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 media. Before Spark, Kevin spent two decades building startups like Twitter, where he was the Director of Mobile Products, as well as VP of Business and Corporate Development. He was also then the COO of Jelly Industries, a search-engine Q+A platform created by Biz Stone. Kevin joins us to share his story, how he got into startups by cold calling his first job, what it was like building Twitter from 2008 through its IPO, what it was like building Jelly, how he transitioned to being a VC, and much more.

Kevin Thau, General Partner, Spark Capital | EP 166

A podcast focused on interesting people and the innovative ways they achieve success.

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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 joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, his advice for raising capital, how Privy has approached growing to over 250,000 users, and much more.

Ben Jabbawy, Founder & CEO, Privy | EP 198

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, Tumblr Entertainment and now Houseparty.

There her role has really grown from partnership, to leading more aspects of growth, marketing and customer support. The Houseparty brand and some of their early learning, have really catapulted their app into international fame.

Kimberly joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, how she approaches partnerships, her approach to growth at Houseparty, and much more.

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

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 industry. He eventually joined Twitter where he became a Principal Designer.

Josh joins us to share his story, how he got into design, what it’s was like working as a Principal Designer at Twitter, what led him to starting Abstract, his advice on raising funding, how he thinks about the design industry, and much more.

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

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 for Wordpress - and the challenges in scaling it to over 800,000 active installs worldwide - all in less than 2 years!

Ben joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it’s been like growing Elementor from 0 to over 800,000 active installs, some challenges of marketing a product to users worldwide, and much more.

Ben Pines, CMO, Elementor | EP 195

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 and his co founder Sidra persevered - launching a custom dress shoe company called Markhor.

They eventually made it to the US, ran a massive kickstarter campaign and got into YC on their second attempt.

Today, Waqas & Sidra are at it again, working on an everyday shoe for the new creatives called Atoms. 

Waqas joins us to share his story, how he discovered the internet & startups in his home country of Pakistan, all the challenges they had to go through just to start a company, his advice for getting into YC, what really goes into creating a product and story, how they’ve approached launching Atoms, and much more.

Kevin Thau, General Partner, Spark Capital | EP 166

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