Great Business Minds

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here.
This week we are joined by one of the first people taking artificial intelligence into the boardroom of a multi-billion-dollar Asian giant.
 
Nguyen Xuan Phong is FPT Software’s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and an influential leader with vast managerial and technical experience.
 
From 2013 to 2021, Phong served as an AI researcher at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory, where he obtained 8 patents and was named among Top 50 young inventors.
 
He has also spent two years as Director of Data Science and AI Division at Tokyo Techies, two years as Hitachi’s representative, and four years as Visiting Researcher at the world’s largest AI research institute Mila (in Canada).
 
In 2018, Phong returned to Vietnam following the government’s Innovation Network program where He played an important role in the strategic partnership between FPT and Mila, with an aspiration to build a major AI hub in Vietnam.
 
Phong holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo and a Master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, two top-tier universities in the US and Japan.
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
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This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information.
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Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
 
GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here.
In this episode, we chat to an accomplished founder within the digital infrastructure landscape.
 
Philbert Shih is the Founder and Managing Director of Structure Research, an independent Toronto and Singapore-based research and consulting firm devoted to the cloud and data centre infrastructure services markets with a specialization in the hyperscale value chain.
 
He has covered the infrastructure services space for over 20 years. He is also the conference chair for the annual infra / STRUCTURE summit and heads up the Structure Research consulting practice, which has advised and provided subject matter expertise for transactions across data centre, cloud and managed hosting, with over $3 billion US dollars in value.
 
Prior to founding Structure Research, Philbert was the first hosting infrastructure analyst hired after Tier1 Research was sold to The 451 Group (2005) and spent six years as Senior Analyst for managed hosting and cloud.
 
Prior to joining Tier1 Research, he spent more than four years covering the web hosting industry – three of them as Senior Staff Writer for The Web Host Industry Review’s online and print publications.
 
Philbert holds an MA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia with a specialization in political economic development, and he joins GBM now from Canada’s largest city, Toronto.
 
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
 
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
 
See you soon!
 
///////////////////////
 
This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information.
 
///////////////////////
 
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
 
Official Website
 
LinkedIn
 
Facebook
 
Instagram
 
Twitter
 
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
GBM is brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here.
In this episode we speak with Rachel Turner, a transformative leadership advisor and coach with over twenty years of experience as a founder whisperer. Rachel is the co-founder of VC Talent Lab and coaches founders of VC-backed businesses, from blitzscaling tech companies to global consumer brands and professional services organizations.
In this episode, Rachel talks about her life journey, the experiences and people who have influenced her, and what motivates her in life. She also shares her thought process for generating new ideas and what she considers non-negotiable in business.
Rachel also sheds light on the characteristics and skills VC investors should look for in promising founders and business leaders. She explains why founder leadership skills are crucial to the long-term success of any business and shares specific challenges and struggles founders may face in the digital infrastructure industry, along with tips on how to survive the founder 'marathon' in the digital infrastructure sector.
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
///////////////////////
This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information.
///////////////////////
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
At Great Business Minds we would like to welcome our new sponsor for this year. GBM is now brought to you by Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly.  Wherever your legal or regulatory needs are (including outer space) Preiskel & Co LLP can support you, so do feel free to reach out to them here.
In this episode we get to talk to someone who is driving pure play investment into digital infrastructure across the board.
Richard Sem is a Partner and Head of Europe at global infrastructure fund Pantheon Infrastructure where he spearheads the Global Infrastructure and Real Assets Investment Team leading its European investment activity.
Founded in 1982, Pantheon has total assets under management and advice of $89 billion. Since 2009, the firm has completed more than 160 infrastructure investments alongside more than 50 asset sourcing partners. The global infrastructure investment team where our guest sits operates just south of $20 billion in assets.
Richard has 25 years of experience in infrastructure private equity, corporate finance and project finance at leading institutions including InfraRed Capital Partners, HSBC, ABN AMRO, and BNP Paribas.
Richard’s experience spans investing in primary, secondary, co-investments and direct investments across all infrastructure subsectors and global OECD markets.
He holds a Bachelor of Science and MBA from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and joins us from London.
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
///////////////////////
This episode features our commercial partner Preiskel & Co, a leading award-winning City of London law firm, internationally recognised for its expertise in the digital infrastructure industry as well as the telecoms and tech sector work more broadly. Visit www.preiskel.com for more information.
///////////////////////
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
 
Great Business Minds is brought to you by Portman Partners, the premiere executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.  With 50+ years of experience, no other firm can match their knowledge, discretion, and connections with the best top level talent in the sector.  Are you seeking great business minds for your digital infrastructure business? Contact Portman Partners.
 
