Product Hunt Radio

On this episode Abadesi talks to Josh Howarth, co-founder of Exploding Topics.In this episode they talk about...His early days as a maker and what he would change if he could do things over again“It’s not the case that you build it and they will come. It took me two months to build and then I was like, now what? I hadn’t thought at all about marketing channels.”Josh talks about one of the projects that he created at the start of his journey to becoming a maker. He worked on a website plugin that he had seen other people implement where you spun a wheel to see what kind of discount code you would get for entering your email.He says that he didn’t realize how difficult getting distribution for the plugin would be and spent a lot of his time after releasing it reaching out to different people trying to get business to sign up. He achieved some revenue from it but it seemed to quickly fizzle out.“You can usually tell pretty quickly whether it will work or not if you’re putting it out there for people to see. I probably should have quit sooner, like after two months instead of six on my previous project.”He realized that he didn’t have any passion for the project and that it would have been better to work on something that he cared deeply about. In hindsight, he also realized that he spent too much time working on it when it was fairly clear that it would always be a slog to try to keep the revenue up.“If the goal is to run your own business, you should go for a space that you’re interested in because someone else who is passionate about it will beat you in the end.”The genesis and evolution of Exploding Topics and the lessons he’s learned through the process“It’s 100 times easier to bootstrap a profitable online business if you ride one of these big market trends. You will grow with the opportunity and the competition won’t be too fierce either. That’s when I started to build a project that would spot these trends, to scratch my own itch.”His experience with his previous project led him to research emerging trends that he could potentially build an online business out of. He did a lot of research and turned his research project into a web app when he realized that the results might be of use to other people as well.“I didn’t intend for it to become a product in itself but I decided I had solved this problem for me, I may as well turn it into a web app and see if other people are interested in it.”He started to post the project on the web with lists of the top trends that he was seeing at the time, which proved to be very interesting to people. One day his site was near the top of Hacker News when his database went down, leading him to scramble to upgrade to a paid solution before losing all the traffic that he was getting.He explains what he learned and what he would have done differently with Exploding Topics if he was starting over again.“You can feel it when you have something that people like and that is taking off. With the with the previous SaaS app it felt like I was pushing like a boulder uphill, but this thing was like snowball, everywhere I posted it people loved it and it just kept growing and growing.”How writing updates kept him accountable as a solo founder and his advice for finding a co-founder you can work well with“Make sure there’s a good co-founder fit, make sure that you know them and they’re going to bring a lot.”Josh says that it was very gratifying to see people use Exploding Topics to create their own sites based on emerging trends. This was what he had hoped to do with his original project with the web plugin.He says that it was important as a solo founder to write updates on Medium for his users. This encouraged him to make sure that he was making progress consistently on the site, because he needed to show his users and readers that he was always working on it. He also heard a lot of useful feedback from users who would use the site and sometimes even from people who were simply following his journey.He ended up taking on a co-founder for Exploding Topics via the sale of his site. He explains what the most important attributes in a co-founder are and why he and his co-founder work well together.“Writing updates and keeping people updated on your progress is fantastic as a sole founder because it keeps you accountable. It also helps to clarify your thoughts and direction. It helps to get support from other people who reach out to offer support, advice and guidance.”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Matthew Paul, software product designer, researcher, and front-end engineer. He’s a former product designer at InVision, he’s worked on software and design systems at IBM, and has designed prototypes at Apple.In this episode they talk about...The open-source design project he’s working on, and how to make good design more accessible“As a designer you always have to bring the customer back to the conversation, and you have to invite the engineers, product directors, VPs, into your conversations with the customers, and let them hear what the customers have to say.”Matthew points out that type is being used on screens in more and more places these days, including in non-traditional places like in heads-up displays in vehicles and in VR headsets. He says that it’s important to make sure that good type is accessible to everyone, everywhere, and explains how the project he’s working on will enable that.Common design pitfalls to avoid and advice for working with designers“Seriously, don’t be afraid to ask for help. At a decent company, at a decent place, no one’s gonna get dinged for asking for help. You’re going to get dinged, not right away, but you’re going to get dinged if you don’t. You just end up burning out or not doing a good job at any of the things.”He runs through a bunch of different common mistakes that people make when they’re designing a product or working with a design team. He walks through some projects in the past that he’s been a part of that didn’t work out as intended and what the key issues turned out to be on those teams.“Don’t run a design sprint unless you actually know what it is and how to do it and have a plan to make it successful.”He explains the right ratio of designers to software engineers, saying that you want to usually have one designer for every eight software engineers. He also talks about the pitfalls of running a design sprint without really knowing what you’re doing. He also talks about what it means to be “neuro-atypical” and why we need more inclusion of different thinking, learning, and communication styles in the workplace.“They expect them to be a certain person, to fit a certain mold, to have good executive functioning, to have a set of cognitive processes that allow you to work in a linear fashion. The fact is, our brains are not all built that way. That’s neurodiversity.”How he’s working on his personal development and where he learns the most“I try to meet new people. I literally have gotten every single job that I’ve ever had through Twitter, just through them reaching out to me, me reaching out to them, and introductions happening that way.” Matthew explains the evolution in his thinking over time on how best to keep up with the latest trends in design and says that he used to follow all the blogs very closely when he was younger but has moved away from that as he’s grown as a designer.He offers a book recommendation if you’re interested in getting into typography, and says that he learns the most from other people. He tries to travel often to be exposed to new people and talk to them in person about what they’re working on.“I think I just learn the most from meeting new people and hearing what they’re working on — taking a little spark of what they’re working on and seeing if I can include that in my work.”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin Mobile for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Pieter Levels, founder of Nomad List, a global community of international travellers working around the world, RemoteOK, a job board for remote jobs, and Hoodmaps, a unique neighborhood map app.In this episode they talk about...Bootstrapping versus VC, and why he doesn’t want to build a team around his products“I don’t want to lose my skills. If I stop making stuff and become a manger, I’m going to learn a new skills but I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative person. I get happy from making stuff that works and people use.”Pieter says that he originally thought about creating a venture-backed business, which was going to be a proto-Uber in Amsterdam, before he pivoted to bootstrapping businesses. They discuss the questionable ethics of big venture-backed businesses who have often had to compromise on their values to get really big, really fast. He says that he works with one other person on his products but otherwise works on them all on his own — and he likes it that way. He explains why he doesn’t want to become a manager and instead prefers to keep working on his current products and potential new ones on his own, instead of delegating them to someone else once they’ve become successful.The difference between creating a website and building a community, and how to think about charging for your product“It’s psychologically difficult to charge people money.”He talks about how Nomad List has evolved over time and the features he has added to the site. He explains how it transformed from a website to a community. He breaks down the benefits of a community in expanding the reach of a movement and the intangibles that a community brings with it.He talks about how he got over the psychological barriers to charging money for access to a community, and says that at one time he explained to a member that he was even somewhat embarrassed to be charging, though now he hears from people all the time about the value that it brings to their lives. He also talks about the difficulty of managing and moderating a community.What the future of remote work and the digital nomad lifestyle will look like“You start off as a nomad thinking that you are going to travel the world forever but you go insane if you travel too fast.”Pieter talks about the evolution of the digital nomad lifestyle from its infancy to now, and why it’s being talked about more than ever. He says that it was at one time a somewhat fringe movement and that he never expected it to expand like it has. He says that creating the community around the lifestyle has helped accelerate its acceptance in mainstream culture and has resulted in there being more resources than ever for digital nomads.He says that in time we won’t be calling it nomadism anymore, it will just be something that becomes a normal part of life as remote work gains more and more acceptance. He says that eventually “digital nomadism” will become a term like “netizens” (an early term for people who used the internet) that we don’t use anymore, because it is so pervasive, just like the internet has become.“I flew less than my Dutch friends last year. Travel’s really fun but it’s more about finding a place where you feel better than where you were born and grew up.”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin Mobile for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Waseem Daher, founder and CEO of Pilot. Pilot is bringing bookkeeping into the modern age. He has started (and sold!) two other companies prior to Pilot.In this episode they talk about...The story of starting Pilot and what Waseem learned from his two previous companies“The end-to-end solution is really what made the business work. We are going to be your bookkeeper, your finance team, rather than sell you software.”The story of Pilot goes back to his first company, where they tried to do their books themselves, but realized how tedious it was and how much could be automated. He explains why he tries to have a more focused approach to company-building now:“I try to have a better sense of what is actually important. We were so worried about all of the stuff that we thought represented an existential threat but in practice literally zero of those things mattered. Of all the things I remember agonizing about, none of them had any actual effect on the business.”He also says that he makes sure to take time to rest and recharge, rather than working all the time:“In the first company we worked all the time, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. Despite having worked that long, there were Saturdays where I still felt behind so I worked then as well, and every time I did that, it was always a mistake.”When it makes sense to take venture capital versus bootstrap a business“There’s a very pervasive and harmful narrative in Silicon Valley that the VC way is the only way to do it. I actually think the VC way is the unnecessarily difficult or hard way.”Waseem explains how to think about starting a company and talks about the principles to keep in mind when you’re thinking about the risk and reward of different approaches:“If your objective is wealth creation, you should not start a startup, you should go work on Wall Street or something. The easiest way to make $10M is to own 100% of a company that’s worth $10M, not to own 1% of a company that’s worth $1B.”He says that “lifestyle is not a bad word” and that as a founder you don’t need to care about serving a massive market unless you’ve taken venture capital funding.“Venture capital is not right for 99% of businesses. You have to be building something that is targeting a gigantic market to have a company worth billions of dollars doing hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue.”How to think about a potential acquisition“By raising a bunch of institutional capital, you’re prevented from taking exits that are otherwise very good or very profitable.”Waseem shares what he’s learned from two previous exits, one to Oracle and the other to Dropbox. He says that it’s most important to think about how you and your company will mesh with the acquirer and choose the offer that provides the best fit rather than the highest dollar amount. He says that if the fit is good, you will create much more value through the relationship together than the value of the acquisition.“Look at the acquisition as the start of a new relationship, not the end of something.”How Waseem stays productiveHe explains that he keeps most of his apps on his phone in folders rather than on his home screen. This creates friction and ensures that he has to be intentional about what exactly he is doing when he takes out his phone.He also explains exactly how to write emails that get responses from busy people:“Craft something that is really short, that is to the point, and that has a very crisp and clear call-to-action at the end of the email. Ideally the call-to-action is as easy to respond to as possible.”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin Mobile for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Ethan Eismann, VP of Design at Slack. He has previously worked on flagship products at Google, Uber, and Airbnb, as well as at Adobe back when Flash was still a thing!In this episode they talk about...The consumerization of the enterprise and bringing personality to software“You need somebody who is really able to think of your customers first and who can translate your customers’ perspective into your own unique tone and personality.”Ethan talks about the trend of the “consumerization” of the enterprise, why workers are demanding better software, and how Slack has played a role in the trend. He talks about how they’ve brought some personality to software that is typically utilitarian, to the delight of millions of users. Ethan tells the story of the pivot that Slack made from being a gaming company called Glitch to a communication tool for the enterprise. He also talks about how one of the early employees helped to shape the unique personality that Slack has today.The design philosophy at Slack and how they use hypotheses in designing their products“It’s critically important to have a perspective on what your customers need. They will often tell you where to focus. They have these unsatisfied needs and deep wants and desires. They will tell you the path.”Ethan breaks down the design philosophy at Slack, explaining some of the unique processes that they use to develop software. He says that they iterate rapidly, and are constantly testing new features on their own live data from their internal Slack channels. He says that they encourage their engineering teams to contribute design ideas as well. “We try to keep a history of our prototypes and we document the learning that comes along with each prototype. We have a library of the past experiments that we’ve tried and what we’ve learned.”He explains their process for testing their hypotheses and how they determine what to do based on the results of their experiments. He says that sometimes they find unexpected results which change the direction of their efforts.“When you're thinking about your product, consider that people only have so many cognitive calories to spend at any given moment. If you have a complex product that could be okay, as long as you break it down into simple concepts that people can consume.”Customer-centric design and what it means to communicate energy as well as information“Fundamentally, the companies that have been most successful are the ones that have prioritized their customers. They’re always making time every week to get closer to customers. Having a customer-centric company means that everyone has a perspective because everyone in the company is spending time with them.”Ethan talks about the importance of listening closely to what your customers have to say. He says that at Slack they are constantly co-creating with their users. He breaks down exactly how they do this, including how they uses shared channels to interface with power users around the world who are always sharing feedback and helping them shape the direction of the product. He also breaks down why communication is not only about information, how they are using things like emojis to communicate energy in addition to information, and how this is allowing workers to express their unique voice.“Communication is information as well as energy. Software tools are often great at allowing you to create information but don’t always let you express energy. We try to design in a way that allows individual personalities to shine.”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin, Safety Wing, and Trulioo for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Michelle Bacharach, founder and CEO of FINDMINE, a retail technology company that uses machine learning to scale the currently manual and tedious process of product curation. They are a fast-growing company with clients like Adidas, Perry Ellis, and Callaway.In this episode they talk about...What led Michelle to found FINDMINE, and how they’re changing the buying experience“We’re trying to close the information gap between the customer, who isn’t an expert on what they’re buying, and the brand, who is an expert at what they’re selling. The customer gets better information and spends more money and the brand is happier because they make more revenue and they save time."The inspiration for FINDMINE came from Michelle’s experiences as a shopper. She says that she struggled with buying things that might have looked intriguing at the point of purchase, but realized later that she didn’t have the use for it that she thought she did, or it didn’t work with the rest of her purchases, as with a couch that didn’t match. She says that she started the company to help the people at companies who know the most about products and their potential use cases transfer that information to the buyers of those products. She says that they are using machine learning to hone the marketing campaigns for products and in the process saving time for those selling products and increasing customer satisfaction on the buyer’s side.“Artificial intelligence and automation are very valuable when there’s a bottleneck of human effort, and we scale out creative human effort. The starting point is a human they set the vision for what this fashion brands stands for and how they define style.”Her advice for startups pitching big companies as potential clients“Pitch the companies that you’re trying to land as clients. Maybe one takes a chance on you and if nothing else, you’re going to learn a lot, like what features are important and what the product feedback is.”Michelle explains how, as a relatively young company, they have landed contracts with so many big-name brands. She explains the process that she used to pitch them, and talks about her key pieces of advice for smaller companies pitching bigger ones. She says that it makes sense to aim for clients that have fewer legal requirements for suppliers when you’re just getting started.“People don't necessarily always know they have a problem or the severity of the problem that they have or how to tackle it. You can get analysis paralysis from a customer sometimes. When they realize there's a problem, that's half the battle. They may realize we are the solution, but they don't know how to start using the tools.“How to close enterprise customers“It’s so funny because our whole mission is to help the buyer understand how to be successful with the product that they’re buying and that’s exactly the same thing that we have to do for our customers. They have less information about how to be successful with our FINDMINE technology than we do and we have to close that gap for them. It’s so full circle.”She walks through the process of landing a client from the initial pitch to signing the contract. She says that it’s important to educate your customers on the true value of the product to them when they don’t know exactly what kind of problem they have or how to solve it, let alone with new technologies that they may be unfamiliar with. She talks about the value of case studies and why successfully landing just one client can lead to many more.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin, Safety Wing, and Trulioo for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Ryan Simonetti, co-founder and CEO of Convene. They call themselves commercial real estate’s first workplace-as-a-service platform. He co-founded the company in 2009 and have raised $260M in funding to date. He is also an investor in and advisor to tech startups.In this episode they talk about...The story of founding Convene and his advice for finding a co-founder“Partnerships evolve over time. You have to be open-minded enough to go on that journey together.”Ryan grew up in an entrepreneurial household and worked in the finance and real estate industries in New York City where he saw an emerging need in the space. He says that they’ve seen lifestyle becoming a primary concern for people that they view their clients as users rather than as customers. He co-founded the company with his business partner and long-time friend Christopher Kelly, intending to disrupt the commercial real estate industry. He also explains his philosophy for finding a co-founder. “When thinking about choosing a co-founder, you have to know yourself first. You want to make sure that you are aligning yourself someone who is complementary.”How they have created a strong company culture and the importance of gratitude at Convene“We obsess over customer experience but we put that same energy and attention into team member experience.”Ryan explains how they have created a team that can deliver the consistently high standards expected by their members. He says that it starts with the right culture and philosophy, which means hiring the right people. He says that building the right culture begins even before someone is hired. It starts right at the initial interview process, where they eliminate candidates if they don’t meet the high standards that Convene has for culture.He also talks about the culture of gratitude that they have instilled in the workforce and says that their executives pass around handwritten notes about what they appreciate that other team members have done.Ryan’s predictions for the future of work in an increasingly distributed world“I think that there is a whole generation of companies today that are being born that will never sign a lease for their own office and will outsource to companies regardless of how big they ever get. It’s remote-first and experience-first.”He explains the three big trends that he says will define the future of work and explains the implications for his business of the remote-first companies that are being created around the world.“Even though the future of work will be more distributed… no matter what happens, place will continue to be really important in the future of work.”How he is investing in his personal development“Don't be afraid to ask for help and surround yourself with people with more experience than you. Never be afraid to steal wisdom. I like to think of myself in the wisdom theft business — the more I can steal, the smarter I feel.”Ryan says that it is important to him to relax and de-stress, and that this is part of the key to his productivity. He also explains how he makes time to be present with his wife and children consistently. He also says that he was not afraid to “ask dumb questions” when he was a first-time founder starting Convene. He credits surrounding himself with mentors and coaches that he could ask for advice for his success thus far, and suggests that founders do the same.He also talks about some of his favorite products and a great book that he read that helped him as he scaled Convene.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin,Safety Wing, and Trulioo for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Jill Salzman, founder of The Founding Moms, a “global collective of offline masterminds and online resources for mom entrepreneurs.” She was formerly the founder of a music management firm and was also the creator of a line of baby jewelry.In this episode they talk about...The story of the creation of The Founding Moms and how it’s helping mom entrepreneurs around the globe“No one wants to say that they’re a mom entrepreneur. They’re an entrepreneur. They don’t like to use the word mom. They don’t want people to know they’re distracted by kids. There are tons of moms who are making things but don’t want to say it because nobody else is.”Jill tells the story of the businesses she founded prior to this one, including her time managing bands and how it was akin to building communities, although in a very different manner than she does today with The Founding Moms. She says that the community and business grew out of an inauspicious beginning after she created an informal meetup in Chicago for moms with businesses.She was surprised at the number of people who showed up and also that there were people from outside her city who were requesting a chapter in their own cities. The Founding Moms has since grown to include countries around the world, with chapters in Singapore, Guatemala, and more.“I posted on Meetup and I said ‘if you’re a woman with a business and a baby, please come have coffee with me and tell me how you’re doing it because I think I’m going to lose my mind.”How she grew the community and her advice for those who are new to community-building“I think we need to eradicate the idea of networking being a dirty word.”Initially, Jill showed up to the meetups without a formal plan or agenda for what should take place. She realized that when she showed up with a piece of paper with handwritten notes, people commented on how organized she was. She then started showing up with a printed piece of paper, and has since created much more structure for the meetups.She says that in her case and for those new to community-building, it’s best to show up and listen and ask a lot of questions of your community members. If you listen to them, they’ll tell you what they need and lead you to the ways that you need to change to grow the community further. She explains why you shouldn’t feel the need to include absolutely everyone in your community and why in fact it’s actually best to set yourself a goal to make sure that the wrong types of people are not feeling a part of the community.She also gives her advice on branding, outreach, and content marketing.“I know in my heart of hearts ten years in there is nothing that trumps meeting up in real life at all.”How she approached the decision to charge for access and subsequently increase prices, as well as how she stays productive“If you learn to lean on the community and become a little more vulnerable than you’re used to, I can’t tell you how exponentially you’re going to grow.”Jill talks about the thought process that went into deciding whether to charge for access to the community and how she came up with the number that she would charge per month. She started at $10 and has since increased it to $35. She says that everything she does is “literally trial and error” and that she simply Googled what other communities were charging. She explains why you shouldn’t be afraid to charge for your community and how to overcome your fear that your members will leave if you do so.She also explains how she manages her schedule, why she uses three (!) virtual assistants and the work they each do, as well as how her team of contractors at The Founding Moms works together.“I have three virtual assistants. I am a huge VA proponent. I think you’re all missing out if you don’t have one because they’re extremely affordable and amazing at getting things done for you.”She also talks about some of the products she’s loving right now.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Headspin for their support.Companies and Products Mentioned on This EpisodeLoom — Seamless screen, mic, and camera recording for Chrome.Marco Polo — Find your phone by shouting MARCO!Slack — Be less busy. Real-time messaging, archiving and search.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Brianne Kimmel, founder of Work Life, an early stage venture firm in Silicon Valley that invests in tools and services for the modern workplace. She was formerly head of product and GTM strategy at Zendesk.In this episode they talk about...Why she started Work Life and what she learned while fundraising“There are a lot of non-traditional folks who are breaking into venture, many of which are solo GPs.”Brianne started angel investing on the side when she was working at Zendesk. She enjoyed working with and meeting new entrepreneurs so decided to start her own fund to “do what she was doing on evenings and weekends full-time.”She explains the focus of the fund and talks about the fundraising process for it. Initially, she says, she started with a “friends and family'” round before she became comfortable raising from other people. She started pitching to people outside her network and tried to run a “tight process.” She explains her strategy for follow-up and why her personal productivity regime was such a big part of her pitch. She also talks about why she created her own list of questions that were often asked by potential investors and how she continually weaved those back into her pitch deck.“The list of FAQs kept getting smaller because the pitch was getting incrementally better every time I give it.”No-code tools, distributed teams, and the future of work“Only 0.5% of people can code, so for the 99.5% of us code is actually a real barrier.”Brianne is passionate about no-code tools, especially those that can help employees be more productive in the workplace. She talks about the importance of growing “bottom-up” in the enterprise market and talks about some of the companies she’s investing in that are employing that strategy.“Increasingly, startups will compete on culture and culture alone and having great tools and creating a very inclusive work environment is one great way to do that.”She also talks about some of the tools that are enabling remote work and why more and more early-stage teams are going fully distributed. She says that people are traveling more, the world is getting smaller, and people who formerly didn’t have flexibility at work now have the flexibility to work from home or anywhere else in the world.“The question is not, ‘can you find enough work?’ It’s, ‘can you find the right problems that you want to work on?’”How she’s building a community around her fund“People are a little bit tired of networking. They have to be the best version of themselves at all times and come in very confident but you end up leaving with something that doesn’t feel truly authentic.”Brianne started building communities while at Zendesk. She also runs a program called SaaS School in San Francisco. She talks about how she built a community of fellow product managers who met regularly in an informal setting where they could be open, authentic, and vulnerable with each other. She says that she’s doing the same for her fund and explains why it’s important to build a community when investing. Brianne also gives tips for fellow community-builders.She also talks about some of the products she’s loving right now.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.Companies and Products Mentioned on This EpisodeBunches — The easiest way to start a paid group chat about anything.Canary — A complete security system in a single device.Chroma Stories — Create stunning and engaging stories with easy-to-use tools.Deep Sentinel — A robust, AI-powered home security system.Muze — Messaging and social media platform.

