In Episode #37 of ScaleApp Podcasts, I sit down with Rupesh Kumar, founder & CEO of ARIQT Global Technologies. Rupesh left a top-1%-earning developer job in India to move to the Netherlands out of what he simply calls “curiosity,” founded ARIQT in June 2020 and has scaled it to 130 colleagues across India, the Netherlands, Australia, and Ireland, breaking $5M in revenue. In Scalerator we used ARIQT for a small but complex project of our own — which is how I came to know Rupesh, and which is why I was curious to get him on the show.

Three threads in our conversation: First, the referral-only growth model, which is not a strategy Rupesh chose so much as one that chose ARIQT — he has an interesting theory about why clients keep calling. Second, the “developer-first” positioning, which is more substantive than it sounds on a careers page. And third, what AI is doing to engineering teams — not the usual will-jobs-disappear debate, but the flattening of the senior/junior hierarchy and the disappearance of the middle.

Favorite Quotes

– “It may sound hard to believe, but in six years we have never sent a single cold email to approach new clients. That says a lot about our services.”

– “People build mobile-first, cloud-first, client-first companies. I said no — I will build a developer-first company, where the developer is our most important asset. Ask ten developers if they want to be a good developer. All ten say yes.”

– “For me it’s very important how much a person knows, but what matters more is: do they have fire in their belly? Do they have hunger for learning?”

– “AI has reduced the gap between senior and junior. The middle is gone.”

– “Four years ago I gave ARIQT a slogan: Sharing is shining. If you want to shine at ARIQT, share your knowledge. Everybody sees it — that’s how you rise here.”

Key Themes

– Referral-only growth as a quality signal.

– “Developer-first” as strategic positioning, not HR copy.

– AI is flattening the engineering organization.

– Services-to-products without sacrificing services. ARIQT’s three AI-native SaaS products emerged from client problems — and Rupesh sees the company becoming predominantly product-based over the next five years, with services as the feeder pipeline.

– “Sharing is shining.” ARIQT’s internal slogan operationalizes the learning culture — knowledge sharing is how you gain visibility and rise inside the company.

Key Takeaways

– A FIFA World Cup 2022 client had struggled for 18 months with a sub-40ms message-processing problem; ARIQT solved it in three months working day and night. They don’t advertise this — clients just tell each other.

– Hiring at ARIQT runs 5–6 interview rounds specifically to screen for hunger and fit, not just skill.

– On-the-job learning is roughly 60% of how the team stays current; structured courses and certifications deliver the initial 40% kickstart.

Rupesh’s five-year vision: ARIQT becomes predominantly known for one of its products, with services continuing

What if the robots are already there — but nobody can get them to actually work, inexpensively and at scale?

In this episode, Ashish Kapoor, founder of General Robotics and former head of the Microsoft Research robotics initiative, discuss how General Robotics is powering the usefulness of robots, immediately and at scale. Ashish has spent his career at the intersection of frontier AI and real-world deployment — and what he found when he surveyed the enterprise robotics landscape was startling: out of 150 large enterprises he spoke with, each having spent north of $100 million on robotic equipment, zero were in production deployment.

The problem isn't the hardware. It's the intelligence layer. General Robotics is building what General Robotics calls the Intelligence Grid — an AI platform that plugs into existing robots across 40+ OEMs, giving them the ability to adapt to unstructured environments, manipulate objects, and navigate dynamic spaces. A power grid, but for robot intelligence.

Ashish walks through his unusual journey, dreaming of being and Indian Air Force pilot, arriving at MIT a quarter century ago where machine learning was everywhere, to flying his own kit airplane, to 18 years at Microsoft Research learning how to take frontier science to commercial scale.

He founded General Robotics in 2023 and now has a 25-person team — 19 of them world-class roboticists — and has already signed approximately 10 large enterprise customers across manufacturing, defense, and logistics, with a target of 100 in the next 12 to 18 months.

"Access to capital is easy. Access to folks (E14) who can really help you is very hard. Optimize for the second, and the capital will come automatically."

"Curiosity, integrity, drive. If I find someone who excels in all three, I would hire them right away. Skills can be taught — but those three things are harder to find."

Key themes in this episode:

- The Intelligence Grid: why robots need an AI power grid, not just better brains

- The deployment gap: $100M+ in idle robots and why zero enterprises are in production

- Research to reality: bridging frontier science and operational deployment

- Hiring for character: curiosity, integrity, and drive over pure technical skill

- Smart capital: VCs as partners — access to customers and talent matters more than money

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What does it take to build a global fintech platform from a small Greek city — and end up powering banks and fintechs across Europe and the Middle East?

Enter Natech, headquartered in Ioannina, Greece. Founded in 2003, Natech builds core banking systems, digital channels, and regulatory technology for financial institutions — primarily smaller, agile banks that need to move fast. Their front-to-back platform deploys in 90 days, future-proofing banks so they can focus on what they do best: serving their clients.

