Leadership Lessons from Scaling a Rocket Ship Scale Up with Ben Sanders

Today’s guest and our first 40 Minute Mentor of 2020 is the brilliant Ben Sanders, who is the MD for Europe at the Tech Scale Up Pollen.

Pollen, formerly known as Verve, is one of the top 10 fastest growing UK scale-ups and a global leader in word-of-mouth sales in the live entertainment and travel industries.

As MD for Europe, Ben leads a team of over 100 people, and he has played a key role in the growth of their marketplace, which has been turbo charged by a recent £70m Series C Funding round.

Ben started his career in Consulting at Bain & Company where he spent just under 5 years before pivoting into Fintech in 2014 with Worldpay. He was subsequently headhunted by the UK Digital Bank Pockit as COO in 2016, despite having no previous COO experience, and in that time achieved significant successes – scaling the team to over 70 people and winning multiple awards.

Ben has achieved some very impressive feats during his career, and it was great to get a chance to talk to him about his diverse experience so far (which has also included spending time as a Nightclub promoter) and share his advice for others who want to do the same.