Startup HandMeDowns

In this episode, Philip spoke with Girish the co-founder & CEO at Shopalyst. Prior to Shopalyst, he was a Vice President at Infosys where he was responsible for their Retail Industry Solutions Business.

An author of four patents that he helped commercialize, he is passionate about how data and technology are shaping our world. Besides adoption by global customers, his work is featured in MIT Tech Review, Businessweek, and Fast Company, among others.

Girish is a Mechanical Engineer from UVCE Bangalore, and a management graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B).

We talk all things; product, early upbringing and more.

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John is the Founder, CEO, & Product Architect of Enemy Tree, a California, USA based technology startup whose products are wide-reaching experiments in hardware, software, and services that positively impact peoples lives.

Previously, John spent nearly 6 years at Tesla Motors leading teams and internally innovating in areas like operations, sales, delivery, customer service, and marketing. This created an even deeper passion for startups that was already so strong it pulled JOhn to the West Coast. It gave him a profound appreciation for the incredible people who sacrifice so much to make a product and company great.

Prior to that, JOhn not only built a very strong business and operations foundation by working at BIC Consumer Products and learned the roots of quality, systems, process, and execution but also dove deep into the practical and theoretical details of business

In addition to building products now, John is also an active Angel Investor, as well as a mentor and advisor to several startups and entrepreneurs.

John was an early investor in Gimlet Media which sold to Spotify for $200m.

site: startuphandmedowns.co

(Rerun) This week we sat down with Austen Allred of Lambda School, Fit Marketing, Grasswire, and Lendup. On this episode we discuss: - Growth marketing galore - The free upfront model - When to invest Austen Allred has a super interesting origin story, having dropped out of university himself, he went on to co-found his own school and pushing the envelope for the future of education. For those of you who are out of the loop, Austen created Lambda School, a coding school that asks for no money up front in an exchange for a percentage of your salary after you get a job making more than 50k. Austen got his start in the business world at Stubtopia, a ticket brokering company that he started with his brother at 18. After handing over the reins to his brother, he went on to complete an LDS mission in Ukraine which ended up setting a tone of dedication and perseverance for his whole career. If you’re an entrepreneur trying to make your move, I suggest listening to what Austen has to say as he gives honest advice about growth, product market fit, fundraising, and how to take the right advice. Listen on Spotify, iTunes and anywhere else you listen to podcasts!

(Re-run) This week on Startup Handmedowns, we sat down with Gaston Tourn, CMO of Badoo which for those of you who don’t know is a dating app that is most popular in Europe and South America. Gaston describes himself as a writer and a poet, creating the narrative of the customer and integrating their stories into the product in question. Like many of us, Gaston once had the belief that marketers go out and trick people, that it’s more of a "slimy job", which makes his journey to marketing even more interesting. Hear how he didn’t set out to become a marketer at all, and how he was actually convinced by Google to try it out. I mean, if Google told me what job I’m meant for, I’d believe them too. Gaston talks about his time working on projects such as Google Adwords and Youtube before joining Badoo as CMO. The work he’s doing at Badoo is pretty impressive, and from the way he describes it in the interview, it totally makes sense that he sees himself as a writer and a poet. Gaston is working to fix online dating, on the whole, adding safety measures within the app and features to rid some of the common online dating problems and ultimately, get the users on more dates. As well as trying to mend online dating’s failures, he is focusing on the stories of couples who have found each other on Badoo and telling their stories. Gaston is super interesting and has a lot of great tips, especially if you’re marketing a new startup with a limited budget.

In this repeat episode, Philip speaks with Alex about how you should approach investors or attempt to raise money from the crowd?  We talk to the founder of Beam and JustPark's Ex-Ceo Alex Stefani about what it took to raise the largest Crowdfunding campaign of its time and to lead JustPark to become a household name. We discuss 1. Tips and tricks to a successful crowdfunding campaign 2. How to make it easier to launch projects when starting out 3. Why focus groups are dangerous and reliable alternatives for collecting data.

