Best Startup Podcasts - 3 Episodes Per Week: Recent Episodes
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http://www.owltail.com/?utm_source=desc curating the best episodes for you. Best Tech & Startup Podcasts. 1 Episode every 2 days. 3 Episodes a week. Episodes from How I Built This, A16z, Exponent and more. Interviews with Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins and more.
Published on 01 Feb 2019. This mashup is one that's really important to me - focusing around self doubt, which I believe isn't something you necessarily put on yourself, but are inflicted from a young age from a multitude of different places. It starts off with a call from the Empathy Wines livestream last week & branches off from there. The clips used in this mashup are: Watch This If You're Struggling with Self Doubt | Dailyvee 524 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0OMKzelal0&t=128s The Key Is To Be Happy With Yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOhOukPd190 Overcoming Self Doubt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2SW1nEpvPI How To Overcome Anxiety And Build Self Esteem - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu0m1T7Edr8 Self Awareness - Know Yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6tKf1IR5j8 Hope this brings you value 3
Published on 17 Jun 2015. Episode 6 of Startup School Radio: Host Aaron Harris interviews Marco Zappacosta, Co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack. Also on the show: Sanjay Dastoor, Co-founder and CEO of Boosted.
Published on 19 Oct 2018. Two years ago, Gimlet released its first fiction podcast: Homecoming. Now, this November, a television series based on the hit podcast and starring Julia Roberts is launching. Alex Blumberg was behind the scenes as Homecoming went from podcast to TV production. In this first episode, Homecoming creators Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg recount the journey, from concept to podcast to pitching the show to bigtime Hollywood producers. And we hear from some of the celebrities they met along the way.This is the first part of a four-part mini-series on the making of the Homecoming TV show.Want more StartUp? Check out our newsletter! You can sign up at: gimletmedia.com/newsletter.To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers
Published on 28 Sep 2016. Diversity in tech has become a national conversation. In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, Tina Seelig speaks with software engineer and diversity advocate Tracy Chou. Tracy graduated from Stanford with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, and was an early employee at both Quora and Pinterest. In this episode, Tracy talks about her own experiences as a woman in software engineering, what she has learned as she has explored this topic in depth, and how data can inform the conversation around diversity in tech.
Published on 26 May 2016. Race Overview series covers mechanics and opinions of the various playable races.
Published on 22 May 2019. I’ve interviewed Rand Fishkin several times and I’ve been beating myself up about a question I asked. I’ve got to bring it up in this interview. Rand Fishkin is the founder of SparkToro which allows you to discover all the sources that influence your audience. I invited him here to talk about marketing because he’s so good at it.
Rand Fishkin is the founder of SparkToro which allows you to discover all the sources that influence your audience.
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Published on 28 Jun 2017. I believe strong company cultures only emerge when every employee feels they own the culture — and this begins even before the first job interview. CEO Reed Hastings has built an adaptive, high-performing culture at NetFlix by being unabashedly upfront about who they are and who they aren’t. The company’s famous “culture deck” offers a 100-slide description of how NetFlix sees itself — not a “family” but a high performing sports team. It won’t appeal to everyone — and that’s the point. If you can define your culture tightly, while also resonating deeply with a diverse group of employees, you have a winning formula.
Published on 25 Jun 2017. As promised, Mike Slade is back to tell stories from the period 1998 through 2004, when he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs. Background details on the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone and more!
Published on 10 Jun 2016. The Inc. team talks about why Arkadium, an online game company, made Inc.'s inaugural 50 Best Workplaces list. They also discuss how Tradiv built an online platform for legal marijuana companies to sell and buy wholesale pot. Finally, entrepreneur Chieh Huang talks about selling his first company Astro Ape to Zynga.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Published on 06 Jan 2016. Sam leads a panel Q&A on fundraising in this lecture with Marc Andreessen, Founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz, Ron Conway, Founder of SV Angel, and Parker Conrad, Founder of Zenefits.
Lecture Transcript: tech.genius.com/Marc-andreessen-lecture-9-how-to-raise-money-annotated
See Ron Conway's slide, and readings at startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec09/
Discuss this lecture: startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64038
This audio is under Creative Commons license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ Click to view: show page on Awesound
Published on 18 Jun 2018. After noticing more and more people sign up for yoga in the late 1990s, Chip Wilson bet everything on an athletic apparel company aimed toward young professional women. What started as a small pop-up store in Vancouver eventually became the multibillion-dollar brand Lululemon Athletica, spawning a new fashion trend and forever changing what women wear at the gym. PLUS, for our postscript "How You Built That," how Mike Sorentino developed the EyePatch Case, an iPhone case that cleans and protects the phone's built-in cameras.
Published on 16 Aug 2018. We are always blown away by the success stories within the Foundr community, and we take every opportunity we can to shine the spotlight on them. In today's podcast, I am thrilled to present to you three of our Start & Scale ecommerce course students who are absolutely crushing it! I got to sit down with each one and ask them how they got started with their businesses, what challenges they faced, and what successes they are now enjoying. You will hear from: Adam Hendle Adam is the founder of men’s personal care product line, Ball Wash. Adam started his ecommerce journey only eight short months ago and has already made more than $1 million in revenue. Shamanth Pereira Shamanth is a busy mother who created a new leggings product, and put it to the test with a pre-sale Kickstarter campaign. In a short time, she received nearly £50,000 from more than 1,500 backers. Shamanth is in the process of fulfilling those orders and putting her shop online full time. Monique and Chevalo Wilsondebriano Monique and Chevalo run Charleston Gourmet Burger, which was already a $200,000-per-month business, but had yet to reach its potential in online sales. Their goal was turn their website into an online store so they could generate more sales. In two months, they earned nearly $22,000 and attracted 9,110 visits to their website. We couldn’t be happier for these guys and are proud to be part of their journeys. Please join me in congratulating them. Way to go! Key Takeaways Go behind the scenes to learn how three ecommerce stores became successful Discover the two primary marketing channels Ball Wash leveraged that allowed them to scale so fast How Shamanth conceptualized and developed her winning product idea The learning curve for Chevalo and Monique as they transitioned their product to sell online
Published on 02 Aug 2014. In this episode we discuss this tweet of Ben’s: Apple has a monopoly on the iOS market. And monopolies are profitable. — Ben Thompson (@monkbent) July 25, 2014 We also discuss the news that OKCupid and Facebook are running tests on their users. Links Fabian Giesen: What I mean when I say “I think VR is bad news” – Github Hosts Ben Thompson, @monkbent, Stratechery James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review Podcast Information Feed iTunes Twitter Feedback
Published on 24 Mar 2017. Hear what the latest Apple and Amazon acquisitions mean for tech M&A, how the Uber scandals will impact its business, and what one of the industry's top LPs thinks of the state of venture capital right now.
Published on 25 May 2016. Richard Miller, president of Olin College, describes disruptive ideas about education and learning that universities should adopt to graduate more creative, entrepreneurial and impactful engineers. He explains how a focus on math and science alone won't result in more innovation, and that higher education must instill traits like grit and independent thinking.
Published on 03 Dec 2016. Haseeb Qureshi is a Texas-native who dominated the poker world and decided to pursue his dream of becoming a software engineer. He started playing poker at 16 years old and was able to turn $50 to $100,000. He eventually became one of the world’s best no-limit hold-em poker players at 19 but he was not fulfilled. So, Haseeb left the poker world and decided to start over from scratch by giving all of his money away. After hearing about coding bootcamps from a friend, he decided to break into tech and join App Academy. Haseeb learned quickly, became an instructor after two months, and eventually became the Head of Product. He really wanted to work as a software engineer and his recruiting process was tough. On this interview he shares how he got his position at Airbnb by applying lessons from poker and proving that with confidence, deliberate practice, negotiating skills, and an altruistic heart, you can always rise above any challenges you meet along the way.
Key Points: 1. When you’re trying to learn something,you need to give yourself feedback when you make a mistake. This is the idea of deliberate practice. Try to find the smallest possible thing that could be critiqued and then get feedback on it and then try to iterate on it.
- The biggest difference between boot camps is not the curriculum, the teachers, or the network. The biggest difference is your peers and the rate of intensity with which you’re going to be learning around them.
- When facing rejections, remember that you have no control over things no matter how good you are. Also, pain is transient. You might feel awful today but you will feel better the next day and the next, until you can barely even remember. Besides, people can’t say no forever. Consider plugging into your network for job search referrals throughinformational interviewing. Reach out to anyone in your network, sit down with them, ask them about their company and experience, and get referrals.
- A large part about negotiation is power. Be mindful of it, where it comes from, and how to maintain it. Have leverage in your negotiations by having the ability to not accept it because you have another offer. Interviewers can’t read your mind. It’s not a zero-sum game.
SHOW NOTES (FOCUS ON THE STEPPING STONES): [1:33] Growing up in Dallas, Texas [2:47] Starting to play poker at the age of 16 with $50 [11:51] Advice on picking a bootcamp – The biggest difference between great bootcamps and a not-so-great bootcamps: Peers + Rate & Intensity level (with which you’re going to be learning around them) [19:12] Deliberate Practice – Haseeb’s secret sauce for being world-class in poker and his boot camp journey (Feedback mechanism is key!) – Working on Codewars, massive practice, going back over and over to fix mistakes, and understanding the pattern [27:42] Dealing with self-doubt: Haseeb doubted his vision of the world and this picture of himself being somebody who could just walk into an interview and nail it and have all these offers [28:31] How to deal with rejections: You have absolutely no control. No matter how great you are, no matter if you’re the best player in the world, there’s always a chance that you’ll lose. Any pain is transient. What you feel today will be softer the next morning and the next. Keep going. People can’t say no forever. [35:05] Haseeb’s approach to the negotiation process [37:57] Overcoming recruiter tactics that take away your leverage during negotiation: [39:41] Exploding Offers – What are they? How do you deal with these? [45:56] How to prepare for interviews
Published on 17 Jul 2018. Acquired kicks off Season 3 with a gangbuster two-hour extravaganza on America’s most successful automotive startup since The Ford Motor Company: Tesla. We cover everything, from founding to its 2010 IPO to all that’s happened since, including the question on the minds of superhero fans everywhere: who came first, Elon Musk or Tony Stark? (Spoiler: Elon)
Published on 22 Jan 2018. This episode of the a16z Podcast goes deep on various trends in cryptocurrencies -- from mental models for understanding tokens and what may give them long-term value; to the role of stablecoins in the ecosystem; to scaling, on-chain and off-chain protocols, forks, and more.
The discussion features general partner Chris Dixon in conversation with Nick Tomaino, the founder of early-stage crypto venture fund 1confirmation, editor of The Control, and former business development at Coinbase. (He is also an investor in Basecoin, Cosmos, Ethereum, and MakerDAO.) You can also check out past episodes in this series, covering everything from investing in cryptocurrencies and protocols to accelerating research and practical applications to why crypto tokens matter -- as well as a video covering the building blocks of all things crypto -- at a16z.com/crypto.
The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.
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Published on 29 Apr 2019. Charles Hudson, Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures, shares strategies on the great rewards & risks of pre-seed, betting on founders with unique insight, analyzing market structure vs. size, importance of mobilization to increase SV diversity, & the art of making early deals without data
Published on 14 Jul 2017. Max Levchin is the Founder & CEO @ Affirm, the company that aims to remake consumer finance from the ground up. They have backing from some of the best in the business with over $400m in VC funding from the likes of Founders Fund, Lightspeed, Andreesen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Spark Capital just to name a few. Prior to Affirm, Max held numerous exec positions including Chairman of Yelp for 11 years and sitting on the board of directors @ Yahoo. Before that, Max founded Slide, subsequently bought by Google and was the Co-Founder & CTO @ Paypal. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Max come to co-found Paypal and how did that serve as the foundations for his founding of Affirm today? 2.) Why does Max believe there is a crucial misalignment between service providers and consumers in financial services? Does Max agree with Bill Clerico that 'we are still in the very early days for Fintech?' 3.) Having co-founded Paypal, Slide and now Affirm, how has Max changed as a leader and CEO? What does Max believe makes the truly great CEOs? Are there commonalities in how they operate and their skills? 4.) What does Max look for in all new hires or when evaluating founders for potential investment? Why is self-awareness so important for entrepreneurs to have? Why does Max want to be slightly terrified by how smart an individual is? 5.) How has having Children changed Max's perception of what is important and what he chooses to spend his time on? How does that reflect in his actions and self-discipline? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Max’s Fave Book: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Max on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co
Published on 04 Dec 2018. H. John Oechsle is President and CEO at customer relationship management and marketing automation software provider, Swiftpage. John has a 30-year track record of building highly profitable and sustainable revenue growth for emerging companies and established global leaders. He has been recognized several times for his involvement in the tech industry.
Published on 09 Feb 2015. Meet the brains behind the design-driven lifestyle brand Ugmonk. Jeff, who has been in business for over 6 years now, is selling thousands of products per month and building a cult-like following around his company.
But Ugmonk is different than most clothing brands. Instead of graphics being designed from various artists, all Ugmonk items are designed personally by Jeff. Everything from his handcrafted wooden ampersands and leather wallets to his simplistic t-shirts all have the Sheldon touch.
Furthermore, Jeff is a true creative who is highly respected in the design world. He’s been featured on 99u, SwissMiss, How Magazine, and one of my favorite sites, The Great Discontent.
In today’s episode, Jeff and I discuss what it takes to launch a profitable lifestyle brand and the lessons Jeff has learned along the way.
In This Podcast You’ll Learn:
Jeff’s Accidental Business Success Story How Quality Design Is Measured What It Takes To Become A Better Designer Even If You’re Not An Artist The 2-3 Traits Of Successful Creatives
https://startupcamp.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/1-27-15-jeff_sheldon-12715-11.27-AM.mp3
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If you’d like to track Jeff’s journey, you can follow him here on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Learn More About Jeff & Ugmonk In The Video Below
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Published on 06 Mar 2019. Rama Poola is here pitching his airline ticket business, SkyHi, where customers pay a monthly fee to access tickets on the cheap. But the investors are worried that it sounds a lot like MoviePass, a company that offered a subscription for unlimited movie tickets — and ran into a world of problems. Can Rama convince them that his model won’t break the bank? Today's investors are Alexandra Stanton, Sheel Mohnot, Charles Hudson, and Phil Nadel.
Published on 11 Sep 2017. Dave Kellogg is the CEO @ Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM). Previously, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at unstructured big data provider MarkLogic. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as the company grew from $30M to over $1B. Dave has also worked in various capacities with the likes of Breeze, GainSight, Tableau and MongoDB and previously sat on the boards of ag tech leader, Granular (acq by DuPont for $300M) and big data leader Aster Data (acquired by Teradata for $325M). In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Dave made his way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce, came to be CMO at Business Objects and now running his own SaaS company as CEO at Host Analytics? What does David believe is the single most important metric in SaaS? How should SaaS companies structure the first four lines of their financial statements? Why is retention and renewal not always an accurate sign of customer satisfaction? How does Dave look to analyse churn? What is the post-mortem? What is more important, logos or expansion? If a startup’s churn is too high, what is the top 3 things they should do? Why must you have a “standard taxonomy” for churn? How can you construct this? How does David think about taking existing customer and up-selling them? How does he view this in contrast to cross-sell? Does Dave agree with David Skok on the need for more than 1 variable pricing mechanism? Why does Dave not encourage usage based pricing? How does Dave analyse the benefits of multi-year contracts paid upfront? How does this distort TCV and inflate the figures? Does upfront payment misalign the provider and the consumer, in terms of care and support? With that in mind, how does David view billing frequency? Contract durations? 60 Second SaaStr What does Dave know now which he wishes he had known at the beginning? What is the 90 day rule? Why is it important? How much ARR should a good sales rep add in relation to comp? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Dave Kellogg
Published on 21 Feb 2018. Serge is a hardcore biohacker and serial entrepreneur. In this episode we talk about Serge's extreme daily regimen of compounds to biohack every aspect of his brain and body. Serge has studied at Cornell, worked at Google, and was youngest in his class at Stanford Business School. Do not try any of this at home.
Published on 19 Jun 2015. Andres Blank is super smart. After completing a degree in industrial engineering at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, in Caracas, Andres founded a successful lumber company. Then at the age of 24, with Venezuela falling apart and crime escalating, he decided to attend graduate school overseas. The Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) accepted him into their MBA program, where he soon began to create an app called Pixable. Andres and his two co-founders worked like madmen for over a year, gained major investors, and was able to sell it to a Singapore telecommunications company for $26 million.
Since then, Andres is not living the high life. In fact he has started and left behind five product lines. Today, Andres works in a co-working space in New York, as lean as possible, and enthusiastically developing his best product yet, a text messaging service exclusively for your business contacts. It’s called CALIBER.IO. Download it on your phone's App store!
Andres shares deeply about his love for Venezuela, and gratitude for the US. I also ask his thoughts on making Venezuela a more compelling environment for entrepreneurs, to which he offered a clear framework.
In this interview, Andres gives sage advice on how to: Move yourself from a desperate environment to an ideal one Believe that you can do the unimaginable (like getting accepted to MIT, from Venezuela) Build an ideal team for a product company
Inspire multiple rounds of investors to get involved in your start-up
Keep your start-up lean
Recognize and use your immigrant advantages
As always, please subscribe, tell us what you liked about this interview, what would be helpful to you in your entrepreneurial journey.
Published on 13 Apr 2019. Hey podcast … this episode is a really fun one as it’s a full talk I gave to one of VaynerMedia’s biggest clients. What was suppose to be a keynote turned into a really in depth small business Q&A. A lot of value in here that I think a lot of you can apply to your own hustle. 2:00 - You need to be on every platform 8:30 - How I spend my energy 10:10 - Education or entertainment 16:20 - I hold no ego in hiring/firing 22:30 - Figure out how you learn 25:45 - I’m trying to make patience cool 33:15 - The GaryVee transformation Hope you enjoyed this Q&A .. if you haven’t heard the mid roll yet please rewind to 26:08 ;)
Published on 27 Jan 2016. In this episode of Startup School Radio, Y Combinator's legal and finance leads Kirsty Nathoo, Jonathan Levy and Carolynn Levy detail the key basics of forming and funding companies.
Published on 27 Apr 2018. Silicon Valley is leaving money on the table, and Arlan Hamilton will go to extremes to prove it. She's a venture capitalist like no other — black, female, gay — and she's out to prove that investors in the Valley are overlooking big returns they could tap into by investing in more outsiders. Arlan calls them "underestimated" founders, and she's planning to get as rich as Richard Branson by investing in them. But her thesis is still untested, and she's running out of time to show Silicon Valley what she's got.This is the first part of a six-part series on Arlan Hamilton and her company, Backstage Capital.
Published on 17 May 2017. Why look at old things in new ways? Rich Cox, Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, joins host Tina Seelig to share and discuss the listener submissions to the Stanford Innovation Lab: Innovation Challenge. People, young and old, from around the world submitted their ideas for how to create value from unmatched socks. From coffee filters to dating sites to diapers for the developing world, hear how our listeners stepped up to the challenge and created value from something we usually throw away.
Published on 29 Mar 2019. Joining me today is someone I remember reading about on TechCrunch when he sold his company to Etsy. Well he had another idea which partially came from his time at Etsy and seeing how much data they had to manage. He came up with a new company that would help companies like Etsy make use of all their data and better serve customers. I invited him here to talk about how he did it. Jason Davis is the co-founder of Simon Data, which builds data tools for modern marketing.
Jason Davis is the co-founder of Simon Data, which builds data tools for modern marketing.
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Published on 05 Nov 2018. Your first hires = cultural cofounders. And it’s worth your time to get every one right. Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri personally interviewed his first FIVE HUNDRED employees at Workday. He knows how to map back from the culture he wants, to employee attributes to interview questions. Today, with 8000+ employees and $2b in annual revenue, Workday is consistently rated one of the best places to work. With cameo appearances by Danny Meyer (Founder, Shake Shack), Arianna Huffington (founder, Thrive Global), Michael Bush (CEO, Great Place to Work) and Joyce Nethry (founder of Jeptha Creed Distillery).
