Season 2

Many founders start companies because they want to get rich. Honestly, that’s what I did. Unfortunately, only caring about making money often leads to bad startup ideas. Focus on value instead. Another observation... seed sta...

To find product-market fit you need to deliver clear and exceptional customer value. The story of Applyboard shows you exactly what that looks like. Martin changed the lives of thousands of students who he helped study abroad. He impacted not just them but their entire families. In the meantime, he…

Two observations from the Loopio episode: 1. When you're working on your first startup, everything is hard. It's natural to think that the second time around will be much easier. It's not! 0 to 1 is always hard. 2. Most VCs w...

Starting your second startup should be much easier, right? Well, yes and no. Jafar was the founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Loopio, which went on to raise $200M+ and land thousands of customers. He left to start Barley. ...

Before the pandemic, there were 24 employees at Certn (Or Certonians, as they're called). After the pandemic, there were 500. That's 20x growth in just two years. That only happens for one reason... insane product-market fit. This is the story of how Certn got there. Andrew (CEO) walks us through h…

Bootstrapping isn't sexy. At least not at first. As they say, it's not greed that runs the world but envy. And when your founder friend raises $10M, it's hard not to want it too. But 10 years later, when you're running a $100M+ per year bootstrapped business, all of a sudden things aren't looking t…

What's the most important asset of any startup? It's easy. The talent. The software you build is not defensible. It can be replicated. The team you build is what's special. And the culture you develop is what's unique. In this episode, Rob shares some incredible advice from his days at Uber and as …

Wealthsimple is arguably the hottest private startup in Canada, with over 3M users and a valuation of over US$4B. In this episode, Mike (CEO) shares stories he’s never shared before. He goes deep into how he came up with the ...

When you launch a product and no one buys it, the decision is rather simple. You kill the product. At the very least, you make some serious changes to it. What happens when you do real customer discovery, launch a product tha...

There's nothing quite like going from 0 to an 8-figure+ acquisition, especially on your first startup. And 100% bootstrapped! Aydin, the founder of Fluidware and now founder of Fellow, shares the story of his humble beginnings as a Jr Engineer, to launching a startup that would compete with SurveyM…

Customer discovery is easy, right? You just call up a dozen or so potential customers, ask them a bunch of questions, and you're done. It seems absurd but that's what a lot of founders do. No one becomes a founder because the...

You've built a startup from nothing. You've set up a corporation, built a product, had customers, raised some funding, and maybe even had an exit. The entire time you're thinking to yourself, "Wow, next time it'll be so much easier!". That's what Mike thought. He built TopHat from nothing to 500 FT…

Finding product market fit is rarely a straight line. Many founders zig and zag through different iterations of their product, different target markets and competitive positioning until they find true product market fit. It w...

Every founder knows before you launch, you have to build an MVP. They also know that to build an MVP, you should do customer discovery. But few understand how to properly do customer discovery. Before startup mode, there's re...

If you're selling to businesses, you already know... before you publicly launch your product, you'll have to go through a private beta. But beta programs are not all made equal. Many founders go through the motion but get very little out of it. Others, like Jack (the founder/CEO of Clio, a $1.5B st…