On this episode Abadesi talks to John Henry, venture partner at Harlem Capital and host of Hustle on VICELAND.In this episode they talk about...How he got into entrepreneurship and how the expectations for today’s entrepreneurs have changed“I think the world of business and entrepreneurship can seem pretty scary these days. There's so much at stake, you got to get it right, you got to raise money, you got to go public.“John got his start as an entrepreneur through trying to help out his family when he was young, starting a dry cleaning service in New York. He says that he didn’t have big aspirations at the time and that he didn’t come to entrepreneurship with visions of a glamorous lifestyle in his future.He says that these days entrepreneurship can seem very daunting and that rather than feeling the weight of the expectations that people have you should instead take the approach of doing something creative and fun and then see if you can sell it to folks.“I have to be honest, if I were starting now versus a decade ago when I started I might feel like the weight of the the expectation might have crushed the seed of enthusiasm that I had to start.”Why he says getting a regular job is riskier than starting a company“There are a lot of macroeconomic changes and not only are older corporations cutting jobs but you also see it in new companies. For me taking a normal job felt riskier because your own income was not in your own hands.”When John started working he realized that it would be better for him to put his time and effort into building a company instead of putting it into working for someone else at a conventional job. He says that although it can take years to get off the ground, it’s nevertheless better to work at something that you own entirely.How he discovered financial literacy and how to be a “multi-dimensional earner”“I’ve discovered this entirely new way of earning that I never would have known about when I was a doorman ten years ago because back then my best understanding of how to earn income was clocking in.”John says that he is investing in assets rather than experiences these days. He says that through doing so he wants to “build something for your family that can’t be taken away.” He explains how he learned about how to effectively invest his money after coming from a disadvantaged background where he didn’t normally have much exposure to those types of concepts.He also talks about how to find a good business idea for aspiring entrepreneurs and how he has diversified his income streams so that he’s not reliant on any one of them. He explains that he is making sure to “circulate” the funds that he earns so that he’s always re-investing and putting them to work instead of just stashing them away in a savings account.“You have to meet the moment. For anyone who is listening who is curious for one reason or another what they can do to earn income, look around at the moment. There are a lot of changes that are specific to right now, to 2020.”The history of VC and how they’re changing the flow of capital to underrepresented founders at Harlem CapitalJohn explains some of the ins-and-outs of venture capital and the history of the space including how it came to be that a “handful of zip codes and a handful of schools determine which companies go public.” He explains what kinds of barriers to entry exist for people who find themselves outside of the networks of privileged people with connections to the large institutions that normally contribute to venture capital funds (yes, venture capitalists have to fundraise too!).He also talks about how he invests in personal development and talks about some of the products he’s loving right now.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.Companies and Products Mentioned on This EpisodeLED Ring Light — Beautifully lit photos and video calls.Nespresso — The connected espresso machine.Sodastream — Carbonated water, at home.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Kathryn Duryea Wyndowe, founder and CEO of Year & Day. They make beautiful tableware that they sell direct-to-consumer online via their website.In this episode they talk about...How she came up with the idea for Year & Day“I felt very empowered by this idea of buying a new set of plates outside of this proposition of getting married and a wedding registry.”Kathryn graduated from Stanford GSB and started working at Tiffany & Co., helping to bring them online. She was inspired by the new direct-to-consumer brands and had always loved the ritual of setting the table. She decided she wanted to make “tableware fun again.” Through trying to buy a set of tableware for herself, she found that the experience was confusing and uninspiring. After going through that, she “turned on the other side of her brain” and dug into the market for tableware, which accounts for $7B in annual spend, which led her to start Year & Day.Her crazy year preparing to launch the brand“It took about 11 months, almost a year, to go from basically this is my full attention, full-time professional endeavor to now we are selling to customers.”Kathryn thought that she could launch in eight months, but it actually took almost a year. She talks about the wide range of tasks that she had to tackle, basically by herself, from design to manufacturing to fulfilment to arranging for web development. She talks about “fighting against the inertia of the world” to will the brand new company into existence. She says that her launch strategy was to email 500 of her friends about the company and that in the beginning she had her brother doing customer service. Since then they’ve grown to a team of 8 based in San Francisco.“All aspects of starting a business are both wildly thrilling with high highs and low lows and real challenges, but what's so exciting about those early months and days is that this idea that you formulated, now you're starting to bring it into shape into the real world.”The power of Instagram and the rise of direct-to-consumer“A lot of the product discovery these days happens on social media on platforms like Instagram. People are relying more and more on people that they follow there to help them discover products that they’ll love, that suit their lives.”The rules for marketing to the digital-native generation have changed with the advent of social media platforms and influencers. Kathryn explains why Instagram is such a powerful platform and why people are gravitating towards a different kind of shopping experience. She talks about the importance of curation when it comes to products like tableware.She also talks about some of her favorite productivity hacks, including why she meditates, works from home one morning a week, and why she still uses good old fashioned pen-and-paper for her to-do lists.“As an entrepreneur you could literally work 24 hours a day and still feel like your list is growing, so in order to have a healthy balance you need to actually set some boundaries.”She also discusses some of her favorite products.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Knowable for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Bill Loundy and Jeff Camera, co-founders of Readup. Jeff is the sole developer on the team, and Bill handles everything else. Readup is a social reading platform designed to help you track and improve your online reading habits.In this episode they talk about...How they came up with the idea for Readup and how it has evolved over time“Pick a problem that’s personal for you, because otherwise how can you care and keep working on it?”Bill and Jeff are longtime collaborators and have actually been friends since preschool — when they’re not working on Readup, they also like to work on motorcycles together. They explain to Aba how the original spark of an idea for Readup evolved into what it is today. They were frustrated with social media and were lamenting the quality of the comments on online articles, so they got together to build a Chrome extension that would measure the amount of time that you spent on a page, in order to determine whether a person had actually read the article or not. It has since turned into a new take on community and led to the creation of a tool that is like “Fitbit for online reading.” They also discuss the design of the site and why they’ve taken a minimalist approach to it.How you can have a more peaceful existence on the web and the problems with the current state of social media“What we’re doing is measuring very precisely the amount of time and engagement that you have on an article and tying that to your reputation and experience, so in some ways we are actually a true attention economy.”They explain why social media is broken today and why we are perpetually distracted online. They say that social media has become like a slot machine, but that there is no reason that we should have to navigate a slot machine to find someone else’s baby pictures. They point out that we need tools to help us have a better relationship with the web, because we can’t exercise the immense amount of self-control that we would need to block out all the distraction out there on the web. They also talk about some of their favorite books about how the internet has evolved and the unhealthy trends that have sprung up from it.The challenges of being a maker and how they have overcome them“Sometimes things are really dark and like it doesn't feel like things are connecting and making sense. For me, the way to survive that experience is to always remember how big the need is for what we're building.”They talk about the immense effort that went into getting something out there — not just in building the site but also in overcoming the self-doubt they felt to finally release what they’d been working on into the world. “The extreme indifference that the rest of the world has to your ideas has kind of helped. The first time we put it out there it was crickets. When we posted it again, we would start to get more feedback and it was helpful. I don’t know what we were afraid of.”They talk about how they overcome the dark days that they sometimes encounter when working as indie makers, and why being reminded of the magnitude of the problem they’re solving helps them persevere through them.They also talk about why books are still their favorite products of all time.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Knowable and NetSuite for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Cat Noone, CEO and designer at Stark, a suite of integrated accessibility compliance tools for teams. She is also co-founder of Iris, a modern-day emergency alert system.In this episode they talk about...The story behind StarkCat was raised by her grandma and says that that experience ingrained in her the drive to create things for people who are otherwise “put aside.” She is a designer by trade and turned out to be an accidental founder. She explains how the project arose out of her earlier work on Iris, which involved creating experiences for older adults. Stark ended up being a product that they built for themselves when they were working on Iris and then evolved into its own standalone product that they now sell to other teams. Why accessible design matters“There may be only twenty thousand people on a product using it that have only one arm but what you don't realize is that there are more individuals that have a broken arm. There are also millions of people that are new parents for the first time and only have access to one arm. So now your 20,000 just skyrocketed to 2 million.”Cat talks about why designing for accessibility and inclusion is important and talks about some of the other initiatives underway in the tech industry to make the web a more inclusive place for everyone. She explains why it’s important from an ethics perspective, but also why it makes financial sense to do so given the risk of negative PR and potential lawsuits. She says that sometimes compliance can be daunting but they are working to make it easier to be compliant with accessibility regulations through their work at Stark. Why they are “investing in customers” at Stark“I’m a huge proponent of investing in customers and so I think a lot of people think about cost of acquisition but we should ask 'how do we build a community that give back and in turns fuels our mission to be the gold standard.'"Cat explains the company philosophy they have at Stark and discusses what it’s like to be a first-time CEO of a “company that’s going somewhere.” She talks about how they think about culture as they grow and the initiatives that they are working on to grow the company, including content marketing, newsletters, and community. She explains what it means to be investing in customers and why they don’t look at customers as an acquisition cost. She talks about why traditional sales don’t work in a company like Stark and why sometimes the best practices for big companies don’t translate well to smaller ones.How she uses time design to be productive“I was someone who spent a lot of time working for a long period of time. It’s hard for me to sit here and say you can’t do that, because that’s how I got to where I am now. If I could go back in time, I would probably still work those long hours — but I’d take care of myself.”Cat admits that she struggled with managing her time in the past but that with some help she’s been able to “design her time” more effectively which has allowed her to get a lot done in the time that she has as a new mom. She says that her entire workday is planned out and that she starts by reading for thirty minutes every day, which she says helps her approach her work with a calm mindset rather than being frantic about all the things she has to do that day. She also says that she works first on the three things that she needs to make sure she gets done in a given day and then starts tackling the rest. She also says that she still makes sure to take care of herself and says that she can be the best mom and businessperson by prioritizing herself.She also talks about some of her favorite products, including the classics like Twitter, Slack, iMessage, WhatsApp, and Airtable, as well as DuckDuckGo for search. She says that she uses a record player to listen to music and explains what it is about vinyl that makes the music sound so much different from electronic music formats. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Knowable and NetSuite for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Sylvain Kalache, co-founder of Holberton School, a project-based alternative to college where you can become a software engineer in two years. They have campuses in the United States and Colombia. Sylvain formerly worked at Slideshare and LinkedIn.In this episode they talk about...The story of founding Holberton and why a new type of school is needed“Some companies are tech and the ones who are not, are either becoming a tech company or they are going to die. Even a non-tech company, like healthcare, retail, media, transportation, you name it, they all need software engineers.”Sylvain talks about how they came up with the idea for Holberton and the experiences he had that convinced him of the need for the school. He explains how he and his co-founder decided to set out to fix those issues with Holberton. He says that many people he interviewed when he was working as an engineer had spent a ton of money on an education but didn’t have the right skills for the job they were applying for.How they designed their software engineering curriculum“It’s really hard in the first place to find a good software engineer, so it’s exceptionally hard to find a good software engineer who’s also a good teacher.”He talks about the hectic first year of working on the school and what it was like getting everything ready for the first cohort of students in January 2016. They needed to create a curriculum for their school and says that they relied on the community to help them figure out what to include in their education. He also points out that the world of software engineering moves at a really fast pace, so it’s important to have a curriculum that can be flexible and always up-to-date.How to find motivated and passionate people“Most of the people I would interview were right out of college and spent a fortune or took out huge student loans to take this training. They were not prepared to take on the job. They knew things, but not the type of skills that we would need from these people.”Sylvain talks about how to find motivated people in general, which is useful for both admissions at Holberton — when it comes to figuring out who to accept or not, as well as hiring at Holberton — because in the early days of the company it is difficult to match the perks that huge companies offer, so you have to find people who believe in the product or vision and have a lot of motivation and passion. He says that looking at someone’s side projects, blog, and GitHub can give you a good indication of how self-motivated they are.How they are working to increase representation in the tech industry“We gave a lot, as much as we could, not expecting something in return. The power of community is something that we find in Holberton in the learning methodology itself, where students are pushed to work in groups and where helping is not cheating, but helping is collaboration.”He says that admissions at Holberton are completely blind and that the system for admissions that they’ve developed is automated. He says that there is talent everywhere, but that a lot of that talent is missing the education, which is where Holberton comes in. He says that their program is comprised of half people of color and nearly half of their students are women. He says that they baked in inclusiveness into their philosophy and operations from the very first days of the company.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Knowable and NetSuite for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a mechanical engineer, social advocate, writer, and broadcaster. She is the author of multiple books and is the founder of Youth Without Borders.In this episode they talk about...Her aspirations to work in Formula 1“I remember it was the best half-day of my life. I walk past two McLaren F1s on my way into the office and I’m working with all these people with English accents and then I get a call from the admin lady at lunch and she’s like ‘hey, do you have your work visa?’ I didn’t, so they escort me off the premises.”Yassmin grew up in Brisbane where as a young girl she wanted to be a Formula 1 driver. At nineteen years old she managed to find a job with an F1 team in England. She flew across the world for the job only to find out on the first day that she didn’t have the appropriate visa to work at the firm. While staying in the UK for a few weeks afterwards, she honed her hustling skills.How she hustled her way into jobs“I wallowed about for a bit and then I started cold-emailing people in the motorsport industry to ask if I could meet them. So I started catching trains to meet all these heads of different motorsport teams. I got offered a place in a really exclusive program but it cost 50,000 pounds, so I decided to work in oil and gas, which is really where my engineering career started.”Yassmin’s career is a clinic in hustling. From humble beginnings she worked her way to a potential job at an F1 team, and when that didn’t work out as expected, she hustled her way into another job at an oil and gas firm. While working in the industry, she managed to complete a program that normally takes five years in just eighteen months and was poised to take over her own drilling rig.Navigating engineering culture“I did mechanical engineering which was super male-dominated then I went into like motorsport and the drilling industry. Throughout I was surrounded by a very strong culture which said women were just less valuable. You internalize that and you think the way for you to be valuable is to be as close to a man as possible and to really minimize your womanhood. So I for a long time was also like, ‘yeah women probably aren't really good engineers, I'm just the exception.‘She talks about the pernicious culture in male-dominated industries such as engineering and how it affected her mindset and how it held back her career. She explains how she had to fight for credibility and how certain people supported her on her journey.How she has successfully pivoted her career multiple timesYassmin no longer works in motorsport or oil and gas. She wrote a book about her experiences as a person of color and what it was like working on the rigs. The company she worked for did not take kindly to the publication of her first book, so she pivoted her career to becoming a full-time writer and broadcaster. She talks about realizing that the company you work for is not a family and that the company will always put the company first. She has also since pivoted from Australia to London. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Knowable and NetSuite for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Ruben Harris, founder and CEO of Career Karma. They help match you to the best coding bootcamp for you and publish a directory of over 450 bootcamps.In this episode they talk about...How he broke into tech and how Career Karma is helping people get into the industry“There are currently about 50,000 people graduating from four year universities every year [in software engineering] and about 40,000 people graduating from bootcamps. There are about half a million open jobs for software engineers. In the next five years there will be about 400,000 people graduating from four year universities and 1.4 million open jobs — so about a million people have to get jobs outside of college.”Ruben talked about his hustler’s approach to getting into investment banking after having graduated from a small school. He applied the same approach to getting into tech and talks about what he wishes others knew about the industry knowing what he knows now. He explains what Career Karma is doing to help more people get into the industry and talks about the transparency they are providing in the bootcamp landscape. He also talks about some of the benefits of downloading their app, like coaching, mentorship, and motivation.How to level up your career“As a software engineer and really anybody in general, you really want to think of time as your most precious commodity. Whether you’re exploring college or online courses or bootcamps, you want to factor in the time that it takes you to complete the program, so that whatever time you’re investing now creates more time for you in the future.”Ruben says that most people who are in software engineering now are actually self-taught. He talks about how software engineering is analogous to the music industry in that most musicians are not classically trained either, yet the music industry is accepting of most people, regardless of what their background is like, if they can do the work. He explains how people who are already working can increase their earning power by enrolling in a program that provides them with a credential, without having to go back to school. What makes a good software engineer“The ability to communicate is underrated — being able to communicate what you want, what you need help with, what your value is, the way that you talk to yourself, the way that you talk in a corporate environment, the way that you communicate with others, the way that you express your emotions, the way that you express how you feel.He breaks down what makes people in the Career Karma community successful, talks about the importance of passion, and why it’s important to treat your work like play. He also talks about the perception of hiring managers and why presenting yourself in the best possible light is an important piece of the puzzle.The importance of humility“Humility matters. There's a fine line between confidence and arrogance and I think confidence is extremely important, but you can be humble and confident at the same time.”Ruben talks about confidence and humility, and why it’s important to get the balance between them right. He says that it’s like playing the cello, where a good musician can move a room to applause even while playing very quietly, while beginner musicians want to play as loud as they can all the time. He also talks about authenticity and one of his favorite books of all time: The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance.“If you think about most people who go to work, they have masks on. If they go home and are a different person, they were pretending to be a different person to get the job. What would the workplace feel like if everybody came to work with their mask off?”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In today's episode we have collected the very best from the interviews we've done with founders in 2019. Mathilde Collin, CEO of Front, shared lessons on building a strong company culture and talked about the questions she asks when hiring. Sahil Lavingia, founder and CEO of Gumroad, told the story of founding the company and explained some of the challenges that come with taking venture capital.Sharmadean Reid, founder of Beautystack, talked about the unique way she ran her fundraising process, the power of storytelling, and had some great tips for entrepreneurs raising capital.Delane Parnell, founder and CEO of PlayVS, talked about failure and how facing adversity early in his career helped him build PlayVS.David Heinemeier Hansson,co-founder and CTO of Basecamp, talked about how to build a sustainable company and why “small is not a stepping stone.”We'll be back with Season 3 in January!Thanks for listening! Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Thomas Kutzman, co-founder and co-CEO of Prevu. Prevu is a real estate technology platform that saves homebuyers money.In this episode they talk about...How he decided to leave his finance job to start Prevu“I think we got to the point where we were talking about the idea too much and you hit a moment as an entrepreneur and you think to yourself, if i don’t do this, will I kick myself if someone else does, and we hit that point.”Thomas and his co-founder worked in the finance industry and Thomas worked in Geneva as an equities trader for a US hedge fund before he left the firm to start Prevu. He talks about how his finance background helped him with starting the company. He says that it gave him a greater understanding of the real estate market but more importantly, working with risk all day made him more comfortable with taking the risk to start the company.Advice on starting a tech company as a non-technical founder“I had no intention of being the person who was going to code our application, but I wanted to be able to understand it, so I could properly communicate. If you’re a non-technical co-founder you should at least invest time in learning the language so you can be more productive in your conversations with your product team.”Prevu uses a ton of technology in their platform, but neither Thomas nor his co-founder were technical. This can be a daunting challenge for many founders but Thomas talks about how they found the right people to do the work for them in the early days. He also says that he took courses on Ruby on Rails so that he could communicate effectively with the people who were doing the work for them and so that he had a better understanding of how everything was going to work.Why they bootstrapped the company and how doing so helped them“By being bootstrapped and by being disciplined with how we used capital, we were able to last far longer and prove out the concept in a much more attractive way from a data perspective, from the amount of traction we had, and the actual learnings on our customer acquisition, our technology, and where we wanted to go to company. I think if you have the luxury to try to bootstrap, bootstrap as long as possible, so you have data and a story to tell investors.”Some founders view bootstrapping as something that is forced upon makers when they are unable to secure funding, but we’ve had plenty of people on the podcast who say that it is instead a more desirable path to growth. Thomas believes this is the case, and explains why it is a better option than raising venture funding. He says that it forced them to have operational discipline and to make sure that they knew exactly where every dollar they were spending was going. All of thiss also helped them when they later went on to raise funds from venture investors.Lessons on leadership and how he invests in personal growth“For leadership, it comes down to if you show you’re going to learn something that you don’t know, others around you will go and learn something they don’t know and you’ll find your passions that way.”Thomas talks about his leadership style and how they manage being co-CEOs. He talks about how he’s trying to grow personally and as a leader, and gives out some of his book recommendations. He also tells us which podcasts he’s always listening to and says that he actually hosted a real estate podcast himself. He explains that doing so helped him learn a ton from the people he invited on the show.He also talks about some of his (and his wife’s!) favorite products.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Dave Charest, Director of Content Marketing at Constant Contact. He’s here to walk us through all the common mistakes that makers make when marketing their products, and how you can avoid them.In this episode they talk about...How to contribute to an online community as a marketer“Don’t approach it as an opportunity to get your message in front of people, approach it as an opportunity to participate. You can go there and say, ‘hey, check out our stuff,” or you can go there and ask questions and be part of that community. That’s the big difference.”Dave and Aba talk a bit about the different types of marketing approaches that exist and the fact that marketing can sometimes get technical. He talks about why he says “if you’re thinking about starting with content marketing, then yes you should start with content marketing.” He breaks down how to be a good online citizen when you’re approaching a community on behalf of your product, and how to make sure you add value to the discussion, rather than only viewing it from the perspective of how to get the most out of the community that you can.Top tips for developers, designers, and others who are first-time marketers“One of the downfalls of social media is often we don’t see the months, potentially years, of work that went into getting the ten thousand or ten million followers. There’s that saying about overnight success: ‘it took me years to become an overnight success.’” Dave gives his advice for people who are designers, developers, and other makers who usually do not dabble in the marketing space. He says that you need to have a long-term orientation and ensure your plans stretch to twelve to eighteen months, which is when you would expect to start seeing some benefit back to the company or product from your efforts.Which marketing channels to focus onDave points out that the big social media platforms each have their own unique personalities, and that the people that you are trying to reach probably have a personality that meshes with one of the platforms more than the others. That is likely where you are going to find the audience members that you want to reach. He says that it’s also important to think about which channel matches your own personality and interests, so that there’s a good fit between you and the platform, since you are going to be spending a lot of time on it.Common mistakes people make in email marketing“When you're thinking about writing an email, think about answering three questions: What are you offering? Why should the reader care? And what do you want them to do next? If you can answer those three questions, you're actually going to write a pretty persuasive email because you're saying hey, this is what I have for you here today, this is why I think you'll find this thing valuable, and here's what I want you to do next to get it or do it.”Dave talks about why email marketing is so powerful as well as the pitfalls that first-timers encounter and how you can avoid them. He says that it’s important to remember that email lists should always be opt-in, meaning you shouldn’t even think about adding all those emails that you’ve gathered over time without getting permission first. He also talks about the importance of being succinct, making sure that your emails are responsive for mobile, and why perhaps “the original vanity metrics were opens and clicks on emails.”We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Tige Savage, co-founder with Steve Case of Revolution, and managing partner of Revolution Ventures. He was formerly VP of Time Warner Ventures and got his start at age fourteen working at a computer store, where he helped create a community for customers before there was a commercially available internet.In this episode they talk about...How to think about whether to raise capital“Work on product-market fit, identity what you’re good at, be willing to back away from what you’re bad at, and continue to iterate over time. Don’t over-capitalize yourself until you believe you have something that works. Then make the decision on whether to take on other people’s capital.”Tige talks about why they intentionally focus on markets and companies outside of Silicon Valley, and how this has benefitted them. He says that it’s been fifteen years to their “overnight success” at Revolution and talks about how he got into the venture capital game in the first place. He also talks about why the thought process when raising capital from LPs for a venture firm is similar to the process of thinking about raising money from investors for your company. The future of direct-to-consumer and Tige’s breakdown of a number of companies and industries“If my kids were to go back thirty years and see how things were purchased back then, they would be astounded at the friction that’s in the system. The companies that understand ways to deliver to consumers what they want when they want with the least amount of friction are finding the most success and the incumbents that don’t do that have been or will be threatened.”Tige says that it’s “never been a better time to be a consumer.” They’ve invested in a number of different DTC companies and Tige breaks down the market opportunity and why the founder and the idea were a great fit for each of them. He gives his analysis of why DTC is flourishing, including why the millennial generation has fuelled the DTC boom. He talks about some of the unique ways that these startups are taking what have traditionally been online sales techniques and applying them to offline products. He also explains what he wants to see in the future in the space, and what will end up being disrupted.How to scale a startup“Companies have political environments, so my advice always is call it like you see it and don't play the game. There are people who are very political and play the game and indeed have succeeded simply by dint of that capability. My advice is not to be that person, to be as authentic as you can, and to call it out when it's time to call it out. If you do that, you've got to be awfully confident in what you're bringing to the equation, because if you're not playing the game, you better be delivering the goods.He explains how running a seed-stage company as CEO is different from running a larger enterprise as CEO. He talks about the ways that a leader needs to grow along with the company, as “you go from pure hustle to a larger business.” Tige gives out some of his unorthodox leadership tips and talks about why it’s important to also upgrade the management around you when you’re CEO of a fast-growing organization. He also explains why it’s okay if a company’s management doesn’t necessarily have the answer to every question that’s asked of them, even if it feels as though they need to.Tige also talks about some of his favorite products.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Descript. He was formerly founder of Detour, which Descript emerged within before it was spun out into its own company when Bose bought the technology behind Detour. Andrew was also founder of Groupon.In this episode they talk about...Descript’s origin as part of Detour, and how to know when it’s the right time to pivot from your original idea“We would have been over-investing in Descript if all we were using it for was for Detour, but we knew there was a potential business there and were treating it like a kind of a backup plan when you’re pre-product-market fit, like we were. You’re staying open to different paths.”Descript actually emerged as a part of Detour, the company Andrew founded to create local audio tours. The team built themselves a better workflow for editing audio and realized that the internal product they had created could be much larger than Detour itself. They also recognized that a confluence of factors in tech were going to allow them to create the next generation of audio editing tools. Andrew explains how he went through the process of figuring out when to “cut bait” on Detour. He previously had pivoted The Point into Groupon, so he has some insightful things to say about when and how to pivot.“We tried every last possible approach that we could think of and eventually it was like, it’s not supposed to be this hard. Having been through this before, it felt like we were doing the most elaborate things to market the product and reach customers, and at some point it just clicked that it’s not supposed to be this hard and we should move on.”Andrew’s advice on managing people and scaling a company“In a lot of companies the way that people get into management is they'll be individual contributors who have great ideas and nobody wants to listen to their ideas because it's the people in management that get to have those conversations. So people say 'okay, I guess I'll become a manager' and then they become a manager for completely the wrong reasons — not because they care about people or unlocking the best possible incarnation of their teams, but because they care about having their ideas listened to.”He gives a rundown of the history of the company and where they are at now, after having raised a large Series A round and made the acquisition of Lyrebird. He talks about what the next stage of growth will hold for them, and how he is managing the scaling process by putting into place processes and protocols that will provide structure for the company as it grows. He also talks about the importance of delegating the work that the founder has been doing in a growing company.Personal development as a leader and helping your team growAndrew explains what a typical day looks like for the team at Descript. He explains how they manage internal tools and how he tries to create an environment where feedback can flow freely among the team members. He talks about some of the best ways to grow as a leader, including some of the events that he attends and why he reads a lot. He also says that they have created an internal podcast for the team, a cool idea which you might expect from the company given what Descript is typically used for!Andrew also tells us about one of his favorite products that he uses to build tools for the team.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Mike Vernal, partner at Sequoia, the legendary venture capital firm. They are celebrating their scout program turning a decade old. Mike shares stories about the early days at Facebook, transitioning to VC, and advice for founders seeking funding.In this episode they talk about...Why the culture at Facebook in the early days was so special“People self-consciously avoided ever saying they managed someone else at Facebook. It was frowned upon for people to try to assert authority in that way. It was actually far more common for people to say that they ‘support’ teams within an org.”Mike gives a rundown of his career in tech, including working at Microsoft and Facebook. He says that he started as an engineer instead of a product manager, but eventually would work as a product manager despite being labelled an engineer. He talks about what it was like working at Facebook in the early days and how he worked on some of the key products that he worked on at that time that you probably use today.“For people earlier in their careers, you probably have to pick one function to start with, but being able to move between functions fluidly is incredibly valuable.”Going from product manager to VC“It’s surprising just how similar life as a product manager at Facebook is to being a board member at an early stage company.”He says that when he started at Facebook, the aim was for every new hire to have deployed at least one line of code to the live site in their first week. This was a significant departure from how software was typically developed and was definitely a stark contrast from his time at Microsoft, where a piece of software would be worked on for years before being sold in a box in stores. He says that he did deploy his line of code in the first week at Facebook, but it took the site down, so he had to come back early from lunch to fix the site to get it back up. He gives his advice for people who want to advance their careers in tech, talks about how he was introduced to Sequoia through partner Bryan Schreier, and explains why being a product manager is similar to the work he does today at Sequoia.What founders need to know about pitching VCs“I don’t think you should do anything because investors ask for it. That is probably a waste of time, but you should try to figure out why people are asking these questions and what is the kernel of truth or insight that they are trying to get to.”Mike talks about some of the common mistakes that people make when they pitch VCs, including why so many people find a random market size number on the internet and put it in their pitch deck. He talks about why investors ask the questions that they do and what the difference between a good product and a good business is. He also explains why he prefers that monetization be baked into the product, not bolted on as an afterthought once a company or product achieves a critical mass.Trends Mike is excited about, including the no-code revolution“When we talk about the community of professional software developers in the world, it’s stark just how small it is. It’s somewhere on the order of 20-30 million people around the world. When I think about Excel, it and its brethren probably have a billion users around the world and really Excel is a programming environment.”He talks about the scout program at Sequoia, why founders should consider a scout as an investor, and some of the benefits that scouts bring. Mike talks about the importance of the no-code movement that has come about in the last few years, and how it is opening up the high-leverage tools formerly reserved for developers to a wider range of people.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Marcus Taylor, founder of Venture Harbour, a digital product company based in the UK. They’ve launched nine companies in the last few years and have grown them to millions in revenue. He is also the youngest patron of The Prince’s Trust youth charity and has committed £100,000 to support young entrepreneurs across the UK.In this episode they talk about...The business philosophy at Venture Harbour“We built a WYSIWYG form editor for ourselves initially and put it out there to see if other people found it useful. This is how a lot of our ventures happen. We’re working on one venture and we discover a problem and solve that problem and it’s like, okay, new venture!”Marcus explains how he got started with Venture Harbour. He was working at a digital marketing agency out of school and was building side projects. Those side projects started earning him more in revenue than he earned from his salary, so those projects became Venture Harbour. He explains how they approach building an audience for their products, and why they don’t “buy audiences.” He explains the power of content marketing and why they invest so many hours in creating the very best content for a particular topic, as well as the tools and strategies they use to find the most impactful pieces of content to create.How the team works together“Often we will build these hacked versions of ventures keeping the team very small, and then it over time as that venture matures, we start assigning more people and building teams around those ventures.”He explains the in-the-weeds details of how they actually get things done at Venture Harbour, and how he thinks about his role of head of product at the company. He explains how he tries to facilitate and coach to get the most out of the team, and why nailing their vision and values has been so important for them — something that you may not necessarily think of as pragmatic but has really helped with the day-to-day at Venture Harbour.Some of the unconventional views Marcus holds“I started Venture Harbour with 500 quid in my bank and a broken laptop. We've never raised any money for any of the ventures. I find so many friends in the startup world spend so much time messing around with cap tables and pitch decks and high-fiving each other when they raise money. I believe so strongly that if you had spent that time listening to the customers and letting your customers be your investors, you'd be in a far better position.“Marcus explains why bootstrapping is his preferred way to build companies, and says that it is in fact a more sustainable way to build a business than raising venture capital. He also talks about his leadership style and how he uses coaches to get the most out of his work. He also explains why he likes to read books slowly, why he doesn’t have social media, and more.How he thinks about personal development“You’ve got primary books, where the book should have been 2,000 pages but it had to be condensed down to 300 pages. Then you’ve got secondary books — most business books fall into this. They are extrapolating stuff and applying it to a concept. And then you’ve got tertiary books, which are more storytelling and anecdotal.”He runs through the strategies he uses to make sure he is always getting better as a maker and manager. He explains his method of categorizing books and how he decides which to read and which to only read the summary. He also talks about overnight conferences and why he seems to get the most out of those types of gatherings. Marcus also talks about how he used the tips from the book *Getting To Yes *by Robert Cialdini as part of his wedding planning.Of course, he also talks about some of his favorite products.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder and CTO of Basecamp, and creator of Ruby on Rails. He is also the author of several bestselling books, including It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work, co-authored with his co-founder at Basecamp, Jason Fried.In this episode they talk about...Why you should think about your company as a product“This idea that the company itself is changeable — the policies of the company, the values of the companies — are things you can tweak and you can iterate on in much the same way as you would iterate on a product. The process is quite similar to when you put a product into the market and you get feedback from customers.”He tells the story of building Basecamp outside traditional tech hubs and how that influenced the culture at the company. He says that it’s important to build from first principles and to have control over the company you’re building. He talks about their values at Basecamp and how to think about and get feedback from employees on how the company needs to change and evolve. He also points out that you always need to be thinking about improving not just your product, but also your entire philosophy and way of doing business.Why we need new role models in tech“We've gone from everyone thinking the greatest thing in the world would be to be Mark Zuckerberg and to have Facebook to far more people now thinking, actually I don't want Facebook, I don't want Facebook's problems, I don't want to be Mark Zuckerberg. I think if we can start by having a takedown of the past idols, we can start building up some healthier models of what we should try to emulate instead.”David says that we need a new vocabulary in the tech industry. He lists a number of different words, from unicorn to angel to battlefield, that inaccurately describe the actual function or intent of that entity. He says that it’s easy to excuse unethical actions if we believe that we are actually at war in a startup. He also talks about why “small is not a stepping stone” for your company and breaks down why the obsession with growth has led people astray.How to break the cycle of overwork“We can live such better fuller, richer lives if we just stopped believing that the most worthy thing we can do is to give every waking hour and moment to the business. That's actually not good for business. If you were just trying to create the most efficient business, you would not come up with this regime of chaining people to the office.”He explains why you shouldn’t think about your co-workers as your family, and examines some of the current scourges of modern workplaces, like the open-plan setup. He also points out that Henry Ford realized a long time ago that people cannot work for more than forty hours a week without seeing a huge drop-off in efficiency, so it would make sense not to not push employees harder than that today.A new way of working“It doesn't work to constantly puncture and slice up the day [with meetings and standups]. So you should be extremely cautious about when you put things on many people's calendar. When we do instead is we encourage people to share where they are at [on a project] in an asynchronous way where someone can choose to digest that and respond to that on their time.”David talks about the current practices prevalent at most workplaces that result in people not getting things done, and how they can be improved on. He talks about the unique approach to meetings, standups, deadlines, and presentations that they have at Basecamp and how they have increased retention. He says that it’s a misconception that people are born superstars and says that high-quality talent is more akin to a tree, that you cultivate, rather than a “diamond” that you find.Of course, they also talk about some of his favorite products as well.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Elias Torres, co-founder and CTO of Drift. He co-founded the company with David Cancel, a longtime collaborator. They have achieved smashing success so far, and Elias’s personal story of moving to the United States from Nicaragua and working at McDonald’s while simultaneously finishing high school and learning English is one you don’t want to miss.In this episode they talk about...Elias’s longtime partnership with David Cancel“He [David Cancel, co-founder of Drift] knew a lot more than I did and that was another good thing. If you look at Paul Allen and Bill Gates, Paul was older than Bill. That experience drew Bill to Paul and that’s something I like about David. He’s built many more companies than me. He’s always been in startups.”David Cancel is Elias’s co-founder at Drift and this is definitely not their first venture together. Elias talks about how they have been able to work so well across several different companies and how their partnership mirrors that of Paul Allen and Bill Gates. He also talks about the scary moments when he left his job to start a company in 2008 while the stock market was tanking during the financial crisis. What it was like growing up in Nicaragua and moving to the United States“It’s people. People have helped me. I look back and in high school I had a teacher who asked me to join math club. That exposed me to kids who were applying to places I heard called Dartmouth and Princeton, but I didn’t know what that is.”Elias grew up in Nicaragua and moved to the US as a teenager. He suddenly found himself in high school in the United States with a very different set of possibilities open to him. He also talks about how he ended up with his first computer and how that led to him getting into programming. It’s safe to say that when he was young, he didn’t see himself in the position that he is in now. He talks about some of the people who helped get him there and how Drift is giving back to help underprivileged people.A CTO’s tips on hiring and why he spends an hour a month fielding support queries“The recruiting process has to be personal. It has to be about conversations. Engineers are the most sough-out profession in the world. So you’re never going to hire someone that applies. You should not be spending your time there. You have to go and find the people you want.“Elias has a unique perspective on hiring engineers from his perch as CTO at Drift, so he explains how they think about hiring, why diversity is an integral part of their company, and why he looks for engineers who are also extroverted like he is. They are also not afraid to get into the weeds at Drift, with their engineers putting in time talking to customers to get a feel for what the end-user truly needs.Growing revenue from zero to eight figures in under twenty-four months“I went into Boston and asked founder friends of mine: ‘do you want to use my product?’ When I was a kid I went out there and sold mangoes from a tree carrying a basket with my mangoes. I went the same way door-to-door asking for twenty dollars. I got my first five to ten customers like that.”Drift grew from nothing in revenue to eight figures (!) in under twenty-four months. Aba asks how they managed to create such explosive growth and Elias talks about why SaaS businesses are so special and why they are a great way to grow revenue. He shares his best tips for makers looking to earn from their product, including not being afraid to charge, making sure you increase prices, and why to bring in salespeople early.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Delane Parnell, founder and CEO of PlayVS. PlayVS is the community for amateur high school esports. He was previously the youngest black venture capitalist in the US and built and sold his own esports team prior to founding PlayVS. He also has an incredible story of overcoming adversity to get to where he is today.In this episode they discuss...His incredible “origin story”“It wasn’t support in the sense that they were able to help me financially, but even encouraging words like ‘I believe in you. You can do this.’ You can’t put a monetary value on the impact that that can have on a kid.”Delane grew up in a tough neighborhood in Detroit. He says that he had to avoid a lot of gang activity growing up and got his first job at a very young age as a sign twirler at a cell phone store. It was at the cell phone store where he got his first taste for entrepreneurship. There, Delane realized that he needed to be an owner in a business to earn significant money from it. At age sixteen, he set out to be a partner in other cell phone stores around town.How he learned to set his sights high“I was never interested in small-time business. I think that's because I had the exposure super early on from working with Sam to how much a person who owns a dozen cell phone shops made. I wasn't really interested in that. I was dreaming about vacations in the south of France.”Delane had an aunt who was an executive at an auto company and she helped Delane by giving him business magazines, which helped form his life aspirations . He says that the individuals in his neighborhood typically didn’t have aspirations to make it big in business and that he was lucky to have family members who encouraged him to aim higher. He says that Jay-Z was his number one inspiration and explains why he is a “role model and icon” for Delane.How he became comfortable with risk-taking and his advice about giving advice“I try not to give people quote-unquote expert advice. People look at me as an expert because of the amount of money we raised or what we’ve accomplished. But I’m not an expert. People don’t realize the effect that expert advice has on entrepreneurs on young people finding their way.”Having been exposed to business at a young age, he became comfortable with the mindset needed to take risks and be an entrepreneur. He built a few companies that didn’t end up working out and explains how certain pieces of advice that he heard from certain people who he considered to be mentors left him very deflated. Delane explains why he remembers that experience so vividly and why it means he avoids giving advice to young people.What he learned from failure and why founder life is less glamorous than you think“People think it’s very glamorous, but it’s not as glamorous as people think. There’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of work, there’s a lot of responsibility. You’ve got to be prepared for it, otherwise you’ll really struggle.”Delane explains what he learned from failure, including why he was so inspired by Groupon, the story of the subscription-based competitor he came up with, and why it didn’t end up working out. He says that there is always the possibility for redemption and recalls that even Steve Jobs was written off as a failure at one time. He also talks about the day-to-day of his work at PlayVS, why it’s not quite living up to the high hopes that magazines and television held for his imagined future, and why it’s nevertheless rewarding in other non-material waysOf course, he also talks about some of his favorite products.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Companies and Products Mentioned In This EpisodeAlbert — Actionable financial advice on your phone.Discord — Find people who share your interests.Slack — Be less busy. Real-time messaging, archiving and search.Superhuman — The fastest email experience ever made.

