EP39: Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to $100M+ in revenue with founder and CEO Michael Martocci

Paradigm Shift

#Tech #Entrepreneur #Business #Ashish Kundra and Zane Salim #Ashish Kundra #Zane Salim

22:08

Host Francesca Amiker sits down with directors Joe and Anthony Russo, producer Angela Russo-Otstot, stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, and more to uncover how family was the key to building the emotional core of The Electric State . From the Russos’ own experiences growing up in a large Italian family to the film’s central relationship between Michelle and her robot brother Kid Cosmo, family relationships both on and off of the set were the key to bringing The Electric State to life. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts . State Secrets: Inside the Making of The Electric State is produced by Netflix and Treefort Media.…

for 2 år siden 52:58

MP3•Episode hjem

Michael Martocci is the Founder and CEO of SwagUp, a platform that makes it easy to create, automate and distribute swag globally.
In this episode we talk about:

Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to over $100M in revenue
Advice on managing cash flow and how Michael approached forecasting
Michael's vision and SwagUp's unique position to reimagine the entire end to end workflow from the customer experience to the complex supply chain.

This was a really fun conversation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes!

Follow Michael on Twitter
Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter

41 episoder

EP39: Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to $100M+ in revenue with founder and CEO Michael Martocci

Paradigm Shift

published for 2 år siden

Del

MP3•Episode hjem

Michael Martocci is the Founder and CEO of SwagUp, a platform that makes it easy to create, automate and distribute swag globally.
In this episode we talk about:

Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to over $100M in revenue
Advice on managing cash flow and how Michael approached forecasting
Michael's vision and SwagUp's unique position to reimagine the entire end to end workflow from the customer experience to the complex supply chain.

This was a really fun conversation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes!

Follow Michael on Twitter
Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter

41 episoder

#Tech #Entrepreneur #Business #Ashish Kundra and Zane Salim #Ashish Kundra #Zane Salim

Alle episoder

1
EP42: Evaluating and accelerating talent with Ali Partovi, Founder/CEO of Neo; and investor in Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, and more 52:47

for 1 year siden52:47

52:47

In this episode we talk with Ali Partovi about lessons learned identifying, evaluating and accelerating talent across a long and storied career in Silicon Valley. We talk about his founder experience, great investments he's made, and his new accelerator Neo (which is something like YC 2.0). You can learn more about Neo here , and follow Ali to on Twitter to connect with him.…

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EP41: Bootstrapping Boast.ai to $10M ARR with No Marketing Team with Lloyed Lobo 1:14:05

for 2 years siden1:14:05

1:14:05

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EP40: AI as the next platform shift and investing in emerging technologies, with Elad Gil entrepreneur and investor 48:10

for 2 years siden48:10

48:10

1
EP39: Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to $100M+ in revenue with founder and CEO Michael Martocci 52:58

for 2 years siden52:58

52:58

Michael Martocci is the Founder and CEO of SwagUp, a platform that makes it easy to create, automate and distribute swag globally. In this episode we talk about: Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to over $100M in revenue Advice on managing cash flow and how Michael approached forecasting Michael's vision and SwagUp's unique position to reimagine the entire end to end workflow from the customer experience to the complex supply chain. This was a really fun conversation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Michael on Twitter Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter…

1
EP38: Michael Stoppelman, former SVP Engineering at Yelp and investor in 300+ companies, on building world class engineering teams and lessons learned scaling Yelp from 6 to 600 engineers 47:14

for 2 years siden47:14

47:14

Michael Stoppelman is the former SVP of Engineering at Yelp and profilic angel investor in 300+ startups. In early 2007, he left Google to join Yelp, and helped scale Yelp Engineering from 6 to 600 engineers. In this conversation we talked about Michael's lessons learnt building and scaling a world class engineering team- from hiring to motivating to leading world class teams. We also talk about lessons learned from early days at Google, and his approach to angel investing where he has an extremely impressive portfolio and track record. This was a really fun conversation. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Links Follow Michael on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP37: Building and funding enduring fintech companies, with Cameron Peake, Partner at Restive (fintech VC) and founder of early SMB neobank Azlo (almost $1B deposits) 50:01

for 2 years siden50:01

50:01

Cameron Peake is a Partner at Restive Ventures, an early stage fintech focused VC fund. Previously Cameron was co-founder and CEO of Azlo, a company that provided online banking services for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers, and quickly grew to almost $1B in deposits. Cameron understands fintech from multiple vantage points: building for international markets, building one of the first neobanks in the US, and now funding early stage companies. In this conversation we discuss what it takes to build an enduring fintech, drawing from Cameron's experiences as both a builder/operator and investor. Path to building fintech products Founding, building and scaling Azlo Experiences and advice on managing fraud Fintech landscape and building enduring companies Closeout questions This was a fun conversation. We learnt a ton, and hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Links Follow Cameron on Twitter Avoiding common fraud traps Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP36: Semil Shah (founder Haystack, early investor in DoorDash, Instacart, Figma) on the current fundraising market and building intuition to pick winners early 38:41

