Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

There's revenue growth, and then there's rapid revenue growth. This week on the podcast I'm joined by Steve Glaveski, Cofounder and CEO of Collective Campus in Melbourne, Australia. He also hosts the Future Squared Podcast AND recently authored the book "Employee To Entrepreneur: How To Win Your Freedom And Do Work That Matters". Steve shares the strategies he's implemented that have led Collectiv...

We're back and officially kicking off as the renamed Startup Hypeman: The Podcast! To start the new season we welcome Ajay Goel to the microphone. Ajay is Founder of GMass and Wordzen, both gmail plugins that boost your productivity. As a bootstrapped venture, GMass has amassed 350,000 users and 10,000 daily active users in only 3 years. My conversation with Ajay is unique in that most conventiona...

The Discover Your Inner Awesome Podcast is dead. Sort of. Introducing Startup Hypeman: The Podcast. Listen to this short episode where I give a eulogy for Discover Your Inner Awesome, share why I killed it, and what you can expect from its reboot as Startup Hypeman: The Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if your company reached a point where running an ad campaign challenged your personal values and set of morals? Where the upside means massive success, but the downside means doing something that you believe is wrong? In our Season 10 finale I tackle the topic of marketing vs. Propaganda with hip hop recording artist Sir The Baptist. Sir’s music is our show’s theme song — as the self-proclaim...

I have a feeling this episode is gonna get A LOT of downloads. If you're a pre-revenue startup, I'm sure you've thought to yourself, "How do we raise money??" Or maybe you've been out there trying to fundraise and having no luck. Well, brew a pot of coffee or crack open a cold one, sit back and take notes for this one. Amber McDonald is the CEO and Cofounder of Indemnis, a company expanding the co...

How different is your brand? No, really different? Without using the words 'disruptive', 'innovative', or 'game-changing' how are you truly challenging the incumbents in your industry and breaking norms? Erin & Leif Frey cofounded FREY--a clothing care line that I believe actually is game-changing. And they don't use a single buzzword to break the norms of their industry. Through branding, mes...

I've long held the belief that one of the best ways to gain access to potential customers is to find and leverage access points--hubs that give you access to many customers at one time. Some people call this channel marketing, I call these hubs "Superconnectors", but whatever you call it the point is these are partnerships. Allison Lee is CEO and Cofounder of Hemster. Before founding Hemster she w...

Okay, you founded a company. Are you an innovator? Is your company innovative? Many of us think because we're in the 'startup ecosystem' we're practicing innovation by default. Monica Kang has a different viewpoint. She's the Founder of Innovators Box, an innovation consultancy, and author of the book "Rethink Creativity". As a first-generation American, she's been practicing innovation before she...

There's getting off the ground to try to just get to 1, but we all know that 1 is not enough. A true startup looks at growing from 1 to 100, to 1000, to 1 million, all the way to X. That's what we call scale. But how come when we look at scale, we only ever focus on product, sales, and the market? Alida Miranda-Wolff is on a mission to change the conversation around growth and scale. Her company,...

On day 1 all the responsibility falls on you and your cofounder's shoulders. But as you grow, you can't manage everything yourselves. One of the hardest things to do is embrace the idea of "letting go" and entrusting others with responsibilities. Gregory Heilers is Cofounder of content marketing agency Jolly Content. In less than 2 years Jolly Content has scaled to six figure revenue with zero out...

As an entrepreneur, you're on a mission to share your vision for the way the world should work. Whether that's to investors, customers, or other stakeholders. Sharing your vision, and convincing others of it, is not an easy task, especially if it's a radical shift from existing norms and behaviors. Sarah Doherty is Cofounder and CTO of TeleHealth Robotics. Her company's vision is to change the fie...

Want to make the Inc. 5000 list? Be more community-minded. Matt Wilson Cofounded Under30Experiences on the basic premise that young adults should get out and see more of the world. In 5 years, U30X has grown to a multi-million dollar organization, most recently making the Inc. 5000, and being awarded the #1 Fastest Growing Travel Company, with 70% of customers making repeat purchases! I've persona...

