Each week Baremetrics Founder, Josh Pigford, sits down with a different founder to talk shop. Get honest, insightful looks in to how other founders run their businesses.
About Bijan Moallemi:A graduate of UCSD, Bijan Moallemi has nearly a decade of experience building and leading finance functions at companies like Qualcomm and Palantir. He knew CFOs deserved access to better tools, so he co-founded Mosaic Finance to build the next generation of finance software for CFOs and their teams. Today, Mosaic has achieved a 3.5x increase in customer base, raised $18.5 million in funding with investors like General Catalyst and Founders Fund, and is deployed by the fastest-growing technology companies worldwide.About Mosaic Finance:Mosaic is a compass for business leaders, providing a real-time Analytics and Planning platform that helps teams get from data to decision — faster. Historically finance teams have spent the majority of their efforts in reactive mode, wrangling data to unlock basic facts about the past. A Strategic Finance Platform like Mosaic breaks that cycle by integrating data, automating analytics, and connecting teams so they can focus on the future.Show Notes:01:00 start of Bijan Moallemi's entrepreneurial journey05:00 making the move to fast-growing tech sphere in the Bay area: facing new business challenges14:00 the importance of building good financial foundations and structures25:00 the iterative process of choosing a model for financial forecasting: testing and adjusting forecasting over the first couple of years38:00 troubleshooting and dealing with the fallout of inaccurate financial models47:00 attracting first customers early on and building the product around them to make sure that what you're building matches their needs
About Will Peng:Will Peng is the CEO and Co-Founder of Northstar, a financial wellness and benefits platform. Prior to founding Northstar, Will worked in Venture Capital and his firm was an early investor in Coinbase, Guideline, Even, and Oscar. Inspired by the positive change fintech can have on people's lives, Will set out to solve the inequality of financial guidance.About Northstar:Northstar's financial wellness program helps employees make the most of their total compensation, and helps companies support their teams at scale through onboarding, open enrollment, equity events, and more. Northstar has raised more than $10M from investors including M13, Foundation Capital, Workday Ventures, and Parade Ventures. Our employer customers include Zoom, Snap, NerdWallet, Superhuman, Virgin Orbit, and more.Show Notes:1:30 Will Peng's entrepreneurial journey9:00 starting a career as a VC analyst14:30 demonstrating proactivity when looking to switch careers26:00 finding the right career direction through intuition and self-driven learning30:00 most financial advice online is too broad to be effective - personal financial advice should begin with thinking through an individual problem as a case by case34:00 the importance of having difficult conversations44:00 developing an interest in FinTech infrastructure as an Asian-American immigrant45:00 combating the culture of shame around personal finances49:00 understanding how to handle stock options and making other large financial decisions
About Jon Penland:With 6+ years of experience working remotely in the technology space, and 10+ years working with customer-facing teams across multiple industries, Jon stepped into the role of Chief Operating Officer at Kinsta, where his responsibilities include hiring and onboarding as Kinsta has grown from a team of 4 to a team of more than 250 worldwide. While he didn't write his first line of HTML until he was 25 years old, within 3 years Jon was working full-time in technology, first as a freelance writer for technical websites and eventually as a Support Engineer at Kinsta. From there, he moved into management roles, initially as Chief Customer Officer and now as the COO. When he's not driving company-wide strategy and finding ways to help our distributed team stay connected, Jon can be found in rural Georgia with his wife and five kids. You can find him at @jonrichpen on Twitter.About Kinsta:Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider that makes running your site simple. Our services are powered by cutting-edge technology like Google Cloud Platform and Cloudflare, and we take support seriously. Whether you run a website, online shop, agency, or enterprise, Kinsta's premium hosting offers top performance. At our core, we're a group of WordPress experts on a mission to make the best hosting platform the world has ever seen. Join the growing club of 23,000+companies who made the switch to better, faster hosting at kinsta.com.
