RefNow - Employment Reference Checks

RefNow is revolutionizing the way HR teams and recruiters collect employment references with our cutting-edge online platform. With over 12,000 satisfied clients, we've streamlined the process, allowing references to be collected in under 30 seconds. Our platform is scalable and suitable for businesses of all sizes. With our free option, you can request references from up to 5 candidates, and if you require more, we offer flexible plans to meet your specific needs.

Sign up today at https://refnow.com and experience the future of employment referencing.

Co-Founder and Co-CEO

Bally's Interactive

Senior Software Engineer

Gamesys

Software Engineer

Graduate Software Engineer

iTradeNetwork, Inc.

iTradeNetwork Europe provide SaaS hospitality management for large businesses inside and outside of the UK.

Graduate Software Developer

Games Inc

Internship at GamesInc providing Quality Assurance tests for a company that produces gaming platforms for the distribution and usability across HTML5 and flash based systems including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

Software Quality Assurance Engineer

Camps Kenwood & Evergreen

Worked as a general counsellor looking after children ranging from 7-15 years of age (specifically 13-14 year old boys). Engaging in activities and camp trips throughout a period of 7 weeks making the experience for them both exciting and rewarding.

My working experience as a general counsellor has allowed for greater improvement with personal and communication skills with people from around the world. It has opened up a realm of contacts and friendships that will always provide opportunities.

Responsibilities:

•	Leadership
•	Communication
•	Honesty
•	Reliability
•	Teamwork

General Counsellor

3-month Internship working within the field of quality assurance testing and ensuring that products had been developed correctly and excluded any sign of technical bugs that could affect consumers. The internship involved online slot machine gaming and required a high level of detail and constant attention to guarantee the finest quality in online gaming.

Software Quality Assurance Intern

As an experienced software engineer, I have had the opportunity to work on captivating user experiences that foster strong engagement and a sense of belonging.

I am the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of RefNow, an automated referencing platform. At RefNow, we focus on revolutionising the recruitment process and providing an unparalleled user experience, ensuring a seamless and efficient journey for candidates, referees, and hiring managers alike. Our platform simplifies reference checks, saving valuable time for all parties involved.

Recognising the significance of community in driving user satisfaction and loyalty, I have witnessed firsthand how it can enhance retention strategies.

My passion lies in building websites, problem-solving, and generating innovative ideas. While I may not be an AI expert, I am deeply intrigued by its potential and eager to expand my knowledge in this rapidly evolving field.

If you share my enthusiasm for optimising recruitment processes, fostering engaging communities, or exploring the possibilities of AI, I would love to connect. I am always seeking opportunities to collaborate, learn, and make a positive impact.

Ben Adams

Aikido Security

Building the next 🇧🇪 🇪🇺 🦄. Join us!

Aikido is a dev-friendly software security platform. Used by CTOs, CISOs and dev teams such as Niantic, Soundcloud, n8n, LexisNexis, Visma, Cabinet Office, Mont Blanc, GoCardless and 1k+ more.

Code-to-cloud scanning done 15+ different ways. Catch 85% of your false positives. Devs spend less time triaging, more time shipping.

Get started for free: https://app.aikido.dev/. No strings attached.

Raised $25 mil <18 months since inception. Backed by Singular VC, Notion Capital, Connect Ventures, Vanta's CEO and Google's ex-CFO.

Sales performance:
- Highest billing rep in FY25 (to date)
- First rep ever to hit €1M+ in net new/expansion ARR
- Consistent sales team over-performance each quarter
- Results vs target: Q1 164%, Q2 147%, Q3 144%

VP Revenue - EMEA & APAC

- Joined at <10 employees, <$250k ARR
- First remote sales hire for Aikido
- Worked with founders & team to grow to $5M+ ARR within 12 months
- Supported all major aspects of GTM growth (hiring, prospecting, playbooks, coaching)
- Ran multiple events, conferences and partner sales to lay ground work for FY25+ growth
- Highest billing rep in FY24 (Results vs target: Q1 96%, Q2 115%, Q3 66%, 211%)

Revenue Lead - UKI & Global Sales

Filtered

Learning tech for over 1m global users at companies like: P&G, AstraZeneca, GSK, Novartis, Danone, Novo Nordisk, Shell, the NHS, and many more.