Published on 16 Feb 2015. Summary: Finally, the long-promised foray into e-commerce, starting with… not the first… but practically the first… player in the space… and ironically enough, the 800 pound gorilla in the space to this day. Amazon. Dot com. We examine Jeff Bezos, the man. We consider Amazon, the idea. We look at e-commerce, the concept. It’s interesting. It’s groundbreaking. It’s available with free 2-day shipping for Prime members. Just kidding. Bibliography: - The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon - The Playboy Interview: Moguls - Amazon.com: Get Big Fast - One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com - http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html - http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/01/11/253770/index.htm - http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/03/biztech/articles/14amazon.html - http://www.retireat21.com/blog/10-companies-started-garages - http://davidsheff.com/article/jeff-bezos/
Published on 31 Mar 2017. This week, Inc. editors and writers discuss Anna Hensel’s feature in the April issue exploring the daily habits of successful entrepreneurs, like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Then we talk about how, in the wake of the recent Westminster attacks, the UK government is accusing encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp of providing terrorists with a “hiding place." Lastly, the crew interviews a former Inc. staffer, Laura Rich, co-founder and CEO of the media and events company Street Fight, about selling to Brandify and how her background in business reporting helped her as an entrepreneur.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Published on 15 May 2017. Sam Altman interviews Elon Musk for a series called How To Build The Future, which you can watch on YC’s YouTube channel (https://youtube.com/ycombinator).
Read the transcript here (http://blog.ycombinator.com/elon-musk-on-how-to-build-the-future/).
Published on 26 Apr 2018. Yvon Chouinard grew up poor, dropped out of high school and was a failure in life. Accidentally,he started a business and it grew wildly and he became a billionaire. Holy Mango Pie. Let us check out how he did it.
Published on 16 Jun 2016. Ben and David cover the 3-day-old acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft for $26.2 billion. They cover LinkedIn’s founding story by Reid Hoffman, analyze recent stock behavior, and speculate on the future.
Published on 16 Feb 2019. with Ryan Caldbeck (@ryan_caldbeck), Jeff Jordan (@jeff_jordan), and Sonal Chokshi (@smc90)
It's clear that all kinds of commerce companies and consumer products have been disrupted -- or enabled -- by tech. Yet for certain categories, like consumer packaged goods (CPG), it seems like tech hasn't changed things very much. How is the rise of so-called "micro-brands" (or emerging brands) playing out here?
And, how is it possible that "real" -- different -- innovation isn't really happening in the CPG industry, despite the tremendous legacy of brand, talent, and more in the space? How are CPG companies tackling grocery, which represents the perfect end-capsule and case study of challenges -- and opportunities -- in going from offline to online, from online to offline, and more? As for grocery itself, stores themselves (in the U.S. at least) haven't changed very much due to tech, either... is it a last-mile delivery thing; could we also possibly move to distribution-only centers in the future?
Finally, while the holy grail of performance marketing and personalization remains elusive for the industry -- let’s face it, most brands are still guessing in the dark (and forget trying to customize offerings!) -- even going direct-to-consumer (DTC) hasn't been shining as much of a light here as one might expect. Or so argue the guests in this episode of the a16z Podcast, featuring Ryan Caldbeck of CircleUp, along with a16z general general partner Jeff Jordan, in conversation with Sonal Chokshi. Cuz this episode is all about CPG, DTC; micro-brands, yah you know, all kinds of commerce.
Published on 05 Mar 2019. Roger McNamee, early Facebook investor & author of "Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe," shares early days mentoring Zuck, the destructive power of persuasive tech, the Russian plan to subvert American democracy, & Beyond Facebook: Big Tech’s dystopian surveillance, data collection & what we can do about it - PART 1
Published on 19 Jun 2017. Peter Fenton is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the world's leading VC funds with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, eBay, WeWork, Yelp and many more revolutionary companies of the last decade. Peter himself sits or has sat on the board of Twitter, previous guest Cockroach, Optimizely, New Relic and ZenDesk just to name a few. Prior to Benchmark, Peter was a Managing Partner @ Accel. It is clearly not just me that has a man crush on Peter though as he has been named to Forbes Midas List for many consecutive years with the last list placing Peter as No 3 in the world. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Peter made his way into the world of VC with Accel and came to be a General Partner @ Benchmark? 2.) How does Peter differentiate between the good and the great VCs? How can VCs use hyper-curiosity and hyper-competitiveness to improve their investing ability? Why does Peter not believe that operational experience is a necessity pre-VC? 3.) How does Peter view the importance of valuation in the investment decision making process? How much of a role does it play for him and what is his psychology around valuation, especially with regards to ownership levels? 4.) Why is Peter amused when he hears other investors say they must 'invest in big markets'? What were his big takeaways from watching the investment and hyper-growth journey of Snapchat? How did that influence his view on markets? 5.) Peter has previously said that he is a 'student of great board members'. What are the commonalities among the truly great board members? How do they engage and interact with the entrepreneur? How do they get the most out of their fellow board members? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Peter's Most Recent Investment: Zen.ly As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Peter on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co
Published on 10 Nov 2018. Gleb Budman is co-founder and CEO of Backblaze, which he and his team grew to $20m in revenue and profitability, while building one of the largest and most cost-efficient cloud storage systems on the planet. Previously, Gleb led two product teams from pre-funding through acquisition, and founded three companies.
Published on 26 Oct 2016. There’s a secret out there. A way a living that is so naturally attractive, that is does the heavy lifting for you. It’s based in love. While it sounds like a simple word, living it out in a contagious way isn’t as simple as one would hope. Today’s guest, shows us how it’s done.
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Bob Goff is the New York Times Best-Selling Author of “Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World“. But more than that, he’s a global ambassador for good. Through the work of his non-profit, Bob can be seen taking down vicious witch doctors in Africa and raiding brothels in Southeast Asia.
His heart for the protection of children and the willingness to fight good fights thousands of miles from home, is what makes Bob’s story so unique.
Our conversation is not only inspiring, it’s fun. Bob’s words help us realize how simple love actually is and how complex its results can be. If you’re looking for a fresh outlook on leadership, you will enjoy our interview.
What did you think of our conversation? Do you have anything to add? Let me know in the comments below.
Published on 30 Jan 2019. Zahra Kassam has been on the road in a major way, pitching her startup, Monti Kids. A few months before our show, she pitched on ABC’s “Shark Tank.” Today we find out: Did she win over any investors in her two very public pitches? And how do our investors compare to pitching the sharks? Today's investors are Alexandra Stanton, Sheel Mohnot, Charles Hudson, and Phil Nadel.
Published on 04 Feb 2019. Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales @ Logz.io, the startup that uses predictive analytics and machine learning to provide monitoring, troubleshooting and security. To date, Logz have raised over $45m in funding from the likes of Openview, 83North and Vintage just to name a few. As for Bridget, she has the most incredible track record. Before Logz, Bridget was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. Prior to SumoLogic, Bridget was VP of Sales @ YesWare where she increased MRR per rep by 450%. Finally before YesWare, she was VP of Sales @ Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue, over course of 3+ year tenure, in 3 key leadership roles. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Bridget made her way into the world of sales and became the sales leader she is today, having started in the world of marketing? Having led and scaled numerous sales teams, does Bridget agree the best sales reps are outgoing and extroverted? How does the successful profile of a sales rep depend on (1) whether you are selling to SMB or enterprise? (2) The stage of the company? How can one stress test the character type of the candidate pre-hire in the interview stage? Does Bridget believe that sales reps really are as coin operated as many suggest? Why is that potentially an unfair position to take? How does Bridget think about structuring the right comp plans for her team? What other methods of incentivisation does Bridget believe works equally as efficiently? Does Bridget believe that you should pay sales rep commissions on services revenue? Should one pay the same or lower commissions on renewals? Should multi-year deals be paid upfront? How does one structure commissions for the sales team with that in mind? When does Bridget believe is the right time to hire (1) your first sales reps? (2) Your first VP of Sales? Why does Bridget believe that 70% of VP of Sales positions do not work out in the first 9 months? What can founders do to increase the likelihood of success within their VP of Sales role? Where do many go wrong? Bridget’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Bridget know now that she wishes she had known when she started in SaaS? SDR’s are the most important function in the sales process, agree or not and why? Sales training, what works? What does not? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Bridget Gleason
Published on 29 Apr 2018. A lack of sleep is associated with all types of diseases, including Alzheimer's and cancer. Professor Matthew Walker, Director of UC Berkeley’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab—reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to fight disease and change our lives for the better.
Published on 04 Jun 2015. Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO and Co-Founder of Vaynermedia is a fighter. You knew that.
He hustles. You knew that too.
In preparing for this interview I look into the story behind the story behind the story – even if I don’t bring it up during the interview. So, Try to Imagine - if your country lost 1/3 of its population during the Second World War.
Imagine if your part of the country was where most of that 1/3 had lived.
And that your country lost ½ of its economic resources.
And your family survived.
And later moved to America
And you had a chance.
And what that chance looked like was a stack of boxes, in a stockroom, in a liquor store,
In a small town,
In New Jersey.
What would you do?
Gary Vaynerchuk – decided to move the boxes.
…………………..
In this interview:
We talk about greatness. How does one become great?
We talk about family. His family. Personal and extended.
We talk about growing up.
We talk about how, as a kid, he felt like a winner, because of what he felt internally, in contrast to what was going on externally.
He talks to the immigrant out there struggling
He talks to everyman out there struggling.
Then we ran out of time.
Gary graciously invited me back to New York – for round two (in Episode 031)
Published on 21 Aug 2018. Not only are these clips the top viewed #AskGaryVee questions of all time, they're also clips that 100% embody everything that I'm about - Hope you love these 3
Published on 26 May 2015. Episode 3 of Startup School Radio: Host Aaron Harris interviews Pete Koomen, founder and CTO of Optimizely and Jeremy Yamaguchi, founder and CEO of Lawn Love
Published on 15 Apr 2016. Welcome to the first episode of Season 3! This season, we’re doing something new. Instead of following one company over many episodes, we’ll be telling the stories of a bunch of different companies. This season, you’ll meet entrepreneurs from different parts of the world, in all sorts of businesses. We’ll follow prisoners, tailors, smugglers, and tech geeks. And these founders all actually have something in common: their companies are stuck, and they know they need to make a big change. But they have no idea what to change, or whether it will bring the end or a whole new beginning. We’re kicking off this season with a story about a group of friends that moves across the country to launch an unlikely website that they think could replace television. The media loves them. They just need to figure out how to get their users to feel the same way.
Published on 07 Sep 2016. What is the number one cause for failure in early-stage startups? Team issues! In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, Tina Seelig interviews executive coach Michael Terrell. Michael is the founder and managing partner of Terrell Leadership Group, and co-author of The Inside Out Effect, which focuses on effective leadership. In this conversation, Michael shares his insights on effective team dynamics, his process for diagnosing team issues, and examples of how he works through team challenges.
Published on 15 Oct 2012. Find out why scarcity is the only thing worth paying for on today’s episode of Seth Godin’s Startup School. Seth discusses having McDonalds milkshakes for breakfast, the lock-in effect, the large world that is the app market, and how your job is not to find more customers for your products, your job is to find more products for your customers.
Published on 07 Jan 2019. When someone first suggested today’s guest to me I said no way. But then I realized the person I was talking to owned a payment processing company and he knew how much money this guy was making. He has a big following on YouTube and Instagram teaching people how to sell on Amazon but that’s just a side project for him. He has actually created a real business selling on Amazon. Larry Lubarsky makes six figures selling on Amazon and has a YouTube channel that teaches others how to sell on Amazon.
Larry Lubarsky makes six figures selling on Amazon and has a YouTube channel that teaches others how to sell on Amazon.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
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Published on 08 Nov 2017. If you want to grow your business, your goal isn’t to beat the competition — it’s to escape the competition altogether. No one knows this better than Paypal founder Peter Thiel. “Competition is for losers,” he’s been known to say. Thiel is a former colleague, frequent co-investor and long-time intellectual sparring partner with Host Reid Hoffman. Their combined thinking on the competitive landscape is unmissable.
Published on 01 Jan 2017. The background, root causes and rough outline of the dotcom bubble. How it happened, why it happened... and why it's unlikely to happen again anytime soon.
Published on 11 Aug 2017. This week, Inc. writers and editors discuss how a shift in the so-called 'gig economy' impacts companies that depend on short-term labor. They also examine why Netflix, the DVD rental service-turned-streaming giant, just made its first acquisition to date. Finally, they explore the power that the big digital platforms of today wield over media--and what one new high-profile essay on the topic gets so wrong.
Published on 15 May 2017. Ed McManus was the technical advisor for season three of Silicon Valley on HBO.
He came in to talk about what his experience working on the show.
Read the transcript here (http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-technical-advisor-for-silicon-valley-on-hbo-ed-mcmanus).
Published on 01 Sep 2016. This show is about the amazing stories of world-class multi-millionaire and billionaire founders , how they started and how they succeeded. Founder Stories include the founders of Facebook(Mark), Linked-in(Reid), WhatsApp(Jan), Ben and Jerry Ice creams(the name says it), Instagram(Kevin), Amazon(Jeff), Pandora(Tim), Hershey Chocolates(Milton) and more. You will hear their struggles and seemingly insurmountable problems and how they emerged victoriously, so you too can succeed as a founder.
Published on 07 Jan 2019. Before Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice met, they shared a common belief: New York City gyms didn't have the kind of exercise classes they craved, and each of them wanted to change that. A fitness instructor introduced them over lunch in 2005, and before the meal was done they were set on opening a stationary bike studio, with a chic and aspirational vibe. A few months later, the first SoulCycle opened in upper Manhattan. Today, SoulCycle has cultivated a near-tribal devotion among its clients, with studios across the United States and Canada. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," how "kid-preneur" Gabrielle Goodwin and her mom Rozalynn invented a double-face double snap barrette that doesn't slip out of little girls' hair, no matter how much they play around.
Published on 19 Nov 2015. Scott Jordan is no wall flower. He is a force to be reckoned with – and when he became frustrated with carrying devices and wanted something better than a man bag or a fanny pack he quit his job as a lawyer at a startup and launched SCOTTeVEST– a travel clothier that specializes in multi-pocket clothing specifically built around the tech gear we all carry.
That decision, fourteen years ago, was made based on a philosophy that has guided much of his entrepreneurial journey – anything worth doing is worth doing now.
Scott Jordan’s first product, the eVest 1.0, has morphed into a full line of clothing for men and women and a company that has landed on Inc.’s Fastest Growing Companies List three consecutive years. With global sales exceeding $10 million and Board of Advisors that includes Steve Wozniak (yes, the Steve Wozniak) and Kenneth “Hap” Klopp (co-founder of North Face), SCOTTeVEST has traversed the startup desert and reached the land milk and money.
In this interview you will learn:
How to use the power of storytelling to sell a product no one's ever heard of The power of PR and spin, how to make the best out of a bad situation and come out on top What is controversy and why it isn't always a bad thing Answer to the question of whether or not you should bootstrap or go after investors The strategies that Scott used to get his name and his business on the map & much more!
Published on 13 Oct 2017. Ben and James discuss Facebook and where both its critics and executives go wrong. It’s time for everyone to consider the worst-case scenarios. NOTE: We unfortunately had significant audio issues this week on both sides (which, by the way, had nothing to do with the cut cable referenced in the podcast ). Our apologies. Presented by MailChimp Links Ben Thompson: Defining Aggregators — Stratechery This is why tech companies won’t disclose content of Russian ads — The Outline Ben Thompson: Trustworthy Networking — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Manifestos and Monopolies — Stratechery Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery The Barriers … Continue reading Episode 127 — The Worst-Case Scenario
Published on 30 Nov 2018. Asana raises $50 million. Airbnb gets a new CFO. And there are a number of private tech companies worth $10 billion or more (10x unicorns, or, ahem, decacorns) that will probably try to go public next year.
Published on 07 Mar 2018. How do you know when it’s time to start a company? Or when to begin fundraising, and how much? And, as you grow, how do you recruit the best executives and build a culture centered on employees? Venture capitalist Josh McFarland of the firm Greylock Partners answers these questions and more through his experiences as founder and CEO of tech startup TellApart, which Twitter acquired for nearly half a billion dollars.
Published on 25 Feb 2017. Rodney Urquhart grew up in a North Philly neighborhood ridden with gang violence and effects of the crack epidemic. After seeing people around him get involved with gangs and crime, he realized that staying in high school would result in getting arrested or shot.
At 16, Rodney dropped out of high school and moved in with his grand mother. Being a high school dropout and having no college degree, Rodney had his fair share of companies casting doubt on his ability. But his willingness to learn and work well with others was what got him to create an impressive company portfolio including Comcast, Microsoft’s Yammer, and ThoughtWorks. He didn’t just want to survive, he wanted to thrive.
Rodney currently heads the test infrastructure team at Slack. He is also part of a program called /dev/color, a non-profit organization that aims to maximize the impact of Black software engineers in the tech space.
Published on 27 Sep 2016. Ben and David go inside the M&A press with Bloomberg’s technology M&A reporter and host of the Deal of the Week Podcast, Alex Sherman. We explore how stories about big deals get broken or what “according to people familiar with the matter” really means.
Published on 29 Dec 2018. with Marc Andreessen (@pmarca), Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), and Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen)
This episode of the a16z Podcast features the rare combination of a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in conversation, together, with economist Tyler Cowen (chair of economics at George Mason University and chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center there, and host of his own podcast.) The conversation originally took place at our most recent annual innovation Summit -- which features a16z speakers and invited experts from various organizations discussing innovation at companies large and small, as well as tech trends spanning bio, consumer, crypto, fintech, and more.
This discussion covers Ben and Marc's marriage, er, partnership; the evolution of VC and "talent as a network"; and where are we right now on industries being affected by tech (such as retail) and tech trends (such as VR/AR and wearables) -- and where are we going next? Finally, is software eating culture... or is it the other way around?
Published on 09 Feb 2018. Max Levchin, co-founder Affirm, PayPal, Slide & investor 120+ co's on SV early days, finding Peter Thiel & Elon Musk, fighting fraud, Yahoo! board tales, mentoring startups, & returning to Fintech with "beneficience" & giving credit to the consumers who really need it
Published on 11 Dec 2017. Olaf Carlson-Wee is the Founder & CEO @ Polychain Capital, one of the world's premier funds actively managing a portfolio of blockchain assets. Having founded the firm less than 2 years ago with their initial $4m fund, Polychain now has over $200m AUM with backing from the likes of Sequoia, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and USV just to name a few. Prior to founding Polychain, Olaf was the first employee at Coinbase serving as their Head of Risk and as product manager. In addition, Olaf has also been an active angel with a portfolio including the likes of Robinhood, Ethereum and Numerai. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Olaf made his way into the world of crypto from academic studies to Coinbase to today with Polychain? 2.) What really is Polychain Capital and what is the primary mandate with the $250m AUM? With the firm's investments being always liquid, how does one look to stay aligned to founders with an exit possible at any time? How does Olaf think about LP fund withdrawal, would that symbolize a snowball effect in the crypto space? 3.) How does sourcing crypto opportunities differ from sourcing venture opportunities? How does the subsequent DD process change when evaluating crypto opportunities? What does Olaf want to see in whitepapers and what are the big red flags when analysing crypto investments? 4.) How does Olaf think about the exit environment for crypto assets? How does Olaf believe traditional corporate acquirers will respond to crypto assets and those that have raised through ICO? What does Olaf mean when he says, "we will see token network acquisitions in the future"? 5.) Have tokens created a paradigm shift in the method through which companies are funded? Charlie Lee @ Litecoin stated on the show, "ICO's were his biggest concern for crypto". Does Olaf share this concern and where does he see the nuances? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Olaf’s Fave Book: Infinite Jest Olaf’s Most Recent Investment: 0x Project As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Namely is the all-in-one HR, payroll, and benefits platform your employees will love to use. It’s as intuitive as social media, but powerful enough to support the complexity of today’s workforce. Namely’s mission is to help mid-sized companies build a better workplace. See how Namely can transform your workplace at www.Namely.com. Eero is the world’s best-reviewed wifi. A system of eero and eero Beacons wirelessly connects to blanket your home in fast, reliable WiFi, so despite the increased number of devices with Christmas coming, you’ll still be able to get powerful mesh WiFi in every nook and cranny of your home, backyard included. No more dead spots, slow spots, drop-offs, or buffering — right out of the box. Eero is only available in the US and Canada and you can check it out here!
