Just Go Grind

Tyler Denk is the co-founder and CEO of beehiiv, a newsletter platform to fuel creators and publishers' ability to create, monetize, and grow their audience.

While in undergrad at the University of Maryland, Tyler Denk became a self-taught software developer and launched his first startup, VentureStorm—a web application that connected entrepreneurs and startups to talented software developers.

After exiting VentureStorm, Tyler continued to work with startups by building and integrating innovative technology solutions to stimulate growth and exceed various KPIs. He joined Morning Brew as the second employee in a role that spanned engineering, product, and growth—responsible for building the renowned referral program and bespoke tech ecosystem that facilitated the company to scale to a successful $75m exit in 2020.

After a stint at Google as a Product Lead at YouTube Music, he left to co-found beehiiv, which is approaching $1M ARR and has averaged 55% MoM growth since launch in 2021. On the side, he enjoys building cool projects, most recently Big Desk Energy (popular Spotify playlist + web destination).

Topics Covered by Tyler Denk in this Episode

• What beehiiv is and Tyler's journey to founding it
• How Tyler approached growing Morning Brew's newsletter
• Beehiiv's initial vision and what's next
• Beehiiv's business model and how their ad network plays in
• Early customer acquisition and growth
• Leaning into their backstory to fundraise with big tech as their new competitors
• The process of onboarding strategic angel investors
• Tyler's perspective on building in public
• Getting Morning Brew's co-founders as an investor and advisor
• Tyler's perspective shift to becoming a big advocate for remote work
• Achieving "feature parity" and competing for ad dollars with Google and Facebook
• Finding direction when developing features
• What differentiates beehiiv
• Tyler's advice for people starting newsletters

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

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

Andrew Berman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vowel, the world's first complete meeting solution designed to make every meeting more inclusive and worthwhile – before, during, and after. Vowel is a collaboration platform that makes meetings searchable, shareable centers of knowledge for your business. By redefining what data capture is capable of, they are optimizing the potential of every team.

They are a remote-first company whose 20+ employees span four continents. Their team is made up of engineers, designers, inventors, entrepreneurs and security experts – from leading organizations like Google, Bridgewater, Nanit, Airbnb, Casper, Recombine and others. They're building both an inclusive product and an inclusive team that celebrates diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Andrew's inspiration is to apply new technology to build products that can touch millions of people in ways that were impossible before. He is also the founder of Nanit, the first camera to track human behavior (the leading baby monitor), an experienced investor from seed to LBO stages (Silicon Valley, NY and other markets), and an active and experienced angel investor (with investments in SaaS, Security, Healthcare, Consumer and CV/AI).

Use coupon code: JUSTGOGRIND for 3 months free of unlimited seats on Vowel's Pro plan (monthly only)!

Topics Covered by Andrew Berman in this Episode

• How vowel is creating instant searchable, shareable knowledge through a modern video conferencing tool
• Andy's journey to founding Vowel
• How the idea for Vowel stemmed from Nanit's pain points as a distributed team
• Early distribution and organic growth through Twitter
• How Vowel's original use-cases have expanded naturally and leaning into user-led product development
• Giving their users a 10x improved media experience through their next generation video platform
• The challenges of building Vowel
• Recruiting the original founding team
• Building remote-first company culture
• The fundraising process and Vowel's powerful cap table of operator- angel investors
• How to vet investors
• Their B2B growth strategy
• Developing their freemium business model
• How they view competition and taking on legacy brands
• Learnings as a multi-time founder and former VC
• What motivates Andy to challenge the status quo and build innovative companies
• Andy's thoughts on the future of work and running remote teams
• Snagging the vowel.com domain name

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

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

Peter Barba and Zygimantas (Zygi) Zabieta are the Co-Founders of Lectrium, a full-service platform for EV home charging on a mission to make every home EV-ready. They make the home charging installation process easy through their network of EVITP certified electricians. At Lectrium, they believe that true carbon neutrality can be achieved only if the transition to EVs is frictionless, and their ambition is to standardize and reduce the cost of the installation process and remove financial barriers for EV adoption. Peter Barba played Division 1 basketball in college and left his job in investment banking to attend Antler's disruptive startup builder in Oslo, Norway, where he met his co-founder. He is passionate about climate technology, electric vehicles, blockchain, and building businesses. Zygi Zabieta loves innovation, EVs, blockchain, renewables, politics, and sustainable planning. He is also a public speaker, host & co-founder of Impact Meetups Vilnius, Community Champion for Nordics and Baltics at WEF Global Shapers, and got his Master of Science degree in Environmental Management & Policy at Lund University (IIIEE). Topics Covered by Peter and Zygi in this Episode

