The world's most important decisions deserve better intelligence.
ExecDNA is the Executive Intelligence company for founders, executives, board directors and investors, helping leaders make better decisions, accelerate their careers and build stronger organisations.
This podcast is where that intelligence comes to life. Each week, we sit down with CEOs, founders, board directors, investors and operators to have honest conversations about leadership, governance, AI, growth and what really happens when companies scale.
No theory. No recycled advice. Just the patterns, decisions and lessons th
What 30 Years in Big Tech Couldn't Teach Him About Becoming a Founder | Darren Crowder
After more than 30 years in enterprise technology, Darren Crowder walked away from the world he knew to build something completely different.
The catalyst was personal.
After struggling with changes to his skin and health, Darren found himself surrounded by half used products that had failed to solve the problem. He began researching ingredients, products and the evidence behind them, and what he discovered made him question how consumers make everyday health decisions.
That journey became Enbodie.
Darren had already built a global technology career across companies including Microsoft and TIBCO, working at the intersection of technology, customers and complex business challenges.
One of the decisions that accelerated his career was leaving an area where he was already successful and accepting an opportunity at Microsoft that forced him into a very different technology environment.
Years later, another question changed his trajectory again.
What was the biggest regret of his career?
His answer was that he had never built his own company.
That conversation became the beginning of Enbodie.
In this episode we explore career transformation, starting again after decades in corporate leadership, what Darren had to unlearn when becoming a founder, how he tested Enbodie with more than 500 people, what those customers taught him about product market fit, and why consumers often say they value sustainability but make very different decisions when price enters the equation.
We also discuss AI in healthcare, why Darren believes algorithms should have human and clinical oversight, how health information can be made easier to understand, and what building a business alongside his children has taught him about leadership, curiosity and relevance.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:37 The health problem that started Enbodie
02:12 The career decision that changed everything
04:40 Turning technology into business results
06:31 Why Darren finally left Big Tech
08:19 What he had to unlearn as a startup founder
09:58 Testing Enbodie with more than 500 people
12:19 What customers really taught him about sustainability
13:48 Where AI should stop in healthcare
15:51 Making complex health data understandable
17:50 Building Enbodie with his children
19:43 Darren's exact ExecDNA
21:20 Closing
Join the ExecDNA community:
https://www.execdna.com/join/community (https://www.execdna.com/join/community)
Mario Rivas
Founder of ExecDNA
Host of ExecDNA Podcast
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/)
Darren Crowder
Founder of Enbodie
Website:
https://www.enbodie.me (https://www.enbodie.me)
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcrowder (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcrowder)
Enbodie on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/enbodie (https://www.linkedin.com/company/enbodie)
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@Enbodie-me (https://www.youtube.com/@Enbodie-me)
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/enbodie.me/ (https://www.instagram.com/enbodie.me/)
Facebook:
Enbodie on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/people/EnbodieMe/61567471830432/?sk=about_details)
TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@enbodie.me (https://www.tiktok.com/@enbodie.me)
X:
https://x.com/enbodieme (https://x.com/enbodieme)
Blog:
https://www.enbodie.me/blog (https://www.enbodie.me/blog)
#execdna #leadership #entrepreneurship #healthtech #ai
27 Oct 2026
Who Do You Need to Become Next? Executive Reality Check, Chris March
A founder was about to make a £2 million project decision.
Chris March told him not to attend the meeting.
Why?
Because every important decision still depended on the founder.
Chris spent nearly two decades in travel leadership before becoming an executive advisor, helping founders build businesses that can operate without depending on them.
His leadership philosophy was shaped by much harder experiences.
When Covid shut down the travel industry, the company he was leading had to let go around 90% of its staff.
One conversation has stayed with him ever since.
A woman who was about to go on maternity leave begged him to keep her job. Chris stayed on the phone with her for around two hours, listening, explaining and trying to help her process what was happening.
That experience changed how he thinks about leadership.
In this conversation we explore founder dependency, delegation, decision making, hiring, leadership systems and why the desire to be indispensable can become one of the biggest constraints on growth.
