After The Exit - An Allsmith Growth Podcast

In this episode titled "Cultivating Success: The GrowFlow Journey with Travis Steffen," we delve into the remarkable journey of Travis Steffen, CEO of GrowFlow, a company providing compliance, inventory management, and other essential tools for the cannabis industry. Founded in 2018, GrowFlow achieved impressive milestones, including nearly $10m in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and a customer base of over 1,700 B2B clients before its sale to Dama Financial for almost $70m. Steffen shares his entrepreneurial roots, the critical lessons learned, and the importance of company culture and talent. He also discusses the personal and professional transformation following the exit, emphasizing the realities of venture-backed businesses and the shift in his approach towards a more streamlined, high cash flow business model. This episode offers a blend of candid insights and practical advice for entrepreneurs navigating similar paths. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

In this episode, we sit down with Benjamin Gosse, the founder of Synsor, to explore the critical aspect of testing traction in a sales-based business. Benjamin shares insights on how to set up cascading automated mechanisms to evaluate traction at various stages, from email campaigns to pricing strategies. Discover the importance of continuous testing, the value of experience in shaping future ventures, and the journey from being a first-time founder to a seasoned entrepreneur. Join us for a conversation filled with valuable wisdom and growth opportunities in the world of business. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

In this episode, we engage in a profound conversation with Lex Kiefhaber, founder of United by Zero, to uncover the journey behind his climate-conscious business. Faced with a career transformation in 2020, Lex took a leap into the world of sustainability, initiating his impact with the podcast "Who's Saving the Planet?" before establishing United by Zero. He offers an honest perspective on the challenges and victories of starting, growing, and eventually selling a sustainable enterprise. This discussion not only explores the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurial endeavors in the sustainability sector but also highlights the personal and familial sacrifices often hidden behind business success. Lex's narrative weaves through the complexities of identifying market needs, raising capital, executing strategic pivots, and navigating the intricacies of a business sale. His story is a compelling testament to the power of aligning business acumen with environmental stewardship and personal values, providing invaluable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and climate advocates alike. Join us as Lex Kiefhaber shares his experiences and insights, shedding light on the delicate balance of driving business growth while championing sustainability. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

In this episode of "After the Exit," host Blake Smith sits down with Tim Schmoyer, founder of Video Creators, to explore the early days of YouTube and Tim's transformative journey in the creator economy. From posting a 30-second "test video" in 2006 to the successful acquisition of his agency by vidIQ, Tim offers a deep dive into the evolution of YouTube, the shifts in the creator landscape, and the challenges and lessons from his personal entrepreneurial journey. Learn about the evolution of YouTube, the significance of the creator economy in today's digital age, and the profound life and business insights gained from Tim's experiences. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned veteran, this episode promises valuable wisdom for all. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Join us as Doug unveils his decade-long entrepreneurial expedition from a university pitch deck to leading AdStash, a digital signage monetization platform, eventually culminating in a lucrative sale. His reflections post-sale offer a blend of business insights and life lessons, shedding light on the seldom discussed post-exit phase every founder faces. This episode is a riveting narrative filled with grit, grind, and the gratification of seeing a vision through to its rewarding conclusion. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

In today's episode Blake and Alex share their experience with achieving product-market fit and discuss whether or not PMF is the key to your company's success. They also share how Allsmith uses Superhuman to determine whether they have the beginnings of product-market fit. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

In this episode Blake and Alex welcome Allsmith Marketing Manager Tracy Sampanis to discuss the ad channels that Allsmith's customers spend their marketing dollars and the ROAS they've seen. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

In this episode Blake and Alex discuss ChatGPT and the future of AI in performance marketing. Find out if Blake can stump Alex in a game of Human vs. Robot - which one created the ad? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

This post is part of a Youtube/Podcast/Click-able Blog Series called “After The Exit” — the show where I interview CEO's after they've sold their startup and have them share the lessons they learned in blood about business, relationships, and life. Look — you can learn a couple tips from how they built it, but the real wisdom — the moral of the story — comes at the end — after the exit. Today I'm really excited to introduce you to Austin Allison, former founder and CEO of dotloop. Austin started selling real estate at the age of 18, and worked in residential and commercial real estate for a decade. In 2008, in his hometown of Cincinnati, he founded dotloop- a company that created software to seamlessly manage real estate transactions. Zillow acquired dotloop in 2015, and Austin continued to run dotloop as a Zillow executive until 2018. He is now cofounder and CEO of Picaso, which enables people to buy a second home through shared ownership. He lives in Napa, California with his wife Angela and dog Paris and enjoys spending time in his second home in Lake Tahoe, California. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

