This Week in Startups

0:58 Jason intros Alex MacCaw 2:26 What is Clearbit? 8:53 What are some Clearbit use cases? 12:48 Benefits of cashflow positivity in terms of fundraising 15:39 How Jason felt about Alex Tew's Calm investor updates 18:59 GDPRs effect on Clearbit and the industry as a whole 27:37 How did Alex go from anti-coaching to benefitting from a CEO coach? 32:49 Alex's experience finding a CEO coach from Nava...

0:55 Jason intros Lidia Yan 5:03 Lidia describes getting into the trucking industry and why NEXT focuses on "drayage" 13:29 How NEXT has revolutionized drayage shipping 18:22 What is a typical shipping broker's take rate 20:54 How does pricing work in the trucking industry? 27:28 How do trucking companies measure their driver's hours? 29:41 Issues within the trucking industry? 35:14 Did trucking l...

1:03 Jason intros Phil Libin from LAUNCH Scale 2019 1:51 Phil Libin on "The State Machine that Answers All Growth Questions" 32:40 Jason joins Phil on stage for Q&A 39:56 Jason intros Phil (NFX), Rebecca (Canvas Ventures) & Dave (Freestyle Capital) 41:34 Transitioning from founder to VC 44:08 How to let a founder know when they are headed down the wrong path 47:42 At what stage does a founder have...

0:48 Jason intros Rahul Vohra 3:21 Rahul gives a talk on building a "Product-Market Fit Engine" 29:42 Rahul takes questions from the LAUNCH Scale audience 37:28 Jason intros the "Future of Angel Investing" panelists: Ben Ling (Bling Capital), Clara Brenner (Urban Innovation Fund) & Jeff Clavier (Uncork Capital) 38:54 Has Silicon Valley reached peak entitlement? 41:44 Is "too much $ chasing too few...

0:50 Jason intros Tim Junio 1:44 Tim explains what Expanse does and how "attack surface inventory" is the first step in their cybersecurity platform 5:20 Tim explains the Dyn cyber attack 13:20 How many Fortune 500 companies have been blackmailed via cyber attack? 19:32 "White-hat" hackers impact on the cybersecurity industry 23:12 Human-made passwords are the weakest link 29:09 History of Russian...

0:41 Jason intros the #StartupTuneup with Urban-X companies 2:33 David Rodriguez pitches Food for All: food marketplace to reduce waste & help restaurants sell unused food 12:43 Jim Selevan pitches Pi-Lit: innovating transportation thru a wireless lamp system 26:33 Caroline Hansen pitches Hubbster: providing easy access to outdoor games & gear 41:24 Patrick O'Connor pitches 3AM Innovations: safety...

1:45 Zander's take on the recent volatility in the public markets 3:38 What are the lessons learned from the WeWork disaster in terms of corporate governance? 6:09 Importance of diversity on BoD 10:18 Where does WeWork go from here, and how will the situation resolve? 12:35 Why Venture investing is so skewed towards growth, and why the best investors focus on gross profitability 14:41 What is Surv...

0:52 Jason intros Culture Amp's Didier Elzinga 2:44 How Didier's prior career in Visual Effects led him to start Culture Amp 8:24 Issues with yearly performance evaluations 14:15 Did Silicon Valley take culture too far? 17:35 What defines good culture? 24:24 Generational differences in workplace culture 28:30 How should companies view the gig economy in terms of culture and compensation? 37:12 How...

0:51 Jason intros Aileen Lee 1:36 Aileen on her time at MIT, early bias against women in math 5:56 What brought Aileen to San Francisco & working at GAP in the early days of the Internet 9:40 Aileen on working for Mary Meeker & what makes her special 10:25 "All companies that leverage technology are not the same." 13:10 What made WeWork attractive to investors in the early days? 17:54 How the mark...

0:51 Jason intros Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche 2:07 Renaud goes over the idea of his previous startup, LendingClub, and taking it public 9:57 What happened at LendingClub after the IPO? 11:18 What is Upgrade? How did it grow out of LendingClub? 12:40 Are credit scores an outdated metric? 14:11 What is the Upgrade Card? 15:30 Are modern credit card companies sinister in their approach? 24:54 Renaud...

1:00 Want to work at LAUNCH? gettheseat.com 2:28 Jason intros StockX's Josh Luber 3:14 When did the sneaker crazy start? 6:37 What is StockX? 9:19 What should Jason wear courtside? And why not Kawhi's? 14:13 Most $ Josh has spent on pair of sneakers? What were they? 18:15 What is StockX's take on a standard transaction? 18:44 Meeting Co-founder & Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert 19:58 Attracting Mark W...

1:00 Jason intros #AskJason and today's questions 1:47 How to differentiate a great founder from an okay one? - Darius 7:40 Dealing with the lack of updates as a syndicate Angel Investor? - Said 15:54 Bomani calls in and asks Jason about raising through crowdfunding 22:20 What will the new ideal makeup of a founder be after recent events (WeWork, JUUL, etc.)? - Patty 28:29 Peter calls in and asks...

0:47 Jason intros Catharine Dockery 4:29 How Catharine came up with Vice Ventures 7:00 What was the response when Catharine began raising her first fund? 7:19 What does harm-reduction mean for Vice Ventures? 9:21 Getting Marc Andreessen to invest in her fund 13:32 Strangest emails Catharine has received since starting Vice Ventures 16:01 Investing in cannabis 20:15 Investing in psychedelics 26:33...

0:51 Jason intros Shan-Lyn Ma 3:17 Starting Zola and competing in a crowded space 5:14 Jason and Shan go through LAUNCH President Sam's Wedding Registry live on air 6:30 How Zola's registry and business model work 9:10 How does Zola look at Amazon's wedding lists 14:29 What has changed in wedding demographics, and how does Zola keep up? 21:26 Jason and Shan share thoughts on romantic proposal loca...

1:10 Jason intros Hong Quan from Karmic Bikes 2:55 What is the OSLO bike? 4:10 Why are there separate classifications for e-bike laws? 9:15 What does OSLO cost? 12:35 How Karmic bikes are different 14:55 Why e-bikes haven't taken off in the US? 16:52 Is Palo Alto the most bike-friendly city in America? 17:28 Hong shows the OSLO Kickstarter Video 21:45 Why not go the scooter route? 27:34 Hong raps...

1:00 Jason Demant intros Roy Bahat 3:14 Roy's thoughts on raising venture capital 4:14 Debunking the myth of pitching VCs 9:24 Two questions VCs ask themselves after hearing a pitch, and how founders can apply them 15:33 The startup paradox 18:04 Does Bloomberg Beta keep up with companies they passed on? 19:51 Selection bias in Silicon Valley 25:32 Why Angel $ from venture-backed founders is so va...

0:51 Jason intros Mattieu Gamache-Asselin 2:52 Changing from ScriptDash to Alto Pharmacy 4:19 Meeting and working with Twitch founder Justin Kan in the early days of Alto 6:51 Message to HBO's Silicon Valley writing room 7:26 Working out of Justin Kan's house 8:15 Why are pharmacies broken? How is Alto fixing them? 14:25 How did Alto's team architect a 1.0 version of their pharmacy? 21:44 US Healt...

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Goldbelly - Goldbelly.com Every.io - http://every.io/ Zite - zite.com/twist Today's show: Today, Zapier's a multi-billion company helping enterprises integrate AI agents and other time-saving shortcuts into their workflows… but we had the founder on TWiST when they were just getting started! In a 2016 chat, founder Wade Foster walked JCal through their 20...