About Douwe Mann:Born and raised in the Netherlands, Douwe Maan was introduced to computers early by his father, and picked up programming at the age of nine. While studying at Utrecht University, Douwe co-founded a SaaS startup that grew to $150k in ARR, which led to him joining GitLab in 2015 as employee number 10 after landing the parents of its CEO as customers. After graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Douwe spent six months traveling the world, visiting and working with 49 colleagues in 14 countries on 5 continents. In early 2020, Douwe took over as the General Manager of GitLab's internal Meltano project, which quickly gained traction and spun out of GitLab in early 2021 to become an independent startup under Douwe's leadership. Douwe currently lives in Mexico City with his wife, who he met while traveling the world, and their two cats.About Meltano:Meltano is an open source data operations platform that supports data integration connectors for over 300 sources and destinations. Originally an internal project within GitLab, Meltano spun out in early 2020 to become an independent startup with $4.2 million in seed funding from investors, led by Alphabet's GV. Today, Meltano has thousands of active monthly projects and is looking to bring the benefits of open source data integration and DataOps to a wider audience.
About Bryan Clayton:Bryan is CEO and co-founder of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 200,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day. Before starting GreenPal, Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc. which had a $10 million annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013. In 2020 GreenPal generated $20 million in annual revenue.About GreenPal:GreenPal is an online marketplace connecting homeowners with lawn mowing professionals that want their business. Get 5 bids in minutes, pick the pro you want, and schedule and pay all online or with the mobile app. Founded by landscaping professionals to make the lawn care industry easier and more efficient for homeowners and vendors. Show Notes:01:15 Growing a high school job into a highly successful medium-size business5:45 Hiring the right number of employees6:30 Developing methods to minimize wasting time and other resources10:30 Calculating how much profit every employee adds, and what the diminishing margin of return for manpower is11:10 Working in the business vs. working on the business – making time for strategizing13:20 Applying blue-collar business learnings to tech entrepreneurship15:00 Triaging problems and focusing 100% of resources on the current major issues, one at a time16:30 Doubling down on what's already working, rather than fixing what's not working, especially when it comes to customer acquisition19:20 Inviting frictionless feedback and doing customer support yourself as a founder: closing the gap between customer logic and founder logic20:20 Thinking about what you can be the best in the world at, and focusing all business resources on that one thing25:20 Understanding your value to your customers: sometimes it's less about the actual service itself, and more about selling people back their time27:30 As a business that connects customers to contractors, catering to both sets of needs: customers want easy access to services, vendors want a sticky platform that enables fast payments, repeat business, marketing automation etc29:15 Creating incentives for vendors to perform well starts with accountability: providing performance metrics such as number of repeat bookings, reliability and quality ratings etc36:20 Identifying business problems and development goals, and implementing weekly strategies for success44:30 Creating one or two highly specific goals and getting your whole team to commit to them
About Aran:Aran Khanna has been labeled many things. Thought leader. Innovator. And (at times) troublemaker. Now, in his search to give technological control back to developers and business leaders, he's added cloud management entrepreneur to that list as the Co-Founder & CEO of Archera, a company that helps organizations find cloud solutions that fit their companies. About Archera:Archera uses machine learning to help organizations automate & de-risk their cloud strategies. The company's goal is to put control back into the hands of developers and business leaders so they can use the resources they need when they need them, without hemorrhaging time and money. Founder Chats listeners get a free demo of Archera. Claim your perk.
Show Notes:00:46 Starting your first business03:30 As a company, how do you provide value to your employees? Is offering high commissions sustainable?06:30 Losing a business isn't the end of the world, there's no shame in taking a job while you regroup09:20 Outsourcing labor in the days before Upwork etc11:25 Getting the mojo back: starting a second business after the first one failed13:30 Discovering a market for listing online businesses14:55 Collaborative team sales vs. individual sales - sharing sales commissions across the whole team16:00 How do you incentivize your team to act in the best interest of your company?18:35 Using equity and open strategy meetings to encourage all employees to work towards your company's long-term success28:45 How to effectively implement sales goals: top down vs. bottom up approach32:20 Forecasting problems of the future to discover a new market niche34:00 Know what kind of entrepreneur you are and build a team with complementary skill sets and interests36:00 Challenges of working with a remote team based across the globe40:55 The value of community - sharing successes and failures with trusted business peers48:55 Making decisions on data vs. on gut52:10 Taking over an established business with an established team53:30 Differences between a founder-led business vs. a private equity-led business59:45 When to sell a SaaS business, why, and how
About Matija Kovač:Matija Kovač is the co-founder and head of development at Taia Translations, a company that bridges the gap between language barriers with the help of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.About Taia Translations:Taia Translations is a modern translation platform, where we help companies translate their documents, websites, and other content with AI-assisted, human-perfected translations. If advanced neural machine translation is good enough, you can get your files translated, with formatting intact, in just a few seconds. But when you need a professional touch, you can order from a range of services, right inside the app.
