Like all of us, today’s guest had to face the hardships brought on by the global pandemic in 2020 – one of which was having her children learn at home instead of in school.

But for her and her kids, something peculiar happened – and they actually thrived in the online experience.

She later learned that other parents and their kids did not, unfortunately, thrive to the same degree – and this led her to try to figure out what worked for her – and how she could share that. This inspired the creation of Edify – a tutor matchmaking service which is on a mission to help neurodivergent kids everywhere thrive in an optimal learning experience.

We had a fascinating conversation where we talked about how she was able to bottle the inspiration – and figure out what actually made the experience work. How putting extra effort into matchmaking up front pays dividends later on, and how she is working to scale the business without losing the magic at its core.

I learned a lot from the interview – and hope you do as well.

Links:

Priya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priya-tron/
Edify: https://www.edifylearningspaces.com/

The startup journey is full of twists and turns – but it can also present new opportunities as you go down the path.

Today’s guest, Katelyn Alberts started her journey with the idea of building a marketplace – and quickly transformed it into something even greater than that.

During our talk, we covered some really timely topics for any founder:

- How Katelyn, as a nontechnical founder, was able to navigate the tough question of whether to hire a tech team or recruit a tech founder – and how she discovered an even better approach.

- How to go from seeing a problem that needs to be solved – to deciding to take action on it yourself.

- What to do when you get started – and how to define your MVP

- The challenges of building a 2 sided marketplace – and knowing how to recruit participants on both sides.

- How adding a community mastermind to the mix can add huge value to the core members of the audience – and generate more revenue to help grow the business

- The importance of getting the formula right in one location – to achieve “density” – before scaling

Links for Katelyn:

VERVERY: https://www.ververy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katelynalberts/

Starting and building companies is an amazing rollercoaster of ups and downs – and for many founders, achieving a successful exit at the end of the process is the ultimate goal.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience 2 major exits in my founder career – and I learned a ton from both of them. Today’s guest, Mac Lackey – has gone through a total of 6 major exits in his startup career.

Starting out in the midst of the first web explosion of the mid-90’s, Mac quickly built and sold his first company – and has then learned how to capitalize on opportunity after opportunity since.

I had a fascinating conversation with Mac about the ups and down, the huge takeaways – how he improved his craft with each exit. And – how we all can learn from his experiences to drive something he called optionality into our own startup experience.

I hope you get as many gems out of our conversation as I did!

Links:

Exit DNA: https://exitdna.com/
Book: https://exitdna.com/book/

We’ve all seen products over the years that fizzle out or go sideways – and other products in the same category that achieve explosive growth and quickly scale to millions

Likewise, we’ve seen companies enter red oceans with tons of competitors – only to quickly go viral there and dominate. Google did this in the crowded search space of 1998. Facebook did this to Myspace.

But – how do they pull this off?

I’m so excited to bring you today’s guest – Vince McPhillip. 

A trained social scientist and entrepreneur, he’s spent his career thinking about how to design for massive virality.

And he’s already done it once, launching the Pi network to over 3 million users during his tenure – and over 45 million users at its peak.

Now he’s at it again with Knomad – tackling one of humanity’s longest standing challenges – trust.

LinkedIn provided a huge breakthrough to the space back in 2003 – but has been about as innovative as a snail since then, and may have set itself up for a Myspace moment of its own.

Vince and I had a fascinating discussion about what goes into the DNA of products to make them go viral – and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did as you hear his plans for launching Knomad.

Links:

Knomad: https://knomad.io/

If you’re involved in selling – and especially B2B selling for a SaaS business, then you’re going to love today’s episode. In the last episode, we talked with Stephen Steers about how storytelling is important to sales. Today’s guest – Matt Wolach – shares a masterclass on another aspect of B2B sales that will help you massively increase your close rate.

In sales, it can be tempting to share all of the unique features and bells and whistles of your product. Especially after you’ve spent to much care bringing it to life. But Matt explains how a different frame – based on deep curiosity for your customer’s challenges – is going to help you improve your results.

I had a blast talking to Matt – and learned a ton of nuance along the way. I hope you get some gems as well.

Links:

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwolach/
Website: https://mattwolach.com/ 

There’s one skill that every founder has to master in order to build a successful startup.

I’m talking – of course – about sales. But – there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what sales is and what it isn’t.

Today’s guest – Stephen Steers – has mastered the art of Startup Sales and codified it into a method he calls Contact Sales.

During our discussion, we talked about the importance of story – and why it’s critical to help your prospect see themselves in the story.

We talked about how to eliminate the pressure of closing – and help your prospect from the same side of the table.

We talked about how to structure your sales call for maximum effectiveness – and a lot more.

It was a value packed discussion – and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

To learn more about Superpower Storytelling & Stephen:

https://www.stephensteers.com/

The modern startup ecosystem has been evolving for decades – since the evolution of Silicon Valley from farmland to the hardware companies of the 60’s and 70’s – to the modern tech startup space of today.

But – even after all of these years, a founder looking for support can still feel like they’re living in the wild west. 

At the elite levels, accelerators like Y-Combinator and Techstars certainly offer transformational support. But outside of the top 1% or so – the rest of the space can be a bit confusing.

Today’s guest, Jonny Boyarsky is looking to help founders cut through the noise and get better advice.

His company, called “Literally Helping Startups” – is, wait for it – literally helping startups make sense of the journey.

We had a great in depth conversation around all of the challenges founders face today, what they can do to make more sense of the world – and what Literally Helping Startups is doing to help move things forward.

We’ve talked a lot on the podcast about the importance of asymmetric upside – or luck – in helping to drive entrepreneurial success.

Today’s guest, Vlad Mkrtumyan, has made stacking the deck into a science in his ventures.

In his first company, he launched an app featuring Drake quotes that got 2,000 downloads in week 1 - then he rinsed and repeated the process into hundreds of thousands of downloads.

He then turned what he learned into a method he uses for evaluating and executing new opportunities to make sure he and his agency’s clients are constantly in the flow of asymmetric upside.

We had an amazing discussion going deep into a whole bunch of rabbitholes – peeling back the layers of the onion and finding new insights on what makes founders win – and getting dangerously close to solving puzzles around success in general.

I had a blast talking to Vlad – and I hope you enjoy our discussion as well.