nextNYC: Startups, Venture Capital, Made in New York City

Vivek Sharma, founder of Movable Ink, on building one of the dozen or so martech companies out of 14,000 to clear $100 million in revenue, and why he just handed the CEO job to the guy he hired as his first manager.

Charlie first heard the Movable Ink pitch in Madison Square Park at the 2010 Shake Shack party, right after Vivek pivoted into competition with a First Round portfolio company, which meant Charlie couldn't write the check. The original plan was a $20-a-month tool for MailChimp users. Then American Express put ten people in a room to meet two guys in startup t-shirts, the first pilot closed at $70,000, and they never looked back. Movable Ink now counts over 500 enterprises as customers, from Home Depot to Morgan Stanley to 20 divisions of Amazon.

Also: the moment around 60 employees when the culture broke and he was the last to know, how he picked the company's three values by studying his best people, the hiring book a board member handed him that fixed their interview process, why he kept betting on smart people who'd never done the job before, what a private equity firm did to earn his trust during the sale to STG, and the one role he wishes he'd hired for on day one.

Hosted by Charlie O'Donnell, author of Founder Unfriendly. Recorded as part of the Founder Unfriendly Live AMA series.

Audrey Gelman, founder of The Wing and now The Six Bells, on one of the most extreme rollercoasters a New York founder has been through, and what she’d do differently.

Charlie met her in fall 2015, back when the deck said “Refresh Club” and the Mets were good, and invested in the seed round. The idea came from her own life in politics: changing into a suit in an Acela bathroom, squatting in hotel lobbies for Wi-Fi. The first 5,000-square-foot space opened in Flatiron with 250 members and a 10,000-person waiting list inside a year. Then the Inc. cover, a new baby, WeWork’s stake to buy out, $50 million to raise, and five months later every club closed.

Also: why fundraising is horrible for everyone and the mindset shift that gets you through it, whether being the face of a brand is worth it, what investors who promise to “be there in the worst of days” actually owe you, the call she was scared to make to people who lost money, and why she wasn’t going to play small forever.

Hosted by Charlie O’Donnell, author of Founder Unfriendly. Recorded as part of the Founder Unfriendly Live AMA series.

Alexis Lê-Quôc, co-founder and CTO of Datadog, on building one of New York's biggest tech companies before the city was ready for it.

He and Olivier Pomel had worked together since 1999 and decided to start something before they knew what. The problem they picked was their own: developers and sysadmins without the right tools, pointing fingers at each other. Then came two years of signups who never came back, pitch meetings where investors asked why they weren't in ad tech or mobile, and a wait until December 2014, about four and a half years in, before it felt like there might be something there.

Also: why so many of Datadog's earliest employees are still there, why you can't design a culture, and why "action tends to be the best antidote to fear."

Hosted by Charlie O'Donnell, author of Founder Unfriendly. Recorded as part of the Founder Unfriendly Live AMA series.

A preview of the best moments from nextNYC events and conversations — founders and investors dropping the pitch and telling the truth about raising money, building, and the parts nobody puts on a slide. Interviews, live AMAs, and teardowns -- all coming soon to our new podcast. Like and subscribe!