Vested Capital

In this episode, I sit down with Yaya Mokhtarzada, one of three brothers who co-founded Truebill and sold it to Rocket Companies for over a billion dollars. Yaya shares the rollercoaster journey from bootstrapping in a basement to hitting $100M in revenue, including the manual work that got them started and the paid acquisition strategy that scaled them to unicorn status.

Michelle Tasco built a $550,000/year one-on-one financial coaching business over 13 years, starting from $8,000 in year one. This is the story of how she went from $68,000 in credit card debt to charging $700 per session, working only 18-23 hours per week. No courses, no group programs, just consistent growth through referrals, local SEO, and mastering the discovery call. She shares her exact five...

Arthur Menard built three successful businesses before turning 30: an automated online education platform still running a decade later, a door-to-door SaaS company for French bakeries, and now Lambs, an 8-figure health apparel brand. This is the story of how a podcast listener became a guest, how walking around CES in underwear created breakthrough exposure, and how focusing on conversion rates be...

David Ciccarelli and his wife Stephanie built Voices.com from a newspaper ad and a $15,000 loan into a 130-person marketplace connecting over 2 million voice talent with clients worldwide. This is the story of bootstrapping through 10,000 cold calls, betting $30,000 on a domain name they couldn't afford, surviving as a husband-and-wife founding team, and raising $18 million from Morgan Stanley to...

Teddy Keres built one of Montreal's most successful mortgage brokerages by mastering the art of relationship-driven sales and strategic scaling. This article chronicles his journey from hockey player to peak-performing mortgage specialist at Bank of Montreal (closing 500 deals annually), then to founder of Group Orbis, a 60-person brokerage. We explore his client acquisition strategies, his person...

I've spent over a decade building in the cryptocurrency space, starting before most people even knew what Bitcoin was. In this episode, I share how losing money in the Mt. Gox collapse led me to create Vaultoro, the first Bitcoin-to-gold exchange, and why I'm now building The Standard, a DeFi protocol that lets you borrow against your assets without banks.

This interview with Collis Ta'eed, cofounder of Envato, was recorded over a decade ago as exclusive content for my Laptop Lifestyle Academy members. At the time, Envato was already a multiple seven-figure business with 100+ employees. Today, they've crossed $1 billion in total revenue returned to creators, employ 600 people, and Collis and his wife Cyan are on Australia's tech billionaire list alo...

Gabriel Musella's journey from Southern Italy to Y Combinator is a masterclass in persistence, pivoting, and building in emerging markets. After spending a fortune on education across Europe and the US, working at Nokia and UBS, and failing at three startups, he finally cracked the code with Coin Rule—a platform that automates crypto trading for regular people. This is the story of how he met his...

Kisan Patel spent nearly a decade running a boutique M&A firm before bootstrapping Deal Room, a SaaS platform that digitizes the merger and acquisition workflow. This is the story of how he went from selling gas stations in rural Indiana to building a media company inside a tech startup, why most M&A deals fail (hint: it's a people problem), and why the real success in startups happens between yea...

Russ Heddleston built DocSend from a simple idea into a $165 million exit to Dropbox. But the story isn't about overnight success or massive funding rounds. It's about research before building, pricing that actually makes sense, content marketing powered by unique data, and knowing when money isn't the bottleneck anymore. This is the playbook for building a horizontal B2B SaaS company the right wa...

Sarah Mausolf built Winnie, a $212 billion marketplace that connects parents with daycare and preschool providers across the United States. This is her story of going from MIT math major to Google product manager to startup founder, navigating the challenges of raising $9 million as a female founder in an 'unsexy' space, building supply before demand, and creating a platform that's become the defa...

Lee Zlotoff went from secretary to Hollywood writer in a single conversation, created MacGyver by removing one key element, and developed a three-step creativity system that became faster than any writer in the industry. This is the story of how audacity, a chocolate bar, and paper models built a global phenomenon—and a problem-solving method anyone can use.

