Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

Say it with me friends: PRODUCT alone doesn't win! Especially when there's competition, your brand is what will convert prospects into customers into champions, and advocates. There is perhaps no better example of this than the meteoric rise of ClickUp. At its core, ClickUp is a project management software. But their BRAND is someone you'd want to be best friends with. They've become famous for th...

Want to get Steve Wozniak to come speak at your event? You don't need a million-dollar speaking budget. Instead, you need a name that will create Pull Attention. What goes into your company and product names influences how your target audience will receive you, how you grow, and how you market. Adam Fulham has experienced this firsthand launching Startup Network Europe. In just 2 years they've hos...

We are gearing up for Season 19, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 17! Everyone talks about how startup life is crazy. At any given point you're working on 5 different things. Decisions made an hour ago might change an hour later. What you thought you were doing yesterday might not be what you're doing tomorrow. In a weird way, we're kind of obsessed with the chaos, and w...

We are gearing up for Season 19, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 16! Most people believe deals are won or lost at the proposal stage. But that's only true if you've done a poor job managing your sales process. In reality, deals are confirmed or revised at the proposal stage. This is something I fundamentally didn't understand when I was a rookie salesperson. Then I hire...

We are gearing up for Season 19, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 13! I didn't think it was possible, but I found someone who is as passionate about storytelling as I am. Enter: Michele Kelly, Cofounder & CEO of K+L Storytellers, a corporate storytelling agency focused on brand development and content creation. There was magic in the air in this conversation, as we g...

We are gearing up for Season 19, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 15! Most conversations in B2B sales are about how you sell to the person you're speaking with. Ask them the right questions, learn their pains, needs, and goals, give them pricing, send them proposals, etc. There is A TON of content in this area. The oft-overlooked part is how to navigate a multi-stakehold...

8-figure revenue. $123 million raise. A community of 100,000+ members. The buzzword in Silicon Valley is 'Product-Led Growth', but is PLG really the future? Lloyed Lobo  Lobo thinks its CLG -- COMMUNITY-Led Growth.   Building COMMUNITY is a low-cost, high-growth option that can become your ultimate moat.   Lloyed would know — building up the  Tractionconf.io  community allowed his company  Boast  ...

When we think of raising capital we usually default to VCs, Angels, Friends & Family, and maybe Family Offices. But there are a whole host of other funding instruments that can put you on the map, like alumni groups, sovereign wealth funds, and more. Randall Crowder raised over $100 million for Phunware, then took the company public via a SPAC and raised another $100 million. He's experienced...

When we work on investor pitch decks, one of our questions to founders is, "What's your G2M / distribution strategy?" Too often we hear, "Social media", "buying ads", or "SEO". Now, it's not that these channels don't work, it's that it usually requires a ton of upfront capital to even start to figure out what's working and what's not. Capital that you don't have yet, for CAC that won't pay you bac...

You've seen it in the news, in your Linkedin feeds, and from industry experts. Y-Combinator sent out their doomsday letter. All the classic characteristics have started to show themselves already. I'm talking of course about 'The R Word'. What does a potential recession mean for you as a founder, both in running your company and raising capital? Who better to ask than a VC. Navin Goyal is a physic...

I'm a firm believer that the majority if not all, problems that exist are ultimately a communication problem. And as your company scales, how you communicate sets the precedent for your leadership style. Aviva Rosman and her Cofounder Alex Niemczewski have scaled BallotReady to 100 employees with 300+ customers including names like Spotify, TikTok, Snapchat, and Levis. But they were on the verge o...

If there's one emoji you never want to describe your product, it's the cricket emoji 🦗. Yet every day, hundreds of startups launch to crickets — no interest, no adoption, no future. Rishabh Jain successfully brought hundreds of creators and dozens of brands to Fermat, securing agreements to billing terms or down payments, before ever building the product. Fermat's ability to generate pre-sales no...

Ever notice how whenever you watch a sports game on TV that the name of the arena is sponsored by a brand, there are decals and signs along the field featuring additional sponsors, the pre-game show is sponsored, the highlight reel, the halftime show, the postgame show are all sponsored, I think you get the idea... What these teams, venues, and networks all realize is that there is room for added...

