HackToStart

Ben Jabbawy is the Founder of Privy, a suite of tools designed to help marketers and ecommerce businesses increase their marketing conversions. Ben has a background in Industrial Engineering, but moved into a few technical roles, before really diving into startups. Ben joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, his advice for raising capital, how Privy has approached growing to over 250,000 users, and much more.

Kimberly Kalb is the Head of Marketing & Growth at Houseparty, an app that takes the group chat to the next level with group video chat. Kimberly has a background in entertainment media technology, having worked with brands like NBCUniversal, HBO, Tumblr Entertainment and now Houseparty. There her role has really grown from partnership, to leading more aspects of growth, marketing and customer support. The Houseparty brand and some of their early learning, have really catapulted their app into international fame. Kimberly joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, how she approaches partnerships, her approach to growth at Houseparty, and much more.

Josh Brewer is the Co-founder & CEO of Abstract, a platform for modern design teams to work together. Josh’s career in design started off with teaching - but quickly lead to him diving into the emerging web and mobile product design industry. He eventually joined Twitter where he became a Principal Designer. Josh joins us to share his story, how he got into design, what it’s was like working as a Principal Designer at Twitter, what led him to starting Abstract, his advice on raising funding, how he thinks about the design industry, and much more.

Ben Pines is the CMO of Elementor, the most advanced Drag & Drop page builder for WordPress. Design beautiful professional websites faster and without code. Ben shares what it’s been like building an open source, visual, drag & drop theme editor for Wordpress - and the challenges in scaling it to over 800,000 active installs worldwide - all in less than 2 years! Ben joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it’s been like growing Elementor from 0 to over 800,000 active installs, some challenges of marketing a product to users worldwide, and much more.

Waqas Ali is the co-founder of Atoms, one & only shoe for every day. Waqas started building a startups and businesses after discovering the internet and realizing you could sell products online. While there were a ton of insurmountable challenges, Waqas and his co founder Sidra persevered - launching a custom dress shoe company called Markhor. They eventually made it to the US, ran a massive kickstarter campaign and got into YC on their second attempt. Today, Waqas & Sidra are at it again, working on an everyday shoe for the new creatives called Atoms. Waqas joins us to share his story, how he discovered the internet & startups in his home country of Pakistan, all the challenges they had to go through just to start a company, his advice for getting into YC, what really goes into creating a product and story, how they’ve approached launching Atoms, and much more.

Vibhu Norby is the co-founder & CEO of B8ta, a new store designed for discovering, trying, & buying the latest tech products, as well as a new platform called “Built by B8ta”, which aims to power the future of physical retail experiences. Vibhu moved to silicon valley after college to join a startup. He was eventually fired from the job, but then joined another startup which was acquired by MySpace. From there, Vibhu joined YC with a social network startup of his own, raised some money, and was later acquired by Nest. It was there that Vibhu started to really get interested in the future of retail - especially for emerging hardware brands. Vibhu joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like running his own startups & working at Nest, why he started B8ta, how he thinks about the retail industry, what Built by B8ta is all about, what they’ve learnt scaling to 80 physical stores, what’s next for the startup, and much more.

Sam Mallikarjunan is an Executive Strategist at HubSpot. He hustled his way into the organization with a landing page and ads - and ended up leading the Experimental Marketing team, the Ecommerce Marketing team, the South American internationalization team, Hubspot Labs and more. Today, Sam also teaches Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education and the University of South Florida's Muma College of Business. He is also the co-author of the book "How To Sell Better Than Amazon". Sam joins us to share his story, how he got into marketing, what it’s been like leading a few of these teams at Hubspot, what some of the biggest challenges were, how he approaches solving problems, his mindset around growth and disruption, and much more.

Asher Hunt is the Founder & CEO of Overnight, a platform to book homes from people you trust. Asher comes from a visual arts and music background, but got into tech through product design and is driven by a passion for learning. He was Product Designer at Chill, a viral video sharing platform, and then he launched a product of his own, Look.io, which was later acquired by LivePerson. Now he’s back at it as a founder, building a friend and community driven home-sharing platform called Overnight. Asher joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like taking one of his first startups, Look.io from startup weekend idea to acquisition in 8 months, what its been like working on Overnight, how he manages being a Product Designer & CEO, and much more.

