The VentureFizz Podcast

Episode 332 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Lerer, Managing Partner of Lerer Hippeau. The tech scene in New York City has come a very, very long way over the past 14 or 15 years. A lot of that transformation and growth was due to access to early-stage capital which wasn’t prevalent back then, but Lerer Hippeau was a key element to the foundation of its success as a seed stage investor. The firm was an early investor in many consumer brands that you recognize as they have all been very successful like Allbirds, Casper, Warby Parker, BuzzFeed, Mirror, Venmo, and many more. Its reputation was built on these consumer breakouts, but ultimately the firm is category agnostic investing equally across the enterprise and consumer landscapes. For example, take a look at two of their most recent investments, which are Boston companies, 10Beauty (consumer robotics for manicures) and Tollbit (content monetization in the era of AI), which we talk about in details for this podcast. Ben is now a fulltime VC after founding and running Thrillist that scaled and then added other digital media brands under its umbrella as Group Nine Media, which was acquired by Vox Media. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Ben’s thoughts on the market and if now is the ideal time to start a company. * The inspiration behind Thrillist, plus lots of stories and lessons learned around the full lifecycle and evolution of the company to Group Nine Media and acquisition by Vox. * Advice for entrepreneurs on building a startup media company in today’s world. * How Lerer Hippeau came to fruition and what they are targeting for investments, plus why he considers himself a talent driven investor versus a thesis driven investor. * And so much more.

Episode 331 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Rob Go, Co-Founder & Partner at NextView Ventures. I’ve been fortunate to have many people support my journey with building VentureFizz through the years and Rob was one of the earliest. Shortly after I launched the site, he reached out looking to meet up and needless to say, I jumped at the chance. Through the years, Rob has always been incredibly helpful with his feedback on VentureFizz when I needed an outside perspective. I thank him at the beginning of our show, but I did want to note a sincere “thank you” here as well. Rob’s also has a podcast that you should check out called The Idea Maze where he asks the question: where do great entrepreneurial ideas really come from? You can find it on all major podcast platforms, plus I have included a link to it in the show notes. NextView Ventures is a pre-seed and seed stage VC firm that invests in founders who want to redesign the Everyday Economy. The firm’s portfolio includes Bobbie, The Browser Company, Devoted Health, WHOOP, Attentive, and more. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The five flavors of AI. * Rob’s background story including what he learned from his Dad’s entrepreneurial endeavors, getting his career started in management consulting, and then learning product at eBay. * How he landed a VC position at Spark Capital, plus a fun story about his almost investment into Groupon. * What led Rob and his Co-Founders, David Beisel and Lee Hower, down the path of starting a seed stage firm and what the seed investing landscape looked like back then. * What Rob is targeting for investments and the importance of founder-opportunity fit. * What he’s learned while running a venture firm. * And so much more. This Week's Sponsor This is exciting… for the “Hey Mom, I made it” category… we are in a book… not any old book… but a book from MIT! Be on the lookout for the new book for entrepreneurs called Startup Tactics. It is available globally starting on April 2nd and it features 15 tactics entrepreneurs need for success. You’ll find VentureFizz listed as a “tool of the trade” in the chapter on Hiring for Startups! Amazing!!! Get your copy now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org.

Episode 330 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Harman Singh Narula, Co-Founder & CEO of Canary Technologies. “Are these entrepreneurs uniquely qualified to build an industry leading company?” - this is one of the many questions that most (if not all) VCs ask themselves when deciding to make an investment into a company. When you look at Harman’s background, it is obvious that his “Founder Fit” is at a very high scale. As a graduate from Cornell’s esteemed hotel school, he built a foundation in an industry that was ripe for disruption, that being the hospitality industry. The guest experience is so mission critical, yet for years and years, hotels relied on old systems and the same old check-in process. Not anymore. Canary Technologies is modernizing the hotel tech stack with its end-to-end Guest Management Platform that digitizes everything from post-booking through checkout. The company works with more than 20,000 hoteliers in 80 countries and is venture-backed by Insight Partners, F-Prime Capital, Y Combinator, Thayer Ventures, Commerce Ventures, and others. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A conversation about the market for vertical SaaS solutions. * Harman’s background story and how he landed at Cornell to study Hotel Administration, plus how he got his career started including spending time in the strategy group at Starwood Hotels. * His long standing friendship with his Co-Founder, SJ Sawhney, and what led them down the path of starting Canary Technologies. * All the details about Canary, from their experience at Y Combinator to surviving the pandemic to the latest with the company & its platform, including their use of AI. * Outside of their domain experience, the key factors that influenced future rounds of capital. * And so much more.