for 2 years siden38:41

38:41

Semil is the founder and GP at Haystack, an early-stage VC firm with $450M+ AUM. He’s an investor in 200+ companies including DoorDash, Instacart, Hashicorp, Figma and more. In this conversation we discuss the current funding environment, Semil's approach to venture capital and making early investments, and his advice for founders starting a company and fundraising in today's market. This was a really fun discussion and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Links Follow Semil on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP35: Beerud Sheth, founder of Upwork ($1.5B public co) and Gupshup ($1.4B unicorn), on the resilience and grit needed to build two generational companies 56:09

for 2 years siden56:09

56:09

Beerud Sheth in a rare founder who’s started not one, but two unicorns — UpWork and Gupshup. He’s seen a lot of pivotal moments in SV history — having started Upwork in 1998 before the dot com bubble, and Gupshup in 2005, three years before the GFC. Today, Upwork is a publicly traded company valued at $1.5B and Gupshup is a unicorn, last valued at $1.4B+ as of April 2021. In this conversation, we talk with Beerud about his experiences building UpWork and Gupshup across almost 25 years. Links Learn more about Gupshup and try Upwork Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP34: Finding product-market fit and blitzscaling a healthcare marketplace 25x in 18 months, with Wei Deng, CEO/Founder Clipboard Health ($1.3B) 43:19

for 2 years siden43:19

43:19

Wei is the founder of Clipboard Health. Clipboard Health makes it really easy for nurses to search for jobs based on what they're qualified for and what they care about, and apply with one click. Over the last few years, Clipboard has have experienced rapid growth and become the leading marketplace for healthcare profesional to find on-demand shifts at healthcare institutions. Clipboard has raised $94M from top VCs that include YC, Initialized, Caffeinated Capaital, and Sequoia, most recently at a $1.3B valuation. In this conversation we talk about Wei's path to founding Clipboard Health, how we iterated through multiple ideas and products to find PMF, and her approach to blitz-scaling 25x in 18 months during Covid. Wei is one of the most formidable founders we have ever met and we were so blown away by this conversation. Hope you enjoy it and learn as much from it as we did. Links Follow Clipboard Health on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP33: Building and scaling network-based enterprise businesses with James McGillicuddy, former Head of Strategy at Carta ($7.4B) and COO SourceGraph ($2.6B) 42:49

for 2 years siden42:49

42:49

In this conversation, we speak with James McGillicuddy. James was previously Head of Strategy at Carta ($7.4B valuation) where he brought products like CartaX to market, and before that was the COO and early team member of SourceGraph — a universal code search tool company valued at $2.6B. He was also early at RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce for $390M) and played college football for Stanford under Jim Harbaugh. Some highlights: how James approached decisions on which early stage companies and founders to work with, lesson learned from building and scaling GTM at the zero to one stage from earliest days to unicorn-level for multiple companies, approach to building teams and why he loves it, and some really fun stories and lessons from playing college football with legendary coach Jim Harbaugh. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did. Links Follow James on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP32: Building and launching cross-chain crypto infrastructure, with Bryan Pellegrino, founder/CEO of Layer Zero ($140M Series A) 54:09

for 2 years siden54:09

54:09

Bryan is the founder of LayerZero Labs, which is an omnichain interoperability protocol that unites decentralized applications across disparate blockchains, enabling cross-chain applications. LayerZero Labs is building foundational crypto infrastructure. Since being founded in 2021, the company has raised over $140M from top investors including Sequoia Capital, a16z, Tiger Global, Coinbase, Cristies, Paypal, Polygon and Dapper Labs. In this conversation, we discuss the LayerZero founding story, how Bryan approached building complex decentralized infrastructure, their explosive launch and seemingly immediate product-market fit, and the cross-chain opportunity space. This was an incredibly fun conversation and we learnt a ton from Bryan about the "behind the scenes" of building and launching widely used crypto infrastructure. Links Follow Bryan and Layer Zero on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP31: Kunal Shah on building breakout consumer internet products, founding Cred ($6.4B) and Freecharge ($450M exit), and angel investing in 200+ Indian startups 51:57

for 2 years siden51:57

51:57

Kunal Shah is a serial entrepreneur and founder of two iconic Indian companies -- CRED and Freecharge. CRED is an Indian consumer fintech that is valued at over $6.4B, and Freecharge was one of the earliest Indian fintechs that sold to Snapdeal in 2015 for $450M. Kunal has an unmatched track record not just as a founder, but also as an investor and thinker. He’s a prolific angel investor in over 200+ Indian startups and shares insightful, bite-sized philosophical wisdom on Twitter with over 700K followers. In this conversation we explore frameworks and insights that have guided Kunal's approach to building consumer internet products, the "delta-4" framework he uses to evaluate the potential for a breakout product, how consumer behavior changes in trust vs trust-less societies, and his approach to angel investing. In the closeout, we ask Kunal about the most difficult/challenging feedback he has received and how he processed it, and superpowers he has identified in himself that he leans on day to day. Links Follow Kunal and CRED on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP30: Building web3 email, drive and docs with a privacy-first and decentralized approach, with Andrew Milich, founder of Skiff ($10M Series A led by Sequoia) 43:53

