Rocketship.fm

Veil is a near-future climate change techno thriller, but how does a high researched, science based fictional book like this come into existence? Today we follow Eliot Peper and through his process of building a physical product and releasing something that can't be updated with a hot fix pushed to production. We walk through his writing, editing, rewriting process and the discipline it takes to '...

Amazon Echo (shortened to Echo) is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa, which will respond when you say "Alexa". Users may change this wake word to "Amazon", "Echo" or "Computer". The features of the device include: voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming po...

When Rob Walling launched Drip, he was doing $7K in monthly recurring revenue. But he quickly realized that his revenue had already flat-lined and that he had a high customer churn problem. He was competing with behemoths like Mail Chimp and Marketo with a team of just 3 engineers. Drip started as a simple opt-in pop-up with an autoresponder. It then evolved into an email service provider, to fina...

Tenor is an online GIF search engine and database that was acquired by Google in 2018. Over the life of the company they instilled a culture in relentless pursuit of growth - forgoing even putting their company name on their office door. Today we talk with David McIntosh about how he built a product and company that now hosts over 300 Million monthly active users to use their pop culture and socia...

In 2003, Apple was working on new types of inputs for the Mac. The plan was to get rid of the mouse and keyboard, and the team began to experiment with multitouch — rotating and zooming on-screen with a few careful flicks of the finger. One of the first prototypes of a finger-controlled tablet was known as Model 035, a large white tablet that looked something like a clunky precursor to the iPad. B...

From Maximum Security Prison To CEO, Marcus Bullock, is now building Flikshop as a way for incarcerated individuals to stay connected to their families and loved ones. He knows first hand the impact a picture from the outside can make on those incarcerated. But this story is as much about our criminal justice system as it is about Marcus's journey. This episode is brought to you by: SIEMENS is run...

Facial recognition startup Kairos, founded by Brian Brackeen, was one of the only companies in it's space with a black CEO, and it turned out to be their secret weapon... until the Trump Administration came knocking and wanted to use their ability to more accurately recognize illegal immigrants and deport them. Brian refused, but his board revolted and sued him to remove him as CEO. This is the st...

Hey! a new email platform, many opinions...and it's creators, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson (known to the internet as DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails) and the Basecamp team, have even more. Hey! launched just a couple weeks ago to a flurry of controversy. From it's firm stance on tracking pixels (perceived as spy devices) to it's pre-launch fight with Apple over revenue splits, Hey! is p...

How did Matt Hooper build a company singing about Blockchain? Today we explore the product journey of Live from Tomorrow! a live show that's been running in New York City for the last two years and has recently been turned into a podcast as an epic musical comedy about innovation in tech and business. There's really nothing like it out there. Recorded in the style of a cast album, the show seamles...

Walker & Company Brands, a startup making health and beauty products for people of color, was acquired by consumer giant Procter & Gamble in 2018. The company was founded in2013 by Tristan Walker,  who previously led business development for Foursquare, and who aimed to create products that would better serve the needs of people of color with coarse or curly hair. Walker & Co. started out with its...

This episode originally aired on Jay Clouse's podcast Creative Elements. Rocketship.fm Host Michael Sacca is the VP of Product at Dribbble and cohost of Rocketship.fm. He started his career 15 years ago as a Product Designer, eventually founding a cutting-edge product agency that built applications for Scholastic, GE, Nike, Siemens, Kobe Bryant and more. In this episode we talk about building an a...

Hamilton founded Backstage Capitol, a venture capital firm, in 2015, when she was homeless. The firm seeks to address funding disparities in the technology industry by investing in companies started by undervalued but high-potential entrepreneurs who are women, people of color, and/or LGBTQ. To date, Backstage Capital has raised more than $10 million and invested in more than 130 startup companies...

Kimberly Moore, CEO and Co-Founder of Go Together, is an entrepreneur completely passionate about building one of the most exciting companies in the mobility space. Go Together, an early stage startup, is on a mission to get people where they need to go through their trusted networks and via any transportation option available. First starting with education and political engagement. Two industries...

Diversity can be a difficult issue to discuss, but the truth is the tech industry has a problem. Even a brief look at the data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reveals huge racial disparities in the tech workforce compared to the private sector overall. Tech companies and investors should be concerned: Evidence strongly suggests that a racially diverse tech sector could tra...

In Part Two of our look at Diversity in Tech we hear from how Stripe increased their percentage of underrepresented candidates in their internship program from 10% to 40% in one year. How Crowdfunder fixed their gender pay gap problem and how VC Arlan Hamilton is investing millions into underrepresented founders at Backstage Capital. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company t...

Shift is an online, peer-to-peer, marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Founded in 2014, Shift is an American company based in San Francisco’s Mission District. As of 2019, the company offers its services in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego, California as well as Portland, Oregon. The leadership team includes Co-CEOs George Arison and Toby Russell, also co-founders of Tax...

PayPal was originally established by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek in December 1998 as Confinity, a company that developed security software for handheld devices. In March 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, an online banking company founded by Elon Musk. After watching PayPal become the premier choice of Internet auction shoppers, online marketplace giant eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 b...

Earth Class Mail was founded over 16 years ago with the ambitious mission of “taking over the post office of the world." They were one of the first startups to launch on national television with their own slickly produced 8 part TV series focused on their CEO Ron Wieners fund-raising journey. But the journey hasn't always been smooth, they company was acquired in 2014 through a Bankruptcy resoluti...

The story of Instagram’s explosive rise reads like a Silicon Valley fairy tale, with the company gaining staggering momentum within a few short months. The app itself took only eight weeks to develop before launching on the iPhone, and within a year and a half Facebook had acquired the company for $1 billion in cash and stock. But like all good tales, the process involved many twists and turns, fa...

Founded in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google-and-Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein, who both worked on improving the productivity of employees at Facebook. They took their internal Facebook tool and commercialized it, launching publically in 2011. Since they, they've been trying to simplify the "work about work in Moskovitz's own words. Asana’s mission is to help humanit...

Square was founded to solve the pain point of a well known glass blower in San Francisco who lost a sale because he couldn't accept a credit card transaction. The prototype was built in a month, and Jack raised $600 just by charging VC's to hear his pitch. Today we walk you through the Product Journey that is Square with their Hardware Lead, Jesse Dorogusker, who left Apple to join the team in 201...

The stock was tanking, and the company kept hemorrhaging cash. Investors sued. Some users even filed a suit. It was a losing battle from the start but what really went wrong at the beloved startup MoviePass. Today we tell the story of MoviePass's rise and ultimate fall on the season finale of Rocketship.fm's Product Failures. We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join toda...

Today we discuss another type of failure that is all too common, especially in young companies - team failure. We talk with Latif Nanji, the founder and CEO of Roadmonk, about his first startup Pokerspace.com and the many mistakes they made trying to move in the same direction as a team, but often failing miserably. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today...

The Exit. Liquidity. Acquihire. Merger. No matter the name, it’s a milestone in any entrepreneurs life. Today we take a look at the real stories behind acquisitions, when the outcome isn’t quite what you read about in Techcrunch with stories from Andy Sparks, former COO of Mattermark, Courtland Alves VP of Product & Mentorship at Bloc and Morris Wheeler, DrummondRoad Capital founder and principal....

Path was created in 2010 by former Facebook employee Dave Morin as a sort of anti-Facebook. It stood out with one good idea: limits for friends. You couldn’t add more than 50 people to your network when it first launched. As Facebook ballooned in size and our friend lists grew with it, Path sought to be the place where you chatted with only the people you were closest to. And for a little while, t...