Any business owner will tell you the most important thing is customers. Last week's episode covered building relationships with them, and this week's episode we dive into finding them in the first place. My guest is Jason Bay, who joins the show for a record third time. Jason and I met in 2015 for, of all things, a podcast recording (his first appearance on this show). We've since become good frie...

Brian Letzter is a former U.S. Army Cavalry Scout, and the current Cofounder of HowDoWe, a fundraising platform for public schools, churches, and community action groups (sort of a local community-focused Kickstarter). I first met Brian in 2017 when he was enrolled in the Bunker Labs' Launch Lab program where I mentor. From his time in the Army, he learned the power of trust and cameraderie. These...

What the heck is blockchain anyway? And how does it impact technology and business? Disruption Joe is the Founder of Chicago Blockchain Project, and a nationally-recognized voice in the blockchain ecosystem. In this episode, he sits down and takes me through a Blockchain 101. If you ever have a confused look on your face when someone talks about blockchain, bitcoin, and cryptocurrency, this is a m...

Lucas Guariglia is a former touring musician turned entrepreneur--now Cofounder and President of Rowboat Creative, a promotional marketing company. In both the music and business worlds, his life has been filled with pivots. big and small. Today he joins me on the show to share his experience in not only making pivots, but surviving them and moving forward. Get episode updates, full show notes, an...

Listen in as Raj shares updates, announcements, and changes to the podcast for the upcoming season! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“People always say, ‘how are we going to get more people of color and women in tech? Oh the answer is education.’ I don’t believe the answer is education. Education is the answer is a 20 year solution. Just wait 10 years, wait 50 years until we have a new crop of really smart kids, THEN we’ll do inclusion, because we would have quote unquote trained them. Yeah--you know what? I’m gonna go the Mast...

“In our first fund we had 33 companies. And 42% of those were founded by women or minority groups. And, depending on the publication you read, between 40-45% of those who apply for venture capital funding (anywhere) fall into those groups. So we pretty much hit the nail on the head...just by removing human bias from the equation, and those were the results. And they’re actually performing better w...

"...Most people don't take that much care and attention to the truth that they communicate, because they think 'Hey I use words -- I'm a great communicator' which couldn't be farther from the truth. Most people are very lackadaisical about their communication skills...most people aren't as good of a communicator as they think, and they don't spend time really understanding what they are communicat...

“...Think about how many brands we consume, that there’s no face to. That’s one of the fundamentals to me that I never understood. Brands don’t give people a reason to care and connect...For me one of the keys to awareness is having a brand heartbeat. We have so many choices now for where we’re going to give our attention and time and money, so it’s finding the brands that connect with you on a de...

“...Know what you are. Know what kind of business you want to build. Because this community only has so many resources. There are only so many micro-VCs and angel investors. And every person who takes money, and the amount of times you take money from an angel investor and don’t return it, that means somebody else doesn’t get that money, and you’re slowing the economy down.”   -Scott Kitun, Techno...

"...One of those people who signed a letter of intent kept calling us over and over again and she became our first client. She called us one day on a Friday and said, "Look--if you guys can start for me Monday, I need this to happen. I need you to help my business." It was that weekend when (we said) if we're going to actually learn how to build this product, why not do it with the customer? Why n...

“I think (messaging) is one of the most important things that startups can focus on, and it gets glossed over all the time. “It’s just messaging. It’s just positioning. It’s marketing, it’s sort of spin.” And I just think that’s wrong. It’s the core of how you’re going to communicate your business to potential customers. You need to activate them…the words you choose, or the graphics you show, or...

"You never know who calls you or who texts you about something. Sometimes you'll get a lead for a story from something random, people who you never expected to call or text you. It's something where when you start to be in a world of something, whether it's basketball, or music, or anything like that, you never know when worlds will collide, or when someone will reach out to you. There are times w...