Founder Chats

This week I talk with Steli Efti, Founder of Close.io! In this episode we talk about growing up as an immigrant kid in a factory town, discovering books at 16, starting a slew of businesses like a DVD rental company and a hypnosis hotline, discovering sales, building a remote team and more!

This week I talk with Leah Culver, Founder of Breaker! In this episode we talk about starting companies, jumping in to things you have no idea how to do, how social networks have been a part of much of Leah's work, the resurgence of podcasting and more!

This week I talk with…myself! This was a live-streamed episode where I walked through the entirety of my past 15 years of business, in which I've started, built, and shut down over 50 different projects!

I walked through how that many projects came to be, why I started each, how I failed at most of them and the stories behind how many of them got sold and a lot more!

I also did an extensive Q&A session at the end. Hope you enjoy!

This week I talk with John Sheehan, Founder of Runscope! This episode is slightly different from previous episodes in that we quickly jump in to the story of Runscope itself. Runscope's story includes running out of money, laying off their entire staff, going through an acquisition two separate times, buying back shares from investors and all sorts of fun step in between!

This week I talk with Ryan Hoover, Founder of Product Hunt! In this episode we talk about growing up in Oregon, how video games shaped his future, the origins of Product Hunt, how Ryan was intentional about keeping Product Hunt a positive community, mistakes he's made along the way and more!

This week I talk with Ryan Carson, Founder of Treehouse! In this episode we talk about moving to England on a whim, learning how to manage a team, starting a conference company, how Ryan found his true calling, what's wrong with education today and more!

This week I talk with Jesse Genet, Founder of Lumi! In this episode we talk about being a tinkerer as a kid, getting in to screen printing in high school and how that has been a common thread in every business for 15 years, being on Shark Tank, shutting down a successful business, the role of printing processes in human history and more.

This week I talk with Rob Walling, Founder of Drip! In this episode we talk about growing up in the country, learning programming, getting in to entrepreneurship as a kid, buying existing businesses and improving them, the origin of Drip and its acquisition by LeadPages and more!

This week I talk with Eoghan McCabe, Co-Founder of Intercom! In this episode we talk about creativity, exploration of knowledge, how Eoghan and his co-founders met, the full story of how Intercom got started, how the problem they're solving has changed over the past 7 years and more.

This week I talk with Zach Klein, Founder of Vimeo & DIY! In this episode we talk about the origin stories and how Zach got involved with CollegeHumor, BustedTees, Vimeo, DIY.org and JAM, how Zach started an online reptile pet store as a high school kid, how everything he's done has a common thread that ties back to his days spent on AOL growing up and a lot more. Enjoy!