Published on 25 Oct 2018. Alan Trefler is a visionary leader, a technology change-agent, an innovative philanthropist, a chess master, and a trusted advisor to business executives around the world. He founded Pegasystems to change the way the world builds software. Today, the company employees nearly 4,500 people around the world and has a market cap of almost $5B.
Published on 08 Nov 2018. Nathan Rice and Julie Mendez have a familiar story: As a married couple well into their corporate careers, they found themselves stuck in a rut, living for their jobs and missing out on their family. Renting a spare bedroom in their home quickly showed them the power—and profit capability—of Airbnb.
Through experimentation and innovation, Nathan and Julie put together a winning Airbnb strategy. They’ve launched multiple properties that provide them the financial freedom to focus on their family and to travel the world.
Now, they’re ready to bring their knowledge and insights to the StartupCamp community. This week’s StartupCamp Stories Podcast episode kicks off our free upcoming Airbnb webinar. Nathan and Julie discuss the benefits of becoming an Airbnb entrepreneur and what you need to do to get started.
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In this surprisingly emotional conversation, Nathan and Julie share the struggles, and inspiration, that led them to become entrepreneurs. This episode is full of wisdom and motivation for anyone looking to put their hospitality skills to the test. These two certified Superhosts will show you how to:
Work as an entrepreneurial team Prioritize the guest’s needs and comfort Conduct market research Scale by building a team
Financial freedom is easier than you may think. Take a listen to this week’s episode. If you would like a copy of Nathan and Julie’s free eBook they mentioned during this podcast, email Ben@startupcamp.com to request it, and be sure to sign up for the upcoming webinar
Published on 25 Apr 2018. The U.S. immigration system is a bureaucratic nightmare. And it’s only getting worse. Founder Xiao Wang has a plan to solve that with his startup, Boundless. Today's investors are Jillian Manus, Daniel Gulati, Phil Nadel, and Michael Hyatt. For more information about our show visit thepitch.show
Published on 22 May 2017. Mark Suster is Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures which he joined in 2007, having previously worked with Upfront for nearly 8 years as a two-time entrepreneur. Before joining Upfront Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com following its acquisition of Koral, where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, a European SaaS company that was acquired by SWORD Group. Mark is also the writer of one of my favourite VC blogs, Both Sides Of The Table which is a centre piece to the whole VC community and is a must read for all interested in entrepreneurship and VC. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Mark made his way into the world of startups and came to invest in SaaS with Upfront today? What are 4 reasons why startups should prioritise professional services in the early days? Why do most VCs disagree with this? How did Salesforce do this right in their period of hyper-growth? How should early stage startups approach the topic of pricing? How can they evaluate whether to call high or low? What are the pros and cons of doing both? Mark has previously discussed the importance of finding your champion in the buying process. How can startups determine whether your champion is a decision-maker? What questions can you ask to find this out? What changes as a SaaS business scales? What are the key inflection points of company development? How does Mark view the amount B2B startups are raising today? How does Mark evaluate responsible and right spend? 60 Second SaaStr What should your first sales reps be really good at? How has Mark seen early stage SaaS startups go wrong most often? IPO markets, frothy or fantastic? What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known before? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Mark Suster
Published on 27 Feb 2017. Gary Vaynerchuk is an American serial entrepreneur, four-time New York Times bestselling author, speaker and internationally recognized internet personality.
Published on 17 Mar 2015. Clementine Bihiga inspires others. Which is against the odds. 21 years ago, on March 11, 1994, Clementine Bihiga, enjoyed life like any other 8 year old, in Gisenyi, Rwanda. She would play by the lake with her family, go out to restaurants, and attend church. That all changed with the Rwandan genocide, that killed between 500,000 and 1 million people. She escaped to the Congo, then to refugee camps in Kenya, then to Massachusetts in America.
In this podcast, Clementine shares about her homeland, and her journey, especially here in America. Her initial experience starting high school were heartwarming as everyone sang about her name ‘Clementine’. But she soon suffered from culture shock as her she couldn’t understand other students’ behavior, concerns, and standards. Then how she turned around her life through college, the work force, and her entrepreneurial journey. She shares why she is such a happy person today, and her gift to be able to bring others out of suffering. She teaches that pain and suffering can build us and take us to the next level of humanity. She also shares about what it means to be Rwandan and how to cook her favorite dish.
Clementine’s entrepreneurial activity is speaking to organizations, companies, churches to share her message of purpose and hope. Through her You Are a Masterpiece workshop, she teaches that being happy is a matter of knowing what your calling is. The sooner you know what your purpose is the sooner you will live a more fulfilling life. The best way to reach Clementine at: clembihiga@hotmail.com, at her blog: http://darlingclementin.blogspot.com/, or at Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cbihiga
The title of Clementine’s upcoming book is: Happily Broken; Discovering Happiness Through Pain and Suffering. In her book Clementine teaches to learn your motivational gifts, to be encouraged in your calling, and how to appreciate others’ uniqueness.
Published on 12 Dec 2018. Stop complaining, stop judging, stop making excuses for yourself or others - once you start recognizing these super important facts, you begin to really excel...
Published on 16 Sep 2015. Episode 17 of Startup School Radio: Host Aaron Harris interviews YC partner Michael Seibel. Also on the show: Wade Foster, cofounder and CEO of Zapier.
Published on 09 Nov 2018. The Story: Eva Moskowitz wants to fix a really big problem. There are over a million kids in New York City’s public schools. Most can’t read or do math at grade level. Many won’t graduate on time. And it’s largely poor, black and brown kids who are stuck in the lowest performing schools. Eva’s the founder and CEO of Success Academy, the subject of this season of StartUp. And she’s actually making progress. Her school network is growing at lightning speed, and her students get among the highest standardized-test scores in the city, beating out schools in some of the wealthiest districts. And the education world is watching. But not everyone likes what they see. In this season, we ask how exactly Success is doing what it’s doing, and why does it have so many critics?Today, on the first of our six-part series about Success, we meet a mother, Sherisse, who desperately wants her son to get into Success, so that he can have opportunities she never had herself. And we go inside a Success classroom on the first day of school, to see what parents like Sherisse are clamoring for.The Facts:Peter Leonard mixed the episode. Our theme song is by Mark Philips, remixed by Bobby Lord. Build Buildings wrote and performed our special ad music. Additional music by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Hot Moms Dot Gov, Jupyter, Mothica,Golden Gram and BlueDot.For a list of our sponsors and show related offer codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers
Published on 05 Apr 2017. What can MadLibs teach you about brainstorming? Emily Ma, from Alphabet’s X, joins host Tina Seelig to discuss how simple word choices in brainstorming profoundly influences what ideas are generated. They discuss what questions you can ask to squeeze out more diverse ideas, and how do you keep your team from falling back into incremental solutions. Emily also shares her strategy for color-coded voting at the end of a brainstorm that helps teams move from exploration to exploitation. This is the second of three episodes with Emily on brainstorming.
Published on 08 Oct 2012. Learn how adjusting your course is beneficial on today’s episode of Seth Godin’s Startup School. This week Seth describes how being a consultant differs from being an entrepreneur, explains how he came to own a 40 billion dollar t-shirt, and starts to ask the group a series of questions that every entrepreneur should be able to answer.
Published on 10 Dec 2018. Today’s guest has been running his company for five years. It’s huge but still under the radar. I’m wondering why, so I’ve invited the founder here to talk about it. Patrick McKenna is the founder of Strike Social which is a global social media advertising company.
Patrick McKenna is the founder of Strike Social which is a global social media advertising company.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
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Published on 24 May 2017. If you’re Steve Jobs, you can wait for your product to be perfect. But there are almost no Steve Jobs’ in the world. For the rest of us, If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late. Imperfect is perfect. Why? Because your assumptions about what people want are never exactly right. Most entrepreneurs create great products through a tight feedback loop with real customers using a real product. So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company. What will make or break you is speed. And no one knows this better than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. He shares the origin story of his famous mantra, “move fast and break things” and how this ethos applied as Facebook evolved from student project to tech giant.
Published on 01 Sep 2018. On Google's 20th Birthday (September 4th) a re-cutting and re-airing of my comprehensive history of Google, from it's inception through its IPO. Happy Birthday, Google!
Published on 19 Oct 2018. This week on Inc. Uncensored, writers and an editor discuss Juul, the San Francisco startup that inherited the tobacco industry’s baggage. Plus, they explore how innovative startups are rethinking the future of malls and why Mark Cuban invested in a founder who kept her day job
Published on 15 May 2017. Anu Hariharan is a Partner at YC Continuity (https://www.ycombinator.com/continuity) which is an investment fund dedicated to supporting founders as they scale their companies.
Read the transcript here (http://blog.ycombinator.com/anu-hariharan-on-network-effects/).
Published on 29 May 2017. Blake Mycoskie started and sold four businesses before age 30. But only in Argentina did he discover the idea he'd want to pursue long term. After seeing a shoe drive for children, he came up with TOMS — part shoe business, part philanthropy. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," how a long-haired Southern Californian, Chris Healy, co-founded The Longhairs and created special hair ties for guys.
Published on 29 Mar 2017. Jordan Harbinger is one of the most influential people in entrepreneurship today, thanks to his popular podcast The Art of Charm. His show recently hit its 10th anniversary, and Harbinger has interviewed some of the greatest minds and personalities in the startup space and more. Starting off as a law school graduate who landed a job as a financial attorney on Wall Street, it didn't take long for Harbinger to become quickly disillusioned with the life that being a big shot attorney offered. Within a year, he left his job to work full-time the Art of Charm podcast, but not before taking with him some key lessons from his stint on Wall Street. During that time, Harbinger learned of "the third path" to success that no one seemed to talk about. The one that wasn't about working long hours, or even being the smartest person in the room, but instead was all about networking. He found that the key to success was all about sharpening your social skills in order to develop the key relationships you need in order to succeed. That lesson turned Harbinger's life around and opened up a whole world of possibilities that he never thought possible. In this week's episode: How to develop and master the social skills you need to succeed The competitive advantage behind networking and building relationships Why podcasting changed the game and how you can harness its power How to become a highly influential person The secret to creating a successful podcast & much more!
Published on 16 Oct 2015. Ben and James discuss how cloud services have set the stage for fundamental changes in venture capital, just as they have in the enterprise. This episode is sponsored by Wealthfront. See recommended portfolios and get up to $15,000 managed for free by visiting Wealthfront.com/Exponent. Links Ben Thompson: Venture Capital and the Internet’s Impact — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Unicorns — Stratechery In Aggregate — Exponent Episode 049 Chris Dixon: The Babe Ruth Effect in Venture Capital — CDixon Blog Ben Thompson: Dell to Buy EMC, Enterprise Disruption, Dell’s Logic — Stratechery Daily Update Hosts Ben Thompson, @benthompson, Stratechery James Allworth, @jamesallworth, … Continue reading Episode 055 — AWS and Venture Capital
Published on 16 Nov 2018. This week, Uber was first in line due to the scale of its results. The firm disclosed its third-quarter results including slowing growth (in percentage terms), steep losses on a GAAP basis (GAAP means that all costs were counted) and adjusted losses that fell in the period.
Next up was the big deal of the week, effectively. The Qualtrics exit to SAP for $8 billion in cash, a portion of which it borrowed, as we point out. The deal meant that the company didn't actually go public (boo), but it still made a hell of a splash all the same.
Published on 26 Oct 2017. There was a time, not long ago, when information we desperately wanted wasn’t at our fingertips. What’s the best deal on flights to New York? How much does that home down the street cost? Serial entrepreneur Rich Barton has made a career out of providing all those juicy details by launching platforms such as Expedia, Zillow and the company-review site Glassdoor. He shares his journey and advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Published on 08 Sep 2017. From New York to San Diego, Saron has launched one of the biggest coding podcasts called CodeNewbie. The show has over 1.4 million downloads and listened to over a hundred countries.
With a Twitter community of over 27,000 people, Saron hosts the #CodeNewbie Twitter Chat happening every Wed @9PM EST. She organizes meetups in ATL, Philly, New York, and DC. She caters to an early audience to get people to recognize that there are multiple ways to learn how to code.
Saron is also the producer of Codeland Conference, an annual event that gives a whole new light to how tech conferences should be done.
Published on 02 Mar 2017. Kevin worked on his startup idea close to 2 years but it didn't take off. He took a risk, scraped his old idea and went with a new idea, which he found almost by accident. It was a hit and Facebook bought it for $1 billion. Let us check out how he did it.
Published on 05 Dec 2016. Mark Cuban made millions off of tech startups, then billions off of stocks — and later went on to buy and revive the Dallas Mavericks. He has come to define the persona of the serial entrepreneur.
Published on 28 Mar 2018. Welcome back to our “Best of Foundr” podcast series! To celebrate Foundr’s 5th birthday, we put together a series of special edition podcast episodes that feature the best snippets from our most popular episodes. We pulled out the gems from each of your favorite interviews and compiled them into a three-week series of pure content gold. This week we are focusing on hustle, motivation, mindset, and getting s**t done! In this episode, we have one of my heroes and the king of hustle, Gary Vee. We also have memory and productivity wizard Jim Kwik, morning routine master Hal Elrod, and the mindset king himself, Tony Robbins! While I have loved the releases in this special birthday series so far, I have to say, we saved some of the best for last. In this episode, you will be challenged and motivated to seriously move to the next level!
Published on 06 Feb 2015. This is the story of Stratechery, presented with much sheepishness on Ben’s part. How Ben thought about the market, his business model, and more. We apologize that this is a little long and perhaps a bit choppy. It’s hard to talk about us! Links Andrew Sullivan: A Note to my Readers – The Dish Ezra Klein: What Andrew Sullivan’s Exit Says About the Future of Blogging – Vox Ben Thompson: Blogging’s Bright Future – Stratechery Ben Thompson: Dear Zoë Keating: Tell YouTube to Take a Hike – Stratechery Taylor Swift: For Taylor Swift, the Future of Music is a Love … Continue reading Episode 034 – The Story of Stratechery
Published on 09 Nov 2018. Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a blast. Connie and I were in the studio with our guest, True Ventures's Tony Conrad, while Danny repped the other side of the country, dialing in from New York.
Published on 05 Feb 2018. Choose co-founders based on their core values. Pick investors who will be there in your darkest hour. Make hiring the best people your top priority, and treat them like owners — not employees. Sameer Dholakia, CEO of business email service SendGrid, discusses the most important strategies for a startup's success, including the concept of "servant leadership."
Published on 19 Feb 2018. Gary Vaynerchuk does not need an introduction. For those of you who haven’t heard of him yet, he is not only a rockstar entrepreneur, he's an author and a speaker. He's a four-time New York Times bestseller. He now runs a 800-person media agency, VaynerMedia. He is also an early investor in Twitter, Snapchat, and Uber.
Big on giving back and making people happy, the one legacy he wants to leave is that he has given more than what he has taken.
Published on 02 Nov 2016. An acquisition so wild and crazy, they had to do it again. And again. Ben & David cover tech’s perhaps most-traded asset, Skype (which also happens to be a fantastic business). How do we even know which deal to grade? Tune in to find out… Topics covered include: * Community spotlight: Slack community member Swyx’s financial data research startup Sentieo! * Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis’s meeting in the 1990’s at Swedish telecom company Tele2 * Zennström & Friis’s introduction to talented Estonian developers Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla, and Priit Kasesalu as part of Tele2’s efforts to jump into the dot com “portal mania” * Skype’s origins in the technology powering Zennström, Friis and the Estonians’ first startup endeavor together: the peer-to-peer file sharing platform Kazaa * The “complicated” legal, technological and ownership situation for Kazaa and Skype * Skype’s “unique” corporate culture, including a swimming pool in the board room and shots for initiating new employees * The first Skype acquisition: eBay’s 2005 deal to acquire the company for $2.6B, just two years after launch * Culture clash between eBay and Skype management, and further legal drama regarding Skype technology ownership post-acquisition * The second Skype acquisition: eBay’s 2009 decision to spin the company out to a private investor consortium including Silver Lake and the newly-formed Andreessen Horowitz * The third (and final?) Skype acquisition: Microsoft’s $8.5B purchase of the company in 2011 * Skype as a “crossover” product with viable market opportunities both in consumer and enterprise * Bill Gurley’s “Keys to the 10X Revenue Club” and the power of Skype’s organic customer acquisition model Followups: * The Google iPhone… err, Pixel! Hot Takes: * AT&T’s $85B mega-acquisition of Time Warner… making America great again, or rebuilding the T-1000? * The New York Times acquiring The Wirecutter The Carve Out: * Ben: Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny * David: SOMA the Musical starring our very own Acquired listener, the brilliant and talented Jake Saper!
Published on 28 Sep 2017. with Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam
We’ve already talked about why bitcoin matters. But as the set of cryptocurrencies — and networks and “tokens” enabled by the underlying blockchain — grow (Ethereum being one of the fastest-growing ones), where do we go from here? How do we tease apart the signal from the noise, given all the buzz and critiques out there?
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, general partner Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam (former Goldman Sachs trader and a co-founder of Coinbase) break down the fundamentals of it all — from incentives, developer communities, and protocols, to new models of governance and the tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized systems (including central planning vs. letting a thousand experiments bloom). And then, given all the hype out there right now around crypto tokens and “ICOs”, how do we tell the difference between what’s promising/legitimate vs. a red flag? How could we value tokens? And what does it mean for incumbents when all the value that was created in the previous paradigm is being commoditized by the new one, and that value creation now has to happen at some new layer?
At the end of the day, the key word through it all is incentives. And it’s a testament to the power of getting incentive structures right that someone pseudonymously dropping a 9-page whitepaper onto the internet led to a $70 billion cryptocurrency, a whole ecosystem of companies and users, and the largest supercomputer network in the world. Then again… isn’t that how innovation happens?
Published on 30 Oct 2018. Mar Hershenson, Pear VC: "Building Companies from 0 to 1" & what startups need to know to get from idea to Series A; & James Currier, NFX: "Network Effects Produces 70% of the Value in Tech" & how startups can create network effects for defensibility & scale @ LAUNCH SCALE
Published on 05 Jun 2017. Brian Singerman is a Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the world’s most prestigious and successful VC funds with prior investments in the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, SpaceX, Spotify and many more incredible companies. Prior to Founders Fund, Brian spent 4 years at Google where, among other projects, Brian founded iGoogle. Whilst at Google, Brian also started his career as an investor, founding his own angel fund, XGYC Fund. Brian also currently sits on the board of Affirm, Oscar, AltSchool and Emerald Therapeutics. Due to Brian's immense success he was named No 5 on Forbes Midas List for America's Top VCs. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brian made the way from Google, to his own angel fund to being General Partner @ Founders Fund? 2.) How has Brian seen his investment mindset shift over the years from angel investing to his angel fund, XGYC to now being a partner at Founders Fund? 3.) Why does Brian believe that success in VC is purely about upside maximization? What does Brian think downside minimisation is unimportant? 4.) What does the investment decision-making process look like at Founders Fund? How does this change with the scaling cheque size? What are Brian's views on conviction driven vs unanimous team voting structures? 5.) Why is Brian a staunch generalist when it comes to investing? For Brian, why does he believe that being a generalist will deliver outsized returns over being a specialist? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Brian’s Fave Book: Snow Crash Brian’s Fave Blog: Dan Primack Brian’s Most Recent Investment: Affirm As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brian on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom’s their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They’ll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.
Published on 17 Jul 2018. Sati is a seasoned entrepreneur who loves building product, growing people and delivering customer value. He has both enterprise and start-up experience that enables him to transform an idea into a scalable company. He founded Zenkraft (the leading shipping platform for Salesforce), Eversauce (CRM for PR industry) and most recently OneMob, which has earned the support of Salesforce Ventures and was awarded Gartner Cool Vendor and Aragon Hot Vendor. OneMob makes video recording, sending and tracking easy for any professional, with powerful integrations into platforms like Salesforce, Cisco Spark, LinkedIn and more. Before starting OneMob, Sati spent 8 years at salesforce.com, where he built and grew the AppExchange from an idea to 2000 apps.
Published on 04 Apr 2018. How many of you work too hard, focusing more on your business and not enough on your family?