Abadesi is joined on this episode by Sarah Paiji Yoo. She is the founder of Blueland, a direct-to-consumer company that sells environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies. She formerly founded and sold Snapette, a mobile platform for local platform shopping.In this episode they talk about...Her extensive entrepreneurial journey“We ended up launching one business per year for the next four years, which was crazy.”Sarah was a successful founder before she started Blueland. When she first switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone, she realized the power of the platform and launched a company called Snapette, which she later sold. Later, she started a startup studio and churned out a number of different direct-to-consumer businesses in a variety of spaces: luxury footwear, beauty, fashion, and even coffee.How she convinced investors of the promise of Blueland“At first our deck opened with the environmental story. It led with our mission to eliminate single-use plastic packaging. We realized for a subset of investors that didn’t really resonate. We changed our deck to emphasize the business case but I realized that I wasn’t finding investors whose values aligned with ours, so I ended up switching the format back.”Sarah recounts her fundraising journey for Blueland and why she went with a deck that didn’t necessarily resonate with all investors. Since “you can divorce your husband, but you can’t divorce your investors,” she wanted to make sure that her investors and board members were aligned with the values-driven approach to business that Sarah was taking. She also points out that their environmentally-friendly business model also has real financial benefits, with tablets that are about thirty times lighter than traditional cleaners and thus are much less costly to ship.The future of sustainable direct-to-consumer products and companiesSarah talks about the importance of transparency in direct-to-consumer, and particularly in companies that are working in sustainability. She points out that Millennials and Gen Z are eager to support companies that have similar values to them. According to her research, there are many more people than you might think who derive great satisfaction from buying environmentally-friendly products, even if it means more time and effort investment by the end consumer.Managing a fast-growing team at a scaling companyShe says that hiring always has to be the top priority as a founder and that she reminds herself of that every single day. She explains who she hired first when she was starting the company and what qualities she looked for in them. Sarah says that it’s always a risk hiring someone at a startup who has come from a big company because of the risk of a culture clash. She also talks about the importance of making sure that your employees unplug to prevent burnout, because the high-performing Type A personalities that are naturally drawn to a startup have a propensity to work themselves exceptionally hard, even if there is no pressure for them to do so.What’s in her “resiliency toolkit”“Becoming a mom has become an incredible forcing mechanism for work-life balance. It’s really helped me carve out really dedicated pieces of time where I can be 100% present with my family.”Sarah gives a rundown of what a typical day looks like at her company and explains how the birth of her son was an important turning point in her thinking about work-life balance. She says that it’s important to be disconnected from work for family time and how she makes sure that all her team members are on the same page about when she will or won’t be online.Of course, she also tells us what some of her favorite products are and why she loves them.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Sharmadean Reid, founder of Beautystack. She’s one of Aba’s favorite people of all time, and is an inspiration to women and people of color everywhere. She recently raised a whopping seed round to grow and scale Beautystack.In this episode they talk about...How she’s helping women start businesses“People always say that the information is out there, but sometimes you don’t know what to Google.”Sharma talks about the importance of networks of women who can help and support each other in their founder journeys. She explains what it was like for her when she was just getting started, and how she was helped by others who were further along than she was. She has been giving back through a couple of different initiatives and talks about the self-sustaining community they have created.“The proudest thing for me is the tens of thousands of connections between women that we’ve created.”What fashion means to her“My personal style to me is the reason I like fashion. Fashion and beauty is essentially how we as homo sapiens show our tribes, it’s the way we say this is what I am, this is what I stand for and what I believe in. For me, being a bit ‘extra’ with my look is a testament to how my mind works.”She explains how fashion can make a powerful statement and her philosophy behind how she chooses her looks, saying that it’s part of “living in the future.” She explains how she got into the fashion industry in the first place, takes us behind-the-scenes of fashion shoots, and talks about why they are excellent vehicles for virality. Her fundraising journey“We often sit there and have a business idea and do a pitch deck and do market research. But market research is not the same as writing your own thesis of how the future is going to look.”Sharma explains how she approached the fundraising for Beautystack, and talks about why, once you’ve done the important work in advance and have conviction in your ideas, it can be quite effortless to put everything together. She talks about fleshing out all of her thoughts around the company in a personal password-protected blog, and how she researched her investors ahead of time to know what kinds of objections they might bring up in order to anticipate them. She also points out that it’s important to find the right investors for your company, so you should be just as discerning as your investors are.The founder mindset and personal development“I think that good investors want missionary founders and cultivating my personal mission keeps me on the straight and narrow and gives me that north star that regardless of how the business pans out, I own that personal mission.”She is one of the hardest-working people that Aba knows, and invests in herself as much as in everything else that she does. She explains the importance of cultivating a personal mission and how to define success for yourself. She also talks about some of the mental models she uses, why she reads from a broad variety of sources, and explains what she means when she says “everything is cyclical.”The future of work and scaling a team“I learned this from the guys at Basecamp. Think of the company as your product. Your users are your employees — are you giving them the best user experience possible?”Sharma explains how she’s cultivated Beautystack’s unique culture. She takes us through some of the initiatives they’ve started, including increasing the level of gratitude in the workplace and why each person at the company creates and presents their own “guide to working with me.” She also talks about how she plans for the future growth of her company and why she loves the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.Of course, she also lets us know what some of her favorite products on her home screen are.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

