Podcast appearances and mentions of dane atkinson

Dane Atkinson, CEO and founder of Odeko, joins the show to unpack the reality of evolving as a founder. He shares why the first idea you start with rarely survives, how to know when it's time to pivot, and why anchoring on a mission instead of a product keeps you in the game. This conversation dives into frameworks for making hard calls, the messy middle of startup life, and what it really takes to endure as a multi-time founder.Key Takeaways• Your first idea probably won't be the one that works—focus on the customer and the mission, not the concept.• Pivoting is brutal but necessary; small experiments can create the proof you need to shift direction.• Founders who learn from failure are more likely to succeed in their second or third ventures.• Having a North Star rooted in mission makes the day-to-day grind and tough decisions bearable.• The best outcomes come when investors give founders space to experiment and even fail.Timestamped Highlights00:43 – Why Odeko's mission is to help small coffee shops compete with giants01:44 – The flawed brilliance of Odeko's first AI-driven product and the hard pivot that followed05:28 – The painful trap of chasing product-market fit and the danger of sticking too long10:24 – Building proof for a pivot and the difference between charisma-driven sales and true demand14:04 – Why most successful founders are “multi-run players” and what VCs often miss about failure17:02 – How staying mission-driven keeps founders motivated through setbacksA line worth remembering“You can change the product, you can change the delivery, but if you have a North Star that matters, you'll always know how to steer the company back on track.”Founder TipTest new directions quietly alongside your current model. Early prototypes not only prove viability but also help you win over skeptical teammates, boards, and investors.Call to ActionIf this episode gave you something to think about, share it with a fellow founder or operator who's in the middle of their own evolution. And don't forget to follow The Tech Trek so you never miss the next conversation on scaling, leadership, and building companies that last.

Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He grew the company from ~$2M in revenue to ~$15M. He's a multi-time founder with multiple exits. His current startup, Odeko,  raised $227M.He takes us through his long journey as a founder of multiple companies and shares the key startup lessons he's learned.Why you should listen:- Why 7-day trials led to higher conversion than 30-day trials at Squarespace- Why you should talk to customers every single day.- Why SMB usage doesn't always translate into revenue.- Why you need to follow customer problems over business models and TAM.Timestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(0:00:0:37) Before Odeko(00:06:54) Leaving Squarespace(00:07:31) SumAll(00:13:01) Conversion Rates with Free Trials(00:16:10) The Start of Odeko(00:20:05) Staying Close to Clients(00:26:36) Realizing the New Model was Working(00:31:47) Landing the First Few Customers(00:37:00) Overhiring(00:39:17) Finding Product Market Fit(00:41:32) One Piece of Advice

Dane Atkinson is the Founder and CEO of Odeko, the all-in-one operations partner for local businesses. Dane has spent his entire career helping small businesses. This episode is a masterclass on selling to SMBs. He shares all his lessons learned as a founder, and how Odeko survived zero revenue during COVID and hit $150 million in revenue two years later. Timestamps (00:00) Intro (03:33) The magic formula to sell to SMBs (04:06) Why every small business starts as a dream (21:57) The reasons you shouldn't listen to customers (25:16) Lessons running Squarespace for four years (27:12) Why simplicity is better for SMBs (28:58) How Squarespace ran the very first podcast ads (35:35) Lessons messing up his second company (37:46) How to demote an employee (50:29) Coming up with the idea for Odecco (52:05) Why VCs screw their portfolio companies (55:16) How to navigate pivots with your board (01:04:27) Growing revenue from zero to $100m+ in two years (01:12:10) Advice for first-time founders (01:14:18) How Dane would re-design the food system (01:15:39) Why our food is so bad for our health (01:16:17) How Odeko empowers local makers Check out Odeko: https://odeko.com/ Where to find Dane: Twitter: https://twitter.com/daneatkinson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daneatkinson Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/

Dane Atkinson is the Founder & CEO of Odeko, an online wholesale and technology platform powering a third of independent coffee shops across the US. In this episode we'll talk about how Odeko's reverse franchise model arms mom and pops against Starbucks, what the future of loyalty looks like for small businesses, and the myriad of ways technology can build sustainable local economies around the café ecosystem. Read the full HNGRY Trends article here

