#5 Farhan Lalji “As an entrepreneur you shouldn’t get frightened by No”

We are joined by Principal at Anthemis Group, Farhan Lalji. Farhan talks us through, the art of building a company, but also how to exit a business, he gives us a history lesson on Whatsapp, Flickr, Yahoo, Slack, Shazam, Linkedin, the importance of understanding the customer and why your idea is worthless until you’ve got a proof-point.

Farhan is a Principal at Anthemis, where he leads the BBVA & Anthemis Venture Creation Partnership. He works with companies that are focused on evolving the digital finance and banking experience for consumers and companies. Previously, Farhan was a Partner at Rokk3r Labs, a global venture builder. He was also an executive at PeerIndex, a social media analytics platform that was acquired by Brandwatch in 2014, Yahoo! and various other startups and later-stage private companies.

When he is not geeking out on technology trends and their impact on society he’s listening to old school hip hop and watching or reading about NBA basketball.