In this special edition of Product Hunt Radio, the community is the guest. Ryan chats with the members of the Product Hunt community about the apps that they love and why they’re so great. People from all around the world called in to let us know what’s on their home screens.This was an experiment, so let us know what you think! If you want to be part of the next session and potentially be featured in the podcast, make sure to follow us on social media.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Ryan Singer, head of Product Strategy at Basecamp, where he’s worked for 16 years, ever since 2003. He is the author of Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work That Matters. You can read the book for free online.In this episode they talk about...How Basecamp cultivates their unique company culture“If you think something is going to work, then go make it and let’s look at what you made in two or three days or a week. If you can’t make anything yet that works, maybe it’s not real and not ready yet. Don’t make me a big document about how it’s going to work — let’s make a prototype and click on it and see if it’s going to work.”Ryan says that he was initially a UI designer and got into programming after joining Basecamp. He was at what was then called 37signals when Ruby on Rails was being created. He talks about the culture of shipping at Basecamp and how the learnings from his sixteen years at the company have made it into the book.Why wireframes and documents are overrated“If we over-specify the design up front with a lot of wireframes, we make the most decisions when we have the least information.”Ryan says that at Basecamp, they use breadboards and fat marker sketches to mock up potential products, rather than detailed documents or pixel-perfect wireframes. He explains why it’s important to allow for improvisation by the designers and developers of products, and why you shouldn’t make the key trade-offs in the design phase, but instead after you’ve seen and used a prototype. He says that you “need to find the right level of abstraction” in your designs.Why betting is better than planning“We acknowledge the reality, which is that we don’t know what’s going to happen, we don’t know how this is going to work out, we’re probably going to be wrong about some things, so we want to use the language of risk instead of the language of certainty.”At Basecamp, instead of making plans, they make bets. Ryan explains why this provides a better framework for the work that they do. He points out that when you make bets, you bet a fixed amount. They do the same at Basecamp, “betting” a certain amount of time on a project to see if it will work. If at the end of that time, it didn’t work out, they don’t spend more time than they originally “bet” on it chasing sunk costs.How to find balance at work, and why Basecamp doesn’t think about “maximizing capacity”Ryan says that they don’t think about “maximizing capacity” from their employees. Instead, they want to make sure that their workers have a meaningful goal with good odds for success. He says that managing how many hours someone worked the day before or today means very little. His advice is to stop micromanaging employee time and to experiment with a more flexible approach at your company. He also points out that they try to think about strategy at a more macro level than in terms of days or hours.How to separate strategic failure from execution failure“I would much rather have a healthy team that’s good at shipping stuff and occasionally make a strategic mistake. Because our bets have a limited downside, we’re setting out how much it is worth at the beginning. We only lose however much time we set out initially.”As part of their unique approach to strategy, they are able to manage their downside by setting out the amount of time they’re willing to spend on something in the beginning. They trust their teams to figure out the details of the work on their own, without prescribing every detail of the product in the beginning. He explains how this is important to morale and what the difference between “imagined work” and “discovered work” is.Ryan also talks about his love for the Apple Pencil and the iPad, and how he uses them to get his work done.Bonus Content: Aba and the community on personal brandingWe have more bonus content for you this week! Aba recently hosted a Periscope session where she invited all of you in the community to call in and explain what sites you use for personal branding and why. They covered LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, personal sites, mailing lists, and more. If you want to be part of the next session (and maybe even be part of the podcast!) be sure to follow us on social media.We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Ryan is joined by a friend, writer, and student of human psychology, Nir Eyal. I’ve learned so much from his writing over the years. He has an incredible ability to synthesize complex ideas and studies into actionable steps people can use to build more engaging products and a healthier life. Ryan actually helped him with his first bestselling book,* Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products*, back in 2012, before Product Hunt started. This week he published his second book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. The timing of its release is more relevant than ever as people are increasingly seeking a healthier relationship with their smartphones, wearables, and tech in general. In this episode they talk about... The change in attitude towards tech over the past several years “Back then people thought Zuckerberg and the Twitter guys and the Google guys just got lucky and stumbled onto something. We had to convince people that they knew what makes you click and what makes you tick better than you do yourself. Now, that’s a foregone conclusion. In fact, I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way.” Nir explains the shift in the perception of tech in general since he wrote his first book, Hooked, to now. He says that there has always been a level of skepticism in Silicon Valley, which is generally a good thing, but that he fears people are heading towards being too cynical and having a fixed mindset towards the tech industry and its products. How to make sure your product development process is ethical ““I think it’s important that product designers have a way to tap the brakes and ask, ‘is what we’re doing okay? Does this cross an ethical line?’” He talks about searching for an ethical framework that ensures that the products one creates are not causing harm to the user. He says that he went from the (former) Google motto “don’t be evil” to the Golden Rule to what the lawyers recommended to get to his formulation of the “regret test.” He explains exactly how you can use it at your company. A regret test asks ‘would the user do the thing we have designed for them to do, if they knew everything we do?’” Whether the government should or should not get involved in regulating tech They talk about some of the proposed regulations that are floating around the news these days, and Nir explains why they are well-intentioned but unlikely to make a real difference. He points out that the problem is the “fear-industrial complex” that accompanies any new tech or media. He says that to say that people lack any agency to pull themselves away from tech is insulting and points out that over fifty years ago, people were using the exact same words to describe the effects of comic books. The true impact of tech on your brain “Why is scrolling on Twitter somehow morally inferior to watching Fox News? To me they are equally divisive, equally potentially toxic, and can equally be abused by people who go overboard. Why do we only apply the standard to new technology? Because it’s an easy target.” Nir says that it’s important not to get fixated on the tech, but rather the end result of using that tech. He points out that both Snapchat and Duolingo use streaks, but to very different ends. He says that he is neither a proponent of nor apologist for tech and that not all distractions are created equal." The strategies he uses to ensure he doesn’t get distracted “The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought. We have to plan ahead and take steps in advance to make sure you do whatever it is you want to do in life.” He explains what his nightly routine is, how it has enabled him to live a better life, and how he uses certain pieces of tech to keep himself away from other, less useful tech. He tells the story of buying a twelve dollar flip phone from Alibaba and why, like crash diets, digital detoxes don’t end up working. Bonus Content: Aba’s Community Podcast Abadesi recently hosted a Periscope session where she asked the community to chime in on what their favorite products are and why. Make sure to follow us on social to participate in the next session, and you could make it into the podcast! We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Nic Brisbourne, managing partner at Forward Partners, and creator of the popular email newsletter, The Equity Kicker. In this episode they talk about... The future of venture capital and the concept of “applied venture” “Why stop at having a few people on payroll to help your portfolio companies succeed? Why not find a way to have as many as possible? That allows you to help your portfolio companies with many more things, offer better service, and that should see the companies go on to achieve greater results.” Nic gives us a history of the waves of venture capital since the early 2000s and explains how firms have evolved over time to better serve founders. He talks about the new trend in the industry — what they call “applied venture.” He explains what it is and how it is having an impact on founders and companies. The culture at Forward Partners “When we think about our culture, on the one hand we’re trying to reflect what we have currently so that it feels authentic and on the other, we’re trying to stretch ourselves to what we want to be tomorrow.” Nic says that at Forward Partners they look up to characters who inspire and inform their work. He explains why they chose Indiana Jones, Yoda, and Leonardo Da Vinci as the three individuals who capture what they want to be at Forward. Nic’s introduction to mindfulness “It was totally the wrong time of year to go to India. I arrived at the New Dehli airport and there was a sign up in the airport with the temperature, 44 degrees centigrade at 1 o’clock in the morning.” Nic explains how he became an advocate for mindfulness after having a hesitant start and shares the funny story of going to India during the hottest months to meditate at an ashram. The benefits of mindfulness for founders “There was a biotech company that ran an 8-week mindfulness course for their employees. After eight weeks they did MRI scans and the happiness centres in the people who had been on the mindfulness course were noticeably more active.” After Nic became a mindfulness convert, he didn’t stop at how it could help him in his work, he looked also to how it could have a positive impact on the founders he works with as well. He explains some of the benefits to the practice and talks about some of the programs they have been putting on for founders to help them get in the habit. What he’s most excited about in the tech ecosystem “Really what’s most exciting for me is the way that the startup ecosystem is growing and growing. The world is changing faster and faster and we have bigger and bigger problems to solve and it’s entrepreneurs who are going to be solving those problems for us on a global level.“ He talks about some of the tech trends happening now that he loathes and loves, and explains what they look for when they’re evaluating a potential investment for the impact it would have on the world. Nic also shares some of his favorite products and explains why he was initially an Apple skeptic but has since become a fan. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Gina Bianchini, a serial entrepreneur and an investor. She is founder and CEO of Mighty Networks, a platform for building communities. She also co-founded Ning and has been an entrepreneur in residence at Andreessen Horowitz. In this episode they talk about... The emerging trend of community-powered businesses “They’ve taken their personal experience and their personal story, combined it with expertise, and now there are people who are really excited to master or learn that topic together with other people in their community.” Gina says that the next big trend in business is experiential commerce. She says that it’s a myth that building a community is hard and talks about some of the non-traditional ways to build one. She also explains the many benefits of creating a community around your business. Why it’s important to stay laser-focused on the results your customers want “How am I enabling the people using my product to have results they cannot otherwise achieve? If you have that, you can charge money for your community, you can charge more money for your product or service. It’s understanding how you are enabling your users to go from point A to point B.” Gina talks about some of the different approaches a maker can take to community-building but says the most important one is to notice what your customers’ needs are, what they’re looking to get out of the community, and how that intersects with what you can provide. How a community helps build your brand “A brand is how people talk about you when you’re not in the room. Here’s the amazing thing about investing in a community early on. You’re not just talking to your customer but you’re a part of a conversation where your customers are talking to other customers. You will understand so much more clearly what the people you serve need from your brand.” She says there’s no substitute for watching your customers talk to each other and listen to the specific words they’re using and exactly how they’re describing what they need. Observing your customers is made much easier when you are hosting the community. She also says that building a community off of the social media platforms is a better approach than trying to build on a monolithic platform like Facebook. Why it’s okay (and preferred!) to start small “There is no niche that is too small in 2019. There are 22 million people and brands that have over a million followers on Instagram. There are 147 million accounts with over 10,000 followers.” She talks about some of the lessons she learned from Ning, and explains why there was a “moment in 2007” where you could build a community for a broad swath of people but that moment has long passed. She says that not only is it easier to start small, it’s the only route to success. Gina also talks about some of her favorite products, why Instagram Stories has replaced TV for her, and some of her favorite accounts to follow on Instagram. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Courtland Allen. He is a super talented designer and developer. In 2016 he founded Indie Hackers, an awesome community of bootstrappers and makers sharing their stories. Nine months later Stripe acquired the company. Courtland is also a Y Combinator alumnus and an MIT graduate with a degree in Computer Science. In this episode they talk about how to avoid making the most common maker mistakes. They discuss... How and why Courtland became an Indie Hacker “I spent a while following the traditional startup route. I started a startup, I got into Y Combinator, we raised money, but we never really had a business model. Eventually we did charge money for our product, and a couple hundred people signed up right off the bat. I was enchanted by this idea that I don't have to raise money from investors, I don't have to hope that there's some sort of exit opportunity in the future, I could build something and put a price tag on it and sell it to people directly and feasibly pay my rent.” Courtland explains his path to becoming a self-sufficient bootstrapper. He got his start in the very early days of indie hacking, even before Stripe had launched. He says that it was the Stripe beta that allowed him to go independent. How to figure out whether you have a good idea on your hands “A lot of people think a business is an invention. But an invention needs to be this entirely novel thing. A business is more of a process. It doesn’t need to be completely unique. A lot of people get frustrated and blocked by their inability to come up with something that’s completely novel. The number one thing you should do is not put that constraint on yourself.” He explains how to “sanity check” your idea and runs through the common mistakes he sees people making when they are validating their ideas. Finding beta testers for your product and what to avoid when bootstrapping “You’re trying to from no one using your app to five or ten people. You can easily do that. Talk to five relatives or five friends or coworkers. Go online and find people who you think would be good users of your product and send them a heartfelt personalized email. A lot of founders I have talked to have done this non-scalable approach at the beginning.” Courtland explains why, as a one-person operation, you shouldn’t be copying what big, successful companies are doing. He says that a landing page is not a good way to test your product and instead recommends that you go the old-fashioned route and talk to people about it. “These companies are doing things that you can’t do, and that you probably shouldn’t do. You’re much smaller. You wouldn’t go to the gym and try to bench press five hundred pounds because the biggest guy in the gym is doing that. One of the most troubling things for early Indie Hackers is the most obvious examples to copy are these big companies who are the worst people to copy.” How to know whether to go full-time on your idea once demand picks up “The barometer I use is: Do I like the customers I’m serving? Are the people who are paying for what I’m building people I would want to talk to and be friends with and hang out with? Because that’s what you’re probably going to be doing for the next few years, so you probably don’t want to quit your job and go full-time into something you don’t like working on.” He provides some excellent advice on launching, dealing with the ups-and-downs of being a maker, and once you’ve made it to a place where you’re getting some traction, how to figure out whether to quit your day job and go full-steam ahead on your side project. He says that he saved up a year’s rent before going full-time on his idea and points out that even when you are full-time on your project, there will always be more to do than you can manage. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Companies and Products Mentioned In This Episode Flippa — The #1 place to buy and sell websites, domains and apps. Notion — The all-in-one workspace - notes, tasks, wikis, & databases.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Cassidy Williams. Cassidy is a great follow on social media and is a software engineer at CodePen. Prior to CodePen, she worked for Venmo, Amazon, Clarify and others. She is a true maker and a huge mechanical keyboard nerd (which you hear a bit about on the show). In this episode they discuss... How she got to where she is today, including lessons learned from working at big and small companies “It gets more political the more you go up the career ladder. At CodePen, we only have eight people, so you can’t really be promoted, and past Cassidy’s mind might be blown that she can’t be promoted and she’s okay with that.” Cassidy talks her personal career trajectory and how she learned “the hard way” that big money at big companies isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She talks a bit about working at Amazon and why it didn’t work out for her and explains why it’s just as valuable to know what you don’t want to do as knowing what you do want to do. She also talks about some of the differences between working at a big company and a small company. Her personal definition of success as a software engineer “My definition of success is having the flexibility to build whatever I want. Right now I’m building for CodePen but because my job is so flexible I’m able to build things outside of work. Someday I would love to be able to not have to work and build things for fun, whether for money or not. I love building things in general, whether it be keyboards, code, or Legos.” Cassidy says that she used to be obsessed with “climbing the career ladder” and explains why that’s no longer the case for her. She says that she would go into jobs with the intention of collecting titles and experience in order to make a case for a promotion. She’s realized now though that being at the top is less important to her than the freedom to be able to create and do the things she loves. The future of programming “When I first started using React, it seemed magical, but over time it has changed to be a lot more granular and less magical. That is a very interesting metaphor for a lot of things that are happening in the tech industry.“ She talks through some of the trends in software engineering, including how programming for the web has changed over the past few years. She explains how and why languages and the way that programmers use them have evolved over time. “People want to be more granular with their coding and engineering practices. A lot of people want to get to the core of adding more low-level and theoretical computer science practices to web development.” Why she loves mechanical keyboards so much “It’s so fun to be able to build something that is both pretty and functional. Typing on them is actually really fun. Typing on a mechanical keyboard feels like actually accomplishing something. When you feel that tactical feedback, it’s great.“ While doing the interview, Cassidy mentions that she had nine different mechanical keyboards sitting next to her. She waxes poetic on the virtues of using and building mechanical keyboards, including a breakdown of some of her favorite builds. She also talks about some of her other favorite non-keyboard products as well. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Copper for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Justin Jackson. Justin is a founder, author, and podcaster. He is co-founder of Transistor, a platform for podcasters, and runs his own podcast called Build your SaaS. He is also the creator of the MegaMaker community for developers. In this episode they discuss... Going from side hustle to full-time founder “The truth is that where I’m at now is that where I’m at now is the result of years and years and years of investigating things, being curious and being naturally passionate about radio and audio in particular.” Justin followed a circuitous route to becoming a founder. He grew up in rural Alberta, Canada, and didn’t get his first job in tech until he was 28 years old. He recently started working on Transistor full-time, and explains the progression from working a regular job, to working remotely, to starting a side hustle, and finally to becoming a “solopreneur.” His candid recounting of his experience with depression “I got hit hard, like I had never been hit before. I have to admit I had a bad perspective on mental illness. I thought that people who were depressed were weak. I remember that time — I felt like I had been punched down into the ground like the Incredible Hulk.” Justin opens up about what it was like to experience depression for the first time, how it impacted him and how it changed his perspective on work, life, and mental illness generally. How to take care of your mental health “If you think of our lives as an application, we’re really good at maintaining the front end code. The front end code is everything that people see — the house, the degree, the job — all the external stuff. It’s the stuff we post on Instagram, it’s the stuff we talk about when we’re with friends, it’s our public face we reveal to others. But we have this back end code that we are gradually writing things to but not refactoring or caring for it the way we should.” He explains how he got himself out of his depression with the help of a therapist, and talks about some of the important mental shifts he needed in his life. He also talks about the importance of separating your sense of self and your identity from your professional projects. The future of podcasting and “mindful technology” “Increasingly, people are looking for mindful technology, technology that’s not designed to keep you on the platform forever, that’s not designed to be addictive or maintain your attention forever. It’s difficult to track, it’s difficult to sell your data, and podcasting right now fits — it’s mindful.” Justin has been passionate about audio since he was a kid riding in the family pickup truck in Alberta. He talks about the changes he’s seen in the space over the last decade and what the future holds for podcasting. He also explains his theory of mindful technology, why people want their technology to be mindful, and why podcasts fit the category perfectly. And of course, they talk about some of his favorite products for desktop and mobile. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Copper for their support.