(Re-upload) In this week’s episode of Startup Handmedowns, we sit down with Ryan Walsh who is currently a partner at Floodgate. Ryan has had a very rich career history, from starting out as a performing DJ in San Francisco to co-founding his own startup, and working as the VP of product at Beats by Dre. His origin story is wild, as Ryan got his start as a raver in Pittsburg, taking pictures of the polished DJ’s equipment with a disposable camera to figure out how to emulate that sound. After figuring out that the party life of a DJ was not for him, Ryan went on to found a company called Pulselocker, which was meant as a DJ tool to cooperate with streaming services. If you’ve ever talked to a musician who has been playing pre-Napster, you’ve heard all about how much the music business has changed and how rapidly the way we buy and sell music shifts. Well, the way music was being consumed and DJ’d changed even faster than his company could develop a product, and he eventually left Pulselocker.

Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative VC an investment fund focused on supporting and investing in the shared future. The fund centers around two macro themes which are the growth of the creative class and the concept of collaborative consumption. Now, Morgan has a unique role at the fund because he's not actually an investing partner, he's a writer. He produces all the written content for the fund which was why I wanted to talk with him. In this episode, we talk about content marketing, whether money can buy happiness and his new book, The psychology of money.

The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness Paperback: Pre-order: https://amzn.to/3fR3cZC

Tzahi (Zack) Weisfeld is a seasoned executive and a serial entrepreneur, with 25+ years of experience in tech consumer and enterprise markets. General manager and head of Ignite, Intel's Startup Mentorship Program. President of ASN (Accelerating Startup Nations), Zack was one of the founders of Microsoft Israel R&D site as well as a member of its management team for 8 years where he created Microsoft for startups which has gone on to be one of the most successful programmes in the world.

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In this episode Philip spoke with serial entrepreneur and investor Haymo Meran. Haymo is currently the head of product at Usersnap which provides SaaS companies with feedback collection tools so that they can become more customer-centric and truly make use of the voice of the customer to improve their service. 

But before this, Haymo built and sold 2 companies and that is what we spent of our time discussing. How to build meaningful products and what the production process should look like. We also discussed how he thinks about angel investing and how he got involved with Tier the Berlin-based unicorn e-scooter company.

Dan Bowyer co-founder and invest at Superseed VC. Dan invests in technical founders building smart B2B tech startups (SaaS/health/data), with a mission to help them to find global market fit.

It's Dan's job to help them get out of startup mode using scalable, repeatable and profitable sales models. Ensuring they get the right people on the bus, create the right energy, infrastructure & activity to get to their first £1m in recurring revenue - which is definitely the most exciting and precarious stage for any tech startup. Before Dan was a VC he was a Tech entrepreneur, operator, and investor with 20 years experience building businesses and implementing digital. Having enjoyed some spectacular failures and some delightful successes.

Dan has probably been one of the most interesting VCs I've met having started out his career in a boy band managed by Simon Cowell, I kid you not. In this episode talk all things from venture investing to COVID-19 and more.

In this episode Philip spoke with Andrea Hippeau is a Principal on our investment team. Prior to joining Lerer Hippeau, she held management and business development roles at portfolio companies. Andrea worked in corporate development while at Advance Publications and managed client relationships for Thomson Reuters. After studying French and business management at Skidmore College, she went on to get her MBA from Columbia Business School. 

In this episode, Philip and Andrea talk all things venture capital, COVID-19, deal flow, and more.

Melissa has been an executive at high-growth companies for over twenty years. She is now Principal of Daimler Partners, working as an advisor, facilitator, and executive coach. Her primary focus is on helping leaders define and operationalize culture.

Prior to starting Daimler Partners, Melissa was an executive who experienced multiple leadership viewpoints throughout her career. She led HR for a fast-growing venture-funded startup. She created and built Learning & Organizational Development functions for Adobe, Twitter, and WeWork. She built a coaching company while also the first employee of Coach University, one of the first leaders in the coaching field. Her experience as an executive and now as a consultant includes coaching executives, helping teams work more effectively, and building scale-proof organizational processes.

Mick is a Brooklyn-based multi-talented creative with influential footprints internationally – from New York to LA, London to Tokyo. He is a DJ, style influencer, tech investor, inspirational speaker, music curator and brand consultant. He's also a pretty cool dad from what I hear also!

