Dan Murray-Serter 🧠

Co-Founder of Heights I Angel Investor | Over 100 Startups I Follow For Daily Posts on Health, Business & Personal growth from UK’s #1 ranked health creator (apparently)

Serial entrepreneur and Angel investor in 100+ startups with over 10 years experience starting, scaling and failing multiple startups.

Co Founder of Heights - Europe's leading brain and gut health company.

I also started and help run Foundrs - A not for profit community of the best, most ambitious and compassionate founders in UK.

I recently stepped away from Leaders Media - A media company making the top business podcasts in Europe, Secret Leaders - at the top of the charts, to focus on much more important things with my time - being a dad to 2 awesome daughters.

Angel/Advisor

Beam (www.beam.org)
ATAI Life Sciences (https://www.atai.life)
Allplants (www.allplants.com)
Humanity (https://humanity.health)
BYP (www.byp-network.com)
Goss (https://www.goss.media)
Tribe VR (www.tribevr.io)
Thrift (www.wearethrift.com)
THIS (www.this.co)
The Sports Edit (www.thesportsedit.com)
Faction (www.factionskis.com)
Runway East (http://runwayea.st/)
London Union/Dinerama (http://londonunion.com/)
Neardesk (https://www2.neardesk.com/)


Tailored.to (https://tailored.to/)
Motivii (http://motivii.com/)
Earlybird (https://earlybird.fm/)
Upshot (http://www.upshotapp.co/)
Togethera (www.togethera.com)
Repairly (www.repairly.co.uk)
Zaboo (www.zabooapp.com)
Lissom (www.lissom.com)
Bloom (www.hellobloom.io)

Dan Murray

Too many leaders still fear being “outshined” by smarter people on their teams.

That’s backwards.

The best leaders don’t aim to be the smartest person in the room. They aim to build the smartest room possible.

Here’s the reality:

- A team full of people who only know what you know will never surpass you
- Hiring people smarter than you creates leverage, not competition
- Growth comes from surrounding yourself with people who stretch your thinking, challenge your assumptions, and bring ideas you’d never imagine

It takes humility to admit you don’t have all the answers. But humility isn’t weakness-it’s the foundation of strength.

I’ve learned the leaders who fear smarter colleagues usually struggle with ego. The leaders who thrive? They welcome it. Because they know:

- Smarter teammates = faster progress
- Different perspectives = fewer blind spots
- Bigger talent = bigger results

Stop guarding your title. Start curating your circle.

True leadership isn’t about being the brightest mind. It’s about creating the conditions where the brightest minds can do their best work-together.

If you want to grow, stop fearing smarter people. Start hiring them.

Question for you:
Do you intentionally surround yourself with people who outshine you in certain areas-or do you default to comfort?

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♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone in your network!

🖐️ P.S Join my newsletter The Science Of Success where I break down stories and studies of success to teach you how to turn it from probability to predictability here: https://lnkd.in/d9TnkzdH

One thing I’ve learned after building multiple teams: the most valuable people are rarely the loudest.

They’re the ones who quietly upskill when no one’s watching.

You can’t teach that level of internal drive.
You can’t force someone to care about their growth more than the company requires.

That has to come from within.

And from a neuroscience perspective, people who self-educate build something incredibly powerful:
a plastic brain.

Every new skill, every book, every online course, it all strengthens their neural pathways for adaptability, problem - solving, and creative thinking.

Those traits compound.

They become faster learners.
Better decision-makers.
More resourceful under pressure.
And over time, they outgrow people who rely only on formal training.

When I hire, I look for curiosity.
Not credentials.
Not polished answers.
Curiosity.

Because someone who reads, experiments, builds, tinkers, or studies on their own time will eventually outpace almost everyone else.
They don’t wait to be told what to learn.
They choose it.

And that choice is what makes them dangerous, in the best way possible.

If you’re that person, keep going.
Even if no one notices right now.
Your effort is compounding quietly.
You’ll feel the gap before anyone else sees it.

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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone in your network!

🖐️ P.S Join my newsletter The Science Of Success where I break down stories and studies of success to teach you how to turn it from probability to predictability here: https://lnkd.in/d9TnkzdH

100-year-old productivity hack. Still works. Still simple.

1918. Charles Schwab runs Bethlehem Steel. Hires productivity consultant Ivy Lee. Lee's offer: give me 15 minutes with each executive, pay me what it's worth in 3 months. 3 months later, Schwab writes a cheque for $25,000, equivalent to $400,000 today. The method was that effective.

The Ivy Lee Method. Five steps. At the end of each workday, write down the 6 most important tasks for tomorrow. Not 7, not 10, six. Rank them in order of true importance. Tomorrow morning, start with task 1, work until complete. Move to task 2, then 3, one at a time in order. Unfinished tasks move to tomorrow's list. Repeat daily.

Why 6 tasks? Forces prioritisation. With unlimited tasks, everything feels important, nothing gets done. Six is manageable, ambitious but achievable.

Why rank them? Most people work on whatever feels urgent or easy. Ranking forces you to confront true importance. Task 1 should be the thing that, if completed alone, makes tomorrow successful.