About Reed-McGinley-Stempel:Reed is the Co-Founder and CEO of Stytch, a platform for passwordless authentication that makes it simple for apps and websites to retire the password.Before founding Stytch, Reed joined Plaid as one of their first 100 employees. He remained with them until they grew to a $5B+ valuation.With a selection of new products about to hit the market, Stytch is prepped to spearhead the transition to a passwordless future.About Stytch:Stytch improves security and user experience with passwordless authentication. Stytch is building the developer platform for authentication to enable teams to easily build experiences that delight their users.
About Benn Stancil: Benn Stancil is cofounder and Chief Analyst at Mode Analytics, a company building collaborative tools for data scientists and analysts. Benn is responsible for overseeing Mode's internal analytics efforts, and is also an active contributor to the data science community. In addition, Benn provides strategic oversight and guidance to Mode's product direction as a member of the product leadership team.To stay up to date with Benn's writing on the modern data experience, check out his substack. About Mode: Mode helps businesses grow faster by speeding up answers to complex business problems and making the process more collaborative, so that everyone can build on the work of data analysts. The Mode platform combines the best elements of Business Intelligence (ABI), Data Science (DS) and Machine Learning (ML) to empower data teams to answer impactful questions and collaborate on analysis across a range of business functions. In 2021, Mode has added a number of premiere enterprise companies to its customer base, which now includes Anheuser Busch, Bloomberg, Capital One, Conde Nast, Doordash, Lyft, Meredith Publishing, VMWare, and Zillow, among others. At this point, 52% of the Forbes 500 have turned to Mode for help with data-driven decision making.
About Mike Potter: Mike Potter is the co-founder and CEO of Rewind, the leading data backup and recovery provider for cloud and SaaS data. While studying Mechanical Engineering at McMaster University, Mike began his start-up career as the founder of InTheHack.com, one of the most popular sporting websites in Canada. Since founding Rewind in 2015, Mike has focused on building a company culture that values and respects employees. When Mike isn't running backups, he can usually be found assembling LEGOs with his kids or walking his dogs.About Rewind: Since 2015, Rewind has been on a mission to help businesses protect their SaaS and cloud data. Today, over 100,000 customers in more than 100 countries use Rewind's top-reviewed apps and support to ensure their software-as-a-service applications run uninterrupted. The Rewind platform enables companies to back up, restore, and copy the critical data that drives their business.About Baremetrics: Baremetrics provides real-time subscription metrics for teams built with Stripe, Shopify Partners, Braintree, Recurly, Chargebee, Google Play, and App Store Connect. In addition to providing metrics, Baremetrics is the industry leader in SaaS growth tools that prevent churn and help you make more. Start a free trial of Baremetrics today: https://app.baremetrics.com/users/sign_up
About Jeff Solomon:Jeff is a 6x founder and has been in the startup scene for most of his career. He has done just about every role from CEO to Chief Janitor, Head of Product to Marketing Lead.He has deep expertise in Saas, Content Marketing, SEO, Mobile Apps, Startup Accelerators, Lead Generation, UX, Angel & Seed Funding, B2B Software, Enterprise Sales and Bootstrapping. And he's been writing content on these topics for most of his career.Jeff co-founded Amplify, Startup Accelerator (5 funds, $50MM raised, 10x exits) and Velocify (sold in 2017 for $128MM). He has raised $35MM+ in venture capital. And he's had one startup fail miserably. He's