Omidyar Network Founder's Corner Podcast: Recent Episodes
Ha Nguyen
The podcast delivers bite-sized lessons from our conversations with today’s premier founders and CEOs.
Tim Chen is the founder and CEO of NerdWallet, a company that helps consumers evaluate credit cards and financial products and aims to be tomorrow’s everyday GPS for money matters. On this episode of Founder’s Corner, host and Omidyar Network venture partner Rob Veres joins Tim for an in-depth conversation packed with advice and lessons for entrepreneurs. Tim covers the origin story of the company, explains how he sets and aligns goals within the organization, and details how he stays focused on leading the company by avoiding the email inbox to-do list. Listen in for insights that will improve the way you get work done and lead your organization on this episode of Founder’s Corner.
Kickstarter has revolutionized the way businesses and entrepreneurs build communities, launch products, and raise crowdfunded capital. On this episode of Founder’s Corner, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler recounts the origin story of the company turned public-benefit corporation, which has grown to support over 130,000 successfully funded projects with more than three billion dollars pledged. Yancey looks back on his past 8 years with Kickstarter and shares lessons from his missteps and how the company’s vision and idealism were incorporated into the business’s structure. He also recounts Kickstarter’s approach to attracting talent by clearly defining its mission and values. Yancey also shares his perspective on the challenges of successful leadership when you’re operating in a newly invented space as the market leader. Tune in to this episode with Yancey Strickler for a look behind the curtain at Kickstarter and honest dialogue about growth, scaling, and leadership.
Renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Reid Hoffman joins the Founder’s Corner podcast for a lively conversation on management, product strategy, and the hard lessons he learned early in his career. Reid is a partner at Greylock and sits on the boards of companies including Airbnb, Convoy, and Microsoft. He is the Co-founder of LinkedIn and previously served as the company’s CEO and executive chairman. Reid sat down with Omidyar Network partner Shripriya Mahesh for a chat recorded live during our recent Product Leader Summit in front of an audience of founders, entrepreneurs, and product leaders. Listen in for thoughtful, in-depth advice from one of today’s tech luminaries, as Reid shares his insights on evolving product-market fit, managing and motivating employees, and lessons on entrepreneurship and leadership.
Jeremy Johnson is the Co-founder and CEO of Andela, a startup that is revolutionizing talent distribution in engineering by finding and placing Africa’s brightest developers to help tech giants build better products faster than ever. In today’s episode of Founder’s Corner, host and Omidyar Network venture partner Rob Veres sits down with Jeremy to learn more about how the company came together, why you should prioritize skillset and propensity for learning over traditional markers when hiring, how the company balances mission with a client-oriented focus, and why the belief that brilliance is equally distributed but opportunities do not continue to drive both the company’s direction and Jeremy's leadership. Listen in for a great founder’s story and best practices you can take back to your entrepreneurial venture today.
Scott Heiferman is the founder and CEO of Meetup, home to the world’s largest network of local community groups. In this episode, Scott speaks with Rob Veres, venture partner at Omidyar Network, about the origins of Meetup, running a later stage startup, tools for building a shared company vision, missteps he’s made along the way, and course-correcting to develop a workplace as diverse as the community that Meetup serves. Scott is a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded Fotolog, a pre-Facebook and Instagram photo sharing network, and i-traffic, one of the leading online ad agencies of the 1990s. Tune in for lessons you can apply to your startup journey and hear from a tech leader who approaches each day with a change-oriented mindset.
Jessie Woolley-Wilson is the CEO and president of DreamBox Learning, a startup aimed at reimagining learning for kindergarten–8th grade students in mathematics. Jessie has led a remarkable career serving in executive positions at leading EdTech companies, including Kaplan, LeapFrog SchoolHouse, and Blackboard. On this episode of Founder’s Corner with host and Omidyar Network partner Shripriya Mahesh, Jessie shares the lessons she’s learned in setting mission and vision, the advice she gives young professionals about asking for what they deserve, and her family’s immigrant story, which still inspires her daily. Listen in for insights from Jessie’s experience and her unique perspective on the importance of bridging passion and purpose in work.
Gina Bianchini is the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks, a startup empowering organizations and individuals to create their own interest-focused, branded social networks and communities on mobile and web. Gina joins the show to share why enabling people to connect around their passions matter, her unique perspective on building a company in a competitive market, and how she approaches recruiting from a career development standpoint. During this insightful conversation with Omidyar Network partner Shripriya Mahesh, Gina also explains how she manages her time as a CEO, why she starts every day by drafting her big picture goals, and how she stays close to the business by taking time each day to address feedback from users. Listen in for lessons that will change the way you approach your role as a founder and entrepreneur.
