Bits, Bytes and Business

Hosted by Bhairav Patel

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282

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Jul 2026

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About the show

Conversations with a range of business owners from across the globe that discuss the challenges, triumphs and failures that are faced when trying to build and grow a business. In addition we talk about the latest trends in tech and generally anything we feel is relevant for today's tech and business savvy audience The companies interviewed operate in a diverse set of industries and are of varying maturity from the new startup to the established multi-national. If you would like to take part in a podcast or would like to learn more then follow the link to Substack or LinkedIn and message us there

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60 recent

August 20, 202644 min

Start for Success with Jan Cavelle (replay)

Jan Cavelle returns to the show, this time with her new book Start for Success, the prequel to Scale for Success. Where a lot of startup books are written by people who raised a billion dollars in Silicon Valley, Jan's is built from the honest, often raw stories of real founders, including the smaller and less glamorous ones whose journeys actually resemble most people's. Bhairav and Jan work through the full arc of starting a business: why people really do it, why you still have to make money even with the most altruistic mission, and the fears, funding traps and hiring mistakes that catch founders out along the way. It's a candid, reassuring listen for anyone thinking about taking the plunge, or anyone already in it and second-guessing themselves. What We Cover Why Jan wrote a second book, and why the timing suits Start now The gap between the glamorised idea of entrepreneurship and the reality The real reasons people start businesses, and why yours only has to be good enough for you Why you are not running a charity: even mission-led businesses need a model that makes money Values and mission that are true to you, not written to impress others Co-founders versus going it alone, and treating a co-founder relationship like a marriage Fear of failure and imposter syndrome, including why success can make the doubt worse Starting small to overcome fear, and why failure is rarely as bad as you imagine Coaches versus mentors, and why a good mentor in your field is gold dust Incubators and accelerators: an unregulated, wildly variable industry worth researching hard Why founders neglect their own personal development, and why that is a mistake Funding myths, the reality of investor scrutiny, and the case for bootstrapping Hiring the right people at the right stage, and protecting culture as you grow Staying relevant amid constant change, and keeping the ChatGPT panic in perspective Key Takeaways Most people start a business for lifestyle, freedom or necessity, not to get rich. Know your real reason and own it. A business has to make money to survive, however altruistic the mission. Break-even helps a few people; profit lets you help many. Fear paralyses more founders than failure ever does, and the reality of failure is usually far milder than the fear of it. A mentor gives advice you can take or leave; a coach encourages you to run your own race. Neither should tell you exactly what to do, and neither knows everything. Raising funds is not a sign of success, and funded businesses are not automatically better ones. An investor is someone else looking over your shoulder. Hiring expensive people too early breaks things. Bring in the right people at the right stage, and protect your culture as it spreads. Links Start for Success and Scale for Success are available on Amazon in paperback, hardback and Kindle, and through the usual booksellers More from Jan, including links to the books, at jancavelle.co.uk

July 30, 202631 min

RWE: What do you really need to worry about when starting a business?

In this episode of Real World Entrepreneurship, Bhairav and Alan dig into a question every business owner wrestles with: what’s actually worth worrying about? Between cash flow, co-founders, market reception and the things you genuinely cannot see coming, it’s easy to spend energy in the wrong places. Alan and Bhairav talk through how they’ve each dealt with the unexpected over the years, including a deeply personal story from Alan about a cancer diagnosis that tested everything he believed about planning and control. What You Will Learn From Listening - A simple test for deciding whether something is actually worth worrying about - Why detailed planning gives a false sense of control, and why that’s not actually a problem - The difference between risks worth preparing for and risks not worth the effort - How COVID exposed which businesses could adapt and which couldn’t - Why Eisenhower’s two quotes on planning are more useful than any risk register - How Bhairav’s experience selling Atom challenged his own assumptions about strategy - Why founders should run a “hit by a bus” scenario on themselves, not just key staff - Alan’s personal account of being diagnosed with cancer two weeks after buying a company - What the “trough of disillusionment” is and why it hits most founders around six months in - How to tell the difference between problems worth carrying yourself and problems you can hand off

