HackToStart

HackToStart episodes:

• 06.12.2018

  Ben Jabbawy, Founder & CEO, Privy | EP 198

  Ben Jabbawy is the Founder of Privy, a suite of tools designed to help marketers and ecommerce businesses increase their marketing conversions. Ben has a background in Industrial Engineering, but moved into a few technical roles, before really diving into startups. Ben...

  
• 06.05.2018

  Kimberly Kalb, Head of Marketing & Growth, Houseparty | EP 197

  Kimberly Kalb is the Head of Marketing & Growth at Houseparty, an app that takes the group chat to the next level with group video chat. Kimberly has a background in entertainment media technology, having worked with brands like NBCUniversal, HBO,...

  
• 05.29.2018

  Joshua Brewer, Co-Founder & CEO, Abstract | EP 196

  Josh Brewer is the Co-founder & CEO of Abstract, a platform for modern design teams to work together. Josh’s career in design started off with teaching - but quickly lead to him diving into the emerging web and mobile product design...

  
• 05.15.2018

  Ben Pines, CMO, Elementor | EP 195

  Ben Pines is the CMO of Elementor, the most advanced Drag & Drop page builder for WordPress. Design beautiful professional websites faster and without code. Ben shares what it’s been like building an open source, visual, drag & drop theme editor...

  
• 05.08.2018

  Waqas Ali, Co-founder, Markhor (YC15) & Atoms | EP 194

  Waqas Ali is the co-founder of Atoms, one & only shoe for every day. Waqas started building a startups and businesses after discovering the internet and realizing you could sell products online. While there were a ton of insurmountable challenges, Waqas...

  
• 05.01.2018

  Vibhu Norby, Founder & CEO, B8ta

  Vibhu Norby is the co-founder & CEO of B8ta, a new store designed for discovering, trying, & buying the latest tech products, as well as a new platform called “Built by B8ta”, which aims to power the future of physical...

  
• 04.24.2018

  Sam Mallikarjunan, Executive Strategist, Hubspot

  Sam Mallikarjunan is an Executive Strategist at HubSpot. He hustled his way into the organization with a landing page and ads - and ended up leading the Experimental Marketing team, the Ecommerce Marketing team, the South American internationalization team, Hubspot Labs...

  
• 04.10.2018

  Asher Hunt, Founder & CEO, Overnight

  Asher Hunt is the Founder & CEO of Overnight, a platform to book homes from people you trust. Asher comes from a visual arts and music background, but got into tech through product design and is driven by a passion for...

  
• 04.03.2018

  Sonja Jacob, Content Strategy Team Lead, Drift | EP 190

  Sonja Jacob is the Content Strategy Team Lead at Drift. Sonja kicked off her career in marketing by blogging years back. She quickly realized the power of content and decided to launch her own business as a copywriter and marketing freelancer. Over...

  
• 03.27.2018

  Mari Sheibley, Product Desginer Instagram | EP 189

  Mari Sheibley is a Product Designer at Instagram. Mari has a background in fine arts, before she transition into graphic design. When she first moved to New York, she took a bunch of odd jobs to make ends meet. She eventually...

  
• 02.27.2018

  Hannah Donovan, CEO & Co-Founder, Trash (prev. Vine) | EP 188

  Hannah Donovan is the CEO & Co-founder of Trash, a new startup that’s currently building a predictive video editing platform for creators. Hannah’s passion for media and design in all forms goes back to her early childhood. She eventually moved to New...

  
• 02.13.2018

  Matthew Hollingshead, CEO, Hifyre

  Matt Hollingshead is the CEO of Hifyre, a web & mobile app developer based on Hamilton, Canada. Back in 1999, Matt and some friends launched their first agency called factor[e] which ended up generation $1M in sales within its first...