Many folks have great business plans, but very few actually have similar plans to make sure their families are just as successful.
If you’ve ever wondered how to take the same focus and strategy that makes your business successful and apply it to your family, then you’ll love what today’s podcast guest Pat Lencioni has to say.
http://startupcamp.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/pat_mixdown.mp3
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As an entrepreneur, business thought leader, and award-winning author on organization health, Pat’s most cherished trophy (received for selling 1 million books) is one he wasn’t even there to accept, because instead he was with his family celebrating his son’s first confession.
In this episode, we discuss with Pat one of his least popular but most important books. The Three Big Questions For A Frantic Family: A leadership fable about restoring sanity to the most important organization in your life. In this book, Pat lays out how he learned to apply the same principles to his family that he teaches to others for building strong businesses.
In our interview, Pat lays out these three questions and how you can answer them for your family:
What makes you unique (your values and strategy as a family)? What’s most important in your life, right now? What are you going to do to daily remember your values, strategies, and priorities?
So if you want to apply the same motivation and drive that you have for your business to your relationships
Published on 13 Jun 2018. Stefan Loble wows the room with his near perfect pitch for Bluffworks, a company that makes travel-business attire. But is his compelling story enough to get investors to sign on? Today's investors are Nicole Verkindt, Michael Hyatt, Jillian Manus, and Charles Hudson.
Published on 07 Apr 2017. Dan Burkhart is the Founder & CEO @ Recurly, the startup powering much of the subscription success, trusted by the likes of Twitch, CBS Interactive and Hubspot just to name a few. They have raised over $20m in VC funding from leading investors including Greycroft, Freestyle, Harrison Metal and more. As for Dan, his background spans 14 years with the likes of eBay and NBC Internet in the marketing, business development and strategic partnership realm. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Dan make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Recurly? How does Dan perceive a good CAC/LTV ratio? Does he agree with the hallowed 3:1 often cited by founders and investors? How does Dan manage and measure customer churn? How does he approach regrettable and non-regrettable customer churn? What is the post-mortem analysis of customer churn? How does Dan insert an element of accountability without creating a sense of churn? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Dan Burkhart
Published on 30 May 2018. Kevin's first AMA! Three health tips, favorite supplements, biggest regrets, dealing with fear, how to approach relationships, dealing with haters, Dr. Longo vs Peter Attia, and more!
Published on 22 Dec 2016. Chiara Cokieng is a young entrepreneur and copy-writer, in the Philippines who thinks a lot.
She told me she wanted to be an entrepreneur many years before she could spell it.
She lifted herself up above her environment in two ways – she became a champion free style wrestler, and she began entering math competitions starting locally and then going international. She also wrote at quite a young age, a 100 page sales letter for her first employer, to find out if through a mix of storytelling, empathizing, and reason-why copy-writing, they could double their monthly recurring revenue. They did.
I interviewed Chiara because I wanted to understand the thinking of entrepreneurs in emerging markets.
She and I are both interested in the intersection of America and Asia startups & adapting Silicon Valley principles to local realities.
She’s been inspired by immigrant entrepreneurs like Steli Efti, Hiten Shah and Gary Vaynerchuk, and she reflects on the differences between typical business attitudes in America and those in the Philippines.
Interesting for any entrepreneur in an emerging market – especially as she’s created opportunities for herself as a country manager for American based companies.
Some highlights:
How can immigrant entrepreneurs bring their experience/knowledge back to their countries?
The moment an immigrant suddenly realizes: “I’m so f*g rich!”
Why you can sell iPhones in the Philippines, where 70% of the people make $100 per month.
Why it’s easier for your ideas to persuade someone in America than the Philippines
What happens when there is less trust of each other, in your culture. What are the obstacles to that occurring in the Philippines?
What to do when you realize you have sense of entitlement? Which is a big problem in all cultures
What is and how she learned the entrepreneurial mindset?
How attending international math competitions made Chiara recognize that you are the average of the five people closest to you. And why that is the best LIFE HACK
Why she loves THE IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEUR
And most important. How to really know who your customer is?
Chiara’s website: http://chiaracokieng.com/
One of Chiara’s blogs: http://chiaracokieng.com/suffering/
The Immigrant Entrepreneur Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheImmigrantEntrepreneur/
Published on 23 Oct 2018. fired up for this - the 1st ever Vaynermedia 4Ds in London !!!
Published on 10 Feb 2016. Aaron Harris interviews Paul Graham, author and co-founder of Y Combinator
Published on 06 Jul 2018. Every year, there’s a movement of thousands of pastors starting new churches — they call them church plants. It’s a world remarkably parallel to the tech industry, with incubators, growth metrics and, well, angel investors. One of these pastors, Watson Jones III, has dreams of starting a bustling new church in North Philly. But first, he has to figure out how to get people to show up. Watson might have the most difficult task of any founder in America: Convincing people who don’t know -- or even believe -- in God to change their minds and join his church. Reporter Eric Mennel tells the story of this young church plant in a new multi-part series from StartUp. Listen now to the first episode. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers
Published on 11 Jan 2017. If you really want to win at negotiation, stop fighting and start listening. In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, host Tina Seelig speaks with Margaret “Maggie” Neale, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, for answers to the burning questions about negotiating. Is emotion your most powerful tool? When does deference earn you more than dominance? Will setting a walk-away price decrease your drive to negotiate for more? Maggie also shares pro-tips on negotiating in all settings, from the office to the farmers’ market.
Published on 31 Dec 2012. This week Seth takes the group through The ShipIt Journal. Seth talks about figuring out what the hard part of your project is, describes the difference between perfect and good enough, and explains why shame is the project killer.
Published on 04 Feb 2016. Pathfinder 205 covers how to create interesting and fun encounters for your players. Covers things from average encounters, to boss battles.
Published on 05 Oct 2018. My guest, Jennifer Fitzgerald, saw how ancient the insurance space was and knew it didn’t have to be this way. She had a background in insurance and felt she could modernize this enormous industry. Well, she’s done it. I want to find out how. Jennifer Fitzgerald is the co-Founder of Policygenius, a consumer marketplace for insurance.
Jennifer Fitzgerald is the co-Founder of Policygenius, a consumer marketplace for insurance.
Sponsored by HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Their network of workspaces enables businesses to operate anywhere, without the need for set-up costs or capital investment. It provides our customers with immediate cost benefits and the opportunity to fully outsource their office portfolio.
It’s a network designed to enhance productivity and connect 2.5 million like-minded professionals: an instant global community, and a place to belong.
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Published on 11 Jul 2018. You may think that to scale you need to cut humans out of the equation. The opposite is true. You can harness the power of the "human cloud" to solve almost any problem — as long as you keep the word “human” in the equation. That's what TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot champions for this community of people who work with each other, teach each other, and continually learn from each other. With cameos by DeLashea Strawder (Mosaic Youth Theater in Detroit) and Whitney Johnson (Author, "Build An A Team").
Published on 08 Jul 2018. Lisa Napoli got a job straight out of college at CNN in its earliest days, which is a crazy startup story in it’s own right. But then she worked for a time at Delphi, which was an early online service and competitor to AOL and Prodigy that I don’t think we’ve covered much here before. And then she helped bring the NYTimes online with CyberTimes, which, as she said, is forgotten to history even by the New York Times. Then on to MSNBC, a crazy hybrid tech and media startup that I don’t think we’ve d
Published on 20 May 2016. The Inc. team talks about Harry's, the subscription men's razor company, and how the startup gained market share by buying a 100-year-old razor factory in Germany. The crew also talks about how companies are being sued for misusing biometric technology, and they chat with Toni Ko about selling her makeup company, NYX. Write us: uncensored@inc.comVisit: www.inc.com/inc-uncensoredInc. Uncensored is brought to you by Squarespace. Build your website today at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code UNCENSORED at checkout to get 10% off.Support for this episode's Exit Interview comes from Deloitte's Emerging Growth Company team conducting audits to meet the needs of fast-growing companies that seek investor capital or to go public. See how audit can help companies as they pursue high performance at deloitte.com/us/egc.This episode is also brought to you by The Lincoln Motor Company. The elegant and powerful Lincoln MKZ is for listeners who use their vehicle for both personal and business reasons. Find out more at Lincoln.com/MKZ
Published on 15 May 2017. Ammon Bartram is the cofounder of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Socialcam (YC W12).
Triplebyte (https://triplebyte.com) connects software engineers with companies that are hiring.
Read the transcript here (http://blog.ycombinator.com/hiring-engineers-with-ammon-bartram).
Published on 27 Oct 2016. This show is about the amazing stories of world-class multi-millionaire and billionaire founders , how they started and how they succeeded. Founder Stories include the founders of Facebook(Mark), Linked-in(Reid), WhatsApp(Jan), Ben and Jerry Ice creams(the name says it), Instagram(Kevin), Amazon(Jeff), Pandora(Tim), Hershey Chocolates(Milton) and more. You will hear their struggles and seemingly insurmountable problems and how they emerged victoriously, so you too can succeed as a founder.
Published on 30 Oct 2017. In 1992, Steve Ells was a classically trained chef working in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. But after eating a burrito at a local taqueria, he got an idea: to sell burritos and earn enough money to open his own gourmet restaurant. The first Chipotle opened in Denver the following year. Bringing his culinary training to taqueria-style service, Steve Ells helped transform the way we eat fast food. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," how Alexander Harik turned his mom's recipe for za'atar spread—a fragrant Middle Eastern condiment—into Zesty Z: The Za'atar Company.
Published on 24 May 2017. In 2012, Gretta Rose van Riel, like most aspiring entrepreneurs, found herself spending all of her free time building a business. It was nothing more than a passion project at the time, something to do in her spare time when she wasn't working at her day job. Despite the fact that she had no real plans to become a full-time entrepreneur with her own business, it wasn't long before that passion project grew into something bigger. She soon knew that this was something she just had to devote all of her time and energy to. "Basically, I had an idea that resonated with me so strongly, I just knew that it was something that I had to pursue," van Riel says. The result was a multimillion-dollar ecommerce business called SkinnyMe Tea, the world's first teatox using the natural benefits of tea to help you achieve your health, fitness, and nutrition goals. That alone is impressive enough, but what really separates van Riel from the rest of the pack is that she didn't just build one multimillion-dollar business, she's built many. In five years, Van Riel has transformed herself from just another employee to serial entrepreneur, with multiple ecommerce businesses under her belt. She's effectively cracked the code on how to successfully build a business online, including coming up with the perfect idea, the best way to market it, and how to rapidly scale. In this week's episode you will learn: How to build an incredibly loyal customer base through social media The easiest way to hack into the power of influencer marketing to build your brand Gretta's method to developing the perfect product from idea, to validation, to selling Why Instagram should be your number one channel for customers and sales The foolproof marketing formula guaranteed to double your revenue & much more!
Published on 07 Aug 2014. In this week’s episode we discuss how the Internet is enabling not only big winners, but also small, focused niche players, and why that’s exciting. We also discuss the impact this transition will have on society, follow up on last week’s integrated/modular discussion, and in a special “After Dark” segment briefly discuss Ben’s recent experience with Android and theorize that the Android/iOS are at equilibrium. Links Ben Thompson: Daily Update: Micromax Wins on Local Taste – Stratechery (members-only) Rohin Dharmakumar: Can Micromax Become India’s Leading Smartphone Maker? – Forbes India Ben Thompson: How Technology is Changing the World (P&G Edition) … Continue reading Episode 012: The Internet Rainforest
Published on 17 Aug 2018. Production note: Alex’s mic was a bit whack until the 16-minute mark. Please forgive the issue, we noticed and fixed it as fast as we could. Hugs and love!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Published on 10 Nov 2010. In this lecture that parallels his book Good Boss, Bad Boss, Stanford professor Bob Sutton unpacks the best habits of beloved and effective managers, and details the worst habits of those who fail to lead. The best leaders develop and nurture those who work for them. However, when bosses gain more power, they can easily grow oblivious to the needs of those they lead.
Published on 10 Aug 2018. It all started when Jacob Hsu immigrated from Taiwan at an early age! Fast forward to now, Jacob spends his time between San Mateo and Baltimore while he’s building and managing his team as the CEO of Catalyte.
An ex-banker, Jacob went on to create two startups, one of which is Symbio, a product development and R&D outsourcing services company. In just less than 11 years, the company has grown from $10 million to over $600 million in revenue. In 2016, Symbio got acquired for over a billion dollars.
Catalyte has a very unique business model, specifically using AI to find exceptional people from different backgrounds and helping them become great software engineers. Based in Baltimore, the company is now looking to expand to other cities where they can bring massive impact to local people within the community.
Today, Jacob talks about the different key elements Catalyte is built upon and why now is the time to kill the resume!
Published on 05 Dec 2016. Ben and David complete the Disney acquisition trilogy, covering the "house that Mickey built"'s 2009 acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.
Published on 07 Jul 2018. with Marc Andreessen (@pmarca), Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz), and Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson)
The rise of zero-sum thinking -- which has come snapping back recently -- slows and even halts progress, observes Marc Andreessen. Because you're then dividing up a smaller piece, adds Ben Horowitz, instead of growing the pie altogether. This is true not just in economics, politics, and tech, but also in business relationships (and life), too.
And speaking of such relationships, how does the partnership between Ben and Marc work, more than two decades later, how has it changed through different types of organizations -- and is there anything startup co-founders (and other colleagues) can take away from it? Where do they find the creative inspiration, information, and influences for new ideas? And then, more broadly, how do they think about tech change... including jobs, automation, AI in general?
This episode of the a16z Podcast covers these questions and much more. It's based on a fireside chat that took place at our annual a16z Summit event in November 2017 (which brings together large companies, finance investors, academics, and startups to talk all things innovation), and is moderated by author Steven B. Johnson -- who has written numerous magazine articles, 11 books so far (including Where Good Ideas Come From), and also hosted the PBS series “How We Got to Now”. Incidentally, those are the de facto themes for this conversation, which arcs from past to present to future -- taking us from blinking cursors to dashboards to screens and beyond.
Published on 29 Jun 2018. Crushing Customer Acquisition: Andy Artz, Social Capital explains how to think about your funnel like an investor ("If Warren Buffet Were a Marketer") & Whitney Sales, Acceleprise walks through the optimal sales process @ LAUNCH Festival Sydney
Published on 25 Jun 2018. Max Motschwiller is a Partner with Meritech Capital, one of the West Coast's leading growth investment firms with over $150Bn in IPOs and a portfolio that includes the likes of Facebook, Salesforce, Snap, Box, Mulesoft and Cloudera just to name a few. As for Max, prior to Meritech he spent 3 years with Kleiner Perkins (KPCB) where he was actively involved with investments in Dropcam (Nest/Google), Duolingo, MyFitnessPal (Under Armour), RelateIQ (Salesforce.com) and Stance. Before joining KPCB, Max worked for 3 years at Summit Partners and was actively involved across Summit’s technology portfolio. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Max make his way into the world of VC with Summit and KP from University? What did that decision-making process look like for Max? 2.) As a career VC, would Max agree with Pat Grady @ Sequoia, "the rate of decay on operating experience has never been greater"? What would Max say are the biggest elements he missed through lack of operational experience? How do the skills required from early to pre-IPO change the type of background required? 3.) Max has said before, "to be a good VC you have to do 4 things well", what are those 4 things? Why does Max believe that picking is the greatest skill to develop? At growth, what does Max mean when he says "the picking is around price"? How do the very best VCs approach price sensitivity? 4.) Question from Rob Ward: Max has mastered network development from an early age, what advice would Max give with regards to developing a network? What did he do well and works? What did he try and did not do well? How does Max think about depth vs breadth of network? How does he apply this to investing and due diligence? 5.) In a time of Softbank and Sequoia's $7Bn fund, how does a firm like Meritech look to compete in such frothy environments? How has growth bifurcated into 2 clear stages? What are the advantages of being a small pure-play growth firm? How does the portfolio construction and return expectation change for you given the fund size and stage of investment? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Max’s Fave Book: Home Deus Max’s Most Recent Investment: Amplitude As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Max on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Highfive makes meetings better for thousands of organizations with insanely simple video conferencing designed for meeting rooms. It’s the easiest-to-use solution, with all-in-one hardware and intuitive cloud software. Plus, it’s a high-quality experience with industry-leading audio powered by Dolby Voice. It’s so easy to use, that there’s no pin codes or app downloads. Just click a link in your browser, and you’re in the meeting. With customers in over 100 countries, Highfive is already trusted by the likes of Evernote, Expensify, and Betterment and you can learn more by simply heading over to highfive.com.
Published on 01 Mar 2018. Over the past 10, years, Russell has built a following of over a million entrepreneurs, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, popularized the concept of sales funnels, and co-founded a software company called ClickFunnels that helps tens of thousands of entrepreneurs quickly get their message out to the marketplace.
Published on 08 Nov 2017. When Mike Slagh left the military, he wanted to find a job in tech, but he couldn’t get his foot in the door. And then he found out that he was one of approximately 300,000 service members who every year struggle to make the transition back into the workforce. So Mike decided to do something about it and started Shift. For more information about our show and the investors, visit gimletmedia.com/thepitchOur show is produced by Josh Muccio, Kareem Maddox, and Molly Donahue. We are edited by Devon Taylor. Our Theme Music is by Breakmaster Cylinder, with original music composed by The Muse Maker, Bobby Lord and Haley Shaw. We were mixed by Enoch Kim with help from Matt Boll. Lisa Muccio plans our recording events and thanks to Asthaa Chaturvedi for her reporting on this episode.
Published on 16 Apr 2018. Chetan Puttagunta is a General Partner @ NEA, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms in the world with over $3Bn in their latest fund and a portfolio including the likes of Mulesoft, Jet.com, Uber, Houzz and many more incredible companies. As for Chetan, Chetan focuses on enterprise software and has made investments in MuleSoft, MongoDB, Elastic, Heap, just to name a few. Due to his phenomenal track record, Chetan has been named to GrowthCap’s Top 40 under 40 Growth Investors, Forbes 30 under 30 All-Star Alumni List, and Forbes’ 30 under 30 in Venture Capital. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Chetan made his from the world of leveraged buyouts to the world of enterprise VC investing with NEA? Why does Chetan have such conviction with regards to open source companies today? Why does he feel the big question of “Can open source product multi-billion dollar companies” has been proven”? How does Chetan think about the underlying business models of open source when comparing the likes of Red Hat with 85% gross margin to Hortonworks at negative gross margins? What does Chetan believe is a healthy ratio between professional services vs closed premium features? Does Chetan believe this is the end for per seat pricing in SaaS? How does Chetan approach market sizing today when evaluating potential enterprise opportunities? Why does Chetan believe there is a mental trap in the VC requirement for large markets? How can founders present the niche market they are attacking, in an exciting enough way to satiate the investor appetite for large market? Chatan has said before, “if you have conviction and vision, you should not be afraid to raise capital and go big”. Does every founder not have conviction and vision in the early days? How does Chetan determine when truly is the right time to pour fuel on the fire and raise that mega war chest? 60 Second SaaStr? A moment in Chetan’s life that has changed the way he thinks about the world? Fave SaaS reading material? What does Chetan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Chetan Puttagunta
Published on 29 Feb 2016. Dr. Patrick is my go-to scientist for all things longevity, nutrition, and body hacking. In this episode, you'll learn why I'm freezing myself, the benefits of fasting, a supplement that's a great pain killer, and a drug that might extend life by 17%.
Published on 12 Jan 2017. Poverty is a hard place to be. Many of us, perhaps most of us, as we started out in life, lived for years one paycheck away from poverty, with no savings. Yet people do rise out of poverty each day.
According to one my interviewees, poverty is big business. Apparently the various levels of government spend over 900 billion dollars every year, to pay for the food, housing, medical care, and other expenses for the poor. Yet the number of poor is not declining. In 2003 there were 23 million on food stamps and in 2012 there were 46 million on food stamps.
Yet immigrant entrepreneurs, most who experienced harsh conditions and poverty, are able to create not just success for themselves, but a pathway, a model for others to follow.
Despite language skills, a lack of connections, a lack of credit, or capital, they do break through.
So, how do immigrant entrepreneurs break through, how do they rise from zero to hero.
