This Week in Startups

0:53 Jason intros Bubble CEO Emmanuel Straschnov 4:25 Defining "no-code" and how Bubble differs from other no-code tools? 9:04 How much more efficient is Bubble than popular coding schools? How advanced do you have to be to learn Bubble? 14:16 Emmanuel shares Bubble's origin story and explains what Bubble unlocks for startups? 16:51 Emmanuel demos Bubble & explains notrealtwitter.com 21:17 What ar...

0:01 Calling all writers! Apply to be the first TWiST Archivist at twistarchivist.com 2:42 Jason intros CEO Coach & Author Matt Mochary 4:49 How and why did Matt decide to become a CEO coach? 8:32 What is the secret to being a great coach for investors & CEOs? 12:12 Drawing feedback out of employees 19:27 How to differentiate healthy fear from paralyzing fear? 32:06 How is Matt's method structured...

0:58 Jason intros Melissa Hanna 1:40 What is Mahmee? What challenges are they solving for? 4:54 How does Mahmee acquire customers? Who pays for the service? 7:37 What is the current cost of having a child in the US? What are some glaring postpartum care issues in the US? 15:28 How did Melissa get Arlan Hamilton to invest? 18:42 How did Mark Cuban invest in Mahmee? 21:02 Why are black mothers 3-4x...

1:39 Peter calls in and asks Jason the optimal check size if first engaging with a company in their Series A and general best practices while Angel investing 14:00 Sarah asks Jason why so many investors seek out a "lead" 17:30 Amrit calls in and asks Jason how to run a US-based startup as an international student 24:29 Jake asks Jason to identify some easily avoidable mistakes that first-time foun...

0:46 Mehak from OnDelta (ISA School for Growth Hacking/Marketing) asks Jason best practices on scaling her business as a solo founder 10:18 Ketan from HireClub (Career coaching SaaS) asks Jason about transitioning his business to help with natural churn 20:59 Benjamin from Infection Control (Hardware infection control for sickest hospital patients) asks Jason how to raise for a medical device in a...

1:00 Jason intros Chris Best 3:24 What happened to Kik? (Chris' first startup) What did he learn from it? 5:03 What is it about email newsletters that attracted Chris? 9:41 Chris explains the AI alignment problem and how it relates to content consumption 13:58 What bad behaviors have Google & Facebook's ad algorithms created? How is Chris working to fix them? 18:09 Gamification's impact on startup...

0:47 Jason intros Open Office Hours 2:15 Trevor from Moovin (on-demand software to rent professional furniture) asks Jason to share some hacks on how to gain interest from investors 18:31 Jelica from Saddle Shoppe (e-commerce luxury equestrian clothing/gear) asks Jason best practices on scaling while bootstrapping in a niche market 34:49 Antonio from Youcanevent (event services marketplace) asks J...

0:49 Jason intros Open Office Hours Live at Neyborly 1:09 Sebastian from Tailpath asks Jason how to generate consumer habits to drive demand 18:37 Sana from Ribitt asks Jason how to overcome past failures in a lucrative market 38:21 Elizabeth from Deep Isolation talks with Jason about solving nuclear waste and developing new nuclear energy 52:12 John from Sircles asks Jason how to take on major in...

LINKS to brackets: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zqc-2vDRl7e86USf4okiX8DRcXPzX1HW || https://www.canva.com/design/DADuVKZjuc4/9Qt3B4m4DU-Z_HxbuDTb6w/view?utm_content=DADuVKZjuc4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton 0:29 Jason intros Garry & Zach 3:02 Jason goes over the bracket-style breakdown 3:15 Best of the decade: Ride-Sharing vs. AI/ML 8:32 Best: Amazon Prime vs...

0:52 Kenny from Bacarai asks Jason how to start a flywheel with paid pilots as a pre-revenue company in the group airfare space 13:30 Elyse from Bloom Bras asks Jason some tactical questions around converting bounced website visitors 32:05 Pranav from Glyph asks Jason about goal-setting around raising a Seed round 50:31 Mark from Recapped asks Jason how to better understand & capitalize on investo...

0:48 Jason intros Gil and asks about his lengthy background in cybersecurity 3:02 What experiences inspired Check Point? 8:31 Gil explains how he raised money for Check Point in the early 1990's 14:04 How did Gil build and price his first product in a developing market? 16:46 Dealing with the first batch of cyber attacks at Check Point 19:10 What was the profile of a typical hacker in the early In...

0:52 Jason intros TWiST Live guest and one of his first investments Marco Zappacosta & Marco describes how they met in 2010 2:28 What did Thumbtack look like back in 2010? How has it changed in 2019? 6:09 Dealing with regional price differences 7:58 How much has mobile demand increased since starting Thumbtack? 11:53 What was it like running a startup in 2010 vs. 2019? 14:38 Impact of starting Thu...

0:58 Jason welcomes the Startmate companies to the TWiST Studio 1:36 Zac from JigSpace pitches an AR platform for educational presentations 11:56 Teresa from Brandcrush pitches an experiential marketing platform 24:57 Jimmy from Syncio pitches a 1-click Shopify inventory sync extension 37:53 Alice from Ovira pitches a wearable device that helps stop period pain 46:14 Brett from Flaktest pitches an...