  
• 02.06.2018

  Casey Winters, Growth Advisor In Residence, Greylock Partners | EP 186

  Casey Winters is the Growth Advisor in Residence at Greylock Partners. Casey got interested in growth via his background in marketing and his holistic approach to helping Apartments.com achieve quick growth from 2005-2008. He then joined GrubHub around the 15 person mark,...

  
• 01.30.2018

  Joei Chan, Content Marketing Manager, Mention | EP 185

  Joei Chan is a Content Marketing Manager, at Mention, a platform for real-time media monitoring. Joei is originally from Hong Kong and moved to Paris, France for a summer to study French. She ended up staying and building a career as...

  
• 01.23.2018

  Gessica Bicego, Head of Performance Marketing, Blinkist | EP 184

  Gessica Bicego is the Head of Performance Marketing, at Blinkist, the platform for bite-sized insights in audio or text. Gessica is originally from Italy and has a background in computer science, as well as a passion for marketing. She then wanted...

  
• 01.16.2018

  Jordan Scheltgen, Managing Partner, Cave Social | EP 183

  Jordan Scheltgen is the co-founder and Managing Partner at CaveSocial, a marketing agency that he started during University and that now spans across 3 major North American cities. Originally from Surrey, BC, Jordan moved to Toronto for school and football. Through...

  
• 01.09.2018

  Jonah Lupton, Founder, SoundGuard | EP 182

  Jonah Lupton is the founder of SoundGuard, the world’s first sound proof paint. Jonah has spent the better part of the last 10 years launching several brands across completely different industries. From social media software, to non-profit funding platforms, to white...

  
• 01.02.2018

  Jess Brown, Director of UX, VICE

  Jess Brown is the Director of UX at Vice Media. She’s spent the past couple of years building the team that’s lead the company’s efforts on re-designing Vice’s brand from the ground up - across the web and all mobile properties. But...

  
• 12.26.2017

  Tom Levesque, Co-founder, Rey.AI

  Tom Levesque is the Co-founder at Rey.ai. Tom is a Software Developer turned Product Manager. After graduating and working with a local startup in Waterloo, Tom decided to move to the valley where he ended up joining Wildfire before it was...

  
• 12.19.2017

  Oscar Falmer, Founder & Developer, TweetReality

  Oscar Falmer is the Founder and developer behind the world’s first augmented reality Twitter client - TweetReality. Oscar is only a few months away from graduating from the University of Eastern-Paris Marne-La-Vallee with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. TweetReality...

  
• 12.12.2017

  Amir Shevat, Director, Developer Relations, Slack | Hack To Start

  Amir Shevat is the Director of Developer Relations at Slack. Amir originally fell into Developer Relations by mistake, volunteering to work with a community of developers early on in his career. He’s since led Developer Groups at Microsoft & Google for...

  
• 12.05.2017

  Brian Balfour, Founder & CEO, Reforge (Prev. VP Growth, Hubspot) | EP 177

  Brian Balfour is the Founder & CEO of Reforge, an organization that offers selective growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering. Brian was previously the VP of Growth at Hubspot and an EIR at Trinity Ventures...

  
• 11.28.2017

  Lydia White, Design Lead, Beme | EP 176

  Lydia White is a Design Lead at Beme, an independent, and wildly ambitious technology+media company bringing a wider range of perspectives to the news that was cofounded by YouTuber Casey Neistat & Matt Hackett. Lydia started her design career with an...

  
• 11.21.2017

  Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Skillshare | EP 175

  Michael Karnjanaprakorn is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman at Skillshare. Michael has always had a passion and love for education and learning. His career in tech began as an outsider looking to prove himself. And so he ended up taking a...

  
• 11.14.2017

  Stephanie Engle, Product Designer, Cruise | EP 174

  Stephanie Engle is a Product Designer at Cruise. Before joining the team there, Stephanie had a background in social products, starting her career off as an intern for the anonymous messaging app Secret, before joining Facebook to work on the Profile,...