Abadesi is joined by Sarah Cooper on this episode. She’s an author and comedian from New York, and has published two books: 100 Tricks To Appear Smart In Meetings, and How To Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings. She was also an executive at Yahoo! and Google. In this episode they discuss: How she got started in comedy and her advice for following your passion “Observe yourself. Notice where your mind goes when you’re supposed to be doing something else. What do you obsess about? What can you not stop thinking about?“ It was a difficult decision to leave a job at Google to pursue comedy full-time, but Sarah walks through her decision-making process and what pushed her over the edge. She talks about how to find your passion, and why you might need to let go of those childhood dreams. “Be flexible in what you passion is. Don’t feel like you have to do something just because it was a childhood dream.“ The inside scoop on working at Google Sarah worked for several years at Google in NYC, working on the Google Docs product. She explains what the best (and worst) things were about her time at Google. She dishes on the amazing interior design, the perks, the nap pods, but also the hyper-competitive environment that knew no bounds. For example, she says that people would race to be the first one to congratulate a co-worker on a personal announcement in an email thread. Another time, a co-worker of hers grabbed her laptop out of her hands to type on it himself because she wasn’t typing fast enough. What she’s excited about and how tech can do better at helping the world “It’s kind of ironic because one of the big selling points of joining a tech company is the chance to change the world. That’s the problem with capitalism — the question is always ‘how are you going to make it into a million-dollar company,’ even if it is going to help a small group of people immensely.“ Aba asks Sarah which technologies she’s most excited about. Sarah talks about some of the problems inherent in capitalism and why a company that makes a huge difference to the lives of a small number of people will nevertheless have a hard time getting off the ground. Her advice for people who are trying to write more “Never set aside time to come up with ideas. Ideas come to you when you’re observing people or yourself or in the world, or in the shower. I keep a running list of ideas and when I sit down to write I’m not starting with a blank page.“ Sarah takes us behind the curtain to show us what her creative process looks like. She explains why improv comedy is a favorite activity for tech companies looking to do team building, and the best way to turbocharge your writing process. And of course, we also talk about some of her favorite products. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Copper for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to Alex Konrad, Senior Associate Editor at Forbes. He’s one of today’s top tech journalists and has interviewed some of the biggest tech titans around. He also plays a pivotal role in the lists that Forbes publishes, including The Midas List, The Cloud 100, and 30 Under 30. In this episode they discuss... Why The Financial Crisis Was a Flourishing Moment In Tech “If you look back, that post-2009 period was a really good one for new companies. Out of the chaos came all these great startups. People weren’t sure if the traditional industries were welcoming to them and they looked to do their own thing or join great tech companies.” Alex says that the current crop of companies going public can seem like overnight successes, but really they are “overnight successes ten years in the making.” He points out that many of them were started in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and explains what that was a “flourishing moment” in tech. “Emotionally, it was a hard time for all of us, but I do think that that uncertainty did create a lot of interesting ideas and risk-taking.“ How To Handle a Crisis as a Founder or CEO “The instinct can be to turtle and batten down the hatches and take an us-versus-the-world mentality when something goes wrong. You have to resist that inclination. CEOs and any founder who owns an issue and engages in conversation… I can’t think of a situation where that blew up in their face or it made the problem worse.“ Alex has covered plenty of scandals, breaches, and crises in his day. He explains how a founder or a CEO can make sure they handle a crisis in the best way they possibly can. He says that part of doing so means being human and approachable, instead of retreating into your company and denying responsibility. The Best Ways To Establish Rapport With Someone Important “I can connect really quickly or build a rapport with someone when I connect with them first as humans. Whether it’s small talk before or after a meeting or just asking a questions about hobbies or things unrelated to their company, its really important to see how people see the world and what they’re thinking about.” He talks about what it’s like to interview some of the biggest names in tech, including Satya Nadella, Marc Benioff and Eric Yuan. He explains how he builds a rapport with them in order to get the best interview possible, and gives us some tips on how to build rapport with anyone, as well as how you can communicate more effectively. “Hustle-Porn Culture” and How He Stays Productive “We idolize people who seem to be making crazy sacrifices and doing something outlandish in pursuit of their goal. We fall into the trap of thinking that just because that’s working for them it’s somehow better than what others are doing or something that we should all be doing.” Alex points out that the tech titans that he’s interviewed have drastically differing personal styles. Some are bookish while some are bombastic, yet they are all very successful. He points out that given the disparities, it’s hard to draw conclusions about the “best” way of doing something. He talks about the trend that’s currently in fashion to point to particular personal quirks and habits as the “key to success” and why we should be cautious about saying everyone should be waking at 4am or working seven days a week. And of course, we also talk about some of his favorite products. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Copper for their support.

