Rita Kastrati - Founder - Pioneering People

Breakfast with changemakers 🥐 yesterday I met with Rita Kastrati 

Rita is the epitome of the meaning of startups and currently the CEO of Pioneering People and a voice of UN Women UK.

We spoke about:

- Building business for revenue. Imagine that! Coming from an entrepreneurial family, the idea of making revenue (and a profit) from day one is the norm. Using these principles in the world of tech helps shape how problems get solved, but importantly how to stay close to your customer. 

- Raising investment. There are still too many challenges in the space, but Rita really emphasised the importance of working through the change rather than waiting for change. Where the female founder land space is far from perfect, we simply don’t have 20 years to wait. 

Stories sell, transactions are capped.

- Holding investors accountable to the funding gap. It’s not just about funding allocation, it’s even just allocating more first calls and pitches. Few ideas here that would be great to come to life.

- Sales sales sales. Growing up in the world of high-end hospitality, selling and upselling is a skill. It’s not about selling drinks over the bar as a transaction, but rather getting guests to realise the experience they are buying into. Stories sell, transactions are capped.

- B2B vs B2C: there’s a lot of emphasis on B2B nowadays, but let’s not forget that B2C was the saviour for many during Covid. At the end of the day it’s all about distribution channels that increase revenue with strong ROIs rather than just comparing the benefits of business vs. consumer.

- Making boring businesses sexy. We spend too much time looking at the big, visionary tech ideas rather than the real world problems that need solving.

If you’re in hospitality looking for short term talent, speak to Rita!