Hustle Over Everything

Building an online marketplace is a fun and uphill task. The sharing economy has provided many opportunities for new businesses to be started. Entrepreneurs are creating solutions to existing problems and creating new solutions for problems we never thought we had. Being able to spot an opportunity and executing on it is a skill.

Airbnb, Uber, and Kickstarter are examples of businesses which were born out of frustration to problems the founders had. Each business is a marketplace that has a supply and demand side. Supply and demand are the heartbeat of a marketplace business. One cannot succeed without the other.

In this episode we discuss the approaches of building a marketplace and the pitfalls a founder might come across when creating one for a specific niche. Owen has experience with building a marketplace business with Sneakerdeck. Sneakerdeck was an online sneaker reselling platform that provided buyers with the peace of mind that they were getting authentic sneakers. Owen provides steps, and strategies to create a marketplace for any industry and gives insights on what it takes to be successful. Press play and enjoy!

In this episode, I speak with Stephania Stefanakou. She is the Co-Founder and CEO of House of Anesi. House of Anesi bridges innovation and bra technology to create a revolutionary bra. House of Anesi has created the first ever bra of it’s kind that can advance two cup and two band sizes to fit ever changing breast sizes every day of the month.

The design and functionality of the conventional bra has left some women irritated with the way it makes them feel. Women’s breast fluctuate in size constantly due to hormonal changes such as a period, gaining or losing weight and pregnancy. The elastic straps dig into shoulders and leave painful red marks, and if you have bigger breast, it can cause health problems in the long term. Steph and her team saw this problem that women face and created a disruptive solution for it.

House of Anesi completed a successful Kickstarter campaign. They sold $90,452 from 683 backers! We talk about the ins & outs of Kickstarter and being a female founder.

Building a fashion brand is something some of us have aspired to do. We’re surrounded by great apparel brands such as Nike, Adidas, and Supreme. Most aspiring entrepreneurs have thought about entering the fashion industry and building a lifestyle brand. I can relate to this as my first ever business was Recruits Clothing.

Today I get a chance to interview my friend, Connor Bradley. I’ve known Connor for over 11 years now spanning back to our childhood days playing each other in basketball. We later reconnected as we both ended ended up at Ryerson University.

Connor has always been a fashionable guy. He and his partner have embarked to start their brand “RFi: Room for Improvement” an eco-friendly apparel line for men and women. I speak to Connor:

- Creating a cut and sew line.

- Finding fabrics such as Bamboo and Hemp.

- The design and sampling process.

- How to launch a a fashion brand.

- The difficulties of building a brand.

If you have ever wanted to know wha

Dropping out of school is something that changed my life. I remember getting my first taste of success building Recruits Clothing which spurred me to make the decision to leave Ryerson University. It’s a decision that I will never regret. I ended up coming back to school because I realized I valued learning more than anything. A lot of entrepreneurs face this decision. Entrepreneurship is something that is sexy, its exciting, and it’s full of possibilities. School has become something that holds some people back from pursuing their startup. School puts them in serious debt for degrees that have no correlation for what they want to do in their life

Today I sit down with my roommate, Seqian Wang. Seqian is a data analyst at Decision Research Group. He previously founded Motion Correct which was a startup that focused on capturing accurate scans of the human brain. Seqian began this company with his co-founders while he was pursuing his Masters at McGill University. We discuss