On this episode Abadesi talks to April Wensel, founder of Compassionate Coding, and one of Aba’s favorite follows on Twitter. She’s a veteran software engineer who has worked in healthcare, entertainment, research and education. In this episode they discuss... How to make your interviews more inclusive “What you can do is discuss problem solving on a technical level, because I think that’s really one of the most important skills as a software engineer. It’s not memorizing syntax or being able to code something up really fast on the spot, instead you turn it into an evolving conversation where you talk about architecture, how to choose frameworks, or working through refactoring problems.” April recounts her first time hiring a team of engineers and says that it ended up being fifty percent women and people of color without making any special effort to do so. She explains how she approached the hiring process and why typical tech industry interviews, despite being used by some of the biggest companies in tech, exclude too many people from the process and don’t test for the right skills. Why we need to change the way we think about the tech industry “We don’t think a lot about the people who are involved in or affected by tech. We’re mostly focused on the hot new technology or whatever. That’s what inspired me to start something to change how we think about technology from the level of software engineers.” April explains how she came to the realization about the tech industry that spurred her to create Compassionate Coding. She says that too often we don’t think enough about the human side of technology and that we need a new approach. Why telling someone you’re non-technical is nonsensical, and why she says, "if you can use a fork, you’re technical" “I was always hearing this term non-technical. When people call themselves non-technical, that’s heartbreaking because they’re limiting their possibilities. It’s like when people say they’re not creative. It’s such a fixed way of looking at the world that’s just not true. Whatever skills they have, they’re technical. Anything where you go really deep is technical.” She says that in her experience in tech “non-technical” has been used as a codeword for a broad swath of unspoken reasons that someone wouldn’t fit in. She explains why we need a broader definition of technical that doesn’t just mean that someone has coding skills. The problem of “toxic elitism” in the tech industry “The culture that uses terms like RTFM implies that ‘I’m not going to help you, and you should be ashamed that you didn’t help yourself first.’ It assumes that this person is lazy and can’t figure things out.” April talks about some of the toxic attitudes and behaviors that pervade tech, and specifically software engineering. She says that people are too often reticent to help each other and that there is an unwarranted sense of superiority among engineers. How you can do your part to cultivate a positive culture at your company “Imagine the fear that we [women and minorities] have been living in forever. Now that we’re having conversations, yes it’s making men and people from the majority groups more mindful, but yes, your words are important and it’s worth being mindful about them. It’s about not being afraid to make a mistake but knowing you will make mistakes and being humble enough to admit that and then to handle it gracefully when someone points out that you made a mistake and commit to doing better.” Aba and April swap stories of some of the most egregious interactions they’ve had or heard about in the tech industry, and explain how we can all help to make tech more more inclusive. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Copper for their support.