In this episode, we talk about Mick's approach to becoming the go-to DJ for many celebrities and how he's the ability to network and add value afforded him many opportunities. Many of these opportunities included giggs, sponsorship deals, and angel investment opportunities. One deal, in particular, was with podcast hosting platform Anchor which was recently acquired by Spotify for a reported $200m which isn't bad at all.

Peter Rojas is a founding partner at Betaworks Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund based in New York and San Francisco. He is also the co-founder of several startups, including Weblogs Inc. (acquired by AOL in 2005), where he created and was editor-in-chief of both Engadget and Joystiq; Gizmodo (formerly Gawker Media, now part of Univision); music discovery service RCRD LBL; and gdgt, a social commerce platform (acquired by AOL in 2013). Prior to Betaworks Ventures, he worked at AOL as VP of Strategy and later as Co-director of Alpha, the company's experimental products group. I really enjoyed this episode because I got to talk with Peter not only as an entrepreneur and founder but also as a venture capitalist which is always great as you get both perspectives on things. 

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Hadley has done a little bit of everything on the path to co-founding Eniac. Starting as an engineer and development team lead at Pegasystems, he later took on roles as a product manager at Microsoft and strategist at Samsung, where it became clear that big companies were not for him.

In 2007 he was very fortunate to join a very talented AI team out of MIT at Vlingo where he ran a few aspects of the business across product, strategy, and marketing until it was sold to Nuance for $225M. He rolled his experience building a successful startup into Thumb whereas CBO he helped the real-time recommendation app reach user engagement levels second only to Facebook before being acquired.

In this episode, Philip and Hadley discuss product development, startups, consumer startups and the effects of Covid-19 on the ecosystems. 

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For close to 20 years, George has run a national executive search firm mostly dealing with executive search and leadership at the C-Suite level such as CEO, CFO, CTO roles throughout the US, Europe, and South America. He's worked with small startups to some household named organizations.

Besides managing his recruiting firm, he also works with similar executives by helping them take control of their careers and branding themselves appropriately when looking for their next move. In this episode, George talks about losing everything in 2008 and having to restart and reinvent himself. We also talk about the importance of creating a strong personal brand, pricing, COVID-19, and more!

This week in Startup Handmedowns, we chat with Abhi Lokesh, founder CEO of Fracture and down-to-earth world traveler. Fracture is a glass printing company that emerged out of Abhi’s university passion project, an e-commerce art business that donated all of its profits to charity, as well as a trip to Swaziland with his classmate, Alex. A major lesson in this week’s episode, is patience. Abhi talks about refreshing his order intake page and projecting the typical hockey stick growth curve in a naivié way that I’m sure a lot of us can relate too. His dreams for Fracture were pretty idealistic, but the steps to get there actualized in slogging through Facebook marketing campaigns, trying to get on Techcrunch, and really just trying stuff out and seeing what worked. Additionally, Abhi did not take the traditional fundraising route with venture capitalists, advisors, and a bunch of fundraising rounds. He believed in his product and its ability to grow on its own.

Startup Handmedowns: startuphandmedowns.co

In today’s episode I had the pleasure of interviewing Rodney Appiah founder and chairman of Cornerstone partners, an angel investment group focused on investing in predominantly black founders. They not only invest in the business but they also provide debt financing to businesses already in operation and generating significant revenues. Rodney is also a Director and venture capital investor at Foresight Private Equity, a leading investment firm focusing on earlier stage UK businesses. He has worked with several entrepreneurial companies over the last 11 years and currently sits on the board of a number of high growth businesses. In this episode, we discuss growing up in Mitcham and working in investment banking straight out of university. We also discuss the funding process when and how startups should be approaching this.

Jude Gomila is a serial entrepreneur and a serial angel investor. He's invested in over 180+ companies including Airtable. In this episode, Philip talks with Jude about early life and "failed" projects to moving to San Francisco and starting Heyzap with his childhood friend which they went on to sell for $45m. We also discuss getting into Y-combinator and the conversation with Paul Graham (PG)  on the sidewall. 