This post is part of a Youtube/Click-able Blog Series called “After The Exit” — the show where I interview CEO's after they've sold their startup and have them share the lessons they learned in blood about business, relationships, and life. Look — you can learn a couple tips from how they built it, but the real wisdom — the moral of the story — comes at the end — after the exit. Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my new friend - Ade Olonoh. He started his first company as a senior in college. He studied computer science and mathematics at a small school in the Indianapolis area. Prior to starting that company, he'd spent the previous four years paying his way through college as a freelance web developer. He's since started four companies so far that have exited (to varying degrees of success and failure), and a handful of other companies that he quietly shut down before any real traction. The two most prominent companies are Formstack ( a B2B SaaS company which he bootstrapped for 3 years, then raised $700k from angels, and sold a major stake to Private equity 10 yrs later) and Formspring which had insane initial growth then raised $17M from VCs and later sold for pennies on the dollar after 4 yrs. This episode is brought to you by Visible.vc - Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. It's also brought to you by Boilerplate.legal - Affordable, streamlined, venture capital-approved legal documents for your startup. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Welcome to After The Exit, the show where I interview CEOs after they've sold their startup and have them share the lesson they've learned about business, relationships, and life. Today we have two very special guests: my current co-founders Chris and Nikki Ridenour. Before they were a married couple, they started in 2012 as co-founders of LISNR - an ultrasonic proximity platform. Chris as an engineer and CTO, Nikki as a designer. After working with a ton of major artists and hosting 30K+ user activations, they raised Series A with Progress ventures. Shortly thereafter they left the company in 2014. That lead to Chris founding Casamatic and going through both the Ocean and Brandery accelerators in Cincinnati - and later raising a seed round from Accelerant. After pivoting from b2c to b2b they decided to shut down the company and return the funds to the investors. Chris then joined me as CTO of Cladwell for 2 years, while Nikki went through the Uptech startup accelerator with her startup Farmbee. Chris later joined Nikki on Farmbee after they had their first child. Now - they are current co-founders with me in Boilerplate.legal. If you're short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to https://www.allsmith.org/aftertheexit/chris-and-nikki-ridenour and you can browse a list of all of the lessons and click on the hyperlink to watch individual lessons. This episode is brought to you by [Visible.vc](http://visible.vc/) - Raise capital, update investors, and engage your team from a single platform. It's also brought to you by [Boilerplate.legal](http://boilerplate.legal) - Did you know that the average startup spends $30,000 in their first 2 years on legal costs? Save 90% of those costs on venture-capital approved legal documents using Boilerplate.legal. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