The one thing you always hear about, and I talk about it a lot is that they work hard, and work long hours. Gary Vaynerchuk who invited me to his headquarters in New York city twice, for interviews out-works everyone.
But what is the work they are doing. Often it is learning. How is Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s family came from the poorest European country of Belarus, able to teach so much about social media to his clients at Vaynermedia. He learned it. How is he able to create such riveting presentations? He studied pubic speaking.
How did Elon Musk learn about space rockets? He studied.
When Elon first came to Canada from South Africa he got the highest paying job he could find which was cleaning boilers at a lumber mill. Elon said: "You have to put on this hazmat suit and then shimmy through this little tunnel that you can barely fit in," Musk said. "Then, you have a shovel and you take the sand and goop and another residue, which is still steaming hot, and you have to shovel it through the same hole you came through. There is no escape. Someone else on the other side has to shovel it into a wheelbarrow. If you stay in there for more than thirty minutes, you get too hot and die."
So how do immigrant entrepreneurs learn
They ask important questions. They learn from other cultures. They read books. They pay attention to their experiences.
Do you have a big question that drives you?
All the time working, Musk thought that the most difficult thing was to be able to come up with the right questions. The questions that would drive him to study, driven him to learn, drive him to work harder than anyone. And drive him to succeed.
They learn from different cultures
Being from a different country and a different culture makes them more equipped with people’s kills than natives. They use those different cultures to their advantage. Instead of giving up because they do not know the native language, they use their knowledge from different other cultures and languages they have been exposed to while they were growing up to their advantage. However, it doesn’t end here. They learn the native language and use it to enhance their communication skills which allows them to deal with people from different cultures, ethnicities, and countries with more fluency. Moises Annicchiarico from Teachlr was a French national who was exposed to Italian and Venezuelan culture and languages while growing up and this helped him with his work a lot.
They learn from books
This is the reason they do not hesitate to read books and lots of them. It helps make up for the street knowledge they lack in the foreign land and makes them understand people and cultures better. Take the example of AJ Rassamni, born in Lebanon, now a serial entrepreneur who came to America at a younger age and worked days and nights to educate himself. He ended up acquiring the very company he worke...
Published on 01 Jul 2018. I think everyone should listen to this due to the advice for general social media it gives, but ESPECIALLY creatives young and old in advertising because we dive deep into the old, new and changing landscapes of the advertising world. We talk about working with more traditional superiors, why you need to be thinking in tweets instead of TV spots and a ton more - this was an all time one. Apologies that some of the questions were cut out - this was in a large hall and we weren't able to capture every question.
Published on 17 Mar 2016. This interview is off-the-charts powerful.
The feeling of being unqualified to launch a business, start a non-profit, or chase a dream is common. But it can be a dangerous place. In this episode Steven Furtick and I close the gap between weaknesses and dreams.
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Steven Furtick is a New York Times Bestselling Author and the Lead Pastor of one of the largest churches in America. His new book Unqualified dives deep on helping people realize the power of not feeling ready.
Powerful Quotes From This Episode
Do you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be? God can’t bless who you pretend to be. Our calling is often found in the journey of becoming comfortable with who we are, not who we think we should be. Feeling unqualified isn’t the problem, it’s your relationship with that feeling. If you don’t feel intimidated from time to time, you might not have a vision worth pursuing. We must look to our past to have the faith to push toward our future. If I changed anything, it would change everything, so I wouldn’t change anything. The internet can make 3 critics feel like 3,000. But in reality, it’s a few people with too much time on their hands.
What did you get out of today’s lesson? Anything that hit hard? Let me know in the comments below.
Published on 05 May 2015. Episode 1 of Startup School Radio: Host Aaron Harris interviews Alexis Ohanian, the Founder and Executive Chairman of Reddit. Also on the show, Kaz Nejatian, Founder and CEO of Kash.
Published on 22 Jun 2018. For seven months, Arlan Hamilton agreed to let StartUp reporter Amy Standen follow her around with a microphone and ask her all kinds of questions — from how much money she had raised for her venture capital firm, Backstage Capital, to where she slept when she couldn’t afford a place to live. Like many reporter-interviewee relationships, Arlan and Amy’s was complicated. At GimletFest, the two of them sat down to talk it out. Shereen Marisol Meraji, from NPR’s Code Switch podcast on race and identity, moderated the conversation.
Published on 19 Apr 2017. In this episode, host Tina Seelig challenges you to apply the lessons on brainstorming that were shared in the last three episodes of Stanford Innovation Lab. She reveals an assignment that requires you to look at something old in a brand new way. The most innovative ideas will be showcased on the final episode of the season, and all those who are mentioned will receive a special prize…. One thing’s for sure:
You’ll have to think on your feet for this one!
Published on 07 Jan 2013. On the final episode of Seth Godin’s Startup School we learn the importance of being distinct and direct. Seth explains why people at the top get hurt last, why e-mail is the best direct connection to your customers, and why it’s important to have your own distinct voice. Seth shares a technique to get an appointment with impossible to reach top decision makers, discusses why it’s better to act like you don’t have money now, and tells us why he’d rather spend 4 years writing a blog before writing a book in order to build an audience. He also talks about how not to get sued, giving people a souvenir to remember you by, and the rules on naming your company.
Published on 11 Jun 2018. I remember when today’s guest posted on Hacker News that he has launched this new thing. It’s called Codementor, instant one-on-one mentoring. If you’re a developer or someone learning to code, you want a pro to just look over your shoulder and give you feedback. And so, I thought, “This guy’s brilliant, whoever came up with this. No wonder it’s doing so well.” But it turns out it wasn’t a big business at the time, it was just some dude, some guy who had a lot of entrepreneurial experience who said, “I’m not going to do it the same way anymore. I just want to start this thing easy and build it up.” Weiting Liu is the founder of Codementor, a community which gives developers live mentorship.
Weiting Liu is the founder of Codementor, a community which gives developers live mentorship.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
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Published on 21 Mar 2018. To find your big idea? Look for it. And look for it. And be ready to act. Spanx founder Sara Blakely was actively seeking a business idea when she thought of Spanx. Then she moved fast, found help in the right places, and went all-in. The result: A billion-dollar company & women's wardrobes transformed.. With cameos by National Geographic explorer Andrés Ruzo, former Director of the US Patent & Trademark Office Michelle Lee, and Endeavor CEO Linda Rottenberg.
Published on 17 Mar 2018. No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some details on that company for the first time, and he also worked at Flipboard and Oculus, so we get some important context especially on the future of VR and the like. But the most fascinating stories you'll hear will be about Amazon, where Eugene was the first analyst in the strategic planning department. As you'll hear, Eugene had a unique perspective on Amazon's early
Published on 16 Oct 2015. Inc. editor James Ledbetter and Inc. staff members Jon Fine, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, and Will Yakowicz talk about how Playboy will stop publishing nude photos, how B Corps are trying to save the world while still making big bucks, and how a renaissance of psychedelic research has found incredible applications for non-toxic drugs once thought to be deadly. Inc. Uncensored is brought to you by Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer, and save up to 80% compared to a postage meter. Sign up for a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer when you visit Stamps.com and use the promo code UNCENSORED. And by Squarespace. Start building your website today at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code UNCENSORED at checkout to get 10% off. Squarespace -- Build it Beautiful. Email us: uncensored@inc.com
Published on 06 Jan 2016. There's a lot that goes behind the scenes in running a startup. Getting the legal, finance (equity allocation, vesting), accounting, and other overhead right will save you a lot of pain in the long run. Kirsty Nathoo, CFO at Y Combinator, and Carolynn Levy, General Counsel at Y Combinator, cover these very important topics in this lecture.
From YC Startup Class - How to Start a Startup - Stanford CS183B
Lecture Transcript: genius.com/Kirsty-nathoo-lecture-18-mechanics-legal-finance-hr-etc-annotated
See the slides and readings at startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/
Discuss this lecture: startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64047 Click to view: show page on Awesound
Published on 16 Nov 2017. Ryan had a dream of starting a company and becoming a multi-millionaire while he was young. He ran out of money and faced many personal tragedies. Did he succeed? I am sure you know the answer by reading the headline. Let us check out how he did it.
Published on 28 May 2018. As a kid, Troy Carter dreamed of being a rapper, but soon discovered he was a better manager than a musician. He took Lady Gaga from obscurity to stardom – helping shape both her music and her brand. Then he turned his gift for spotting talent to spotting investment opportunities with his company Atom Factory. PLUS, for our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with Robyn Gerber for an update on Parkarr, a mobile app that helps drivers find street-parking.
Published on 18 May 2016. One of the greatest misconceptions you'll encounter in the startup world is the one about age. You'll hear would-be entrepreneurs constantly telling themselves that they're too young, or that they're too old, or that they're just waiting for that right moment to finally become an entrepreneur. That's ridiculous. There is no perfect moment waiting around the corner for you, because the perfect moment only comes to those who actually go out there and create it. Ben Chaib, founder of Sell and Succeed, is the perfect example of that. After working in the corporate world for 25 years, he decided that enough was enough. He had the skills and ability to generate millions in revenue, but he wasn't getting the return that we wanted. So he set out and created his own business, and today he's consulting hundreds of other aspiring entrepreneurs on how to market for success. "We are great at doing things for others, but we are not great at doing it for ourselves. But we deserve it more than others," he says. While relatively new to entrepreneurship, Ben is no slouch when it comes to knowing how to make a business work. In our interview with Ben, we get invaluable insight from one of the top business coaches in the world as he breaks down his sales process and shows us what it means to be a great marketer. In this interview you will learn: Ben's 8-step process of marketing and making sales The advantages of having a business coach and good mentors to help you start your own business Tips on how to make a sales process that is authentically you How to find clients and target audiences through Facebook marketing Why you need to get your customers to connect and feel comfortable talking about their business with you & much more!
Published on 25 Jun 2014. In this episode we take on the validity of Disruption Theory in three parts: A discussion of Jill Lepore’s New Yorker article attacking disruption, as well as the debate that surrounded the article Ben’s article from last fall “What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong” A deeper discussion about whether or not managers can really do anything about true disruption, and whether or not they should even try The quote referenced at the ending from Jill Lepore’s article on political polarization is as follows: “But intellectuals, as Bruno Latour once pointed out, are nearly always one critique too late: “entire Ph.D. programs … Continue reading Episode 008: Debating Disruption
Published on 28 Jul 2017. This week we had the full crew on deck, including Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex! -- to dive into the biggest news of the week. We weren't alone, thankfully, as Maveron general partner Rebecca Kaden joined us in the studio to mull over the latest.
The news of the week was earnings-themed, unsurprisingly, including Amazon's big revenue beat and profit miss, Alphabet's slightly fretful growth and losses on its "Other Bets," whatever the hell happened to Twitter during the San Francisco dawn, and Facebook's continued triumphal parade.
Published on 19 Nov 2014. Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz shares which entrepreneurial skills truly matter, and why learning to manage well may be the most critical skill of all. Horowitz, a founding partner of Andreessen Horowitz, discusses the value of learning inside a large company, some of the exciting technology frontiers ahead, and the purpose and philosophy of his firm, in conversation with Stanford Engineering Professor Tom Byers.
Published on 08 Apr 2018. If you're a mom or you know some moms who want to know what it takes to break back into tech after you've been out of work for several years, this is a must-listen episode.
Today's guest is Wendy Padua who has been out of work for 16 years and is not part of the marketing team at Zendesk.
We also have Tami Forman on the show today. She's the Director of Path Forward, a nonprofit organization that creates mid-career returnship programs to ease the transition back to work for women and men after taking a break for raising children or other caregiving responsibilities.
Wendi and Tami share their beautiful experiences with regard to motherhood, the struggles with putting yourself out there as you try to return to the workforce, and how to ultimately set yourself up for success!
Published on 05 Jan 2017. Two friends turned their passion of ice creams into a multi-million dollar empire. They just started with $5 investment and did not know anything about how to start a business.
Yet they became wildly successful. Let us see how they did it.
Published on 11 May 2018. Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-themed podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Matthew Lynley, Connie Loizos and myself were joined by Villi Iltchev, a partner at August Capital.
Published on 02 Apr 2018. Melissa has been teaching negotiation tactics for the last 22 years.
Today, Melissa Hereford is going to teach us how to negotiate, not only in terms of salary, but life in general - deadlines, relationships, friendships, etc. She's going to give you actionable strategies you can use to negotiate a higher salary with your manager.
Previously, Melissa worked for BayGroup International, the biggest negotiations consulting company in the world. She's worked with huge clients like Cisco, At&T, Oracle, GE, and several pharmaceutical companies.
Stop selling yourself short! You’ve got to ask for more. But the biggest question is how. Negotiation can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. You just have to know how you can prepare for it!
Published on 10 Apr 2013. Based on his continuing exploration of the decision making process under opaque circumstances, Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, shares how the benefits of random conditions can be successfully harvested to help navigate a world we do not fully understand.
Published on 15 Feb 2017. University of Pennsylvania Professor Adam Grant, one of today’s most influential management thinkers, shares the top six takeaways from his book “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World,” bringing his insights to life through amusing behavioral research and lively audience interaction. Grant explains why middle managers are notorious idea killers, why stress helps some rise to the occasion and how entrepreneurs and organizations can get what they want through unconventional means.
Published on 02 May 2018. with Atul Butte (@atulbutte), Daphne Koller (@daphnekoller), and Vijay Pande (@vijaypande)
Whether you’re an academic seeking to move out of research and into industry, or simply interested in working at a bio startup, this episode of the a16z Podcast is for you. It covers everything from how to build a brand in the space when you don’t have one to how the bio and how the healthcare startup ecosystem is different from traditional tech (or traditional pharma), to how to choose the right co-founder -- or even identify what problems to solve and build a company around.
The discussion (which is based on a recent event at Andreessen Horowitz) features Atul Butte, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences at UCSF; and Daphne Koller, founder and CEO of insitro (former professor at Stanford, co-founder of Coursera); in conversation with a16z bio team general partner Vijay Pande. Together, they provide practical how-to's -- for those coming from machine and deep learning backgrounds, but also for anyone, really -- for how to break into the bio space.
Published on 04 May 2018. Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Published on 27 Apr 2018. Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Published on 22 Mar 2018. Jason is widely known as a global brand director for the Jordan Brand at Nike, where he led and contributed to the creation of several shoes for athletes and cultural icons including Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Derek Jeter, and Michael Jordan.
Following his 13+-year stint at Nike, he started several things in tech at Accel and as an advisor for Stanford’s Design School. He then co-founded a startup with Stephen Curry and eventually creating his very own startup called Super Heroic, a tech-enabled system of play for kids starting with shoes that help them discover that they're actually superheroes.
Contrary to what many people think that San Francisco is Silicon Valley, but it's not. In fact, it's not a place. Jason is therefore doing a lot to make sure they're able to leverage this platform to do a ton of educational work in places such as StreetCode Academy and collaborate with other teams like Black Jedi ZULU, and so much more.
Jason is the founder of Trillicon Valley, a community of entrepreneurs, athletes, designers, and creatives.
Published on 21 Apr 2018. Can one really apply the lessons of history and of the past to the present and the future, as a way to get what they want out of life? By deeply understanding cause-effect relationships -- clearly expressed, shared with others, overlaid with data, back-tested, modified -- you can build a set of principles/algorithms/recipes for dealing with the realities of your life, observes Ray Dalio in this episode of the a16z Podcast (in conversation with a16z general partner Alex Rampell and Sonal Chokshi). Dalio's book Principles: Life and Work originated as an internal company document that was posted online years ago and has been shared widely since; he is the founder, chairman, and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates -- one of the top five private companies in the U.S., which manages over $150 billion and has made more money for clients than any other hedge fund.
"Is this is a duck, how do I deal with ducks; or this is a species I haven't seen before, and how do I deal with that?" In other words, when you see a particular thing coming over and over again, you can know what you're seeing and how to act on it. But what about timing, which is a huge factor when it comes to making various bets and decisions in both work and life? And what if a phenomenon is entirely new and hasn't been seen before (is there such a thing), and also, how do we avoid an overly pattern-matching/ pattern-recognition trap? Having a framework can still help -- even if the phenomena don't have a clear set of rules like chess -- because we can understand why things might be different. Knowing that is important, argues Dalio.
The conversation covers everything from the differences between private and public investing, and between startups and big companies -- to how people, teams, organizations, and even nation-states can evolve through principles like "believability-weighted idea meritocracies" and more. But... can adults really change? What are the differences between the two you's, and between closed-minded and open-minded people, and how do they play out across the roles of a "teacher", "student", or "peer" in organizations of varying scale? It's not as obvious as you might think, and knowing how you know -- and what we don't know -- can help.
Published on 23 Apr 2018. Before Mixergy, I was a student like many of you. And in my car on the way to school, I would listen to SAT word recordings. I loved it. The problem is those books are such a pain in the butt to carry around. And I hate to sound like somebody who’d care about this stuff. But you look a little bit lame carrying a bunch of standardized test prep books. Today’s guest had a similar view of the world. He said, “Why are all these books being lugged around? They’re so antiquated. There’s a better way. There’s technology. It’s been invented. Come on, get with it.” And he created a company. Ujjwal Gupta is the founder of BenchPrep, a comprehensive learner success platform. He’s the guy responsible for creating a lot of the software that the ACT and other organizations are using. They’re white labeling it and using it for their students. I want to find out how he did it.
Ujjwal Gupta is the founder of BenchPrep, a comprehensive learner success platform.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
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Published on 07 Mar 2018. Ghazal Asif is the heading Channels Sales at App Dynamics and she shares her path into tech!
Published on 18 Apr 2018. You might recognize today’s guest because he was on Mixergy back in the early days of Mixergy Interviews. I learned so much from that interview. One of the best lessons was when he said, “Everybody says to work your way up to the big guys. Screw that. I want to go after Walmart, because once you get the big guy, everyone else wants to work with you.” I’m looking forward to learning even more from him. Tom Szaky is the founder of TerraCycle, a company whose a mission is to eliminate even the idea of waste by recycling the non-recyclable.
Tom Szaky is the founder of TerraCycle, a company whose a mission is to eliminate even the idea of waste by recycling the non-recyclable.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
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Published on 06 Jan 2017. A history of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad. Oral histories from the people that made the technology happen. "Chapter" episodes providing background on the history of the companies.
Published on 02 Mar 2017. At his very core, Matthew Kimberley is a salesman. Whether it's something he was born with, or a trait he picked up while growing up, Kimberley understands the art of the sale. Starting at the young age of 13, Kimberley took to the street as a young street performer. Juggling his way into his first few dollars, and finding within himself that perfect combination of charm, drive, and ambition that make up the best salespeople. Fast forward to his 20s, Kimberley had built himself an highly lucrative company earning a cool 7-figures a year, and yet, he was unhappy. He just didn't believe in what he was doing, and couldn't find the passion to keep on going. Taking a step back as a founder, he went back to what he knew best: selling. “I realized what I liked to do is sell and teach people how to sell. So what I did was become a self-employed sales trainer, and I haven’t looked back since.” To Kimberley, there is no other skill that is as important as knowing how to sell. “Here’s why sales are important. When you can sell, you don’t need any other skills. When you can sell, you don’t need to be a creator. When you can sell, you don’t need to be a manager. When you can sell, you don’t need to be a writer, you don’t need to be a speaker, you don’t need to be a talker, you don’t have to have a business idea. You don’t have to be a particularly good executor. You don’t have to be good at doing anything, other than asking, persuading, convincing,” Kimberley says. Today, Kimberley has honed his skills to the point of being one of the go-to gurus when it comes to the art of selling. He's taught hundreds of people and businesses how to not only grow, but double and even triple their profit margins by teaching them his practical system on how to sell hard, and sell fast. In this week's episode you will learn: Kimberley's 16 principles of professional persuasion The best place to learn and hone your skills as a salesperson Why learning how to sell is the most important skill for an entrepreneur How to follow your passion while maximizing your profits The importance of having a mentor and where to find one & much more!
Published on 22 Jun 2015. A history of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad. Oral histories from the people that made the technology happen. "Chapter" episodes providing background on the history of the companies.