July 23, 202637 min

The Loneliness Economy: London vs The Valley

**About This Episode** Bhairav sits down with Ramit Mehta, founder of Commfy, a community marketplace app connecting individuals, organisers, venues and brands. Ramit shares his journey from Mumbai to Silicon Valley to London, why he left the US behind, and the thinking behind building a platform to fight rising loneliness and the disappearance of "third places." **What We Cover** - Ramit's winding career path: engineering at BITS Pilani, a master's at Duke, years in Silicon Valley business strategy and ops roles, including launching a gaming brand and doing Twitch talent work - Why he left the Bay Area for London: layoffs, US green card wait times, family, and health - Comparing work culture and diversity between Silicon Valley and London - The idea behind Commfy: a marketplace for real-life communities, built on co-creation and asset-based community development principles - The closure of youth centres and libraries in the UK, and what that means for community spaces - How Commfy plans to work with community organisers, venues, and brands - Ramit's advice to his younger self on anxiety, perfectionism, and self-acceptance **Key Takeaways** - Integration is not just about language. It's about finding your niche and your people, wherever you land. - Loneliness has been described as an epidemic, and shrinking "third places" (neither home nor work) are a big part of why. - Building community isn't just about ticketing or chat apps. It's about giving organisers real support and rewarding participation. - Being an immigrant twice shaped Ramit's thinking about what makes people feel like they belong somewhere. **Links** - Commfy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/commfy/ - Find Ramit Mehta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramitmehta/

July 21, 20264 min

Find Joy in the Process - Ramit Mehta Trailer

This is the trailer to the main event, this week's guest is Ramit Mehta, the founder of Commfy https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramitmehta

July 16, 202638 min

LLMs are the most overrated part of AI - Sanjay Rakshit

About This Episode Bhairav sits down with Sanjay Rakshit, now at Poppulo, for his third or fourth appearance on the show. The conversation was sparked by a quote Sanjay gave at DSE (the digital signage industry event run by Invidis): "LLMs are the most overrated part of AI." They unpack what that actually means, and dig into agents, agentic systems, context engineering, data fidelity, AGI, robotics, and the future of engineering jobs. What We Cover - What Sanjay meant by his "LLMs are overrated" quote, and the DSE event where he said it - The difference between an agent and a chatbot: agency, planning, and achieving an outcome versus reactive output - Where LLMs actually fit inside an agentic system (as one tool among many) - Why context engineering, not the LLM call, is where most of the real work happens - Data fidelity versus data quality, and why it matters more than raw data volume - The mathematics underpinning AI, and why understanding first principles beats following influencers - Quantum computing's potential impact on AI going forward - AI, jobs, and the "power tools" analogy for engineering productivity - Sanjay's take on AGI, and why he remains sceptical - Robotics versus AGI, and his work with the Bayes Institute in Scotland Key Takeaways - An agent is any entity that can think, plan, and act to achieve an outcome; a chatbot just responds - Roughly 70% of agentic system work is context generation and systems engineering, not the LLM call itself - Data fidelity (relevance to the use case) matters more than raw data quality - AGI scepticism rests on the argument that the brain's capacity may be too vast to model - AI is compressing the mechanical effort of coding, freeing engineers to focus on solving the actual problem Links Connect with Sanjay Rakshit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjay-rakshit/

July 14, 20263 min

Understand the Fundamentals - 5 Questions with Sanjay Rakshit

Sanjay is back! But this time he answers the famous five questions... https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjay-rakshit/