1:08 Jason intros Joel Flory 2:12 What is VSCO? How is it different than Instagram, Facebook & other photo-sharing apps? 4:33 How does VSCO grow at hyper speed without follower counts, likes, etc.? 8:28 What is VSCO's scale so far? 12:23 How does VSCO get people (mostly Gen-Z) to pay for a social network? How do they view pricing? 18:09 How VSCO uses themselves as a tool for other social networks...

0:51 Jason intros Josh Browder & DoNotPay 2:48 Starting DoNotPay in college 6:12 How much $ has DoNotPay saved citizens since launching in 2016? 7:46 Josh explains his product roadmap to Jason 15:14 DoNotPay's mission and how Wells Fargo scammed its customers 17:37 Josh takes us through DoNotPay's suite of features starting with the robot lawyer/chatbot 19:57 Josh describes the "Skip Waiting on Ho...

0:44 Jason intros Luke and describes how he found out about Farmer's Fridge 5:01 How did Luke overcome barriers of making a vending machine feel like a restaurant 9:18 Luke's life before Farmer's Fridge 11:52 How Luke discovered the issues of distribution that led to Farmer's Fridge 16:18 Building the first Farmer's Fridge vending machine 23:48 Ideal locations for Farmer's Fridge machines & where...

1:04 Jason intros Alexandr 2:19 Alexandr shares his personal startup history 5:17 How & why did Scale start? 8:26 What is the best example of Scale in practice? What problem are they solving? 10:44 Video demo of Scale's platform 15:34 Acquiring the scale.com domain name & insights on the unique spelling of Alexandr 17:31 How does Scale deal with data-sharing between customers? 21:34 LIDAR vs. non-...

1:06 Jason intros the Pegasus concept & Yousician's Chris Thür 3:52 Chris explains Yousician 5:22 How did Yousician start and what did Guitar Hero have to do with it? 11:02 Capitalizing on Apple's inclusion of subscriptions 16:00 What were the early days of Yousician like, and was it hard to raise $? 20:32 Is being based in Finland an asset? 27:00 Chris gives his best advice for founders 29:34 Doe...

1:05 Jason intros Alex Mather 2:08 Why did Alex launch a paid subscription publication in a seemingly dying industry? 4:32 How & where did The Athletic start? What was their thesis? 6:32 What was early feedback like from investors? 15:57 Changing approach from ad-based to subscription-based writing 21:34 Why the NHL & MLB are great for The Athletic 22:43 How do they manage young writers? 26:52 Wha...

1:08 Jason intros Andy Rachleff 2:20 Where is Wealthfront at currently? 4:44 How are traditional money managers allowed to get away with so much? 10:19 How has Andy dealt with becoming the elder statesmen at his company? 14:15 What are Wealthfront Cash Accounts? 18:27 Wealthfront's long term vision 23:49 What is high-revenue retention? How does Wealthfront maintain it? 27:44 How has Silicon Valley...

1:03 Jason's thoughts on the exploding DTC movement 4:10 How Jason discovered Eight Sleep 7:15 Jason intros Matteo Franceschetti 8:18 Matteo describes starting Eight Sleep and The Pod 15:48 What was Matteo's history before Eight Sleep 16:27 What did Matteo learn from his prior career in Solar Energy? 20:11 What has Matteo learned about users' sleep through data analysis 22:54 How does the thermo a...

1:10 Jason intros episode 1000 + Brian Alvey & Lon Harris 3:58 "Money is the Root of All Evil" theme song 5:22 What were the first few episodes of TWiST like? 6:27 What is working with Jason like? 7:49 Tyler joins the show from Thailand and shares his history with TWiST 10:55 Brian gives his experience being the first guest on TWiST 11:59 Historic Clip: Gary Vaynerchuk on E24 18:12 History of podc...

0:53 Jason intros Brian Chen 1:15 Brian demos ROOM's collaboration with Calm 2:42 How did ROOM get their room.com domain name? 3:49 Upside & downside of open floor plans 5:52 Why ROOM manufactures the product in Indiana (for US distribution) & Portugal (for European distribution) as opposed to China 13:47 How did Brian convince VCs to invest in his DTC furniture business 18:13 What Brian thinks ab...

0:53 Jason intros Sajith Wickramasekara 1:40 What does Benchling do? 2:24 How did Sajith get into life science? 6:55 Benchling's value proposition for scientists 9:04 How do they charge? 10:43 Is Chamath Palihapitiya the most famous Sri Lankan in the US? 13:25 Why immunotherapy is the most exciting development in life science 19:00 3D Printing & harvesting organs in other species 20:50 Ethics of e...

0:52 Jason intros Brian Halligan 1:35 Brian describes how his job has changed as HubSpot has scaled 3:33 Jason asks Brian about buying Jerry Garcia's guitar "Wolf" 4:42 Jason & Brian reminisce over Grateful Dead shows at Giants Stadium 6:36 How the Grateful Dead pioneered "Inbound Marketing" & inspired HubSpot 15:24 How Brian met his Co-founder Dharmesh Shah 17:04 The original idea behind HubSpot...