Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

What if instead of rushing to social media, paid ads, or even a traditional outbound sales motion, you used live events as a customer acquisition strategy? You immediately provide value to your target customer, created a shared experience, and get valuable face time with them. Sales Assembly has bootstrapped to 7-figure annual revenue, growing 300% from 2020 - 2024. The secret to their success? EV...

If you're a CPG or retail brand, you know by default the importance of brand. It's what people buy into as much as the product itself. There's a reason why you choose to pay more for a Nike shirt when you could reasonably buy the same shirt without the logo. Brand is a promise. It's a value system. It's a marker of trust for your community and customers that signals an understanding and expectatio...

Everyone wants to have a community. Everyone says they have a community. But just having a Slack or WhatsApp group doesn't actually mean you have community. Community is more about the interactions than the medium. And investing in community means playing the long game. Which is why so many brands don't think it's worth the effort. My friend Pablo Gonzalez has cracked the community code with a pla...

What does it take to turn an idea for a boutique 7-11 into a tech-driven consumer market, into a national brand that merged with one of the biggest names in grocery? Enjoy this special episode, a replay of my interview with Foxtrot CEO & Cofounder Mike LaVitola live from the Startup Grind Chicago 4th Annual Great Chicago Food Bash in January 2024. Mike shares overcoming rejection for his crazy...

I think we can all agree AI is seemingly everywhere. But what does that actually mean for a startup? Enjoy this special episode, a replay of my interview with Techstars Managing Director Tricia Martinez-Saab live from the Startup Grind Chicago AI Showcase in November 2023. Tricia leads the AI and deep-tech verticals at Techstars and shares her perspective on the good and bad of AI's permeation, ho...

The 3-letter acronym every startup obsesses with is TAM. But what is your TAM comprised of, and specifically WHO makes up your TAM? When you go to market, you may think your target is one group, but then find it includes others you weren't previously considering. That was the case for Cardio Diagnostics, who built a solution with a clear end user but involved multiple ancillary decision makers and...

In a down economy, runway is everything. But it should also be everything in a boom economy. Great companies figure out how to spend less, and make more. Jordan Tepper cofounded the cocktail brand Apologue in 2017, and in the 7 years since he's achieved over $1M annual revenue, while raising just $2.5M in that time, and as of this writing still carrying $1M of that raise in the bank. For a CPG bra...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here,...

Trying to hire for sales? Who you bring in first, and subsequently your next few hires after can be the deciding factor on if your company sinks or swims. So what do you look for in a candidate? What do you ask in an interview? How do you prep them and set goals? There's A LOT that can go terribly wrong, or, wonderfully right. Olivia Herron has stood up a sales team from zero at Facebook Labs, and...

You've probably joined a virtual meeting where a phantom 3rd party named Fireflies also joined. Heck, maybe it was your personal Firefly that joined. You're not alone. In fact, Fireflies.ai has taken notes for over 5 million calls and is now used by over 150,000 organizations. It's no wonder Khosla Ventures led their $19M Series A round. When you hear those kinds of numbers, you think of massive m...

We all know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of really good content. Whether it's a funny meme, an inspiring video, or an insightful whitepaper. Why then, are so many startups *so bad* at CREATING content for their audience? Is it bad source material, bad measurement, or just plain being bad at content? Whitney Durmick spent a half-decade running content for the Oracle startup acceler...

In part 2 of our powerhouse conversation, Lofty Angels' lead investor Chris Deutsch comes back to the mic to share how involved an angel investor should be in a startup, his framework for making investments, and the importance of more founders becoming angel investors themselves. Note: This episode is for educational and entertainment purposes and is NOT meant to serve as financial advice. Find Ch...

Ever say to yourself, "I want to invest in startups?". Even if you're a founder yourself, maybe you've had that moment of 'when I make it big, I'm gonna start investing in other founders'. Chris Deutsch wants to demystify the process for you. As founder of Lofty Angels, he's invested in over 150 founders, 80+ startups (75% by underrepresented founders), and experienced 5 exits. He's also started t...

Going from zero to 1 is a beast. But what comes after 1? And how do you make sure what you're doing in the zero to 1 phase doesn't just work for the 'right now' but also sets you up for long-term success? Ted Blosser learned that lesson the hard way. After struggling to gather escape velocity and hovering in the low 6-figure MRR for literal years (where many told him that he should just give up),...

One of the best feelings as a founder is being so good at pitching your company that people literally throw their money at you on the spot. That's what Christine Izuakor has experienced in her journey pitching Cyber Pop-Up in competitions across America. So much so that in a single year, she amassed over $250,000 in pitch competition winnings. As a Startup Hypeman client, we had an inside look at...

Every successful founder and investor will tell you 10 out of 10 times that TEAM matters more than anything else. As you scale, WHO you hire and HOW you hire them is the difference between 3x growth and falling 6 months behind target. That's why your PROCESS needs to be ironclad. Alex Levin is the Cofounder and CEO of Regal. Since launching in 2020, Regal has scaled to over 100 employees. During t...

Need a revenue boost AND a way to promote your company in a meaningful and impactful way? Try public speaking. Jen Allen-Knuth made $77k from speaking gigs in just THREE months and championed her companies in the process. But this is not some 'get rich quick' strategy. It took time building credibility, finding her niche, saying yes to unpaid gigs, and more. But whether you get paid or not, one th...

What if you could have one of Apple's pioneering innovators, or the co-founder of Netflix, or Nike, on your Board of Advisors? Simon Hudson, Founder of Cheeze, has Guy Kawasaki, Marc Randolph, and more on his board and cap table. When you essentially have celebrity backing, new doors open up, more media outlets want to promote your startup, and traction becomes a little less of an uphill battle (p...