HackToStart

Episodes

• Ben Jabbawy, Founder & CEO, Privy | EP 198

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  Jun 12 2018

  Ben Jabbawy is the Founder of Privy, a suite of tools designed to help marketers and ecommerce businesses increase their marketing conversions. Ben has a background in Industrial Engineering, but moved into a few technical roles, before really diving into startups. Ben joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, his advice for raising capital, how Privy has approached growing to over 250,000 users, and much more.

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• Kimberly Kalb, Head of Marketing & Growth, Houseparty | EP 197

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  Jun 05 2018

  Kimberly Kalb is the Head of Marketing & Growth at Houseparty, an app that takes the group chat to the next level with group video chat. Kimberly has a background in entertainment media technology, having worked with brands like NBCUniversal, HBO, Tumblr Entertainment and now Houseparty. There her role has really grown from partnership, to leading more aspects of growth, marketing and customer support. The Houseparty brand and some of their early learning, have really catapulted their app into international fame. Kimberly joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, how she approaches partnerships, her approach to growth at Houseparty, and much more....more

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• Joshua Brewer, Co-Founder & CEO, Abstract | EP 196

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  May 29 2018

  Josh Brewer is the Co-founder & CEO of Abstract, a platform for modern design teams to work together. Josh’s career in design started off with teaching - but quickly lead to him diving into the emerging web and mobile product design industry. He eventually joined Twitter where he became a Principal Designer. Josh joins us to share his story, how he got into design, what it’s was like working as a Principal Designer at Twitter, what led him to starting Abstract, his advice on raising funding, how he thinks about the design industry, and much more....more

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• Ben Pines, CMO, Elementor | EP 195

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  May 15 2018

  Ben Pines is the CMO of Elementor, the most advanced Drag & Drop page builder for WordPress. Design beautiful professional websites faster and without code. Ben shares what it’s been like building an open source, visual, drag & drop theme editor for Wordpress - and the challenges in scaling it to over 800,000 active installs worldwide - all in less than 2 years! Ben joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it’s been like growing Elementor from 0 to over 800,000 active installs, some challenges of marketing a product to users worldwide, and much more....more

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• Waqas Ali, Co-founder, Markhor (YC15) & Atoms | EP 194

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  May 08 2018

  Waqas Ali is the co-founder of Atoms, one & only shoe for every day. Waqas started building a startups and businesses after discovering the internet and realizing you could sell products online. While there were a ton of insurmountable challenges, Waqas and his co founder Sidra persevered - launching a custom dress shoe company called Markhor. They eventually made it to the US, ran a massive kickstarter campaign and got into YC on their second attempt. Today, Waqas & Sidra are at it again, working on an everyday shoe for the new creatives called Atoms. Waqas joins us to share his story, how he discovered the internet & startups in his home country of Pakistan, all the challenges they had to go through just to start a company, his advice for getting into YC, what really goes into creating a product and story, how they’ve approached launching Atoms, and much more....more

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• Vibhu Norby, Founder & CEO, B8ta

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  May 01 2018

  Vibhu Norby is the co-founder & CEO of B8ta, a new store designed for discovering, trying, & buying the latest tech products, as well as a new platform called “Built by B8ta”, which aims to power the future of physical retail experiences. Vibhu moved to silicon valley after college to join a startup. He was eventually fired from the job, but then joined another startup which was acquired by MySpace. From there, Vibhu joined YC with a social network startup of his own, raised some money, and was later acquired by Nest. It was there that Vibhu started to really get interested in the future of retail - especially for emerging hardware brands. Vibhu joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like running his own startups & working at Nest, why he started B8ta, how he thinks about the retail industry, what Built by B8ta is all about, what they’ve learnt scaling to 80 physical stores, what’s next for the startup, and much more....more

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• Sam Mallikarjunan, Executive Strategist, Hubspot

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  Apr 24 2018

  Sam Mallikarjunan is an Executive Strategist at HubSpot. He hustled his way into the organization with a landing page and ads - and ended up leading the Experimental Marketing team, the Ecommerce Marketing team, the South American internationalization team, Hubspot Labs and more. Today, Sam also teaches Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education and the University of South Florida's Muma College of Business. He is also the co-author of the book "How To Sell Better Than Amazon". Sam joins us to share his story, how he got into marketing, what it’s been like leading a few of these teams at Hubspot, what some of the biggest challenges were, how he approaches solving problems, his mindset around growth and disruption, and much more....more

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• Asher Hunt, Founder & CEO, Overnight

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  Apr 10 2018

  Asher Hunt is the Founder & CEO of Overnight, a platform to book homes from people you trust. Asher comes from a visual arts and music background, but got into tech through product design and is driven by a passion for learning. He was Product Designer at Chill, a viral video sharing platform, and then he launched a product of his own, Look.io, which was later acquired by LivePerson. Now he’s back at it as a founder, building a friend and community driven home-sharing platform called Overnight. Asher joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like taking one of his first startups, Look.io from startup weekend idea to acquisition in 8 months, what its been like working on Overnight, how he manages being a Product Designer & CEO, and much more....more

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• Sonja Jacob, Content Strategy Team Lead, Drift | EP 190

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  Apr 03 2018

  Sonja Jacob is the Content Strategy Team Lead at Drift. Sonja kicked off her career in marketing by blogging years back. She quickly realized the power of content and decided to launch her own business as a copywriter and marketing freelancer. Over the years, Sonja helped create or lead marketing and content efforts for companies like Hubspot, KISSmetrics, Zenefits, and DocSend - and now heads up Content Strategy at Drift. Sonja joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, her approach to creating valuable content, what conversational marketing is all about and how to get started, how B2B marketing is changing, and much more....more

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• Mari Sheibley, Product Desginer Instagram | EP 189

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  Mar 27 2018

  Mari Sheibley is a Product Designer at Instagram. Mari has a background in fine arts, before she transition into graphic design. When she first moved to New York, she took a bunch of odd jobs to make ends meet. She eventually met Denis Crowley and Naveen, who were working on an idea that would become Foursquare. Mari was super passionate about the idea and started by designing all the badges for the app. Once Foursquare raised money, Mari became their first designer. Over several years there, she helped push the product and shape the brand into the platform we’re all familiar with today. Mari then became the Creative Director at Walker & Company brands, tackling all aspects of physical product design for the fast growing startup. Mari then took some time to consider her next steps as a designer and eventually joined Instagram. Mari joins us to share her story, how she got into design and startups, what it was like working on Foursquare, what it was like tackling physical products as the Creative Director at Walker & Company Brands, what motivated her to join a bigger company like Instagram, her career advice and insights for other creatives, and much more....more

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• Hannah Donovan, CEO & Co-Founder, Trash (prev. Vine) | EP 188

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  Feb 27 2018

  Hannah Donovan is the CEO & Co-founder of Trash, a new startup that’s currently building a predictive video editing platform for creators. Hannah’s passion for media and design in all forms goes back to her early childhood. She eventually moved to New York before using the remainder of her savings to fly to the UK to interview with Last.fm where she was the first designer and woman hired on the team. Following the $280M acquisition of Last.fm by CBS, Hannah moved back to New York to push her product ideas and hypothesis on mixing AI and user recommendations in the audio space further with the launch of This Is My Jam, a cool and innovative platform for music lovers. After almost 4 years of working on that technology, Hannah continued to pursue her interests and passions for creating new forms of content & art, as well as the creative process of using a variety of tools. She joined Drip.com which was acquired by Kickstarter, and then the Twitter owned Vine platform, where she was faced with the unique challenge of shutting the platform down, shortly after joining. Hannah joins us to share her story, how she got into design and startups, what it was like working at Last.fm, what it was like launching and growing her first music startup This Is My Jam, how she created the opportunity to join Vine as the General Manager, what it was like facing the immense challenge of shutting the beloved platform down while simultaneously preserving the amazing content, how she managed to pursue her passions and curiosities, while establishing a career in consumer entertainment technology, what she’s currently up to with her new startup Trash, and much more!...more

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• Matthew Hollingshead, CEO, Hifyre

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  Feb 13 2018

  Matt Hollingshead is the CEO of Hifyre, a web & mobile app developer based on Hamilton, Canada. Back in 1999, Matt and some friends launched their first agency called factor[e] which ended up generation $1M in sales within its first 24 months. Today Matt is the CEO of Hifyre, a web & mobile development shop that’s working with Fortune 500 and fast growth startups. Matt joins us to share his story, how he got into business, what it was like building various consumer agencies over the last 19 years, why it’s important to work hard and talk about that work, how he sees the future of freelancing & studios evolving, and much more....more

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• Casey Winters, Growth Advisor In Residence, Greylock Partners | EP 186

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  Feb 06 2018

  Casey Winters is the Growth Advisor in Residence at Greylock Partners. Casey got interested in growth via his background in marketing and his holistic approach to helping Apartments.com achieve quick growth from 2005-2008. He then joined GrubHub around the 15 person mark, and helped the company scale from 40,000 users up to 3M when it went public. In 2013, Pinterest reached out and Casey ended up joining the team to help lead growth and later overcome challenges associated with international expansion and growth. Today, Casey advises several companies like Pocket, Canva, Reddit and works directly with a handful of portfolio companies as part of his role at Greylock Partners. Casey joins us to share his story, how he got into marketing and startups, what it was like growing a marketplace like GrubHub from 40,000 users to over 3M, what it was like helping Pinterest expand internationally, how to think about growth & innovation within a startup, and much more....more

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• Joei Chan, Content Marketing Manager, Mention | EP 185

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  Jan 30 2018

  Joei Chan is a Content Marketing Manager, at Mention, a platform for real-time media monitoring. Joei is originally from Hong Kong and moved to Paris, France for a summer to study French. She ended up staying and building a career as a Content Marketer. After starting her career in the agency world, Joei moved over to the startup side with Mention. She joined the team when they were about 30 people and beginning to transition from a small business to the enterprise market. Joei joins us to share her story, how she got into marketing and startups, how Mention’s content marketing strategy has evolved as the company has grown and shifted from a small business tool into an enterprise platform, her approach to creating content partnerships, why audience-fit is the most important factor with content, how content marketing fits into the sales funnel, and much more....more

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• Gessica Bicego, Head of Performance Marketing, Blinkist | EP 184

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  Jan 23 2018

  Gessica Bicego is the Head of Performance Marketing, at Blinkist, the platform for bite-sized insights in audio or text. Gessica is originally from Italy and has a background in computer science, as well as a passion for marketing. She then wanted to accelerate her career and moved to Berlin to join Kayak as a Programmatic Marketing Manager. Over the last few years, Gessica has been building a Performance Marketing team at Blinkist, an app that enables busy people to listen or read bite-sized insights from books and more. Blinkist was recently featured as one of the Top Apps of 2017 by Apple - and with over 4 million users and 15M in funding - Blinkist is looking to double its growth in 2018. Gessica joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, how she’s built a career as a Performance Marketer, what it’s been like working at both Kayak and now Blinkist, what it’s like building a team, and much more....more

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• Jordan Scheltgen, Managing Partner, Cave Social | EP 183

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  Jan 16 2018

  Jordan Scheltgen is the co-founder and Managing Partner at CaveSocial, a marketing agency that he started during University and that now spans across 3 major North American cities. Originally from Surrey, BC, Jordan moved to Toronto for school and football. Through that experience, Jordan started a blog which would later become Cave Social the agency. Jordan joins us to share his story, how he got into business and marketing, he shares his keys to a great story, as well as how brands should approach telling stories, what it’s been like growing an agency model business across 3 major cities, and much more....more

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• Jonah Lupton, Founder, SoundGuard | EP 182

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  Jan 09 2018

  Jonah Lupton is the founder of SoundGuard, the world’s first sound proof paint. Jonah has spent the better part of the last 10 years launching several brands across completely different industries. From social media software, to non-profit funding platforms, to white labeled supplement companies, to industrial manufacturing with SoundGuard, Jonah has prototyped, built, and launched ideas he’s been passionate about and learnt a ton along the way. Jonah joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what he’s learnt from launching several brands, what it’s been like creating a physical, manufactured product, the challenges of bootstrapping, and much more....more

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• Jess Brown, Director of UX, VICE

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  Jan 02 2018

  Jess Brown is the Director of UX at Vice Media. She’s spent the past couple of years building the team that’s lead the company’s efforts on re-designing Vice’s brand from the ground up - across the web and all mobile properties. But before joining Vice, Jess was based in San Francisco working on a fashion startup of her own called Threadflip, she was introduced to the team at Rent The Runway in New York. Jess ended up joining the team there for several years. There she helped create and deliver a better user experience through a mix of design and product thinking. Jess joins us to share her story, how she got into design & startups, how she approaches building products through user experience, what it was like completely redesigning the Vice brand from the ground up, and much more....more

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• Tom Levesque, Co-founder, Rey.AI

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  Dec 26 2017

  Tom Levesque is the Co-founder at Rey.ai. Tom is a Software Developer turned Product Manager. After graduating and working with a local startup in Waterloo, Tom decided to move to the valley where he ended up joining Wildfire before it was acquired by Google. Before he’d even graduated as a Software Developer from the University of Waterloo, Tom had found an interest in Product Management. He then joined a series of startups in Canada, Silicon Valley and the UK, including Wildfire (which was acquired by Google), VigLink (where he helped raised a $20M Series B round) and more. Today, he’s the cofounder and developer of Rey.ai, an AI based email platform that’s redefining our conception of a “social network”. Tom joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he approaches building products, what he’s currently working on with Rey.ai, and much more....more

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• Oscar Falmer, Founder & Developer, TweetReality

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  Dec 19 2017

  Oscar Falmer is the Founder and developer behind the world’s first augmented reality Twitter client - TweetReality. Oscar is only a few months away from graduating from the University of Eastern-Paris Marne-La-Vallee with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. TweetReality is the 7th app he’s released to the Apple App Store - and it’s the biggest challenge he’s undertaken. TweetReality has gotten over 20,000 downloads, 500+ upvotes on Product Hunt, been featured in over 150+ articles in 20+ countries, including on The Verge, Fox News, CNN, The Next Web & more! Oscar joins us to share his story, what it’s been like working all over the world, what motivated him to launch TweetReality, what it been like putting this app out there, and much more....more

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• Amir Shevat, Director, Developer Relations, Slack | Hack To Start

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  Dec 12 2017

  Amir Shevat is the Director of Developer Relations at Slack. Amir originally fell into Developer Relations by mistake, volunteering to work with a community of developers early on in his career. He’s since led Developer Groups at Microsoft & Google for many years before joining Slack to focus on driving growth around the Slack Developers Platform. Amir is particularly passionate about bots. He joined Slack before bots were as popular as they are today and has seen many of them launch on that platform and others. He’s even the author of “Designing Bots: Creating Conversational Experience through O'Reilly. Amir joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he approaches building developer communities, why he’s so passionate about bots, what it was like joining Slack, and much more....more

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• Brian Balfour, Founder & CEO, Reforge (Prev. VP Growth, Hubspot) | EP 177

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  Dec 05 2017

  Brian Balfour is the Founder & CEO of Reforge, an organization that offers selective growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering. Brian was previously the VP of Growth at Hubspot and an EIR at Trinity Ventures before that. Brian has raised over $30M in venture funding for various startups he launched or joined. Brian also has extensive experience building growth teams and strategies. He’s one of the leading experts on user acquisition and retention and frequently writes on Reforge and his personal blog. Brian joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he’s approached developing a growth mindset, how to prioritize growth strategies, why he started Reforge, and much more....more

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• Lydia White, Design Lead, Beme | EP 176

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  Nov 28 2017

  Lydia White is a Design Lead at Beme, an independent, and wildly ambitious technology+media company bringing a wider range of perspectives to the news that was cofounded by YouTuber Casey Neistat & Matt Hackett. Lydia started her design career with an academic background in fine art and photography, but growing up she had the chance to learn a lot from her dad. Later Lydia started her career as a developer at agencies, before moving into a dedicated design role. After moving to the East coast and freelancing for a few years, Lydia eventually joined the team at Tumblr where she had the chance to work on some big projects that had a big impact on the evolution of the platform and it’s community as Tumblr made the move to mobile. Lydia was later recruited to join the small team at Beme, where she’s helping to change the way news stories are told and delivered. Through new products like Panels, Beme is creating a unique and youthful blend of technology and storytelling. Lydia joins us to share her story, how she got into design & startups, how she created the opportunity to join the team at Tumblr, what it was like building a user research team there, some of the challenges they faced as they moved into mobile, what it was like joining the team at Beme, some of the early challenges in building an entirely new type of company, and much more....more