In this first episode of 2023, we are joined by a special guest who is an expert in design, especially business design.
 
Mark Wilson is CEO at Futurestate Design, formerly known as Wilson Fletcher, a London-based business innovation consultancy which has over the last 20 years gained unique insights into challenges of driving transformative change in established organisations from their work with leading companies around the world.
A digital strategist with more than 30 years' experience Mark is also the author of 'Futurestate Design - how to step out of the past to create a business fit for the future', and a regular face on business changing platforms.
 
He has also founded Cronycle – a content intelligence platform – and authored an MSc in Digital Service Design with Brunel University.
 
As if that wasn’t enough, he is also an advisor to several startups giving them guidance on branding, positive transformation, and advice on market dynamics, always without forgetting the value of branding, consistency and visual language.
 
In this episode we discuss not only his journey through the years but also how design impacts a business and how digital infrastructure organisations can win better at the branding game, including quick actions that anyone can take today to up their branding resilience.
 
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
///////////////////////
This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.
///////////////////////
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
 
I’m your host Joao Marques Lima and I use my experience as a digital infrastructure journalist to dig deep into business issues but also get to know those who build our digital world.
 
Great Business Minds is brought to you by Portman Partners, the premiere executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.  With 50+ years of experience, no other firm can match their knowledge, discretion, and connections with the best top level talent in the sector.  Are you seeking great business minds for your digital infrastructure business? Contact Portman Partners at www.portmanpartners.com.
 
This week we have a special guest who is one of the world’s leading diversity and inclusion advocates in and out of the data centre space.
 
​Dr Terri Simpkin has enjoyed a successful career which spans global academic leadership, general management and human resources management in the private sector.
 
A forward thinking, industry experienced academic, Terri is invested in the examination of emerging leadership paradigms for the digital age. 
 
She is also an authority on the impostor phenomenon having researched both the personal impact and the implications of the phenomenon on diversity and productivity in organisations.
 
Terri works with bodies and individuals to establish a working suite of capabilities to better address the challenges of rapidly evolving organisational landscapes.
 
She has done so with a range of groups, including SMEs, large corporate clients, industry associations and government agencies for nearly two decades.
 
She is currently working within the digital infrastructure sector on workforce development, the diversity agenda and inclusion projects with a focus on emerging leadership challenges.
 
Terri today serves as a partner to Portman Partners having previously been the Higher and Further Education Principal at CNet Training and co-author of the world’s first and only Master’s Degree in Data Centre Leadership and Management.
 
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
 
///////////////////////
 
This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.
 
///////////////////////
 
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
I’m your host Joao Marques Lima and I use my experience as a digital infrastructure journalist to dig deep into business issues but also get to know those who build our digital world.
Great Business Minds is brought to you by Portman Partners, the premier executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry.  With 50+ years of experience, no other firm can match their knowledge, discretion, and connections with the best top-level talent in the sector. Are you seeking great business minds for your digital infrastructure business? Contact Portman Partners at www.portmanpartners.com.
This week we are joined by someone who I have been waiting to chat for a long time, not only for what he is building at the moment and where, but also for his slightly unusual background when compared to other data centre executives.
From Portugal, Afonso Salema is heading one of Europe’s largest data centre capital deployments as its chief executive. With a price tag of US$4.2 billion US Dollars, Start Campus’ project in Sines aims to create one of the largest European data centres and redesign how colocation and hosting is done.
In this episode we delve into Start Campus and the ins and outs of the venture and much more.
For background information, Afonso has a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon and has spent 15 years in investment banking in London, New York and Madrid, covering the renewable energy, energy and infrastructure sectors, having briefly worked for EDP between 2009 and 2011.
This deep dive into capital markets around the energy segment has given the executive an interesting advantage in the climate transition that every data centre operator is facing today as well as an exposure to different market challenges.
In this episode of GBM, we cover this as well as current topics around data centres becoming a utility, the looming economic recession and how the sector should not ignore the warning bells of Wall Street, and how to navigate the backlash against data centre developments in different geographies due to land, power or water usage.
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
 
///////////////////////
 
This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.
 
