Empowering the next generation of Tech Pioneers

Turning technical innovation into commercial success  at Telefonica’s global accelerator

Situation

Wayra is Telefónica’s Corporate Venture Capital arm, a global powerhouse dedicated to fostering innovation by investing in high-potential startups. Their mission is to connect these startups with organizations to generate real-world impact.

However, for many technical founders, the greatest hurdle isn’t the technology, but turning it into a commercial opportunity. Brilliant at engineering but often inexperienced in enterprise sales, these entrepreneurs struggled to translate complex technical features into simple, human business value.

To maximize the impact of their diverse accelerators (spanning AI, Cyber Security, and Health-Tech), Wayra needed a consistent way to upskill founders, ensuring they could articulate their worth and win high-stakes contracts with some of the world’s largest organizations.

Solution

Between 2016 and 2022, True & North acted as the ‘Sales Experts in Residence’ for Wayra. We didn’t just deliver workshops; we embedded ourselves across their portfolio to provide a rigorous, repeatable framework for commercial success.

Our approach focused on three pillars of founder empowerment:
•
Humanizing the Technical: We coached hundreds of entrepreneurs to move beyond “feature-dumping” to solve specific human business problems. By applying our consultative frameworks, founders learned to see their products through the eyes of the customer.
•
The ‘Startup-to-Enterprise’ Bridge: We provided the tools to turn internal technical roadmaps into high-impact external proposals. This gave founders the confidence to pitch to global FMCG brands and payment providers, speaking a language that procurement and C-suite leaders understand.
•
Ongoing Mentorship & Rigour: As experts in residence, we offered a continuous feedback loop. This included pitch practice, proposal auditing, and live case support, ensuring that every startup within the Wayra ecosystem operated with the commercial rigour of a seasoned enterprise.

The results

Upskilling Senior Audiences

“I have built several successful cybersecurity businesses and I have an MBA from Harvard Business School. Despite that experience, I have no hesitation in saying that the single best sales training that I have ever had was facilitated by True & North.”

John Fitzgerald
CEO, Adents

Growth & Scale

“I was keen to gain an understanding of consultative sales in order to better support my sales team. The workshop provided far more than I could have hoped for.
With a list of clear actions I was able to win a contract with one of the largest FMCG companies in the world, the largest contract in our company’s history.”

Prask Sutton
Founder & CEO, Wi-5

Getting Client-centric to Close Deals

“As a result of our session with True & North, we articulated our value more simply and impactfully. Within weeks we had partnerships with two of the world’s biggest payment providers.”

Andrew Rabbit
CEO, Incuto

True & North’s workshops are one of the best rated amongst our entrepreneurs and they consistently report a lot of value and practical advice they get from it. Teams without much sales experience develop quickly using their approach and experienced sales teams gain valuable insights from the experience as well. I truly recommend it to all our entrepreneurs.

Country Manager at Wayra UK

publicis groupe inverted

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True and North
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