About Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia
UK Top 20 Business Show for today’s entrepreneur. Hosted by UK Top 20 Female Founder, Stephanie Melodia, Strategy & Tragedy spotlights the most authentic & interesting founder stories - featuring the good, the bad, and the ugly of building a business. With the purpose to inspire and educate entrepreneurs, guests also include subject matter experts such as top business strategists, marketers, and investors to help arm founders with the knowledge to succeed in business.
🧚♀️ Want Steph to mentor you? Apply for 1:1 founder coaching here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SAXdIlDj-Qvr0lr2r0mrUCDPdFdyTnkUgH2j82zZKsY/edit
Top 20 UK Business Host, Stephanie Melodia, shares her reflections on 120+ interviews from 2+ years of Strategy & Tragedy. From the top 3 observations of the most successful entrepreneurs interviewed to reflecting on core themes and the most common answer to the traditional closing question, 'What's one tragedy that taught you an unforgettable lesson?'
Steph also answers your questions, from avoiding burnout to best & worst advice from guests.
Interviews mentioned:
Varun Bhanot
Olivia Parkes
Thomas Panton
Jodie Cook
Timo Armoo
Maya Raichoora
Mike Bandar
Jonny Burch
Daniil Scherbakov
Deborah Williams
Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen
Jenny Quigley-Jones
Lottie Whyte
Farah Kabir
Simon Squibb
Nick Telson-Sillett
Authors and their books mentioned:
Energise by Simon Alexander Ong: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57951376-energize
Long Haul Leader by Chris Ducker : https://longhaulleader.com/
Stay in touch:
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stephmelodia/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephmelodia-keynotespeaker/
1 Apr 2026
Your mental fitness bootcamp with Maya Raichoora [REPLAY]
I'd LOVE to know, what resonated most with you here?
Get involved in the conversation:
🤍 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephmelodia/
🤍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephmelodia-keynotespeaker/
About the show:
Entrepreneurship is overly-glamorised, and there’s a lot to learn from the mistakes of others.
Strategy & Tragedy keeps it real; sharing the highs & lows, the strategies & tragedies, of other founders who have “made it.”
In addition to CEO interviews, we spotlight subject matter experts to help you on your entrepreneur journey.
Available on all major streaming platforms, now in the UK Top 20 Business Charts.
About Steph Melodia:
As ex-CEO of an award-winning marketing agency, Stephanie now hosts Strategy & Tragedy, advises MBA students with Oneday, coaches founders 1:1, and travels the world as an international keynote speaker on her signature subject of ‘Hacking Luck.’
She has delivered impactful sessions for household brand names including Qatar Airways, Soho House, WeTransfer, LinkedIn, Xero, Harvey Nash Group, Web Summit, and more - leaving audiences feeling inspired, motivated, and energised.
18 Mar 2026
From Deliveroo to deliverance: Entrepreneurship lessons with Jonny Burch, NearFuture AI
🧚♀️ Want Steph to mentor you? Apply for 1:1 founder coaching here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSchRTqGNNhrN8xph4Gh4RuVJNU_mc31cT8bl08nXRQeM6rd8Q/viewform
☕️ Get 25% off artisan half-caff coffee for a guilt-free cup at https://buzzcutcoffee.com/
Jonny Burch is a serial entrepreneur, early Deliveroo employee, exited founder, and now runs Near Future, an AI transformation consultancy for product and design teams. As a designer for nearly 20 years, Jonny is the founder of Progression, a career platform for which he raised $6m and exited in 2024, before exploring the AI transformation space by day and tinkering in his product studio by night.
In this conversation, Steph and Jonny discuss:
👉 Jonny's design background and how it's influenced his entrepreneurial journey
👉 Early days at Deliveroo and the unforgettable lessons learnt
👉 Finding product-market fit with his first venture - testing lots of ideas and parting ways with initial co-founders before landing on Progression
👉 Fundraising for Progression during the pandemic
👉 Exiting Progression and the shocking last-minute turn of events
👉 Founder life and soul-searching post-exit
👉 What Jonny's working on now (hint: it's in AI!)
🤖 Keen to accelerate your team’s AI adoption? Get in touch here: https://nearfuture.works/
I'd LOVE to know, what resonated most with you from this interview?
Get involved in the conversation:
🤍 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephmelodia/
🤍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephmelodia-keynotespeaker/
🎧 Don't forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share with a friend!
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[…] We were playing with older models like Bert, non -LLM models as well. We had always played as nerds, really, as understanding, well, we wanted to build something but it was always not quite good enough to do any of the fun things that we wanted to do, whether it was useful things or fun things. […]
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