By using the data you already have, combined with our human- and AI-powered technology, we filter out wasted learning spend and crappy content, help personalize learning to your organization's actual needs, and amplify that across your entire workforce.

Our customers realize real $$$ savings from day 1 (up to 50%), 10x faster curation, and significantly better LXP and LMS experiences. And we're bloody good at it!

Co-Founder

- Taking over a CS function of zero CSMs as we pivoted our business to a new category
- Running all AM duties across 30+ enterprise accounts and taking on full quota responsibility (£MMs)
- Planning account mapping, expansions, renewals, territory management & full cycle revenue mgt
- FY22 results (to quota): Q1 105%, Q2 122% (2nd highest booking period in the company's 13+ year history; remaining top five periods also under my stewardship (FY20/21))
- Within 6 months, re-established CSM function by evolving the careers of our IMs into CSMs
- 100% logo retention of new product; 95% logo retention of legacy product; 135%+ NRR
- New & improved processes across: sales handoffs; pricing models; professional services; customer & MI reporting; product feedback; sales intelligence; account management

Co-founder & Chief Customer Officer

- FY20/21: Oversaw CS function; team achieved 120% to quota (unrevised during covid): Q1 97%, Q2 140%, Q3 126%, Q4 104% (including the top 4/5 quarters by bookings in the company's 13+ year history)
- Retained all major logos, and creatively upsold through new products, features, licences and partnerships; setting up the business to successfully pivot to a new product/sub-category in FY21
- Sold into blue-chip organisations by multi-threading C-level execs and securing company’s largest ever multi-year contract £MM+
- Developed pipeline to support new logo acquisition in FY21
- Grew both functions 3x and created a progression framework to attract, retain and develop staff
- Implemented executive, sales and customer training programmes, reading groups and sales frameworks to build an optimal CS and ops function
- Setup systems to proactively monitor under-utilised accounts, user engagement or new corporate initiatives for cross/upsell opportunities
- Oversaw ops & CS functions during covid and stabilised cashflows through revenue growth and refinancing (renegotiated contracts, payment terms and Innovate Grant/Loan funding)

Co-founder & COO

- Co-led (with CEO) on corporate strategy to secure company’s first rounds of seed funding in both equity and convertible notes (Jan 2016-Jun 2018)
- Created new workflows to support an evolving team as we pivoted to B2B-enterprise sales and developed an AI-based LXP; first-to-market with learning recommendations
- Acquired new B2B enterprise logos (2017) and built post-sales infrastructure to support these early customers (2018)
- Won a place for Filtered on Startup 500’s founder bootcamp in SF (Sep 2018)
- Secured and led on loan financing (Dec 2018) and then series A (Jul 2019); taking total funding to date $5m+

Co-founder & Head of Operations

Travelled around SE Asia, New Zealand and the US

Co-founder & Director (on sabbatical)

- Created and launched from scratch a brand-new B2B brand (Filtered) to take our B2C off-the-shelf library success into large corporate businesses
- Oversaw all ops, marketing and product/engineering functions, introducing new processes such as Agile, scrum, hifi/lofi prototyping, and emerging technologies such as Hubspot marketing/CRM, Customer.io, Heal, Algolia and many others
- Led on establishing the company’s first recurring revenue base of customers, going from £0 to £600k ARR in <6 months, and minimal acquisition/expansion spend

Co-founder & Head of Product

- Prototyped and innovated a novel approach to algorithmic, adaptive online learning, US-patent approved algorithm: "Computer systems and computer-implemented methods for providing training content to a user"; United States No 14/540395.
- First-to-market online training courses through daily deal sites, growing revenues from $0 to $5m+ in <24 months building a profitable, bootstrapped startup
- Launched multilingual, global products across all time zones, setup CS, support, finance, ops/people functions from scratch, growing team from three founders to 35+ staff in <18 months

Co-founder

Revenue Syndicate

The Revenue Syndicate is Europe’s first investment community and angel investment syndicate built for go-to-market operators in the European tech industry. Our 500+ exclusive members are some of the best go-to-market practitioners in Europe and are driving the growth of the fastest growing companies in the world.

