Claim OwnershipFounders with Pek
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© Pek Pongpaet
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Interviews with startup founders in all sorts of industries and regions to expand our definition, thinking of what is a startup. Learn from their journey and apply it to your own startup.
29 Episodes
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Jeroen Corthout is the Founder at SalesFlare, an intelligent CRM startups and small businesses love to use. It's a zero-input sales pipeline tool that thinks and works for its user, not the other way around. No more manual data entry. Salesflare fills out address book and keeps track of all interactions with the people users in contact with.
Jeroen loves building great experiences, tinkering with products, reading on diverse topics, optimizing health.
In this episode, we talked about:
Difference of SalesFlare in any other CRM
Jeroen’s background, interests and family background
Challenges in starting a new company
Jeroen talks about his previous company Doctura
The idea on how he started SalesFlare
What works and doesn’t work in building a successful business
How did they got their first early customers?
Partnering with Appsumo deal in getting more sales
Building and growing SalesFlare team
And MUCH MORE!
Links:
USE PEK25 code to get 25% for the first 3 months https://salesflare.com/
Connect with Jeroen
https://salesflare.com/
Zapier
Matthew worked at the intersection of design and technology for over 22 years, most recently as VP of Design at The Zebra. He builds high-performing teams and designs award-winning products and brands. Beyond that, he also writes about ethics, accessibility, diversity, and education within design.
At The Zebra, he scaled a Design Org from 3 to 22 in 3 years. His teams included product and marketing design, research, and design operations. They built a suite of products that increased revenue from $1M to $100M, along with a 100% retention rate on his team.
Before The Zebra, he was the Co-Founder of DeviantArt.com, the largest online art gallery in the world. With over 30 million works of art and 300 million users.
He’s also involved in the larger design community, both in Austin and abroad. He’s been a member of Invision’s Design Leadership Forum and is currently serving on the Advisory Board for Austin Design Week. He also donates his time and design skills to various non-profits, including American Cancer Society.
In this episode, we talked about
How did DeviantArt.com start?
Some feature Matthew designed in the early days
Deviant Art system
Dealing with copyrights and how did they manage it
Building and engaging with the community
Career after DeviantArt
Starting The Zebra
What is The Zebra and how it serves people
How did he scale design org
And MUCH MORE
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewstephens/
https://matthewstephens.com/
https://www.deviantart.com/matteo
https://dribbble.com/matthewlarn
Jane Portman is a UI/UX consultant specializing in web application design, founder of UI Breakfast and Userlist. At Userlist, Jane's goal is to provide flawless onboarding and engagement for SaaS companies through a simple customer messaging platform.
Jane has also been running UI Breakfast Podcast since 2014.
In this episode, we talked about:
How did Jane get into design?
Software design and Saas Products
Life as UI/UX consultant
Productized Consulting
Jane’s workflow and process in writing a book
How to network?
Podcasting to build a network
What is Userlist and what designers need to think about as entrepreneurs
And MUCH MORE!
Links:
UI Breakfast Podcast
Better Done Than Perfect
https://userlist.com/
UI Audit by Jane Portman
Authority by Nathan Berry
Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick
Stacking the Bricks with Amy Hoy - https://stackingthebricks.com/
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
USE PEK300 as a code to get $300 OFF - https://userlist.com/
Bryan Clayton is CEO and co-founder of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 200,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day.
Before starting GreenPal Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc. one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee growing it to over $10 million a year in annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013.
Bryan‘s interests and expertise are related to entrepreneurialism, small business growth, marketing and bootstrapping businesses from zero revenue to profitability and exit.
In this episode, we talked about:
How Bryan scaled his business into the most profitable landscaping business in the state of Tennessee
What led to launching GreenPal
Starting a tech company with no tech background
Hustling and reinventing into a tech entrepreneur
Common mistakes when starting a business
Learning skills from building a startup
Some of the big challenges with growing small business
And much MORE!