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• Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Skillshare | EP 175

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  Nov 21 2017

  Michael Karnjanaprakorn is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman at Skillshare. Michael has always had a passion and love for education and learning. His career in tech began as an outsider looking to prove himself. And so he ended up taking a pay cut to move to New York and join Scott Belsky at Behance with two things in mind: do whatever the team needed and learn as much as he could. While product/market fit was already found at Behance, Michael later dove into product at Hot Potato, both deepening his skillset and knowledge in this area, and getting to experience the search for product market fit first hand. He then dove into launching a startup of his own - Skillshare - by following 3 simple rules. Michael joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, how he and his cofounder proved to themselves that Skillshare would work, what it was like building the platform in the early days, how they’ve approached raising close to $25M, what’s next for Skillshare, and much more....more

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• Stephanie Engle, Product Designer, Cruise | EP 174

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  Nov 14 2017

  Stephanie Engle is a Product Designer at Cruise. Before joining the team there, Stephanie had a background in social products, starting her career off as an intern for the anonymous messaging app Secret, before joining Facebook to work on the Profile, and later joining the VR team. Stephanie recently joined Cruise as a Product Designer, helping to create and design solutions around the emerging self-driving cars industry. Stephanie joins us to share her story, how she got into design, how she created the opportunity to join the team at Facebook, what it was like tackling VR design challenges, how AR / VR and autonomous cars are a lot alike, what it’s like being part of the team at Cruise, and much more....more

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• Jason Stoff, Principal Digital Product Designer, Starbucks | EP 173

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  Nov 07 2017

  Jason Stoff is a Principal Digital Product Designer at Starbucks. Before joining the team at Starbucks, Jason had built a career as an Art Director and Senior Designer with various agencies. One day he shared a rebound of a Starbucks logo design on Dribbble, that eventually caught the eye of Starbucks. One year later, he had the chance to interview for a design role and moved his family across the country to join the team in Seattle. He and his team have helped to create international design standards, launch new Starbucks apps and experiences like the Apple Watch, iMessage gifting and more! Jason joins us to share his story, how he got into design, how he created the opportunity to join the team at Starbucks, what it was like transitioning from the agency to product world, what it’s like designing digital products at Starbucks, and much more....more

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• Andy Carvell, Partner, Phiture (ex-Soundcloud Growth) | Ep 172

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  Oct 31 2017

  Andy Carvell is the author of the Mobile Growth Stack and a Partner at Phiture, a mobile growth consultancy. Andy began his career as a mobile game developer with Nokia, where he created several games like Space Impact which was preloaded onto 150M+ devices. He then later led several different teams at Soundcloud as they transitioned from a web only application to mobile platforms. While leading growth and retention, Andy developed the Mobile Growth Stack as a framework for thinking about all the potential channel tactics and how they related back to high level business objectives or business verticals. The wide spread awareness gained around the presentation and sharing of the framework launched Andy and his co-founder Moritz Daan into the next phase of their careers with the launch of Phiture. Andy joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like leading several growth teams at Soundclound, what motivated him to create the Mobile Growth Stack, what it was like launching Phiture, some of the most common mistakes Andy sees others making when it comes to growth, and much more....more

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• Jordan Kretchmer, Founder & CEO, Livefyre (acquired by Adobe) | EP 171

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  Oct 24 2017

  Jordan Kretchmer is the Founder & CEO of LiveFyre, which was acquired by Adobe in 2016, where he is now a Senior Director continuing to scale the Livefyre solution within the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Before starting Livefyre, Jordan worked for a few agencies as a Creative Director. He then joined Current.TV - a media platform backed by Al Gore - and saw the coming rise of user generated content. In 2009, he left Current to start LiveFyre. As a designer, Jordan created highly realistic mockups of the product he envisioned, but it took several more months before the first version launched. Livefyre raised over $52M in funding and grew to over 150 employees by the time it was acquired by Adobe in 2016. Jordan joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, the challenges involved in building Livefyre, especially in the early days, how founders need to approach product development, what it’s now like being a part of Adobe, and much more....more

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• Leah Culver, Co-founder & CTO, Breaker | EP 170

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  Oct 17 2017

  Leah Culver is the co-founder & CTO of Breaker - the best app for listening to podcasts. Leah has been building startups and products for over 10 years. She helped launch an early version and competitor to Twitter called Pownce with Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka in 2007. In 2011, she was working on a B2B chatting and instant messaging application that was accepted into Y Combinator, and has been also part of companies like Sincerely and Dropbox. Since 2016, she’s been focused on building Breaker, a new podcast app centred around discovery that was also part of Y Combinator earlier this year. Leah joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it’s been like building and working at startups in Silicon Valley for over 10 years, what it’s been like been like building Breaker, what it was like going through Y Combinator a second time, and much more....more

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• Ajay Yadav, Founder & CEO, Roomi | EP 169

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  Oct 10 2017

  Ajay Yadav is the Founder & CEO of Roomie, the leading marketplace for shared housing and apartments. Ajay has built several companies before Roomi, which was bootstrapped for the first 2 years and has raised over $6M to date. Ajay shares how he approached building the platform in the early days, from a Tumblr + Google forms MVP to building the first version of the mobile app himself. Today, Roomi has acquired a few other startups in the same industry and has a remote team of over 40 people. Ajay joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like building companies in the early days of the web, how he approaches fundraising, what it’s been like building and scaling a marketplace, and much more....more

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• Paul Canetti, Founder & CEO, MAZ | EP 168

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  Oct 03 2017

  Paul Canetti is the Founder & CEO of MAZ, a platform that empowers leaders in media to become pioneers in OTT and mobile technology. Growing up, Paul was exposed to design and technology through his father’s work and hobbies. Paul taught himself digital design and although he studied philosophy in college, he continued to maintain an interest in technology. After working in corporate environments and then consulting, Paul started building websites and then iPhone apps with a high school friend. Their passion for building products led them to creating MAZ, raising $2M, and then continuing to build and scale the business in a sustainable way. Paul is also an Associate Professor at Columbia University in New York, where he teaches a class on user experience and product management for the MBA program. He is also a podcaster and the host of Wizardest, a podcast that features startup founders, VCs, and other interesting personalities to learn about their past experiences and views on the future. Paul joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like growing MAZ in the early days, how he approaches fundraising, why he got into podcasting, and much more....more

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• Rei Wang, Director, Dorm Room Fund at First Round Capital | EP 167

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  Sep 26 2017

  Rei Wang is the Director of First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund, the largest student-run venture firm in the nation. They’ve invested in over 150 startups, who’ve gone on to raise more than $300 million from investors like: Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Y Combinator. Before joining First Round Capital, Rei help build products and community as a Product Manager and Global Community Lead at General Assembly. Rei joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, how she approaches building online and offline communities, what it’s like growing the Dorm Room Fund, and much more....more

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• Kevin Thau, General Partner, Spark Capital | EP 166

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  Sep 19 2017

  Kevin Thau, a General Partner at Spark Capital, focusing on early-stage investments in companies like Lola, Medium, Haven, and Aura. Kevin has spent over 20 years building startups that defined new markets in graphical computing, messaging, mobile technology and social media. Before Spark, Kevin spent two decades building startups like Twitter, where he was the Director of Mobile Products, as well as VP of Business and Corporate Development. He was also then the COO of Jelly Industries, a search-engine Q+A platform created by Biz Stone. Kevin joins us to share his story, how he got into startups by cold calling his first job, what it was like building Twitter from 2008 through its IPO, what it was like building Jelly, how he transitioned to being a VC, and much more....more

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• Jesse Middleton, General Partner, Flybridge Capital (Prev. Founder WeWork Labs) | EP 165

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  Sep 12 2017

  Jesse Middleton is a startup founder and one of the early executives at WeWork who tackled a bunch of growth and operations challenges before launching WeWork Labs, their own global startup incubator, investment fund, business and digital product development lab. But before jumping into the world of venture capital, Jesse launched and sold a few companies of his own and then spent 5 years as part of the early team at WeWork, growing the company from a few buildings to a worldwide network and pioneer of the coworking and remote work industries. Jesse joins us to share his story, what it was like building WeWork and WeWork Labs, what it was like transitioning into venture capital, his two investment rules at Flybridge, and much more....more

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• Giuseppe Stuto, Co-founder & CEO, Fam | EP 164

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  Sep 05 2017

  Giuseppe Stuto is the co-founder and CEO of Fam, a group video chat app for iMessage that quickly grew to over 1 million users in just 10 days! But Fam almost didn’t happen. Fam is a pivot off another social app that Giuseppe and his team built - SmackHigh - which started off as a bit of a joke for high school students to exchange smack talk between sports teams. But it quickly showed some promise and Giuseppe and his team began to iterate. Houseparty and Facebook live had just launched, but the team at Fam wanted to put the product where teens would use it the most - iMessage. Giuseppe joins us to share his story, what it was like building a career in consumer tech, what it was like launching his first company, how they created Fam, what it’s been like growing this iMessage app, what it was like raising money, and much more....more

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• Drew Strojny, Fouder, Memberful | EP 163

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  Aug 29 2017

  Drew Strojny is a retired NFL player turned tech entrepreneur. He is the founder of Memberful, super easy to use membership software. Growing up, Drew had a passion for tech and computers. During the NFL offseason, Drew continued to teach himself how to code and build websites. When his career in professional sports came to an end after a few years, Drew decided to launch his own company. But the original model never succeeded. After several years of building Wordpress sites and selling premium themes online, Drew noticed that there was no simple way of selling and managing online memberships. 4 years ago, he launched Memberful and has been growing the software ever since. Drew joins us to share his story, what it was like transitioning from a career in professional sports to tech startups, what it was like launching his first company, how he’s bootstrapped both Theme Foundry and Memberful, how he approaches building small teams, and much more....more

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• John Doherty, Founder, Credo | EP 162

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  Aug 22 2017

  John Doherty is the founder of Credo, a platform for connecting great businesses with the best vetted digital marketing consultants and agencies. He took a side project that started as a spreadsheet from a $50 dollar referral commission to a SaaS marketplace that has tripled its annual run rate. Before diving into a startup of his own, John worked at Distilled in NYC, and later joined Zillow. There he focused on growing Hotpads into their #2 brand. Starting off with a team of 1 - John quickly grew his organization to 8 people in just 12 months, increasing their listings’ visibility by 200%. John joins us to share his story, what it was like running a nimble team inside a larger real estate company, some challenges to rapidly growing a team, how he took Credo from a spreadsheet to a full time company, some of the biggest challenges he had to face over the last 3 years as the business model evolved, and much more....more

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• Mike Williams, Founder, Thinkbox | EP 161

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  Aug 15 2017

  Mike Williams is the founder of Thinkbox, a startup studio in Santa Monica, California, and the company that’s behind several successful startups including StudioTime and Yoroomie - an app which was built in less than 30 days and sold in less than 6 months, after getting a ton of press for being listed on eBay. While in high school, Mike was a pretty good wrestler. But he knew his sport had limits. So he decided to pursue his passion for flying instead. While in college, he was exposed to the world of cycling and that led him to becoming both a semi-pro in the sport, and an e-commerce entrepreneur, selling high quality bike parts to other cyclists in the early days of the web. Mike joins us to share his story, how he built and sold his first company Codeity, how he approaches building MVPs, what it was like launching Yoroomie and having it acquired in less than 6 months, how he built a chatbot in a weekend, the biggest mistakes most entrepreneurs make when building an MVP, and much more....more

  Episode

• Katie Zhu, Product & Engineering, Medium | EP 160

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  Aug 08 2017

  Katie Zhu is an Engineer turned Product Manager at Medium. Medium is a social publishing platform that allows anyone to share ideas and perspectives that matter. Medium now reaches over 30M readers a month, has explored new formats like Series, audio posts, and more. After internships with both NPR and the New York Times, Katie decided to make a big decision and join Medium over other tech companies. At Medium, Katie’s had a chance to work on several parts of the platform and continue to help creators and storytellers push the limits of their craft. Katie joins us to share her story, how she optimized her career for learning, what it’s been like working on developing new tools for writers and storytellers on Medium, how she approaches product management, and more....more

  Episode

• Hunter Walk, Partner, Homebrew Ventures | EP 159

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  Aug 01 2017

  Hunter Walk is a partner at Homebrew Ventures, a seed stage venture fund. Over a decade ago, while Hunter was a Product Manager at Google, working on the newly acquired YouTube platform, Apple had approached them before Steve Jobs had even announced the world's first iPhone. There was no public App Store at that time and no third party apps. Apple wanted to have complete control over the experience and built the first video app for the iPhone that would pull YouTube content. It was a risky move, but the alternative to working with Apple was - at that time - going directly to a carrier and paying them large sums of money to include you app on all their devices. It was an exciting but challenging time as Hunter recounts - because there were so many moving pieces and not everyone saw that smartphone were going to play such a huge role in our daily lives in just a few more years. So if you’re a Product Manager yourself, love YouTube, or are just curious about how a startup like YouTube sold to Google for $1.65B in 2006 (the largest consumer tech acquisition at the time) and then went on to work with Apple to ensure they’d make the jump to smartphones - get ready, cause Hunter is going to share his insights and experiences into all this and more....more

  Episode

• Kelly Nyland, Director of Marketing, Spectacles (Snapchat) | EP 158

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  Jul 25 2017

  Kelly Nyland is the Director of Marketing for Spectacles - a pair of video-recording sunglasses created by Snap Inc. the parent company of the massively popular disappearing photo app, Snapchat. While this is the first hardware product from Snap Inc., Kelly’s personal history into architecting massive marketing campaigns for innovative & emerging consumer hardware products goes way back. Kelly worked with Parrot as well as Sphero, helping the latter company go global through a partnership with Apple; putting them in their stores in more than 70 countries in less than 14 months. Kelly was also involved in the launch of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ BB8 product. So if you’re a hardware aficionado, love marketing campaigns, or are just curious about how startups conceive, launch, and scale hardware products - get ready, cause Kelly is going to share insights into all this and more!...more

  Episode

• Adii Pienaar, Founder, Conversio | EP 157

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  Jul 18 2017

  Adii Pienaar is the Founder of Conversio, an all-in one marketing dashboard. Adii is based in Cape Town, South Africa and previously co-founded WooThemes - an e-commerce platform for Wordpress - which bootstrapped their way to over 150,000 customers. Today, Adii is continuing to help e-commerce entrepreneurs worldwide build stronger businesses through his latest startup Conversio, an all-in one marketing dashboard that helps you sell more. Adii joins us to share his story, how he started his career in entrepreneurship, what it was like transitioning wordpress templates into a full e-commerce platform, what it was like bootstrapping a company, how he’s approached building his latest company Conversio, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Tom Emrich, Partner, Super Ventures | EP 156

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  Jul 11 2017

  Tom Emrich is a Partner at Super Ventures and a co-producer of Augmented World Expo. After the release of the first feature phone, Tom began to see how immersive new technologies would transform the world around us and began building his career in the space. He’s consulted on how these technologies can improve the workplace & covered the industry for media publications like CanadaAM, ReadWrite, Betakit and more. Tom has also created and helped to foster communities around emerging technologies all over the world through groups like: We Are Wearables, Augmented Reality Bay Meetup, and most recently Augmented World Expo. He’s also now investing with 3 other partners through Super Ventures, a $10 Million dollar fund that’s helping to back startups building AR/VR & wearable products worldwide. Tom joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, why he’s so passionate about emerging technologies like AR/VR & wearables, what motivated him to help launch Super Ventures, what he and his partners look for in their investments, how he approaches building communities around emerging technologies, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Jeff Morris Jr., Director Product Management & Revenue, Tinder | EP 155

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  Jul 04 2017

  Jeff Morris Jr. is the Director of Product Management & Revenue at Tinder. Jeff got into tech after seeing a tweet late one night for a position with Zaarly. The next day, he had to move from California to Kansas City, Missouri - if he wanted the job. Jeff quickly made a name for himself and became one of the first few city managers. Following his time building the marketplace, Jeff began consulting, before working on several of his own projects - like Slack Chats, a directory of popular slack channels that grew to over 80,000 users. Jeff then joined the team at Tinder to work on increasing retention and engagement through the product and marketing channels. Today, Jeff also works with the team of engineers, designers, and marketers to create, build and launch new, paid features for the platform. Jeff joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, what it was like growing a massive marketplace at Zaarly, what it was like joining the team at Tinder, how he approached Product Management, how he’s approaches working on monetization over the last year, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Huda Idrees, Founder & CEO, Dot Health | EP 154

