Startup Secrets

Founding partner of one of the world’s largest digital marketing agencies, angel investor, and father of 4 just in case he’s not busy enough! In this episode we chat with Matt Isaacs, Chairman of Essence … and it’s a beauty!   Matt co-founded Essence with his two friends and colleagues in 2005. After some seriously explosive growth (at one point growing tenfold within 3 years), and with turnover into the 100s of £millions, Essence were eventually acquired by WPP, the world’s largest marketing group. Essence focus on the paid media component of advertising, and across their 11 offices and 750 staff, they manage $1bn of digital media. Their customers (spanning 70 countries) include Google, The Financial Times, Universal Pictures, and eBay, just to name a few. What’s more impressive, they never received any external funding and managed this growth organically. We cover a whole heap of topics in this episode which I’ve listed below, and I personally found it very inspiring to see how a company can reach such heig