How Joelle Frijters brought transparency into the advertising space with Improve Digital

What are some of the topics you can expect?

• How did Improve Digital raise their first round of funding?
• Why did Joelle make the 85% sale of Improve Digital to Swisscom?
• What is Joelle’s strategy for hiring the best talent?
• How would Joelle approach her ‘going abroad’ strategy if she had to make this choice today?
• What was the shift from founder to CEO like for Joelle?
• What is her advice for young entrepreneurs?

All these questions are covered within our new podcast episode. Available now on all major listening platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts.

08:33 - Joelle - “A lot of decisions in the VC industry are being taken based on a gut feeling - do I feel that this guy can scale it [the company] to a billion. And I am not sure if you are half pregnant, you are presenting a standard image of someone who will be able to work 80 hours a week and pushing things through the roof.”

15:35 - Joelle - “ When you don’t have enough money, you start to hire hands to help you. But you also need to hire people that can help you move the needle from A to B independently.”

19:02 - Joelle - “I never have the problem of hiring people better than myself. I think it’s actually a blessing if you can do it.”

31:37 - Joelle - “In hindsight, I would say: take one market and go in big.”

41:38 - Joelle - “Because we were two female founders, which is not very conventional, we also attracted a lot of unconventional profiles - and I think that it’s a hugely underused pool of people.” 

55:06 - Joelle - “The product is not what you sell, you need to use it to solve a challenge out there”.