Thanasis shares the full story — from bootstrapped beginnings with personal capital and zero VC ecosystem in Greece, to $35M raised, $11.5M in 2025 revenue, and a bold target of $18M in 2026. With ~200 people across 6 countries, Natech has quietly become a serious global player.

A centerpiece of the conversation is Snappi — Natech's neobank joint venture with Piraeus Bank, one of Greece's largest financial institutions. The story of how a 50-person startup convinced a banking giant to co-found a digital bank is a masterclass in trust, speed, and commitment. Snappi has already onboarded 75,000 customers in under six months, targeting 300,000 by year end, and is now AI-first.

Thanasis also reflects on the culture that built Natech — forged in part by Greece's financial crisis, and defined by a simple but powerful mantra:

"Please test your ideas. You may think better than everybody else. Don't be afraid."

And his advice to any founder starting out?

"Never settle, never be afraid. It will be a really bumpy road."

Key themes in this episode:

• Building a global fintech from a peripheral city — and making it a competitive advantage
• The 'future-proof' value proposition: why banks can't just build once
• How trust closed the Snappi deal
• Culture born from crisis — adversity as competitive DNA
• Bootstrapping for 17 years before raising outside capital

🎧 Find ScaleApp Podcast on:

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Jay Rogers is a serial entrepreneur who doesn't just learn from failure — he codifies it. His previous venture, Local Motors, 3D printed autonomous vehicles and deployed 150 of them across 29 cities and three continents. The technology worked. The pricing worked. They raised $100 mm or so in capital. Regulation slowed everything down and they never learned how to sell.

The company failed as an investment, but the genetics survived.

Between Local Motors and Haddy, Jay sat down and wrote out his critical lessons: stay out of highly regulated industries, make products with few components you can build entirely under one roof, and — here's the subtle one — choose assets that are financeable. He wanted a robot he could pay for with an SBA loan, not venture equity. That distinction between capital-intensive and equity-intensive is one of the sharpest insights in this conversation (disclosure: I am an investor in Haddy).

What emerged is Haddy — a 3D printing "world builder" running a robotic micro factory in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. Furniture, boats, molds, lighting, architectural elements, defense products. Jay went from Princeton to manufacturing in China to banking to dropping out of Stanford to join the Marines for seven years — and every chapter shows up in how he leads Haddy today, including a Marine-bred commitment to vulnerability that might surprise you.

Favorite Quotes

– "We've orphaned an enormous amount of tribal knowledge — how to mine, how to forge, how to do tool and die. America has lost a lot of making capability. That's what Haddy is here to address."

– "Double, double, double to me is sluggish."

– "It's a capital-intensive business, but don't hear that it's an equity-intensive business. Those things are often confused. We're a capital-efficient, capital-intensive business — and that's a deliberate choice."

– "With Local Motors, I went out with a technology and built ahead of the market — and we were early. With Haddy, I got an order from a furniture company before I raised a dollar for the business."

– "Vulnerability is being willing to get curious. Are you willing to shut up and listen? That vulnerability is worth its weight in gold."

Key Themes

Reshoring manufacturing through robotic micro factories

• Haddy is rebuilding the "tribal knowledge" America lost over two decades of offshoring, using 3D printing and robots instead of scarce skilled labor
• Failure as a design document — Extract lessons from failure and hardcode them into a new business model, from avoiding regulated industries to choosing financeable assets
• Capital-efficient, not equity-intensive — a deliberate distinction that shapes everything from equipment choices to fundraising strategy, using SBA loans and debt rather than dilutive venture capital
• Customer before capital — Jay secured a furniture order before raising a single dollar, reversing the Local Motors approach of building ahead of the market
• Vulnerability as leadership — learned in the Marines, refined in business, Jay argues that shutting up, listening, and admitting mistakes creates stronger teams and better customer relationships

In Episode 33 of ScaleApp Podcasts, Kevin Kilty and I unpack the messy, honest reality of building a cross-border payments platform from the UAE — one of the world’s fastest-growing trading hubs. HubPay is now approaching $10 million ARR (already at a $10mm run rate), profitable, with 58 people across Dubai and London, and a Series B in motion.

Kevin launched HubPay in 2019 with a clear vision: a one-stop-shop for businesses to move money globally — fast, cheap, and simple. The problem? The infrastructure wasn’t ready. Bank APIs, virtual IBANs, regulatory tech — none of it was there yet. HubPay spent two years grinding through $1–2 million ARR while the market caught up. As Kevin says: “50 fintechs came before Revolut with pretty much the same plan. They were just too early.” HubPay nearly was too.

But Kevin held on, pivoted from retail remittances to corporate cross-border payments, and when the critical infrastructure came online in late 2024, growth exploded. Now profitable at $10 million ARR (expected Q2), the Series B isn’t for survival — it’s for expansion into the UK, Europe, and Saudi Arabia. Kevin sees $100 million ARR in two to three years. (Disclosure: I am an LP in Emkan https://www.emkan.vc a VC investor in HubPay.)