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  Jun 27 2017

  Huda Idrees is the founder and CEO of Dot Health, a platform that enables secure and easy access to your personal health data. Huda began her career as a developer and designer by building websites as a teenager. She then attended the University of Toronto and studied Industrial Engineering before diving into startups. Huda has been a part of several successful Canadian consumer tech startups, including Wattpad where she joined as one of the first employees and really dove into product design. She also helped develop and grow several products at Wave. She then joined Wealthsimple as one of the earliest team members and served as the Chief Product Officer - scaling the company though a major brand shift and launching its mobile presence on both Android and iOS. Today, Huda is the founder of Dot Health, an innovative healthcare platform that makes personal health data accessible and actionable. Huda joins us to share her story, how she started her career in tech, some of the biggest lessons she’s learnt building consumer technology startups, what it’s been like building Dot Health, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Mubashar Iqbal (aka Mubs), Co-founder, Botlist | EP 153

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  Jun 13 2017

  Mubashar Iqbal aka Mubs is the co-founder of Botlist - and several other startups and side projects. Mubs is originally from Pakistan, but spent most of his early years living in England before moving to the US. Mubs has created a successful career in technology, working in several different industries. He’s also built several side projects over the last few years, winning Product Hunt’s Maker of the year in 2016. Mubs joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, why he works on side projects, how he transitions side projects into independent startups, what it’s been like building Botlist, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Nathaniel Harley, Co-Founder & CEO, Mantl | EP 152

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  Jun 06 2017

  Nathaniel Harley, the Co-founder & CEO of Mantl. Nathaniel was previously an analyst with Goldman Sachs before jumping into tech with a Techstars backed startup called Spoon University. Nathaniel then got accepted into Techstars (again), this time as the CEO of his own Fintech startup. Nathaniel joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, what it was like going through Techstars - twice, what it’s been like build a fintech startup, why he’s so passionate about the future of FinTech, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Nathan Bashaw, Co-founder & CEO, Hardbound | EP 151

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  May 30 2017

  Nathan Bashaw is the Co-founder & CEO of Hardbound. After discovering the world of startups during college, and driven by the desire to build things and implement his own ideas, Nathan became a self-taught developer. He knew pretty early on, that he wanted to leverage technology to create new forms of education and storytelling that was native to new devices like smartphones. After joining Olark as an intern and then working in San Francisco as a full time developer, Nathan decided to pursue his own project - Scratchpad. It was later acquired by General Assembly, where Nathan worked as a Product Manager. While in San Francisco, Nathan met Ryan Hoover and helped him create the first version of what would become Product Hunt. Nathan then decided to focus on pursuing his vision for what would become Hardbound. He and the team recently completed the Techstars Boulder program, raised some funding, and have released a completely new version of the app. Nathan joins us to share his story, some of the biggest challenges he faced in becoming a Product Manager, why he’s so passionate about new forms of education and storytelling, what it’s been like building Hardbound, some of the biggest challenges they had to overcome, what it’s like raising money, what it was like going through Techstars in Boulder, and much more....more

  Episode

• David Heimann, Co-founder & CTO, Purple | EP 150

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  May 23 2017

  David Heimann is the Co-founder & CTO of Purple. David is originally from Gothenburg, Sweden but came to the US for school. Having always been more technical, he focused on the business side of things. After graduation, he took on several sales roles to deepen his skills before joining a development studio called InfiniOne. There David really learnt the in-and-outs of product management and operating as a lean startup. David is now working on his own company, Purple, which he helped launch by working with Rebecca Harris. Originally a long content format website dedicated to political news and information, Rebecca and David noticed that people - especially their peers - didn’t seem to be connecting with the content they were creating. So they re-imagined the format and discovered that SMS and Messaging apps were a more popular way to share and engage with their audience. Purple was then accepted into the Techstars New York accelerator and continues to grow its reach as a platform. David joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, some of the most valuable startup lessons he learnt while building products for other people, what it was like going through Techstars, why Messaging is such an engaging medium, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Sançar Şahin, Director of Marketing, Typeform | EP 149

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  May 16 2017

  Sançar Şahin is the Director of Marketing at Typeform. With a background in radio and media, Sançar has become a self-taught marketer. Through several side projects and products built around content and education, Sançar has seen the shift towards new forms of online marketing and brand building. Currently based in Barcelona, Spain, Sançar is leading the Marketing team at Typeform, and leveraging these tactics to continue to build and develop the experience that visitors and users feel when using the product or engaging with their content. He and the team at Typeform are pushing the boundaries of what data collection means and redefining the traditional concept of a ‘form’. Sançar joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, how to create engaging content, what it’s like working at Typeform, what the startup scene is like in Barcelona, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Sean Ellis, CEO, GrowthHackers.com & Co-Author, Hacking Growth | EP 148

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  May 09 2017

  Sean Ellis is the CEO of GrowthHackers.com and the co-author of the new book Hacking Growth. Sean began his career in tech back in 1995 after he invested all his money in a friend’s company. There he helped the young startup overcome lots of challenges related to growth and monetization. This experience led him to realize the potential for growth that could be unlocked through cross-discipline collaboration. Sean then took on more growth roles at startups like LogMeIn, Dropbox, Eventbrite and more - ultimately coining the term ‘Growth Hacker’ - and pioneering a new discipline and skillset. Sean went on start his own company, Qualaroo, which had customers like Uber, Starbucks, Spotify and more. It also grew to millions of dollars in monthly recurring revenue before being acquired. Sean also started GrowthHackers.com the online community for growth minded people. Through these experiences, he and Morgan Brown - another veteran marketer - teamed up to write Hacking Growth, a book that could serve as a detailed ‘How-To’ guide for the next generation of startups looking to acquire customers and grow. Sean joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, what it was like growing Uproar, LogMeIn, Dropbox and more, what it was like launching his own startup, why and how he built GrowthHackers.com, why he and Morgan wanted to write ‘Hacking Growth’, some of the biggest mistakes he sees startups making when it comes to growth, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Maya Prohovnik, Head of Operations, Anchor | EP 147

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  May 02 2017

  Maya Prohovnik is the Head of Operations at Anchor, a whole new way to experience audio. Maya studies psychology and linguistics before joining a startup called Aviary. There she learnt all about startups taking on several roles and helping the team grow from 8 to more than 30 before it was acquired by Adobe. Maya then ended up joining Betaworks in New York where she helped organize the first (official) Hackers in Residence program. She also helped launch a product called Glitter while she was there. Maya also introduced the duo of Michael & Nir - who were working on app called Anchor - to Betaworks. She joined their team as the app quickly took off. Maya joins us to share her story, how she started her career in tech, what it was like working at Betaworks, how she joined Anchor, how she’s building a community around a new way of sharing audio, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Anthony Pompliano, Managing Partner, Full Tilt Capital | EP 146

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  Apr 25 2017

  Anthony Pompliano is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Full Tilt Capital, an early stage venture capital firm. Anthony served as a Sergeant in the US military and is an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran. After his service in the military, Anthony launched two startups of his own in North Carolina - which were both later acquired. Anthony then decided to move to San Francisco and learn from larger startups. He worked on growth at both Facebook (with the Pages team) and later with Snapchat. Today, he’s leading one of the most active venture capital firms - having made more than 22 deals in their first 90 days. Anthony joins us to share his story, how he started his career in tech, what it’s like building a venture capital firm, what they look for in investments, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Gina Gotthilf, VP of Growth & Marketing, Duolingo | EP 145

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  Apr 18 2017

  Gina Gotthilf is the VP of Growth and Marketing at Duolingo, a platform for free language education for the world. Gina is originally from Brazil, but has spent much of her career in New York. After a few years of working at social media agencies, Gina joined Tumblr to help lead their internationalization efforts in Brazil and South America. She then launched her own consulting company to help other US bases companies navigate these complexities. Today Gina is the VP of Growth & Marketing at Duolingo, a platform with over 170M users worldwide. Gina joins us to share her story, how she started her career in tech, what it was like running her own internationalization consultancy, how she ended up joining the team at Duolingo, what it’s been like growing the app internationally, how they’ve created an amazing community of contributors, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Andrew Pelling, Founder, pHacktory | EP 144

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  Apr 11 2017

  Andrew Pelling, an award winning Scientist, Professor, TED Senior Fellow and entrepreneur. His work and innovations have been featured in Wired, Motherboard, Scientific American, Popular Science, BBC and more. Andrew directs and manages the Pelling Research Lab, out of the University of Ottawa. The lab uses low-cost, open source materials and methods to explore new technologies and ideas. He has, for instance, created human body parts made from plants and grown living skins on LEGOs – innovations with the potential to replace prohibitively expensive commercial biomaterials. Andrew has also founded pHacktory, a street-level research lab in Ottawa that amplifies community ideas through a potent mixture of craft, serendipity and curiosity. Andrew joins us to share his story, what motivated him to take a completely different approach to research and academics, what it’s been like creating significant impact through his biomaterial innovations, what it’s like building and growing his open source based biomedical research company Spiderwort, what he’s looking to do with pHacktory, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Jeff Sheldon, Designer & Founder, Ugmonk | EP 143

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  Apr 04 2017

  Jeff Sheldon is the designer and founder of Ugmonk. Jeff started Ugmonk as a side project to serve as his creative outlet from his day job as junior graphic designer. Several years in, Jeff reached a tipping point and decided to go all-in and make Ugmonk his full time focus - growing the product line from t-shirts to other new items with a unique sense of style and minimalistic design. 10 years later, Jeff has shipped his products to over 67 countries, has spoken at conferences like 99u, been featured in publications like The Great Discontent, and launched charitable campaigns that have helped to provide over 50,000 meals to kids. Jeff joins us to share his story, what motivated him to launch Ugmonk, what it was like building the company in the early days, how he know when it was time to go all-in, some advice on building e-commerce brands, where the name “ugmonk” comes from, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Nick Patrick, Co-founder & CEO, Radar | EP 142

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  Mar 28 2017

  Nick Patrick is the co-founder & CEO of Radar, the location platform for mobile apps. Nick has a background in computer science, but has coupled that with an MBA from Harvard and extensive experience as a Product Manager at Microsoft and later at Foursquare and a startup called Handy. Even though smartphones have been around for the past decade, location is still relatively new and often under used. That’s because it’s always been a challenge to add location into apps effectively. Nick and his cofounder Coby are looking to change this. Radar was accepted into Expa Labs and is currently building the location platform for developers, aiming to make location as simple as Stripe created payment processing. Nick joins us to share his story, how he got into tech and startups, what it’s been like building Radar, what it was like being a part of Expa Labs, how Radar is approaching building a developer community, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hanna Kulin, Product Designer, Facebook | EP 141

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  Mar 21 2017

  Hanna Kulin is a Product Designer at Facebook. She is originally from Sweden where she hustled to become a designer and ended up joining Spotify through an internship. While there, an opportunity presented itself for Hanna to become one of the first Product Managers to work on what would become Spotify Business. While backed by Spotify, Hanna and her colleagues built this side of the business from scratch, very much like a startup of their own. Though this process and to help meet her own needs in documenting user feedback on mobile devices, Hanna also helped create a product called Lookback.io - which would go on to become a startup of it’s own and even raise funding. Today, Hanna is a Product Designer at Facebook where she’s part of the video team. She’s currently focused on Facebook Live and building creator tools for this rapidly growing platform. Hanna joins us to share her story, how she got into tech and startups, what it’s been like building her career at Spotify and now Facebook, how she’s approached designing and helping to building creator tools for Facebook live, the differences in startup culture between Sweden and San Francisco, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Manu Goswami, CEO & Co-Founder, Technotronics | EP 140

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  Mar 14 2017

  Swish Goswami is the CEO & co-founder of Technotronics, a recipient of Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 and TEDx Speaker. Swish is originally from Singapore and moved to Canada at a young age. He began his career as a social entrepreneur launching several initiatives including the World Youth Fund, which has helped to support over 70 projects created by young entrepreneurs all over the world. Today, Swish is studying at the University of Toronto while working on his wearables startups - Technotronics, which is backed by the NBA Brooklyn Nets’ power forward, Trevor Booker. Swish joins us to share his story, how he got into social entrepreneurship, what it’s been like working on Technotronics, how he’s approached building the partnership with Trevor, his advice to other young entrepreneurs, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Stephen Ufford, Founder & CEO, Trulioo

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  Mar 07 2017

  Stephen Ufford is the Founder & CEO of Trulioo. Stephen decided to become an entrepreneur after high school in order to pursue his idea of enabling online credit reports - after seeing first hand how out-of-date the process was. He launched iQuiri in 2000 and within 3 years it was acquired. Following his mantra of creating impact, Stephen went on to create 2 more companies following his early success, both within very similar markets. These startups were also acquired. Today, Stephen is working on his 4th startup, Trulioo, which has raised over $25 million dollars to create the leading global identity verification service, provide instant electronic identity & address verification for 4 billion people in 60+ countries. Stephen joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it’s been like building 4 startups in the fin-tech industry, his advice on how to approach fundraising, why he focuses not on product-market fit, but creating impact, what it’s like building a startup in Vancouver, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Sophia Dominguez, CEO & Co-founder, SVRF | EP 138

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  Feb 28 2017

  Sophia Dominguez is the CEO & Cofounder of SVRF, the best way to search and discover VR content on the web. Sophia learnt how to be a front end developer after asking for an internship with a local company. From there, she developed a passion for product and startups. After graduating, Sophia went to San Francisco and fell in love with VR. Wanting to spend more time around this emerging technology, Sophia ended up helping to organize one of the first conferences for wearable technologies. After the conference, Sophia got a Google Glass and decided to travel the world to see how people in other countries would react to this emerging technology. She raised some money to make the project a reality and ended up visiting countries like: Spain, France, England, Germany, India, and more, before ending up at CES to cap off her trip. Sophia continued to build her career in tech by joining a startup called Context Labs where she helped launch several different products and startups. Following this experience, Sophia launched AllThingsVR as a go-to newsletter for VR enthusiasts. She then joined Rothenberg Ventures (now Frontier Tech Ventures) as an EIR before launching her current startup SVRF which is the best way to search and discover VR content on the web. Sophia joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it was like organizing a Google Glass trip around the world, how she approaches product management, why she’s so excited about VR, what it’s been like working on SVRF, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Emma Nemtin, Senior Marketing Manager, Headspace | EP 137

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  Feb 21 2017

  Emma Nemtin is the Senior Marketing Manager at Headspace, an app that makes meditation simple. In school, Emma studied psychology before shifting to International Media and Communication in Sweden. After school, Emma started her own consulting company after school, getting her own clients through word of mouth. Emma then moved to Toronto and ended up joining the team at Hubba as one of the first 5 employees. There she continued to deepen her skillset as a full stack marketer and helped the company grow very quickly. Today, Emma is the Senior Marketing Manager at Headspace, an app that makes meditation simple. Emma joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it was like joining the team at Hubba, how the app grew so quickly, what it’s like now being in LA and working at Headspace, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Mike Singleton, Co-founder, Iterate (Prev. VP. Eng, Foursquare) | EP 136

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  Feb 14 2017

  Mike Singleton is the co-founder of Iterate, a product that helps you get the feedback you need to build better products and make better decisions. Mike started off his career as a developer working for a small startup in NYC before joining the early stage team at Foursquare. He later became the VP of Engineering and help build the team that focused on the web services part of the platform. After several years with Foursquare, Mike’s back at it with a startup of his own called Iterate. Mike and his co-founder decided to create Iterate after seeing a real need for smart tools that could help smaller teams get dynamic product feedback to help them grow. Mike joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like being one of the first employees and later the VP of Engineering at Foursquare, how he grows technical teams, what motivated him to launch Iterate, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Allison Esposito, Founder, Tech Ladies | EP 135

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  Feb 07 2017

  Allison Esposito is the founder of Tech Ladies, a community that connects women with best jobs and opportunities in tech; as well as companies with the best women techmakers. Allison is a New Yorker through and through - loving the fast pace of the city and all it has to offer. Graduating with a masters in Journalism in 2008, Allison had to find other ways to build a career. She put her writing skills to work as a consultant and copywriter / marketer with startups like Foursquare. Allison later joined Oyster as one of the first hires and quickly dove into all types of roles to help the company grow and set the bar for what mobile reading could be. Oyster was then later acquired by Google. Allison then found herself hosting a small meetup - at coffee shops - with other women who worked in tech. The group grew week-after-week until Allison decided to make Tech Ladies her full time focus. Allison joins us to share her story, how she got into tech and startups, what it was like working at Foursquare and Oyster, what motivated her to launch Tech Ladies, how they’ve grown to over 7,000 members worldwide in just a few short months, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Mike Schmidt, Co-Founder, Dovetale | EP 134

