Every day, Jason Calacanis and Molly Wood cover startups, technology, markets, media, crypto, and the all the hottest topics in business and tech. They also interview the world’s greatest founders, operators, investors and innovators.
https://thisweekinstartups.com
Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 52 days 15 hours 42 minutes
E972: “Robbed of Equity”: Toptal denies any shares to employees & investors. Amir Efrati of The Information on breaking the story, founder Taso Du Val’s stock hoarding, unusual tactics & changing landscape of startup-investor relations; then former employ
1:00 Jason intros the Toptal situation and Amir
3:00 Amir on breaking the Toptal story
3:20 Frequency of compensation issues in startup funding
13:45 Jason explains convertible notes
16:10 Did Taso Du Val know what he was doing?
22:00 How can Toptal investors cash out?
29:15 What do LPs think of SAFE agreements and convertible notes?
30:20 Toptal is a cautionary tale for employees & investors
35:59 Jason’s thoughts on convertible notes/SAFE...
E971: The Next Unicorns: Checkr CEO & Co-founder Daniel Yanisse built the first API for background checks, shares insights on scaling to 10,000+ customers, bringing transparency & fairness to hiring, growth v. profitability, the future of gig economy & th
0:50 Jason introduces The Next Unicorns
3:30 Founding Checkr through the gig economy
4:28 Creating the first API for background checks
13:09 Solving the "False Positive" issue in background checks
15:10 Are gig economy companies doing enough in their vetting process?
19:07 Parsing felons through Checkr
28:20 Would Daniel hire someone with a violent criminal history?
32:13 Does Daniel feel pressure for Checkr to...
E970: Revel CEO & Co-founder Lisa Marrone is building communities for women over 50, creating networking opportunities & solving loneliness through curated collaborative events, shares insights on inspiration, virality, scaling strategies, and pricing; pl
2:45 What is Revel?
8:00 Losing friends as you age
18:05 Revel's pricing model
20:47 Who does Revel resonate with most?
23:10 Helping women over 50 with loneliness
33:25 How Revel uses virality to scale
36:58 Revel hosts using the platform as a second source of income
39:05 Will Revel get into physical spaces?
49:43 Leonardo from Send4 on Open Office Hours with Jason
54:37 Scaling growth in a B2B SaaS product
E969: News Roundtable! Molly Wood, Marketplace & Alex Wilhelm, Crunchbase News on WeWork IPO, obfuscation & the consequences of too much money, Peloton appeal, Jeffrey Epstein & the culpability of tech elite, TikTok data mining Americans & other China-US
1:19 Jason Intros the panelists
3:08 WeWork IPO chaos
10:06 Comparing Ray Kroc and Adam Neumann
16:15 Founder lessons from WeWork mess
24:45 Worst part of the WeWork IPO
27:24 Peloton IPO
28:10 Is Peloton elitist?
31:30 Peloton’s high margin hardware business
34:35 Jason and guests play “Company A or Company B”
37:51 Will Disney+ unseat other streaming giants?
45:45 Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein
46:52 Jason tells his Jeffrey...
E968: Open Office Hours LIVE! Jason helps founders with their biggest challenges: acquiring enough customers to successfully fundraise, when to raise prices, hype vs. metrics in the seed stage, avoiding dying markets & more
1:33 Crystal from Healthiest
5:13 Growing users to appeal to investors
20:12 Adam from Yuma
26:39 Raising $ or innovating production
38:27 Claire from Online Profile Pros
43:45 Hype vs. traction in the Seed stage
58:32 Karen from Perceive
1:00:02 "Dead people don't buy ice cream."
E967: Twilio CEO & Co-Founder Jeff Lawson on growing Twilio to 160,000 customers & a billion-dollar run rate, innovating in a trillion-dollar market, learning from Bezos, strategic timing of Twilio’s IPO, the importance of focusing on customers over compe
2:14 Starting Twilio
16:54 How did Twilio 1000x revenue?
20:57 Passing $1B in revenue
31:37 Why Twilio went public when they did
41:20 What makes Jeff Bezos special?
E966: Scott Harrison, charity: water Founder & CEO shares journey from club promoter to entrepreneur & philanthropist, raising $400M to bring clean & safe water to 5000 new people every single day, scaling with SaaS model & equity sharing, solving for glo
2:39 What is charity: water?
12:43 Rachel’s birthday story
34:23 Working with local governments
46:19 Funding charity: water through “The Well”
1:01:39 Creating “The Pool” and how Scott uses startup tactics to run his non-profit
1:10:31 How Scott almost quit after not meeting yearly goals
E965: Kim Scott, author of “Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity,” shares secrets of great leadership through giving & getting honest feedback, lessons learned running Google’s AdSense & working with Sheryl Sandberg, strategies
1:08 How Jason met Kim while she ran Google AdSense
4:01 What Kim learned from working with Sheryl Sandberg
14:40 Does Google regret losing Sheryl Sandberg?
21:24 Why the lack of Psychological Safety in today's business landscape?
35:43 How much should experience matter when evaluating salaries?
42:15 Kim takes Jason through some Radical Candor best practices
E964: PodShare Co-founder & CEO Elvina Beck builds co-living communities where tenants trade privacy for access to the most desirable locations at a low-price point, shares insights on bootstrapping to profitability, using Pods to tackle homelessness, & c
1:37 What is PodShare?
5:16 PodShare's real estate triangle
15:40 Is PodShare a venture scale business?
32:08 What do potential investors think of PodShare?
44:43 What Elvina has learned since starting PodShare in 2012?
E963: Cameo CEO & Co-founder Steven Galanis allows celebrities to monetize their fame by delivering personal messages to fans, shares his unique founding story, new $50m raise by Kleiner Perkins, insights from massive growth, expanding into global markets
2:10 Steven tells Cameo's unique founding story
15:26 Who is the most booked person on Cameo?
29:50 Who can and can't be on Cameo?
37:11 Steven's Top 3 Talent Wishlist
44:10 Scaling Cameo