Today on the show, we have Dane Atkinson, CEO, and Founder of Odeko. Odeko is a hidden platform supporting thousands of Coffee shops with the technology once only held by the public giants. It uses AI and automation to provide a single source of supplies that is loaded into stores in the closed hours, and consumer apps making all cafes easily discoverable and accessible and soon a host of other building bricks. Odeko is a GGV portflio. Dane is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company at the age of 18. Since then, he has built a successful career running tech companies, mostly in the SMB tech space, such as Squarespace, SumAll, and Odeko. Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He also serves as a board member, mentor, and advisor to numerous other companies. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have Dane Atkinson, CEO, and Founder of Odeko. Odeko is a hidden platform supporting thousands of Coffee shops with the technology once only held by the public giants. It uses AI and automation to provide a single source of supplies that is loaded into stores in the closed hours, and consumer apps making all cafes easily discoverable and accessible and soon a host of other building bricks. Odeko is a GGV portflio. Dane is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company at the age of 18. Since then, he has built a successful career running tech companies, mostly in the SMB tech space, such as Squarespace, SumAll, and Odeko. Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He also serves as a board member, mentor, and advisor to numerous other companies. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Odeko is a mobile payments and supply chain platform for cafés and indie coffee shops. CEO and Founder Dane Atkinson joins the show to talk about AI that can predict when and where you will buy a croissant, taking on juggernauts like Starbucks, acquiring startup Cloosiv over zoom, and building a fleet of delivery trucks to streamline the coffee shop supply chain. This breadth of challenges Odeko is taking on is astounding. From consumer-facing payments and mobile ordering to predictive AI and a supply-side marketplace that reaches individual farms, Odeko's aspirations are massive. All within the niche of coffee shops and cafes. Open Roles! Brand designer (Remote) Full-stack Engineer (Remote) Sales Coordinator (Remote) Try Odeko! Highlights on Twitter

Jeffrey Young is joined by cafe chain operators and back-of-house technology providers to understand what tech building blocks you will need to scale from one, to two, to four and beyond. David Abrahamovitch, CEO of Grind, shows how he uses back-of-house technology to manage KPIs across his 11 cafes.Joe Cripps, Managing Director of Trail, shows how removing cognitive load from your team simultaneously lowers costs, increases revenues while boosting customer service. Dane Atkinson, CEO of Odeko,  explains how independent cafes can benefit from the same technology that the big coffee chains use but at a reasonable cost.  Credits music: "Fire" by Ruby Confue, winner of the 2017 Coffee Music Project. Get in touch and tell us what topics you'd like to hear by visiting www.worldcoffeeportal.com/5THWAVE/Podcast

Dane Atkinson is a serial entrepreneur with lots of great stories to share. We're bringing his interview back this week as part of our "Best of" tag. Dane was the COO of a company at the age of 18, owned a bar in Williamsburg for 3 years, and was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007-2011, among many other things. Today Dane is working on his company SumAll, which democratizes data and analytics for small businesses, pulling from over 40 platforms and synthesizing the data in a simple visualization tool.

Dane Atkinson is the founder and CEO of SumAll, a company that made headlines for committing to salary transparency and sharing with employees what every other employee gets paid. In this interview, Dane and I discuss the downsides of secrecy and the surprising upside of pay transparency.

Dane Atkinson is one of the most experienced entrepreneurs we have had on VFA Podcast thus far! He was the COO of a company at the age of 18, owned a bar in Williamsburg for 3 years, and was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007-2011, among many other things. Today Dane is working on his company SumAll, which democratizes data and analytics for small businesses, pulling from over 40 platforms and synthesizing the data in a simple visualization tool.

An ecommerce merchant deals with lots of data. There’s revenue, profit, customers, traffic, order values, Likes, followers . . . lots of data. One company that helps merchants sort through this data and make decisions is SumAll. Its CEO and co-founder, Dane Atkinson, speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Dane Atkinson of SumAll by Brent Leary and Small Business Trends