Kruze Consulting's Founders and Friends Podcast for Startups

Monica Ohara & Hannah Russin of Datascore came on the podcast to talk Paid Marketing for Startups. Monica & Hannah are all about the data. In this day and age, so much marketing and advertising is done over the Internet, that you should be taking a data-centric approach to your marketing. Datascore tells you how to do it

Kathy Woeber Gardner is a Partner at of Montgomery Pacific LLP and has spent her career as a lawyer working with startups. Kathy began at Orrick and then moved to Montgomery Pacific. She talks about the transition from big to boutique law firm and building her client base including a special connection with Australian & Asia Pacific Startups. We end with an incredible series of tips for running a startup M&A process.

Mike is the founding partner at Codeword (formerly Knock Twice), a hybrid PR, content, advertising, branding and design agency that puts start-ups on the map and builds campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world. Mike is one of the best in the business and we're lucky to have him as a guest. He walks us through the Startup PR Playbook and also gives some great career advice.

Ashish Desai, VP of Product at 99designs, talks about Product Marketing at a Startup. 99designs is the best place on the Internet to find an excellent designer. You can run a contest, get tons of submissions, and then refine a few designs before choosing a winner. Or you can contact and hire a designer directly. In this episode, Ashish talks about how a failed Internet venture (with me :)) helped him recognize the opportunity at 99designs. He talks about managing a development team on two different continents and how 99designs' Australian culture helps the team focus on the future and improvement.

David Bergeron of T3 Advisors walks us through the San Francisco Startup Real Estate Market. David shares his 3 Tips every startup should know when negotiating a new real estate deal.

Jen O'Neal & Jeff Manheimer founded Tripping.com to make finding a vacation home anywhere in the world easy. Tripping is like Kayak for the vacation home market. Consumers can go to Tripping and find available vacation homes across many other services, which guarantees the best selection and pricing.

The first portion of the the interview occurs as Tripping hit product market fit. The second half comes six months later and you'll hear about the explosive growth.

Bill Growney is a Partner at Goodwin Procter, one of Silicon Valley's leading startup law firms. Bill has 20+ of startup law experience both inside big firms and on the company side while at iMeem and Rich Relevance, a late stage eCommerce software company. Bill talks about common mistakes early stage startups make while setting up their company including securing the IP, stock options, and how to navigate liquidation preferences if you're raising a venture capital round.

Brian Mullen of Twilio was the company's first business hire. He's a Business Development guru. In this episode he talks about what attracted him to Twilio, how the company's focus on developers paid off and he even manages to sneak in a few comments about Oakland and his Cal Bears.

Rod Drury is the Founder & CEO of Xero, a multi-billion publicly traded accounting software company. Xero began in New Zealand and is going head to head with Intuit's Quickbooks across the globe. The Company has been a publicly traded startup since the early days because that was the easiest way to raise capital in New Zealand. But now Matrix and Accel have invested and Xero has just hit an annual run rate of $250M in Revenue.

David Barrett is the Founder & CEO of Expensify, the world's best expense management software. The Company's motto is Expensive Reports That Don't Suck. Expensify is backed by Redpoint & Openview Partners and the Company is growing rapidly. David talks about his original idea for Expensify, his previous startup experience building a company with Uber's Travis Kalanick and some of Expensify's unique approaches to hiring and team building.