Sonja Jacob is the Content Strategy Team Lead at Drift. Sonja kicked off her career in marketing by blogging years back. She quickly realized the power of content and decided to launch her own business as a copywriter and marketing freelancer. Over the years, Sonja helped create or lead marketing and content efforts for companies like Hubspot, KISSmetrics, Zenefits, and DocSend - and now heads up Content Strategy at Drift. Sonja joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, her approach to creating valuable content, what conversational marketing is all about and how to get started, how B2B marketing is changing, and much more.

Mari Sheibley is a Product Designer at Instagram. Mari has a background in fine arts, before she transition into graphic design. When she first moved to New York, she took a bunch of odd jobs to make ends meet. She eventually met Denis Crowley and Naveen, who were working on an idea that would become Foursquare. Mari was super passionate about the idea and started by designing all the badges for the app. Once Foursquare raised money, Mari became their first designer. Over several years there, she helped push the product and shape the brand into the platform we’re all familiar with today. Mari then became the Creative Director at Walker & Company brands, tackling all aspects of physical product design for the fast growing startup. Mari then took some time to consider her next steps as a designer and eventually joined Instagram. Mari joins us to share her story, how she got into design and startups, what it was like working on Foursquare, what it was like tackling physical products as the Creative Director at Walker & Company Brands, what motivated her to join a bigger company like Instagram, her career advice and insights for other creatives, and much more.

Hannah Donovan is the CEO & Co-founder of Trash, a new startup that’s currently building a predictive video editing platform for creators. Hannah’s passion for media and design in all forms goes back to her early childhood. She eventually moved to New York before using the remainder of her savings to fly to the UK to interview with Last.fm where she was the first designer and woman hired on the team. Following the $280M acquisition of Last.fm by CBS, Hannah moved back to New York to push her product ideas and hypothesis on mixing AI and user recommendations in the audio space further with the launch of This Is My Jam, a cool and innovative platform for music lovers. After almost 4 years of working on that technology, Hannah continued to pursue her interests and passions for creating new forms of content & art, as well as the creative process of using a variety of tools. She joined Drip.com which was acquired by Kickstarter, and then the Twitter owned Vine platform, where she was faced with the unique challenge of shutting the platform down, shortly after joining. Hannah joins us to share her story, how she got into design and startups, what it was like working at Last.fm, what it was like launching and growing her first music startup This Is My Jam, how she created the opportunity to join Vine as the General Manager, what it was like facing the immense challenge of shutting the beloved platform down while simultaneously preserving the amazing content, how she managed to pursue her passions and curiosities, while establishing a career in consumer entertainment technology, what she’s currently up to with her new startup Trash, and much more!

Matt Hollingshead is the CEO of Hifyre, a web & mobile app developer based on Hamilton, Canada. Back in 1999, Matt and some friends launched their first agency called factor[e] which ended up generation $1M in sales within its first 24 months. Today Matt is the CEO of Hifyre, a web & mobile development shop that’s working with Fortune 500 and fast growth startups. Matt joins us to share his story, how he got into business, what it was like building various consumer agencies over the last 19 years, why it’s important to work hard and talk about that work, how he sees the future of freelancing & studios evolving, and much more.

Casey Winters is the Growth Advisor in Residence at Greylock Partners. Casey got interested in growth via his background in marketing and his holistic approach to helping Apartments.com achieve quick growth from 2005-2008. He then joined GrubHub around the 15 person mark, and helped the company scale from 40,000 users up to 3M when it went public. In 2013, Pinterest reached out and Casey ended up joining the team to help lead growth and later overcome challenges associated with international expansion and growth. Today, Casey advises several companies like Pocket, Canva, Reddit and works directly with a handful of portfolio companies as part of his role at Greylock Partners. Casey joins us to share his story, how he got into marketing and startups, what it was like growing a marketplace like GrubHub from 40,000 users to over 3M, what it was like helping Pinterest expand internationally, how to think about growth & innovation within a startup, and much more.

