Founder Chats

About Jeff Solomon:

Jeff is a 6x founder and has been in the startup scene for most of his career. He has done just about every role from CEO to Chief Janitor, Head of Product to Marketing Lead.

He has deep expertise in Saas, Content Marketing, SEO, Mobile Apps, Startup Accelerators, Lead Generation, UX, Angel & Seed Funding, B2B Software, Enterprise Sales and Bootstrapping. And he's been writing content on these topics for most of his career.

Jeff co-founded Amplify, Startup Accelerator (5 funds, $50MM raised, 10x exits) and Velocify (sold in 2017 for $128MM). He has raised $35MM+ in venture capital. And he's had one startup fail miserably. He's angel invested in a dozen companies. Moreover, Jeff has seen over 3,000 startups apply to Amplify and been pitched by hundreds of entrepreneurs. And he's helped raise more than $50MM in venture funding for his companies.

Jeff is currently growing Markup Hero, a screenshot & annotation SaaS tool and has been teaching high school entrepreneurship for 6 years. He recently launched a comprehensive online customer development course available on Udemy and is one of the top 10 expert advisors on the popular advisor platforms Clarity.fm with over 500 calls and 350+ 5-star reviews.

About Markup Hero:

Capture ideas, communicate clearly, and save time with Markup Hero a file annotation and screenshot tool. All you need without the bloat; made for Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome and Mobile Web.

Founder Chats listeners get 3 months free on an annual plan with the code X84BB9 🎉

Sign up for Jeff's course: Launch + Grow Your Business with Startup Customer Development

Customer Development is the single most important skill entrepreneurs need to be successful. Whether launching a startup for the first time, or you've tried and failed before,  or your existing business is building out a new product -- customer development is the critical activity you cannot skip. 

To get a discount on the course, get in touch with Jeff at his personal website or on Linkedin. 

About Jeroen Corthout:

Jeroen is the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, a simply powerful CRM that automates data to build better relationships and make more sales. It's a fast, visual and easy-to-use sales machine. Salesflare is the most popular CRM ever on both Product Hunt and AppSumo. It also got featured on TechCrunch and Entrepreneur.com. Prior to Salesflare, Jeroen was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing and sales.

About Salesflare:

Salesflare is the intelligent CRM startups and small businesses love to use. It's a zero-input sales pipeline tool that thinks and works for its user, not the other way around. No more manual data entry. Salesflare fills out your address book and keeps track of all interactions with the people you're in contact with. It takes data from social media, company databases, phone, email, calendar and hands it to you in automated customer timelines that tell you everything you need to know. 

Jeroen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/

https://salesflare.com/

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About André Monteiro:

André is the co-founder and CTO of Verb Energy.  He's a NY-based entrepreneur that leads the tech team at Verb Energy, one of the fastest growing food and beverage brands in the country. André and his team have built a suite of internal tools like a CRM and workflow orchestrator that enable their team to personalize and manage an SMS-based customer journey at scale.

About Verb Energy:

At Verb, our mission is to energize all humans everywhere. We believe there is nothing more powerful than human energy, and that when a person feels their best, they can do amazing things. We started Verb to make people feel incredible by delivering energy in a healthy, convenient, and delightful way, and now we are one of the fastest growing food and beverage brands in the country. We make delicious energy products that we sell uniquely through text message and online. 

www.verbenergy.co

www. baremetrics.com 

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About Rand Fishkin: 

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of audience research software startup, SparkToro. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you bribe him with great pasta or remarkable cocktails, he’ll happily pull back the curtain on big tech’s dark secrets.

About SparkToro:

SparkToro® is a software company founded by Casey Henry & Rand Fishkin. We believe high quality market research and audience intelligence should be available to everyone, not just tech giants and those with huge budgets.

Learn more about audience intelligence, marketing, and the future of work at the SparkToro Blog:  https://sparktoro.com/

www. baremetrics.com 

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About Craig Hewitt: 

Craig is the founder of Castos, where he leads of team of 15 extremely talented individuals that are crafting the best podcasting platform in the industry. He's a husband to an amazing wife, and father to two incredible children.

