The Thread Podcast

Christina Cacioppo , Co founder and CEO of Vanta , joins the show to talk about How Christina's experience as a PM at Dropbox gave her the insight to starting Vanta. Current state of the security and compliance industry and why it's primed to explode. The impact that AI will have on security. Should founders raise strategic capital? And at what stage does it make sense to do so? Your sta...

Joe Thomas , CEO and Co founder of Loom , joins the show to talk about How Joe and team have scaled Loom to +21M active users The decision to hold on monetizing Loom until Year 3 of the company, and why founders should use activation as a success metric. The "earned insight" that led the Loom team to build a horizontal application vs. vertical application How Loom is planning to use Gene...

Bill Smith , Founder and CEO of Landing and Shipt (acquired by Target), joins the show to talk about Moving from Birmingham to San Francisco, the insight that led to Landing, and re-imagining how we rent homes. The remote work debate. Which hires should be in person and which hires can thrive remotely. Founder insights from building and selling Shipt to Target for $550M, and the differences betwee...

Rahul Vohra , Co founder and CEO of Superhuman , joins the show to talk about Founding Rapportive, selling to Linkedin, and the insight that came from filtering every idea through the lens of our most valuable asset. Our time. The Superhuman Product Market Fit Engine and Rahul's method of quantifying whether or not you've found PM fit. A vision driven approach vs. a metrics driven approa...

Max Lytvyn , Co founder of Grammarly , joins the show to talk about Pivoting from plagiarism detection to building Grammarly, one of the 20 most valuable startups in the US A 16 year "overnight" success story.  Building and innovating when your vision is ahead of what's technically possible. Direct to consumer or B2B?  How founders should evaluate building a direct-to-consumer vs. B...

NBA Champion, investor, and hoops analytics guru, Shane Battier joins the pod to talk about The transition from playing alongside Lebron, D Wade, and Chris Bosh to the front office leading analytics for the Miami Heat. "Burning the ships". Shane's decision to go "all-in" on basketball and the parallels to founding a company. The impact that generative AI will have on the b...

Kaveh Khorram ,  CEO of Usage.ai , joins the show to talk about: Eliminating "cloud waste", creating a new category in the midst of the cloud wars, and the importance of timing when creating Usage.ai . Kaveh's experience taking Usage from 0 to 1 and learnings from the scale and growth phase of his company Diversifying and de-risking partner and platform risk, and predictions on wher...

Edith Harbaugh , Co founder and Executive Chair at LaunchDarkly , joins the show to talk about The process LaunchDarkly went through to validate PM fit and create the category for feature management. LaunchDarkly's target customer profile when finding PM fit and how their target customer profile has evolved as their category and company has scaled. At what stage in a company's growth sho...

CEO Succession draft! My co founder and brother Jeremy joins the show to analyze the top 10 CEO successors of the past two decades

Kurt Davis , Co founder/CEO of Biteline and author of " Navigate the Lighthouse " and the BD aSaaSin, joins the show to talk about: International deal making and how Kurt approached doing large carrier BD deals in the early days at Boku. The process of crossing the second "chasm". What is the second chasm and how founders should approach it. Navigating the lighthouse and when a...

Scott Kacyn , Co founder and CTO of Hunt Club , joins the show to talk about: Hunt Club's process of finding PM fit, startup life before and after raising $40M, and creating the category of Network Relationship Management in the process. The impact that generative AI will have on the hiring space. How Scott is using Copilot to support his engineering team in building Hunt Club Creating a star...

Suze Dowling , Co founder and Chief Business Officer of Pattern Brands , joins the show to talk about Unlocking direct to consumer businesses and creating a successful multi-brand model. The value in developing a brand that resonates with your personal stage of life, and how to define successful brand and buying personas. The differences between operating an agency and operating a startup. Direct...

Terry Rice , Host of Entrepreneur's " Launch Your Business " podcast and author for Entrepreneur Media joins the show to talk about: How Terry got on Jason Feifer's radar (Editor in Chief at Entrepreneur Media), and how he turned that interaction into his dream job. Terry's process for launching his own consulting practice, finding your zone of genius, and tactics to take...