Anthony Frasier is a digital strategist, tech entrepreneur, author, and public speaker. A Newark, NJ native, Anthony has a long history of mentoring, advising startups & community infrastructures, to solve real problems and build solutions. Before joining Newark Venture Partners as their entrepreneur in residence, Anthony was one of the founders behind The Phat Startup. With well over a decade of experience in tech, media, speaking and coaching aspiring entrepreneurs and students from underserved groups, he has developed a thoroughly different worldview. A published author, Anthony believes that success isn’t something external, it comes from within. You can create your own luck, no matter your background or lack of experience. startuphandmedowns.co

Ramon is a serial entrepreneur and in my opinion a serial hustler. He’s a different kind of entrepreneur, not a tech startup tech-savvy kind of guy but more of a methodical "how do I drive traffic and monetize" it kind of guy. In this episode we discuss how to create engaging content and drive huge amounts of traffic to your site and also, how Ramon started a soap opera blog which he went on to sell for $9m without ever watching a single soap opera show. Learn how to pick a topic, start testing content ideas,  grow traffic and monetize your content all on this episode. 

Re-run - This week we're sharing our interview with Tammy Nam, COO of PicsArt, a photo-editing platform with over 100 million monthly users. Tammy has worked at tons of cool companies such as Slide, Scribd, and Viki, and has earned quite a name in the consumer-facing tech world. In this episode we discuss: How to deal with different founders The attributes of virally successful companies The role of culture in startups Full of helpful startup marketing tips, this episode is for all non-technical entrepreneurs out there. Voted one of the top 25 women to watch in tech by AlwaysOn, Tammy has a ton of expert advice to share, from how to bring out the best in different founders to navigating the challenges of being a woman in tech. Our favorite part of this episode is her strategic, purposeful marketing and growth strategies. Marketing is often boiled down to storytelling or hacking, but Tammy shows us how you can approach marketing in any stage of your company in a thoughtful, future-focused way. Don't miss this episode if you really want to get into the client-focused side of a product, it is an expert crash course in UX/UI. 

In this episode Philip sat down with Ezechi Britton Principal at Impact X Capital and Co-founder of Neyber to talk about his journey so far. From growing up in Lewisham with his parents who were teachers to finding his way into investment banking and later as a co-founder to a startup that would go on to raise £200m. Ezechi touches on moonlighting Neyber while still working as an engineer at an investment bank and why he believes entrepreneurs should keep cashflow coming at all costs until they can transition out and work on a project full time. 

visit: startuphandmedowns.co

Re-run: This episode originally aired in March 2018 but Kai's lessons in entrepreneurship are timeless. In this episode Philip spoke with serial entrepreneur and now venture capitalist Kai Bond. Kai is the lead investor at Catalyst Fund which is a seed fund based in New York City. Catalyst Fund is an extension of Comcast Ventures and it serves as a unique investment vehicle to elevate minority entrepreneurship by matching capital and resources with underrepresented minority entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Catalyst Fund Kai has had a truly remarkable career as an entrepreneur. He’s had some painful failures and tells Phil about his lowest point where he didn’t even have enough money for a subway ride. Kai talks about building his third startup within 60 days (Pixie Tv) which he would then go on to sell to Samsung within a year. Kai was also the General Manager of Samsung's accelerator and Hatch Labs where the dating app Tinder was incubated during his tenure as GM.

Visit our site: startuphandmedowns.co

Sticking with the theme of Black History Month, Philip sat down with Eric Collins who's the founder and CEO of Impact X Capital which is a venture capital firm based in the UK. They invest in diverse, underserved –– or what Philip likes to say "underestimated"–– founders in the UK and across Europe. 

On this longer than usual episode, Eric talks about him growing up in the South and his career as a consultant where he worked on M&A deals. Eric talks about the importance of key partnerships to enable growth, raising capital and why he and his stellar founding members decided to start Impact X Capital.

Skip to 1:00:00 if you want to get straight into the Impact X Capital conversation.

Site: startuphandmedowns.co

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Alain Sylvain is the founder and CEO of Sylvain Labs, an innovation and brand design consultancy. They have offices in New York, Amsterdam and Richmond, VA. The company serves as a strategic planning resource for product developers and marketers. They have some of the biggest names as clients including Google, Airbnb, Spotify, General Motors, Samsung, Facebook, Nike, Uniqlo, PepsiCo, Bloomberg, and others.

Alain is co-founder and investor of several ventures including: Master + Dynamic, a design-driven, premium audio brand. Lílo, the first-of-its-kind refrigerator-stable açai bowl, and Waynesaw, a mobile game.

