Off the Record with Aram

Highlights:

- Principles and metrics on when to pivot or not (apart from the gut feeling)
- How Mike started GrubHub and grew it to IPO
- How Mike raised 5 million dollars for his new company Fixer

About Mike

Mike Evans is an author and Founder of Fixer and GrubHub. Before Fixer, he earned a pile of degrees in MIT, where he also accrued a massive amount of debt. After seeing flaws in the food delivery system, Mike launched GrubHub, which he bootstrapped for two years and was involved in five fundraising rounds, as well as several acquisitions, a merger, and an IPO.

Mike's upcoming book called Hangry: A Startup Journey is here: 
https://mikeevans.com/hangry-intro/

Highlights:

- How to prepare your company for an exit
- When is the right time to exit your business
- If you’re being acquired how not to sell your business too low
- VC role may not be a good fit to you - reasons why

About Stephen

Stephen is a managing partner at Fresco Capital. He was Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, a leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools which got acquired in 2014. And he’s also an avid mountain climber, and leads an annual charity fundraising trek in the Mt. Everest region.

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Highlights:

- 2 moments when Bram was considering walking away from a startup
- How to get employees to work on what they really want
- 1000 small pivots - what’s that and how it works
- Don’t set long term goals

About Bram

Bram Warshafsky is the Founder of Shelfgram, a tech start-up that enables brands and retailers with increased in-store visibility and a suite of competitive intelligence tools to find actionable shopper insights, monitor in-store promotions, and spot retail trends before they're trends. Prior to founding Shelfgram, Bram was the VP of Innovation at sgsco where he led a team of engineers applying artificial intelligence to eCommerce and was instrumental in building and commercializing a new SaaS product with Fortune 500 marketing teams. Bram joined sgsco through the acquisition of 5Crowd, a global platform that connects enterprise marketing and sales departments with top freelancers, which he co-founded. Before 5Crowd, he held various roles within brand management and digital marketing at Johnson & Johnson. He has been named Top 30 Under 30 by Marketing Magazine, Young Entrepreneur of the Year by Desjardins Bank and Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year by the Toronto Board of Trade.

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Highlights:

- How much mindset matters in running your business
- What to look for in a good mentor
- How Mike met Bill Campbell
- Self-awareness - fundamental block for your success

About Mike

Mike Smerklo has worked 100 hour weeks at Lehman Brothers, a job that he hated. Got hired by legendary entrepreneurs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz as one of the first employees of their new startup, Loudcloud. Started his own company after acquiring a San Francisco startup and grew it into a successful 3,000-person publicly-traded business. He now heads Austin-based firm Next Coast Ventures. 

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Highlights: 

• Why you need to start marketing before you build a product
• At what point do you abandon opportunities? How do you find traction?
• How to not get destroyed by your business mentally

About Mike

Mike is the CEO and Co-founder of Jetstream and a Facilitator of the Alacrity Academy Digital Marketing Bootcamp. In his current role, Mike works to help companies grow through scalable digital marketing strategies and initiatives and help develop up-and-coming leaders in the digital marketing ecosystem.

Prior to Jetstream and Alacrity Canada Mike has worked in Digital Marketing for the past 18 years. During that time he has Co-founded several companies.

Conversation highlights:

• Jim’s philosophy on failing and doing market research
• How Jim bought Danby Appliances
• What to look for in hiring
• Wealth philosophy - you don’t need that much money

About Jim Estill:

Jim is a Canadian technology entrepreneur, executive, and philanthropist. 

He started his first computer distribution business from the trunk of his car while in university and grew that business to $2 Billion in sales.

He invested in, mentored and advised over 150 technology companies including Blackberry.

In addition, Jim was the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 Ontario winner and has received both the Order of Canada and Order of Ontario.

Parth takes us through his entrepreneurial path and obstacles he had to overcome while building his business.
We talk about product market fit, figuring out your company values, scaling and fundraising.

Key talking points:

- Product market fit - what to look out for
- What kind of mindset you need to secure funding and build relationships with investors 
- What company culture really is and how to define your core values 

About Parth Khanna

Parth holds an undergrad degree in neuropsychology, two law degrees, and US patents in AI and NLP-based technology. He was an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2018 and right now is the CEO of a healthcare and life sciences company called ACTO.

Before founding ACTO, Parth worked on training and developing people through founding and serving as President of Creating Legal Acuity in Student Environments (CLAUSE). In 2014, Parth and his roommates from the University of Waterloo had the vision to help people “Act today”.

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I’m speaking with technologist, inventor, and entrepreneur Scott Case. Scott is well-known as the founding CTO of Priceline.com.
 
Currently, he is the Co-founder and CEO of Upside.com, where he is reinventing business travel for millions of people each year. He is also the host of Founders Focus, a community of entrepreneurs navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.

Key talking points:

- How Nelio hacked his way into marketing while being on vacation
- Key considerations for founders to build their brands on social media
- What elements make social posts hyper-successful

About Nelio:
 
Nelio has been a growth marketer for nearly a decade, and he has a passion for building edgy brands with digital flair. He is the founder of Urban Monks, a growth marketing agency he started in early 2019, dedicated to building awesome brands and helping entrepreneurs earn their own "Black Belt". 

Before going down the entrepreneurial route, Nelio was a marketing manager at L’Oreal in Paris, Director of Brand at Careem and Head of Growth at Washmen. He was the first Marketer to join Careem and helped the company scale from Newborn to Unicorn and was recently bought over by Uber. He then replicated a similar success story at Washmen where he helped the company scale from start up to a solid SME.

#personalbrand #marketing #linkedinbrand

Foti is an accomplished founder with an extensive background in full stack growth marketing. He has over a decade of experience developing and marketing businesses. In this episode, we’re speaking with Foti about getting your product off the ground and growing your startup, as well as the benefits of outsourcing, and why a strong team might not be the right fit for your company. 

Growth Mentor started in 2018, matching founders, marketers and product managers with vetted growth marketing and start-up mentors. The platform enables new founders to engage in 1-1 video calls and conversations with experienced mentors, to provide them with the skills to grow their companies.