Investor

Replicate Labs

Replicate helps sales teams understand their buyers better.

Instead of using outdated personas, Replicate creates dynamic, real-time personas that evolve with new data from LinkedIn, podcasts, calls, and emails. You can view these personas to see how they change, interact with them for research and feedback, or role-play any sales scenario to practice and get targeted coaching.

With powerful analytics to see if using these personas lead to real-world improvements in sales behaviour and business impact.

Backed by Emerge Education, Revenue Syndicate, SFC Capital and Al Newman. Official partners of ValueSelling Associates and Salesloft.

Odin

Odin is building a better way to invest together. Our first product is a relationship-focused, community-centric investment marketplace, which gives you access to the best private markets investments and allows more people to participate in building the future.

Foundy

Find out why thousands of other business buyers and founders use Foundy for a streamlined, transparent acquisition process. Sell your business via Foundy's end-to-end platform

Honest Mobile

Changing Mobile for Good. Good for you. Good for the planet.

Uhubs

On a mission to enable 1 billion people realise their potential by 2030. We started by improving the performance of Sales and Marketing teams.

Flexa

Led and built a revenue function which hit record-breaking months and quarters, acquired a flurry of MM and enterprise logos and established itself as a recognised player in the Employer Branding space.

New logos acquired include: Microsoft, Mondelez (owners of Cadbury's), TUI, Centrica, MoneySuperMarket, Trainline, Not On The High Street, Motorway and 50+ others.

Highlights & results include:

- Results: Achieved 2.5x ARR growth in 9 months
- ACV: 10x growth from £1.5k to £15k (inc 3x largest deals)
- New logos: 55+ new logos acquired, inc 5x enterprise
- Retention: 125% NRR and 100% GRR (Tier 1 logos)
- Satisfaction: Achieved 4.8/5* on G2 in <3 months (no prior presence)
- ICP: Evolved our value prop to accelerate our up-market motion (from VSBs to MM and Enterprise)
- Team: Setting up a revenue function of SDRs, AEs, CSMs & AMs, with career progression plans

- Stack: Fully setup Hubspot CRM & Marketing, Apollo.io and Gong in <3 weeks
- Process: Pipeline reviews, SPICED sales framework, deal management, deal desks and new contracts
- Customer Success: Established Time-To-Value metrics & monitoring, implemented a proactive programme of "always-on" customer marketing, case studies and testimonials via our CSMs
- Commissions: Created new quotas and commissions schemes for all roles in the function
- Marketing: Ran mixed format events, including first industry conference (10x cost outlay recovered through 3x new deals within 3 months)
- IC contribution: Led from the front, ran my own deals and carried my own quota

Chief Revenue Officer

âcasă - your home run

Financial management platform for the home. Invested at seed stage.

Experienced startup operator, investor and advisor on all things revenue and GTM.

Hired 300+ people over the years, created startups that have grown to £MM's in recurring revenue, and led teams of all sizes at the startup - series B phases.

I'm in my comfort zone when I'm working in high-performing and high-trust teams, where we expend the effort to go and visit our customers, understand their worlds and do our best to help them. I'm a deeply empathetic leader who invests a lot of time in my teams. Whether it's working as an SDR, AE, CSM or AM, or the wider organisation, I always lead from the front. And let my teams grow and develop.

Also an angel (seed) investor in a range of UK startups (solo seed and via syndicate) & Venture Fellow on the Newton Venture Program (LBS, LocalGlobe).

Vinit Patel

Two years ago I shot my shot. 🏀 🏀 🏀

I got two separate investor mailshots (Notion Capital and Connect Ventures) in the space of two weeks about how they'd bankrolled a $5m seed round into a tinnyyyyy ass Belgian startup with 6 people in it.

These were two funds I'd tried to raise from for years and had no luck!