On the show, we unpack what it takes to get branding right and he gives us an insight into the creative process without giving away too much.

If you haven't already please subscribe and leave a review on the show wherever you listen to podcasts!

Sponsor: DesignCrowd. A website that helps entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses outsource or ‘CROWDSOURCE’ design. Get $100 off your first project with this link designcrowd.com/hmd

On this episode, Philip spoke with Charles Hudson. Charles is a serial entrepreneur and is the Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures. Precursor is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies. They recently closed their second fund at $31m, doubling their first fund which was $15m.  Prior to founding Precursor Ventures, Charles was a Partner at SoftTech VC. In this role, he focused on identifying investment opportunities in mobile infrastructure.

Before joining the world of venture capital Charles was a budding entrepreneur in the events industry and then the gaming industry.

In this episode, they talk startups, diversity in tech and more.

This is a rebroadcast to celebrate black history month.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Jordan Fliegel who’s an early-stage investor and serial entrepreneur with a focus on sports tech.  Before Jordan started investing he co-founded a number of successful startups, including Draft, a fantasy league app which he started with his best friend and went on to be acquired by Paddy Power. At the time of the acquisition, they had a team of fewer than 15 employees.  Jordan also co-founded CoachUp which he raised $15m for with the likes of Steph Curry from the Golden State Warriors later investing in the company. A calm and humble entrepreneur Jordan talks nothing but facts about what it actually takes to start and run a company and how marketing is really about maths. These days, Jordan Fliegel heads up TechStars as the MD of their first-ever sports tech-focused accelerator based out in Indiana.

We recorded the show at BetaWorks studios in meatpacking New York.

This was one of my first interviews when I was still getting into podcasting. This interview was first aired in 2017 and you can hear just how bad of an interviewer I was! But luckily, I was interviewing an OG! Tom Bilyeu brought that fire regardless of my poor interviewing skills! SO many great insights and killer pieces of advise for startup founders that he drops here. If you haven’t already checked out Impact Theory–– Tom’s Youtube and podcast–– make sure you do, he has some of the best interviews and with some of the highest performers in the world.

Quick background on Tom, Tom was one of the co-founders of Quest Nutrition which was recently acquired $1bn in cash and is now the founder and host of Impact Theory. Before Quest Nutrition he ran a successful tech company for 7 years before he started working on Quest on evenings and weekends.

What’s crazy is that at the time of this Quest was only valued at a billion dollars so for them to have actually recently sold for a billion dollars is incredible.

Angel Gambino is a WIRED Top 100 executive who has built companies on three continents. She's also an urban regeneration pioneer, a visionary investor, a passionate environmental lawyer, and a dedicated and loving mother. The technology phase of her career has included co-founding investment partnership Prehype Partners, senior roles at the BBC and MTV Networks, and leading the pioneering UK social network Bebo. She has also played pro soccer, and she ran logistics for the USWNT at the Olympics. Raised in Detroit, she recently returned to San Francisco as founder-CEO of a social artificial intelligence startup called Sensai.

This is fitting as it’s Women’s Month and Gambino is nothing short of an incredible entrepreneur and investor. Her background should inspire you to take more risks, pursue your goals and do whatever you feel passionate and compelled to do. 

Check out our site: Startuphandmedowns.com

This week we're interviewing Tony Conrad of True Ventures, Sphere, about.me, Wordpress and many other great startups.  On this episode we discuss: - The turning point of modern startup culture - Expert level networking - The emotional intelligence necessary to excel in the startup landscape The theme of this episode is networking, networking, networking! And no, you aren't just going to hear the obvious "just get out there and meet people!", Tony has some concrete advice for how to surround yourself with people that will guide you along your journey as an entrepreneur. Coming from a tiny midwestern farming town, Tony was not set up for the life as an entrepreneur that he went on to lead. His startup experience more or less fell into place after a decision to move to California after working in the corporate world for 8 years, and he's been killing the game ever since which is why we call him the Godfather of Silicon Valley. Having invested in companies such as Blue Bottle Coffee, Bandcamp, Fitbit, Peloton and more, Tony seriously knows what he's doing and you won't want to miss out on the expert advice on this episode. Visit our site: startuphandmedowns.co