Joei Chan is a Content Marketing Manager, at Mention, a platform for real-time media monitoring. Joei is originally from Hong Kong and moved to Paris, France for a summer to study French. She ended up staying and building a career as a Content Marketer. After starting her career in the agency world, Joei moved over to the startup side with Mention. She joined the team when they were about 30 people and beginning to transition from a small business to the enterprise market. Joei joins us to share her story, how she got into marketing and startups, how Mention’s content marketing strategy has evolved as the company has grown and shifted from a small business tool into an enterprise platform, her approach to creating content partnerships, why audience-fit is the most important factor with content, how content marketing fits into the sales funnel, and much more.

Gessica Bicego is the Head of Performance Marketing, at Blinkist, the platform for bite-sized insights in audio or text. Gessica is originally from Italy and has a background in computer science, as well as a passion for marketing. She then wanted to accelerate her career and moved to Berlin to join Kayak as a Programmatic Marketing Manager. Over the last few years, Gessica has been building a Performance Marketing team at Blinkist, an app that enables busy people to listen or read bite-sized insights from books and more. Blinkist was recently featured as one of the Top Apps of 2017 by Apple - and with over 4 million users and 15M in funding - Blinkist is looking to double its growth in 2018. Gessica joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, how she’s built a career as a Performance Marketer, what it’s been like working at both Kayak and now Blinkist, what it’s like building a team, and much more.

Jordan Scheltgen is the co-founder and Managing Partner at CaveSocial, a marketing agency that he started during University and that now spans across 3 major North American cities. Originally from Surrey, BC, Jordan moved to Toronto for school and football. Through that experience, Jordan started a blog which would later become Cave Social the agency. Jordan joins us to share his story, how he got into business and marketing, he shares his keys to a great story, as well as how brands should approach telling stories, what it’s been like growing an agency model business across 3 major cities, and much more.

Jonah Lupton is the founder of SoundGuard, the world’s first sound proof paint. Jonah has spent the better part of the last 10 years launching several brands across completely different industries. From social media software, to non-profit funding platforms, to white labeled supplement companies, to industrial manufacturing with SoundGuard, Jonah has prototyped, built, and launched ideas he’s been passionate about and learnt a ton along the way. Jonah joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what he’s learnt from launching several brands, what it’s been like creating a physical, manufactured product, the challenges of bootstrapping, and much more.

Jess Brown is the Director of UX at Vice Media. She’s spent the past couple of years building the team that’s lead the company’s efforts on re-designing Vice’s brand from the ground up - across the web and all mobile properties. But before joining Vice, Jess was based in San Francisco working on a fashion startup of her own called Threadflip, she was introduced to the team at Rent The Runway in New York. Jess ended up joining the team there for several years. There she helped create and deliver a better user experience through a mix of design and product thinking. Jess joins us to share her story, how she got into design & startups, how she approaches building products through user experience, what it was like completely redesigning the Vice brand from the ground up, and much more.

Tom Levesque is the Co-founder at Rey.ai. Tom is a Software Developer turned Product Manager. After graduating and working with a local startup in Waterloo, Tom decided to move to the valley where he ended up joining Wildfire before it was acquired by Google. Before he’d even graduated as a Software Developer from the University of Waterloo, Tom had found an interest in Product Management. He then joined a series of startups in Canada, Silicon Valley and the UK, including Wildfire (which was acquired by Google), VigLink (where he helped raised a $20M Series B round) and more. Today, he’s the cofounder and developer of Rey.ai, an AI based email platform that’s redefining our conception of a “social network”. Tom joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he approaches building products, what he’s currently working on with Rey.ai, and much more.

Oscar Falmer is the Founder and developer behind the world’s first augmented reality Twitter client - TweetReality. Oscar is only a few months away from graduating from the University of Eastern-Paris Marne-La-Vallee with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. TweetReality is the 7th app he’s released to the Apple App Store - and it’s the biggest challenge he’s undertaken. TweetReality has gotten over 20,000 downloads, 500+ upvotes on Product Hunt, been featured in over 150+ articles in 20+ countries, including on The Verge, Fox News, CNN, The Next Web & more! Oscar joins us to share his story, what it’s been like working all over the world, what motivated him to launch TweetReality, what it been like putting this app out there, and much more.