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  Jan 31 2017

  Mike Schmidt is the co-founder and CEO of Dovetale. Mike grew up outside Toronto, Canada and later attended Queen’s University, studying Chemical Engineering. While at Queen’s, he quickly developed an affinity for tech startups and was accepted into the Next 36 (an exclusive program in which he’s still involved to this day). After graduating from both programs, Mike launched Listn from a dorm room at the university. As the CEO, Mike helped raise money, create the vision for the product, sign major partnerships, and helped the company get acquired by SFX Entertainment. Following the acquisition, Mike’s career in tech continued to flourish. He lead mobile and many other product initiatives at SFX Entertainment as part of a product called BeatPort. After a few year there, a mentor introduced him to another startup called We Heart It in San Francisco where Mike was the Head of Growth, Product, and Engineering. Under Mike’s guidance, the app grew by 5M users and reached as high as the #12 spot overall on the App Store in less than 12 months. Throughout his career, influencer marketing was a common area of interest and fruitful tactic that Mike came back to time and time again. But it was often complicated to execute, expensive, and unpredictable. Today, Mike is the founder of Dovetale, a startup that’s looking to change exactly that. Dovetale is backed by Expa, a startup studio created by ex-founders of companies like Uber, Foursquare, and more. Mike joins us to share his story, how he turn a chemical engineering degree into a passion for tech startups from a dorm room at Queen’s University, what motivated him to launch Listn, what it was like being part of the Next36, what it was like raising funding, how Listn was acquired, how he’s trying to change the way influencer marketing happens for everyone, what it’s like being part of Expa, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Morgan DeBaun, Co-founder & CEO, Blavity | EP 133

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  Jan 24 2017

  Morgan DeBaun is the co-founder and CEO of Blavity. Morgan initially wanted to be a teacher before learning more about startups. She then started to explore some of her own ideas for startups before diving into a career as a Product Manager. After a few years at Intuit, Morgan later joined a much smaller startup in San Francisco called Demandforce. She then started to think about launching a company of her own. Today, with a team of 17, Blavity reaches more than 20M readers per month, runs 2 major conferences a year, and has raised over 1M in funding. Morgan joins us to share her story, how she started her career in tech, what motivated her to launch Blavity, how she had to approach fundraising, why they started a pair of conferences, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Michael Sacca, President, Crew & Co-host, Rocketship.fm | EP 132

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  Jan 17 2017

  Michael Sacca is the President at Crew and co-host of Rocketship.fm. Michael started his career with a moved to LA in order to pursue a career in the music industry. However, he quickly had to turn to other options. After teaching himself a bit of code and making a few websites, he ended up launching his own agency - Tiny Factory. While running that company, the team began to build some of their first products. Michael then joined a startup called Crew to help establish partnerships. He has recently taken on the role of President to help lead the company to new heights in 2017. Michael joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like teaching himself how to code and building an agency, how he approached building some of his first products, how he approaches partnerships, what he’s doing as President of Crew, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Terri Burns, Associate Product Manager, Twitter | EP 131

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  Jan 10 2017

  Terri Burns is an associate product manager at Twitter. After being bored with general classed when she first got to college, Terri applied for a student program with Google and discovered the world of startups and development. She started to teach herself how to code online before changing her major to computer science. Terri was also the President and is currently the Chair for Tech@NYU. Terri has since taken on new challenges - like being a Developer Evangelist for Venmo, the co-host of the Forbes podcast Well Technically, and now as an Associate Product Manager at Twitter. Terri joins us to share her story, how she got into coding and tech startups, what it was like being a part of Tech@NYU, how she got into Twitter, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Seth Louey, Co-founder, BotList & Creative Director, SimplyTapp

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  Jan 03 2017

  Seth Louey is the co-founder of Botlist and the Creative Director at SimplyTapp. As many entrepreneurs do, Seth started his career by saying he could code websites and then spent a week straight learning how to do it. He later met a fellow developer named Mubashar (aka Mubs), and they quickly became friends. They’re among the most prolific makers on Product Hunt both being nominated for Makers of the Year in 2016. Seth, Mubs and Ben Tossell then launched a site called Botlist. Now, just over a year later it’s already crossed more than 2M+ page views, thousands of bots submitted and a thriving community of bot enthusiasts. Seth joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, why he’s so passionate about bots and messaging, what it was like launching BotList, how he manages to balance several side projects and full time job, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Daniel Beauchamp, Head of VR, Shopify | EP 129

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  Dec 27 2016

  Daniel Beauchamp is the Head of Virtual Reality at Shopify. Daniel has been passionate about technology and developing video games since his early teens. While taking an entrepreneurship class in university and realizing that he could build a company of his own, Daniel worked with classmates to build their first startup. After working on their startup for a bit, they eventually joined Shopify. Over the past 7 years, Daniel has been leading all kinds of projects and initiatives within the company, heading up the Internal Tools team and working on other projects like Open Data Ottawa. Daniel spent his spare time exploring VR technologies. He became so passionate about them that he decided he needed to be working on it full time. He then pitched Toby the CEO of Shopify on why they should be investing in VR and now heads up their team working on this exciting technology. Daniel joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, why he’s so passionate about VR, how he helped create Shopify VR, how he thinks about and sees the future of VR evolving, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Jake Cohn, Founder & CEO, And Chill | EP 128

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  Dec 20 2016

  Jake Cohn is the Founder & CEO of And Chill, a friendly bot that gives you amazing movie recommendations! Jake was introduced to the world of startups through university and various groups afterward graduation. He then left his law office job for a contact with Google. Jake’s career continued to push him down the startup path and saw him develop an affinity for putting the customer first and championing for their needs. He then decided to go all in and launched And Chill, a recommendation app that broke the mold - creating a friendly and funny personality via their first chatbot for Facebook Messenger. Jake joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what motivated him to launch And Chill, why he’s so excited and passionate about the bot space, why they chose to create the personality and tone of the bot, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Chris Gimmer, Co-founder & CEO, Snappa | EP 127

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  Dec 13 2016

  Chris Gimmer is the co-founder and CEO of Snappa, the fastest way to create graphics. Chris joined the government after school, but quickly found himself wanting to explore other career paths - eventually stumbling on to tech startups. He and his co-founder, Marc, began working nights, weekends, and even the occasional lunch hour at work to launch some of their first online projects. Their second bootstrapped startup - Snappa - first launched just over 12 months ago and has seen over 40,000 signups since then through a combination of growth focused tactics. Chris joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, how they’ve leveraged constraints to push growth as a bootstrapped company, what it’s like scaling a SaaS company, how to approach partnerships with bigger companies, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Adelyn Zhou, Founder & Head of Marketing, Topbots | EP 126

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  Dec 06 2016

  Adelyn Zhou is the cofounder and Head of Marketing at Topbots. Adelyn is a seasoned technology leader with experience at Nextdoor, Eventbrite and Amazon. She has spoken at SXSW, Harvard Business School, Launch Festival, Growth Marketing Conference, 500 Startups, and more. She is a frequent contributor to VentureBeat, Forbes, Wired and other publications. Adelyn began her startup career by joining an up and coming company called Diapers.com which was later acquired by Amazon. Following that experience, she continued to build her career as a growth marketer joining startups like Eventbrite and NextDoor - where she helped significantly grow the reach of the platform. Moving back to New York, Adelyn started her own growth consultancy, before launching Topbots - a community for the best bot news. Adelyn joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it was like growing Diapers.com and being acquired by Amazon, some strategies Adelyn uses to approach growth based on the stage of a startup, why she’s so interested in bots, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Orrett Davis, Head of Growth, Abe | EP 125

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  Nov 29 2016

  Orrett Davis is the Head of Growth at Abe, a company that builds conversational banking solutions for progressive community banks. Orrett is originally from Jamaica and moved to Florida as a kid. After studying Biotechnology, Orrett was exposed to the world of startups and marketing and jumped right in - loving the fast pace at which (almost anything) is possible. Orrett is also deeply connected in the Orlando startup community, having organized several startup weekend events, meetups, and even launching an accelerator there. He was also previously an analyst with a VC firm in between startups of his own. Today, he’s leading growth at a fin-tech bot company called Abe. Orrett joins us to share his story, what it’s like building and being a part of the tech community in Orlando, how he joined the team at Abe, why he’s so interested in the intersection of the fintech and bot spaces, what it’s like growing a bot, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hailley Griffis, Communications Specialist, Buffer | EP 124

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  Nov 22 2016

  Hailley Griffis is a communications specialist at Buffer. Hailley started building her personal brand as a communication strategist while in school. She then launched her own consulting business while travelling before joining Getaround in San Francisco. Hailley then found her dream job at Buffer and has since also helped grow their new podcast - The Science of Social Media. Hailley joins us to share her story, how she approached building her brand, how she launched her own social media consultancy while travelling, how she got into tech startups, what it’s like working at Buffer, how she started writing for sites like Time and Fast Company, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Justin Brooke, Founder & CEO, Digital Media Buying Institute | EP 123

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  Nov 15 2016

  Justin Brooke is the founder & CEO of the Digital Media Buying Institute. Justin is a high school dropout who got into construction, but he’s always had a passion for marketing. Now, after more than 10 years in the business, building and growing his own agency, managing over $10M in ad budgets, and travelling the world, he’s now building his own platform startup. Justin launched The Digital Media Buying Institute or DMBI earlier this year. He’s already broken six figures in revenue - twice. With more than 2,500 students and growing, DMBI is the world’s most updated online advertising courses platform. Justin joins us to share his story, the challenges he faced in building a services agency, the creative tactics he leveraged to acquire some of his biggest customers in targeted niches, what it was like spending over $10M in online ads, the biggest mistake he’s seen other digital marketers make when it comes to online ad buys, the challenges of scaling a platform business, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Joel Flory, Co-founder & CEO, VSCO | EP 122

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  Nov 08 2016

  Joel Flory is the co-founder & CEO of VSCO. Joel turned his passion for travel and seeing the world through photographs into a career as a professional photographer. After more than 10 years of running his own business, he and his co-founder Greg set out to build something that would fill-in the many gaps they saw in the industry. Visual Supply Company was then born in 2011. The company has evolved from a series of photography workshops, to a film emulation plugin for photoshop and illustrator, and then made the jump to mobile as a simple photo editing app in 2013, before becoming the product it is today. VSCO is now used by more than 45 million active users worldwide. While they were initially bootstrapped for the first 3 years of business, they’ve since raised over 70 million dollars to continue to build their platform and creative community. Joel joins us to share his story, what it’s been like building VSCO, why their community is incredibly important to the entire company, how they’ve grown over the years, how they approached raising money, what’s next for the platform, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Una Kravets, UI Engineer, Digital Ocean | EP 121

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  Nov 01 2016

  Una Kravets is a blogger, podcaster, speaker, and UI engineer at Digital Ocean. In high school, Una started to explore new technologies like Flash and the Wacom Tablet. After a few internships, Una found a way to combine art and computer science into a career. She then joined IBM where she worked along a team making Watson more accessible and is now part of the team at Digital Ocean. Una also regularly speaks at conferences across the world and co-hosts her own podcast called Toolsday. Una joins us to share her story, what it was like working at IBM, how she’s (currently) living as a digital nomad, what it’s like working at Digital Ocean, how she started speaking at tech conferences, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Aydin Mirzaee, Co-founder & Co-CEO, Fluidware | EP 120

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  Oct 25 2016

  Aydin Mirzaee is the co-founder & co-CEO of Fluidware (which was recently acquired by SurveyMonkey). Aydin has been an entrepreneur since a young age - working with his brother to find different ways to earn their own allowance. He then moved from New York City to Ottawa, Canada for school. After finding work in the tech field Aydin began to explore starting another business. He quickly left his stable job and dedicated himself to building a product and growing a company. In August of 2014, that company, Fluidware, was acquired by SurveyMonkey. Aydin joins us to share his story, what it was like starting off on his entrepreneurial journey, how he acquired some of his first customers, how they built a solid team & culture at Fluidware, what it was like going through the acquisition to Survey Monkey, the biggest challenges facing SaaS startups, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Kathleen Warner, Executive Vice President, NYC EDC (Prev. Startup America) | EP 119

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  Oct 18 2016

  Kathleen Warner is the Executive Vice President & Managing Director of the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s Centre for Economic Transformation. Kathleen is a lawyer by training, but following the start of her career in both the private and public sectors, she took a risk and decided to help launch Startup America where she was the founding COO. There Kathleen did everything from building the Startup America brand, to executing a growth strategy, and working with their founding sponsors which included: the Case Foundation & the Kauffman Foundation, an all-entrepreneur board, and with its key public partner, the White House. Following the success of Startup America, Kathleen was looking forward to the next opportunity and decide to undertake the challenge of helping New York City become the global model for tech and innovation. As executive vice president, Kathleen works hand in hand with industry leaders to address the needs of NYC's legacy and emerging businesses to spur economic growth and opportunities for all New Yorkers. Kathleen joins us to share her story, what it was like building Startup America, some of the toughest challenges they had to overcome, how she approaches managing massive partnerships with key stakeholders, what she’s working on today at the Centre for Economic Transformation, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Adam Michalski, Partner Growth, Branch Metrics | EP 102

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  Oct 16 2016

  Adam Michalski is focused on Partner Growth at Branch Metrics, a deep linking platform for mobile apps. Adam is an incredible entrepreneur based out of New York. After studying finance, Adam began a career in banking and started working with larger corporate clients. Through this experience, he began to understand business operations and financing. He then started to immerse himself in the local startup scene and taught himself more about tech startups. He launched a side project called DormChat. After growing it to 15 campuses and raising a seed round, Adam went in full time. One year later, he realized there was too much competition and made the difficult decision to shut it down. But mobile and startups were still a passion for Adam and he found his way onto the GoButler team as they had just closed a massive Series A round and were setting up operations in the US, where he became the Director of Business Development and Operations. Following his time with GoButler, Adam came across the opportunity to join the team at Branch Metrics in setting up an East Coast office in NY and help them continue to work with some of the biggest mobile companies out there. Adam joins us to explore the rapidly changing world of mobile, why messaging & bots were hot even years ago, and how the web & mobile are still evolving so quickly. Adam joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like launching and growing DormChat to seed stage, what he learned from joining and growing operations at GoButler through their Series A stage, what he’s now doing at Branch Metrics through Partner Growth and the launch of an East Coast office, why he’s so passionate about mobile, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Chris Messina, Developer Experience Lead, Uber - EP 118

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  Oct 11 2016

  Chris Messina is the Developer Experience Lead at Uber Chris Messina is the Developer Experience Lead at Uber, and pretty much an internet celebrity. From literally inventing the hashtag, to being a top Product Hunt user, to blogging on Medium, to his very own chatbot - The MessinaBot, we’re super excited to have him join us for this episode. Chris started his career with an interest for both art and technology. As a champion of the open web, Chris started off his career as a consultant before joining the Mozilla Foundation and helping them get their first 100 million downloads for Firefox. Afterwards, he launched some of his own startups and side projects before eventually joining Google to work on their social products (Buzz & later Google +) as well as building their developer brand. Today, Chris is the Developer Experience Lead at Uber - where he works with many different teams to help make it easier for developers to leverage Uber’s logistics platform. Chris also coined the term “conversational commerce” in 2015 and wrote what’s become one of the cornerstone posts for this new wave of technology and interface design. He continues to write about, experiment, and share his thoughts on bots, messaging, AI, voice, and the growing trend behind the many forms of conversational commerce. Chris joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like at Google, why he decided to join Uber and what his role there is all about, how he saw the conversational commerce trend emerging, why he’s so interested in bots & messaging, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Jeremy Goldberg, Product Designer, Facebook Messenger | EP 117

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  Oct 04 2016

  Jeremy Goldberg is a Product Designer at Facebook - working on building Business, Platform, and AI on Messenger. Jeremy’s had a passion for and interest in design from an early age. He was part of a touring band as a teen and would often put his design skills to use for designing merch, poster, or other things the band needed. Following his time as a performer, Jeremy started to team up with product minded entrepreneurs in around his home town in Arizona. He launched a few side projects of his own before ending up working at Google on their search product for iOS. Today, Jeremy is part of the team at Facebook Messenger where he spends a lot of his time thinking about how people and businesses want to use Messenger to have conversations and get things done. Jeremy joins us to share his story, how he got into design and later tech startups, what it was like launching some of his own projects and the biggest lessons learnt from that, what it was like applying to Facebook, what it’s like working on the Messenger team, how he thinks about bots, AI, and businesses in the context of messaging, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Mada Seghete, Co-Founder, Branch | EP 116