angel invested in a dozen companies. Moreover, Jeff has seen over 3,000 startups apply to Amplify and been pitched by hundreds of entrepreneurs. And he's helped raise more than $50MM in venture funding for his companies.Jeff is currently growing Markup Hero, a screenshot & annotation SaaS tool and has been teaching high school entrepreneurship for 6 years. He recently launched a comprehensive online customer development course available on Udemy and is one of the top 10 expert advisors on the popular advisor platforms Clarity.fm with over 500 calls and 350+ 5-star reviews. About Markup Hero:Capture ideas, communicate clearly, and save time with Markup Hero a file annotation and screenshot tool. All you need without the bloat; made for Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome and Mobile Web.Founder Chats listeners get 3 months free on an annual plan with the code X84BB9
About Jeroen Corthout:Jeroen is the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, a simply powerful CRM that automates data to build better relationships and make more sales. It's a fast, visual and easy-to-use sales machine. Salesflare is the most popular CRM ever on both Product Hunt and AppSumo. It also got featured on TechCrunch and Entrepreneur.com. Prior to Salesflare, Jeroen was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing and sales.About Salesflare:Salesflare is the intelligent CRM startups and small businesses love to use. It's a zero-input sales pipeline tool that thinks and works for its user, not the other way around. No more manual data entry. Salesflare fills out your address book and keeps track of all interactions with the people you're in contact with. It takes data from social media, company databases, phone, email, calendar and hands it to you in automated customer timelines that tell you everything you need to know. Jeroen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/https://salesflare.com/www. baremetrics.comhttps://baremetrics.com/founder-chats
About André Monteiro:André is the co-founder and CTO of Verb Energy. He's a NY-based entrepreneur that leads the tech team at Verb Energy, one of the fastest growing food and beverage brands in the country. André and his team have built a suite of internal tools like a CRM and workflow orchestrator that enable their team to personalize and manage an SMS-based customer journey at scale. About Verb Energy:At Verb, our mission is to energize all humans everywhere. We believe there is nothing more powerful than human energy, and that when a person feels their best, they can do amazing things. We started Verb to make people feel incredible by delivering energy in a healthy, convenient, and delightful way, and now we are one of the fastest growing food and beverage brands in the country. We make delicious energy products that we sell uniquely through text message and online. www.verbenergy.cowww. baremetrics.com www.baremetrics.com/founder-chats
About Rand Fishkin: Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of audience research software startup, SparkToro. He's dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand's not working, he's usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you bribe him with great pasta or remarkable cocktails, he'll happily pull back the curtain on big tech's dark secrets. About SparkToro:SparkToro® is a software company founded by Casey Henry & Rand Fishkin. We believe high quality market research and audience intelligence should be available to everyone, not just tech giants and those with huge budgets. Learn more about audience intelligence, marketing, and the future of work at the SparkToro Blog: https://sparktoro.com/www. baremetrics.com www.baremetrics.com/founder-chats
In this episode, we talk about Spencer's start in investment banking, his decision to leave banking & start a SaaS, and how he pivoted multiple times to find product market fit.