///////////////////////
 
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
 
Great Business Minds is brought to you in partnership with Portman Partners, the premier executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry. 
 
This week we are joined by cricket and tennis player Rajiv Ramaswami, who is also an accomplished Indian entrepreneur and chief executive of American cloud computing company Nutanix, a role he took on during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
 
He joined Nutanix from VMware, where he served as Chief Operating Officer of Products and Cloud Services.
 
Prior to this role, Rajiv led VMware’s Networking and Security business, one of the fastest-growing units in the company, as executive vice president and general manager.
 
Before joining VMware, he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure and Networking at Broadcom, where he established Broadcom as a leader in data center, enterprise, and carrier networking.
 
In his prior General Manager roles at Cisco, he led multibillion-dollar product lines in switching, data center and storage, and optical networking.
 
Earlier in his career, he held various leadership positions at Nortel, Tellabs, and IBM.
 
Rajiv earned his BTech in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology and his Master’s and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California in Berkeley.
 
He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow and holds 36 patents, mostly in optical networking, and joins GBM from his home in the Sunny State.
 
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
 
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
 
See you soon!
 
///////////////////////
 
This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.
 
///////////////////////
 
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
 
Great Business Minds is brought to you in partnership with Portman Partners, the premiere executive search firm for the digital infrastructure industry. 
 
In this episode we are joined by an industry titan who has leading experience in creating, scaling up, and exiting businesses delivering on high return rates.
 
Byrne Murphy is an entrepreneur with more than thirty years of operations in international development and investment. Three times he brought US concepts to Europe and grew start-up companies into US$1+ billion global enterprises.
 
After developing high-end mixed-use projects in Washington, DC in the 1980s and ‘90s, Byrne co-founded BAA-McArthurGlen, the company that imported the designer outlet concept to the UK and Europe. After opening the company’s Paris office in 1992, he led its expansion across Europe, resulting in more than US$1 billion in sales.
 
He then developed private residence clubs, starting with restoring Palazzo Tornabuoni, a 15th-century Medici palazzo in Florence, Italy. The Palazzo underwent a $250 million re-development and is now managed by The Four Seasons. In 2010, the project won Urban Land Institute’s prestigious Award of Excellence for EMEA.
 
More recently, he co-founded DigiPlex, a sustainable data centre business in the Nordics, with Bill Conway, the Co-founder of The Carlyle Group. The two have recently sold the operator to affiliates of IPI Partners, LLC, a global investment platform focused on cloud hosting and other technology and connectivity-related real assets.
 
Author of the award-winning book “Le Deal: How a Young American, in Business, in Love, and in Over His Head, Kick-Started a Multibillion-Dollar Industry in Europe”, Byrne also owns and runs Kitebrook Partners, a real estate development and investment company.
 
In his first major public interview since the DigiPlex transaction was announced in July 2021, Byrne shares with GBM the ins and outs of the deal, as well as his vision and projections for data centre and digital infrastructure investment across different regions.
 
Byrne also delves into his life journey, the ups and downs, and how he turned things around when things turned really bad.
 
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
 
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
 
See you soon!
 
///////////////////////
 
This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.
 
///////////////////////
 
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube

Welcome to another episode of the Great Business Minds podcast, the definitive show for the business of digital infrastructure.
Our guest in this episode is a successful entrepreneur who has spent the last decade building a business that is today valued at more than US$5 billion.
Felix Van de Maele has led data intelligence firm Collibra through record growth and is responsible for its global business strategy.
But prior to co-founding Collibra, he served as a researcher at the Semantics Technology and Applications Research Laboratory (STARLab) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he focused on ontology-focused crawlers for the semantic web and semantic data integration.
He holds a Master’s in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a Master's in General Management from the Vlerick Business School.
Outside his HQ, he is a big fan of kitesurfing and in 2019, Felix was named the EY Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in New York.
Here at the GBM podcast, we hope you enjoy this episode and do leave us a review and share it with your contacts. We invite you back again for the next episode with another big name in the digital infrastructure space.
If you want to get more from the definitive podcast for the business of digital infrastructure, make sure you subscribe to Great Business Minds.
See you soon!
 
 ///////////////////////
 
This episode features our commercial partner Portman Partners, the leading executive search firm working exclusively in the digital infrastructure sector. Visit www.portmanpartners.com for more information.
 
///////////////////////
 
Get more from the GBM Podcast on:
Official Website
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube