight to preserve agility, instinct, and scrappiness.

Key Themes
•Evidence-based self-belief: why childhood pushes create adult resilience.
•Scaling culture: how processes, titles, and silos quietly kill innovation.
•Founder relevance: the outdated belief that entrepreneurs have a “sell-by date.”
•Customer intimacy: the founder’s instinct as a strategic asset, not a liability.
•Women entrepreneurs: why empathy, resourcefulness, and personal problem-solving make women natural founders.
•Leaping before you feel ready: Sahar’s enduring motto for starting anything new.

Favorite Quotes
•“Self-belief is evidence-based — you build it by doing difficult things.”
•“A startup culture can quickly put on a corporate mask.”
•“Back then they thought passion was flaky — today every big company wants it.”
•“Women start businesses from personal need — and that’s where many great ideas come from.”
•“Leap and the net will appear.”

🎧 Listen to the full conversation: https://scaleapp.buzzsprout.com

Jorge Rodriguez, founder of Paciv, built a world‑class industrial automation and computer systems validation company from a small warehouse in Puerto Rico to a global player serving Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and other pharma giants. The son of Spanish immigrants who arrived on the island with nothing but work ethic and discipline, Jorge translated family lessons about integrity, paying suppliers first, and “keeping the machine running” into a business that became a trusted partner inside some of the most demanding plants in the world.

Paciv started as Jorge leaving a safe job at Johnson & Johnson with a single client contract and a laptop. Within months he was billing 80–90 hours a week, combining deep technical know‑how in control systems with an insider’s understanding of pharma’s regulatory pain points. The insight was simple but powerful: if you can deliver the same validated process in Puerto Rico, you can clone it in Indiana, Ireland, Singapore, or the UK—exactly what global quality and regulators expect.

Favorite Quotes

• “Don’t let go of something until you have something else secure. I quit Friday and started selling services Monday.”

• “Clients spoon‑fed me growth—‘we have a larger project, but you can’t do it alone… hire a few engineers and we’ll give it to you.’”

• “To drive customer intimacy, first you model it. I was 100% billable for the first 13 years.”

• “If you stop growing, you start dying.”

• “I was riding a Ferrari in second gear. If I could speak to my younger self, I’d say: take more risk and grow faster.”

Key Themes

• From Immigrant Household to Industrial Specialist
• Becoming an Entrepreneur from the Inside
• Customer Intimacy as Competitive Advantage
• Scale Globally Through Clients, Not Campaigns
• Radical Transparency and Trust
• Professionalizing the Business: From Mom‑and‑Pop to Scale‑Up

Eben Upton, co-founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi, turned a Cambridge lab experiment into an intriguing scale-up stories. What began as a mission to create more programmers in the world by empowering kids to program, became a $250 million public company that has shipped over 70 million units worldwide and helped redefine accessible computing.

At its heart, Raspberry Pi is a simple but revolutionary idea: a fully functional computer the size of a cigarette pack, priced under $35, and designed to spark curiosity with extensive hardware interfaces. Eben describes it as a modern-day Lego brick—the glue between software, peripherals, and imagination. The company’s first batch of 100,000 units sold out on launch day.

Favorite Quotes

• “We sold 100,000 Raspberry Pis on the first day—and none to target market, kids. We dropped the product in the market to see where the market was.”
• “Licensing gave us a global footprint from day one—but the unit economics were brutal.”
• “We build our products at Sony in South Wales—40,000 a day, right next to two handmade broadcast cameras.”
• “Never wait—if you can grow capability without risking the organization, do it now.”

Key Themes

1. From Education to Global Scale: Raspberry Pi started as an educational charity project but when hobbyists and engineers discovered it, the product jumped from classrooms to factories and embedded systems across the world.

2. Product-Market Fit by Accident: The team didn’t find a market through focus groups—they discovered it by “accidentally dropping a product into blue ocean demand.” The first-year sales hit one million units.

3. The ARM Model and Beyond: Inspired by Cambridge’s own ARM, Raspberry Pi began as a licensor of technology and brand IP. But to capture more value, the company evolved into direct production, partnering with Sony to manufacture at scale while maintaining the agility of a startup.

4. Culture and Retention: Upton built an engineering-driven organization that balances autonomy with structure—“a startup’s flexibility with a corporation’s resources.” With nearly 100% retention, Raspberry Pi proves that culture can scale when people love what they build.

Reshma Advani Rojas, CEO of Advanced Commercial Equipment (ACEL), has turned a family legacy into the Caribbean’s most respected restaurant supply companies. Based in Trinidad & Tobago, ACEL serves 14 countries across the region and generates approximately $30 million in revenue. In this episode of ScaleApp Podcasts, Reshma shares how leadership, culture, and clarity drive scale—not just capital.