About Castos:

Castos is a full-service podcast hosting, distribution, and analytics platform, with an industry-leading production service built right in. In our platform, you can easily create, promote, and distribute your podcast and grow your audience.

Learn more about starting and growing a podcast at the Castos Blog:  https://castos.com/blog/

www.castos.com

www.baremetrics.com

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About Marc Brown:

Marc Brown is the founder of Byta. Marc got his start in music at murderecords, Canada’s premier artist-owned label during the mid 90s. After working in A&R at the legendary London indie Creation Records, then at Alan McGee’s Poptones, Marc started his own boutique UK radio promotion company off the back of his success with The Hives. For over 10 years Marc worked with an impressive list of indie rock luminaries including Wilco, Bloc Party, Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes, Spoon and Refused as well as legends such as Tom Waits, Yoko Ono, Booker T and Mavis Staples. 

About Byta: 

Byta enables sending and receiving of digital audio in a clean, simple and secure way. Built for everyone working with music today, Byta is inspired by Marc's time spent as a radio plugger based in London, UK in the early 00's.

Links to articles mentioned by Marc during the interview:

• Decentralized tension- https://byta.com/blog/viznomics/music-is-different-decentralised-tension/
• Here to there - https://byta.com/blog/viznomics/where-is-there/
• Rules too be Free - https://byta.com/blog/viznomics/rules-to-be-free/

ABOUT PETER SCHOENKE:

Peter Schoenke is the co-founder and President of RotoWire.com, a leading content and technology provider to fantasy sports consumers and media companies including ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, FanDuel, DraftKings and Sirius XM Radio. Mr. Schoenke is also a board member of the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association, where he heads up lobbying and government affairs and served more than a decade as Chairman. 

Mr. Schoenke has led the FSGA's efforts to fully legalize fantasy sports in all 50 states which has resulted in the passage of 25 state laws since 2012. He has testified in Congress and 10 state legislatures in support of fantasy sports and sports betting legislation. In 2011, Mr. Schoenke was elected to the hall of fame for both the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and Fantasy Sports Writers Association for his contribution to the growth of the industry.

ABOUT ROTOWIRE:

RotoWire is a leading content and technology provider to fantasy sports consumers and media companies including ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, FanDuel, DraftKings and Sirius XM Radio. Founded in 1997, RotoWire has been a pioneer in fantasy sports developing industry staples such as player notes and DFS lineup optimizers, while winning more writing and industry awards than any other company.

https://www.rotowire.com 

https://www.baremetrics.com

https://baremetrics.com/founder-chats

ABOUT SANTI:

Santi Bibiloni is a Silicon Valley-based technology entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO at COR, an AI Management Software that serves Worldwide top Agencies and Consultants. Prior to COR he founded Balloon Group, one of Argentina’s fastest-growing digital agencies, among other businesses. Today he also mentors on Sales & Fundraising in 500 Startups.

ABOUT COR:

COR is the Next-Generation Solution for Creative and Professional Teams that Intelligently Suggests How to Manage your Projects, Teams, and Finances, all in one tool.

ABOUT BAREMETRICS: 

Baremetrics is the all-in-one metrics, forecasting, analytics, insights and engagement tool for teams using Stripe, Braintree, Chargify, Recurly and more. 

ABOUT FOUNDER CHATS:

Founder Chats is a podcast about starting and growing tech companies, as told candidly by the founders behind them.

Founder Chats is back! In this episode, we talk with Brian Parks, Founder and Managing Partner of Bigfoot Capital. Hear his story of transitioning from working at a local bank to running a tech company, his tips on managing your capital stack, and a whole lot more.

Curious about you what heard? Check out the below links to learn more. 

Bigfoot Capital Growth oriented loans for B2B SaaS companies with $1.5M+ ARR. 

Baremetrics Metrics, forecasting, analytics, insights and engagement tools for teams using Stripe, Braintree, Chargify, Recurly and more. 

Founder Chats  A podcast about starting and growing tech companies, as told candidly by the founders behind them.