Links:
http://yourgreenpal.com/
https://www.facebook.com/greenpallawncare/
https://www.instagram.com/yourgreenpal/
https://twitter.com/YourGreenPal
Marie is the developer and designer of Llama Life, a tool that helps you work THROUGH to-do lists, not just make them. She's a 4th time founder (sold 2 companies) and previously designed an app that was featured by Apple and ranked in the Top 10 Productivity apps. Currently based in Melbourne, Australia, but spent 12yrs living in London and New York where she got her foundation in the Branding and Advertising world.
Marie shares her journey of starting up Llama Life helping thousands of people around the world be more productive and what it differs from other productivity apps. Co-founded an app praised by Apple as one of the "best new apps"
Wonderschool CEO and co-founder Chris Bennett saw too many parents who were anxious and scared about finding child care, as well as educators who couldn’t afford care for their own children while they were at work. He knew that there had to be a better way to address this issue for families and teachers alike.
Chris’s appreciation for education goes back to his parents, Honduran immigrants who did whatever they could to ensure that he had access to an excellent education—from sending him to a quality preschool to supporting him through his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania. He was committed to making sure other children had the same opportunities to reach their full potential.
The Wonderschool team designed the mission-driven company as a way to dramatically increase access to high-quality early childhood care for all families. Today, the platform empowers experienced educators and child care providers to run their own in-home business while providing a much-needed service to other families in their communities.
Roger Dickey is the Co-Founder of MADE. Roger is a serial entrepreneur & active angel investor based in San Francisco. Roger's first company was an AirBnB for tutoring started in Austin in 2006.He entered the games industry in 2007 with a Facebook app startup, launching 19 apps with the largest generating 300M+ page views per month. After an acquisition by Zynga, Roger went on to found Mafia Wars (100M users), FishVille (35M users), and 5 other titles in his 3 years there. Roger served as an international product team advisor for Zynga helping the company grow its games in India, Japan, and China. Since leaving Zynga, Roger has launched Gigster, a marketplace for software development services. Alongside his work at Zynga, Roger began advising & investing in bay-area startups in 2010. His investments include Docker, Addepar, iCracked, OpenGov, ClassDojo, and Wanelo. Advisory roles include Formation 8, Nest, OpenDoor, and The Thiel Fellowship.
In this episode, we talked about:
Made Renovation and how it serves people
Made Renovation’s satisfied customers
Roger’s team and system
Their all-in-one renovation system
Overcoming market risks
His career as a CEO and Co-founder in Gigster
What drove Roger to start Gigster
Founding Mafia Wars
Akeel Jabber is the Investment Director and GP of Horizen Capital, an Engineer who was previously a partner and operations director at Wired investors, a micro private equity firm focused on digital asset acquisitions and has been involved in over 15 company acquisitions. Expert in growth marketing strategy and business operations.
Andrew Gazdecki is the Founder of MicroAcquire. Former CEO & Founder of Bizness Apps and Altcoin (both acquired). He likes to build stuff, mostly companies, and in this episode, he tries to tell a story that goes beyond what the company does to how it’s changing markets.
Andrew has been featured in NYT, Forbes, WSJ, Inc.com, and Entrepreneur Magazine, as well as prominent industry blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat.
Capri Wheaton is an avid thrifter and fashion fanatic, she is currently the CEO and Co-Founder at Thryft. She briefly studied political science and philosophy as a Freshman at UC Berkeley before dropping out to co-found Thryft with Sam Yang.
Thryft is Shopify for Instagram sellers, they turn Instagram feed into a website in 1 click. It helps Instagram sellers collect payments securely across drops, live streams & more, purchase shipping labels at the lowest rates, automatically send buyers tracking and manage all their orders and metrics in one place.
Sheel Mohnot is a Co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures - a $75 million seed-stage five-focused venture capital firm investing in exceptional founders building transformative FinTech companies globally.
He helps design, build, and improve human ecosystems through technology and disrupt financial institutions to enable them to act more efficiently.
Sheel has been exclusively investing in fintech companies for the past 6 years and has 2 successful FinTech companies. Sheel also co-founded the podcast "The Pitch,"- which has 100k weekly listeners, and a food company called Thistle.
