40 Minute Mentor

April 20, 2022

From Exiting Songkick To Tackling The Climate Crisis with Supercritical’s Michelle You

“Even if we electrify everything and switch to renewables and decarbonise – we still need to remove billions of tonnes of carbon from the sky because we have polluted so much.” 

Ahead of World Earth Day this week, we’re really excited to welcome Michelle You, Co-Founder of Songkick and Co-Founder and CEO of Supercritical, to 40 Minute Mentor. 

You might have heard of the popular concert ticket app Songkick before, which Michelle and her Co-Founders built to one of the most popular apps on the market. After a turbulent time navigating a lawsuit including winning an antitrust settlement from Ticketmaster, Michelle exited to Warner Music and reassessed her purpose and identity outside of Songkick. 

This journey led her to starting Supercritical – a software enabling businesses to measure, reduce and offset their climate impact in weeks, without the need for a sustainability team. 

We absolutely loved having Michelle on the podcast and can’t wait for you to listen to the incredible mentorship she shares in today’s episode, including: 

  • How she transitioned from studying Humanities to working in Tech [05:40] 
  • Why she started Songkick and how working in the industry has affected her relationship with music [07:56] 
  • The key lessons she learned from growing Songkick and the challenges she faced throughout [12:17] 
  • How she dealt with the grief and emotional exit from Songkick and how she found her passion to go again with Supercritical [15:17] 
  • The mission behind Supercritical and how Michelle and her team work with businesses to tackle the climate crisis [20:06] 
  • Michelle’s advice on what we can all do to offset our climate impact [31:28] 
  • What Supercritical are looking for when hiring talent [33:42] 
  • How Michelle managed to build a 50/50 cap table and her advice for anyone looking for more diverse investors [35:07] 

💙A big thank you to our Sponsors:

Chipper Cash – an African cross-border payments company trusted by over 4 million users. The team have been on an incredible expansion journey and is hiring for some exciting roles. If you want to be part of their mission to unlock global opportunities and connect Africa, one transaction at a time, head over to https://bit.ly/40mmsponsor to find out more.

️ Helpful links:

➡ ️To find out more about Supercritical, head to: https://gosupercritical.com/

➡ ️To learn more about Michelle, check out her LinkedIn profile at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleyou/

➡ ️Our episode with Chipper Cash’s Founder & CEO, Ham Serunjogi – https://jbmc.co.uk/insights/40-minute-mentor/unlocking-global-opportunities-with-chipper-cashs-ham-serunjogi/

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