Episode 329 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Pano Anthos, Founder & Managing Director of XRC Ventures. I always love it when things come full circle. I first met Pano back in, what I believe was 2008 when he was building Hangout Industries. I was running a recruiting firm at the time and I stopped into their offices to discuss some of their hiring plans. Hangout was early to market as the company’s technology in the metaverse lane was very impressive but not ready for adoption by consumers yet which apparently is still the case. It was great to come full circle years later to interview Pano for The VentureFizz Podcast and get up to speed on what he’s been up to in the startup circles. Inspired by a discussion with his wife about the retail industry, Pano went off to start XRC Ventures, a venture firm & startup accelerator investing in retail tech, consumer goods and the consumer healthtech sectors. The firm’s portfolio includes companies like Billie, ShopShops, Fillogic, and many more. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A conversation about anti-dilution protection and why that is an important term for entrepreneurs to understand. * How Pano got into entrepreneurship by starting a company in the global trade industry and how the early days of the internet impacted this sector. * Other companies that Pano has been involved in like Pantero, Hangout, and others. * Launching XRC Ventures and how the accelerator works, plus what makes it unique like not having a traditional cohort program. * The details on the firm’s Opportunity and Brand funds. * Thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro and spatial computing. * And so much more.

Episode #328 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures. Back in 2016, we wrote a profile about Ellen on VentureFizz when she was leading product management at Lola.com. The profile was part of a series that we called Driven, which I think is a very fitting word to describe Ellen… and ironically, the discussion around considering a role in venture capital actually came up. So, in my opinion, it was only a matter of time. From being part of the winning team in high school for the FIRST Robotics competition, to starting a company in college, to a career path in product management, to leading a company that was developing a new programming language… Ellen has built the perfect core foundation for a successful career as an investor. boldstart is a venture capital firm that is your partner from inception for developer first, infrastructure, & SaaS founders that looking to turn your idea into a category-creating iconic company. The firm’s portfolio includes companies like Snyk, Kustomer, BigID, Superhuman and many more. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A conversation about what makes a great product manager. * Ellen’s background including the story off taking some time of to build an EdTech startup with other classmates while in college at the Olin School of Engineering, * Working on early mobile initiatives at Microsoft, then joining Kickstarter as a Product Manager, and what led her to pursue her MBA at Harvard Business School. * Meeting serial entrepreneur, Paul English, and leading product at Lola.com, a travel app. * Developing a new programming language for her startup called Dark with Paul Biggar which allows companies to build software faster, plus what this experience taught her in terms of leading a company and getting adoption with the developer community. * The future of AI developed code. * How she landed in venture capital at boldstart including what she is targeting for investments and what has been her biggest surprise as a VC. * Startup pitch advice. * And so much more.

Episode #327 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures. This is exciting! Why? Because this episode is longer than my normal interviews, as Reed and I cover his career that spans multiple decades across major technological platform shifts. This means that based on his career, he has so many great stories to share. It is like a historical walkthrough of the Boston tech scene. We even had to do two sessions, so if you are watching this video from our YouTube channel then you’ll notice the different sweaters that Reed is wearing. Today, Reed is a General Partner at Engine Ventures, a “tough tech” venture capital firm launched by MIT and trust me on this one, as you’ll want to stay tuned throughout the whole episode! Here is an outline of what we cover: * Reed’s background story, including graduating from high school at 15 years old, his experience as a factory worker and his studies at MIT. * Developing a program called Freelance Graphics at a startup that was acquired by Lotus and his experience there, which was twice the size of Microsoft at the time. * Co-Founding Radnet, which raised the largest venture round of its time in Boston. * Running company development in Boston for IdeaLab, Bill Gross’ internet incubator which spun out companies like Compete, Picasa and others. * Meeting Katie Rae at EONS, a startup founded by Jeff Taylor, and then running Microsoft Startup Labs. * Launching Project 11 Ventures with Katie and then running Techstar Boston together which included many successful companies like GrabCAD, PillPack, and others. * Founder conflict and how it can destroy a startup. * The details of Engine Ventures and what Reed is targeting for investments, plus portfolio company examples. * What it was like leading a course at MIT with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. * And so much more.

Episode 326 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead of Drupal and Co-Founder, CTO, and Chief Strategy Officer of Acquia. Many of the most successful companies in tech were created by founders who built something that was to fill their own need. This was certainly the case for Dries, who back in 2000, started an internal online message board for his friends from his dorm room in Belgium which turned into Drupal. Fast forward to today, Drupal powers 2% of all websites in the world and over 10,000 people contribute to the Drupal open source project every year. In addition to running one of the most successful open source projects, Dries went on to build Acquia, along with his Co-Founder & the company’s first CEO, Jay Batson and early investor - Michael Skok. Acquia’s innovative business model has been a blueprint for other open source companies. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The details of the Drupal community and what are the right ingredients for building a successful community. * Dries’ background story growing up in Belgium, how he developed a passion for technology, and the full story of how Drupal came to fruition. * Drupal’s growth and momentum, plus a great story of how the community stepped in to help fund this open source initiative. * The early days of Acquia in terms of figuring out the business model and then scaling the company under Tom Erickson’s leadership. * The current state of the state of Acquia as a Digital Experience Platform. * Why entrepreneurship is 80% sales and marketing, even as an engineer. * And so much more.