Published on 24 Aug 2016. People in Silicon Valley often talk about failing fast. But what exactly does that mean? In this pilot episode of STVP’s new podcast series, Stanford Innovation Lab, Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig interviews serial entrepreneur Alberto Savoia, who describes how to fail smart. Based on his experiences founding two companies, as well as his time at Google and Sun Microsystems, Alberto discusses different types of failure, and how specific practices can be used to fail faster and more efficiently using a concept he calls “pretotyping.”
Published on 09 Apr 2018. He’s not the founder. He’s not super-comfortable being the front guy. So how did David Sinick take over PaleoHacks? (And why was he so anxious about this interview?)
David Sinick runs PaleoHacks, a place that allows you to connect with others who are on the journey to learn how to live, eat, and move better.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Published on 23 Mar 2018. Leadership is not just about management, but about passion, a bit of humor, and resilience. General partner Peter Levine and Dick Costolo (entrepreneur, former CEO of Twitter, and erstwhile comedian) share their thoughts on the topic in this episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a conversation recorded as part of the BreakLine program (hosted at Andreessen Horowitz) preparing military veterans transitioning into tech careers.
Among other things, Costolo shares what running Twitter was like pre-IPO and after, as well as what it’s like to suddenly find yourself thrust onto the world stage; the role of improv and imagery in leadership; and the difference between preventing mistakes from happening... and correcting them as quickly as you can when they do happen.
Published on 04 Apr 2018. Today we’ve got an entrepreneur who created a search engine and sold it to Google about 18 months later. He took some time off and in his off time he invested in some companies, learned the other side of the entrepreneurial journey, and now he is back with a brand new business. The previous company he created was called Plink. Imagine being able to take a picture of something with your phone and then finding out more about it. That’s the technology that Google acquired and merged it with the rest of their business. His current company is called Pointy. What they do is they plug into a company’s barcode scanner, and as a result they know what’s in the store, what’s being sold, and they allow people who are interested in buying things locally to see available around them locally. The founder who started about those companies is Mark Cummins. I’m happy to have him here to talk about how he did it and what he learned from building it.
Mark Cummins is the founder of Pointy which? lets ?local? ?retailers put their stock online so that they can be discovered via search engines.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Published on 02 Apr 2018. Today’s guest hit on an interesting issue. You’ve probably felt it but most of us don’t know what to do about it. Stress. Jane Smorodnikova is the founder of Welltory, an app that lets you measure your stress and be more aware of what’s going on in your body so you can understand what your body is ready for each day to feel better tomorrow. I had no idea how well the app was doing. I invited her here to find out how she got so many users and how she got them to pay so much.
Jane Smorodnikova is the founder of Welltory, an app that lets you measure your stress and be more aware of what’s going on in your body so you can understand what your body is ready for each day to feel better tomorrow.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Published on 30 Mar 2018. Wait until you hear the story my guest today has to tell. I can’t believe that I didn’t know about this. Brandon Evans is a guy who started a company and sold it. Frankly, that alone would make for an interesting interview. But then started another company and was fired from it. That too could make its own interview. Now he’s running something else where he’s taking entrepreneurs on Ayahuasca journeys. Brandon Evans is the founder of CrowdTap, influencer marketing that actually works and iheart, a conscious business collective.
Brandon Evans is the founder of CrowdTap, influencer marketing that actually works. He’s currently the founder of 1heart, the first startup studio focused exclusively on building conscious businesses and backing heart-centered leaders positively impacting the world.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
With Bench, you get a professional bookkeeping team to do your books for you and our simple, elegant software to review your finances. It’s everything you need to forget about your bookkeeping, without actually forgetting about your bookkeeping.
Sign up at Bench and get 20% off for your first 6 months.
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Published on 28 Mar 2018. It all started with a realization. Two, actually. Jyoti Bansal noticed that more of the software that controls our lives will be in the cloud, and that it would all eventually break. So he decided to create a company to help the people who make software understand what was going wrong so they could fix it. This is the story of how he turned this vision into AppDynamics and why he sold the company to Cisco.
Jyoti Bansal is the founder of AppDynamics which gives users real-time insight from your apps using Application Performance Monitoring & Management—how they’re being used, how they’re performing, where they need help.
Sponsored by needls – needls is the easiest and most effective way to advertise on Social Media. The needls ad platform allows businesses to automatically create, target and optimize digital ads across Facebook and Instagram, and in turn, determines the perfect target audience for these ads by monitoring social media conversations in real time. Using its proprietary intent engine and AI, needls identifies buying signals within posts, tweets and status updates, then delivers ads directly to these individuals.
Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
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Published on 05 Nov 2012. Learn about the different ways on how to raise money and how to pay that money back on today’s episode of Seth Godin’s Startup School. Seth discusses television, the importance of advertising, and the long tail.
Published on 26 Mar 2018. Today’s guest noticed a problem. If you’re a web designer or app creator, you can’t see the look on users faces when they’re using your product. You can’t see if they encountered a button they don’t understand, for example. He thought companies should be able to create a great product without having to code analytics to find out how people are using it. So he built a company to solve that problem. I want to find out how he did it in today’s interview. Todd Olson is the founder of Pendo.io which helps product teams understand and guide users to create product experiences that customers love.
Todd Olson is the founder of Pendo.io which helps product teams understand and guide users to create product experiences that customers love.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
With Bench, you get a professional bookkeeping team to do your books for you and our simple, elegant software to review your finances. It’s everything you need to forget about your bookkeeping, without actually forgetting about your bookkeeping.
Sign up at Bench and get 20% off for your first 6 months.
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Published on 23 Mar 2018. Today’s guest says that his company is going to make coding obsolete. If anything, they’re going to probably be building or teaching people how to build using his creation. Emmanuel Straschnov is the cofounder of Bubble, a visual programming language for web and mobile applications. We’re going to find out how he did it. Frankly, this isn’t just a vision for the future. It’s a real sustainable business today. It’s bootstrapped. It’s doing well. I invited him to talk about how well and how he got here.
Emmanuel Straschnov is the cofounder of Bubble, a visual programming language for web and mobile applications.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Published on 23 Mar 2018. Ben and James discuss Facebook’s current crisis, and why almost everyone misunderstands what the company did wrong: the problem isn’t advertising, it was Facebook’s desire to be a platform. Presented by WordPress.com: Get 15% off on a new site by visiting WordPress.com/Exponent. Links James Allworth: What the F*** Was Facebook Thinking — Medium Ben Thompson: The Facebook Brand — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Tim Cook’s Unfair and Unrealistic Privacy Speech — Stratechery Mark Zuckerberg’s Reckoning: ‘This Is a Major Trust Issue’ — The New York Times Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Good News — Stratechery Nicholas Thompson: … Continue reading Episode 146 — Facebook’s Real Mistake
Published on 19 Mar 2018. We read a lot about entrepreneurs who are building SaaS companies and Ethan is someone who said, “I’m going to jump in and try it out.” Ethan Sigmon is the founder of SocialInsight.io, a software that helps you manage your Instagram marketing. I want to talk to him about what it was like to become a first-time software entrepreneur. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed and it wasn’t a disaster either. It was a story that’s a lot more common and I want to learn from it.
Ethan Sigmon is the founder of SocialInsight.io, a software that helps you manage your Instagram marketing.
Sponsored by needls – needls is the easiest and most effective way to advertise on Social Media. The needls ad platform allows businesses to automatically create, target and optimize digital ads across Facebook and Instagram, and in turn, determines the perfect target audience for these ads by monitoring social media conversations in real time. Using its proprietary intent engine and AI, needls identifies buying signals within posts, tweets and status updates, then delivers ads directly to these individuals.
Mailshake – Mailshake is an easy-to-use way of taking away the pain point of high volume emails while still being personal and not ending up in the “promotions” tab in Gmail. Use it as a biz dev tool to reach out to prospects on your target customer list. Mailshake is light weight and low cost email software for marketers and sales folks.
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Published on 16 Mar 2018. Usually, I have entrepreneurs on to talk about how they built their businesses. Today’s guest is not going to be doing that. Sherry Walling is the founder of ZenFounder, which helps founders handle the mental side of their work. Her new book is The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your S**t Together: How to Run Your Business Without Letting It Run You.
Sherry Walling is the founder of ZenFounder, which helps founders handle the mental side of their work.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
needls – needls is the easiest and most effective way to advertise on Social Media. The needls ad platform allows businesses to automatically create, target and optimize digital ads across Facebook and Instagram, and in turn, determines the perfect target audience for these ads by monitoring social media conversations in real time. Using its proprietary intent engine and AI, needls identifies buying signals within posts, tweets and status updates, then delivers ads directly to these individuals.
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Published on 14 Mar 2018. There are specific things that Jordan Harbinger did relentlessly that resulted in topping the charts of the podcasting world. I wanted to bring him on here to talk about how he did it with his previous podcast, Art of Charm. He’s now growing a second podcast called The Jordan Harbinger Show. His goal with The Jordan Harbinger Show is for every episode to solve a problem for you or make you better in some way. I listened to it. I didn’t want to just come here and say, “It’s a good show. Go download it,” because he’s a friend. I wanted to make sure it was actually good and it was. It will help you solve a problem, make you better in some way.
Jordan Harbinger is the host of The Jordan Harbinger Show, where every episode solves a problem for you or make you better in some way.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Published on 12 Mar 2018. You guys are going to recognize the business model today’s guest created. It’s not laughable the way it was when he started out. People in the U.S. raised millions for that idea, he did not. It had to be bootstrapped. He built it from scratch and kept growing and growing and growing it. Bruce Jeffreys is the founder of GoGet, Australia’s first car-sharing service. I’m so fascinated by this scrappy way that he and his cofounder built up the business.
Bruce Jeffreys is the founder of GoGet, Australia’s first car-sharing service.
Sponsored by Toptal – If you’re having trouble finding developers, Toptal is a network of elite pre-vetted software developers. You tell Toptal what you’re looking for, they search their network for the best people, they test the candidates, and then they present you with only the candidates who meet your individual needs. Once you pick someone you can start work with them the next day. They offer a no-risk trial period. Go to Toptal.com. Get the best of the best right now.
HostGator – Ready to take your website to the next level? Whether you’re a first-time blogger or an experienced web pro, HostGator has all the tools you need to create a great-looking website or online store. A wide range of options includes cloud-based web hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated servers. Founded in 2002, HostGator is the perfect web partner for business owners and individuals seeking hands-on support. Visit www.hostgator.com/mixergy to see what HostGator can do for your website.
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Published on 13 Mar 2016. A history of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad. Oral histories from the people that made the technology happen. "Chapter" episodes providing background on the history of the companies.
Published on 07 Mar 2018. I usually interview tech entrepreneurs about how they built their software companies. Today’s guest tried that and it didn’t work. Now he’s selling the opposite of technology. He’s selling hand grinders. Raj Jana is the founder of JavaPresse, a coffee company dedicated to helping consumers enjoy the perfect cup of coffee. We’ll find out how successful this business is, how he got where he is today, and what’s working and what’s not. I think it’s especially useful for anyone who is in ecommerce.
Raj Jana is the founder of JavaPresse, a coffee company dedicated to helping consumers enjoy the perfect cup of coffee.
Sponsored by With Bench, you get a professional bookkeeping team to do your books for you and our simple, elegant software to review your finances. It’s everything you need to forget about your bookkeeping, without actually forgetting about your bookkeeping.
Sign up at Bench and get 20% off for your first 6 months.
Mailshake – Mailshake is an easy-to-use way of taking away the pain point of high volume emails while still being personal and not ending up in the “promotions” tab in Gmail. Use it as a biz dev tool to reach out to prospects on your target customer list. Mailshake is light weight and low cost email software for marketers and sales folks.
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Published on 01 Oct 2012. Welcome to the first episode of Seth Godin's Startup School. Join best-selling author Seth Godin as he provides business advice for entrepreneurs and freelancers from this rare workshop. During this week's episode Seth discusses creating a monopoly, describes the differences between freelancers and entrepreneurs, and talks about how a business is connected to marketing.
Published on 06 Jan 2016. So you have an idea. How do you go from zero users to many users?Adora Cheung, Founder of Homejoy, covers Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing, in Lecture 4 of How to Start a Startup.
Lecture Transcript: tech.genius.com/Adora-cheung-lecture-4-building-product-talking-to-users-and-growing-annotated
See the slides and readings at startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec04/
Discuss this lecture: startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64033 Click to view: show page on Awesound
Published on 04 Jan 2015. A history of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad. Oral histories from the people that made the technology happen. "Chapter" episodes providing background on the history of the companies.
Published on 28 Jan 2010. The founders of Airbnb are guys who couldn’t make rent a few years ago, but they kept turning desperation into creative solutions. In October 2007, eager to make extra money, they noticed that local hotels were booked up because of a conference. So they pumped up some inflatable mattresses and listed their place online as an “air bed and breakfast.” It was quirky and it worked. That little act of creativity became Airbnb, the (profitable) site that allows anyone to list their extra space for rent. This interview is full of examples of that kind of hustle, like how they created and sold cereal called “Obama O’s.” That idea brought in a much-needed $30,000, but more importantly, it impressed investor Paul Graham of Y Combinator, who backed them. They jumped on that opportunity too, seizing every chance they could find to get Graham’s advice. His mentorship helped their company become profitable. Along the way, they got impressive media hits by crafting interesting stories, improved their design by sleeping in their users’ homes and kept changing their product based on feedback. In this interview, they teach you how they did it.
Brian Chesky & Joe Gebbia are two of the co-founders of Airbnb. (The third co-founder is Nathan Blecharczyk.) Airbnb is a marketplace for renting space. Their open platform accommodates a ‘couch to a castle’, including vacation rentals, bed and breakfast, private rooms, and entire apartments. Travelers typically save money and get a local experience, while hosts have an easy way to earn extra cash and meet new people.
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Published on 03 May 2017. If you want your company to truly scale, you first have to do things that don't scale. Handcraft the core experience. Get your hands dirty. Serve your customers one-by-one. And don't stop until you know exactly what they want. That's what Brian Chesky did. As CEO of Airbnb, Brian’s early work was more akin to a traveling salesman. He takes us back to his lean years – when he went door-to-door, meeting Airbnb hosts in person – and shares the imaginative route to crafting what he calls an "11-star experience.”
Published on 19 Apr 2015. A history of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad. Oral histories from the people that made the technology happen. "Chapter" episodes providing background on the history of the companies.
Published on 11 Jan 2018. Entrepreneurs find inspiration in all sorts of places. But for Ari Meisel, founder, bestselling author, and productivity expert, desperation was the driving force behind the launch of his successful company, Less Doing. That same desperation led him to breakthroughs in productivity that changed his life. At just 23 years old, Meisel was enjoying a thriving real estate career, but after suffering some major business blows and landing $3 million in debt, the stress overwhelmed him and he was diagnosed with debilitating Crohn’s disease. Managing the disease crippled Meisel’s ability to work regularly. Some days he was unable to work longer than an hour. During this difficult experience, Meisel realized he needed to devise a way to accomplish more work in the limited time he had. Through a long process of experimentation, Ari developed his Less Doing, More Living productivity system, which allowed him the time he needed both to build a new business and improve his health. A devoted husband, father of five, and dedicated businessman, Meisel now helps individuals and businesses around the world become more effective—all while working only 5 ½ hours a day. He's also recently teamed up with Foundr to teach his Less Doing, More Living system to our awesome community. In this inspiring interview, learn the secrets behind Meisel’s airtight productivity system and discover how you can also become a productivity master and optimize, automate, and outsource your life and business. Key Takeaways Ari’s 15-minute outsourcing rule that frees you up to focus on growing your business How saying no to new opportunities can grow your business more than saying yes The power of using machine learning to slash your work time and automate systems Why working more hours does not always translate into getting more work done
Published on 06 Jan 2016. Business Strategy and Monopoly Theory
Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal and Palantir, discusses business strategy and monopoly theory in "Competition is For Losers".
Lecture Transcript: tech.genius.com/Peter-thiel-lecture-5-business-strategy-and-monopoly-theory-annotated
See the slides and readings at startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec05/
Discuss this lecture: startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64034 Click to view: show page on Awesound
Published on 17 Aug 2017. Beto had a passion for dance and later immigrated to America to bring Zumba, his dance fitness to America . He did not have a place to sleep and faced many hardships and rejections . Yet ,How did he build this multi-million dollar company ?. Let us check it out.
Published on 21 Nov 2017. Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of the popular DNA-testing company 23andMe, discusses how providing people with their own genetic data empowers consumers to make better health decisions and advances science. In conversation with Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig, Wojcicki explains how the intense scrutiny that the DNA-testing company has received is a sign that it is disrupting the status quo.
Published on 13 Nov 2017. Amy Chang had accomplished a lot in her eight years at Google, helping launch and then lead Google Analytics to 70 percent market share. But then she left to launch her own tech startup, a relationship-intelligence platform called Accompany. In conversation with Matt Harvey of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Chang talks about getting out of one's comfort zone and laying the groundwork for a successful career.
Published on 07 Oct 2015. The iconic entrepreneur behind SpaceX, Tesla Motors and Paypal shares his predictions for artificial intelligence, renewable energy and space exploration, in conversation with DFJ General Partner Steve Jurvetson at Stanford on Oct. 7, 2015. University President John Hennessy introduces the future-focused discussion, which follows Musk's journey from his first Internet startup in the mid-nineties to his dream of a Mars colony in the next 20 years.
Published on 04 Dec 2017. Ben and David dive into the most talked-about tech IPO of 4Q 2017: Stitch Fix. After downsizing the offering and pricing below the range, does this signal a warning that public markets won’t value high-flying silicon valley “disruptors” as high as VCs hope? Or is this a textbook example of a great return for a disciplined management team and well-run company? Most importantly, what happens next? Tune in for our heroes’ take.
Carve Outs: * Ben: The iPhone X * David: Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court
Sponsor: * Thanks to Perkins Coie, Counsel to Great Companies, for sponsoring this podcast. You can get in touch with Jason Day, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, here.
Published on 22 Jan 2018. In this hallway conversation of the a16z Podcast, Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky discuss CES 2018 and share insight on what they took from this year's show. How much can you discern each company's "big picture" strategy out of the slew of new products, press releases, and announcements that flood the floor? How do you sort the wheat from the chaff?
And beyond the event of CES itself, Evans and Sinofsky analyze the experimentation we're beginning to see in connected consumer electronics for the home. When it comes to the smart home, it seems as though more is better -- more devices, more connectivity, and a single network to rule them all -- but that isn't the case. How (and when) will these devices and appliances -- some of which you only buy new every 10-20 years -- all connect into one system, and what will that platform look like? Which devices will we actually need to be "smart", and what will be today's equivalent of the electric carving knife? Where will new kinds of UI come in; when will a simple GO button be the better option? All this and more in this episode.
Published on 09 Nov 2014. How to Disrupt an Industry - The Age of working Differently.
The Elance Story with Fabio Rosati
It’s not every day you change the way the world works. But with Elance, Fabio Rosati did just this, altering the way global labor markets operate for the foreseeable future. It’s no small task, but by providing an easy and secure way for businesses to find, hire, manage and pay freelancers, Elance’s online staffing platform has revolutionized the freelancing economy. And it’s one of the fastest growing companies in the industry, expanding at a rate of 50% per year. As of 2013, Elance has over 3 million users, with 800,000 businesses hiring from a pool of 2.8 million registered freelancers, earning over $300 million yearly.
Today's Guest - Fabio Rosati
Hailing from Florence, Italy, Elance CEO Fabio Rosati is polite and softly-spoken. Conversing with him, you wouldn’t pick that in the last five years he had become one of the most influential individuals in the entrepreneurial space globally. A thought leader on work, the freelance economy and online staffing, Rosati’s views on the burgeoning online labor market have appeared in publications including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., and The New York Times. It’s no small wonder then that in 2013, Rosati was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist.
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Published on 30 Sep 2015. Tony Robbins talks fast. Conversing with him is like riding Space Mountain: You get in, you hang on, and before you know it, it’s over and you’re left feeling bewildered, slightly euphoric, and wanting to smooth your hair.
Robbins has become a household name as the man who popularized life coaching. Imagine your client list including Oprah, Princess Diana, and Bill Clinton—all before you hit your mid- 30s. He’s spoken to more than 50 million people in 100 countries. To call Tony Robbins just a self-help guru would be like calling Muhammad Ali just a boxer. It doesn’t quite cut it. He is a force of nature, an industry, and a global brand. His advice is still sought by the likes of professional athletes, CEOs, movie stars, rappers and world leaders.
