TL;DR Startup School: Recent Episodes

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Learn from some of the worlds best startup founders, operators and investors in 5-minutes or less.

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What's it all about? 

https://www.tldrstartup.com/

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In today’s show, we are joined by Rohan Gilkes - Serial Bootstrapped Entrepreneur who has built and sold multiple online businesses. In today’s episode, we are going to be exploring Rohan’s framework for successfully building and launching new products. From validating ideas with his 10-point system, to exploring practical strategies for acquiring those first customers, bootstrapping new ventures successfully whilst capping the downside, finding lucrative opportunities in areas that just aren’t seen as sexy, and more!

Rohan has such a great way of telling his story and giving an ‘under the hood’ view of how he builds his companies. I highly recommend checking out his threads on Twitter.

Check out Rohan -

https://twitter.com/rohangilkes

https://www.facebook.com/RohanRGilkes/

https://www.instagram.com/rohangilkes/?hl=en

https://getjasmin.com

This show is brought to you by Perlego - Perlego is on a mission to make educational content more affordable by offering it under a subscription model. To date, the platform offers more than 300,000 titles from 2500 publishers including Wiley, Pearson and Harvard University Press to name a few." visit perlego.com and start your free 14-day free trial today.

Show notes;

  1. Intro’s - 1.32
  2. First Business - “What is a simple business that can make me money in the next 30 days?” - 3.30
  3. “What channels did you use to get your first customers?” - 5.30
  4. “At what point did you start removing yourself from day-to-day operations? - 7.11
  5. Teething problems in building a team - 8.50
  6. “What metrics are you using to measure your new businesses, do you time-box these experiments?” - 11.03
  7. “How do you triage new ideas & build a $1m dollar business from scratch?” - 13.16
  8. Rohan’s 10-point system for validating ideas - 14.05
  9. $4k Reddit Acquisition of Wet Shave Club to $1m dollars 16.20
  10. How Rohan grew Wet Shave Club - Content Strategy - 18.23
  11. “What are you working on now?” - 20.36
  12. “Hows the business doing so far?” - 21.35
  13. Bootstrapping 101 - 22.40
  14. “Do you put a cap on how much time/capital you would invest in a new bootstrapped idea?” 24.40
  15. “Bootstrapping is the cheapest MBA you will ever get” 25.57
  16. Advice to first-time founders - 27.00
  17. Launching to an audience vs an ‘empty room’ - 29.35
  18. Additional thoughts on different approaches on D2C vs B2B vs B2C - 31.40
  19. Quick fire round - 35.27

a. What’s next for you?

b. What are you enjoying learning about right now?

c. What are the most important things that new founders should learn?

d. Who would you like on the show next?

e. Where do you see opportunity at the moment?

f. Where can we learn more about you?

You can find me on twitter at @heyya_jonathan or sign-up to our weekly newsletter via the https://talkingwithfounders.com landing page.

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In today’s show we are joined by Bram Kanstein - @Bramk - Founder of No-Code MVP - https://nocodemvp.com. Prior to No-Code MVP, Bram has built and sold x3 businesses including Startup Stash - https://startupstash.com and in today’s episode we are going to be exploring Bram’s philosophy and methodology for building and launching products. From starting out with an idea, to testing traction channels to acquire those initial customers. This episode provides us with great practical advice on how to successfully launch a Minimal, Viable, Product, fast.

This show is brought to you by Perlego - Perlego is on a mission to make educational content more affordable by offering it under a subscription model. To date, the platform offers more than 300,000 titles from 2500 publishers including Wiley, Pearson and Harvard University Press to name a few." visit perlego.com and start your free 14-day free trial today.

Show notes;

  1. Intro’s - Journey to becoming a Non-Technical Internet Entrepreneur. Being focused on starting the business, not scaling them.
  2. First products - the first experiments, the learnings that lead to Startup Stash.
  3. “Nobody cares about your idea” - And how to find the people who care.
  4. The Traction Channels that worked for Startup Stash.
  5. Before you ask for something, you have to give some value.
  6. What metrics to measure for your MVP. Timebox this process.
  7. Shrinking the big vision...for now.
  8. What is the No-Code MVP?
  9. Advice to first time founders.
  10. Businesses you can start...without code.
  11. Thoughts on the No-Code space and addressing the “does no-code scale” question.
  12. Experiences from exiting x3 businesses. How did it happen? The magic of the internet.
  13. Just launch.
  14. Quickfire round - learnings, recommended startups

If you would like to suggest speakers or themes for upcoming Talking with Founders shows feel free to contact me directly, you can find me on twitter at @heyya_jonathan or sign-up to our weekly newsletter via the https://talkingwithfounders.com landing page. The weekly newsletter features a transcribed summary of our podcast interviews, shares some product recommendations to check out that we have discovered, and discuss some startup ideas that we are thinking about.

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Nick Brackenbury is the CEO and Co-Founder of NearSt - www.near.st/‎- a retail technology platform connecting the world’s in-store inventory to the web. Since 2015 NearSt have been on a mission to unlock the massive opportunity currently hidden away in high street shops, and recently they have partnered with Google to connect in-store inventory directly into search at a massive scale.

Show notes;

  1. The literal light-bulb moment.

  2. Responding to Covid-19 - observations on impact on Retail.

  3. The early days. Learning, making mistakes, not being perfect - and that's ok.

  4. Prioritisation and focus, building on a big vision. Picking the right things to focus on.

  5. Knowing when to pivot.

  6. Partnering with Google.

  7. Building teams, selecting the right skills.

  8. Culture. Organic or by design. freedom vs structure.

  9. Founder Psychology

  10. What's next for NearSt and Retail more broadly.

  11. Quick fire - book recommendations and other startups that Nick rates highly.

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