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  Sep 27 2016

  Mada Seghete is the co-founder of Branch, the deep linking tool for app growth & attribution. Mada is originally from Romania and grew up under communism. She then moved to the US for university. While taking some business classes, one professor helped her realize that the next wave of companies would be started by people like her. After starting her first company and learning lots of valuable lessons first hand, Mada and her co-founders started Branch after realizing that their biggest challenge was user acquisition and referral tracking. Branch has now raised over $53M in funding and has customers like: Pinterest, Mint, Foursquare, Buzzfeed and many more! Mada joins us to share her story, how she got into tech and startups, what motivated her to start Branch, how they did things that didn’t scale to get their first customers, how she sees the future of mobile evolving, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Matt Schlicht, Founder & Editor, Chatbots Magazine | EP 115

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  Sep 20 2016

  Matt Schlicht is the founder and editor of Chatbots Magazine, the #1 place to learn about chatbots. Matt is a YC Alum, a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner and was also previously a product manager at Ustream as well as an advisor to several other startups. Several months ago, Matt decided to launch a community dedicated to messaging and bots. Chatbots Magazine was born and now reaches over 200,000+ people per month. Matt joins us to share his story, how he got into startups and tech, how he created the opportunity to join the team at uStream, how he approaches building products, why he’s so passionate about bots and messaging, what’s next for Chatbots Magazine, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Bri Connelly, Associate Product Manager, Google | EP 114

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  Sep 13 2016

  Bri Connelly is an associate product manager at Google. She studied computer science at the University of Texas. While in school, she interned with IBM, Apple and Google. Bri was also part of a class project powered by IBM’s Watson called Celebri AI. The project was quick validated turned into a startup that got accepted into the Capitol Factory accelerator in Austin. Bri then joined Google as an Associate Product Manager where she got to work on the gboard, Google iOS keyboard. Bri joins us to share her story, how she help launch Celebri AI, what it was like being at the Capitol Factory Accelerator in Austin, how she joined Google, what it’s like being a product manager there, what it was like launching a search driven keyboard, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Ardi Iranmanesh, Co-founder & Chief-of-Staff, Affinio | EP 113

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  Sep 06 2016

  Ardi Iranmanesh is the co-founder and chief-of-staff at Affinio, an advanced marketing intelligence platform that leverages the interest graph to understand today’s consumers. Ardi is originally from Iran and moved here to study engineering. Having Always had a passion for business and how businesses are started, he quickly discovered the beginnings of the work that would become the Lean Startup framework by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. Ardi was eventually connected with a few local founders and joined them in building a lean product lab called 26ones. Affinio was born from a constant challenge they would inevitably face when trying to identify potential groups of customers online and through social media. Ardi joins us to share more about his story, how Affinio approached getting their first customers, why and how it’s so important to test everything, what he’s currently focused on, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Tracy Chou, Founding Team, Project Include | EP 112

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  Aug 30 2016

  Tracy Chou is a software engineer and was most recently at Pinterest, where she worked on the home feed and recommendations team, ads and web teams, API, growth and much more! Before Pinterest, Tracy worked at Quora, also as one of the first engineering hires there. Tracy is well-known for her work pushing for diversity in tech. In 2013, she helped kick off the wave of tech companies that began to disclose their data about the diversity within their companies through a Github repository. Tracy is now a founding member of Project Include and is focused on driving solutions in the space. She was named Forbes Tech 30 under 30 in 2014 and has been profiled in Vogue and WIRED for her advocacy. Tracy is also an advisor to Homebrew VC and on reserve with the U.S. Digital Service. She joins us to share more about her story, how she got into tech and startups, some of the amazing things she’s been able to accomplish as part of Quora and Pinterest, how she’s been challenging the status quo and championing for diversity in tech, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Corey Pollock, Co-founder, Leet | Ep 111

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  Aug 23 2016

  Corey Pollock is the co-founder of Leet, where gamers share and discover the best gameplay highlights. Corey is a product manager at Tiny Hearts in Toronto. He’s also built and launched several side projects over the years, including his latest startup Leet. Corey joins us to share his story, how he got into tech and startups, how he approaches working on side projects, how he approaches building communities, what motivated him to launch Leet, and much more!

  Episode

• Laura Roeder, Founder & CEO, Edgar | EP 110

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  Aug 16 2016

  Laura Roeder is the Founder & CEO of Edgar, an application that automates social media scheduling and marketing. Edgar is a cutting-edge service, and one of the fastest-growing competitors to HootSuite. Laura was still in junior high school when she taught herself to build websites. She then launched her first consulting business at the age 22. After consulting and running various online and offline classes on how to drive traffic and increase social engagement, Laura developed a process that would become the basis of her next software company. Within 11 months of launching Edgar, Laura grew it to over $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue, serving almost 3,000 customers - all while remaining bootstrapped. Laura joins us to share her story, how she got into consulting and then startups, how she got her first customers, how they’ve managed to keep growing while staying bootstrapped, how she approaches managing and building a remote team, and much more!...more

  Episode

• John Gleeson, VP of Customer Success, Affinio | EP 109

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  Aug 09 2016

  John Gleeson is the VP of Customer Success at Affinio, an advanced marketing intelligence platform that leverages the interest graph to understand today’s consumers. Affinio won Gartner’s “Cool Vendor” in Data-Driven Marketing Award for 2016. While building an adult hockey skills company during university, John decided to pursue his MBA in Eastern Canada. He then decided to take a break from school and build his business remotely while traveling the world to surf. Returning to school after a year away, John quickly found himself as hire #1 with a new startup called Affinio. Two and a half years later - and following their Series A funding - Affinio has now grown to a team of over 40 people based in New York, Toronto, Halifax and Ireland. John is now the VP of Customer Success and joins us to share more about his story, how Affinio approached getting their first customers, why he’s now focusing on customer success, how he’s building that part of the organization and what metrics matter, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Michael Katchen, Founder & CEO, Wealthsimple | EP 108

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  Aug 02 2016

  Michael Katchen is the Founder and CEO of Wealthsimple, a platform that make smart investing simple and affordable. After starting his career off as a business analyst with one of the largest consulting firms in the world, Michael got a call in 2011 from a friend who was building a new YC company, 1000memories, where he was a VP of product & growth. After being acquired by Ancestry.com, some of his close friends approached him about advice on how to invest some of the money they got during the acquisition. Michael then created an excel sheet to help his friends learn how to invest. This was the MVP for Wealthsimple. Since launching in 2013, Michael and Wealthsimple have since raised over 30 million dollars in vc funding and grown to over 20,000 users, winning numerous awards along the way. Michael joins us to share his story, how he got into tech and startups, how he approaches building products, how they overcame early challenges when launching Wealthsimple, how they’ve built such a cool brand, what they look for when hiring and building a team, and tons more insights on building startups....more

  Episode

• Esther Crawford, CEO, Olabot | EP 107

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  Jul 26 2016

  Esther Crawford is the CEO of Olabot, a platform that makes it fun, simple to build personal bots. You can learn more about Esther by chatting with her personal bot: m.me/estherbot With a background in Philosophy and an interest in Middle Eastern politics, Esther began to explore different online tools and communities like blogging and YouTube. Pairing this with her passion for storytelling and design, Esther began her career as a social media consultant to some large brands, before launching her own startup called Glmps. Glmps was unfortunately not as popular as it’s closest competitor Vine and Esther ended up continued on her startup journey by diving into mobile product marketing and growth at several other startups including Coach.me. In 2015, Esther began to explore the emerging bot trend and built her own resume bot. She open sourced the project which was quickly used by hundreds of people looking to build bots of their own. Continuing to experiment with personal bots, Esther launched a platform called Olabot. They’ve since launched several more bots including the “Messina Bot” and a bot for Redfoo. She’s now part of Betawork’s bot accelerator, Botcamp. Esther’s bots have been featured in Fast Company, Lifehacker, Venture Beat and more. Throughout her nine year career as a product marketer, she’s worn several different hats, helping to define and execute on go-to-market strategies, product launches, messaging, marketing campaigns and more! Esther joins us to share her story, how she got into tech and startups, what attracted her to the bots and messaging space, what it’s been like iterating on EstherBot and building the Olabot platform, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Todd Garland, Founder & CEO, BuySellAds | EP 106

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  Jul 19 2016

  Todd Garland is the founder and CEO of BuySellAds. Todd started diving into tech during college and got into startups shortly after. He join HubSpot as an early employee and quickly got inspired to start his own company. Buy Sell Ads is now flipping the Ad Tech industry around with their unique, transparent and simple approach. Completely bootstrapped and acting as a marketplace between advertisers and publishers, they now work with over 1200 publishers to strategically place ads that don’t invade the consumer’s privacy and online rights. Todd joins us to share his story, how he managed to build the first version of the service, why BuySellAds is a completely different advertising model, how they’ve managed to remain bootstrapped and scale to selling more than 6 billion ad impressions each month, how they’ve approached acquisitions to fuel growth, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Victoria Young, Product Marketing Lead, Uber | EP 105

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  Jul 12 2016

  Victoria Young is a product marketing lead at Uber. Victoria likes to think about the intersection of culture and technology - working with emerging startups and new media platforms to creatively apply technology and new strategies to solve complex problems. At Uber, Victoria is currently focused on one of Uber’s fastest expanding products, uberPOOL. There she spearheaded the launch of go-to-market campaigns for new product features and defined the strategy for marketing programs that drive acquisition and growth of users, leading cross-functional teams from ideation through execution. She also led the marketing campaign for a national uberPOOL partnership with CapitalOne, which resulted in triple digit sustained growth. Victoria was also selected as one of eight KPCB Product Fellows, through a process that included over 2,500 applications from over 200 universities and over 600 interviews. KPCB Product Fellows is a program that provides top-quality mentorship, opportunities to create meaningful relationships between talented individuals, and work experiences with substantial responsibilities. Victoria also recently spoke at TEDxUCLA, acted as a mentor at RECESS, and frequently speaks at events on marketing, entrepreneurship, diversity, and technology. She’s also a frequent blogger on her site. She joins us to share her story, what it was like getting selected as a KPCB Fellow, how’s she’s approached building such an amazing career, what it’s like working at Uber, some of the common growth/product mistakes she sees other entrepreneurs and organizations making, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Taylor Conroy, Co-founder & CEO, Change Heroes & Journey333 | EP 104

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  Jul 05 2016

  Taylor Conroy is the co-founder & CEO of two social enterprise startups: Change Heroes and Journey333. Before diving into social enterprise, Taylor was running a successful real estate business. After a life changing trip to Uganda in 2009, Taylor came back to Canada, sold his business and launched Change Heroes, a SaaS company serving the world's most innovative and dedicated nonprofits to engage people in giving through personal video. Change Heroes has since helped thousands of people to bring friends together from over 80 countries to fund projects including schools, libraries, girls scholarships, anti-trafficking work, and more in 14 countries for over 200,000 people. Seeing the growing desire millennials have for wanting to affect change and travel, Taylor saw a huge need and recently launched Journey333, an experiential impact travel company that exists to shift humanity by systematically shifting 1% of the North American millennial generation to become truly empathetic, altruistic, and connected by 2025, while providing adventure, purpose, and community to their community of millennial participants. Taylor is also a sought after speaker who has presented around the world to over 100,000 people. He regularly presents at the United Nations in NY, and has lectured on social entrepreneurship at Harvard, Princeton, NYU, Cornell, and Stanford. He has studied meditation with Zen monks in Japan, surfed the longest wave in the world in Peru, filmed documentaries in Cambodia, Uganda, and Ecuador, become a yoga teacher in Costa Rica, run with the bulls in Spain, travelled to 35 countries, and explored every continent on earth. Taylor joins us to share his story, what motivated him to launch socially minded startups, some of the impact his organizations have had so far, some of the challenges he’s had to overcome in the social enterprise space, how he’s worked with corporate partners like Disney and DHL, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Ruby Lee, Product Partner, KPCB Edge | EP 103

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  Jun 28 2016

  Ruby Lee is a Product Partner at KPCB Edge, a team of builders, investing in seed stage founders working on emerging areas of technology. While studying at Stanford, Ruby got more into startups through entrepreneurship and business groups. She was also part of the founding team of the Dorm Room Fund - a student run investment group backed by First Round Capital. After school, Ruby joined Google as an associate product manager through their APM program started over 10 years ago by Marissa Mayer. While at Google, Ruby worked with the Chrome team, then decided to join a less established team and worked on Project Fi. Ruby was then approached by a friend to come help launch a new seed investment group out of KPCB. It’s been just over a year since KPCB Edge launched. Ruby joins us to share her story, some of the initiatives they’ve launched over the last year, advice she has for new product managers and entrepreneurs looking to create new products, what they look for when investing, and much more!...more

  Episode

• SC Moatti, Founder & Author, Mobilized | EP 101

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  Jun 14 2016

  SC Moatti is the Founder & CEO of Products That Count and a best selling author of Mobilized: An Insider's Guide to the Business and Future of Connected Technology. She is a mobile expert with tons of insights to share from her first hand experience gained over the past 15 years of working in mobile. While visiting Silicon Valley from Paris, France at that time, SC felt like she was on another planet and knew that’s where she had to be. From her time with EA building mobile games, to moving to Nokia, to launching a precursor to Tinder and being acquired by Facebook to help their mobile efforts and running several teams there, to launching her new #1 best selling book Mobilized, SC delivers a ton of invaluable insights for anyone working on products or who’s interested in the mobile space. SC joins us to share her story, how she got into mobile, how to approach building mobile products, what simple frameworks to keep in mind, what skills product managers should focus on, what emerging connected technologies could mean for business, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Ajay Rajani, Founder, The Inevitable Collective | EP 100

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  Jun 07 2016

  Ajay Rajani is the Founder of The Inevitable Collective, an investment vehicle that helps build and invest in companies that push the world forward. Ajay has been a part of Grovo as a product manager, the founding CMO of Inventure, and is now launching new experiments including: Nextt, the first accelerator for ideas & The Inevitable Collective, a new investment vehicle that’s investing in companies with products that are primarily aimed at developing markets. Ajay joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what he looks for when investing, how to get product/market fit, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Mahdi Yusuf, CTO, Gyroscope | EP 99

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  May 31 2016

  Mahdi Yusuf is the CTO of Gyroscope, an app that let’s you sync your data to track your health & everything about your life. Mahdi moved around a lot as a kid, spending time in Saudi Arabia, Ottawa, and Thailand, among other countries - all the while, exploring new technologies and learning about computers. After university, Mahdi started working for a mergers security company before jumping into startups. He is also the co-founder of Pycoder’s Weekly and a large part of the Python community through that newsletter that attracts over 30,000 subscribers. Mahdi’s also given several talks on personal branding & how to build communities around projects. He joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, why focusing on your health is so critical, how to develop your own brand (especially as a developer), what it’s like to be CTO at Gyroscope, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Erica Brescia, Co-founder & COO, Bitnami | EP 98

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  May 24 2016

  Erica Brescia is the Co-founder and COO of Bitnami. With over 1 million apps deployed per month, Bitnami makes it incredibly easy to deploy apps with native installers, as virtual machines, or in the cloud. Erica had lead operations for Bitnami since they started. She’s also been responsible for all their partnerships with big brands like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and VMWare. She’s also led their sales efforts - which has enabled them to remain mostly bootstrapped all these years. Erica joins us to share her story, how she got into tech and startups, what it’s been like building Bitnami, some of the challenges they’ve had to overcome, what it was like going through Y Combinator with a more established company, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Khoi Vinh, Director of Product Design, Mobile, Adobe | EP 97

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  May 17 2016

  Khoi Vinh is the Director of Product Design, Mobile at Adobe. With a background in graphic design, Khoi really got into his career as a product designer with the New York Times after several successful years as the co-founder of his own design firm. He then left and launched Mixel, a new type of creative app for the iPad. However, without as much traction as they needed to keep operating independently, Khoi and his co-founder managed to get the app and team acquired by Etsy. After the acquisition, Khoi left Etsy after a few months to continue learning and experimenting with technology - specifically around how people create on different devices and on the go. He’s now helping to lead the creation of a new generation of creative apps, for new technologies and hardware like the iPad pro at Adobe. Khoi joins us to share his story, some of the challenges around running your own company, what it’s like working at Adobe, how he thinks about the intersection of tech, design and creativity, how he’s approaching bringing startup energy to the team, much more!...more