Favorite Quotes

· “Soft skills are not optional—they’re the foundation of company culture.”

· “Scaling starts when you know exactly who you are as a brand.”

· “Our diversity in T&T gives us a groundbreaking view of the world—we’re not trapped by one culture.”

· “Breaking and rebuilding your business process and structure is hard—but it’s how real growth happens.”

· “One big win from ScaleratorT&T was alignment—we all finally spoke the same language.”

· “I asked my 10-year-old if she’d take over the business. She said, ‘Yes—but I also want to own a hospital.’ I love that ambition.”

Key Themes

• **Legacy Reinvented:** Reshma inherited a legacy company from her father but reshaped it into a modern, scalable venture with international reach.

• **Culture and Soft Skills:** In a world of automation, she champions empathy and communication as a competitive edge.

• **Women Leading Change:** As a woman of color in a male-dominated industry, Reshma redefines what authority and expertise look like. Her success challenges outdated cultural and gender assumptions.

• **Scaling with Identity:** ACE’s success stems from deep brand clarity and consistent follow‑through. Service excellence and relationship‑based selling are what set them apart.

• **The Scalerator Effect:** Through ScaleratorT&T, Reshma and her team built shared understanding and focus, aligning on what success truly means. The result: a stronger, smarter organization ready for the next level.

From garage to a $250 million global aerospace supplier—and then do it again and again as an investor and mentor.

In this episode, Jerry Jendusa, founder of EMTEQ and now head of Breakthru, shares how a mix of listening to customers, discipline, and people-first leadership drove his growth journey. From bootstrapping to $100 million in sales and $250 million exit, Jerry reflects on lessons learned:

• people trump process
• process trumps product
• customers trump capital
• debt trumps equity.

A proud Wisconsin native, Jerry also discusses building bridges in polarized times through shared purpose and growth.

Favorite Quotes

“We learned, sometimes the hard way, to prioritize people and process—but learned fast. At the end of the day, people create the process, so people always trump process.”

“We set out to raise customers, not capital. We wanted to live inside customers’ value stream: their minds, habits, and pain points.”

“Equity is far more expensive than debt. The smarter you are about leveraging debt, the faster your equity can grow.”

“I still meet $5-million companies who brag, ‘I pay cash for everything.’ My reaction? ‘Are you serious?!?’ That’s not strength—it’s stagnation.”

“To my younger self: don’t start a business—buy one.”

Key Themes

People over process: Sustainable scaling begins with the right team, not the right manual.

Customer intimacy: The best capital is customer trust, not investor cash.

Smart leverage: Knowing when (and how) to use debt accelerates equity growth.

Scaling culture: Values, discipline, and a bias for listening build companies that last.

Key Takeaways

Growth follows focus—on people, customers, and disciplined risk.

Process matters, but only when people buy in.

Debt, used wisely, can be a growth engine.

Entrepreneurs don’t need to invent something new—they can scale what already works better.

From Ghana to Czech Republic to Harvard Business School to the frontlines of Africa’s digital economy, Raphael (“Rafi”) Afaedor's career is a masterclass in vision, immersion, and execution. Having co-founded Jumia—the first African e-commerce giant to list on the NYSE—and later Kyosk, a B2B platform connecting fast-moving consumer goods producers to informal retail shops and end customers, Rafi has learned firsthand how to scale in large, complex markets.

As Rafi explains, Africa’s so-called ‘difficult markets’ are actually vast opportunities for those who learn to adapt to local realities rather than impose foreign business models. From repackaging fertilizer in much smaller, 1kg bags to rethinking online payments, his story is about listening, learning, and building systems that work for real people—not just spreadsheets or foreign VCs.

Favorite Quotes

· “Capital reaches Africa last—and dries up first. Choose investors who have patience and understand the terrain.”

· “You can’t change customer behavior. It’s much easier to work with what already exists than to try to replace it.”

· “Africa’s customer service works—it just works the African way.”

· “Think in decades, not exits. The continent will reward those who stay the course.”

· “Leadership isn’t formal authority. It’s when people still call you ‘boss’ even after you’ve left.”

Key Themes

· Adapting Global Models to Local Realities: Western e-commerce assumptions often fail in Africa; success means redesigning for local buying patterns and logistics.

· Leadership through Respect: Rafi’s philosophy—‘you can’t be a leader if you don’t have followers’—underscores the power of informal authority and dignity.

· Venture Capital Fit: Choosing investors who understand Africa’s pace and volatility can make or break a scaling journey.

· The Long Game: True scale takes patience, persistence, and alignment among partners for the long haul.

· Repackaging for Affordability: A consistent lesson—from fertilizer to consumer goods—is that smaller, accessible SKUs unlock massive new markets.