Ryan recently visited Grove HQ in SOMA in San Francisco to chat with two founders who know a ton about fintech. Chris Hutchins was our gracious host and is CEO of Grove, a startup that uses people and technology to help you with your financial goals. Ryan actually met Chris in the early days of Product Hunt when he was an investor at Google Ventures. Before that, he started a company called Milk that was acquired by Google. All his life he's been a self-acknowledged financial nerd, often sharing his money-saving tips with friends, which was a large inspiration for starting Grove. Jake Gibson is the co-founder of NerdWallet. The company started back in 2009 and helps consumers make smart financial decisions like “which credit card should I get?” or “what's the best savings account for me?” He left in 2014 and has since focused his time angel investing, primarily in fintech startups. In this episode they discuss... How fintech has evolved over the past decade — and why it’s so hot right now Jake and Chris both worked in finance before becoming entrepreneurs and they talk about how that informed the companies they founded. They talk about the big changes that have happened over the last ten years and why a space that very few founders would touch just a few years ago has become one of the hottest spaces for entrepreneurs and investors. “We all basically know the guidelines around how to be healthy, but we don’t do it, because eating broccoli sucks, and its complicated, and good food is expensive, so there are a lot of reasons why we aren’t going to do it and personal finance is the same way.” — Jake The top financial life hacks, including why Chris says he buys his groceries at OfficeMax People ask me, ‘where do you buy your groceries?’ and I’ll be like, ‘I buy my groceries at OfficeMax, because I buy Whole Foods gift cards at OfficeMax so that I can buy my groceries.’ You have to be kind of crazy to do that but I’m clearly there.” — Chris Chris talks about his obsessive quest for credit card points and why, once you take a lavish vacation using only the points you’ve accrued on your cards, it makes having twelve credit cards and an index card to tell you when to spend on which one all worth it. “I have all these credit cards and I’ve specifically gone in and said, ‘do I spend enough here to make it worth it?’ It might be that I’m the first person to volunteer to plan a trip for friends and they all think ‘wow, I’m getting this awesome benefit, my friend’s planning this trip for me, I don’t have to think about it.’ I’m like, totally, and I will do that for free, but I will put 100% of the flights and hotels on my credit card. I’ll earn the points, you get a free travel agent, and it works out really well for both of us.” — Chris What the future holds for fintech and their favorite companies in the space They talk about the problems they were trying to solve with the companies they co-founded, what remains to be done in the space, and some of their favorite apps for helping you get a handle on your finances. “How do you know if a term life policy is more relevant than investing in your 401k or saving more money or putting it towards your kids’ college? How do you figure all that out? The short answer is you could build a future cash flow model and the bankers in the room are like ‘oh, I already did that’ but 99 percent of people are like ‘I have no idea.’” — Chris The rise of crypto and how it might impact fintech “There are a lot of people in the crypto space who don’t know anything about finance and a lot of people who know a lot about finance getting into crypto who don’t know anything about crypto, so it’ll be interesting to see how that will all evolve.” — Jake It wouldn’t be a tech podcast without talking about crypto, right? They discuss the promise of crypto and which aspects of it are overhyped. “People talk about how tokenizing securities — stocks and bonds and things like that — should make the world better and more efficient. Sure, if you can cut out trading costs, I think that can be helpful, but you don’t necessarily need a blockchain to do that. Additionally, everyone says one of the benefits is it’s tradable 24/7. I don’t think that’s actually a benefit.” — Jake If you want to give Grove a try, check out hellogrove.com/producthunt to get $100 off. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Vettery and Copper for their support.

On this episode Abadesi sits down with Reshma Sohoni, co-founder and managing partner of Seedcamp. She co-founded the firm in 2007 and works with the Seedcamp team and their portfolio companies to help push early stage companies from difficult times to household names. In this episode they discuss... How Seedcamp discovers, attracts (and retains!) hidden talent “We do recruit from odd places. Forty percent of our team are working mothers. On the accounting and legal side, it’s a job you can do remotely and can do with kids. We’ve recruited folks who are senior and could be doing other things, but we’ve given them flexibility and they’ve chosen to work with us.” Reshma talks about some of the unique ways they have been able to compete for talent that others in the industry miss. She also talks about why diversity is important to the team and how being authentic about their values has helped them find people who mesh well with the culture. How they’ve built a strong culture at Seedcamp Reshma explains why they have clearly articulated not just want they want their employees to do, but also what they want their employees not to do. They discuss the rule at Seedcamp that a meeting should never produce another meeting, and some of the other ways that they have differentiated their culture from other VC firms. “One of the things we say is that you’re CEO of Function X and you should run it like that. Obviously the negative is, how do you get them to work together and talk to each other? We’re conscious of that. We’ve built in online and offline systems to make sure all those pieces connect together. But that autonomy is a huge part of retention.” Her advice for people who want to work in VC “It helps to do jobs you don’t like early in your career. It’s huge. You really figure out what your weaknesses are and also therefore identify what your strengths are.” Reshma talks a bit about how she got into venture capital, how it has changed and how she would advise young people looking to get into the VC game today. “We don’t do interviews in a traditional style. It’s very much a multi-party dialog around how you’ll fit, what are your ambitions, and how do we help those?” Why founder mental health has been getting more attention and how VCs can help the cause Reshma talks about how they’ve taken a different approach to helping founders when it comes to some of the personal difficulties they face in building a company. She points out that some of these issues are not thing that they can discuss at for example, a board meeting. She says that they are investing in companies that can help alleviate some of these pressures generally, both for founders and others. Which spaces she’s most excited about investing in “We’ve made a number of investments in personalized health. We think that’s the biggest opportunity humanity has had. We believe a lot in that and we’re investing in it.” Reshma talks about some of the products she uses from their portfolio companies and why in addition to the healthcare space, why she’s also excited about FinTech. And of course, they talk about some of her favorite products and what the Seedcamp team uses to stay productive. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Vettery and Copper for their support.

Abadesi talks to Veni Kunche, who is founder and CEO of Code with Veni, a newsletter for women in tech, and Diversify Tech, an awesome online resource for underrepresented groups trying to break into the industry. In this episode they discuss... How she got into tech and her advice for people trying to break into the industry “The first programming class that I ever took was Intro To Java Programming and I got a C in it. That disqualified me from entering the computer science program. I was completely lost and had no idea what to do. I think one of the reasons that I struggled was that a lot of times university intro classes are not actually intro classes. I had no idea what code was but my classmates all seemed to know.” Veni was the first woman in her family to go to college and she describes what that was like as someone who was unfamiliar with all the “unwritten rules” about college and the job market. She also speaks about her father, who is also a software engineer and was the first person in his family to go to college, as her inspiration to get into the industry. She lists her advice for those trying to break into tech, including building a network before you need it, and remembering that everyone is on their own journey and their own path — so don’t sweat it if other people seem to be making more progress than you! How companies can make their recruiting process more suitable for women and underrepresented candidates “Research has shown that women apply only if they meet most of the requirements whereas men apply to a job even if they meet half the requirements. Sometimes people list nice-to-haves in the requirements list in a job description but they need to understand that that may be deterring people from applying.” Veni talks about the difference between the interview process when she was applying for jobs in 1999 and now, and how it has changed (not necessarily for the better). She points out that some candidates need more accommodations and can’t necessarily take an entire day off for an interview. She also shares some of the feedback she’s given CTOs via her job board at Diversify Tech. How she invests in her career capital and keeps up with new developments “I usually need a project to work on. I’m not someone who can learn something just by reading. So usually I make up a project and work on it. That’s how I keep up with the new developments in tech.” Veni describes feeling like she was behind her colleagues when coming back from maternity leave and how she got herself up to speed on new developments in the language they were working in. She talks about the challenges of landing a job when she was first starting out and how she volunteered in order to obtain work experience. Her advice on starting companies and fostering community “Starting a company is like a marathon. It’s not something that you do and just works. The launch is not going to determine if you’ve failed or not. You have to be continuously reflecting on what’s working, what’s not working, what changes you can make, and constantly talking to your customers.” She shares what she’s learned after trying and failing to build a number of different companies and why she found success with Code with Veni and Diversify Tech. She explains the most important factors in building a strong community and why she still runs office hours, the program which was the initial catalyst for her two companies. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Vettery and Copper for their support.

Abadesi talks to Sahil Lavingia, founder and CEO of Gumroad, an online platform that enables creators to sell directly to their customers. Sahil is a very authentic founder who is not afraid to speak uncomfortable truths, as you’ll see in the interview. They talk about... His journey starting Gumroad and what happened when they realized the company wasn’t going to be as successful as they had hoped Sahil was very young when he started Gumroad (he’s only 26 now!) and had worked a couple big tech companies where he saw that “there’s a lot more duct tape in the industry than people realize.” He recounts the ups and downs of the company and what precipitated the events described in his now-famous article. “We raised over ten million dollars from a great list of investors and realized when we were trying to raise a series B that that was unlikely to happen and went from 20 to 5 employees to get to profitability. Then we went from 5 to 1 when I could run the company by myself but luckily we’ve been able to grow the team again. Even though we’ve processed over $200 million for creators, eight years later it still feels like we’re in the first inning, as people say.” He says that a lot of people think they can be the exception to the rule that most companies don’t succeed as much or as fast as they hope they will, and that you should remember that “you’re probably closer to the mean than you think.” Why relationships in Silicon Valley are so transactional Sahil talks about the difficulty of building deep relationships on a personal level in the Valley and how that changed when he moved to Provo, Utah, where he was able to find a support network. He says that people were eager to meet with him when he was perceived as successful but not so much when the company wasn’t doing well. “There’s this transitive property of trust, where if someone that someone trusts gives you an intro to them you’re sort of guaranteed to meet them. I think network-building is better in Silicon Valley than anywhere else but it’s difficult to meet with someone multiple times and build a deep relationship without a clear agenda that’s going to help [one or the other].” Dealing with the psychological ups-and-downs of having your identity as a founder so wrapped up in the fate of your company “On a personal level, you do suffer, because you realize how much you’ve invested in your company and how little in yourself.” He talks about the difficulty of admitting that your company isn’t doing as well as people think and how to find help as a founder: “The only way you can get support is to be open about the thing that you need help with, and when your identity is so wrapped up in something that isn’t working, it’s difficult to be open about that.” He comments on the trend of watching successful founders try to find themselves in public and in real-time on Twitter after their exits: “They have all this time and all this money and they feel anxious and don’t know how to spend their time and don’t know what’s next for them. You realize, that’s my future if I don’t figure this stuff out.” His philosophy of technology, both personally and at Gumroad “Pick a couple things that you really believe in strongly and do the boring, standard things for everything else. The things that you do differently, you really want to invest in doing them differently in the right way. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing things differently the wrong way.” Why he believes so strongly in in-person connection Even with the advent of technologies and tools that make it possible to connect over long distances, he points out that the physical world is much higher fidelity than the digital one: “Technology is great and getting better but nothing replaces being in the same place as another person and breathing the same air.” “Gumroad is great, but if it’s not making people’s lives physically better, it’s not worth it.” We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Embroker and Vettery for their support.

Abadesi is back to host this episode with Saron Yitbarek, founder and CEO of CodeNewbie and the Codeland conference. Saron is a former journalist who started working in the tech industry and then pivoted to a technical role after learning to code from scratch. Aba and Saron talk about... What inspired her to get into tech, and the story of going from journalist to software engineer “Cold emailing will get you far in life.” Saron describes how reading the Walter Isaacson book about Steve Jobs showed her that tech can be about design and storytelling and that tech had a human side that fit with her liberal arts background. She explains how she got her first job at a tech company without any tech experience by cold emailing several founders in NYC. “Transitioning into a new career is hard. It’s a lot harder than we’ve been telling people that it is.” Her journey learning to code, including what she learned from the failed attempts “I said to myself I’m going to do this full-time, I’m going to give myself a month to see if I like it and I’m not allowed to quit until the month is over. This time I said to myself, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to suck but let’s give it a month and we’ll see if it sucks less at the end of the month. And it did — it sucked less, so I continued and went about my coding journey.” Saron talks about some of the resources she used and why having the right resources made a big difference in her eventual success. She also talks about starting the CodeNewbie community and why having a supportive community around you when learning to code is important. How to get the most out of coding bootcamps and how to find a great job “Your network is absolutely everything. When you’re hearing the success stories, what I’d like to know is how did that person actually get that job? Did they know a friend at the company? Do they live in San Francisco? Are they already working at a tech company in a non-technical role?” Saron points out that it's important to manage your expectations coming out of a coding bootcamp. “I think there is this expectation oftentimes that if I go through the bootcamp and graduate, I’m going to automatically get a job without having to go through the job search. If you go into it with that mindset, you’re going to be frustrated if it’s been a couple months and you still don’t have a job.” How the landscape for learning to code has changed She explains how bootcamps have evolved over time: “I think that there is a deeper understanding of what it really takes to learn how to code and what it takes to be job-ready. Some of the programs are a little bit longer and more in-depth. They’re not trying to cover all things but instead the fundamental things. There’s a maturity in the space where we have a better understanding of what companies are actually looking for.” She also talks about some of the communities and resources that have popped up since she was learning how to code. Her unique formula for staying organized and productive “Any time someone gives me a task I pull up my calendar and I will give myself a block of time to do a task. I end up with a timesheet for myself with everything I’ve been doing in a day. At the end of the month, I can tally it up in a spreadsheet and see exactly how I’m using my time.” She also talks about some of the apps her and her team uses to stay on top of their time and their work. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Monday.com and Embroker for their support.

Scott Kupor joins Ryan on this episode to talk about his new book, Secrets of Sand Hill Road. Scott is Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and has been at the firm since it was founded. He has a long history with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, including working alongside them at Opsware in the early 2000s. Ryan and Scott talk about... How venture capital has changed over the past decade “The biggest shift has been the massive amount of seed funding growth that has happened. Something like five hundred new firms focusing on seed have been formed in the last ten years in the US alone.” Scott also points out that even though there has been an explosion in seed funding, it's still the case that less than 10% of all venture capital dollars are deployed at the seed stage. “You’ve got this interesting dichotomy, which massive new company formation happening at the seed stage but a winnowing down of the opportunities and increasingly more capital going to winners in particular ecosystems as they mature.” They also discuss the fact that companies are taking much longer to IPO now than they did in the past, and why that trend is here to stay. Advice for founders in the new investment landscape Scott talks about how founders need to adapt to the new investment landscape and walks through some of the biggest mistakes that founders make when they are trying to raise money. “It’s cheaper than ever to start a company today and we’ve got incredible amounts of seed funding but it’s also more expensive than ever to actually scale the businesses because the markets you can go after are much bigger and people realize they have to look at international markets in parallel.” The future of venture capital Ryan asks what the biggest potential disruptor to venture capital could be in the next five to ten years. “Capital is definitely no longer a scarce resource and therefore if you’re relying on capital to differentiate yourself in the market, that’s not a good place to be. Whether [the future] is ICOs or crowdfunding, I think we’ve permanently gone into a place where you have to provide something other than money to be competitive. I think we’re also going to see more blending between the private markets and the public markets.” How to think about the long-term relationship between your company and your investors “It turns out that most VC relationships will last longer than the average marriage in the US, which unfortunately only lasts about eight years. Sometimes you’ll be involved with VCs for ten to twelve years, so it really goes to this fundamental question of understanding the VC’s incentives but also being very clear as an entrepreneur what you expect from your VC.” “We think about these financing rounds as though they’re episodic because they are, but they’re a part of a continuum and anything you do that doesn’t play well for subsequent investors is probably the biggest mistake I see on both the investor side and the entrepreneur side.” How a VC thinks and how to understand their incentive structure Scott pulls back the curtain on VC to explain how an early-stage investor thinks about evaluating your company. “The question ultimately for an early stage VC is, imagine if this company worked — what could it become? And then the real question that follows from that is, why would I want to back this team versus any number of other teams that might have the same idea.” Ryan also tells the story of walking into Andreessen Horowitz in sneakers and a Product Hunt kitty t-shirt to pitch the company and finding himself speaking to nearly twenty people. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Monday.com and Embroker for their support.