• How Lectrium is making U.S. homes EV-ready
• Lectrium's origin story
• How they ended up at the Antler accelerator
• How Peter and Zygi met at Antler, bonded, and decided to work together
• The evolution of Lectrium during the Antler program—how a bad idea became the goldmine
• What customer discovery looked like for Lectrium
• Product development and using no-code tools (Zyro and Typeform) for initial building
• Getting their first paying customers
• Lectrium's business model and customer acquisition
• Bottom-up vs. top-down dealership acquisition strategies
• How they're approaching growth in these early stages
• How new U.S. public EV charging mandates could affect Lectrium
• The argument for residential vs. public EV charging
• The potential for partnering with auto-manufacturers directly
• Onboarding electricians and their role in Lectrium's success
• How they're approaching brand recognition and marketing, and startup showers as the new baby showers
• How they're managing a distributed team across time zones
• Their execution plan to succeed as market leaders in the next few years

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

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

This is a special episode pulled from the Just Go Grind vault! Dr. Iman Abuzeid is the Co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a career marketplace whose custom matching technology offers hospitals the fastest, most effective way to hire qualified permanent nursing staff. By 2024, the United States is poised to experience its biggest employment crisis to date, a shortage of one million nurses, putting patient care in jeopardy and hospitals at risk of significant financial loss. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the nursing shortage, highlighting the need for qualified nurses across the country.

Incredible Health is on a mission to reinvent the hospital and healthcare staffing landscape, helping to solve the nursing shortage. As a former medical doctor whose immediate family includes three surgeons, Iman understands the importance of helping healthcare professionals find and do their best work. Incredible Health is based in San Francisco, backed by top tier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and is used by hundreds of leading hospitals across the country, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Stanford Healthcare, Baylor Scott & White and many more. Dr. Abuzeid holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In August 2022, Iman led Incredible Health to $1.65B unicorn status with an $80M Series B raise. This makes Incredible Health the highest valued tech-enabled career marketplace in healthcare. This new funding comes on the heels of several major milestones for Incredible Health. In 2021, revenue grew 500% as their marketplace grew exponentially. More than 10,000 US nurses now join Incredible Health's platform every single week, and they've expanded from partnering with 200 hospitals to 600 hospitals. Their marketplace technology has reduced the average time to hire permanent nurses to only 14 days – from an industry standard of 82 days – while saving each hospital location at least $2M annually in travel nurse, overtime, and HR costs.

Topics Covered by Iman Abuzeid in this Episode

• How Incredible Health got started
• Being 1 million nurses short in the U.S. by 2024
• How Iman figured out what the initial version of Incredible Health would be
• Creating a solution that's 10x better than what's currently available
• How Iman met her co-founder, Rome, and the conversation around going into business together
• How Iman thought through the equity split early on
• Raising a few hundred thousand dollars from friends and family to get Incredible Health off the ground
• Raising a $2.4M Seed Round in 2-3 months after going through the NFX accelerator
• Raising a $15M Series A in 4-5 weeks led by Jeff Jordan at Andreessen Horowitz
• Iman's advice for fundraising and creating a process and how her own skills evolved
• How Iman brought on the first hospitals through cold-calling
• The MVP of Incredible Health and why you have to fight the urge to ship perfection
• How the team has grown for Incredible Health
• The values of Incredible Health and how it's part of everything they do
• How Incredible Health uses customer insights to develop their platform, operations, and marketing
• Why Incredible Health offers free continuing education for every nurse in the country
• How Iman thinks through the products and tools they're going to provide to their customers
• The sales process of getting hospitals on their platform
• The 3 biggest value adds of the investors Iman has for Incredible Health
• Questions that Iman asked of CEOs for reference checks on investors
• How Iman takes care of her own mental health and why she has a therapist
• How getting an MBA from Wharton impacted Iman's journey as an entrepreneur
• Books and blogs that Iman recommends
• How Iman recharges away from work and why she doesn't work on Saturdays
• Iman's experience as a minority woman founder
• Diversity debt

Links from the Episode

• Rome Portlock
• NFX
• Jeff Jordan
• Andreessen Horowitz
• Obvious Ventures
• signal.nfx.com
• James Joaquin
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• Who (A book on hiring)
• Above the Crowd by Bill Gurley
• Stephanie Lampkin
• Blendoor

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

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

Dave Fink is the CEO and Co-Founder of Postie, a marketing technology company that has transformed Direct Mail by enabling it to perform like a digital channel. In doing so, Postie has unleashed the medium's potential and unlocked growth for its advertisers, delivering an average campaign ROAS of 1,382%. From prospecting campaigns for new customers, to retargeting and CRM campaigns to maximize existing customers, Postie offers marketing solutions for every stage of the customer journey. With creative testing, real-time attribution, and campaign management tools Postie delivers an all-in-one platform to dynamically optimize your DM strategy.