When Foundr interrupted Robbins’ schedule for an interview, he was 40 miles from the Arctic Circle, racing Lamborghinis across a frozen ice lake. As you do. “I was eaten up by my crazy schedule, going to 15 countries a year, so I decided, ‘I’m going to find a little time to play,’ and this was on my list. So it’s nice to be able to experience it.”
It’s a fitting vacation. Robbins is best known for his high-intensity seminars. To say he’s bursting with enthusiasm is an understatement. It seems as though he’s sitting atop an erupting volcano of energy and optimism. His voice is booming, with its trademark rasp. He makes each point with the force of an artillery bombardment.
In this interview you will learn:
How to deduce your market to the metrics that matter The steps you need to take in order to be financially free Turning past pain into pure motivation and a hunger for success Tony's ethos in living for impact, and how the money will follow How to serve your client in the best possible way & more more!
Published on 20 Nov 2017. Ben & David cover the proposed largest tech M&A deal of all time, and in the process dive into the evolving dynamics of the industry that started everything in Silicon Valley—silicon. Just when VCs thought innovation was dead in semiconductors, a new wave of startups and large companies are redrawing the lines of competition in an industry dominated for a half-century by the “Wintel” duopoly of Intel and Microsoft.
Topics Covered Include: * Innovation and disruption in the semiconductor industry over the past two years * Intel’s acquisition of Nervana * Graphcore and other ML-focused semiconductor startups * CDMA and the telephone network effect * Qualcomm’s early cell phone handsets * Vertical integration + commoditization in smartphone chipsets
The Carve Out: * Ben: The de-watering of Niagara Falls * David: Big Daddy’s Antiques * Bonus: The Mystery Show
Sponsor: * Thanks to Perkins Coie, Counsel to Great Companies, for sponsoring this podcast. You can get in touch with Nick Ferrer, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, here.
Published on 13 Jan 2018. It's surprising that how (and what) we eat has actually changed very little over the ages, despite how much we’ve advanced as a species. Now, however -- driven by globalization, environmental factors, and other considerations -- the way we move, taste, and make our food is moving forward too.
From countering the limits of seasonality and global transport to re-thinking our species’ dependence on meat to optimizing nutrition to distilling the essence of taste, this discussion with Bryan Crowley, President of Soylent; Ooshma Garg, founder and CEO of Gobble; David Lee, COO and CFO of Impossible Foods ; and James Rogers, cofounder and CEO of Apeel Sciences -- and moderated by a16z Partner Kim Milosevich -- is all about the future of food... including how we define what “food”really is.
Published on 29 Sep 2017. Ben and James discuss the development of theory, why blogs have disrupted books, and why too many in tech are too pessimistic about humanity. Presented by MailChimp Links Ben Thompson: Defining Aggregators — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Aggregation Theory — Stratechery Ben Thompson: More Aggregators — Stratechery Daily Update Ben Thompson: Netflix and the Conservation of Attractive Profits — Stratechery Ben Thompson: TV Advertising’s Surprising Strength — and Inevitable Fall — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Books and Blogs — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Friction — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Twitter’s Marketing Problem — Stratechery Hosts Ben Thompson, @benthompson, Stratechery James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review … Continue reading Episode 126 — Getting to the Future Faster
Published on 10 Jan 2018. The complete sequencing of the human genome is one of the most powerful examples of technology and science in action: We've gone from needing $3 billion and over 13 years to read a single human genome to today, to where we can do that same amount of work for about $1,000 in roughly 2 days -- and the price will only continue to drop. But beyond pricing, what does understanding the gene -- and moving from the sequencing layer to the applications layer -- mean to us; what new questions arise now that we can sequence DNA quickly, reliably, and cheaply?
This conversation -- with co-founder and CEO of Jungla Carlos Araya and co-founder and CEO of Freenome Gabe Otte, moderated by a16z General Partner Jorge Conde (based on a discussion that took place at a16z’s annual Summit in November 2017) -- takes a step back and considers all these questions. Every time a human genome sequence is completed, there are on the order of 3,000,000 new variants identified. So how do we think about interpreting all that data? Actionability? And how do we derive meaning from all this, for applications in the clinical space?
Published on 20 Feb 2014. In this, the first episode of the Exponent podcast, we talk about our background, Microsoft and disruption, and the meaning of culture. We also explore our goals for this podcast, and just a bit about Taiwanese garbage trucks. Show Notes: If Steve Ballmer Ran Apple link The Halo Effect:…and Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers link Skating Towards the Goal link Bill Gates’ Steve Jobs Moment link Friction link Note: The Internet Explorer rendering engine is called Trident, not Triton
Published on 19 Dec 2017. New fintech companies are democratizing access to financial services in different ways, whether it's making food stamps more efficient, no longer waiting two weeks for a paycheck, or enabling anyone with a smartphone in developing countries to create small businesses. But what these all have in common -- besides a more inclusive approach to finance -- is also changing, in some way, the fundamental way our financial system works.
Featuring CEO of Propel Jimmy Chen, CEO of Branch Matt Flannery, and CEO of Earnin Ram Palaniappan, in conversation with a16z partner Angela Strange, this episode of the a16z Podcast is based on a discussion that took place at a16z's annual Summit in November 2017. Financial innovation can come in unexpected ways from unexpected places -- but what does that mean for established players? For the future of fintech overall?
Published on 30 May 2012. Co-Founder Drew Houston shares personal moments from starting the cloud-based file storage service Dropbox. Houston touches on the importance of persevering through early challenges at a startup, selecting the right co-founder, and focusing on solving problems to maximize customer happiness.
Published on 14 Oct 2016. CFO of Zillow Group Kathleen Philips joins Ben and David to cover the show’s first true “merger” versus “acquisition" (only took 22 episodes!), Zillow’s 2015 combination with Trulia to form Zillow Group. Note: our audio glitches unfortunately continued on this episode, and quality is rough. We recommend listening on speakers vs headphones if you’re able. We apologize and will be back to normal quality next time! Topics covered include: - Zillow and Trulia’s beginnings during the “Web 2.0” era in the mid-2000’s - Zillow, Trulia and other online players’ place within the massive US real estate market - The lengthy “dance" between Zillow and Trulia and earlier aborted merger talks between the two - The difficulty of "true mergers” among private companies and why the path is easier for public companies - Public company shareholders’ influence and role in M&A transactions - Details of the blazingly fast negotiations (27 days start to finish!) per disclosures in the SEC filings (scroll down to "Background of the Mergers”) - Structuring the deal and incentivizing Trulia and Zillow mangers to stay and continue growing as separate brands - Trulia cofounder Sami Inkinen’s whereabouts during the merger negotiations - The experience going through a lengthy FTC review of the merger, and defining what the relevant “market” is the FTC should be considering - Introducing our new acquisition category: a “timeline acquisition” ;) (h/t Kathleen) - Zillow Group’s overall approach to acquisitions, folding into its broader HR strategy - Zillow founder Rich Barton’s startup thesis of searching for "What piece of marketplace information do people crave and don’t have?" Followups: - Snap Inc. Spectacles! Hot Takes: - Twitter-Disney rumors, according to “people familiar with matter”! - AppLovin’s journey from bootstrapped startup to $1.4B exit The Carve Out: - Ben: The Marvel Symphonic Universe - David: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Kathleen: The Struts
Published on 28 Aug 2016. Bitcoin quickly made its way from a whitepaper to a production network, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. But its scripting/ programming language was initially, intentionally, limited for a few reasons, which meant that building new apps on bitcoin wasn't always easy.
Enter ethereum in 2014 -- a public blockchain platform that moved away from the "Swiss-army knife" approach to a more general protocol approach. This would in turn allow endless (and entirely new) use cases to be built on top of the blockchain, whether smart contracts or "app coins" that allow decentralized crowdfunding and decentralized business models. The results, at first glance, may seem just like a new way of financing a company. But it actually goes much deeper than that: They're really software protocols that are almost replacing centralized companies or what those companies would do. The possibilities are endless...
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Ethereum inventor and co-creator Vitalik Buterin joins Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase (an a16z portfolio company) in conversation with Chris Dixon. The conversation covers everything from the politics of open source (and value of network effects even when those networks split) to the challenges of mainstreaming and scaling tech. And what happens next?
Published on 16 Dec 2016. Ben & David chat with Brian Schultz, the Managing Director of Strategic Investments & Corporate Development at Microsoft.
Published on 20 Aug 2016. This show is about the amazing stories of world-class multi-millionaire and billionaire founders , how they started and how they succeeded. Founder Stories include the founders of Facebook(Mark), Linked-in(Reid), WhatsApp(Jan), Ben and Jerry Ice creams(the name says it), Instagram(Kevin), Amazon(Jeff), Pandora(Tim), Hershey Chocolates(Milton) and more. You will hear their struggles and seemingly insurmountable problems and how they emerged victoriously, so you too can succeed as a founder.
Published on 27 Nov 2016. Albrey Brown, is a Berkeley native who does not take ‘No’ for an answer. He was rejected on his first attempt to becoming a Hack Reactor graduate and went on to become a founder of Telegraph Academy. Most importantly, he found a love for teaching and is an educator that has completely changed the career trajectories for hundreds of students. Although he never graduated from college, he always knew that he was going to be a teacher. He grew up in a single family home where his mom raised him to become the man who he is today.
Key Points: 1. When you’re learning a new skill, it’s good to have resources (see below), but try to find someone to double check if you’re doing the steps “correctly”
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Bootcamps need to be more accessible and there are resources like Telegraph Prep and Climb that are working to democratize this form of education
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You’re always going to find another bug (another hill to climb, a new thing to conquer) so don’t be afraid of that. Take risks.
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Mentorship comes through various channels. If someone invests time into helping you, the best thing that you can do is succeed.
SHOW NOTES (FOCUS ON THE STEPPING STONES): [1:12] – Albrey grew up in Berkeley, CA in a single family home with his mother and his aunt. He had no idea of what a startup was.
[3:15] Albrey’s mother got diagnosed with Cancer during his sophomore year and he took a couple of years off after he graduated high school (never graduated college)
[5:32] Beginner Resources – What resources did you use to learn how to code? First, a mentor. Then, he started with The Odin Project and Learn Ruby the Hard Way
[6:35] What was your motivation to learning how to code?
[10:47] What led you to choose Hack Reactor instead of all the other bootcamps?
[11:52] How did you do with Hack Reactor’s Interview Process?
[15:10] Don’t let money stop you from acquiring a new skill – How did you pay for your tuition ($18,000)? When he passed his interview and got accepted into Hack Reactor he needed to figure out how to pay tuition. He had no more money and used a crowdfunding platform called GoFundMe to raise $18,000 in 30 days
[18:19] Tell us more about the Bootcamp Model as a new model for education
[19:06] What makes Telegraph Academy different from all of the other Bootcamps?
[21:40] Take a Bootcamp Preparation Program if you are starting from scratch and need someone to guide you
[22:22] What financing packages are available at Telegraph Academy?
[24:58] What are some of the outcomes for Telegraph Academy?
[26:17] What do the demographics look like at Telegraph Academy?
[29:00] How did you put this all together? He is a big advocate of taking the road less traveled.
[30:40] What do you have planned for the future? Thoughts on education in general?
[33:37] The Lightning Round 1. How would you get back to this point in your career if you were dropped into a new city with only $100? (assuming your food and shelter is taken care of)
Albrey: Become a Lyft or Uber Driver to get a car (here’s the Uber option), make money, learn about your city, and meet people
- When you ran into roadblocks or struggles, was there any piece of music or a movie that you watched that helped you get over that situation?
Albrey: Always Be Closing by Glengarry Glen Ross
- Looking back, what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone now that you’ve been through this journey?
Albrey: The best resource that you can have is a mentor
- Have you been able to speak with anyone that Sponsored your GoFundMe now that you have executed on your promise to start a school? Yes; His cousin Brian Tippens, who never told him what he did when he originally contributed. Now that Albrey reconnected with him after the launch of Telegraph Academy, he just realized Brian is the Head of Diversity
Published on 10 May 2016. Whether you think of it as a distributed ledger, decentralized database, computing infrastructure, open source/ software development platform, cryptocurrency, transaction platform, or financial services marketplace, the bitcoin blockchain is driven by two key features: that it is a peer-to-peer network, and that it unbundles trust. Imagine moving from Googling for things to offering proof-as-a-service instead (which itself begins with rethinking identity).
In fact, there's a lot of parallels -- both in evolution and development -- with the blockchain and the internet before it. Only the blockchain doesn't need the web. And that has profound implications for what applications and new businesses are now possible, especially in financial services. But if "the worst place to develop a new business model is from within your existing business model", then how can banks move beyond mere process innovations to offering entirely new services built on the blockchain? Many financial institutions are trying to get ahead of the blockchain disruption by exploring it proactively, but how do they overcome the innovator's dilemma and looking at startups like animals in a zoo?
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, William Mougayar, the author of the new book The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology shares how traditional, established industries can overcome the innovator's dilemma in this case; what the future of banks might be; and what new applications, services, and startups are possible due to the features -- really, benefits -- of the blockchain. Because the blockchain, ultimately, is an innovation platform.
Published on 01 Nov 2017. Industry disruptors, it stands to reason, tend to be outsiders. But how comfortable are you not being an outlier? Serial entrepreneur Catherine Berman shares her story of coming to terms with the traits and experiences that set her apart from friends and colleagues throughout adolescence and early in her career. Embracing her uniqueness emboldened Berman to launch several social ventures, the latest being a social-impact startup in fintech called CNote.
Published on 11 Oct 2017. Bangaly Kaba shares his story on how he broke into product management from a non-traditional backgrounds in Education and Finance. Originally from the East Coast, Bangaly is now considered as one of the best PMs in the Bay Area. He previously worked at Facebook's growth team until landing his current product management role at Instagram.
You probably first heard of Bangaly's name back on Episode 13 when Elaina Koros mentioned his name on the show referring to him as a great mentor.
From working in Switzerland, to starting a men's fashion business, working at Facebook and finally handling product management at Instagram, Bangaly sure has crafted his own success story.
Published on 27 Jul 2017. Jan Koum migrated to America in his teens. His family was poor,Yet this kid rose to build an app called Whatsapp. It grew like crazy and was purchased for a whopping $15+ billion. Holy smokes. How is this possible.
Let us check out this unbelievable story.
Published on 11 Nov 2016. Ben and David tackle their first IPO episode, starting with the largest tech IPO of all time, Facebook.
Published on 10 May 2017. Ben and David continue Acquired’s “tech and sports” mini-series with Disney’s 2016 acquisition of a minority stake (with the right to purchase a majority stake at a later date) in BAMTech, the internet streaming company originally founded as part of Major League Baseball in the early 2000’s. However the importance of this story goes deeper than just sports, with major ramifications for nearly every major technology company from Amazon to YouTube. Even if you’re not not sure if baseball’s played on a diamond or a gridiron, tune in as we swing for the fences in predicting the future of TV!
Topics covered include: * What is BAMTech, and why is it, according to The Verge, "the future of television”? * BAMTech’s origins as part of Major League Baseball's Advanced Media division ("MLBAM)”) * MLBAM’s founding CEO Bob Bowman’s decidedly “non-tech” background, and growth into one of the most important tech leaders of the past 15 years * Initial technology struggles and learnings from early streaming efforts (including a botched audio package of Ichiro Suzuki’s games with the Mariners for fans in Japan) * Landing on a streaming model that works with the launch of MLB.tv in 2002/2003—three years before YouTube is founded! * Improvement of the MLB.tv service and MLBAM’s streaming expertise over the next ten years through the rise of mobile, and simultaneous growth of MLBAM’s revenues to over $1B annually * MLBAM’s initial deals to expand its streaming services beyond baseball, starting with ESPN in 2010, then WWE, the PGA, HBO and the NHL * The importance of media rights, and MLBAM’s transition from a simple tech/infrastructure provider to a full-fledged media company * The decision to initiate a spin-off process for BAMTech from MLB in August 2015, and Disney’s $1B investment into the newly created spin-out company in August 2016 * Disney’s subsequent announcement that they’ll be working with BAMTech to create a direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming service * BAMTech’s $300M deal with Riot Games in December 2016 for the media rights to League of Legends eSports content * Bob Bowman’s announcement in February 2017 that he’ll be stepping back to from a day to day role, and hiring of former Amazon VP of Video Michael Paull as BAMTech’s new CEO
Followups & Hot Takes: * Facebook’s struggles with Instant Articles * Microsoft killing Wunderlist (David is VERY sad) * Instagram continues its torrid growth, passes 700M MAU * Amazon’s new Look * The Cloudera IPO * Confirmation the ride sharing wars are far from over: Didi raises $5.5B in the largest private funding round ever
The Carve Out: * Ben: NYT’s 4th Down Bot * David: Wait But Why on Elon Musk’s “Wizard Hat"
Published on 31 Dec 2016. Ben & David welcome very special guest Tom Alberg, board member and first lead investor in Amazon.com, to cover the IPO of "earth’s most customer-centric company".
Published on 04 Mar 2017. Snap! Acquired is live on the scene reporting from the "Super Bowl" of 2017 tech events: Snap Inc's hugely anticipated IPO.
Published on 01 Sep 2017. This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex! -- were joined by Samuel Angus, a partner on the corporate team of Fenwick and West, where he represents a number of venture-backed firms including Airbnb and Github.
Published on 11 Nov 2015. Blockchain without bitcoin? It's a debate as old as the cryptocurrency itself (which, to be honest, isn't that old). Given that bitcoin is not just a digital bearer instrument/token but is a network, a distributed ledger, a protocol, the question of separating blockchain from bitcoin isn't a moot one. Especially when you think of it analogously to voice over IP, but for financial services.
So what is the financial services industry doing with this "money over IP"? Clearly many large business players are paying attention and trying to get ahead of disruption, by asking themselves exactly what their bitcoin/blockchain strategy is. Adam Ludwin shares what's happening here from his perspective as founder of Chain, an enterprise blockchain platform that partners with financial institutions to help them apply the technology to their markets.
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Ludwin covers what it's like merging the cultures of finance and tech; what's driving the recent bitcoin prices; why he believes in blockchain beyond bitcoin; whether there can be such a thing as private or permissioned blockchains; definitions of newer concepts like 'colored coins' and 'sidechains'; and more. Oh and what are the most interesting native apps, too.
Published on 16 Jun 2016. Love the term or hate it, the concept and reality of the "sharing economy" (or "gig economy" and so on) is here to stay. And in fact, argues NYU Stern professor and researcher Arun Sundararajan, it may even reduce the income distribution gap between the haves and have-nots in a way that previous shifts -- like the Industrial Revolution and traditional 20th century institutions -- never did. How?
Because it's a new model for (crowd-based) capitalism -- one where we're increasing the segment of the population that owns the means of production. Or... have we just shifted value from traditional institutions to the platforms instead? Well, let's see what the data tells us. In this episode of the a16z Podcast, Sundararajan (who is also affiliated with NYU's Center for Urban Science+Progress and at NYU's Center for Data Science) shares the latest findings, economics research, and more from his new book on The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism.
We cover the challenges of capturing this shift in GDP (as well as the challenges of GDP and measuring tech progress in general); the challenges of creating a new funding model for the "social safety net of the 21st century workforce"; the challenges of "data darwinism", reputation, and ratings; and finally, how and just who should regulate the sharing economy?
Published on 24 Feb 2017. Has fear ever stopped you from moving toward something you felt called to? Have the costs been too high to take a leap of faith? Or what about your emotions? Have you allowed your feelings about a certain direction dictate your decision?