  
• 11.07.2017

  Jason Stoff, Principal Digital Product Designer, Starbucks | EP 173

  Jason Stoff is a Principal Digital Product Designer at Starbucks. Before joining the team at Starbucks, Jason had built a career as an Art Director and Senior Designer with various agencies. One day he shared a rebound of a Starbucks logo...

  
• 10.31.2017

  Andy Carvell, Partner, Phiture (ex-Soundcloud Growth) | Ep 172

  Andy Carvell is the author of the Mobile Growth Stack and a Partner at Phiture, a mobile growth consultancy. Andy began his career as a mobile game developer with Nokia, where he created several games like Space Impact which was preloaded...

  
• 10.24.2017

  Jordan Kretchmer, Founder & CEO, Livefyre (acquired by Adobe) | EP 171

  Jordan Kretchmer is the Founder & CEO of LiveFyre, which was acquired by Adobe in 2016, where he is now a Senior Director continuing to scale the Livefyre solution within the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Before starting Livefyre, Jordan worked for a...

  
• 10.17.2017

  Leah Culver, Co-founder & CTO, Breaker | EP 170

  Leah Culver is the co-founder & CTO of Breaker - the best app for listening to podcasts. Leah has been building startups and products for over 10 years. She helped launch an early version and competitor to Twitter called...

  
• 10.10.2017

  Ajay Yadav, Founder & CEO, Roomi | EP 169

  Ajay Yadav is the Founder & CEO of Roomie, the leading marketplace for shared housing and apartments. Ajay has built several companies before Roomi, which was bootstrapped for the first 2 years and has raised over $6M to date. Ajay shares...

  
• 10.03.2017

  Paul Canetti, Founder & CEO, MAZ | EP 168

  Paul Canetti is the Founder & CEO of MAZ, a platform that empowers leaders in media to become pioneers in OTT and mobile technology. Growing up, Paul was exposed to design and technology through his father’s work and hobbies. Paul...

  
• 09.26.2017

  Rei Wang, Director, Dorm Room Fund at First Round Capital | EP 167

  Rei Wang is the Director of First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund, the largest student-run venture firm in the nation. They’ve invested in over 150 startups, who’ve gone on to raise more than $300 million from investors like: Andreessen Horowitz,...

  
• 09.19.2017

  Kevin Thau, General Partner, Spark Capital | EP 166

  Kevin Thau, a General Partner at Spark Capital, focusing on early-stage investments in companies like Lola, Medium, Haven, and Aura. Kevin has spent over 20 years building startups that defined new markets in graphical computing, messaging, mobile technology and social...

  
• 09.12.2017

  Jesse Middleton, General Partner, Flybridge Capital (Prev. Founder WeWork Labs) | EP 165

  Jesse Middleton is a startup founder and one of the early executives at WeWork who tackled a bunch of growth and operations challenges before launching WeWork Labs, their own global startup incubator, investment fund, business and digital product development lab....

  
• 09.05.2017

  Giuseppe Stuto, Co-founder & CEO, Fam | EP 164

  Giuseppe Stuto is the co-founder and CEO of Fam, a group video chat app for iMessage that quickly grew to over 1 million users in just 10 days! But Fam almost didn’t happen. Fam is a pivot off another social...

  
• 08.29.2017

  Drew Strojny, Fouder, Memberful | EP 163

  Drew Strojny is a retired NFL player turned tech entrepreneur. He is the founder of Memberful, super easy to use membership software. Growing up, Drew had a passion for tech and computers. During the NFL offseason, Drew continued to teach...

  
• 08.22.2017

  John Doherty, Founder, Credo | EP 162

  John Doherty is the founder of Credo, a platform for connecting great businesses with the best vetted digital marketing consultants and agencies. He took a side project that started as a spreadsheet from a $50 dollar referral commission to a...

  
• 08.15.2017

  Mike Williams, Founder, Thinkbox | EP 161

  Mike Williams is the founder of Thinkbox, a startup studio in Santa Monica, California, and the company that’s behind several successful startups including StudioTime and Yoroomie - an app which was built in less than 30 days and sold in...

