Business Reputation: Take control of it!

Cass alumnus, Alberto Lopez-Valenzuela, Founder and CEO of Alva, was the guest in the first of a new series of EntrepreneursTalk@Cass for this academic year

EntrepreneursTalk@Cass (in partnership with Thomson Reuters) are intimate, in-depth interviews with some of the UK’s most innovative and inspirational tech entrepreneurs. They are conducted by Axel Threlfall, Reuters Editor-at-Large based in London.

Alberto Lopez-Valenzuela is Founder and CEO of Alva, an intelligence platform for reputation analytics. Alberto is a Cass alumnus (EMBA, 2000) and has worked in the analytics and business information industry for the last 20 years. Prior to Alva, Alberto worked for the management consultancy PA Consulting and global media companies such as Cision and Datamonitor plc, where he held different senior management roles.

Alva is an online platform that allows businesses to better understand and monitor what’s being said about them across the millions of publicly available pieces of content being produced every day. This knowledge enables them to make better-informed decisions and drive positive change.

During the interview, Alberto Lopez-Valenzuela explained how support from the Cass Entrepreneurship Fund was crucial in growing his business.

“I think it was partly about the idea and partly about the market opportunity but mainly about the team and the passion that we had.  The reality is that they invested in us – they thought these three guys can make it happen”.

When asked how much luck plays a role in success, he told Threfall:

“You just see the tip of the iceberg. Underneath is a lot of work that goes in to it.  There is an element of luck but if you don’t do the basics, if you don’t do the hard work, you’ll get nowhere.

“Entrepreneurship is a great, great thing to do but you have to be massively resilient, you have to have an obsession to actually make it work and you are going to be tested so many times.  When you are faced with challenges, my advice is always roll with it and carry on - you just have to ride the storm”.

Aurore Hochard, Head of Entrepreneurship Programmes at Cass Business School, said it was great welcoming Alberto back to Cass and gaining an insight into his career progression since he graduated in 2001.

“Hearing the ups and downs Alberto and his team at Alva have gone through since the company was founded was also refreshing and hopefully it will inspire more students to follow his path”.

The next EntrepreneursTalk@Cass is on 13^th March 2017 and our guest is Julien Callède, founder of Made.com.