for 2 years siden43:53

43:53

Andrew is the founder of Skiff, which is a privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted, wallet native workspace with email, file sharing, and collaboration. Skiff has hundreds of thousands of users and is part of a broader trend towards privacy-first and decentralization. Skiff is backed by Sequoia Capital who led their seed and Series A. In this conversation we discuss Andrew’s path to building privacy-first products, approach to finding Product-Market Fit with Skiff, and the various tarde-offs and opportunities when building privacy-forward and web3/decentralized products. This was a really fun conversation and we learnt so much about what why privacy products matter, their path to increasing mainstream adoption, the business models that are working, and how companies like Skiff are taking us into an exciting future where technology continues to democratize and protect privacy and digital freedom. Topics discussed: How did you end up working on privacy-first products? What is your vision for Skiff and what does the product to today? How did you approach integrating crypto login with meta-mask and decentralization? How did you approach being privacy-first from the ground up? How does that affect the user experience and user journey? How did you approach the trade-offs between building on centralized and decentralized APIs/components for the best user experience? Eg: onboarding, account recovery, etc. How did you approach e2e encryption and interoperability when building a privacy-first Skiff email product? How did you get started building the initial Skiff MVP and who was your first user? What are your thoughts on competing with very mature incumbent products like GMail, Drive, Notion and Evernote? How have you approached it? How did you build conviction in the opportunity around Skiff and the market opportunity? What have you noticed are some triggers that make people switch to a privacy-first email or collaboration product like Skiff? What are some archetypes of people who seek out these products and switch? Since you don’t track your users, how do you figure out who they are, what they want and figure out how to improve the product? How do you think about the global opportunity and internationalization? How do you cross the user adoption chasm to mainstream adoption from where we are today to privacy-first networked products like email? How do you think about business models for Skiff and privacy products? What made you decide to be consumer first vs enterprise and b2b focused? Who should use Skiff and how should they use it? Zooming out what are some areas in the privacy space that you’re most excited about? Closeout questions: what is the most challenging or difficult feedback you’ve received and how have you processed it? What are some superpowers you’ve identified in yourself that you like to lean on? Links Follow Andrew and Skiff on Twitter Signup for Skiff for end to end encrypted web3 email, drive and docs Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP29: Keith Rabois on navigating the downturn, developing good judgement, and building an iconic company 35:20

for 3 years siden35:20

35:20

Keith is a Silicon Valley legend— an accomplished operator, founder, and investor. He started his career as an early executive at PayPal, LinkedIn and Square, before going on to co-found companies like OpenDoor (which IPO’d in 2020) and OpenStore. He’s currently a General Partner at Founders Fund and Co-Founder/CEO of OpenStore. Along the way, he’s made incredible investments as an angel and VC in companies like DoorDash, Affirm, Stripe, YouTube, Palantir, Airbnb, Ramp, Faire, and many more. In this conversation we ask questions that span three broad areas: how to grow through a downturn, how to develop good judgement, and how to build an iconic company. This episode is packed with incredible insights and actionable advice from Keith. We hope you enjoy this conversation, and learn as much from it as we did. In this episode we discuss: Growing through a downturn Given the current market correction underway, what do you think happens next? What advice do you have for founders starting companies in this market context? You’ve said you believe the best companies are built in the public markets. What do you think needs to happen for more companies to go public within 4-6 years vs 10-15 years? What do you think is the right time (or maturity level) for a company to go public? Developing good judgement You have been extremely successfully at investing super early. What has been your approach to making investments when it’s just a team and a keynote deck? You’ve talked about how you look for a “spark” when making early-stage investments. Could you describe a time you’ve seen that? What has it looked like? Could you share some examples where things have not gone well and how you’ve approached those situations? How have you honed your skill in evaluating people and opportunities, and what advice do you have for someone trying to improve their own judgement? How much overlap do you think there is between the skills used to hire and the skills used to evaluate a founder? How do you approach assessing people in both those contexts? Building an iconic company You’ve seen a lot of companies navigate the path to product-market fit. What approaches you’ve seen work particularly well? What has been your own approach to getting to PMF? Post PMF, how do you think about the trade-off between growth and efficiency? Do you think the current market context changes the traditional blitz-scaling strategy? When evaluating investment opportunities, to what extent are you thematically driven vs opportunistically driven? You’ve talked about how people often don’t map their time to their priorities well. As a VC and an operator, how do you approach setting priorities and what does that look like on a week-to-week basis? How have you approached coaching/helping founders and new managers/executives better prioritize their time towards the highest leverage activities? Closeout questions What is the most challenging/difficult feedback you’ve received — how have you processed it and incorporated it going forward? What are your superpowers that you find yourself leaning on often? Anything you’re reading right now that you’d recommend? Links Follow Keith , Founders Fund and OpenStore on Twitter Hit subscribe to keep up with new episodes! Follow Ashish and Zane on Twitter for summaries Click here to share feedback — it only takes a minute…

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EP28: Building an open source powered product and company, with AppSmith Co-Founder/CEO Abhishek Nayak 41:04

for 3 years siden41:04