logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2025
15m 27s

Decisions That Made Me: Sir Kenneth Olis...

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

At a time when coding and IT was in its infancy, Sir Kenneth fortuitously took a computer class to get out of cross country running; that choice would shape the rest of his life. From an internship at IBM, he later went on to a senior position at Wang laboratories, but then was fired after an unsuccessful management buyout. He eventually struck out on his own and founded two merchant banks. The entrepreneur talks to Evan Davis about the moment he was fired after trying to engineer a management buyout, and then what happened next.

Production team: Producers: Eleanor Harrison-Dengate Editor: Matt Willis Sound: John Scott Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison

Up next
Aug 21
Decisions That Made Me: Anthony Eskinazi (JustPark Founder)
When he finished university Anthony Eskinazi was destined for a graduate scheme with a top accountancy firm, but he couldn’t resist a business idea he’d had while trying to get to a baseball game during his gap year. The tech entrepreneur tells Evan Davis how he gave up job secur ... Show More
16m 1s
Aug 14
Decisions That Made Me: Joanna Jensen (Childs Farm Founder)
When an investor pulled the plug on a £3m cash injection for Joanna Jensen’s fledgling business, it could not have come at a worse time. The Childs Farm founder was just about to launch in two of the UK’s biggest high street stores, and was also going through a divorce and moving ... Show More
17m 10s
Aug 7
Decisions That Made Me: Nick Grey (Gtech, Founder and CEO)
When Nick Grey started his cordless vacuum business 20 years ago he took a big risk by handing a lot of control to a much bigger rival. The entrepreneur, who’d designed and built prototypes in his garage, tells Evan Davis about that decision and the moment he knew it had really p ... Show More
16m 58s
Recommended Episodes
Jul 2016
Acquired Episode 15: ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce) with Scott Dorsey
Ben and David return to make their first foray into enterprise software, covering Salesforce’s $2.5B acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013 with the help of special guest and ExactTarget cofounder & CEO, Scott Dorsey.   Technical note: due to an issue we didn’t catch during recording ... Show More
1h 16m
Dec 2024
S10 Bonus: Andrey Kudievskiy, Distillery
Andrey Kudievskiy has always been fascinated by technology, and when asked about himself, he identifies as an entrepreneur. He has been a software engineer, database developer, administrator and then jumped accidentally into management. Outside of his professional life, he is mar ... Show More
32m 58s
Sep 2024
Sam Altman: ChatGPT and the AI revolution
How is freshly minted billionaire Sam Altman shaping our future through his company OpenAI and ChatGPT? He made his fortune by investing in huge tech start-ups like Reddit and Airbnb, before turning his attention to artificial intelligence - being fired and re-hired by his own co ... Show More
45m 48s
May 26
Quitting Consulting to Buy a $1m SDE Agency
Register for the webinar:Buy a Business, Not a Fantasy: Addressing This Month’s 7 Most Common Buyer Concerns - Wed May 28th - https://bit.ly/43u7otoWhen Julia Hensel decided to pursue entrepreneurship, husband Grant helped her find a remote business with a great team.Topics in Gr ... Show More
1h 27m
Mar 2025
Sir James Dyson: Sucking up the cash
A blocked vacuum cleaner led to a billion-dollar idea for British inventor Sir James Dyson. After studying art, then reinventing the wheelbarrow, Dyson struck gold with his iconic bagless vacuum, but only after years of effort.BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Ts ... Show More
46m 26s
Sep 2024
Groupon and Descript: Andrew Mason
Andrew Mason was a 27-year-old with a degree in music when he co-founded one of the fastest growing companies of all time: Groupon. Its deep discounts on everything from sushi rolls to plastic surgery soon became a ubiquitous part of life in cities across the world. In 2011, just ... Show More
1h 11m
Sep 2024
Becoming a super IC: Lessons from 12 years as a PM individual contributor | Tal Raviv (Product Lead at Riverside)
Tal Raviv is a product manager at Riverside, where he joined as its first PM. Over his 12-year career as an individual contributor, Tal has been an early PM at Patreon, AppsFlyer, and Wix, working in consumer growth, developer API platforms, and pricing. He started his career by ... Show More
1h 31m
Mar 2025
Why do companies make terrible decisions? With Dan Davies
Modern industrial economies were made possible by automation and mass production, but also by something similar going on inside the world of management. Where once all the decisions were made by an identifiable boss, now they are farmed out to rule books, bureaucracies and comput ... Show More
32m 29s
Dec 2024
Behind the founder: Marc Benioff
Marc Benioff is the co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, the second-largest software company in the world. He started programming at age 15, selling his first program for $75, and went on to build Salesforce into a company worth more than $300 billion that also owns Slack, Tableau, ... Show More
57m 18s
Sep 2024
Zhang Yiming: TikTok’s tech boss
How did an unassuming software engineer become one of the richest people on the planet? This is the story of how Zhang Yiming transformed social media by creating TikTok, and how the Chinese tech company ByteDance became a multi-billion dollar business. BBC business editor Simon ... Show More
46m 55s