Miguel McKelvey , Co founder of WeWork, Proto, and Nayah joins the show to talk about How Miguel got the inspiration for founding WeWork and how he and Adam approached finding PM fit. The cultural challenges WeWork faced in the early days as the company scaled, and creating WeWork's Culture OS (Operating System) to scale culture. Founding Proto and building a more inclusive brand of footwear....

Ann Miura-Ko , Founding Partner at Floodgate joins the show to talk about Founding a Venture Capital firm in the midst of a financial crisis. How founders should be thinking about their business and communicating to VCs at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages of company building. Why VCs say no and why Floodgate said no to Disco. What VCs actually mean when they say they're "investing...

Jake Gibson , Co Founder of NerdWallet and Founding Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures , joins the show to talk about Founding NerdWallet, building a public company, and pioneering in the early days of financial services on the internet. The right time to replace yourself in order to help your company scale. Investing in the future of FinTech, embedded FinTech and rethinking the interface of Fina...

Chris Buttenham , CEO and Co Founder of Obie (acquired by Seismic) , joins the show to talk about How Chris' experience installing security cameras that led to the customer insight behind founding Obie Creating and falling into startup categories The process Chris took to successfully sell Obie to Lessonly and Seismic.  Suggestions on how to grow the aSaaSins podcast

Gretchen Salyer , CEO and Founder of June Care , joins the show to talk about The childcare crisis in the US, and parenting and homeschooling in a global pandemic. Building a MVP for a better way to child care through community. How June Care's service model and product has evolved as they've received customer feedback from Moms on the network. The time I almost had my wife accidentally...

Lauren Peate , CEO and Founder of Multitudes , joins the show to talk about The future of engineering and how teams use DORA metrics to measure engineering effectiveness. The importance of focusing on team outcomes and goals as an engineering leadership team. The impact that Generative AI will have on engineering team performance and productivity Ethics in AI and how entrepreneurs should respond t...

Nichole Powell , CEO and Founder of Kinfield , joins the show to talk about Nichole's decision to make a professional pivot out of big tech to building clean, sustainable,consumer products for the outdoors. Nichole's experience appearing on Shark Tank, swimming with the sharks and receiving four different offers from investors to build Kinfield. How Kinfield has approached building produ...

Joe Pompliano , Co founder and CEO of Huddle Up , joins the show to talk about Two Billion social impressions, 25M YouTube views, and the journey to building one of the most successful content platforms for the business of sports. How Joe landed podcast guests like Ice Cube, Troy Aikman, Lance Armstrong, and others. How Joe evaluates the companies he invests in, and his perspective on working with...

Henry Shi, Co founder of Super , joins the show to talk about Building a savings super app focussed on the everyday American, and Super's approach to customer segmentation. Henry and Hussein's approach to finding product market fit for their consumer focused startup, and Henry's thoughts on how this differs from finding PM fit in building a B2B company. Super's initial focus on...

David Booth , CEO of On Deck , joins the show to talk about: How On Deck helps founders get leverage on their time and lean into community to build exceptional companies, as well as how On Deck differs from traditional accelerators like YC and 500 Startups. David's "three edges" framework to evaluate On Deck's founder candidates, and evaluating the mindset that many founders ha...

Jacob Jaber , Chairman and Co founder of Philz Coffee joins the show to talk about: The founder's story behind building one of the industry's most successful specialty coffee brands. Creating a culture of "Grandma's house hospitality" and a personalized approach to building product and delivering service to customers, one cup of coffee at a time. How Philz harnessed initia...

Justin rounds out the week with a quick recap from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and talks about The future of fan engagement and personalization in sports. The evolution of the athlete, player empowerment, and the "look at me" generation Leadership lessons from WNBA legend, Sue Bird, Miami Heat VP of Analytics, Shane Battier, and Celtics GM Brad Stevens.