Magic Minds

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today's episode is another deep dive. It's in the world of startup PR. My guest today is Ed Zitron.

Ed went from being a journalist to a PR professional within a large firm to start his own firm, EZPR about a decade ago. We got to know each other about nine years ago when he helped me navigate the strange foray into startup PR with my company at the time, Tilt. He was insanely helpful then, and he's even more helpful now with another decade of experience under his belt.

This is an episode on a topic that is on so many creators’ minds — but it's something that was a black box for me for many years. What is PR? How do you navigate the world of PR well? How do you get those great articles you read about other companies? How do you get others to help amplify a message that you're trying to bring to the world with your product or your company?

We touch on everything that PR is good for, everything that is not good for, and what you can expect to get out of “great PR” (and what you can’t really expect from it).

We talk about price ranges that you might pay for a great PR firm, the tactics that can help you get press *without* a PR firm if you are aiming to get press yourself, and also about the topic of “crisis management” which is something that I had never heard a PR professional breakdown as simply as Ed did for me in this episode.

It was great to hear insight into something as gnarly and really disorienting as having to manage through a PR crisis —  and do it with a level head as a founder as a creator.

As I said, startup PR is a topic that is on many people's minds. It is something that I knew took me a few years to really understand, and I wish I had an episode like this with someone that broke it down for me.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

This is another plog (podcast + blog post) about a shift in perspective on how we think and talk about mental health. One that takes us from synonymizing mental health with mental illness, a distinction we already have with physical health and physical illness.

Enjoy this shorter episode on a specific topic (one near and dear to me)!

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today's episode is another check-in episode.

For this episode, I’m going to talk about the below the line, unscripted version, of what’s going on my side of things. I share the details about the reason why we decided to move to Los Angeles (and why LA is shaping up to become the creative capital in the next 5-7 years in my opinion). I also talk about the experiences that led me to start a new company, Magic Mind.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Rahul Vohra is a founder a couple of times over — with his last company Rapportive getting bought by LinkedIn in 2012. His next company, the one in which I became a customer of (and a major fan of), is called Superhuman.

You may have heard of this fast-growing email application that easily cuts my inbox time in half each day. You may also be a customer and a fellow fan. For something that we all spend countless hours in each day like email, very few companies have succeeded in captivating our attention in recent years. Superhuman is seizing this moment, and you'd be surprised by the foundational thinking that goes into the design of this application.

From this episode, you're going to get to hear all about the underlying design principles, the moments of joy, the key insights, and truly understand and appreciate the frustrations that have made Superhuman such a fan favorite and made Raul such a well-known founder in Silicon Valley and abroad. Similar to the product and the high flying company, you'll hear about the underlying experiences that shaped Rahul and his entrepreneurial path.

He shares his key insights when it comes to building and creating, and his own moments of joy and defeat. You'll also get to hear about the things he thinks a lot about but rarely gets a chance to talk about on most business podcasts.

I'm really excited for you to hear this episode from such a thoughtful and insightful founder.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today's episode is a deep dive into the space technology sector. It's with the Y-Combinator backed Momentus founder and CEO, Mikhail Kokorich. Momentus is one of the most exciting space tech startups in the world right now — and is a rocket technology company focusing on “last-mile delivery” based here in the Bay Area.

He has founded five businesses before but we really focus the episode on his experience in the space tech sector, especially with SpaceX's recent launch of humans into space by a commercial, private company. The first of its kind.

We cover everything from the current environment of launching satellites, astronauts, and so on, tourists, into space by a commercial private entity with something like SpaceX and others on the way. We also talk about the various other commercial aspects of Space Technology... from satellites to mining to tourism to energy... it’s about to become a space gold rush, and I wanted to chat with an expert to give us all an overview of where this whole Space “space” is going.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today's episode is with Immad Akhund who is a serial entrepreneur and serial investor. He has been through Y Combinator a couple times, and his current business, Mercury, is a bank built for startups. But really, it's a bank built for all businesses and full disclosure, I am fortunate enough to be an investor (but there’s a side to this that I still kick myself for — more details in the episode).