About Craig Hewitt: Craig is the founder of Castos, where he leads of team of 15 extremely talented individuals that are crafting the best podcasting platform in the industry. He's a husband to an amazing wife, and father to two incredible children. About Castos:Castos is a full-service podcast hosting, distribution, and analytics platform, with an industry-leading production service built right in. In our platform, you can easily create, promote, and distribute your podcast and grow your audience. Learn more about starting and growing a podcast at the Castos Blog: https://castos.com/blog/www.castos.comwww.baremetrics.comwww.baremetrics.com/founder-chats
About Marc Brown:Marc Brown is the founder of Byta. Marc got his start in music at murderecords, Canada's premier artist-owned label during the mid 90s. After working in A&R at the legendary London indie Creation Records, then at Alan McGee's Poptones, Marc started his own boutique UK radio promotion company off the back of his success with The Hives. For over 10 years Marc worked with an impressive list of indie rock luminaries including Wilco, Bloc Party, Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes, Spoon and Refused as well as legends such as Tom Waits, Yoko Ono, Booker T and Mavis Staples. About Byta: Byta enables sending and receiving of digital audio in a clean, simple and secure way. Built for everyone working with music today, Byta is inspired by Marc's time spent as a radio plugger based in London, UK in the early 00's.Links to articles mentioned by Marc during the interview:Decentralized tension- https://byta.com/blog/viznomics/music-is-different-decentralised-tension/Here to there - https://byta.com/blog/viznomics/where-is-there/Rules too be Free - https://byta.com/blog/viznomics/rules-to-be-free/
ABOUT PETER SCHOENKE:Peter Schoenke is the co-founder and President of RotoWire.com, a leading content and technology provider to fantasy sports consumers and media companies including ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, FanDuel, DraftKings and Sirius XM Radio. Mr. Schoenke is also a board member of the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association, where he heads up lobbying and government affairs and served more than a decade as Chairman. Mr. Schoenke has led the FSGA's efforts to fully legalize fantasy sports in all 50 states which has resulted in the passage of 25 state laws since 2012. He has testified in Congress and 10 state legislatures in support of fantasy sports and sports betting legislation. In 2011, Mr. Schoenke was elected to the hall of fame for both the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and Fantasy Sports Writers Association for his contribution to the growth of the industry. ABOUT ROTOWIRE:RotoWire is a leading content and technology provider to fantasy sports consumers and media companies including ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, FanDuel, DraftKings and Sirius XM Radio. Founded in 1997, RotoWire has been a pioneer in fantasy sports developing industry staples such as player notes and DFS lineup optimizers, while winning more writing and industry awards than any other company. https://www.rotowire.com https://www.baremetrics.comhttps://baremetrics.com/founder-chats
ABOUT SANTI:Santi Bibiloni is a Silicon Valley-based technology entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO at COR, an AI Management Software that serves Worldwide top Agencies and Consultants. Prior to COR he founded Balloon Group, one of Argentina's fastest-growing digital agencies, among other businesses. Today he also mentors on Sales & Fundraising in 500 Startups. ABOUT COR:COR is the Next-Generation Solution for Creative and Professional Teams that Intelligently Suggests How to Manage your Projects, Teams, and Finances, all in one tool. ABOUT BAREMETRICS: Baremetrics is the all-in-one metrics, forecasting, analytics, insights and engagement tool for teams using Stripe, Braintree, Chargify, Recurly and more. ABOUT FOUNDER CHATS:Founder Chats is a podcast about starting and growing tech companies, as told candidly by the founders behind them.
Founder Chats is back! In this episode, we talk with Brian Parks, Founder and Managing Partner of Bigfoot Capital. Hear his story of transitioning from working at a local bank to running a tech company, his tips on managing your capital stack, and a whole lot more.Curious about you what heard? Check out the below links to learn more. Bigfoot Capital Growth oriented loans for B2B SaaS companies with $1.5M+ ARR. Baremetrics Metrics, forecasting, analytics, insights and engagement tools for teams using Stripe, Braintree, Chargify, Recurly and more. Founder Chats A podcast about starting and growing tech companies, as told candidly by the founders behind them.