Favorite Quotes

“Timing is everything. We had the right thesis, just the wrong year. Revolut wasn’t the first with the plan — 50 fintechs came before with pretty much the same idea.”

“Execution is key. The idea is not quantum computing. But the plumbing behind it? That’s where you earn your stars. The customer demands are relatively simple.

“At first people were getting burned out. You don’t mind working hard. But you get burnt out when you’re working hard and it’s simply not working.”

“We are a team, not a family. Your family is with you no matter what. You don’t do a good job, your family’s there. Your team is certainly not — you must execute.”

“Three pieces of advice to my younger self: Make the leap earlier. Community is everything. And when you raise money, be way more disciplined in how you spend it.”

Key Themes

– Timing is the silent killer: HubPay had the right thesis but launched before the infrastructure existed. Surviving “too early” without burning through capital became the defining test.

– Simple value proposition, brutal execution: Customers want speed, global reach, and fair pricing. Delivering that across borders, regulators, and banks is where the real work lives.

– Team, not family: Kevin runs a flat, execution-driven culture — 15+ languages in the Dubai office, mutual respect, but no room for passengers.

– Financial discipline unlocks optionality: Profitability at $10M ARR on a shoestring means Series B is entirely for growth — UK/European licenses, Saudi expansion, and AI-driven product innovation.

In Episode 32 of ScaleApp Podcasts, Sam Smith and I unpack her 24-year scale journey: building FinnCap from an in-house corporate finance desk into an IPO-listed £50 million revenue financial services firm, staying profitable throughout.

At 24 – “I literally had no clue what I was doing” after painstakingly building to £3 million revenue, a step change along with a management buyout created real ownership, a clear vision, and the freedom to scale.

After leaving FinCap, Sam built Superscalers to address a stark gap in the UK’s scale ecosystem. Using data to track outcomes, Superscalers connects and equips underrepresented founders already past £1M revenue to push through the next doublings — and to create more businesses that break through to £50M and beyond.

Favorite Quotes

• “It was literally a desk, a phone, and me.”
• “We built from there to over 50 million revenue and IPO listing.”
• “Those patterns are the doubling principle.”
• “It doesn’t come with 0.2 of a person.”
• “Who started here is not going to be who ends here.”
• “Assume everyone becomes an alumni.”
• “I’ve not worried about competitors, I worry about customers!"

Key Themes

Why ownership, vision, and incentives mattered — and how the MBO unlocked the next chapter of scale.

The ‘doubling principle’: Why growth compounds in leaps (1→2→4→8→16) and why teams/capability can’t be built in tiny increments.

Culture through constant change: Hiring for growth mindset — and accepting that different stages require different people and skill sets.

Exits as alumni, not endings: A practical approach to protecting culture by treating departures as ongoing relationships.

Christina LaMontagne on Scaling Healthcare with Conviction

Scaling in healthcare is never just about growth—it’s about trust, discipline, and conviction. In this 31st episode of ScaleApp Podcasts, I sat down with Christina to unpack what it really takes to build and scale a healthcare business that works for patients, parents, providers, and payers alike.

Christina’s journey is grounded in first principles. Before chasing growth, her team doubled down on unit economics, playbooks, and proof points. As she puts it, you have to “understand exactly how your model works before you deploy your Series A capital to scale it.” That discipline shaped every expansion decision that followed.

Rather than spreading thin, Christina embraced a land-and-expand strategy. The focus was narrow and intentional: one condition, one state, executed exceptionally well. Only once the model was proven did the company raise capital to scale further. This approach reduced risk, built credibility, and created a repeatable engine for growth.

A central theme of the conversation is the flywheel of trust. Expansion wasn’t just geographic—it was relational. By delivering consistently for pediatricians, the company earned trust that translated into referrals, relevance, and long-term value for families. Growth, in this model, compounds not through marketing spend, but through reliability.

Christina also challenges conventional thinking around Total Addressable Market in healthcare. With nearly half of U.S. children enrolled in Medicaid, she argues that true scale is impossible without serving the full population. Big outcomes require inclusive models—anything less leaves both impact and opportunity on the table.

Underlying it all is founder conviction. Christina doesn’t frame success around exits, but around inevitability—the belief that a solution must exist and therefore will exist. That mindset deepens over time, turning ambition into responsibility.

Her advice to her younger self captures the spirit of the episode: the audacity to build a completely different life is a founder’s superpower. Healthcare, she reminds us, offers no shortage of meaningful problems—and a lifetime of opportunity for those willing to solve them.

🔑 Key Themes

1. Scaling with Unit Economics First
2. Land-and-Expand as a Risk-Reduction Strategy
3. Trust as a Growth Flywheel
4. Rethinking TAM in Healthcare
5. Founder Conviction Over Exit Thinking
6. Healthcare as a Career-Long Opportunity Space

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