Minimum Viable Podcast with Elliott Poppel

Matt Mireles reveals how he revolutionized his startup by firing his development team and fully replacing them with AI tools. Using sophisticated prompting techniques and synthetic personas, he's pioneering a new founder archetype—one who leverages AI to build faster with smaller teams and deeper context. In a groundbreaking shift that challenges conventional startup wisdom, TalkTastic founder Mat...

Allen Yang shares all that went into his decision to walk away from his Head of Product role at no-code pioneer Bubble to found his new startup Liminary. On this week’s episode, get a raw and behind-the-scenes look at all the decisions that go into making such a major life decision. On this episode, Yang reveals his experience managing family finances, investor relationships, and the emotional wei...

Mike Heller is a renowned go-to-market advisor who has helped shape the sales strategies at companies like Dropbox, Whimsical, and Clearbit. He currently advises seed to Series A founders on crafting and executing their go-to-market strategies, while serving as a venture scout for Craft Ventures. In this episode of ‘Minimum Viable Podcast’, go-to-market expert Mike Heller unveils the hidden playbo...

Kate Syuma reveals the hidden psychology behind user onboarding and why most companies get it catastrophically wrong. Drawing from her transformation of Miro's growth strategy, Kate shares the principles and tactics that she believes separate successful products from those that lose 60% of users before they experience any value. Kate is the founder of Growthmates, where she advises companies on pr...

From LEGO to Apple, community architect Jake McKee reveals how to transform product development through deep customer engagement. Learn his field-tested framework for weaving user voices into every stage, turning feedback into breakthrough innovations. --- Jake McKee, a pioneering community architect since 1996, reveals the hidden framework behind successful product development that most companies...

Anthony Pierri has a knack for taking complex ideas and turning them into clear, compelling messages. As the co-founder of Fletch PMM, Anthony has helped over 300 companies (mostly in SaaS), refine their positioning to stand out in competitive markets. This week on Minimum Viable Podcast, Anthony spoke to the tricky balance between strategy and execution, and how even the best product ideas can fi...

Emily Kramer , Founder of Kramer HQ and Co-founder of MKT1 , has led marketing teams at fast-growing companies like Asana and Carta. Now, she's on a mission to change how founders and leaders approach marketing. In this episode of Minimum Valuable Podcast, she shares common mistakes founders make, such as undervaluing marketing early on or copying their pitch deck directly onto their website. Emil...

Launching on Product Hunt is a huge moment for any startup. We’ll be launching General Collaboration on Product Hunt on October 8th, so ahead of our launch, I recently sat down with two experts who have it down to an art form. Leo Bosuener heads up Social Growth Labs, they specialize in helping startups find their first thousand users through Product Hunt. Joining him is Tomás Hernando Kofman, co-...

On this episode of Minimum Viable Podcast, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tal Saraf , Head of Corporate Engineering at Atlassian . With a career spanning heavyweights like Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, and Meta, Tal knows about building and scaling world-class products. But what really caught my attention was his experience the forefront of distributed collaboration for years, even before the...

Anthony Nardini , the founder of NEXT Careers , knows a thing or two about navigating career transitions. After spending 11 years at Goldman Sachs across various cities and roles, Anthony found himself volunteering with organizations focused on career mentorship in his spare time. This experience inspired him to leave behind his successful finance career and dive headfirst into the world of career...

On this week's episode of Minimum Viable Podcast, I had the pleasure of chatting with Evan Walden and Maveric Real , the dynamic duo behind Getro , a network management platform that's made waves in the venture capital and private equity world. Evan, the company's CEO, is a seasoned pro when it comes to all things sales and growth, while Maveric, Getro's President, is the engineeri...

This episode features Joe Toscano, founder of DataGrade and author of "Automating Humanity." Joe's journey into the world of data privacy is pretty wild - it all started during his time as a consultant for Google, where he saw firsthand just how much potential there was for abuse and how little ethical oversight there was around data usage. That experience lit a fire under him to bec...

This episode of Minimum Viable Podcast features Charles Hudson, Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures. Under Charles' leadership, Precursor has raised four funds totaling over $175 million and has backed more than 375 companies led by over 400 founders. Prior to founding Precursor, Charles was a Partner at Uncork Capital, Co-Founder and CEO of Bionic Panda Games, and held various...

The latest episode of Minimum Viable Podcast features Andrew Rea . Andrew grew up in Ohio and was the first in his family to attend college. With a whole lot of grit and hard work, he worked his way into the tech scene. He became an early team member at On Deck and later served as Head of Growth at Capital, where he played a key role in initiatives like New York Tech Week. These days Andrew is wor...

Jeff Bussgang is a veteran entrepreneur, investor, and educator, currently serving as Co-Founder and General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners , a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Boston and New York City. With over two decades of experience in the startup world, Jeff has been on both sides of the table as an entrepreneur (Upromise, Open Market) and as an investor in numerous successfu...

Dev Bala is a seasoned product executive with over 20 years of experience at some of the world's most influential technology companies. He has led product teams at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, and currently serves as Vice President of Product Management at Coursera . Throughout his career, Dev has honed his ability to make tough decisions in fast-paced, high-stakes environments. In this ep...

Tem Nugmanov , Founder & CEO of Optemization was my guest on the Minimum Viable Podcast this week. He shared a story with me about a hard-hitting question he was asked by some VC and founder types during LA Tech Week: "If you come across a Notion workspace that's a 4 out of 5, how do you make it a perfect 5?" It's a question that makes you think about a big issue in digital w...

Welcome to "Minimum Viable Podcast" – a new podcast and content series that goes beyond the surface to explore the depths of product creation. Each episode, hosted by Elliott Poppel, is a masterclass in innovation, combining deep insights, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and hands-on product analysis. In our first episode, host Elliott Poppel interviews David Fano, the founder of Teal....