Will Schroter started his first company at 19, building websites for Mastercard and BMW in 1994 when almost no one knew what the internet was. He scaled that agency to $65 million in billings, landed a $250 million Prozac account, and sold in 2001 at age 27. Then he tried running six companies simultaneously in an incubator model, which nearly killed him—literally ending up in the ICU with a stopp...

In this special episode, I'm releasing three interviews I did with Tim Ferriss over the years. We cover his journey from building his first supplement business to becoming the author of The Four Hour Workweek, plus his methods for learning any skill rapidly. This is Tim before he became the famous podcaster and investor most people know today.

Sonia Petkovich built MeowTel, the number one cat sitting app in the US, from a side project during her MBA to a profitable company serving over 10,000 customers across 150+ cities. This is the story of how she pivoted from 'Airbnb for cats' to 'Uber for cat sitting,' survived COVID after raising her seed round just weeks before lockdown, and built a two-sided marketplace while still doing cat sit...

Paul Biggar never wanted to be a CEO. He's a compiler nerd who built CircleCI, now valued at $1.7 billion, by solving a problem he saw at Mozilla. After stepping down when the company was worth just $20 million, he's now working on Darklang, an even more ambitious project to eliminate cloud complexity. This is the story of how a technical founder built a unicorn, knew when to step aside, and is no...

Todd Garland built BuySellAds from a basement apartment into a $10+ million advertising platform. This is his complete origin story: from selling his dad's stereo at impromptu yard sales to washing dishes in high school, from dropping out of college after losing both parents to building websites as a freelancer. You'll learn how he coded the first version while working full-time at HubSpot, why he...

In this episode, I sit down with Dan Young, who went from juvenile detention to building multiple computer hardware empires and closing over $600 million in property deals. Dan shares his unconventional path from selling Ginsu knives at swap meets to founding PC Laptops and Xydax PCs, plus the investment strategies that built his wealth.

A deep dive into Tiliter, a computer vision startup that began by scanning produce in grocery stores and is now expanding globally. This article explores founder Marcel Hirsch's journey from welding steel prototypes in a garage to deploying systems in hundreds of stores worldwide, the technical and business challenges of hardware startups, why investors initially rejected retail hardware, and the...

Brian Clayton built and sold a $10 million landscaping company, then bootstrapped GreenPal to over $20 million in annual revenue without venture capital. This is the story of two successful companies, the brutal first five years of building a marketplace, and why he locked away his exit money to force his second startup to succeed on its own.

Jason and Pili Yarusi went from bartending on a rusty barge in New York City to controlling over 1,000 apartment units worth approximately $75 million. This is the story of how they made that journey, the lessons they learned from every job they held, why they abandoned flipping and wholesaling despite making money, and how they convinced investors to trust them with millions of dollars despite ha...

In this episode, I sit down with Nathan Barry, founder and CEO of ConvertKit, to trace his journey from teenage web designer to running a $28M email marketing platform. Nathan shares the exact strategies that took ConvertKit from $2,000 to $500,000 in monthly revenue, why he deliberately chose not to raise venture capital, and how he's building a company optimized for the journey, not just the exi...

Professional poker player Jonathan Little turned $50 into $350,000 by age 21, then built a multi-7-figure coaching empire. His secret? Obsessive study, ruthless game selection, and treating poker like a business—not a gamble.

Elizabeth Yin spent a few days at Tony Hsieh's startup as a high schooler, sold her own company to BuySellAds, and now runs one of the earliest-stage VC funds in existence. Here's how she invests in companies before they have revenue—and why that's actually less risky than you think.

Jennifer Beck built a cannabis wholesale marketplace, sold it for seven figures during a penny stock IPO, and then launched a CBD skincare line—all while navigating an industry where you can't advertise, can't process payments, and can't even hire a courier. Here's how she did it.