Immad shares with us the “below the line” version of being acquired, the toll the founder life can take on a person and their family, as well as the reasons behind starting Mercury. He also shares why he persisted through many negative conversations, and why he still decided to build his current (and now very hip startup) even though there are many people who weren’t fans of the idea in the beginning — myself included.

We talk about all of these things and more — and I really loved the candor and the simplicity in which he's able to articulate just what he was going through, what matters (and what doesn’t), and what decisions he would have made differently.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today’s episode is with one of the world’s best venture investors coming from perhaps the world’s best venture firm… My guest is Alfred Lin, who is a partner at the famed venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

Alfred is an investor in companies like Airbnb and DoorDash and Instacart among others. With one of the best track records, I’ve ever come across… with publications like Forbes saying he has the Midas Touch.

His track record as an investor is impressive, but as an operator, building companies like LinkExchange (sold to Microsoft), his own venture firm years ago that invested in winners like OpenTable, and then Zappos (selling to Amazon)… his track record as a builder is just about as impressive as an investor.

So, as you can imagine, Alfred has a lot of insights from uniquely being at such high levels on both sides of the table. We talk about how he spots great founders, what the process at Sequoia is really like/peeking behind the veil of one of the most prestigious investment firms in the world. We talk about the books that have impacted his thinking as an investor, it’s not what you would expect. We talk about the silver lining of this new world we all find ourselves in, and we talk about the stories that shaped who he has become… All that and more with one of the smartest (but also kindest) people in Silicon Valley. This is Below The Line.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today's deep dive is with Brianne Kimmel where we discuss her (persistent) path to angel investing in technology startups. From purposefully connecting with the investor of the company she began working at (within months of starting) to hosting dinners for founders to teaching her craft openly and building a massive community to starting her own fund... and everything in between.

Brianne is an early-stage startup investor here in the Bay Area, and her fund is called Worklife. It has a very interesting vision of investing in companies that make work more flexible, creative, human, and balanced. We talk about her journey to becoming an investor, which covers her first investment, and what she was doing before she became an investor... We also discussed her designs in her career path and the choices she made early on that helped her in her current path. We even covered what types of founders and companies will thrive in this post-COVID world... all that and more.

It's a great conversation, and I'm really excited for listeners to get a deep dive into what it's like to become an angel investor. Enjoy.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

John’s monthly “Global Guerillas Report”: https://www.patreon.com/johnrobb

Today's episode is with John Robb, a former aeronautical engineer, special-ops soldier, and then the first internet analyst in the 90’s (followed by becoming an extremely successful entrepreneur). He chats with us about his research report that he releases monthly called “The Global Guerillas Report” and answers the question of “What the hell is going on right now?” in the life and times of Covid-19.

He predicted social networks and their impact on the world back in 1996. He also predicted this pandemic in January before most people knew what was about to happen. And he has a few other observations that I haven’t heard anyone mention anywhere else to date that make this one of my favorite episodes to date.

Simply put, John’s monthly “Global Guerillas Report” is some of the best research and journalism on geopolitical trends I’ve ever come across. John was months ahead of pretty much everyone else with predicting this pandemic, and for someone that thinks deeply about the ramifications of what's happening in the present (and for what can / what will likely happen in the future), this is one of my favorite conversations that I've had in several months cutting across almost every question on my mind with regards to the global situation we’re currently in. Enjoy.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author

Today's episode is with Andrew Wilkinson. I've been really anticipating meeting Andrew for a few years now. I'm a big fan of his agency, MetaLab, his firm, Tiny Capital, and his original views on investing and running technology businesses for a while.

He has done things so idiosyncratically that there isn't anyone like him on the internet that I'm aware of — From starting businesses at 15 and dropping out of college a few years later to pursue his entrepreneurial path, that sounds like a story that you might have heard before. But the part that you probably haven't heard before is that a few years later, he's running five businesses at the same time, after that it’s 25. And he’s likely still just getting started.

Instead of finding companies that he wants to invest in and deploy capital, they do things a little bit differently at his firm, Tiny Capital. They actually are looking to buy companies from founders that might have been running it for years, and are looking for some smart way out. If you’re familiar with venture capital, this is the exact opposite of that model.

I can't wait for you to hear from Andrew himself on the story behind it, and how he thinks through approaching this unique side of investing, owning, and running businesses.

You can email James questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC