Ep1 is live: The Truth About Business Awards | Rajeeb Dey MBE

Big news: we've left our risky pre-seed stage! :-)

Episode 1 of Very Important Business is now live. And we went straight in on one of the more controversial topics in the founder world: are business awards a genuine career catalyst — or a glorified pay-to-play distraction? Carl and Emily dig into it in Episode 1 of Very Important Business, joined by serial founder and MBE-holder Rajeeb Dey.

Rajeeb has been building companies since before most people had figured out what they want to do in life — founding his first at Oxford, going on to build Learnably, and picking up an MBE along the way. He's seen the awards world from every angle: as a winner, a judge, and a deeply sceptical observer.

In this episode

🏆 Which awards actually open doors — and which are just money-making factories? Rajeeb gives his honest verdict. (Hint: the spammy "you've been nominated!" emails are exactly as fake as they look)

🎮 Award or Fraud — we put Rajeeb through a quiz to see if he can tell the real gongs from the ones we completely made up. Are Grave Digger of the Year and the Golden Loo Seat Trophy real? Can he tell? You'll have to listen to find out.

👑 What happened when Emily went on stage to collect a Women in Business award — and Anne Widdecombe refused to hand it over?!

🫠 Founder Fails: what happened when a founder turned up to a crucial investor pitch with a massively embarrassing wardrobe malfunction?

And Tom Warner from Warner's Distillery with a very direct (aka massively sweary) take on the gin awards industry… ..loving the passion.

---

🎧 Listen now: vib.show/content/listen

📱 Join the VIB WhatsApp community: chat.whatsapp.com

✉️ Subscribe for new episodes at vib.show