The Startup Podcast

Are you lying to yourself? Are you really aiming for greatness? This week Chris and Yaniv dive deep into the psyche of startup founders. Discover the harsh truth that a lack of conviction in your vision can lead to self-sabotage, compromising your business through misalignment, poor decision-making, and lost credibility. Are you settling for "good enough," or are you pursuing greatness w...

Today is a very special episode. This week on The Startup Podcast, Chris and Yaniv are joined by Mike Filbey, founder of Pepper and former co-founder of ButcherBox. Mike's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. He catapulted ButcherBox to soaring heights, amassing over $500 million in revenue. Yet, beneath the glitz and glamour of startup success, lay a harrowing truth. Driven by relentles...

Is monetization the secret sauce for startup success, or is it a treacherous highway to failure?  Monetization isn't just about making money; it's about proving your product's worth in the market. Chris and Yaniv unveil the perfect timing for startups to take the monetization plunge and why premature monetization can slam the brakes on growth. Early-stage founders, take note: Discover...

Squads - they’re the “it” way to organise cross-functional teams at Silicon Valley-startups. So why do they often not work? Unravel the blueprint for achieving organizational excellence through effective squads. With squads, teams transform from mere projects to long-term mission owners. These cross-functional squads, comprised of diverse roles and skills, skillfully navigate the balance between s...

In a world where insider founders often seem to have the upper hand, what if being an outsider founder could become your secret weapon?  This week on The Startup Podcast, Chris and Yaniv dive deep into the intriguing journey of outsider founders – those who don't hail from traditional backgrounds.  Join them as they unravel the strategies and insights that can transform your perceived disadvan...

There’s no denying it. No matter how good your product or team is, the startup will make or break because of the founder. Most founders learn this during their startup journey and actively pursue everything they can to make sure they can be the best founders possible. But in doing so, fall into the hidden traps and paradoxically become the founders they’ve tried so hard to avoid being. What are th...

Being a founder is incredibly difficult. There’s no denying that.  As a startup founder, the fate of the company rests on your shoulders. There’s little wonder you’re stressed. For the sake of the company, you must develop skills and techniques to look after yourself! With Chris unavailable as he continues his European adventures, Yaniv explores his 5 Rules of Staying Sane As A Founder. Curious ab...

You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That’s great at a social level or when you’re climbing the corporate ladder but what happens when you’ve founded your own startup and are looking for advice. Enter advisory boards - your startup-oriented “five people”. Feeling stuck and unsure on how to build your advisory board?  Don’t worry, Chris and Yaniv are here to help...

Planning on fundraising in the next 6-18 months?  Interested in the inner-workings of startup fundraising?  This episode is a MUST listen for you! After the success of our previous episode replay we’ve gone into the vault and polished another one of our most popular episodes. This week we’re rediscovering the symbiosis that exists between startup founders and venture capitalists and that at its co...

There is only one Silicon Valley. Countries around the world have tried and continue to attempt to recreate the magic of Sandhill Road. But there will be only one Silicon Valley. So what can different startup ecosystems do to emulate the success of Silicon Valley? This week on The Startup Podcast, Chris Saad and Yaniv Bernstein dive into the key tenants on creating your own Silicon Valley.  What m...

The tech industry has evolved immensely in 2023. It’s time Chris and Yaniv answers the burning questions of startup operators in The Startup Podcast community. This Q&A episode they explore:   Everyone always talks about how you must continue iterating on a product. Does there ever come a point where there is over iteration? Is there a way of telling when you’ve hit that point where you’ve eff...

🚨Twitter Rebrands to X 🚨 Elon Musk wants to blow up the Twitter brand & replace it with 'X' - but why? Listen to this bonus episode of The Startup Podcast, hosted by Chris Saad and Yaniv Bernstein to hear their 🌶️🌶️🌶️ takes!   The Pact  Honour The Startup Podcast Pact! If you have listened to TSP and gotten value from it, please: Follow, rate, and review us in your listening app Foll...