I believe that one of the biggest challenges in going from a few millions to a few tens of millions is building systems and processes that enable scaling. We have seen this challenge in the majority of the ScaleApp Podcast discussions, Giscad is just the most recent example. As Julie Brandle explains, one aspect of their scaling challenge was to bring on more specialized professional services - legal, accounting, HR etc.

Metis is also a great story of resilience - recession, Pandemic, and now, October 2025, significant market uncertainty.

Maybe we need to re-define “Resilience” = “Metis Construction?”

Julie Brandle, founder and president of Metis Construction in Ohio, has built a significant construction services company based in Ohio. Launching in 2009, in the depths of the recession, Brandle turned uncertainty into opportunity. Today, Metis employs about 50 people, generates $30–50 million in revenue, and works across Ohio and beyond with clients such as Firestone Auto Care, Dollar General, McAlister’s Deli, and Bank of America.

Brandle’s formula is simple but powerful: build trust, deliver on time and on budget, and treat every project—large or small—with equal seriousness. Along the way, she has overcome some skepticism of entering a “man’s business,” "over-scaled" too rapidly during COVID to $50 million, and learned that growth must be strategic, not just fast. Metis is also a proud alum of ScaleratorNEO, where Julie and her team sharpened their growth mindset around the three C’s: cash, customers, and capacity.

Favorite Quotes

· “We hit our goal of around the $50 million mark during COVID. And it’s a stressful mark… don’t grow for the sake of growth.”

· “Sometimes clients would ask who I, a woman at a construction site, brought with me. And I’d say, it’s just me. I’m the owner and president.”

· “Our whole team was on board at ScaleratorNEO - I didn’t have to sell decisions later - yhey were already there, part of it from scratch."

· “If it’s important to you and you need it, we’re here to help you. No project is too small."

Key Themes

· Strategic Growth vs. Fast Growth: Rapid expansion can overwhelm systems, people, and processes; scaling requires infrastructure upgrades at every stage.

· Resilience in Uncertainty: Starting in a recession, weathering COVID, and navigating inflationary shocks, Metis has adapted while maintaining service.

· Culture & Teamwork: Remote work strained culture, but flexibility and intentional rebuilding are helping restore cohesion.

· Women in Construction: Julie has confronted skepticism head-on, proving that credibility comes from competence and delivery.

· Scalerator Impact: Involving the whole team in structured growth planning made scaling practices stick.

Background

In this episode, I welcome our first Trinidad & Tobago venture to ScaleApp Podcasts: Giscad, co-founded by Desmond Dougall and Sudesh Botha. What began 22 years ago as two engineers suddenly out of work has grown into a 50-person regional powerhouse operating across nearly numerous Caribbean markets. Giscad is a ScaleratorT&T alumnus.

Academics in the entrepreneurship space often make a stark dichotomy between so-called “opportunity entrepreneurship” and so-called “necessity entrepreneurship”, but the dichotomy is often a false one. I have never bought it, and now we have seen now three significant ventures in which needing to make an income lead to a regional or even global leader. The idea they are separate is, frankly, kind of bullshit.

Favorite Quotes

· “You get customers’ trust when you say, ‘no, we don’t do that, and it won’t be good for you.’”

· "You don’t have all the answers. Take risks. Be open to advice.”

· "We almost crashed and burned because we were growing 20% every year for eight years but had no cash to fund the growth.”

· “We have more external thank internal directors. It keeps you from doing nonsense.”

· “Be prepared for setbacks. Don’t take them personally. Keep moving forward.”

· “ScaleratorT&T totally changed our focus on how we would approach customers: building that customer persona, modeling the customer, and then also modeling the customer journey.”

Key Themes

Origin Story – Born from necessity after a downsizing, Desmond and Sudesh used their expertise in GIS and CAD to launch Giscad. Early success came as the local Autodesk rep, winning against global giants by offering nimble, relationship-driven service.

Scaling Beyond Software – Giscad pioneered GPS tracking in the Caribbean, evolving into the region’s largest fleet management provider. Today, fleet solutions, Autodesk distribution, consulting, and GIS services make up the business, with offerings layered together to create strong customer stickiness.

Challenges & Turning Points – Eight years in, rapid growth nearly bankrupted them. They turned to governance, external directors, and financial discipline to survive and grow.

Culture & Trust – Built on telling customers 'no' when needed, focusing on solving problems rather than selling solutions, and expanding with local presence across multiple Caribbean nations.

Takeaways

· Necessity can lead directly to opportunity and growth.

· Trust and honesty are differentiators in markets dominated by relationships.

· Professional governance and financial discipline are essential when scaling.

· Layering services across business lines strengthens customer loyalty and market share.

· Programs like ScaleratorT&T can sharpen strategy and unify teams.