  Episode

• Avery Swartz, Founder & CEO, Camp Tech | EP 96

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  May 10 2016

  Avery Swartz is the founder & CEO of Camp Tech, a workshop company for non-technical people. With a background in theater, Avery was drawn to both graphic design and the freelancing lifestyle, and decided to made a change. She launched her own design firm to enable her to follow this passion while still being able to contribute to innovative projects like the Art Canada Institute. Through freelancing, Avery saw a need for in-person workshops on a variety of subjects. Shortly after, Camp Tech was born. Since launching in 2012, it has grown to more than 250 workshops across several major Canadian cities. Avery also shares her experience by teaching the business of interactive design and how to work with clients at Humber College in Toronto and is also the co-host of a new conference called Gather North - which is a retreat for women who make the web. Avery joins us to share her story, how she started her freelancing business and some of the biggest lessons she’s learnt along the way, what some of her favorite projects have been, how Camp Tech has grown so quickly, why she decided to help launch Gather North and how they sold out the event in their first year, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Shane Mac, Co-founder & CEO, Assist | EP 95

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  May 03 2016

  Shane Mac is the co-founder & CEO of Assist, bring the best services to your favorite messaging apps. Shane got into startups and tech through music with gigs as a DJ. This lead him to building sites, widgets and more for himself and his friends. He’s worked on products within startups like Gist (acquired by Blackberry), Zaarly, and is now in the super hot messaging space with Assist. Shane joins us to share his story, what motivated him to get into tech & startups, why he’s always been curious about innovation, creativity & building lasting companies, how he approaches raising funding, what he thinks is most exciting about the messaging space right now, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Leslie Bradshaw, Managing Partner, Made By Many | EP 94

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  Apr 26 2016

  Leslie Bradshaw is the managing partner at Made By Many, a product innovation studio. Leslie has won several awards and accolades for her work, including Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Tech, 100 Most Creative People In Business, Inc’s 30 Under 30, and AdAge’s Small Agency of The Year among many more. She writes a series on Forbes called “More (Power) Seats”, about issues facing women in a corporate environment and often speaks or writes about professional leadership. Leslie joins us to share her story, what motivated to get into tech & startups, why she helped launch Jess3, a creative and very successful agency at the age of 23, how she’s managed to execute so many amazing projects for partners, the true cost of success that most people don’t talk about, why having a good team matters, and so much more!...more

  Episode

• Meng To, Founder, Design + Code | EP 93

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  Apr 19 2016

  Meng To is the author of Design + Code. Meng started off his career as a self-taught graphic designer who transitioned to digital work. Wanting to move to San Francisco to learn from some of the best designers in the world - designers who were passionate about solving problems - Meng managed to stay for a year until his visa expired and he could no longer continue to work. His dreams were crushed. With nothing left to lose, and at a crossroad in his career, he set out to travel the world. He soon decided to launch a product while on his adventure. Having started to blog about a new app called Sketch, Meng quickly settled on teaching others how to design with it, and then how to bring those same designs to life through quick prototypes using xcode. Design + Code was born. Two year later, Meng is still just as passionate about helping people learn how to implement their designs as real products and continuing to build & grow Design + Code as a full time job. He’s created several products and libraries since then - some paid, some free - to keep supporting his works and the students that have been using Design + Code. Meng joins us to share his story, what motivated him to launch Design + Code, how he grew it into a full time project, what it was like to travel for 2 years, what it’s like being a new parent, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Brittany Gorevic, GM, Union Square Ventures | EP 92

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  Apr 12 2016

  Brittany Gorevic is the General Manager at Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm based in New York City. After working with AMEX for a few years, Brittany left to start her own company, gtrot, which was later acquired by Groupon. Brittany has also travelled a ton - reaching two pretty incredible milestones: visiting all 7 continents before turning 25 and then Visiting 50 countries before the age of 30. She joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, advice for entrepreneurs who are looking to raise funding, the importance of community within the VC industry, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Marc Gingras, CEO, Foko | EP 91

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  Apr 05 2016

  Marc Gingras is an angel investor and the CEO of Foko, a private photo sharing app for retail teams. Marc has started and sold several companies over the years, including Tungle, a calendar sharing & scheduling application which was acquired by Research in Motion in 2011. Marc has also been a venture capitalist and angel investor in several companies - including Foko, which he later joined as CEO. Marc joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, advice for entrepreneurs who are looking to raise angel funding, how to build products in the B2B industry, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Cristina Cordova, Business Development & Partnerships, Stripe | EP 90

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  Mar 29 2016

  Cristina Cordova is the first Business Development hire at Stripe, the payments infrastructure for the internet. Cristina was previously the first employee at Pulse, where she lead partnerships with brands like The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and more. Today, Cristina is focused on building and managing the Business Development team at Stripe, which focuses on user-facing product partnerships, strategic growth partnerships with brands like Twitter, Pinterest, Kickstarter and much more!

  Episode

• Matthew Hartman, Director of Seed Investments, Betaworks | EP 89

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  Mar 22 2016

  Matthew Hartman is the Director of Seed Investments at Betaworks, an internet startup studio based in New York. Matt has been building products since he was a teen. After working for a real estate company, Matt left to join a social consumer app call Hot Potato - which was later acquired by Facebook. Matt then founded his own startup Referboost which he bootstrapped and then licensed to Apartments.com. He joins us to share his story, what he looks for in investments at Betaworks, what technologies he’s most interested in, why he started podcasting, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Elise Ramsay, Head of Community, Eyegroove | EP 88

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  Mar 15 2016

  Elise Ramsay is the Head of Community at Eyegroove, an app for creating high quality short videos with next level effects to express your true self. Elise was previously the community manager at Wistia, a video marketing platform for businesses, where she grew their community section to over 20,000 members and increased their social following by 5x. Her passion for video and enabling individuals to express themselves creatively lead her to joining the team at Eyegroove. Elise joins us to share her story, how she got involved in startups, what she loves most about video, what she does as Head of Community at Eyegroove, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Robleh Jama, Founder & CEO, Tiny Hearts | EP 87

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  Mar 08 2016

  Robleh Jama is the Founder & CEO of Tiny Hearts, a six year old design studio in the heart of Toronto, Canada. Robleh began his journey into entrepreneurship while in university, building and selling his first startup. He then quickly began to explore creating mobile products, mixing design consultancy and experimental product creation in-house. Six years later, Tiny Hearts has created several award-winning apps - @WakeAlarm (#1 utilities), Quick Fit (featured in Apple TV ad) + @Nextkeyboard (#2 overall App) - used by millions of people around the world. Robleh joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, how Tiny Hearts is different, the tactics they leverage to gain traction & be featured by Apple, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Kim Pham, Head of Platform, Frontline Ventures | EP 86

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  Mar 01 2016

  Kim Pham is the Head of Platform at Frontline Ventures, Europe's first community-focused fund. Kim has always had a passion for entrepreneurship and startups, landing her first job within a startup at the age of 16. Kim joins us to share her story, how she got involved in startups & hustled her way into various opportunities with companies like Onswipe, Blue Apron and more, how she helped launch Dorm Room Fund in NYC, how she got into VC, what she does as Head of Platform at Frontline Ventures in Dublin, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Sarah Adler, Co-founder & CTO, Spoon University | EP 85

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  Feb 23 2016

  Sarah Adler is the co-founder & CTO of Spoon University, a food community and website for college students. Growing up, Sarah loved graphic design and during university ended up co-founding a startup that would become Spoon University, a worldwide food community and website for college students that is in over 150 campuses. Sarah joins us to share her story, how Spoon University came to be, how she taught herself to design & code, how they got into TechStars, what it was like raising a seed round, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Wells Riley, Product Designer, Envoy | EP 84

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  Feb 16 2016

  Wells Riley is a product designer at Envoy, the new standard for visitor registration. Wells began building websites with his friends back in high school and took up design. He then started to notice that design wasn’t taken as seriously when it came to startups and great products, so he created a few online resources to inspire others. “Startups, This Is How Design Works” and Hack Design - which saw over 150,000 signups, are both still active and helping others. Wells joins us to share his story, why he got into product design, how he grew the community around both his design resources, what he’s doing at Envoy, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Michael Lachapelle, Founder, Business Model Fulcrum | EP 83

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  Feb 10 2016

  Michael Lachapelle is the founder of Business Model Fulcrum, a consulting agency focussed on assisting organizations and their leaders to create change, accelerate growth and improve business results through understanding and innovation in their business model. Michael has helped organizations from all industries including the Red Cross, the World Bank Institute, the Canadian Federal Government, FedEx and more. He’s been working with Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas since 2008, and is the only certified trainer and coach in Canada; and one of thirty world-wide. Michael joins us to share his story, why entrepreneurs and founders should understand various frameworks and tools like the business model canvas, common mistakes to avoid, how to get started with the business model canvas, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Andreas Kambanis, Founder, Nibble Apps | EP 82

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  Feb 02 2016

  Andreas Kambanis is the founder of Nibble Apps, a studio that creates award winning food apps for iPhone and iPad and has gotten several apps to the top (paid) spots in the App Store while being featured in publications like Mashable, Time, Men’s Health, and more. Andreas got his start with tech and startups while in school when he built a site called London Cyclists after finding a gap in the market. He then began working with publishers, entrepreneurs, and other influencers to build great apps while traveling. He shares his story, the tactics and resources that helped him rank his apps in the top paid spots in the App Store, how he builds his business while travelling, what it’s like to visit Antarctica, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Timo Rein, Co-Founder & President, Pipedrive | EP 81

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  Jan 26 2016

  Timo Rein is the co-founder and President of Pipedrive, a simple and visual sales pipeline tool that teams love to use. Timo had a background in sales but always found that existing sales management tools weren’t very helpful. So he and his co-founders set out to build Pipedrive. Timo shares how they got into AngelPad, raised angel and seed funding, acquired their first customers, grew the team, and much more!

  Episode

• Jeff Needles, Business Intelligence Analyst, Meerkat | EP 80

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  Jan 19 2016

  Jeff Needles is a Business Intelligence Analyst at Meerkat. Jeff previously worked at This Week in Tech - a podcasting network - through a variety of roles. He's a self taught developer who started building more products in 2015 and is now helping develop innovative analytics solutions at Meerkat. Jeff shares how he got into startups, how he started learning how to code, his approach to landing a job, how to get more out of your data, and much more!

  Episode

• Ben Brown, Co-founder & CEO, Howdy | EP 79

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  Jan 12 2016

  Ben Brown is the co-founder & CEO, of Howdy, a friendly, trainable bot that super powers teams by automating common tasks. Ben has built several startups and products, including XOXCO, a software and product design studio that he ran for more than seven years with his wife Katie. Ben is going to share what got him into tech, why he's excited about chat bots, his thoughts on the future of the industry, and much more!

  Episode

• Niv Dror, Community, Product Hunt | EP 78

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  Jan 05 2016

  Niv Dror is a part of the community team at Product Hunt, a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations. He was previously the first community manager at Meerkat. Niv joins us to share his story, how he got involved in startups after completing his degree in accounting and getting a CPA, how to build communities, how to leverage your community for innovation, and much more!

  Episode

• Amy Muller, VP of Customer Care & Community, Automatic | EP 77

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  Dec 29 2015

  Amy Muller is the co-founder of GetSatisfaction & Yes And Yes Yes. Amy is also currently the VP of Customer Care & Community at Automatic, a platform that enables you to connect your car to your life. Amy joins us to share her story, why she got into tech and helped start GetSatisfaction, how she approaches building community at Automatic, what motivated her to help start YxYY, and much more!

  Episode

• Nancy Hua, Co-founder & CEO, Apptimize | EP 76

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  Dec 22 2015

  Nancy Hua is the Co-founder & CEO of Apptimize, a platform for creating the best mobile experience for each user and context through targeted A/B testing. Previously a mathematics and computer science student at MIT, Nancy became an algorithmic trader out of school before launching Apptimize. In 2013, Nancy and her team were accepted into Y Combinator. Today, Apptimize is used by companies like Strava, Hotel Tonight and more. Nancy joins us to share her story, what it was like going through YC, the difference between seed and Series A rounds, and more!...more

  Episode

• Fred Dixon, CEO, Blindside Networks & PM, BigBlueButton | EP 75

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  Dec 15 2015

  Fred Dixon is the CEO of Blindside Networks and the Product Manager at BigBlueButton, an open source web conferencing platform for online learning. Fred had previously worked for Bell Northern Research which merged with Nortel before starting his own tech startups. In 2007, Fred met Richard Alam, a student at Carleton University who started working on an open source web conferencing software that was trying to solve the problem of distance education. A year later Richard & Fred officially launched this project as BigBlueButton. Fred is going to share tons of insights around raising money, building an open source company, how to build an awesome community and more!...more

  Episode

• Liam Martin, Co-founder & CMO, TimeDoctor & Staff.com | EP 74

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  Dec 08 2015

  Liam Martin is the co-founder & CMO of TimeDoctor & Staff.com. As a teenager, Liam was a competitive ice dancer, training 8-12 hours per day. Unfortunately a knee injury forced him to look for a plan B and he pursued academia until he found out he didn’t like teaching. Liam began building a web based tutoring business and gradually got more involved in tech companies. He’s now the co-founder of TimeDoctor & Staff.com - which is now tracking more than 1,000,000 hours per month. Liam joins us to share his story, insights on productivity & outsourcing, why your domain name matters, how to acquire your first customers, which metrics matter most to SaaS startups, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Steli Efti, Founder & CEO, Close.io | EP 73

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  Dec 01 2015

  Steli Efti is the founder & CEO of Close.io, a platform for closing more deals and making more sales. Originally from Greece, Steli began his career there bootstrapping several business before deciding to build a tech company. With no experience, background or clear idea where to start, he moved to Silicon Valley. After a few failed ideas, he launched a services company and developed an internal tool that would become Close.io. He and his team were accepted into Y Combinator and are now growing quickly with a very profitable platform. Steli joins us to share his story, insights on selling, the future of sales, how Close.io created software that solved a real need, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Jorge Soto, Founder, SotoVentures | EP 72

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  Nov 24 2015

  Jorge Soto is the founder of SotoVentures, and has been involved in sales and business development for over 12 years with experiences ranging from door-to-door, to enterprise software, to mobile advertising, and finally startup sales. Jorge has worked with several startups and large enterprises over his career - including MoPub - which was later acquired by Twitter. He also founded Sales4Startups (which was later acquired by SalesHacker). Jorge joins us to share his story, tactics, and insights on sales and much more!...more

  Episode

• Andres Izquieta, Co-founder & CEO, FiveFour | EP 71

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  Nov 17 2015

  Andres Izquieta is the co-founder, creative director, and CEO of FiveFour, the first subscription-based service for men's clothing. Andres helped start FiveFour over 10 years ago as a school project with a very different business model. Through ups-and-downs, Andres and FiveFour eventually pivoted into an e-commerce subscription model. Andres joins us to share more about how they helped pioneer this model, what makes it so successful, how they grew to over 60,000 subscribers in less than 3 years, what other startups can learn from their model and much more!...more

  Episode

• Kyle Braatz, Co-founder & CEO, Fullscript | EP 70

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  Nov 10 2015

  Kyle Braatz is the co-founder & CEO of Fullscript, a smarter way to recommend & sell professional-grade natural health products. In 2008, he started the Typically Canadian Group - a not for profit dedicated to inspiring Canadians who are battling cancer - and cycled across Canada raising $150,000 in the process. He then dove into tech startups with his co-founder Brad, launching Netgen, and later Fullscript emerged as an opportunity they were passionate about building. Kyle joins us to share his story and insights as an entrepreneur and philanthropist, how giving back to the community and charitable causes makes you a better leader, what it was like raising $2M dollars, and much more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 69 - Kim Bost, Product Designer, Dropbox

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  Nov 03 2015

  This is the sixty-ninth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Kim Bost (on Twitter @KimBost), a Product Designer at Dropbox. Kim is an incredible designer who started her career off with agencies before moving into the physical side of newspaper design at the New York Times. There she transitioned more into digital design while taking on new challenges through freelancing. Kim moved into products and startups working for brands like Etsy, Cover, and most recently, Dropbox. She joins us to share more about how networking can benefit your career, how she transitioned from design work to leadership (and back again), what the design scene is like in NY, some of the biggest lessons learnt along the way, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 68 - Anne-Catherine Goulby, Sales Manager, Quaid Media

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  Oct 27 2015

  This is the sixty-eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Anne-Catherine Goulby, the Sales Manager at Quaid Media, a TV advertising platform for mobile apps. She was previously the marketing project manager at SwiftKey, a top third party keyboard for iOS and Android. She joins us to share her story, what motivated her to build a career in tech, how SwiftKey became a top app on Android and later iOS, some basic tactics app developers and startups can use to rank higher on the Google Play or App Store, why TV advertising is important for apps, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 67 - Poornima Vijayashanker

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  Oct 20 2015

  This is the sixty-seventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Poornima Vijayashanker (on Twitter @ Poornima), the founder of Femgineer, an education platform for professionals. Poornima was previously the founding engineer of Mint.com and then transitioned to a founding role with her first startup BizeeBee. She was then an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at 500 Startups. Poornima joins us to share her story as a founder, what it was like transitioning from an engineering role to a founder, how to raise money, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 66 - Martin Ringlein, co-founder & CEO, nvite

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  Oct 13 2015

  This is the sixty-sixth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Martin (on Twitter @ Smarty), the co-founder and CEO of nvite, the ticketing experience re-imagined. Martin is an award-winning product designer focused on marketing and business development. He’s launched his own agencies and startups, one of them being acquired by Twitter where he joined as their first Design Manager. Martin has extensive experience building and managing creative teams, driving product while continuing to push pixels and commit code. Martin joins us to share his story, insights, what it was like working at Twitter, why he started nvite, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 65 - Cindy Wu, Co-founder, Experiment

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  Oct 06 2015

  This is the sixty-fifth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Cindy (on Twitter @ CindyWu), the co-founder of Experiement, a crowdfunding platform for scientific research. Cindy has a bachelor of science in cellular, molecular and developmental biology and she’s written several peer-reviewed articles. But when she started to look for funding to take a new drug to market she quickly realized there was a major problem. Experiment launched and was later accepted into Y Combinator. Today, more than 350 projects have raised more than 4 million dollars. Cindy joins us to share her story, why she helped launch Experiment, how they got accepted into YC, how they closed a seed round in 10 days, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 64 - Jon Gold, Designer, The Grid

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  Sep 29 2015

  This is the sixty-fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Jon Gold (on Twitter @JonGold), website creation powered by artificial intelligence. Jon joins us to share his story as a designer and entrepreneur, the differences between working at agencies, freelancing and startups, why it's important to pursue projects that you're passionate about, and much more!