Andy Rachleff is the Co-founder and CEO of Wealthfront, a startup dedicated to democratizing access to investment management. In this episode, Omidyar Network partner Shripriya Mahesh chats with Andy about how he came to start Wealthfront and the advice he has for early-stage entrepreneurs and founders. Listen in for guidance on how to scale and hire as well as the tried-and-true philosophies Andy brings into every partnership and negotiation. They’re sure to immediately change the way you approach your business.
Some founders have had an entrepreneurial spirit since childhood, but Sean Behr didn’t realize he wanted to start a company until relatively later in life. It wasn’t until a few years ago that he decided to start his own entrepreneurial journey. During the conversation, Sean shared some great insights into starting a company. From finding the right product-market fit and hiring great employees, to making customers successful and being an authentic leader. Sean embodies how being an entrepreneur means you always have to keep innovating, pivoting, experimenting, and learning.
Don’t overthink things. If you don’t have the team to build a great product, go hire great people. If you have a great team but you don’t have customers, focus on establishing a solid customer base. Just focus on the main problem directly in front of you and solve it as fast as you can. This is advice from Leonard Speiser, a serial entrepreneur who has founded five companies, sold two of them, was most recently the co-founder and CEO of Clover that was acquired by First Data. In our conversation, he shares incredible insights from his many years of success raising capital, building amazing companies and orchestrating successful acquisitions.
Podcast
As the first person to use social media for fundraising at the presidential level during both of Barack Obama’s election campaigns, Steve Spinner recognized an opportunity to build automated fundraising software for a neglected but critical market. Steve is the founder and CEO of RevUp, an automated fundraising software platform that enables nonprofits, higher education institutions, and political organizations to leverage social media and data analytics to raise money. In our discussion, we talk about the challenges of starting a company and how it’s not always right for everyone, the important advice he received in business school, and everything from leveraging your network and experts, to hiring the right people.
Entrepreneurs start companies for a variety of different reasons. For Thomaz Srougi, the motivation to turn an idea into a business came from his own community. Thomaz is CEO and founder of dr. consulta. He grew up in Brazil, and after learning there were 100 million people in the country without access to medical care, he started dr.consulta to provide affordable, quality healthcare. Today, the company services more than 80,000 patients each month. In our conversation with Thomaz, he offered insights into what matters and what it takes to grow a great company. He also shares a very unique end goal – to become useless.
Hiring the right person for your team is like drafting an athlete out of college: You know they’re good, but you’re often choosing them for their potential and how great they’re going to be. Sidharth Kakkar is the co-founder and CEO of Front Row Education. They’re changing the way teachers use technology in the classroom by providing students with the means to both stay on track and to develop the skills they need to be motivated learners for their entire lives. Sidharth talks to Roy Steiner about putting the best team together and the pressures of starting and growing a business.
To build successful companies and work with great people, you must recognize the value of entrepreneurial instinct, and how to pinpoint people’s superpowers and corral them with a common vision. Nancy Lublin is the founder and CEO of Crisis Text Line, a company that offers free, 24/7 text support to people of all ages and leverages data to drive public policy change and make the world a safer place. Nancy provides insight into everything from what to look for in an employee (“Attitude is more important than skills”) to build an effective support system and team that share the same passion.
“Do what you’re passionate about,” is the mantra of many successful entrepreneurs. When it comes to cars and data, there are few out there as passionate about both as Andre Haddad. Andre is CEO of Turo, a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace that’s changing the economics of car ownership. At Turo, he’s worked to establish a highly transparent, data-driven company culture. He believes boards can (and should) add enormous value and that talented, passionate employees should be empowered, not micromanaged. We sat down with Andre to hear more about his work philosophies and how transparency plays a crucial role in building a successful corporate culture.
Combining Company & Product Growth with Skillshare Founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn. Part of what makes an entrepreneur successful isn’t just her or his vision, but also the day-to-day approach to productivity, motivating others, and communicating both regular activity and major changes.
Michael Karnjanaprakorn founded Skillshare with the belief that everyone has a skill that they can teach or share with the rest of the world. With more than 2 million students and nearly 10,000 classes online, Skillshare is a global learning community for creators. We sat down with Michael to get his thoughts on getting to product-market fit in the early years of Skillshare, how he thinks about building an enduring mission-driven, for-profit company, and how his role as a leader has evolved over time.