Barbie-mania and start-up utopia in Paris

Mainly on My Business Leader Secret (MBLS) I'm interviewing CEOs and founders. But a few weeks back California-based toymaker Mattel got in touch with me to say their chief franchise officer was in town and would I be interested to meet? They had my contacts because I did an interview with their CEO Ynon Kreiz during the height of Barbie-mania in the summer of 2023. I thought it would be interesting to speak to someone who had inside knowledge of how the marketing and branding machine was put into action, to help Barbie dominate the cultural agenda.

You can see my quick video interview with Josh Silverman for Business Leader in the link below, but we had a 20-minute conversation which will come out in due course in podcast form. It's incredible that 165 brand partnerships were drawn up for the run up to the Barbie movie, with companies from GAP to Airbnb.

Next week's MBLS will be with a CEO again: Joanna Reynolds of The Folio Society Ltd . It's an experiment, as it will be a bit longer, closer to 3 minutes duration.

Station F in Paris

A few weeks ago I wrote in this newsletter about The Mail on Sunday newspaper running my feature about STATION F in Paris. It's the amazing building that houses 1,000 start-ups in a former railway freight depot, which is so big you could lie The Eiffel Tower flat in it.

This week I finally put out my video about it. You can watch it here:

I visited this place on my own, hosted by 法国EDHEC高等商学院 (you need a member to let you in, it's not open to the public). I produced this video report solo, mainly using my iPhone 15 Pro Max (but also an Insta360 camera and a DJI mobile gimbal). I'm going to reveal a bit about the technicalities behind this in some LinkedIn posts soon.

In the know...

Working at Business Leader I have my ear to the ground and hear a lot about interesting developments. There were quite a few to let you know about this week:

• Liverpool fashion business Tatti Lashes has just reported annual sales of ￡22m. I visited their operation last year to film a report, when I worked at BBC News, which you can see in this video. Best friends and co-founders Charlotte Tiplady and Elliot Barton are two of the most humble entrepreneurs I've met, but they've got a lot to be proud about.
• US VC firm Voyager Ventures is launching a London operation, which it says is a vote of confidence in European climate tech companies. Sarah Sclarsic and Sierra Peterson launched Voyager in 2021, it has offices in San Francisco and New York. It is one of the few venture capital firms founded and led by women.?It's first two oversubscribed funds, supported with $200m, focus on Seed and Series A-stage companies and have invested in 28 companies. It's a sign of more VC funds basing themselves in the UK, creating opportunities for UK start-ups.
• Microsoft revealed at its Ignite even this week more about its AI offer. This link details some of the new products. There's interesting detail about 'out-of-the-box' AI agents that can be set to work in organisations with minimal set-up. I've seen Copilot in action, which lets you customise your own agents to perform specific tasks within your business.
• Talking of AI and business, executive search firm and consultancy Heidrick & Struggles has just released a global survey of company board members, in conjunction with 欧洲工商管理学院 (INSEAD) and 波士顿谘询公司 . It found that only 36% feel prepared to leverage the disruptive potential of AI - there's definitely an anxiety amongst businesses of all sizes that they don't know how to capitalise on AI's potential. I recently did an interview with H&S's CEO Tom Monahan which will be in the next Business Leader magazine, out in December.
• You can still get early bird tickets for the Business Leader Summit in March 2025. It's aimed at medium-sized businesses who have aspirations to scale. I'll be there and there is a line up of great speakers too. Check out the website for more info and tickets.

Thanks for reading!

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