Founder Focus Ep 5: Claudia Smith and Russell Smith of APLYiD.com

Today we chat with the cofounding team of APLYiD, Claudia Smith and Russell Smith.

https://go.tribeglobal.vc/podcast/episode-12-Russell_Claudia_APLYiD 

APLYiD is a portfolio company of Tribe, and provides world class KYC and AML solutions.

Claudia and Russell talk about their path to creating APLYiD which wasn’t their first entrepreneurial venture together – a repeating pattern we see in many successful co-founder relationships.

We talk about their decision to expand out of their first market, New Zealand, into the UK and the challenges they struck in this go-to-market strategy. As we have seen with other founders we have talked with on the podcast, what worked in their first market, didn’t necessarily work in their second. Claudia and Russel talk about what they learned, and what they would do differently with the benefit of hindsight. But as the podcast shows, they seek to learn quickly and fine tune as they go.

We talk about the temptation to scale sales teams too early before the marketing machine is really humming, as well as some growing pains associated with bringing investors, including us, on board.

We know it’s often challenging when founders bring on VC investors for the first time, and Claudia and Russell talk openly about the frictions they experienced. It was a reminder for us that people can experience the same event differently and we see this as an opportunity to look at what we can do to better support our portfolio companies in this transition.

This discussion goes into the role of an independent Chairman, and Claudia's and Russell's perception of the difference it has made to better supporting them and their team.

We hope you enjoy this episode, and as usual, we’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.

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