Steve P. Young is the Founder of AppMasters, a mobile growth hacking agency that helps companies increase downloads, monetize and skyrocket retentions.
He started making apps in 2011 and hit Top 8 under educational games. In 2013, Steve started a podcast to interview successful app creators such as Shazam, Tapbots, and more.
Today, Steve has served over 3000 apps with clients, including GoPro, Red Bull, McAfee, Nextdoor, and several more. His unique approach to app marketing has also allowed his clients to become the #1 trending keyword in the App Store, hitting the top charts in their categories.
Cameron Avery is an experienced CEO with global channel management experience and extensive industry expertise in B2B IT software and services. Born and raised in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia.
Cameron currently leads Elastic Digital, a well-recognized creative agency for channel marketing and management for big tech companies. Elastic Digital aim is to gain a competitive advantage to help solve their most complex challenges.
Zen Lennon is the founder at ClosedWon, a sales meeting automation platform that books meetings for sales, development representatives, or salespeople. She was raised in Hawaii and moved to San Francisco to study at the University of San Francisco.
In 2007, Zen was recruited by Yelp and became the best salesperson, closing over a million dollars in sales. Today, Zen delivers verified leads that convert to warm conversations via email, Linkedin, and Twitter engagements with her product, ClosedWon- the fastest sales meeting platform in 2021. She also has a YouTube channel called “The ClosedWon Sales Show By Zen Lenon.”
Justin Jackson is the co-founder of podcast hosting company, Transistor.FM. Justin writes and podcasts about bootstrapping, product marketing, mindful technology, podcasting and learning to code. With such a diverse range of interests, he had lots of info to share about entrepreneurship on this episode of the podcast.
Dana Todd is an internet pioneer and has been in roles such as the co-founder of a top digital marketing agency, founding board member of a global search marketing trade organization, patent holder and now the founder and CEO of a marketplace platform for disrupting the global garment supply chain, Balodana.
Balodana is the first and only marketplace made exclusively by women to measure fashions from around the world.
In this episode Pek chats to Christelle Rohaut who is the Codi CEO and co-founder. Codi is a home office-sharing company that lets users lend rooms in their homes for others to work from. They discuss how the pandemic interrupted the business, as well as how it has now launched in San Francisco and is planning on launching in more cities soon.
Ian Cohen’s specialty is privacy and FinTech. He is the CEO of Lokker and a leader in financial technology businesses. He serves on the board and is an advisor to multiple FinTech companies. Prior to Lokker, Ian was the General Manager and Chief Product Officer at Experian Consumer Services, as well as the Chief Executive Officer at Credit.com.
Ashutosh Priyadarshy is the CEO, Co-Founder of YC Company, and the app called "Sunsama"- an invite-only daily task planner for elite professionals.
Going back to his background, Ashutosh was born in India. His parents then brought him to Pennsylvania, USA, where he spent most of his childhood. For college, Ashutosh studied at the University of Virginia. After 10 days of graduation, he began working at a start-up called LumoBack.
Ashutosh found inspiration and started working on his own product for 6 years, constantly failing, launching, and working.
Today, his product, Sunsama has over 1000 founders and executives with almost $3 million worth of sales.
Reuben Resendez is the President of Ad Here. He is a Silicon Valley professional who focuses on building systems and introducing cutting-edge marketing initiatives to increase enrollments in the education space.
His journey was not always all sunshine and rainbows. Reuben’s story is a true story of troubles, survival, and perseverance. He came to a point where he only had $500 in his pocket and was at his lowest living off food stamps, had mortgage problems, and a newborn child coming into his life. Reuben turned his life to a total 360 when he realized that he did not want his child to suffer the way he did.
Today, Reuben receives awards from Silicon Valley. He is on the Board of Directors of the Silicon Valley Capital Club, the moderator of the Silicon Valley Chapter of EEO, and an integral part of the Latin community.
He has over a decade of experience in Internet Marketing, Technology, and Marketing in the digital space with an average of $1.5 million a month of sales in Ad Here.
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