This week on the Business Beyond Borders podcast, I interviewed Alicia Navarro – CEO and Co-Founder of London-based Skimlinks.

Skimlinks is a content monetization platform, that helps online publishers make money and gain insights from their commerce-related content. Alicia launched her company in 2006 under a different guise – it began as a social decision-making tool, and evolved several times before it became Skimlinks.

Tune in to my interview with Alicia to find out:

• Her experience moving to London as a penniless entrepreneur to work on her startup idea
• How she pivoted her business three times before arriving at the idea of Skimlinks
• How her product management background helped her to pitch her business idea countless times and improve it everytime she was rejected
• How she managed to raise a seed round in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis
• How Skimlinks now facilitates more than $1 billion in sales for its publishing clients every year
• How Skimlinks leveraged its existing client based to win new clients and expand into the US
• The decision-making process that Alicia used to set up an office in San Francisco and then eventually move it to New York
• How Skimlinks’ company culture began organically, and the steps Alicia took to codify and embed it more deeply into the business over time

I’d describe Alicia as a super-smart, super personable, “geek girl” and born serial entrepreneur. She won a university medal in computing, but instead of becoming a corporate gun, she started her own thing …. A number of times.

She’s fast-paced, she’s flexible and she’s resilient. When things get tough Alicia takes a different direction, but she never gives up. And she doesn’t see being female as any kind of impediment to her success.

I was inspired and humbled to hear Alicia talk about building her company – starting while she was living out of a suitcase in London,and where she has taken Skimlinks from there.

There are so many relevant and pithy bits to this interview – it’s essential listening for anyone, male or female who’s on the entrepreneurial journey.