This week I talk with Jeff Sheldon, Founder of Ugmonk! In this episode we talk about being a creative kid, doing t-shirt design contests, launching his own brand, working with family, staying small on purpose, having an extremely successful kickstarter campaign, turning down opportunity, the future of Ugmonk and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://ugmonk.com](https://ugmonk.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Mike Cheung, Founder of Tinkering Monkey! In this episode we talk about being a maker as a kid, design school, getting laid off, creating 1000 wooden iPad stands by hand, making connections to create signage for huge tech companies, how to balance tools versus skills and a lot more!! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://tinkeringmonkey.com](https://tinkeringmonkey.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Ankur Nagpal, Founder of Teachable! In this episode we talk about living in the Middle East, moving to America at 17, starting a Facebook apps business making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, building on platforms vs creating platforms, reverse engineering growth and a lot more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://teachable.com](https://teachable.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Nick Francis, Founder of HelpScout! In this episode we talk about being an entrepreneur as a kid, how a laptop change Nick's world, working in the music industry, working with his co-founders for six years before starting HelpScout, becoming a B-Corp, focusing on culture and brand and so much more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - https://helpscout.com - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Khash Sajadi, Founder of Cloud66! In this episode we talk about growing up in Iran, how hobby electronics became a conduit for building software, selling software as a teenager to realtors and dentists, learning the value of unit economics, the importance of scheduling your day and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://cloud66.com](https://cloud66.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Zac Smith, Founder of Packet! In this episode we talk about being a kid entrepreneur, dropping out of school to play music, going to Juilliard, stumbling upon cloud hosting, starting an infrastructure business and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://packet.com](https://packet.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Hiten Shah, Founder of CrazyEgg, Kissmetrics, FYI and lots of other things! In this episode we talk about his first businesses (which involved frat party arbitrage), building companies with complex technology problems, a lawsuit that drug on for years, how to prioritize time, using customer love as a growth metric and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://usefyi.com](https://usefyi.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Rand Fishkin, Founder of Moz & SparkToro! In this episode we talk about transparency, making community a part of your business, producing content, alternatives to the typical VC route of funding, writing a book, what's coming with SparkToro and a whole lot more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://sparktoro.com](https://sparktoro.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Claire Lew, Founder of Know Your Team, where they build software and and produce resources to help you become a better manager! In this episode we talk about culture shock of moving a lot as a kid, how painting and art play a part in being a better leader, how an intervention at her first company led to what she's doing today, how a random meeting with the guys at Basecamp led to her becoming the CEO of Know Your Team and a whole lot more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://knowyourteam.com](https://knowyourteam.com/) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Benjy Boxer, Founder of Parsec, a game streaming company! In this episode we talk about gaining startup experience working at other companies, managing risk, maintaining personal momentum, the importance of celebrating small wins, building a consumer-facing technology company and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://parsecgaming.com](https://parsecgaming.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Steli Efti, Founder of Close.io! In this episode we talk about growing up as an immigrant kid in a factory town, discovering books at 16, starting a slew of businesses like a DVD rental company and a hypnosis hotline, discovering sales, building a remote team and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://close.io](https://close.io) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Leah Culver, Founder of Breaker! In this episode we talk about starting companies, jumping in to things you have no idea how to do, how social networks have been a part of much of Leah's work, the resurgence of podcasting and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://breaker.audio](https://breaker.audio) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with…myself! This was a live-streamed episode where I walked through the entirety of my past 15 years of business, in which I've started, built, and shut down over 50 different projects! I walked through how that many projects came to be, why I started each, how I failed at most of them and the stories behind how many of them got sold and a lot more! I also did an extensive Q&A session at the end. Hope you enjoy!