Rules are meant to be broken! You wouldn’t be building startups if you were a complete rule follower. In this episode, Chris Saad and Yaniv Bernstein discuss all the times when you should IGNORE their advice! Together they cover common themes that regularly appear in episodes: Don’t listen to VCs Don’t compromise on your vision Don’t build B2B when you’re trying to build B2C Don’t build a technolo...

We have a special episode for you all this week! This week we’re putting our own advice to use! We have repolished one of our most popular episodes with our new style jam-packed with information to get your company off the ground and steer away from small business syndrome. What is the difference between a Silicon Valley-style tech startup and a regular small business? In this episode of The Start...

Introducing Mid Capital! This week on The Startup Podcast Chris and Yaniv wanted to switch it up and show how to navigate the fundraising VC discussions via roleplay. That’s right! We think Yaniv has found his calling as an actor as he performs as the VC and Chris is the founder pitching. This episode is jam-packed with ways to respond to questions, read the signs and maintain a level of self-beli...

🚨🚨 TAKEOVER ALERT! 🚨🚨 Today we’re excited to share with you an episode from one of our favourite podcasts - The Sachin and Adam Show. Each episode, Sachin and Adam host a fascinating guest from the tech industry - plenty of podcasts do that! But what separates The Sachin and Adam Show from the rest is the skill of the interviewers blending the professional with the personal in a way that reall...

Product positioning will make or break your startup. Go toe-to-toe with multinational trillion-dollar behemoths and the likelihood of success is minute. Restructure your approach to target a different group and you could one-day be the industry-leader yourselves. Researched ways on how to develop your product position and still feel stuck? Don’t fret! Yaniv and Chris are back this week with a supe...

Saying NO takes clarity of thinking. It requires personal conviction and above all else, requires courage. For weeks, Chris and Yaniv have discussed solutions to the symptoms of chronically saying yes: lack of polish, growth, self-serve and appropriate prioritisation. They’ve spoken to special guests about the 10 Commandments of Planning, understanding the 7 Deadly Sins of Startups, developing str...

Apple on your face, or a big disgrace? 🤔 On the 5th of June, an auditorium sat patiently waiting for Apple’s 2023 Worldwide Developer Conference. Rumours had been floating for a while that there was a new product under development. Over the past few years, Apple had been gaining patents, buying companies and hiring people in the augmented reality (AR) space. Much to the wonderment of the crowd, T...

🚨WARNING: Controversial topic alert!🚨 Historically, startup culture has forced people to create a professional facade. A facade that inhibits the ability to reveal any kind of distraction or humanity that might weaken your position or your professionalism in a corporate setting. Challenging that trend is Amy Sun. Amy is CEO and Founder of Briefly AI and also a new mother. Before running her own...

Have you built products and no matter what you worked on it didn’t matter, the business metrics didn’t improve nor did the user experience? You are not alone! Fortunately, we have special guest Itamar Gilad– Former Product Manager at Google turned startup coach, author and speaker here to help change your product mindset from data-driven to evidence-guided. Like many of you, Itamar developed and l...

We’re all storytellers. It’s the way we first begin to learn and it's the way we have communicated important information for thousands of years. However, it is the skill we practice the least. As startup operators, if you were a better storyteller imagine what you could accomplish. You would be able to engross and inspire potential investors and employees in any situation and be able to explai...

Good plans often make the difference between success and failure. Yet so many organisations are filled with time-consuming, ineffective, demoralising planning processes that have everybody muttering “waste of time” under their breath. Fear not! We have very special guest Oliver Heckmann—Head of Engineering at Silicon Valley darling Coda and former Google VP—to help set you up for good planning! In...

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ episode. Yaniv and Chris are fired up about bad VC investors, and they can't hold it in any longer! Good Venture Capitalists help founders make the impossible, possible. They are the fuel that allows rocketships to defy gravity. But bad VC investors will take a founder's dream and grind it into dust. In this episode, Chris and Yaniv share the ways in which bad investors often un...

A startup’s most precious and limited resource? No, it’s not money. It’s time. And so many founders and operators allow their precious time to be eaten away by all sorts of distractions. Distraction can and does kill startups. The opposite of distraction is traction, which is what every startup craves and needs. In this episode Chris and Yaniv are rejoined by friend-of-the-pod Nir Eyal (best-selli...