And on top of that some super angels like Christina Cacioppo (Vanta CEO) + former Google and Deliveroo execs + others also participated.

I was like:
"who the hell are these Aikido guys?"
"how da f did they do that in <1 year?"
"i need to be a part of this!"

10 mins later I sent this email.
A few mins after that, I got an immediate response.
Damn these guys were fast.
My kinda people.

We spoke.
I did a mock demo.
And had to learn about this thing called "application security".
FAST.

And the rest is history.

I joined at <$250k ARR.
We're now at $XXm+ ARR and growing fast.

Team has grown from 6 to 160.
We'll touch 200 soon.

From the 160.
About 20 of us are ex-founders with something to prove!

The best part:

Our founders (Willem, Roeland, Felix) are just as obsessed as at day 1

Our team is just obsessed about delighting ALL customers (big or small) as if they’re our first.

We’re fortunate to count the likes of Revolut, n8n, Visma, Niantic, Inc., GoCardless, Allica Bank, ClearBank, Montblanc, SoundCloud and nearly 2k+ others as customers (1,800 of them joined in last 2 years alone).

We have many open roles across entire biz.

Meet my friend Jarno Broodcoorens: at aikido.dev/meetjarno

We’ve only just started!

Aikido Security. 

PS - lol, I love a PS. Even bigger news dropping soon. Watch this space.

Vinit Patel 🛡️

No bullsh*t security for devs 🛡️ | Rev Leader @ Aikido | Recovering Founder | Investor

you just need this:

"Safe-chain: Exiting without installing malicious package"

the second you try to pre-install a malicious package from NPM

you are IMMEDIATELY blocked. ❌ 
no ifs, no buts.

and every dev can run Safe Chain for FREE. completely free.
no ifs, no buts.

if you're not using Safe Chain, you're exposing yourself to a serious attack vector for no upside. all downside.

still not convinced?

go read what we discovered today at Aikido Security and which affected c. 500 packages / 100 millions monthly downloads

including from some reputable, first-class maintainers including Zapier, ENS, AsyncAPI, PostHog, Browserbase, and Postman

Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ea9f6Exf

Install Safe Chain now (yes, $0 forever!): https://lnkd.in/eZrRahs6

Malware detection is a race against time. Be first OR be good.

When we're first = we publish, inform & spread the word. Fast.

When we're not = we follow, we support, we help. Generously.

We're proud of our amazing research team. Unsung heroes!

Kudos to Wiz and StepSecurity who did reach out to confirm and credit our research & researchers.

Important point here is that...

Sha1-Hulud Strikes Again was confirmed by Aikido Security on Nov 24th 03:16:26 (GMT+0).

If you found it before us - tell us, and share the evidence.

If you didn't - join us in informing others and give us credit for it.

Our Malware Intel feed runs on 5m+ popular packages EVERY DAY and we notice weirddddd sh*t all day long:

⚠️ Intentionally malicious by design. Packages deliberately created to steal data or compromise systems

🔡 Typosquatting. Malicious packages with names similar to popular legitimate packages

🐍 Dependency Poisoning. Injecting malicious code into legitimate package dependencies

🔥 Compromised Accounts. Attackers gain access to legitimate maintainer accounts to push malicious updates.

💩 Dodgy updates. Previously safe packages that introduce malicious code in later versions

We scan, triage and notify these with manual, human research every day
Today was a full on day for our brilliant research & eng team

And it's ONLY one of 15+ core capabilities of ours at Aikido Security

I'm damn proud of our team who do all this and more.

You can also block all this nasty stuff with Safe Chain!
(completely free for you to use)

https://lnkd.in/e7qpQNYd

====

Less impressed when others that just post as if they found it without even mentioning the original researcher. Not even once. Anywhere.

Open article: Aikido Intel- Open Source Threat Intelligence by intel.aikido.dev

Aikido Intel- Open Source Threat Intelligence

We compete with some of these BUT
We also ALL wanna stop the baddies too!

Huge shout out to the incredible researchers and teams at the below (and more).