This week I talk with John Sheehan, Founder of Runscope! This episode is slightly different from previous episodes in that we quickly jump in to the story of Runscope itself. Runscope's story includes running out of money, laying off their entire staff, going through an acquisition two separate times, buying back shares from investors and all sorts of fun step in between! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://www.runscope.com](https://www.runscope.com/) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Ryan Hoover, Founder of Product Hunt! In this episode we talk about growing up in Oregon, how video games shaped his future, the origins of Product Hunt, how Ryan was intentional about keeping Product Hunt a positive community, mistakes he's made along the way and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [http://producthunt.com](http://producthunt.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Ryan Carson, Founder of Treehouse! In this episode we talk about moving to England on a whim, learning how to manage a team, starting a conference company, how Ryan found his true calling, what's wrong with education today and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [http://teamtreehouse.com](http://teamtreehouse.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Jesse Genet, Founder of Lumi! In this episode we talk about being a tinkerer as a kid, getting in to screen printing in high school and how that has been a common thread in every business for 15 years, being on Shark Tank, shutting down a successful business, the role of printing processes in human history and more. - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - http://lumi.com - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Rob Walling, Founder of Drip! In this episode we talk about growing up in the country, learning programming, getting in to entrepreneurship as a kid, buying existing businesses and improving them, the origin of Drip and its acquisition by LeadPages and more! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://drip.com](https://drip.com) - [http://robwalling.com](http://robwalling.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Eoghan McCabe, Co-Founder of Intercom! In this episode we talk about creativity, exploration of knowledge, how Eoghan and his co-founders met, the full story of how Intercom got started, how the problem they're solving has changed over the past 7 years and more. - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - https://intercom.com - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Zach Klein, Founder of Vimeo & DIY! In this episode we talk about the origin stories and how Zach got involved with CollegeHumor, BustedTees, Vimeo, [DIY.org](http://diy.org) and JAM, how Zach started an online reptile pet store as a high school kid, how everything he's done has a common thread that ties back to his days spent on AOL growing up and a lot more. Enjoy! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - http://diy.org - http://jam.com - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Joel Gascoigne, Founder of Buffer! In this episode we talk about how gaming ultimately led to interest in technology, how his time in university introduced him to startups, how Buffer got its start, how transparency became part of the fabric of their company, how Joel's approach to building Buffer has changed drastically and a lot more! Enjoy! - [http://founderchats.com](http://founderchats.com/) - [https://buffer.com](https://buffer.com) - [https://baremetrics.com](https://baremetrics.com/)
This week I talk with Amit Gupta, Founder of Photojojo and a dozen other things! We talk about dropping out of college, working with Seth Godin, starting Photojojo, being diagnosed with leukemia, beating the 1:20,000 odds of finding a stem cell donor, how community has played a role in business in life and what Amit is up to now! - http://founderchats.com - http://amitgupta.com - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Kyle Racki, Founder of Proposify! We talk about Kyle’s journey from quiet, artsy kid in high school to founder of a company aiming to hit $10M in annual revenue this year! Hear how focusing on a side project ultimately took a year and a half of no growth to doubling customers every month and lots of other interesting bits along the way. - http://founderchats.com - https://www.proposify.com - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Cat Noone, Founder of Iris! We talk about growing up in Brooklyn, getting your first computer, pursuing medicine and then dropping out of college, having an advisor copy your product, being an entrepreneur and a parent and lot more! Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - http://getiris.co - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Sahil Lavingia, Founder of Gumroad! In this episode we talk about dropping out of college, being the second hire at Pinterest, the history of Gumroad, raising millions of dollars, laying off 75% of the team, profitability, the future of work and more! Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - https://gumroad.com - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Luke Beard, Founder of Exposure, a visual storytelling platform! In this episode we talk about moving from a small town in England to San Francisco on a whim, working on products like Hipstamatic, Buffer and Zerply and transitioning from product designer to product founder. Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - https://exposure.co - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Mathilde Collin, Founder of Front. Front is a shared inbox for teams used by thousands of companies like Shopify, HubSpot, Stripe and Mailchimp. We talk about growing up in France, what inspired her start Front, what business school didn’t teach her, what her experience with Y Combinator was like, early growth tactics and more! Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - https://frontapp.com - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Brad Smith, Founder of Virb and CEO of Simplecast, among many other things. Brad’s started and been involved with so many things it’s hard to cover them all! In this episode we talk about how he started a design agency out of the ashes of a web division inside a pager company, starting a social network, taking big bets with a massive company pivot, getting acquired, losing your company literally overnight, the future of podcasting and so much more. Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - https://simplecast.com - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Ashley Baxter, Founder of With Jack. We talk about growing up in Scotland, inheriting her dad’s insurance company, the role of design in building great products, using your audience to influence the types of businesses you start and lots more! Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - https://withjack.co.uk - http://iamashley.co.uk/newsletter - https://baremetrics.com
This week I talk with Amir Salihefendic, Founder of of Doist, which makes Todoist and Twist! Amir and I talk about growing up in Bosnia, being a refugee in Denmark and how that’s influenced his views on building a remote company, along with building multiple products to solve a large problem plus so much more. Enjoy! - http://founderchats.com - http://doist.com - http://todoist.com - http://twistapp.com - https://baremetrics.com
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