As a consumer internet and technology entrepreneur, Dave is most engaged when leveraging emerging technologies in simple ways to solve real-world problems. He is driven by the intellectual pursuit as much as the accomplishments they're achieving at Postie.

Topics Covered by Dave Fink in this Episode

• Postie as the only ad-serving technology solution specifically dedicated to the direct mail channel
• How the patterns Dave observed as a partner at Science incubator led to him founding Postie
• Postie's early days of identifying their ideal customer profile, customer acquisition, and go-to-market
• How they manage such a wide range of customer profiles
• How Postie's intuitive product and customer experience mimics the digital campaign experience
• Taking direct mail campaigns from a 60 to 3 day lead time
• Postie's behind the scenes logistics and how they've been able to innovate and optimize efficiency
• How measurable results have fueled Postie's growth
• Why they focused on building first and waited 5+ years to start marketing themselves as a company
• Choosing slow and steady growth instead of continually raising VC
• What's next for Postie

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

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

Connor Ellison is the CEO and Founder of POGR, a next-gen statistical platform for developers & gamers. POGR is a unique customizable profile system with centralized video game statistics. They closed $2.25M at a 20 million valuation earlier this year, and are building the statistical foundation for the future of gaming. Connor is a lifelong gamer and avid reader and learner.

Topics Covered by Connor Ellison in this Episode

• How POGR is building the statistical foundation for the future of gaming
• POGR's origin story
• Connor's path to actually becoming a founder
• 1,000 emails to get their first $100k and raising their seed round pre-revenue
• Connor's insights on cold outreach: scrappiness and high levels of personalization
• Connor's successful cold outreach pitch and how he leverages tracking in the process
• Negotiating terms with investors
• POGR's business model and their multiple stakeholders
• The growth strategy for POGR
• Connor's "jump and figure it out" approach as an entrepreneur and connecting with his co-founders through Discord
• Failure as an inevitable part of success
• Connor & Justin's love for learning and their book and podcast recommendations
• The big vision for POGR

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

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

Samiur Rahman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Heyday, an AI-powered research assistant that makes knowledge workers smarter. Heyday empowers your best thinking by working in the background as an assistant for your memory, automatically saving all your content for you and resurfacing it when you need it, enabling you to stop wasting energy remembering and focus on creating.

Samiur is a software engineer capable of working across the stack (web, mobile, backend and embedded), focusing primarily on data science, algorithms and machine learning. He wants to create the next-generation of intelligent products using modern machine learning and neural networks. He's particularly passionate about employing deep neural networks to tasks that were previously thought to be restricted to just humans.

Prior to Heyday, Samiur and his co-founder Sam DeBrule founded another company, Journal, which they eventually pivoted into their current venture.

Topics Covered by Samiur Rahman in this Episode

• Heyday: an AI-powered research assistant
• How Heyday was born from a pivot of Journal
• The challenging decision to shut down Journal and applying their learnings to building Heyday
• The process of defining their ideal customer
• Deciding to work with Sam DeBrule through multiple companies and the importance of complimentary co-founder skillsets
• Navigating go-to-market strategy and early customer acquisition
• Their experience getting Heyday featured as product of the day, week, and month on Product Hunt
• Getting ready to raise VC funding and working with Order Design
• How they approached VC fundraising
• How to get the most value out of relationships with your investors and why they love working with Kevin Thau at Spark Capital
• How they're approaching sustainable customer acquisition at their current stage
• Finding and working with an ad agency
• Planning for their financial runway in the current market
• Samiur and Justin's thoughts on Adam Neumann's raise from a16z
• The big vision for Heyday

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

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

Ryan Bartlett is the Co-Founder and CEO of True Classic, a D2C men's clothing brand that has grown from $0 to $150M in revenue in just a few years. At True Classic, they understand that not every body is shaped the same. That's where they come in, making premium, high-quality, everyday essentials for every type of person, with no gimmicks.

Their goal with this company has always revolved around over-indexing on the value they give to their customers and communities. This means best in class customer service, entertaining ads that make you laugh, products that are intentionally designed to help you look better, and donating shirts at scale (40k+/month) to help homeless vets, shelters, schools, and other communities in need.

Topics Covered by Ryan Bartlett in this Episode

• What True Classic is doing today
• Ryan's background, True Classic's origin story, and getting the business off the ground
• What differentiates True Classic and how Ryan thought about their market positioning
• Early manufacturing decisions and product development
• How Ryan approached early marketing
• The power Facebook marketing and how their changes in privacy policy have impacted companies
• How they became more intentional with their marketing by creating comedic video ads
• What enabled them to scale to $150M in revenue in 3 years
• Agencies vs. in-house marketing
• The benefits and dangers of moving at warp speed
• Lessons learned for successfully scaling manufacturing
• Developing their intentional hiring strategy
• Launching internationally
• Ryan's big vision for True Classic
• The mission and impact aspect of True Classic

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

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

Katie Reed is the Co-Founder and CEO of Balanced, a digital fitness platform to build a healthspan that matches our new lifespans. They are committed to helping older adults maintain vibrancy in their lives, with an exercise platform that promises community, joy, and a personalized experience to rebel against the decline of aging. Balanced meets older adults where they are with their heterogeneous profiles by taking into account chronic conditions, injuries, pain, and physical ability.