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 63 - Atlee Clark, Head of App Store and Third Party Development, Shopify

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  Sep 22 2015

  This is the sixty-third episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Atlee Clark (on Twitter @AtleeClark), the Head of App Store and Third Party Development at Shopify, a platform to help you sell online, in-store, and everywhere in between. Atlee joins us to share her story as an entrepreneur, why doing complete 180s is more helpful to your career, how she lead the C100 for over 4 years, what her day-to-day role at Shopify is like, what is was like going through an IPO, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 62 - Year One Review

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  Sep 15 2015

  This is the sixty-second episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), chat about the first year of Hack To Start, the past 35 episodes, the top moments and lessons, our favorite tools, books, and app, what's next and more!

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 61 - Andrew Hyde, Founder, Startup Weekend

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  Sep 08 2015

  This is the sixty-first episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Andrew Hyde (on Twitter @ AndrewHyde), the founder of Startup Weekend, a 54 hour event to create communities and build companies. Andrew joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, how he built a worldwide startup movement, how Startup Weekend grew so quickly, what it's been like returning to TechStars, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 60 - Zack Onisko, Head of Growth & Marketing, Creative Market

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  Sep 01 2015

  This is the sixtieth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Zack Onisko (on Twitter @ Zack415), the Head of Growth and Marketing at Creative Market, a marketplace for ready-to-use design assets from independent creators. Zack graduated as a graphic designer but always wanted to run something for himself. He helped launch and grow BranchOut to over 30 million users, raising $49M in the process before it was acquired. He then met up with the founding team of Creative Market right after their time in YC. Zack joins us to share his story, how he helped Creative Market grow a multiple of 17 times in just 12 months, while also increasing revenue by 1600%, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 59 - Travis Truett, Co-founder & CEO, Ambition

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  Aug 25 2015

  This is the fifty-ninth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Travis Truett (on Twitter @ TDTruett), the co-founder and CEO of Ambition, a more effective way to manage employee ramp, productivity, and retention. Travis joins us to share his story, what lead him to becoming an entrepreneur, how Ambition got into Y Combinator, and much more!

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 58 - Jeff Goldenberg, Co-author, The Growth Hacker's Guide To The Galaxy

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  Aug 18 2015

  This is the fifty-eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Jeff Goldenberg (on Twitter @ Jeff_Goldenberg), the co-author of The Growth Hacker's Guide To The Galaxy & Head of Growth at Borrowell. Jeff has an unmatched talent for marketing & growth. He’s launched some impressive businesses ranging from fantasy poker camps, to a Top Chef cooking university and more. He’s also the co-author of The Growth Hacker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Jeff joins us to share his story, what lead him to becoming a tech entrepreneur & growth hacker, some of the biggest lessons he's learnt over the years, how to build partnerships when you have no leverage, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 57 - Grace Garey, Co-founder, Watsi

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  Aug 11 2015

  This is the fifty-seventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Grace Garey (on Twitter @ GraceGarey), the co-founder of Watsi, a platform for funding healthcare for people around the world. Grace has a background in global and international studies. After living in Ghana and interning at the International Rescue Committee, Grace joined Kiva to help them grow their platform. While there she helped launch Watsi - which became the first non-profit company to ever be accepted into Y Combinator. Grace joins us to share her story, what lead her to becoming an entrepreneur, what she learnt while at Kiva, how Watsi got into YC, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 56 - Guy Gunaratne, Co-founder, Storygami

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  Aug 04 2015

  This is the fifty-sixth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Guy Gunaratne (on Twitter @ GuyGunaratne), the co-founder of Storygami, an interactive video tool to add interactive overlays like articles, image galleries, call to action buttons, social feeds & more. Guy was previously an award winning, video journalist who created several documentaries on human rights subjects. However, the video medium was never quite sufficient to tell the stories he was looking to convey. Storygami is his answer to this need. It's been backed by Richard Branson & Virgin Media Pioneers and is currently used by organizations like Virgin Media & Al Jazeera - and is currently part of 500 Startups' batch 13. Guy joins us to share his unique story, how he transitioned from videographer to tech entrepreneur, how they got into 500 Startups and more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 55 - Mustefa Jo'Shen, Founder & CEO, Design Cofounders

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  Jul 28 2015

  This is the fifty-fifth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Mustefa Jo'Shen (on Twitter @ MustefaJ), the founder & CEO of Design Cofounders, a Toronto-based company that provides design education via DC Edu, business & design consulting via the DC Studio, and drive impact and innovation through Design Makes Change initiatives. Mustafa has grown Design Cofounders from a freelancing business into a fully fledged design company. He joins us to share how he’s built such a rapidly growing company through education, community, genuine relationships and more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 54 - Pouyan Salehi, Co-founder & CEO, PersistIQ

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  Jul 21 2015

  This is the fifty-fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Pouyan Salehi (on Twitter @ PSalehi), the Co-founder & CEO of PersistIQ,the complete outbound platform engineered from the ground up for sales. Pouyan has built 3 startups, has extensive experience in the SaaS space, was an entrepreneur in residence at Redpoint Ventures, and was accepted into YC14. He joins us to share his insights on building SaaS products, raising money, getting into YC, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 53 - Ross Simmonds, Founder & CEO, Foundation, Hustle & Grind, Crate

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  Jul 14 2015

  This is the fifty-third episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Ross Simmonds (on Twitter @ TheCoolestCool), the founder & CEO of Foundation, Hustle & Grind, and Crate. Ross has been into startups for as long as he can remember. While running an football fantasy blog in college, he began to understand the power of content and social platforms. He joins us to share how he's managed to build a thriving consulting practise, launch two other startups, how to make sure your brand stands out online, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 52 - Sandi MacPherson, Founder & CEO, Quibb

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  Jul 07 2015

  This is the fifty-second episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Sandi MacPherson (on Twitter @ SandiMac), the founder & CEO of Quibb, share what you're reading for work. Sandi has a background in science and non-profit organizations, but realized that she wanted to be in tech. She joins us to share her insights on starting a company, building communities and social platforms for professionals, how she raised money, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 51 - Matt Fiedler, Co-founder & CEO, Vinyl Me Please

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  Jun 30 2015

  This is the fifty-first episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Matt Fiedler (on Twitter @ IAmMattFiedler), the co-founder & CEO of Vinyl Me Please, the best damn record club out there! Matt grew up with a passion for music that he inherited from his dad. Always wanting to start his own thing, Matt and his co-founder Tyler launched Vinyl Me Please as a passion project. Today they ship to more than 40 countries worldwide and have a rapidly growing user base of subscribers and music lovers. Matt joins us to share his insights on starting a company, enabling a community to take on a life of its own, how to start a subscription company, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 50 - Sarah Stockdale, Growth Manager, Tilt

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  Jun 23 2015

  This is the fiftieth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Sarah Stockdate (on Twitter @ Skstock), the growth manager at Tilt, the easy way to collect money from a group for free. She's also the Director of Speakers for TedXDistilleryDistrictWomen. With a background in the financial tech industry, Sarah shares why she decided to start her career in the tech industry, how she approaches growth in this fast growing market, how optimizing everything you do for learning can help you get ahead, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 49 - Phil Freo, Full Stack Developer, Close.io

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  Jun 16 2015

  This is the forty-ninth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Phil Freo (on Twitter @ PhilFreo), the lead on product and engineering at Close.io. Phil has been developing and building websites since he was a teenager. As a full stack developer, he's worked on several products for companies like Yahoo, Google and for startups. Phil joins us to share his insights on building startups, finding your unfair competitive advantage, thinking about product development, raising money, and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 48 - Megan Berry, Head of Product Development, RebelMouse

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  Jun 09 2015

  This is the forty-eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Megan Berry (on Twitter @ MeganBerry), the Head of Product Development at RebelMouse. Megan had previously led community at several startups including Klout. Now at RebelMouse, she joins us to share her insights on product development, growth, raising money, and much more!

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 47 - Ef Rodriguez, Director of Global Social, HTC

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  Jun 02 2015

  This is the forty-seventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Ef Rodriguez (on Twitter @ pug), the Director of Global Social at HTC. With a background in writing and journalism, Ef has always been passionate about startups, good marketing and cool technologies. He joins us to share his insights on working abroad, being curious, not being lazy, and exploring new technologies and much more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 46 - Anthony Thomas, Co-Founder & GM, Sticker Mule

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  May 26 2015

  This is the forty-sixth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Anthony Thomas (on Twitter @ ac132), the co-founder and GM of Sticker Mule, a custom sticker printing service that kicks ass. Anthony has always been a manufacturing guy, but had deep frustrations with the traditional model and not having direct relationships with the end customers. He wanted to do more and so Sticker Mule was born. He joins us to share more about how this startup was launched in 3 months, how early customers enabled them to quickly achieve product/market fit and improve the experience of buying stickers online, how entrepreneurs wanting to get into manufacturing should approach partnerships, and more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 45 - Dustin Henderlong, VP of Digital, Threadless

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  May 18 2015

  This is the forty-fifth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Dustin Henderlong (on Twitter @ DHendy), the VP of Digital at Threadless, a community-driven design platform featuring designs created by various designers, artists and general consumers. With a background in acting & photography, Dustin has always been interested in technology. He joined Threadless to lead partnerships for several years before becoming the first employee at Snapjoy - which was later acquired by Dropbox. Dustin then returned to Threadless as VP of Digital and has been helping drive innovation since then. He shares more about his day-to-day role, why building authentic relationships is key for personal and business growth, how community is critical at all stages, and more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 44 - Katherine Hague, Co-Founder, ShopLocket

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  May 12 2015

  This is the forty-fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Katherine Hague (on Twitter @ KatherineHague), the co-founder of ShopLocket, an ecommerce platform for hardware entrepreneurs. Founded in May 2012, Katherine raised a $1 million seed round, led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures and Rho Canada. The company was acquired in early 2014 by PCH, a global leader in custom manufacturing solutions. Katherine now acts as VP of Community Engagement & Hackathons for PCH. Katherine has a passion for supporting other entrepreneurs that has naturally led her to becoming an active angel investor. Katherine investments tend to focus on seed stage companies in the consumer hardware and lifestyle space. Katherine has been named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women, was listed as one of Canada's 7 Tech Stars by the Financial Post, and was named one of 5 Women to Watch in Wearable Tech. She joins us to share her insights on startups, fundraising, and more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 43 - Samuel Hulick, Founder, UserOnboard.com

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  May 05 2015

  This is the forty-third episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Samuel Hulick (on Twitter @ SamuelHulick), the founder and user onboarding champion at UserOnboard.com. Originally a web developer, Samuel is passionate about putting users first and creating amazing users experiences. He started his blog, UserOnboard.com to showcase different onboarding experiences as it’s often the most overlooked aspect of the overall user experience. He joins us to share his insights as an entrepreneur, blogger, and usability consultant....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 42 - Victoria Lennox, Co-Founder & CEO, Startup Canada

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  Apr 28 2015

  This is the forty-second episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Victoria Lennox (on Twitter @ VLennox), the co-founder and CEO of Startup Canada, Canada's first-ever, entrepreneur-led, national movement. Victoria is the catalyst of a national grassroots network of local Startup Communities; PIVOTmagazine.ca, 1000startups.ca, StartupAward.ca & MentorshipChallenge.ca among other high-impact, national programs - recognised by PROFIT Magazine as one of Canada's Top 30 entrepreneurs in 2012. She joins us to share her insights and experiences on building non-profit, social driven organizations....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 41 - Nadav Wilf, VP of Possibility, HeroX

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  Apr 21 2015

  This is the forty-first episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Nadav Wilf (on Twitter @ NadavWilf), the VP of Possibility at HeroX, a spinoff of the XPRIZE organization founded by Peter Diamandis. Nadav has previously founded and sold many different startups including DiscoverSD which grew from $0 to $1M in 18 months. Nadav joins us to share his insights and experiences building and growing different types of web based businesses, and to share what's next for HeroX....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 40 - Susan Su, Growth Marketer, 500 Startups Distribution Team

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  Apr 14 2015

  This is the fortieth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Susan Su (on Twitter @ Susanfsu), the growth marketer-in-residence for 500 Startups Distribution team. Susan has more than 8 years of experience going from corporate to startup in Silicon Valley, running marketing for some major media and web startups like: Google, with Ramit Sethi & IWillTeachYouToBeRich, InsideNetwork, AppSumo, and more. She joins us to share her insights on taking risks, creating something of value, how to manage yourself and what it takes to get into 500 Startups....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 39 - Caneel Joyce, CEO, Kickass Creative

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  Apr 07 2015

  This is the thirty-ninth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Caneel Joyce (on Twitter @ Caneel), the CEO of Kickass Creative, her consulting practise that combines creativity with insights about human behavior to design elegant solutions to real problems. Caneel is an ideawoman, a design strategist, and a startup team builder who leverages creativity, data and psychology to design powerful products and build kickass companies. She previously lead growth & creativity at Britely and has taught several classes at the London School of Economics and the d.school at Stanford. Caneel shares lots of amazing insights with us - everything from how constraints increase creativity, how conflict can be productive, how to negotiate, why a solid vision and a mission are critical to growth, and much more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 38 - Dorothy Sanders, Co-Founder & CEO, Maptia

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  Mar 31 2015

  This is the thirty-eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Dorothy Sanders (on Twitter @ Doro1hy), the co-founder and CEO of Maptia, a community of amazing stories told by photographers, writers, and adventurers on the the planet. As avid traveler, reader, and scientist, Dorothy and the founding team dreapt of building an ultimate map. Without any prior technical knowledge or education in startups - Dorothy joins us to share how they've built Maptia, completed two accelerator programs, and grown through their community and philosophies....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 37 - Liz Wessel, Co-Founder & CEO, Campus Job

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  Mar 24 2015

  This is the thirty-seventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Elizabeth Wessel (on Twitter @ LizWessel), the co-founder and CEO of Campus Job. Prior to starting Campus Job, Liz launched a few startups while in college before working for Google on some major campaigns. In June 2014, Liz and her co-founder started Campus Job and raised a seed round in less then a month. They are now part of the W15 cohort at Y Combinator. Liz shares her insights on startups, managing partnerships, and making a difference....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 36 - Max Altschuler, Founder, Sales Hacker

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  Mar 17 2015

  This is the thirty-sixth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Max Altschuler (on Twitter @ MaxAlts), the founder of Sales Hacker. Max Altschuler is the founder and CEO of Sales Hacker, a high integrity community & conference for sales professionals. He's also the author of Hacking Sales: The Playbook For Building High Velocity Sales Machine. He shares his insights on building multisided marketplaces, generating leads, launching a conference, and much more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 35 - Tom Meagher, Founder, Product Hunt Time Machine