The more valuable you are to the daily operation of your business, the less valuable the business may be without you.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:39 Removing the founder from a £2M decision
03:26 The decision that accelerated Chris's career
07:05 Laying off 90% of the team during Covid
08:30 The hardest phone call of his career
14:15 From operator to executive advisor
16:42 Why founders become the bottleneck
19:40 The ultimate test: can you take a month off?
20:52 When being indispensable damages business value
23:33 How to hire people you can genuinely delegate to
25:02 Chris's exact ExecDNA
27:05 Closing
Join the ExecDNA community and get early access to the platform:
https://www.execdna.com/join/community (https://www.execdna.com/join/community)
Mario Rivas
Founder of ExecDNA
Host of ExecDNA Podcast
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/)
Chris March
Executive Advisor
Founder of Chris March Advisory
Website:
http://christophermarch.com/ (http://christophermarch.com/)
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherrmarch/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherrmarch/)
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/chrismarchadvisory/ (https://www.instagram.com/chrismarchadvisory/)
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@chrismarchadvisory/ (https://www.youtube.com/@chrismarchadvisory/)
Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU?si=ce622db462c84839 (https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU?si=ce622db462c84839)
Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/execdna/id1847157416 (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/execdna/id1847157416)
#execdna #leadership #founder #delegation #businessgrowth
20 Oct 2026
He Worked at a $5.7B Startup. Then Had to Reinvent His Executive Career | Eric Grafstrom
He was at Broadcast.com before its $5.7 billion sale to Yahoo. A few years later he was out of work with two young children, and two days a week of consulting became a fractional executive career across more than 25 companies.
Join the ExecDNA community:
https://www.execdna.com/join/community?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=episode&utm_campaign=ep-eric-grafstrom&utm_content=description (https://www.execdna.com/join/community?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=episode&utm_campaign=ep-eric-grafstrom&utm_content=description)
Eric Grafstrom has spent 30 years in technology as a CEO, COO, founder and fractional executive, and his biggest lesson is that knowledge is getting cheaper while judgment is getting more valuable.
He started out making more than 50 cold calls a day selling webcasting when many computers had no speakers, watched Broadcast.com grow from an early internet experiment into a multibillion dollar acquisition, and went on to work for Yahoo in London and Silicon Valley, where his landmark deal was the messaging interoperability agreement between Yahoo and Microsoft.
In this conversation we cover why AI can make experienced executives more valuable, what human judgment gives leaders that technology cannot, why every future executive needs to learn sales, the mistakes smart CEOs keep repeating, why investor and founder priorities can conflict, what it takes to make layoff decisions, and why building something valuable matters more than building something impressive.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:09 Is the traditional executive career changing?
02:26 Does AI make experienced executives more valuable?
03:32 Why human judgment still matters
04:50 Broadcast.com and selling the early internet
06:46 From startup chaos to a $5.7B Yahoo acquisition
09:06 The Microsoft and Yahoo deal that raised the stakes
10:40 Losing his job with two young children
11:24 How he became a fractional executive
12:46 The hardest decisions leaders have to make
14:35 The mistakes smart CEOs keep repeating
17:13 Building something impressive versus something valuable
18:23 Why life experience matters in leadership
20:45 Eric's ExecDNA in three words
22:17 Closing
Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU?si=ce622db462c84839 (https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU?si=ce622db462c84839)
Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/execdna/id1847157416 (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/execdna/id1847157416)
Also available on Amazon Music.
Follow ExecDNA on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/execdna/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/execdna/)
Mario Rivas
Founder of ExecDNA and host of the ExecDNA Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/)
Eric Grafstrom
Fractional Executive and Startup Coach
Website: https://ericgrafstrom.com (https://ericgrafstrom.com)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericgrafstrom/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericgrafstrom/)
Startup Coaching: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startupcoacheric/ (https://www.linkedin.com/company/startupcoacheric/)
New episodes every Tuesday at 17:00 UK.
#execdna #fractionalexecutive #executivecareer #careerreinvention #futureofwork
Inside a recent episode
The Skill That Gets You Promoted Will Also Get You Fired | Navid Nazemian
Published 6 Jul 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And When I say it's being rewritten, I'm not speaking about incremental change. I am speaking about the biggest shift in leadership expectations in probably the last decade. So CEOs themselves actually say that they say the world has changed more in the past year than it has in the past 25 years. […]
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