  
• 08.08.2017

  Katie Zhu, Product & Engineering, Medium | EP 160

  Katie Zhu is an Engineer turned Product Manager at Medium. Medium is a social publishing platform that allows anyone to share ideas and perspectives that matter. Medium now reaches over 30M readers a month, has explored new formats like Series,...

  
• 08.01.2017

  Hunter Walk, Partner, Homebrew Ventures | EP 159

  Hunter Walk is a partner at Homebrew Ventures, a seed stage venture fund. Over a decade ago, while Hunter was a Product Manager at Google, working on the newly acquired YouTube platform, Apple had approached them before Steve Jobs had...

  
• 07.25.2017

  Kelly Nyland, Director of Marketing, Spectacles (Snapchat) | EP 158

  Kelly Nyland is the Director of Marketing for Spectacles - a pair of video-recording sunglasses created by Snap Inc. the parent company of the massively popular disappearing photo app, Snapchat. While this is the first hardware product from Snap Inc.,...

  
• 07.18.2017

  Adii Pienaar, Founder, Conversio | EP 157

  Adii Pienaar is the Founder of Conversio, an all-in one marketing dashboard. Adii is based in Cape Town, South Africa and previously co-founded WooThemes - an e-commerce platform for Wordpress - which bootstrapped their way to over 150,000 customers. Today,...

  
• 07.11.2017

  Tom Emrich, Partner, Super Ventures | EP 156

  Tom Emrich is a Partner at Super Ventures and a co-producer of Augmented World Expo. After the release of the first feature phone, Tom began to see how immersive new technologies would transform the world around us and began building...

  
• 07.04.2017

  Jeff Morris Jr., Director Product Management & Revenue, Tinder | EP 155

  Jeff Morris Jr. is the Director of Product Management & Revenue at Tinder. Jeff got into tech after seeing a tweet late one night for a position with Zaarly. The next day, he had to move from California to Kansas...

  
• 06.27.2017

  Huda Idrees, Founder & CEO, Dot Health | EP 154

  Huda Idrees is the founder and CEO of Dot Health, a platform that enables secure and easy access to your personal health data. Huda began her career as a developer and designer by building websites as a teenager. She then...

  
• 06.13.2017

  Mubashar Iqbal (aka Mubs), Co-founder, Botlist | EP 153

  Mubashar Iqbal aka Mubs is the co-founder of Botlist - and several other startups and side projects. Mubs is originally from Pakistan, but spent most of his early years living in England before moving to the US. Mubs has created...

  
• 06.06.2017

  Nathaniel Harley, Co-Founder & CEO, Mantl | EP 152

  Nathaniel Harley, the Co-founder & CTO of Mantl. Nathaniel was previously an analyst with Goldman Sachs before jumping into tech with a Techstars backed startup called Spoon University. Nathaniel then got accepted into Techstars (again), this time as the CEO...

  
• 05.30.2017

  Nathan Bashaw, Co-founder & CEO, Hardbound | EP 151

  Nathan Bashaw is the Co-founder & CEO of Hardbound. After discovering the world of startups during college, and driven by the desire to build things and implement his own ideas, Nathan became a self-taught developer. He knew pretty early on,...

  
• 05.23.2017

  David Heimann, Co-founder & CTO, Purple | EP 150

  David Heimann is the Co-founder & CTO of Purple. David is originally from Gothenburg, Sweden but came to the US for school. Having always been more technical, he focused on the business side of things. After graduation, he took on...

  
• 05.16.2017

  Sançar Şahin, Director of Marketing, Typeform | EP 149

  Sançar Şahin is the Director of Marketing at Typeform. With a background in radio and media, Sançar has become a self-taught marketer. Through several side projects and products built around content and education, Sançar has seen the shift towards new...