Just Go Grind

Andrew Gazdecki is the Founder and CEO of MicroAcquire, a founder-friendly startup acquisition marketplace. MicroAcquire aims to consolidate the fragmented acquisition market by giving founders and entrepreneurs a single convenient marketplace to meet, coordinate, and close acquisitions. MicroAcquire provides free and instant access to trusted and vetted buyers with total anonymity. They're on a mission to turn founder journeys into success stories and foster the next generation of entrepreneurs. MicroAcquire has more than 100,000 registered buyers, more than 2,000 companies listed for sale, and has facilitated more than 500 deals with a combined value of more than $200 million.

Andrew has been an entrepreneur for longer than he can remember. He likes to build stuff, mostly companies, and try to tell a story that goes beyond what the company does to how it's changing markets. Prior to founding MicroAcquire, he started two companies, Bizness Apps and Altcoin.io, both acquired. He's been featured in NYT, Forbes, WSJ, Inc.com, and Entrepreneur Magazine, as well as prominent industry blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch and VentureBeat.

Topics Covered by Andrew Gazdecki in this Episode

• Andrew's background and MicroAcquire's origin story
• The original vision for MicroAcquire and the tools it provides to founders and buyers
• MicroAcquire's go to market strategy
• What has fueled MicroAcquire's growth and Andrew's advice for other founders
• Andrew's approach to marketing
• Andrew's journey from bootstrapping to fundraising
• Global expansion via partnership strategy
• How Andrew evaluates potential partners
• How Bootstrappers came about
• Andrew's thoughts on media and brand building
• What's next for MicroAcquire

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Sofiat Abdulrazaaq is the Co-Founder and CEO of Goodfynd, an on-demand marketplace for food trucks. Goodfynd enables pop-up retail and mobile vendors to connect with existing and new customers virtually by providing increased visibility and online ordering.

Topics Covered by Sofiat Abdulrazaaq in this Episode

• How Goodfynd is supporting food truck owners and operators as a FinTech startup
• How the idea for Goodfynd was born out of the love of great food and wanting to find it again
• Shifting Goodfynd from a side hustle to her full-time job
• The traction they needed to transition from bootstrapping to getting Venture-backed
• How relationship-building fueled early growth
• The winding road of fundraising from accelerator to first noes to first check
• The process of choosing and participating in incubators and accelerators
• How VC funding enabled the growth and scaling of their FinTech products and services
• Goodfynd's geographical expansion strategy
• Building the Goodfynd team with a culture-first focus
• The challenges and triumphs of being a first-time founder

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Eric Satz is the founder and CEO of Alto Solutions. Alto is the leading platform that empowers everyday investors to diversify their IRAs by investing in alternative assets such as private equity, venture capital, real estate, loans, and cryptocurrency. Offering traditional, Roth, SEP and Crypto IRAs, Alto is bringing alternative investments to the mainstream. Everyday investors can now easily and cost-effectively access their retirement savings to invest in assets once reserved solely for high-net-worth individuals. Investors can use their Alto IRA to invest in opportunities from their own private network or participate in deals offered by Bitwise, DiversyFund, Fundr, Masterworks, Republic, Vint, and numerous other investment platform partners. Launched in 2018 and growing fast, the Nashville-based firm is on a mission to empower people to own their financial futures by achieving true asset diversification in their retirement account portfolios.

Prior to founding Alto, Eric worked in investment banking at DLJ/Credit Suisse and co-founded several companies, including: Currenex, an FX trading solution sold to State Street for more than $550M, Plumgood Food, and VC firm Tennessee Community Ventures. He served on the Board of Tennessee Valley Authority from August 2015 to January 2019. After years in New York City and San Francisco, Eric and family moved to his wife's hometown of Nashville to raise their kids. Nowadays, his pastimes include skiing, soccer, yoga, and all too often hoping this will finally be the year for the 'Canes and Dolphins.

Topics Covered by Eric Satz in this Episode

• What Alto Solutions is
• Alto's origin story and how Eric began to execute on the idea
• Why Eric decided this was a problem he had to solve
• Early unexpected hurdles and getting Alto off the ground
• The UX and investment process with Alto
• Partnering with Angel List
• Shifting their customer acquisition strategy
• How the evolution of different asset classes has affected Alto
• The importance of leveraging storytelling
• Lessons Eric has learned founding multiple companies
• How Eric evaluates investments

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Maika Isogawa is the Founder and CEO of Webacy, a platform for securing digital assets for the unexpected. Maika is a former professional acrobat and performer for the Cirque Du Soleil brand of shows. She is also a Stanford '20 alumnus with a special concentration in Symbolic Systems, a program which combines the study of Human Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, Linguistics, Philosophy, and more. Maika was most recently a Cybersecurity Engineer for Microsoft. She has since founded Webacy, and has been recently recognized as a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Topics Covered by Maika Isogawa in this Episode