July 9, 202649 min

Position Alone Doesn’t Give You Authority with Mateo Bervejillo

Guest: Mateo Bervejillo, CEO of Xseed and author of Back to Basics Mateo started his career as an attorney in Uruguay before moving into outsourcing operations, growing into VP-level roles leading teams across the US, Uruguay and India, and eventually becoming CEO of Xseed, a LATAM software talent company he helped grow from five people to a hundred. He has spent two decades in the gap between being good at a job and being good at leading people who do that job. What we cover in this episode The conversation covers what actually happens when you get promoted into leadership for the first time, and why the skills that earned you the role are rarely the ones the role requires. We talk about inheriting teams versus building them, the mistake of leading by authority rather than trust, why scaling a business means changing how you work rather than just working more, and how to tell whether you are actually succeeding as a leader. Key topics and timestamps [00:02] Why a legal background can become a "business prevention syndrome" and how to get past it [08:00] The transition from corporate to entrepreneurship, and losing the fear of rejection [11:00] Building a network before you need it: your 20s, 30s and 40s [14:45] The book: what nobody tells you when they give you a team [19:50] Inheriting a team, taking it slowly, and giving people the right chance [22:30] Leading by authority versus leading by alignment [26:45] Building a team from scratch, cultural fit, and hiring for the stage you are actually at [29:00] Why unconscious bias in hiring is unavoidable, and how to design around it [33:50] Scaling and the player-coach problem: when letting go of the work feels like not working [41:00] Leadership myths: you are on camera constantly, and the little things matter more than you think [45:50] How to know if it is actually working: results, attrition and growth [48:00] Advice to his younger self: network outside the company, and start early Mentioned in this episode Back to Basics: Bridging the Gap Between Expectations and Preparation for the Leader Role by Mateo Bervejillo, available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback and hardcover. Also at www.xseed.com.uy/back-to-basics-book First Break All the Rules by Gallup (on employee motivation and engagement) Connect with Mateo Company: www.xseed.com.uy LinkedIn: search Mateo Bervejillo Email: mateobervejillo@gmail.com The Atom CTO Podcast is hosted by Bhairav Patel. New episodes cover technology, entrepreneurship and the people building things that matter. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

July 7, 20262 min

Prepare for an emotional rollercoaster - Mateo Bervejillo Trailer

This week's guest is Mateo Bervejilo - CEO of Exceed Solutions, who will be answering the famous 5 questions

July 2, 202644 min

Vibe Coding and Real World Problems: Why AI Still Needs a CTO

# Show Notes: Vibe Coding and Real World Problems: Why AI Still Needs a CTO **Guest:** Anuraag Jain, CTO, Executive Coach and Author **Website:** [growthvariable.com](https://www.growthvariable.com) **LinkedIn:** [Anuraag Jain](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuraagjain) --- ## About This Episode Anuraag Jain is a 30-year tech industry veteran who started as an Oracle DBA in India without an engineering degree and became a CTO in under nine years. He was the first developer hired at Betfair, where he built the betting exchange engine behind one of the era's biggest fintech IPOs, and served as CTO at The Hut Group (THG) during their run as the UK's fastest-growing tech company. In this episode, Bhairav and Anuraag talk honestly about vibe coding: what it can do, where it breaks down, and why thirty years of building things under pressure still matters in an AI-assisted world. --- ## What We Cover - How two non-traditional hires found their way into tech and why that background shaped how they build - The early days at Betfair: manual bet settlement, shoestring infrastructure, and recovering 36 hours of betting data from server log files at 2am - What scaling really means when you have no safety net - The 80/20 rule for vibe coding: what AI handles well and what still requires human judgment - Security blind spots in AI-generated code and why even experienced engineers get caught out - The hidden cost of running AI tooling against a large code base - Repo to Pitch: the open source tool that turns a code base into a full pitch deck and documentation suite - RepoWatch: how to track exactly what AI has changed in your code, commit by commit - *Prompt Engineering the Subconscious*: the book that connects AI prompting to mindset and reached the UK top 50 - What the fractional CTO market actually looks like right now, and the three types operating in it - Practical advice for anyone trying to break into tech or move toward a CTO role today --- ## Key Takeaways - AI can handle roughly 80% of what used to require a developer. The remaining 20% is the domain logic that requires someone who actually understands the problem. - The AI does not know which parts of your code cannot be touched. Unless you tell it, it will modify anything, and you may not notice until something breaks. - Vibe coding a product does not make it production-ready. Security, scalability, and edge-case logic still need human attention. - Building something real, however small, is still the best way to develop the judgment the CTO role requires. The tooling available now means there is no excuse not to. --- ## Links - Anuraag Jain on LinkedIn: [linkedin.com/in/anuraagjain](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuraagjain) - Growth Variable: [growthvariable.com](https://www.growthvariable.com) - Repo to Pitch (open source): [growthvariable.com/repotopitch.html](https://www.growthvariable.com/repotopitch.html) - RepoWatch: [growthvariable.com](https://www.growthvariable.com) - *Prompt Engineering the Subconscious*: [book.growthvariable.com](https://book.growthvariable.com) --- ## About the Atom CTO Podcast The Atom CTO Podcast, transitioning to Bits, Bytes and Business, features conversations with founders, CTOs and entrepreneurs about building technology businesses in the real world. Hosted by Bhairav Patel. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.