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  Mar 10 2015

  This is the thirty-fifth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Tom Meagher (on Twitter @ ThomasMeagher), the founder of Product Hunt Time Machine. With no real experience with programming, but a desire to work on his own side projects, Tom taught himself how to code iOS 8 apps in just 4 months. The result is Product Hunt Time Machine. Tom shares his insights, process, and struggles learning how to make an app, build products, how he did it and more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 34 - Jenn Bane, Community Manager, Cards Against Humanity

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  Mar 03 2015

  This is the thirty-fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Jenn Bane (on Twitter @ JennDangerous), the community manager at Cards Against Humanity. Jenn Bane is the community manager at Cards Against Humanity, a party game for horrible people. The game was created by 8 friends and launched through Kickstarted. Within just two weeks they met their original goal and went on to raise over $15,000; just under 400% of its original goal. Jenn joins us for lots of laugh, jokes, funny stories and to share her insights on how Cards Against Humanity has grown through it's awesome community over the years....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 33 - Cubby Graham, Community Builder, Charity: Water

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  Feb 24 2015

  This is the thirty-third episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Cubby Graham (on Twitter @ CubbyGraham), the community builder at Charity: Water. Cubby's passion is to help people help others. From a young age he was involved in various humanitarian efforts with his church and was deeply affected by the major issues caused by the lack of clean water in developing countries. He left a small town near Portland, Oregon to move to New York City, where he leads community for Charity: Water, an organization on a mission to deliver clean drinking water to everyone. He shares his insights on building community, empowering others to make a change, and how Charity: Water is able to create change at scale by innovating in the traditional "charity" space....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 32 - Jeremiah Gardner, Author, The Lean Brand

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  Feb 17 2015

  This is the thirty-second episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Jeremiah Gardner (on Twitter @ JeremiahGardner), the author of The Lean Brand. Jeremiah Gardner was born in the City of Sin, and raised in the City of Angels(that's Las Vegas and Los Angeles). He is passionate about helping startups (both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs) tell their stories to real people. He authored The Lean Brand alongside veteran entrepreneur and author Brant Cooper, featuring illustrations from Fake Grimlock. He joins us to share his story and insights into one of the most important aspects of building a business....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 31 - Sam Gerstenzang, Director Of Product, Imgur

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  Feb 10 2015

  This is the thirty-first episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Sam Gerstenzang (on Twitter @ Gerstenzang), the director of product and growth at Imgur. Sam had a passion for computers early on and went on to study symbolic systems at Stanford. He first started working in startups with the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and later joined the deal and research team at Andreesen Horowitz. He now leads growth and product at Imgur and shares his insights on product growth, VC, and more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 30 - Bridget Sauer, Community, Teespring

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  Feb 03 2015

  This is the thirtieth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Bridget Sauer (on Twitter @ BridgetCBSauer), the community manager at Teespring. Bridget studied art at Brown University and worked in Paris for the Hermes fashion house before realizing she wanted to pursue a career in startups. She shares how she got started at Teespring, how a background in design and an interest in technology help her build community, and how to harnessing creativity has helped to build and grow Teespring....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 29 - Ryan Delk, Growth & Business Development, Gumroad

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  Jan 27 2015

  This is the twenty-ninth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Ryan Delk (on Twitter @ Delk), growth & business development at Gumroad. Ryan's been an entrepreneur since an early age. While in college he began to get involved in the mobile and payments industries through opportunities with iHub and Square. He joins us to talk about how he approaches business development, growth, and how Gumroad wants to empower creators everywhere....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 28 - Max Lynch, Co-Founder & CEO, Drifty

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  Jan 20 2015

  This is the twenty-eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Max Lynch (on Twitter @ MaxLynch), the co-founder and CEO of Drifty, creators of the Ionic Framework. Max has been building products for the past few years, experimenting with different business models, funding styles and more. In less than 1 year, their Ionic framework has seen over 320,000 apps launched, the team raise 1 million dollars, and grow to 15 people....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 27 - Marc Meszaros, Co-Founder, Snapable

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  Jan 13 2015

  This is the twenty-seventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Marc Meszaros (on Twitter @ MarcMeszaros), the co-founder of Snapable and a software engineer at 5By. Marc shares his insights on building MVPs from a technical perspective, how he's previously done ideation, and how everyone should participate in an accelerator if they can.

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 26 - Year-In-Review 2014

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  Jan 07 2015

  This is the twenty-sixth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland) look back on the lessons learned in the first 25 episodes, about why Hack To Start was started, and what's next in 2015. Hack To Start began in October 2014, and through the support of our wonderful fans and community, has since featured 25 guests and achieved some incredible milestones: - More than doubled traffic month-after-month since launch. - Ranked #1 and #8 by iTunes in "Business News" and "Business" categories respectively. - Been featured in the Top 10 of iTunes "New & Noteworty" since launch (ahead of Gary Vaynerchuk - sorry Gary, we love you!) - Been RT'ed by Canadian icon Tom Green - And has been included in business books published by Pearson Canada Inc....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 25 - James Seymour-Lock, Co-founder, Simple As Milk

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  Dec 26 2014

  This is the twenty-fifth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with James Seymour-Lock (on Twitter @ JamesSLock), the co-founder of Simple As Milk. James shares his insights on building a business remotely, how focusing on quality over business leads to more word-of-mouth work, and how traveling impacts your perspective on work and life.

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 24 - David Spinks, Founder & CEO, CMX Media

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  Dec 25 2014

  This is the twenty-fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with David Spinks (on Twitter @ DavidSpinks), the founder and CEO of CMX Media, the hub for the community industry. David has been building communities around startups and ideas his entire career, including Zaarly, LeWeb, uDemy, and SeatGeek. He also co-founded Feast, a cooking class for people who would never go to a cooking class that got accepted into 500 Startups. He talks about the importance of building valuable communities around existing behaviours and people, what common mistakes entrepreneurs make when building communities, and more!...more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 23 - Rafael Conde, Designer & Co-founder, Sketchcasts

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  Dec 24 2014

  This is the twenty-third episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Rafael Conde (on Twitter @ rafahari), designer at Imaginary Cloud and the co-founder of Sketchcasts. Rafael began designing in his third year of university, building his portfolio by re-designing some of his favorite apps. He co-founded Sketchcasts as a simple project to help teach others how to use Sketch. We spoke about the importance of good design, sharing your ideas with others, and the value of writing....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 22 - Steve Beauchesne, CEO of Beau's Brewery

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  Dec 23 2014

  This is the twenty-second episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Steve Beauchesne (on Twitter @ BeausAllNatural), the co-founder and chief tasting officer at Beau's All Natural Brewing Company. Steve has been an entrepreneur since he was a kid. He started his own record label before opening Beau's Brewery with his dad. He shares the challenges of starting a craft brewery, how culture and values have been the foundation of their brand, and how borrowing marketing tactics from the music industry has turned Beau's beer into a smash hit....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 21 - Sofia Quintero, Head of Growth, Geckoboard

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  Dec 22 2014

  This is the twenty-first episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Sofia Quintero (on Twitter @ Sofiaqt), an entrepreneur and the Head of Growth at Geckoboard. Sofia is from Venezuela and has launched many different startups. She was the only female skateboarded to be sponsored by Vans in Venezuela. Sofia shares with us why growth can be dangerous, but also how to leverage some of the most important (yet often forgotten) growth channels: branding and word of mouth....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 20 - Hana Abaza, Director of Marketing, Uberflip

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  Dec 16 2014

  This is the twentieth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Hana Abaza (on Twitter @ HanaAbaza), the director of marketing at Uberflip and co-founder of Wedding Republic and Snapable. Hana studied business & finance at the University of Ottawa and has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. This combination gave her a very analytical outlook on business. She shares her experience in online and offline marketing with us....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 19 - Wade Foster, CEO & Co-Founder, Zapier

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  Dec 09 2014

  This is the nineteenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Wade Foster (on Twitter @ WadeFoster), the co-founder & CEO of Zapier, a platform that automates your workflow. Wade was on the path to being an industrial engineer when the economy collapsed. When he couldn't find a job, he turned to startups and marketing. A few years later, his company Zapier had been accepted to Y Combinator, had grown from 50 to 350 integrations, and has changed the way everyone connects apps together....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 18 - Cat Noone, Co-founder Liberio

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  Dec 02 2014

  This is the eighteenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Cat Noone(on Twitter @ ImCatNoone), the co-founder of Liberio, simple eBook creation & one-click publishing right from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Github and more. Cat has lived and worked in both New York and San Francisco before moving to Berlin. She shares how these cities and her perspective on design has changed with each place. Cat also shares the importance of side projects....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 17 - Dan Shipper, Co-founder, Firefly

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  Nov 25 2014

  This is the seventeenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Dan Shipper(on Twitter @ DanShipper), the co-founder of Firefly, a co-browsing solution for businesses. It was acquired by Pegasystems in July 2014. Dan has been building products since he was in high school. He started blogging in his freshman year of college and has since attracted more than half a million readers. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, Business Insider, Inc Magazine and more....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 16 - Zach Holman, Founder Speaking.io

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  Nov 21 2014

  This is the sixteenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Zach Holman(on Twitter @ Holman), the ninth employee at GitHub and the founder of speaking.io. He speaks with us about open source projects, building useful products, and how to speak effectively in public. Zach initially worked on what would become GitHub Enterprise and now mostly speaks on the subjects of building products, growing startups, and how to give great talks....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 15 - Greg Isenberg, Founder 5By

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  Nov 20 2014

  This is the fifteenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Greg Isenberg(on Twitter @ GregIsenberg), the founder and CEO of 5By about building products, investing, and the value of networks and partnerships. Greg is from Montreal, Canada and has been building products since he was 13. By the age of 25, he'd already sold 3 companies and been angel investing for over a year. He'd also built major social campaigns for brands like FedEX, NASCAR, TechCrunch & Wordpress. His most recent company is 5By, the best place to find, watch and share amazing videos, now acquired by StumbleUpon....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 14 - John O'Nolan, Co-Founder Ghost

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  Nov 19 2014

  This is the fourteenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with John O'Nolan(on Twitter @ JohnONolan), the co-founder of Ghost about building new products, launching crowdfunding campaigns, and the importance of transparency with open source companies. John is an interactive designer specializing in digital publishing. He was formally the Deputy Head of The WordPress UI Group, where he helped to design and develop the WordPress user interface - and spoke at conferences all over the world about designing WordPress. He also designed and built blogs for people like Microsoft, Nokia, Virgin Atlantic, easyJet, Ubisoft and many others....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 13 - Dominic Coballe, Co-founder N-Prouct

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  Nov 18 2014

  This is the thirteenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Dominic Coballe(on Twitter @ DomCoballe), the co-founder of N-Product about the real challenges of building a physical product, the importance of good design, and the maker movement. Dominic is a design by trade and N-Product is practices the Slow Goods movement, where objects take time to craft, are composed of quality materials and last a lifetime, or two....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 12 - Chris Hexton, Co-founder Vero

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  Nov 17 2014

  This is the twelfth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Chris Hexton (on Twitter @ chexton), the co-founder of Vero (on Twitter @ veroapp) about how to send effective emails and building startups. Chris comes from a financial background, but as a self taught developer has always wanted to create his own product. After several years of consulting, he and his co-founder created Vero, a service that triggers emails based on customer behaviour....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 11 - Zack Shapiro, Founder of Built In Public

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  Nov 11 2014

  This is the eleventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Zack Shapiro(on Twitter @ ZackShapiro), Founder of Silencer.io, Luna, and Built In Public, about the value of building products with transparency. Zack graduated university with a degree in journalism before taking on roles in a business capacity with The Next Big Sound, TechStars and Path, before teaching himself how to code through an internship with Task Rabbit. He's now building awesome product publicly with Built In Public and working on Product Hunt....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 10 - Andrew Draper, Designer & Developer, Co-Founder Manpacks

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  Nov 04 2014

  This is the tenth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Andrew Draper(on Twitter @ AndrewDraper), designer and developer at Hootsuite Labs (on Twitter @ Hootsuite) about building startups and quickly iterating on prototypes. Andrew's been designing, developing, raising money and building startups for 14+ years. He talks about how to iterate quickly and simply products to gain initial traction and growth....more

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 9 - Adrian Salamunovic, Co-CEO WorkshopX

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  Oct 28 2014

  This is the ninth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (on Twitter @ FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (on Twitter @ TylerCopeland), speak with Adrian Salamunovic(on Twitter @ King_of_Canvas), Co-CEO of WorkshopX (on Twitter @ WorkshopXHQ), a team of entrepreneurs building great web based businesses. Adrian started DNA11 and CanvasPop with his friend and co-CEO Nazim Ahmed with only $2,000 and bootstrapped them both to multi-million dollar companies.

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 8 - Heather Payne, CEO of HackerYou

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  Oct 21 2014

  This is the eighth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Heather Payne(@HeatherPayne), CEO of HackerYou (@HackerYou), part-time and full-time courses for people who want to learn to code. Heather is the co-founder of Ladies Learning Code and was recently named one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women.

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• Hack To Start - Episode 7 - Tomas Laurinavicius

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the seventh episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Tomas Laurinavincious(@Tomaslau), founder at Despreneur (@Despreneur) about building blog-based businesses, mobile design and travelling. Tomas is the co-author of The Mobile Design book and has started and sold several businesses and blogs. He's currently travelling the world, working on Refe and Despreneur.

  Episode

• Hack To Start - Episode 6 - Andrew Dumont, EIR Betaworks

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the sixth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Andrew Dumont(@AndrewDumont), EIR at Betaworks (@Betaworks) about the importance of side projects and how business development and distribution channels can help grow your business. Previously, Andrew lead business development for Seemic (acquired by Hootsuite). He then had a similar role at Moz, growing their software sales through partners and distribution channels, all while working night and weekends on a side project: Stride. Within a year, Stride reached over 20k recurring revenue before being acquired by CrazyEgg....more

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• Hack To Start - Episode 5 - Josh Pigford, Founder Baremetrics

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the fifth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Josh Pigford(@ShPigford), founder at Baremetrics (@Baremetrics) about creating MVP software products that create value and how to price from day 1. Josh has always been an entrepreneur and a maker of things. He previously founded PopSurvey, Temper, and was founder & editor of TheAppleBlog among others.

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• Hack To Start - Episode 4 - Ali Zahid, COO Vanhawks

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the fourth episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Ali Zahid(@alizhd), COO at Vanhawks (@Vanhawks) about building a complete startup (hardware + software) and how to launch your business through a crowdfunding campaign. Ali was a biomedical engineering student before he dropped out to join his co-founders at FounderFuel in Montreal. They launched their Kickstarter campaign 12 days before demo day, with the goal of raising $100,000. The target was quickly met (...more

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• Hack To Start - Episode 3 - Brandon Reti, VP Mobile Breather

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the third episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Brandon Reti (@Brandonr182), VP Mobile at Breather (@Breather) about building a mobile product and how to determine what features it really needs. Brandon has worked in the mobile industry for over 10 years. He started off at Airborne Mobile, doing biz dev and closing deals like NFL, NHL, Family Guy and more. Brandon then lead a team of 45 at Manwin, one the largest adult entertainment sites- and owners of YouPorn - getting about 20 Million visits per day to their mobile properties....more

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• Hack To Start - Episode 2 - Adam Benzion, Co-founder Hackster.io

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the second episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Hackster.io (@Hacksterio) Co-founder Adam Benzion(@AdamBenzion) about hardware startups and building products to serve your own needs. Adam previously worked at Microsoft, after selling them one of his first software products. He then left to build his own iPhone accessory - a battery charge case that was later acquired by OtterBox. Returning to his interest in making physical products, Adam founded Entirely, which he later merged with Hackster.io to pursue a shared vision....more

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• Hack To Start - Episode 1 - Brandon Waselnuk, CEO Tattoo Hero

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  Oct 15 2014

  This is the first episode of Hack To Start. Your hosts, Franco Varriano (@FrancoVarriano) and Tyler Copeland (@TylerCopeland), speak with Tattoo Hero (@Tattoo_Hero) CEO Brandon Waselnuk (@BrandonWaselnuk) about building a startup from idea at a Startup Weekend event, through an accelerator (FounderFuel) and all the way to seed round. Brandon previously to worked at IBM, in the Business Analytics Sector, as an Investment Lead For Business Intelligence and Predictive Analytics.

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