Why one task at a time? Multitasking is a myth. Task switching reduces productivity by 40%. Takes 23 minutes to regain focus after interruption. Doing one thing until complete equals deep work.

Why plan the night before? Decision fatigue compounds throughout the day. By 4pm, decision-making quality is 40% worse than 9am. Planning tonight means decisions made when not depleted. Wake up, no decision required, just execute task 1.

Six tasks, ranked, one at a time. Decide tonight, execute tomorrow.

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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

P.S. If you want 2026 to feel different, don’t start with goals.
Start with clarity.

Most people don’t need more discipline.
They need to understand what’s been draining them and what deserves their energy.

I’ve spent years refining a simple process to help you with exactly that.

Download my short PDF guide https://lnkd.in/eniDNptW

I'll see you there.

The Ivy Lee Method 100-Year-Old Productivity Hack 

Opportunities rarely arrive directly.
They move through conversations you’re not in.
Decisions made without you present.
Rooms you never see.

That’s why who you build relationships with matters more than how loudly you promote yourself.

The people who open doors are the ones who trust you enough to bring your name up when it counts. Not because you asked. But because your character, consistency, and competence made it easy for them to do so.

This isn’t about networking harder.
It’s about being reliable.
Doing good work quietly.
Treating people well when there’s nothing to gain.

Reputation travels faster than resumes.
And long before opportunity finds you, it finds your name.

Choose your people carefully.
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Follow me Dan Murray for more on habits and leadership.

P.S. If you want 2026 to feel different, don’t start with goals.
Start with clarity.

Most people don’t need more discipline.
They need to understand what’s been draining them and what deserves their energy.

I’ve spent years refining a simple process to help you with exactly that.

Download my short PDF guide https://lnkd.in/eniDNptW

I'll see you there.

CEO Coach | Board & Strategy Advisor | Chairman & NED - Helping ambitious CEOs, Founders and Entrepreneurs develop themselves, their people, and grow their companies.

I'm a CEO Coach, Strategic Advisor and Chairman. I work with CEOs, founders, boards, and investors on the leadership and execution that accelerate growth, scale and success.

Over a 30-year career, I've built, scaled, and exited multiple technology and healthcare businesses across startup, growth, and global operating environments. 

That includes capturing 80 percent market share within 3.5 years, driving £60 million in revenue in 20 months, and taking a business into more than 10 international markets.

I've led through and advised on several exits and have operated at enterprise scale inside a £5 billion organisation employing 75,000 people and serving 320 million users globally. 

I've chaired 11 boards and coached or advised more than 100 CEOs and founders.

My primary work is CEO coaching, with a focus on building the leadership capacity and operating infrastructure required for sustained growth. Everything I do centres on scaling the CEO, the leadership team, and the business.

Alongside coaching, I support a select number of companies as a Strategic Advisor, Chairman, or Non-Executive Director. In these roles, I focus on aligning vision with delivery, strengthening board-level governance, and improving execution consistency.

Technology and Healthcare is my core domain. I also advise leaders outside the sector where complexity, regulation, and scale create similar leadership and organisational challenges. 

Across industries, my work reflects a consistent view: growth constraints rarely originate in markets or technology. They originate in leadership systems and human decision-making.

I also write Defiltered, a newsletter on leadership, growth, and performance for CEOs and founders - defiltered.substack.com

If you're serious about growth - yours or your company's - and want to explore coaching, advisory, or board support, message me for a confidential conversation.

Kevin McDonnell

The loudest person is rarely the one in charge.

You can spot great leaders by how they listen.

Not the ones who interrupt with a counterpoint.

Or the ones who need to have the first word to establish dominance.

The ones who are entirely comfortable in the silence.

Because in a corporate world obsessed with talking, strategic listening is a superpower.

When a project fails.
When a client threatens to leave.
When a team meeting turns into a pointing match.

The moment you rush to speak, you show your hand.

Leadership isn't about having the fastest answer.

It’s about having the right one.

Over the last two decades of watching executive dynamics, the most respected leaders all share a counterintuitive habit: they use silence as a tool, not a weakness.

It takes immense discipline. But flipping these habits changes the entire room:

→ Be the last to speak. It gives you the full picture and makes your team feel heard.

→ Let silence do the heavy lifting. A three-second pause after someone finishes talking usually prompts them to reveal what they actually mean.

→ Swap defense for data. Instead of pushing back, ask: "Can you walk me through your thought process on that?"

→ Acknowledge before you advise. Validate the tension in the room before you try to fix it.

You don't need to dominate a conversation to lead it.

True influence isn't about being the most heard.

It's about being the most understood.

Why do well funded HealthTech startups still fail?

It isn’t a lack of capital. 

It isn’t a lack of engineering talent.

It’s the "Silicon Valley Savior Complex."

Too many founders walk into healthcare expecting to "disrupt" it the same way they’d disrupt a taxi fleet or a hotel chain.

They build a beautiful, seamless app in a vacuum. 

