In this episode of the Founders & Funding Podcast, Philip Smith speaks with James Robson, Founder and CEO of Fund Onion, a UK commercial finance brokerage evolving into an investment bank for small and medium-sized businesses. James shares the full arc of the business, from a failed comparison platform built on a WordPress site with almost no capital, through a pivot into brokerage, to becoming one of the largest players in unsecured lending for its niche. He talks about why Fund Onion has nev

In this episode of the Founders & Funding Podcast, Philip Smith speaks with Mark McCarthy, Founder of How You Doing, a new app built to help people with their mental health and get the help they need. Drawing on seven years of frontline experience with An Garda Síochána, Mark explains why he wanted to bridge the gap between people struggling in silence and the friends and family who would want to help. He talks about the app's features, including a positive news feed, daily mood journaling, tru

In this episode of the Founders & Funding Podcast, Philip Smith speaks with Eoin, Co-founder and CEO of Trace. Eoin shares how a problem he watched his college friends struggle with, burning through AI subscription credits within hours because of inefficient prompting, turned into a company tackling the same issue at enterprise scale. He talks about bootstrapping Trace alongside a part-time job and a degree at UCC, recruiting his co-founder by physically tracking him down in a Cork shop, and wh