Imagine this: Your company accidentally prints the "C" word onto thousands of diaper packages for the largest diaper brand in the world. What do you do? Several years ago, as General Counsel of ePrize, Gabe Karp found himself in this exact situation. It taught him a valuable lesson on how to approach conflict. But not only that, as a former litigator, advisor, and active VC, Gabe has seen conflict...

Amidst all the ways you can grow a startup, there's one truth everyone can agree on: Bad hires can tank a company. So how do you position your company as attractive to a talent pool? And not just any talent pool, but the pool that's driving the future of work — young talent? At just 25 years old, Keyona Meeks has made waves in the startup world, going from Investment Strategist at Bronze Valley VC...

"We're looking for a CTO, so if you know anyone please let me know!" Does that sentence sound familiar? Whether it's getting the initial product built, or taking an MVP and turning it into a scalable product, "I need a CTO!" is something I hear founders say all the time. Nelly Yusupova is a seasoned CTO with 18 years of experience. As Founder of TechSpeak, she trains startups on how to effectively...

What if you could not only have a great pitch but a lineup of investors eager to get time on your calendar?? It's not only possible but there's a completely practical way to make it happen. Nathan Beckord's company, FounderSuite, brings structure, speed, and efficiency to capital raising with its funding tech stack to over 2500 startups worldwide. He's personally supported hundreds of founders thr...

The podcast is officially back for Season 18! What are we talking about in this week's episode? ICP! ICP! ICP! These 3 letters are the refrain for any startup breaking into the market — find your Ideal Customer Persona/Profile. But what happens once you do find that ICP, and how do you a) know if there are enough of them to keep pursuing, and b) if yes, keep finding more of them? David Fink has gr...

When you think about sales you typically think about generating your own leads, you and your team selling directly to the customer, and your entire sales operation being an in-house effort. Jen Dye has a different approach. She believes selling can and should be a team effort. Not just with your internal team members, but alongside external partners. The Peak Beyond's founding team has been able t...

Trish Stratus. Kurt Angle. Lita. Larry Zbysko. Jeff Jarrett. The Steiner Brothers. Penta El Cero Miedo. These are LEGENDARY names in pro wrestling with accomplishments like headlining stadiums around the world, performing on national television, appearing at Wrestlemania in front of 75,000 fans, and getting inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. So what would make them even take a phone call from a s...

The hardest thing to do during the capital raise journey is convince investors that your startup is a risk worth taking. It's even harder to do if you don't have any revenue behind your name but you're still saying, "Just trust me." Sustainable meat company, New Age Meats hasn't generated a dollar in revenue yet, but they've raised $32 million to date across Seed, Bridge, and Series A rounds. All...

The single greatest customer experience I've ever had is at Swish House. Swish House is the first-ever Basketball Fitness Class. The first time I took a Swish House class I was so in love that immediately after leaving I called 4 friends because I HAD to tell them. Whether you sell fitness classes or software, your customer experience should be so good that people can't help but talk about it in t...

Everyone talks about how startup life is crazy. At any given point you're working on 5 different things. Decisions made an hour ago might change an hour later. What you thought you were doing yesterday might not be what you're doing tomorrow. In a weird way, we're kind of obsessed with the chaos, and we tend to glorify it. But operating from chaos doesn't help you grow a company. As unsexy as it m...

When you bring new technology to market or a new approach to the old way of doing things, you face a fundamental problem of trying to educate the market while also having no brand equity or credibility yet. So why should anyone listen to you? That's the fundamental problem experiential rewards platform Blueboard faced when they launched in 2013. But since launch, they've scaled from 2 cofounders a...

Plain and simple, one of the best ways to grow a startup is to get the people talking — literally. That's what ultra-fast growing startup Electric.ai has done incredibly well. Through telling the stories of their customers, users, and even their own employees, they've managed to create a groundswell around their product that makes new customers, new users, and new users want to become part of thei...