This post is part of a Youtube/Click-able Blog Series called “After The Exit” — the show where I interview CEO's after they've sold their startup and have them share the lessons they learned in blood about business, relationships, and life. Look — you can learn a couple of tips from how they built it, but the real wisdom — the moral of the story — comes at the end — after the exit. Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my friend Jonathan Smith, former CEO of Kai. Before Kai he was a Chief of Staff for a consumer research firm, then applied what he learned there to launch an app for a megachurch in Cincinnati. From there he built Kai - a conversational fitness coach powered by AI. They raised around $100K from friends and family and went through back to back accelerators - first a faith-based accelerator called Ocean, and second Techstars Chicago. Shortly after leaving Techstars they shut down the company due to a lack of fundraising traction. This episode is brought to you by Visible.vc - Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. It's also brought to you by Boilerplate.legal - Affordable, streamlined, venture capital-approved legal documents for your startup. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Welcome to After The Exit, the show where I interview CEOs after they've sold their startup and have them share the lesson they've learned about business, relationships, and life. Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my friend Bob Gilbreath former CEO of Ahalogy. Before Ahalogy, he and some friends founded and sold Bridge Worldwide, a digital agency in 2004. He then spent a year at a local venture capital firm, CincyTech. He initially was an investor and board member of Ahalogy (which was founded by Michael Wohschlaeger) then joined as a co-founder after a pivot. They raised $1mil in 2013, $3mil series A in 2014, and a few more rounds in '14 and '15. After his co-founder left they went from 55 to 30 employees, then pivoted to focus on influencer marketing. They got profitable, were named leaders in Forrester tech report, and started doubling revenue from 2016-2018. After hitting $10mil revenue run rate they were acquired by Quotient Technology for $50mil. If you're short on time and just want to browse the lessons, click here to browse a list of all of the lessons and click on the hyperlinks to watch individual lessons, or watch the entire interview here. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Today I'm really excited to talk with my friend Chris Bergman former CEO of Choremonster. Chris dropped out of high school and was art director at a skate magazine in San Diego (that I personally subscribed to at the time). He then started building websites and built an app development company called Wiseacre Digital. In 2011 they had an idea for an app that would make it fun for kids to do chores - called ChoreMonster - and with this the concept got into the Brandery Accelerator in Cincinnati, OH. After leaving the Brandery they got investment from a local VC Cincytech. They later raised a Seed round from Detroit Venture Partners in 2013 and got into the Disney Accelerator in 2014. After shopping the company around for sale in 2018 he ended up taking an acquihire deal with Verizon in 2018. If you're short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to https://www.allsmith.org/aftertheexit/chris-bergman-sold-choremonster-after-the-exit-episode-4 and you can browse a list of all of the lessons and click on the hyperlink to watch individual lessons. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Welcome to After the Exit, the show where I interview CEOs after they've sold their startup and have them share the lesson they've learned about business, about relationships, and life. Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my friend Whitney Casey, recently exited CEO of Finery. Before Finery, she oversaw product development and growth at Match.com and also lived a life as a producer and/ or correspondent at CBS, CNN, Fox, ABC, and NBC - winning two Emmy's in the process. She founded Finery - a personal stylist in your back pocket (and a competitor of my previous company, Cladwell). She raised $5mil in seed funding from NEA, partnered with Match.com, and was named CNBC's top 100 startups to watch worldwide. As she was raising Series A at a $30mil valuation privacy laws began to shift so according to public sources she opted to sell to Stitch Fix for an undisclosed amount. Hope you enjoy! If you're short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to allsmith.org/afterthexit and you can browse all of the lessons and click to a hyperlink to that specific lesson in each youtube video. This episode is brought to you by Visible.vc - Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. It's also brought to you by Boilerplate.legal - Affordable, streamlined, venture capital-approved legal documents for your startup. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Welcome to “After The Exit” — the show where I interview CEO's after they've sold their startup and have them share the lessons they learned in blood about business, relationships, and life. Look — you can learn a couple tips from how they built it, but the real wisdom — the moral of the story — comes at the end — after the exit. Today's guest is Jeremy Pryor, who sold his Explainer Video Agency, Epipheo, in September of 2020. Before starting Epipheo, he was a pastor turned entrepreneur — looking to integrate his faith, family and business all together. Epipheo was his third try at building a company. It started with a viral explainer video that Jeremy's friend made in Christmas 2008 — it was the first of its kind, so they decided to capitalize on the hype and build a brand around it. This led to them capturing their first customer — Google Wave. This resulted in hundreds of leads coming in. The kept growing to around 700 leads per month, then competition set in. The decided to brand themselves as the premium explainer video company, pushing them upstream from mostly startups to mostly large companies. As the business grew, one of the co-founders went on and started the Bible Project, and around that time Jeremy came back in as CEO for 4 years. He stepped down about a year ago and brought in the former director of Ops in as the CEO to prep the company for sale. They just closed on a sale to him and the director of design in Sept 2020 for an undisclosed amount. If you're short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to allsmith.org/afterthexit and you can browse all of the lessons and click to a hyperlink to that specific lesson in each youtube video. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Big thanks to John Stieger of Cintrifuse for hosting me and Ry Walker (founder/CTO, Astronomer.io) on this conference call on angel fundraising. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Here are my consolidated lessons learned from 7 years running a venture-backed startup, Cladwell. You can also read the Medium post/jump to the lessons you care about here: https://medium.com/@blakesmith/70-lessons-learned-82751e223c8b --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Last startup, I published the lessons I learned once each year. This time with my new startup, Boilerplate, I want to publish them weekly as I go. Subscribe here and get a weekly email where I talk about what I learned this week. Check out the Medium article here. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Last startup, I published the lessons I learned once each year. This time with my new startup, Boilerplate, I want to publish them weekly as I go. Subscribe here and get a weekly email where I talk about what I learned this week. Check out the Medium article here. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Ry Walker (Founder/CTO of Astronomer.io, co-founder of Differential) has some strong opinions about raising money from angel investors. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne-UVOmob8k --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message

Venture Capitalist Brad Zapp (Connetic Ventures) talks with Blake about how he is thinking about investing during the COVID-19 crisis. He also shares his advice / thoughts for startups depending on their stage / situation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aftertheexit/message