Ryan and Wade Foster have known each other through the internet for years before recently meeting in person in Mountain View. Ryan learned so much from the coffee chat that he asked if Wade would join the podcast to share some of his stories scaling Zapier. Like Product Hunt, Zapier is a fully distributed team, although they're much bigger with 200 people in over 20 countries. They're helping makers create no-code apps and helping everyone get work done more efficiently. Ryan and Wade talk about... Learnings from scaling a distributed team and Zapier's “delocation package” “We went through YC in summer 2012, and for the summer all three founders worked and lived together. That was the only time period in our company’s history where everyone was in the same location.” Zapier is a very large distributed team, with over 200 people working completely remotely. They've only worked together one time in their history, when the founders were all at YC together in 2012. Wade talks about some of the benefits to working in a distributed team, including the fact that he has “effectively a teleportation machine” that can transport him from meeting to meeting in seconds by taking calls via Zoom, instead of having to find an open meeting room and switch between physical locations. Zapier came up with a unique “delocation package.” As a distributed team, they offer people living in the Bay Area $10,000 to move out of the Bay Area, which a few employees have taken them up on so far. Wade talks about how they make sure that everyone is on the same page in a fast-growing, distributed team: “A big task that you have to do as you get bigger, is alignment. Alignment is simpler when there are fewer people. When you get bigger, you can do a lot more, which is exciting, but good smart people can pick different paths to go down, which don't necessarily solve for the customer's needs. The last 18 months we’ve worked really hard to create an OKR system that creates alignment across all these different teams.” Managing team dynamics in a fast-growing organization Wade talks about how managing a big team is different than a small team, and why CEOs need to pay attention to how the team is working together and how everyone is feeling about their work. “The larger your org gets, the law of large numbers kicks in. If, say, 1% of your company is angry about something in a given day, you get to 200 people that means every day 2 people might be pretty angry about something. If you make a mistake, maybe 5-10 people are pretty angry about something. For someone who’s a natural people-pleaser, that can wear on you.” Wade explains why it can be difficult to hire from within in a company that is growing exponentially. “If the needs of the company outpace the needs of the individual, which is often common in these companies that are growing exponentially, there are very few people who can rise through the proverbial management ranks fast enough to match the growth of the company.” What it's like to be CEO and the “cheat code” that CEOs get to keep in their back pocket “CEOs get a cheat code, which I think is fair because CEOs have a crazy hard job in so many different ways. We get to hire people. If you feel like any function isn’t being successful, you get the opportunity y to go hire the best leader you can possibly find in the world. As a CEO, your job is to assemble the best team and so if you do your job right you should probably be the dumbest person in your executive team to a degree.” Wade also talks the system he adapted from Dharmesh Shah at HubSpot to denote how urgent his communications with the team are (or aren't). They have a set of hashtags that Wade uses alongside his emails and Slack messages to make clear whether urgent action is required or not. Sometimes employees feel that any email from the CEO means action needs to be taken right away but this system ensures everyone is on the same page. His thoughts on the no-code movement “If you’ve got an idea and you really aren’t an engineer, you can get something up and running that is pretty good in a couple hours. I think it’s just fantastic because it allows many more people to get their ideas out into the world.” Zapier is a big part of the no-code movement and Wade and Ryan talk about some of the coolest projects they've seen built by makers without writing code and some of the products being used alongside Zapier in the no-code movement. “I imagine we’ll find that more and more companies are built with off-the-shelf software, which feels pretty powerful for society to enable the 99% of us who are not engineers unleash our creativity on the world.” Joel also talks about some of this favorite products and the software the company uses to collaborate. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Pilot, Monday.com, and Embroker for their support.

On this episode Ryan is joined by Joel Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer, a simple tool manage all your social media accounts. We've been avid users, big fans, and paying customers for years. In this episode Ryan and Joel talk about... Joel's roundabout journey from the UK to the US via Hong Kong and Israel Joel started Buffer with his co-founder in the UK. They lived only thirty minutes away from one another but worked remotely most of the time, preferring Skype calls and chats. After moving to the Bay Area, they ended up having to leave the US because they weren't able to get visas. He tells the story of how they decided where to go next. “We were unable to get our visas, so we had to leave the US. I remember the three of us in an apartment in San Francisco looking at Google Maps, thinking ‘where should we go?’ We ended up going to Hong Kong for six months and then to Israel for three months.” What it's like to manage an 85-person completely distributed team “David Cancel, who’s at Drift now gave me really good advice. He said either go fully remote or have an office with everyone in the same place. He said it’s hard to make it work when you’re in between those two scenarios.” Joel talks about the advantages of a distributed team, including why distributed workers tend to have more loyalty and retention with a company than Bay Area employees. He also gives his advice for setting up and running a distributed team. “We actually went out of our way to hire the next few people outside the Bay Area just to makes sure we were really distributed and not ending up with people who felt like second-class citizens.” Buffer's extreme transparency and how that endears the company to its customers Joel is one of the most vulnerable and open CEOs you'll find. He talks about how he started writing on the company blog about all the highs and lows that Buffer was experiencing and how it benefitted the company in ways that you might not expect. Buffer also publicly shares their formula for determining salaries as well as the salaries of every individual in the company. Joel explains how this is empowering to employees. “It’s just fulfilling and liberating to open up and share. I feel like it keeps us honest and doing the right things.” He says that transparency made the company more human and that both customers and non-customers felt like they were “along for the ride” when they could learn about the interior workings of the company. [When facing scaling challenges and angry customers] “...we would try to be very responsive on social media and email. When you’re sharing things transparently, you’re building up that trust with customers and very quickly those situations turned around into overwhelming support from customers — and even non-customers, just people cheering us on as a company.” Why (in a very unorthodox move) Buffer bought out their investors last year Joel explains their unique approach to company-building. He talks about how they broached the topic with their investors that Buffer might not be seeking the typical VC exit — and how they found VCs willing to partner with them on those terms. “We shared in the negotiations that there was a good chance that we might never want to sell the company or go public.” Of course, Joel also talks about some of his favorite products as well. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Pilot and Monday.com for their support.

Web Smith has a long history working in direct-to-consumer and e-commerce. He managed marketing spend for Rogue, a leading sports goods manufacturer back in 2011 before co-founding Mizzen + Main and later joining Gear Patrol. In 2015 he founded 2PM, a B2B media company for the commerce industry and advises leading executives in the space. Through 2PM Web also invests in early-stage DTC brands and platforms that support the consumer ecosystem. If you've ever thought about starting your own DTC brand or online shop, you'll want to heed Web's advice. In this episode Ryan and Web talk about... The state of direct-to-consumer today “It’s going to become a battle to discern which companies have sticking power and what a possible exit will look like. Casper’s potential IPO will set a standard for other brands looking to exit. We’re also looking at a lot of companies developing holding companies for these types of brands.” Web points out that only 12% of transactions are e-commerce today — the remaining 88% comes via physical retail. Trends in the industry and how it has evolved over the years “The industry’s filling up pretty quickly. It’s a really dense area for people who want to become founders. They’re highly educated, from great schools, and funding is easy to come by in the DTC space for the time being. So they’re coming out of the gates from Wharton or wherever with millions of dollars in the bank and they’re probably going to get to the next milestone because they have the right founders, the right teams, and the right money. That’s the story of tens if not hundreds of consumer brands in the last two years.” Direct-to-consumer has for several years been a hot area for founders and investors. He talks about some of the trends he's seen in the space, including which growth strategies have been effective and how companies will need to evolve in the coming years as the landscape shifts. They also discuss companies like Casper and Warby Parker getting into brick-and-mortar sales, even as they are the poster children for the disruption of brick-and-mortar. What Web would do if he was creating a direct-to-consumer brand today “If I was starting a DTC brand today, I would actually start with a media company. I would launch a newsletter or blog a year or two before. It’s worth your while to develop an organic base of people that are interested in the product that they have. I know that sounds counterintuitive but you’re seeing a premium on the brands that have that type of organic acquisition” He says that paid acquisition is a commonly used strategy by DTC CMOs but that it is quickly becoming cost-prohibitive. He predicts that companies will need to adapt to different models in the future. How to think about defensibility for direct-to-consumer companies “[Ask yourself] Who are the people defending their purchases? How are they talking about their purchases to their friends and loved ones? How loyal are they? Will they come back to buy the next thing that you sell? That’s an element of defensibility that goes a bit unconsidered.” Web points out that there are plenty of informal brand ambassadors for companies with strong brands. He says that the word-of-mouth spread of brand affinities is an underrated aspect of defensibility. How direct-to-consumer companies can create a community around their brand “When Nike released the ad with Colin Kaepernick, Nike knew what it was doing. It was going to polarize the customer base and the folks that were on their side would spend a lot of time and energy defending Nike’s decision and that would amplify the brand for those defenders.” He says that companies need to think about their consumers in terms of one-to-many relationships instead of the one-to-one model that has been the primary model to date. Web talks about some of the communities that are forming around certain brands and how companies can encourage the creation of those communities. They also discuss some of their favorite e-commerce or direct-to-consumer brands and companies, and Web breaks down why those companies have been successful. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Pilot for their support.

AJ is mysterious. He's a maker who goes by his initials only and is the creator of Carrd, an awesome tool for creating one-page websites without any code. AJ lives in Nashville and built Carrd entirely himself. He's a bootstrapped, solo entrepreneur and maker who's been able to make a great living building a product people love and pay for. Luckily, he agreed to be recorded without voice masking, as Startup L Jackson requested, when Park— er, Startup L Jackson came on in the first incarnation of Product Hunt Radio. In this episode Ryan and AJ talk about... How AJ started Carrd as a side project which morphed into a full-blown business... “It started out as trying to make my life easier but ended up making users’ lives easier as well. A one-page site builder sounds innocuous, but you’d be surprised at the directions something like this can go.” He explains how he started Carrd and why he decided not to take on the large, multi-page site builders of the world. ... and how Carrd's users transformed it into something new entirely as an outlet for their creativity. “Trends in web design means everything moves together and kind of starts to all look the same. It’s nice to see people using Card to build websites that look unlike anything you’ve ever seen.” Among many other applications of the platform that AJ says he couldn't have foreseen, there has also been an unexpected takeover of Carrd by K-Pop fans who use it to create customized fan sites that look very... unique. AJ explains how he thinks about the direction of the platform and how he handles feature requests... “I try to take most new feature requests and figure out whether this is something that really only service one niche, and if so, is it a big enough niche to justify implementing that feature? But I prefer to implement things that would work for multiple groups of people. I try to look at them and think, ‘how can I distill this down to something that’s a bit more general-purpose that others can get use out of?’” ... and how inspiring it is to see the next generation of makers creating their own projects based on the platform. “It tells you that you can do this, you don’t have to just consume, you can create, you can get out there just like everyone else and make something. It doesn’t have to just be a one-way thing. I’m glad that Card is included in this even though I didn’t intend it to be included in the sphere of no-code tools. That’s probably the coolest part of this entire thing to me.” Some of the sites that users have created are in Ryan's words, “so internet in the best way” and are a great way for people to get into creating things on the web, which is reminiscent of the way that people creating amazing apps today got their start hacking their MySpace pages. They also discuss what it's like to work at a single-person startup... “The day-to-day is fundamentally just me in front of a computer, just hacking away at this thing. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get lonely. Remote work has only been a thing people have done recently. I don’t think we’ve fully realized the implications of what it means to spend your day working alone away from human interaction.” AJ recently brought in someone to help with content moderation, but otherwise he's created, built, and scaled Carrd himself. He opens up about some of the “mistakes” he's made along the way and what he would do differently next time. He also talks about the tools he uses to build the platform. ... and why the discussion around whether a company should take venture capital or not is flawed. He talks about whether he would want to take on venture capital and points out that people get caught up in a false dichotomy. He says that we need a more nuanced discussion of what the right type of funding is for a company that takes into account the company's age and stage. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Pilot for their support.

In 2013, Danielle Morrill was just starting up her blog, and writing about startups from a unique, data-driven lens. The blog turned out to be an MVP for what would later become Mattermark, a company she co-founded with her husband, Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks. Danielle's blog was also unique in that she opened up publicly about some of the challenges she was facing at the time, such as feeling lonely as a founder. She also admits to being a “secret introvert” and how over time, even with the level of transparency she brought to her writing, blogging “came to feel a bit like performance art.” “There’s so much content online but a lot of it is very impersonal... Pain is a little easier too bear when you share it. Sometimes it’s easy to believe when we’re struggling we’re going through something no one else has been through. But it’s not true.” In 2017, Mattermark was acquired by FullContact and Danielle moved to Denver Colorado, where she now resides. Danielle recently joined devops platform GitLab as GM of Meltano, a developer workflow tool. In this episode Ryan and Danielle talk about... Her love of reading, the mind-expanding power of fiction, and her book recommendations. Danielle admits that until recently, when she was on sabbatical, she hadn't read many of the classic “startup books.” She's checked many of those off her list now, but she still loves fiction for its mind-expanding power. She says that she thought of herself as a fairly worldly person before she started reading fiction. “I understand a lot more about emotions like empathy and compassion after reading fiction. Each time you read a new book, you try on these new characters’ lives and you get new perspective.” You can follow Danielle on Goodreads, “one of the most underrated social networks.” She loves to give book recommendations. They also discuss... The tools and strategies Danielle uses to track her time and stay productive, and how she ensures she makes time for solitude and self-reflection. Danielle runs through the tools she uses to manage her time and how her routine of Sunday planning and reflection lets her make sure ahead of time she won't have regrets about how she spent her time that week. She talks about the importance of solitude and says that she blocks out time for it in her calendar. “The blog was a good outlet but in a way it became another form of performance art. There’s always more truth you don’t share. There’s the internal work of constantly working towards some kind of coherent story about your life. Journaling, working out, or other things that cause you to have to be in solitude are good for that.” She also talks about what it was like to move from Silicon Valley to Colorado and what it was like to have a co-founder who's also a spouse. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Spoka and Pilot for their support.

Lee Jacobs and Brian Balfour join Ryan at AngelList HQ for this week's episode. Back in the day, Lee was one of the first syndicate leads on AngelList and later went on to join as a Partner. He previously started an education marketplace startup called Campus Dock. Ryan got to know Lee at AngelList a few years ago, when Lee was kind enough to help him craft his deck as he went out to raise his first fund. Lee is now a full-time investor with his own fund, Edelweiss, which he started with Brian Balfour, Elaine Wherry, and Todd Masonis. Brian Balfour invests part-time at Edelweiss and spends the majority of his time as CEO of Reforge, a professional education program for experienced practitioners. We've had some of our teammates here at Product Hunt go through the program. Prior to Reforge, Brian was the VP of Growth at HubSpot, EIR at Trinity Ventures, and the founder of several startups including Boundless Learning, POPSignal, and Viximo. In this episode we talk about: What kinds of questions Lee and Brian ask founders when they first meet them Some of the mistakes that first-time fund managers make and how to avoid them How to think about fund strategy and why the style of your fund should match your personality The importance of cultivating resilience, both as a founder and as an investor Of course, we talk about some of their favorite products as well. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Bubble, Spoka, and Dipsea for their support.