Balanced was inspired by Katie and Kelly's families during COVID-19. While living with her grandmother during quarantine, Katie was distraught with the state of digital fitness for folks like her grandmother. At the same time, Kelly was virtually training her grandparents with cardio boxing via Facetime. With backgrounds in technology, startups, and fitness, the two knew that they could create a digital fitness experience to inspire and build community with healthy outcomes that all older adults deserve.

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in New York City, Balanced has a growing number of fitness programs and content across its platform, available to members at anytime, from anywhere. Their world-class trainers teach live and on-demand classes across multiple fitness modalities with on-screen modifications, including pilates, strength training, cardio boxing, yoga, stretching, dance cardio, and walking.

Topics Covered by Katie Reed in this Episode

• What Balanced is
• How Katie's grandparents inspired her to found Balanced
• Initial testing for Balance
• How they networked to conduct original testing among both communities and trainers
• From bootstrapping to deciding to raise VC in order to become a market leader
• Building out production and branding after piloting their program
• Early decision-making to enable long-term quality and scalability
• Building out their MVP
• Capital deployment from their pre-seed round and positioning themselves to be a supplemental benefit for Medicare Advantage Plans
• Katie's experience fundraising as a first-time founder and selling a vision that resonates
• Building out the team for Balanced
• Katie's tips for finding great founding engineers
• How they're using the funds with their most recent raise
• The Balanced user experience
• How they're approaching motivation and adherence to the program
• What Katie's biggest challenges have been building Balanced as a first-time founder
• How Katie manages her time and takes care of herself
• What's next for Balanced
• Where Katie sees potential in the market of aging adults

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

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

Haroon Mokhtarzada is the CEO and Co-Founder at Rocket Money, previously Truebill, a leading personal finance app with a mission to empower people to live their best financial lives. They offer their 3.4 million members a unique understanding of their finances and a suite of valuable services that save both time and money -- ultimately giving them a leg up on their financial journey. Members can manage their subscriptions, lower their bills, build budgets and automatically set aside money to reach their savings goals. They've saved their members $245 million and counting.

Haroon is a Harvard Law grad turned serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He was the founder and CEO of Webs.com, a popular website creation platform that grew to 50 million users before being acquired by Vistaprint for over $100M. After Webs, Haroon co-founded Truebill in 2015. As CEO, Haroon grew Truebill into a leading personal finance app, topping 2.5 million members and over $100M in annual recurring revenue before being acquired by Rocket Companies in 2021 with the goal of creating a centralized destination for consumers to manage their entire financial lives. Haroon has a passion for technology startups, innovation, global change, and elegant problem solving. He has personally invested in over 100 technology startups including early stage investments in Instacart, Carta, Relativity Space, PlutoTV, and more. Haroon is a 2021 Henry Crown Fellow and has participated on several boards including the American Express Open Digital Advisory Board and the United Nations Global Entrepreneurs Council.

Topics Covered by Haroon Mokhtarzada in this Episode

• What Truebill (now Rocket Money) is
• Deciding to start another company after a $100M+ exit
• The difference between building a company in 2001 and 2015
• What enabled Haroon to go from 0 to $1B exit in 6 years
• Some of the other business ideas Haroon has had and how he chooses which to execute on
• Building a minimum lovable product
• Truebill's go-to-market strategy
• The challenges they faced in funding a PFM (personal financial management) company
• The evolution that led to their unique pay what you want subscription model for a subscription-canceling product
• Being humble enough to not be too tied to your own intuition
• The performance marketing engine that allowed Truebill to go from $1M ARR to $100M ARR in 4 years
• Which metrics are the most important to focus on
• Choosing fully aligned investors
• Haroon's evaluation of the other major players in the PFM space
• What made Truebill unique in a crowded industry, enabling their success
• Haroon's thoughts on the FinTech regulatory environment and government's appropriate role
• From manually cancelling subscriptions to automating and scaling their services
• Haroon's takeaways from his exits
• How Haroon manages his time
• Why Haroon previously had a bit of a chip on his shoulder
• Why Haroon began angel investing and his approach to it now
• Balancing running a company with angel investing
• The benefits of co-founding with your siblings
• Experiences Haroon would like to have had and which company he would've liked to have founded

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

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