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Jimmy's Jobs of the Future

Steve O’Hear: The importance of journalism and how to pitch your business to the media.

Jimmy's Jobs of the Future

Boxlight Creative Studio

Careers, Business, Technology

5.01K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you're a tech founder in the last 10 years, you'll know who Steve O'Hear is. Chances are, you've even pitched him your business. Steve is best known for his 15 years as a technology and business journalist, including reporting for TechCrunch, covering European startups and venture capital. He was the first to write about the now household names of Deliveroo, Monzo and Transferwise. Steve is now the VP of Strategy at home-delivery brand Zapp.  Steve was born with muscular dystrophy and you'll hear in this episode how in the midst of the pandemic, this has shaped his mid-career switch from journalism to building the future of convenience retail. Someone at the top of their game and changing their career is a unique situation on the show. Whether you're looking to get into journalism or looking for strategy roles at upcoming startups, I'm incredibly excited to share this episode with you.  If you're interested to try Zapp, Jimmy's Jobs listeners can get £10 off when they spend £20 by using the code ZAPPJIMMY at checkout.We're not taking any commission from this link, we're just using it to test how many of you amazing listeners click through.In this episode with Steve we discuss: How he defines the job of a journalist and what the best route is to become one And how has the job of a journalist changed? When did people start coming to him with stories rather than the other way around? And how did he cultivate online relationships? When pitched dozens of businesses a day, what he looked for in the stories to cover. Famous stories that stuck with him and companies that weren’t successful that he thought might be Why he made the decision to leave journalism What is strategy and what is a Vice-President? The growth of Zapp and how to maintain a culture Where does the name come from? Why did he join Zapp specifically? Tips for working from home?  Different roles Zapp are hiring for and expansion plans for Zapp The future of Zapp and the scale of the problem it's tackling Why do we need this instant delivery? If Steve was 22 in 2022, where would he look to work? What more can we do to get disabled people into work? If you could go back in time to any point in history, when and where would it be? A tech-themed quickfire round Join the #SaveDerby campaign by using this template to email your MP and raise the issue with them- we've generated amazing support and have even had a question asked in parliament. Even if you're a casual football fan, local teams are the lifeblood of UK towns and it would be a travesty to let one of the oldest clubs in the UK fall into the history books.  Subscribe so you don't miss any new episodes, releasing every Wednesday.You can sign up to Jimmy's Substack here for weekly content on the future of work, technology, and politicsFor more information on partnering with us please visit our partnerships page here.Also make sure you subscribe to The Shift, you can find it here on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Heard about Magpie, the vegan pie truck that needed a bit of help from GoDaddy.

0:03.3

One day the owners are like,

0:04.8

this business hasn't reached this potential.

0:07.1

And the other one goes,

0:08.1

we need a bigger piece of the pie.

0:09.8

And then it hits her.

0:11.1

We need GoDaddy.

0:12.0

Look, we can get it the main name and create an online store

0:14.8

so we can sell to more customers.

0:16.8

Now they've gone from serving a couple of pies

0:19.1

to a vlogging nationwide.

0:20.9

And now everyone's like,

0:22.2

vegan pies are the new thing around here.

0:25.0

Wait, know me!

0:26.4

Till the next step on your business journey with GoDaddy.

0:37.4

Welcome to this episode of Jimmy's Jobs to the Future.

0:42.0

I mentioned briefly last week that I've been working

0:45.2

on the Save Derby County campaign.

0:48.0

I just wanted to let you know as we enter possibly the final week of that,

0:52.4

that we've been hosting various Twitter Town Hall evenings,

0:56.5

which is where I speak almost like a radio show

1:01.3

on the latest Save Derby County campaign updates.

...

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