• What Webacy does
• What led Maika to found Webacy
• Maika's experience and background
• Her experience as a first-time tech founder
• Finding her co-founder and deciding to start a company together
• Onboarding their early team members
• How Maika's skills learned as a Cirque Du Soleil acrobat apply to being a tech startup founder
• Navigating the Web3 space
• The vision for how Webacy's relatively small target market will grow
• Webacy's hybrid go to market strategy
• Approaching trust and safety in crypto
• Maika's view on the community element of Webacy
• Maika's path from leaving Microsoft to building Webacy
• Raising Webacy's pre-seed funding round
• How angel investors have provided value beyond funds in building Webacy
• How they're thinking about future fundraising
• Maika's view on Webacy's competitors
• Webacy's unique value proposition in digital asset security
• How Maika finds balance with her wide variety of interests
• What's next for Webacy

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Alex Taub is the co-founder and CEO of Upstream, a no-code all-in-one DAO builder. Alex previously was the co-founder and CEO of SocialRank (acquired by Trufan). Prior to that Alex led business development and partnerships for online integrations at Dwolla, a payments startup based in Iowa. As well as for Aviary (acquired by Adobe), a NY-based startup that provides a photo editing API for web and mobile devices. Alex is active in the NY tech scene as the creator of the BD Meetup and an advisor to early-stage companies. He has been featured in Business Insider as one of the "Top 20 Under 25" in the NY tech scene.

Alex writes a popular blog called Alex's Tech Thoughts, and has been published in Fast Company, The New York Observer, The Next Web and VentureBeat. He teaches Business Development classes, and has been quoted on many tech websites including TechCrunch, NY Post, The New York Times, Business Insider, Mashable, and PC Magazine. He was a contributor for the Forbes Entrepreneur section and advisor for Rainfall Ventures, a seed stage VC fund. Now he is the General Partner at Taub Ventures, an early stage fund to invest in startups.

Topics Covered by Alex Taub in this Episode

• How Upstream makes it easy to start a DAO
• Upstream as a full-stack solution
• Identifying the need for Upstream in the market
• Different use cases Alex is anticipating for Upstream
• How Alex has approached market research shifting the company's focus
• The decision to "upgrade" Upstream
• Their journey of raising a Series A
• What's next for Upstream
• How Alex views opportunity in their industry
• How Upstream is approaching customer acquisition
• The Illuminati NFT project and putting systems in place to protect its members
• The timeline and process of setting up repeatable structures
• Other projects Alex has been involved in
• What Alex looks for in the NFT space
• Alex's approach to collecting NFTs
• What Alex is excited about within the Web3 eco-system

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Jennifer Smith is the Co-Founder and CEO of Scribe, a software tool that makes it easy to learn from your most productive people without slowing them down by automatically generating step-by-step tutorials for any task, while they work. Scribe seamlessly captures how work gets done across your organization, enabling you to analyze, optimize, and standardize processes, in a way your employees will love. Founded in 2019, the Scribe team imagines a world where the best of what anyone knows how to do is available to everyone. Instantly and automatically. So every person, company, and community can do their best work, every day. With a little more ease and joy.

Prior to founding Scribe, Jennifer spent time at McKinsey & Company and Greylock Partners. She is a Princeton and Harvard Business School alum.

Topics Covered by Jennifer Smith in this Episode

• How Scribe is making it easy to share how to do something
• Jennifer's background and realizing she needed to build Scribe to solve a problem she observed for years
• Going from "someone else will solve it" to "I'm going to solve it" and the first steps she took to start a company
• Finding developers early in Scribe's journey
• Talking to 80+ engineers before she connected with her technical co-founder, Aaron Podolny
• The importance of finding a co-founder that shares your value and vision
• How organic growth enabled Jennifer and the Scribe team to run lean and focus on building in the right direction without any marketing for the first 1.5 years
• How their approach to growth and marketing has shifted
• How they narrowed their target market for a product with such a wide variety of use cases
• Raising an unexpected Series A for Scribe while pregnant with her first child
• Jennifer's strategy behind bringing on great angel investors
• Making Scribe an extremely user-friendly product

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Max Zamkow is the Managing Partner at Third Act Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in AgeTech - technology for older adults and their caregivers. Third Act Ventures invests in founders revolutionizing aging, and is the only firm investing across the entire spectrum of AgeTech. A century ago we didn't expect to make it to 60, but now we're surviving well into our 80's and beyond. Surviving, but not thriving. Technology hasn't kept pace with the medical advancements that gave us 20+ extra years of life leaving us directionless, isolated, and alone. Third Act Ventures invests in companies that recognize this massive opportunity to improve the lives of older adults and their caregivers. Topics Covered by Max Zamkow in this Episode