Episode 325 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Alex Shashou, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of 10Beauty. About 10 years ago, Peter Thiel is credited for saying “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” True, Twitter or X certainly was not in the same frame of mind as to what we saw on The Jetsons, but are we finally starting to get there? The Roomba was a step in the right direction in terms of a consumer robot success story. But… the future just might be closer than you think in terms of the possibilities of robotics and automation? Behold… I share with you 10Beauty! The world’s first and only autonomous manicure machine. I might not be the target market for this robotics company, but my wife and two daughters are definitely in the strike zone and when I told them about it… their immediate response was "WHEN AND WHERE CAN I GET ONE!" 10Beauty is not going to be available for consumers to purchase (at least not initially), as they are taking a B2B approach in terms of their go-to-market strategy. For me, it’s less about the tasks that this robot is performing and more about a team that is thinking bigger and ultimately delivering on something that is incredibly difficult. 10Beauty has raised $38M in funding from Shine Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Imaginary Ventures, and Red Sea Ventures. And, they already have serious traction as they already sold out of their entire first run of machines which means they have over $13M in annual manicure subscription revenue ahead. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A deep dive into the challenges and the complexity of building a robotics startup. * Alex’s background story and how Alex met his co-founder, Justin Effron, the first day of school at the University of Pennsylvania. * The story of their first company, Alice, a task management platform for the hospitality industry that was acquired by Expedia, plus how they connected with their technical co-founder, Dmitry Koltunov. * The definition of a good partnership between co-founders and how they divvy up roles & responsibilities. * All the details on 10Beauty… from meeting Chris Casey (one of the original Roomba engineers) to building out the initial prototype to raising funding to the company’s business model and projected launch. * And so much more.

Episode #324 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Sameer Gulati, Founder & CEO of Ordway. Sameer loves SaaS and it’s for good reason… it is expected that the size of the SaaS market may hit almost $1 trillion by 2030! Yes, the tech industry is having some challenges, but did you know that… even though the evolution to SaaS started 20 something years ago… the adoption of SaaS still only sits at a 36% adoption rate versus traditional on-premise software. There is still such a massive opportunity for growth. Ordway is a billing and revenue automation platform that is specifically designed for today’s innovative, technology-centric business models. With Ordway you can automate billing, revenue recognition, and investor KPIs for recurring revenue from subscriptions or usage-based pricing models. The company is venture backed by leading VC firms like CRV, Clocktower Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and others. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A deep conversation around the current state of the SaaS industry and the evolution of pricing models. * Sameer’s background story and how he joined one of the first SaaS companies called Intacct which exited for a billion dollars. * Working as part of the early stage team at Workday, Zuora, Zynga, GrubBeat, and Spree Commerce. * How he leveraged his experience in finance and billing software to disrupt the industry and build Ordway, plus all the details on the company. * Why it is a bad idea to over-capitalize your startup. * The importance of being a mission critical application versus a nice-to-have solution. * And so much more.

Episode 323 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Elizabeth Lawler, Founder & CEO of AppMap. A question that I ask every guest at the end of every interview is - “What do you like to do for fun outside of work?” Oftentimes, I get common answers like - hiking, traveling, etc. But, Elizabeth’s answer has by far been the best one yet and it is proof that she is not only a great entrepreneur but also a maker at heart. Elizabeth is building with her husband & Co-Founder, Kevin, and their kids, a two seater RV-12 airplane. They previously built a car together when the kids were 6 & 8 years old, so this is their next challenge. So cool! AppMap is a leading developer of code visualization and runtime code review analysis technology. Its platform is redefining how developers improve their software and has become one of the fastest-growing tools for software visualization and runtime analysis. The company has raised $10 million in funding. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A deep conversation around community building and the importance of authenticity. * Elizabeth’s background story and how she learned entrepreneurship from her parents. * Getting her career started in public health research and epidemiology after receiving her PhD. * The background story of Conjur, which was bootstrapped initially and raised a minimal amount of capital and had a successful exit to CyberArk. * Preferred versus common stock and how that affects the payout post-acquisition. * All the details about AppMap and how they built traction and got developers to engage with their product. * How Elizabeth is supporting women entrepreneurs and the role that Andy Palmer is playing, as well. * And so much more.