They assume clinics will eagerly abandon their clunky, 15-year-old legacy systems simply because the new UI is sleeker.

But hospitals aren't consumers.

In healthcare, you aren't just selling software. You're asking burnt-out, overworked clinicians to change their muscle memory in a high-stakes, life-or-death environment.

The founders who actually scale in this space - the ones who don't run out of runway after year two - quickly realise three painful truths:

First, workflow is more important than UI.

It doesn't matter how elegant your dashboard is. If it forces a nurse to open a separate browser tab, switch devices, or double-enter patient data, they will resent it. You have to mold your tech to their messy reality, not force them to adapt to yours.

Second, interoperability is your only moat.

You can have the most groundbreaking predictive AI on the market. But if it doesn’t talk seamlessly with Epic, Cerner, or the local EHR system, it functionally doesn’t exist. In healthcare, an isolated tool is a useless tool.

Third, you are selling to a committee of skeptics.

You aren't selling to an eager early-adopter. You are selling to a Chief Medical Officer, a cynical IT Director. All of whom have been burned by "game-changing" tech before. 

If you're building in HealthTech, the goal isn't to "disrupt" the system.

The goal is to seamlessly support the people keeping it from collapsing.

Are you building to replace them, or are you building to empower them?

CEO Coach | Strategic Advisor | Chairman | Author of ‘Decisive by Design’ (out soon) | Working with Technology & Healthcare Founders and CEOs to unlock potential, growth and scale.

I spent two days at Rewired this week.

The best HealthTech minds in the country in one building.

And the same conversation kept coming up, in the corridors, between sessions, over coffee (many).

“The pilot went well. We can’t get them to scale it.”

I heard some version of that more times than I can count. 

From folks who had done everything right - good product, strong clinical outcomes data, a champion trust that loved them. 

Stalled at the point where it should have accelerated.

Here is the pattern I see repeatedly.

A successful pilot proves one thing: your product works for the people in the room who wanted it to work. 

That is "champion-market fit". 

Real, and it matters. 

But it is not trust-wide fit. 

Not system-wide fit. 

There are three decisions that determine whether a pilot has the potential to scale. 

First, who you treat as the customer during the pilot. 

Most optimise for the clinical champion. That is understandable. But the champion rarely controls the scaling decision. The people who do (procurement, IT, finance, sometimes the medical director) are watching from a distance. If you have not built relationships with them during the pilot, you are starting a new sales process from scratch once it ends. Momentum is already fading before you have begun.

Second, what evidence you are building, and for whom. 

Clinical outcomes data matters. It is not sufficient on its own. The scaling decision-makers want workforce impact (does this reduce or redistribute clinical time?), integration feasibility (what does this actually cost IT to embed at scale?), and a financial return that survives contact with their real budget model. Build that evidence deliberately, from month one, with the scaling audience in mind. If you wait until the pilot review to find out what evidence they need, you have lost six months.

Third, when you start the scaling conversation. 

Most start it after the pilot review. The right moment is at the midpoint, when you have early data, real momentum, and a natural reason to be in the room with the decision-makers. That conversation is not a sales conversation. It is a planning conversation. It shapes the evidence you gather in the second half. It also means the people who hold the scaling decision feel involved in the outcome, not presented with it.

What would you add? 

Also - so lovely to catch up with so many friends, colleagues and clients :)

Your star employee isn’t burned out by work.

That's the myth we tell ourselves.

In reality, they quit something far more insidious.

They quit feeling invisible.

They quit being taken for granted.

They quit watching mediocrity get rewarded while their excellence gets ignored.

Loyalty doesn't die in a single moment.

It dies in a thousand tiny cuts:

→ The credit given to someone else
→ The thank you that never came
→ The feedback that got ignored
→ The promise that got forgotten
→ The effort nobody noticed

Here's what I see with the CEOs I coach:

They'll spend six figures replacing a loyal employee.

But they won't spend five minutes appreciating them.

They'll invest in recruitment campaigns, onboarding programmes, retention consultants.

But they won't invest in the basics:

Listening.
Saying thank you.
Following through.
Giving credit where it's due.

The irony is staggering.

And the cost? Exponential.

Because by the time you notice the shift, it's already too late:

→ The star who stops shining
→ The voice that goes quiet
→ The energy that disappears
→ The passion that turns to apathy

Once someone starts protecting their peace over proving their worth?

You've lost them.

Not in that moment.

You lost them weeks, maybe months earlier.

When they stopped believing their contribution mattered.

Retention isn't about ping-pong tables or free lunches.

It's about respect.

It's about recognition.

It's about making people feel seen.

The best leaders I work with understand this instinctively.

They don't wait for exit interviews to learn what went wrong.

They create cultures where people feel valued before they start questioning their worth.

Where effort is acknowledged in real time.

Where promises are kept, not forgotten.

Where credit flows to those who earned it.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth:

Your people aren't leaving because they found something better.

They're leaving because you made them feel like they deserved better.

Treat people well before they start updating their LinkedIn profile.

By then, you're not solving a retention problem.

You're paying the price for neglect.

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Dan Murray's LinkedIn Performance

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