Published on 20 May 2016. The Inc. team talks about Harry's, the subscription men's razor company, and how the startup gained market share by buying a 100-year-old razor factory in Germany. The crew also talks about how companies are being sued for misusing biometric technology, and they chat with Toni Ko about selling her makeup company, NYX. Write us: uncensored@inc.comVisit: www.inc.com/inc-uncensoredInc. Uncensored is brought to you by Squarespace. Build your website today at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code UNCENSORED at checkout to get 10% off.Support for this episode's Exit Interview comes from Deloitte's Emerging Growth Company team conducting audits to meet the needs of fast-growing companies that seek investor capital or to go public. See how audit can help companies as they pursue high performance at deloitte.com/us/egc.This episode is also brought to you by The Lincoln Motor Company. The elegant and powerful Lincoln MKZ is for listeners who use their vehicle for both personal and business reasons. Find out more at Lincoln.com/MKZ
Published on 14 Oct 2015. The place where Apache Spark was born, UC Berkeley’s AMPLab has not just created a major open source software platform, it’s spun out more than its share of ground-breaking companies (full disclosure: a16z has invested in three of them).
So how did they get there? How has open source and the AMPLab approach reduced the friction between student and faculty ideas and launching them into the real world?
Co-founder and director of the AMPLab, Michael Franklin, joins a16z’s Peter Levine to discuss the AMPLab model, and their own relationship as an academic and an investor. Haoyuan Li also joins the discussion -- which was part of our 2015 Academic Roundtable -- to offer another perspective. Li’s company, Tachyon Nexus, came out of work he did as a student in the AMPLab and the resulting open source project. Li describes his struggles and victories in making the transition from student to founder and leader of a company.
Published on 24 Jun 2016. The Inc. team talks about what makes a leader with Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso. Next, Leigh Buchanan and Maria Aspan debate whether entrepreneurs are born--or made. Finally, the team interviews Jon Sebastiani, the serial entrepreneur who sold his healthy jerky company, Krave, to Hershey, about how the deal went down.Write us: uncensored@inc.comVisit: www.inc.com/inc-uncensoredThis episode of Inc. Uncensored is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, or an online store, it's all possible with a Squarespace website. Enter offer code uncensored at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.Support for this episode's Serious Business debate comes from Salesforce. Salesforce helps small businesses like yours discover how to grow faster than ever before. By managing your sales, marketing and customer service all in one place, your small businesses can succeed at every step. To see how Salesforce can work for you, go to salesforce.com/smallbiz.Support for today's Exit Interview comes from Deloitte's Emerging Growth Company team...conducting audits to meet the needs of fast-growing companies that seek investor capital or to go public. See how audit can help companies as they pursue high performance at Deloitte.com/us/EGC.
Published on 27 Feb 2015. In this week’s episode Ben and James discuss tradeoffs in the context of net neutrality, AT&T’s new gigabit service, and Lenovo’s Superfish debacle Note: when talking about the history of cable, Ben kept saying “companies” instead of “communities.” Sorry for the confusion! Links Ben Thompson: Netflix and Net Neutrality – Stratechery Ben Thompson: Net Neutrality! (analyzing the current proposal) – Stratechery (members-only) This Week in Tech: Superfishy – Twit.TV Ben Thompson: Lenovo’s Superfish Debacle, AT&T Prices Privacy – Stratechery (members-only) Jon Matonis: Silent Circle And Vertu Partner On $10,000 Phone – Forbes Hosts Ben Thompson, @monkbent, Stratechery James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard … Continue reading Episode 036 – Tradeoffs
Published on 30 Oct 2017. In 1992, Steve Ells was a classically trained chef working in a high-end restaurant in San Francisco. But after eating a burrito at a local taqueria, he got an idea: to sell burritos and earn enough money to open his own gourmet restaurant. The first Chipotle opened in Denver the following year. Bringing his culinary training to taqueria-style service, Steve Ells helped transform the way we eat fast food. PLUS for our postscript "How You Built That," how Alexander Harik turned his mom's recipe for za'atar spread—a fragrant Middle Eastern condiment—into Zesty Z: The Za'atar Company.
Published on 15 Apr 2016. The Inc. team talks about how media companies are relying on Facebook to survive, debate whether or not robots will steal our jobs, and discuss how the food instagramming craze is leading to weird trends like rainbow bagels.Write us: uncensored@inc.comVisit: www.inc.com/inc-uncensoredInc. Uncensored is brought to you by Squarespace. Build your website today at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code UNCENSORED at checkout to get 10% off.
Published on 15 Sep 2016. Are you a creative entrepreneur looking to leverage design as a way to compete? Or maybe you re a startup interested in having investors involved in your startup?
Published on 13 Sep 2015. Ben and James discuss James’ sophomore experience at Burning Man, and then turn to the iPad Pro and its paucity of quality of applications. Just how much is Apple responsible? This episode is sponsored by Zendesk. Make your customer service seem like magic by building it directly into your apps, websites and products with Zendesk Embeddables. Links Exponent Episode 016 — Naked People Ben Thompson: From Products to Platforms — Stratechery Emanuel Sa: We Need Sketch for the iPad Pro — Designer News Ben Thompson: App Store Policy Follow-up, The iPad Pro, The iPad Pro Accessories — Stratechery Ben Thompson: … Continue reading Episode 051 — Segue
Published on 24 May 2017. If you’re Steve Jobs, you can wait for your product to be perfect. But there are almost no Steve Jobs’ in the world. For the rest of us, If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late. Imperfect is perfect. Why? Because your assumptions about what people want are never exactly right. Most entrepreneurs create great products through a tight feedback loop with real customers using a real product. So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company. What will make or break you is speed. And no one knows this better than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. He shares the origin story of his famous mantra, “move fast and break things” and how this ethos applied as Facebook evolved from student project to tech giant.
Published on 13 Sep 2016. "Apple isn't just a tech company; it's a tastemaker." Remember the iconic ads of dancing silhouettes in black, with only the headphone wires visible in white? They were a critical part of the larger buy-Apple innovation narrative. So what happens now when those wires -- an emblematic and enduring image -- are no longer visible, as is the case with the removal of the traditional headphone jack in iPhone 7?
It's part of a broader story, both about how product narratives are shared/told and about how innovation happens: "amazingly", subtly, and sometimes, invisibly. Some innovations, like preventing "battery anxiety" or building a platform ecosystem or even laying the tracks for a train that hasn't arrived yet ("ear computers" or "audible computing"? VR/AR? car?) take time. And a direction we may not be able to anticipate from the outside looking in. ...Or so argue the a16zers on this episode of the a16z Podcast featuring in-house analyst Benedict Evans and board partner Steven Sinofsky with Kyle Russell.
Published on 24 Oct 2016. Jane Wurwand moved to Los Angeles with a suitcase and a beauty school diploma. She started what would become Dermalogica, an international beauty empire that set the standard for skin care.
Published on 17 Oct 2014. In this week’s episode Ben and James discuss why Ben thinks the Internet is totally overreacting to HBO’s announcement that they will sell subscriptions directly to customers, and then delve into what might be the underlying motivations behind Gamergate. Links Ben Thompson: The Cord-Cutting Fantasy – Stratechery Ben Thompson: Why TV Has Resisted Disruption – Stratechery Ben Thompson: The Jobs TV Does – Stratechery Kyle Wagner: The Future of the Culture Wars is Here, and It’s Gamergate – Deadspin Paul Graham: Before the Startup – PaulGraham.com Hosts Ben Thompson, @monkbent, Stratechery James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review Podcast Information Feed … Continue reading Episode 021: Gamergate of Thrones
Published on 15 Oct 2016. People always ask me, "Dale, how do you define success?" As a businessperson people expect me to respond with some level of financial ability or size of a business. But it's quite the opposite as you'll hear in this special episode of the StartupCamp.com Podcast.
Published on 28 Jun 2016. with Fei-Fei Li, Frank Chen, and Sonal Chokshi artificial intelligence automation & robotics coding literacy education machine & deep learning announcements autonomous cars computer vision in-residence
Who has the advantage in artificial intelligence — big companies, startups, or academia? Perhaps all three, especially as they work together when it comes to fields like this. One thing is clear though: A.I. and deep learning is where it’s at. And that’s why this year’s newly anointed Andreessen Horowitz Distinguished Visiting Professor of Computer Science is Fei-Fei Li [who publishes under Li Fei-Fei], associate professor at Stanford University. Bridging entrepreneurs across academia and industry, we began the a16z Professor-in-Residence program just a couple years ago (most recently with Dan Boneh and beginning with Vijay Pande).
Li is the Director of the Stanford Vision Lab, which focuses on connecting computer vision and human vision; is the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL), which was founded in the early 1960s; and directs the new SAIL-Toyota Center for AI Research, which brings together researchers in visual computing, machine learning, robotics, human-computer interactions, intelligent systems, decision making, natural language processing, dynamic modeling, and design to develop “human-centered artificial intelligence” for intelligent vehicles. Li also co-created ImageNet, which forms the basis of the Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC) that continually demonstrates drastic advances in machine vision accuracy.
So why now for A.I.? Is deep learning “it”… or what comes next? And what happens as A.I. moves from what Li calls its “in vitro phase” to its “in vivo phase”? Beyond ethical considerations — or celebrating only “geekiness” and “nerdiness” — Li argues we need to inject a stronger humanistic thinking element to design and develop algorithms and A.I. that can co-habitate with people and in social (including crowded) spaces. All this and more on this episode of the a16z Podcast.
Published on 06 Oct 2017. Earlier this year, we asked listeners to call us with questions for Gimlet Founder Alex Blumberg. Alex answered a bunch of them in an episode last season. But one caller’s question was so big, it needed its own episode. Skyler Gronholz had decided to make a podcast about starting up his life again after several years in prison. But he was anxious about making something bad, and wanted Alex’s advice. In this week’s episode, we find out: can making a podcast about your life actually change the way you live it?--If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has a number you can call. 1-800-662-HELP. That hotline gives referrals to local treatment facilities and support groups. And it is completely free and confidential.
Published on 17 Nov 2015. The title of world's financial capital bounces back and forth between London and New York. This year London has bragging rights, but does being the word's center of gravity for finance mean so-called "fintech" companies will naturally flow from that position?
London-based investor Eileen Burbidge joins a16z's Alex Rampell to pick apart fintech in this segment of the podcast recorded on our U.K. road trip. Everything from the term (please make it go away), to the particular barriers and opportunities facing entrepreneurs looking to create what really amounts to better banks.
Published on 06 Oct 2015. Mention Patrick Byrne, the founder and CEO of Overstock.com, and you’ll elicit a strong opinion. In 2004, one hedge fund manager labeled Byrne the most hated man on Wall Street -- a label he wears proudly.
Byrne started Overstock.com in 1999, and the online retailer has been through a lot of change in the intervening years. At the outset, Byrne didn’t want Overstock to be a technology company trying to get retail right, he wanted to be a retail company that was amplified by technology. Looking back, he says, he had the emphasis wrong -- it should have been on technology.
Byrne has been focused on the technology side of things ever since, pushing Overstock further into the cloud, as well as becoming the first major online merchant to accept Bitcoin. Byrne joins this segment of the a16z Podcast to discuss the state of online retail, value investing in tech, and why he believes Bitcoin and the crypto revolution is bigger than the Internet.
Published on 03 May 2017. If you want your company to truly scale, you first have to do things that don't scale. Handcraft the core experience. Get your hands dirty. Serve your customers one-by-one. And don't stop until you know exactly what they want. That's what Brian Chesky did. As CEO of Airbnb, Brian’s early work was more akin to a traveling salesman. He takes us back to his lean years – when he went door-to-door, meeting Airbnb hosts in person – and shares the imaginative route to crafting what he calls an "11-star experience.”
Published on 02 Oct 2015. Financial services are overdue for an overhaul. With a16z's newest general partner, Alex Rampell (who just officially started), this segment of the podcast explores the world of fintech... How software backed up by data is being brought to bear on lending, insurance, and the science (oftentimes art) of underwriting risk.
We also get a taste of what life was like for Rampell running a successful internet business out of his bedroom -- an experience that would lead him toward the world of monetization/ payments and eventually co-founding numerous startups.
Published on 01 Aug 2016. From hardware and hardwires to smartphones and social, technology wants to connect. It's almost a native property of technology and especially software businesses, which is why network effects matter. "It was endemic to these technologies that they wanted to become connected and once connected, they become networks and once networks, they become network effects. Other products like cars or toasters or houses or whatever, aren't natively connected physically or through information sharing," observes James Currier.
But not all network effects are equal -- not only can they be strong or weak, there are many different types depending on the business. Currier, who is the co-founder and managing partner of an accelerator (NFX Guild) that advises and runs a runs a program for all kinds of early-stage companies with network effects, shares their ever-evolving taxonomy for thinking about different types of network effects in this episode of the a16z podcast.
These labels matter. It's not just words, but language that aids understanding -- and the corresponding growth playbook -- that can help build businesses with network effects, especially given the specific challenges they face. And finally, why did some companies with network effects take off but others didn't?
Published on 30 Dec 2016. This week, Inc. writers and editors say "So long!" to 2016, and discuss what this year's developments in politics and cyber security may mean for the new year. Plus, the crew interviews Scott McFarlane about how he sold MetaInfo to Checkpoint in the waning days of the 1990s
Published on 13 Oct 2017. Ben and James discuss Facebook and where both its critics and executives go wrong. It’s time for everyone to consider the worst-case scenarios. NOTE: We unfortunately had significant audio issues this week on both sides (which, by the way, had nothing to do with the cut cable referenced in the podcast ). Our apologies. Presented by MailChimp Links Ben Thompson: Defining Aggregators — Stratechery This is why tech companies won’t disclose content of Russian ads — The Outline Ben Thompson: Trustworthy Networking — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Manifestos and Monopolies — Stratechery Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery The Barriers … Continue reading Episode 127 — The Worst-Case Scenario
Published on 19 Feb 2016. The Inc. team talks with writer Maria Konnikova about her new book "The Confidence Game," and how con artists continuously fool people for thousands of dollars. They also explore how apps like Snapchat are changing Fashion Week, and how researchers want to read fairy tales to robots to teach them morality. Write us: uncensored@inc.comVisit: www.inc.com/inc-uncensoredInc. Uncensored is brought to you by Go To Webinar. With GoToWebinar, you can present to hundreds with confidence. Whether you're a start-up or a company operating worldwide, GoToWebinar will help you connect with, captivate and convert your target audience. Just visit GoToWebinar.com to start your free 30-day trial And by FreshBooks. If you're an entrepreneur or have a business on the side you need to know about FreshBooks. FreshBooks makes creating and sending invoices, organizing your expenses and tracking your hours the easiest part of your day. Go to FreshBooks.com/Uncensored for your free 30-day trial.
Published on 03 Oct 2016. Gary Erickson asked his mom, "Can you make a cookie without butter, sugar or oil?" The result was Clif Bar, an energy bar named after his dad — now one of the most popular energy bars in the U.S.
Published on 14 May 2014. This episode was actually recorded on February 18; however, due to circumstances, we had to hibernate Exponent and the episode was never actually edited and posted. Now that the show is back – for good this time – we wanted to post the “missing episode” plenty of folks have asked us about. There are a couple of dated references, but the content is still very applicable. In this episode we talk about privilege and whether Silicon Valley is solving the right problems. It’s certainly not a new question, but has it become more pressing in the last few months? Links: … Continue reading Episode 002: The Missing Episode
Published on 06 Oct 2017. Head of the largest bioengineering lab in the world, former chairman of the FDA and one of the few recipients of the National Medals of Science and of Technology and Innovation, Bob Langer's work has spanned multiple fields and settings and has been applied across numerous fields, from pharmaceutical to chemical, biotechnology to medical device companies. What does it mean to move across disciplines like this, from science to engineering, both in the lab and into the field?
In this conversation with general partner and head of the a16z bio fund Vijay Pande (with Hanne Tidnam), Langer and Pande share the challenges and opportunities as people move across different disciplines, as well as the changing mindsets for innovation as applied to biotech: first principles, "rational" biology, do no harm, and others.
At the heart of it all is "the interface of engineering and materials" in biology and healthcare innovation. Especially as, thanks to tech, biology shifts from empirical study to engineering -- not just in startups but in academia too. Yet does that make the work too "translational"? And what of regulation? The guests on this episode explore all of these themes, and more.
Published on 15 Nov 2015. What is A.I. or artificial intelligence but the 'space of possible minds', argues Murray Shanahan, scientific advisor on the movie Ex Machina and Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London.
In this special episode of the a16z Podcast brought to you on the ground from London, Shanahan -- along with journalist-turned-entrepreneur Azeem Azhar (who also curates The Exponential View newsletter on AI and more) and The Economist Deputy Editor Tom Standage (the author of several tech history books) -- we discuss the past, present, and future of A.I. ... as well as how it fits (or doesn't fit) with machine learning and deep learning.
But where are we now in the A.I. evolution? What players do we think will lead, if not win, the current race? And how should we think about issues such as ethics and automation of jobs without descending into obvious extremes? All this and more, including a surprise easter egg in Ex Machina shared by Shanahan, whose work influenced the movie.
Published on 17 Feb 2017. Ben and James compare Snap and Facebook to Apple and Microsoft, and worry that Snap’s business is misaligned. Presented by MailChimp Links Ben Thompson: Snap’s Apple Strategy — Stratechery Ben Thompson: The Truth About Windows Versus the Mac — Stratechery Ben Thompson: What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong — Stratechery Ben Thompson: The Audacity of Copying Well — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Aggregation Theory — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Snapchat Spectacles and the Future of Wearables — Stratechery Ben Thompson: Old-Fashioned Snapchat — Stratechery Hosts Ben Thompson, @benthompson, Stratechery James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review Podcast Information Feed iTunes SoundCloud Twitter Feedback Presented by … Continue reading Episode 104 — Snap’s Gingerbread Strategy
Published on 28 Sep 2017. with Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam
We’ve already talked about why bitcoin matters. But as the set of cryptocurrencies — and networks and “tokens” enabled by the underlying blockchain — grow (Ethereum being one of the fastest-growing ones), where do we go from here? How do we tease apart the signal from the noise, given all the buzz and critiques out there?
In this episode of the a16z Podcast, general partner Chris Dixon and Fred Ehrsam (former Goldman Sachs trader and a co-founder of Coinbase) break down the fundamentals of it all — from incentives, developer communities, and protocols, to new models of governance and the tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized systems (including central planning vs. letting a thousand experiments bloom). And then, given all the hype out there right now around crypto tokens and “ICOs”, how do we tell the difference between what’s promising/legitimate vs. a red flag? How could we value tokens? And what does it mean for incumbents when all the value that was created in the previous paradigm is being commoditized by the new one, and that value creation now has to happen at some new layer?
At the end of the day, the key word through it all is incentives. And it’s a testament to the power of getting incentive structures right that someone pseudonymously dropping a 9-page whitepaper onto the internet led to a $70 billion cryptocurrency, a whole ecosystem of companies and users, and the largest supercomputer network in the world. Then again… isn’t that how innovation happens?
Published on 14 Jul 2017. Snap’s share price has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, adding to its woes sourced from a lackluster Q1 earnings report. Snap now trades below its IPO price. Its declines are worrisome for other unicorns looking to defend private valuations in the public sphere. The venture capital sexual harassment scandal continued this week, with allegations leading to the ouster of Frank Artale from Ignition Partners. More on that, and a round-up of the rest of the mess here. Uber grew about 10 percent last quarter and is now working with a former competitor in Russia. If that sounds familiar, just repeat the word ‘China’ in your head about seven times until you recall. And, très surprise, WeWork raised more money. Because why not. What asset-light coworking startup shouldn’t be worth $20 billion, right?
Published on 19 Apr 2016. So... about those bots. Bots bots bots. Bots!
In this episode of the botcast, a16z partners Benedict Evans and Connie Chan -- along with Chris Messina, longtime advocate of the open web and more -- pull apart various threads related to the topic of bots, mobile, and beyond: the (evolution?) from web to apps to messaging to bots; chat as an interface; “conversational commerce”; and so on. They also discuss why framing messaging through the lens of WeChat both reveals useful things (what works/ might not work) and not-so-useful things (such as seeking the “WeChat of the West”).
More importantly, how can we keep bots, and what they represent, in perspective -- beyond the fad? Especially when it comes to considering innovation on the 'web' vs. 'mobile' (remember the mobile browser!) and when it comes to removing friction (vs. adding limited interaction). What contexts (like customer service) are most useful for thinking about bots? And how can we even know, given it’s early days yet and we haven’t moved much beyond the command-line interface...
Finally, as computing moves outside the classic work-centric paradigm to room- and urban-scale, how do we think about integrating online and offline, ubiquitous and “diffuse” computing through bots?