• What AgeTech is
• Why Third Act Ventures invests in the AgeTech ecosystem and how it's changing
• The process of developing a thesis and overcoming the lack of interest in AgeTech
• Emerging models and how social determinants of health are impacting AgeTech
• How having a wide range of stakeholders has led to lack of innovation in the industry
• How Max screens for value and the importance of timing
• The challenge of not being the end user for products he invests in
• One of the AgeTech companies Max is excited about
• Third Act Ventures' strategy as a follow fund and why they're shifting their approach
• Max's effort to expand investments in the AgeTech industry and shift it from niche to mainstream
• Justin's thoughts on how to market yourself uniquely to stand out

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Brenton Howland is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Forum Brands, a platform of category-leading e-commerce brands built for the everyday consumer. They provide exit options to entrepreneurs, use technology to help scale small businesses, and build brands into household names that consumers know and love. Forum partners with owners of the best everyday products selling through Amazon FBA and other 3rd party marketplaces. As long-time investors, operators, and industry experts, Forum's team represents the most trusted buyers in e-commerce.

Topics Covered by Brenton Howland in this Episode

• How Forum Brands is innovating through acquisition in the consumer space
• How Brenton and his co-founders met and started Forum Brands
• The unique value proposition of Forum Brands and its founding team
• How they're leveraging data to indicate the potential for long term success of businesses
• Their top-down hiring strategy
• How they approach portfolio composition
• Forum Brands' early acquisitions, gaining momentum, and learning from mistakes
• The platform side of the acquisition process
• Their creative cap structure raising both VC and debt
• Finding investors who aligned with their unique model
• The benefit of investing time and energy into partnerships and people
• How Brenton's experience in consulting and private equity has influenced how he's running Forum Brands today

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Jonathan Anderson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Candu, the first no-code web builder for existing SaaS products. Candu is building a better way to activate users and release new features. The simple, drag-and-drop UI Editor empowers product and customer teams to create UI themselves, saving developer time and trimming technical debt. Unlike guide products, Candu enables customers to change the UI itself to drive user engagement.

SaaS teams win when in-app experiences help users to adopt the features that ultimately help them do their jobs. That's why Candu gives customers the tools and analytics they need to rapidly redesign the in-app experience. Shape, launch, then improve onboarding experiences to drive user behavior and convert first-time users into devoted fans.

Topics Covered by Jonathan Anderson in this Episode

• What Candu is
• How Jonathan came up with the idea
• Why Jonathan decided this was a problem he needed to solve
• Participating in accelerator Entrepreneur First and meeting his co-founder
• The timeframe for Candu – from original idea to launch
• Why problem identification is more important than solution orientation
• The problem Candu solves and who it's for
• The difference between their first and second launches on Product Hunt
• Why they chose to launch on Product Hunt
• The feedback around their second launch and how to measure it
• Building out the Candu team and what Jonathan has learned doing so
• Jonathan's advice for hiring
• Why they used a recruiter
• Their experience fundraising VC
• Finding work-life balance as a founder
• Being married to another high-performing startup founder
• What's next for Candu
• The future of no-code

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Yoni Shtein is a technology entrepreneur and investor with over 15 years of experience at the intersection of technology and finance. Yoni brings his passion around data and impact into focus by helping to improve people's lives as CEO and co-founder of Laguna Health, a technology enabled recovery solution providing a dynamic member experience and integrative clinicians to shorten recovery times and reduce costly readmissions.

Laguna aims to radically improve care experiences and care outcomes for patients who have moved through a hospital stay and have been discharged home to self-care. Laguna marries a proven clinical treatment model with a digital-first care team, personalized recovery plans, coaching, data-driven interventions and expansive behavioral health resources, all delivered in a friendly and accessible app-based environment. From employers to health plans to providers, the entire healthcare ecosystem now has the ability to ensure every patient recovers with confidence.

Yoni began his career as a software engineer at Microsoft and leveraged that as a founding member of RPX insurance business (KPCB, CRV, Index -> IPO). Next, Yoni co-founded Koru Ventures, which was integrated into Fortress Investment Group, where he led investments in over 30 companies exceeding $500M in equity and debt.

Topics Covered by Yoni Shtein in this Episode

• How Laguna Health is helping people recover confidently from surgery at home
• How Yoni and his co-founder Yael Adam met and decided to work together
• The dating/diligence process of finding a co-founder and the importance of being able to "argue well"
• The hospital unbundling thesis
• How they developed the idea for Laguna Health from personal experiences
• Validating the business opportunity and finding a workable tech-enabled solution
• Connecting with clinical experts and stakeholders
• Yoni's "work hard, work smart, be lucky" approach
• How their business model has evolved
• How demonstrating impact has fueled Laguna Health's growth
• The UX for Laguna Health patients
• Building the Laguna Health team with a "bicoastal" approach
• Yoni's advice for developing remote team dynamics and the impact of aligning cultures and values
• What's next for Laguna Health

Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com

Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212