This is an exceptional community! Round up:

Aikido Security > https://lnkd.in/ea9f6Exf

Wiz > https://lnkd.in/ekf2hB3V

Snyk > https://lnkd.in/ebvPsfsy

GitGuardian > https://lnkd.in/eVsDqeCF

Datadog > https://lnkd.in/eESADC-G

Sonatype > https://lnkd.in/ect5n-UR

Sola Security > https://lnkd.in/eGjUDwvz

Harness > https://lnkd.in/ekzSSSCM

Endor Labs > https://lnkd.in/eq6Tninr

Upwind Security > https://lnkd.in/eDrUf7V4

And of course always wrap your npm pre-installs with Safe Chain

https://lnkd.in/eZrRahs6

New vuln in your dev AI agents found by Aikido Security

If you're a dev building with Claude Code (Anthropic), Codex (OpenAI), Gemini (Google) or AI Inference (GitHub) then read this.

Attackers can submit crafted issues/PRs that trick the AI into executing privileged GitHub CLI commands- leaking secrets or modifying CI/CD workflows.

⚠️ 🚨 Introducing PromptPwnd: A new vulnerability class affecting AI agents in GitHub Actions

What we found:

 • Confirmed exposure in FIVE Fortune 500 companies
 • Google’s Gemini CLI repository was also impacted (now fixed)
 • Vulnerability pattern is already present in real-world workflows
 • Likely affects many more organisations using AI agents in CI/CDIf you use AI agents in GitHub Actions/GitLab CI/CD check your pipelines immediately.

Recommendations:
1/ Remove or restrict privileged tools available to AI agents
2/ Never send untrusted PR/issue content directly into AI prompts
3/ Treat AI-generated output as untrusted code
4/ Limit the blast radius of GitHub tokens (IP-restricted tokens recommended)

👉 How to check if you are affected:
1) Scan your GitHub Action files using Opengrep (Aikido provides rules: https://lnkd.in/dnrEqjdM)

2) Use Aikido Security, which automatically identifies unsafe AI prompt flows in the free tier

Full research by Rein Daelman is here: https://lnkd.in/ehkkvF9U

Open article: Prompt Injection Inside GitHub Actions: The New Frontier of Supply Chain Attacks by aikido.dev

Prompt Injection Inside GitHub Actions: The New Frontier of Supply Chain Attacks

Zapier NPM account is compromised, see details below. 

About 16k (and counting) packages are affected.

Always use Aikido Security's completely free/OSS Safe Chain as an npm wrapper

https://lnkd.in/eZrRahs6

Developer and Security Advocate @ Aikido Security

🚨ZAPIER SUPPLY CHAIN COMPROMISE ALERT

In the latest episode of “Please Stop Breaking the Internet,” Aikido Security has just detected Zapier's NPM account has been compromised & multiple packages have been infected with Malware by the same actors behind the Shai Hulud self-propagating worm discovered in September. 

So far 16k+ public Repositories have been created on GitHub containing stolen credentials under the name "Sha1-Hulud: The Second Coming"

Zapier packages include:
zapier-platform-core
zapier-platform-cli
zapier-platform-schema
@zapier/secret-scrubber

The same malware was infected in the ENS ecosystem as well
@ensdomains/ens-validation
@ensdomains/content-hash
ethereum-ens
@ensdomains/react-ens-address
@ensdomains/ens-contracts
@ensdomains/ensjs
@ensdomains/ens-archived-contracts
@ensdomains/dnssecoraclejs

What’s going on?
 The same threat actor behind the Shai Hulud malware has pivoted to new targets, injecting malicious code into these packages. The intent is familiar: steal credentials, exfiltrate sensitive data, and generally ruin everyone’s Monday. 

What you should do now:
Check which versions you depend on.
Rotate secrets if you consumed the affected packages.
Pin trusted versions & enable package integrity tooling.
Use tools like Safe-Chain to prevent install malicious packages. 

This is an unfolding situation, I will provide more details as they unfold in comments including a technical blog.

taplio

The Battle

Ben Adams

Vinit Patel

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The Battle

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