Startup Boston Podcast: Entrepreneurs | Investors | Influencers | Founders

In today's episode I sit down with Brett Maloley, Co-Founder and CEO of Ladder. Brett grew up in the fitness industry with his father being an owner of health clubs and an owner of an equipment distribution company. Brett uncovered his passion for the fitness industry when he realized he wasn't going to become a professional athlete and spent time working for his father's friend in the fitness industry selling flooring. From there Brett went on to start multiple companies in the fitness industry with Ladder being his third. Ladder connects individuals to health and wellness professionals through digital coaching. Ladder uses what it defines as the four 'rungs' ,fitness, nutrition, sleep quality, and stress management, to make up a happy and healthy lifestyle.

In this episode, Brett shares among other things:

                Why he wanted to start a platform based business

                How Ladder uses cognitive behavioral therapy to help identify the needs of the user

                Why the commercial fitness industry needs to change in order to survive

                What's most important to him when hiring

                Why being an entrepreneur is something you're called not something you call yourself

Links from this episode:

                Rise

                Fitocracy

                Slack

                Calendly

                Producteev

                Intercom

                Audible

                The Hard Thing About Hard Things

                The Icarus Deception

                Start with Why

                Disrupted

                The Buy Side

                The Third Wave

                Applico

                Modern Monopolies

                Ladder on Instagram

                Ladder on Twitter

                Ladder on Facebook

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

In today's episode I sit down with Rob Go, Co-Founder and Partner at NextView Ventures, a seed-stage VC firm focused on internet and software businesses, investing in both B2C and B2B companies. NextView has investments in companies such as Drift, InsightSqaured, Bridj, and TaskRabbit. Before founding NextView, Rob was at Spark Capital and focused on early stage consumer web and mobile companies. Prior to Spark Capital, Rob worked at eBay as the Business Product Lead overseeing the launch of products that enhanced the search, browse, and discovery experience for millions of users. NextView believes in being great at one thing: high-conviction, hands-on seed investing.

In this episode, Rob shares among other things:

                Why he decided to start his own VC firm

The three problems with VC are

                What growing up abroad taught him about running a company

                What makes the Boston startup scene unique

                Deal killers

                How early stage startup valuations have changed over the last ten years

                Why a smaller seed round can be better than a larger seed round

                What he's learned raising money for his first fund

                His advice to founders raising money

Links from this episode:

                Boston Tech Guide

                Congrats to the Sunrise Team

                Lessons from my Dad

Amazon Echo

Nest Thermostat

The Trend Back Towards Smaller Seed Rounds

RentJuice

Dia&Co

Wait But Why

The Martian

Ready Player One

High Failure Strategies

2U

PillPack

Traction Podcast

Rog Go on Twitter

Jay Acunzo on snapchat

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

In today's episode, I interview Bettina Hein, founder & CEO of Pixability, a software platform that helps brands and their agencies place video advertising on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Bettina's first company, SVOX, which worked on text to speech, was sold to Nuance and that technology can be found on mobile phones and cars today. Bettina was born in Berlin, attended college in Switzerland, and moved to Cambridge to become a Sloan Fellow at MIT. It was then that Bettina started Pixability at the Cambridge Innovation Center after identifying the major shift underway in the video industry.

In this episode, Bettina shares amongst other things:

                Pixability's shift from a B2C company to B2B

                The sea change happening in the consumption of media

                Why online advertising is still undervalued

                The three big mistakes that most advertisers make

                How Bettina sees video advertising changing over the next five to ten years

                The three things you need to be a successful entrepreneur

                How she manages a company with multiple offices around the world

Links from this episode:

                Clayton Christensen

                Vimeo

                metacafé

                Dailymotion

                Snapchat

                Amazon Instant Video

                SNOW

                WeChat

                Pinterest

                WhatsApp

                Tinder

                Twitch

                DataXu

                nToggle

                Adelphic

                nanigans

                Hulu

                Netflix

                Slack

                Google Hangouts

                Trattoria Il Panino

                Mama Maria

                InsightSquared

                Buildium

                Localytics

                Happie

                Thinking Fast and Slow

                The Power of Habit

                Crime and Punishment

                The Green Brothers

                Casey Neistat

                CaseyNeistat.video

                Kid President

                SoulPancake

                Pixability on Twitter

                Pixability on Facebook

                Pixability on Youtube

                She-E-Os

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

In this episode, I interview Shea Coakley, founder and CEO of Leanbox, which provides businesses with a fresh food kiosk by blending technology and food service. Their target customer is the ~150 person office that wants to provide employees with a fresh and healthy food service without the need to build a cafeteria. Leanbox eliminates the need for customers to place orders when supply runs low since each Leanbox and its contents can be monitored by the Leanbox team. This means they're able to provide preventative maintenance and restock the Leanbox before it runs out of food. Businesses are charged a monthly fee and the end customer purchases the food at cost, twenty to thirty percent below retail price.

In this episode, Shea shares amongst other things:

                Their pivot from a restaurant to a healthy food services business

                Designing a business so that you can excel

                The moment he realized Leanbox was onto something special

                How they are able to minimize food waste while providing fresh, never frozen food options

                How technology plays a major role in ensuring each Leanbox is always stocked

                The process for sourcing new food items

Links from this episode:

                Sweetgreen

                Dig inn

                New Grounds Food

                Suja

                Stumptown

                Taza

                LogMeIn

                Rue La La

                lovin' spoonfuls

                Deuxave

                Grill 23

                Slack

                Bevi

                Drink

                Sportello

                Brewer's Fork

                Catalant (formerly HourlyNerd)

                Drizly

                The Growth Show

                Freakonomics

                Adam Carolla

                Zero to One

                The Hard Thing About Hard Things

If you liked this episode:

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

Today I sit down with Andy Levitt, the founder and CEO of The Purple Carrot. Founded in 2014, The Purple Carrott is a plant-based meal kit that Andy started after seeing the lack of a plant-based meal kit being offered by the current players in the national meal kit space(Plated, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh). Purple Carrot ships its subscribers all of the raw ingredients they need to cook two to three dinners every week with recipes developed by chefs with a focus on different flavors and ethnicities. 

In this episode, Andy shares amongst other things:

                The process they go through for introducing new recipes

                How they went from a family meal plan focus to a two person meal plan focus

                The logistics issues with starting a subscription meal kit service

                How they're able to manage their food inventory to minimize waste

                What is most important when starting a subscription based company

                The importance of getting comfortable being uncomfortable

Links from this episode:

                Forks over Knives

                Seth Godin

                Washington Post: Meat is bad

                Vedge

                Crossroads Kitchen

                Alta Strada

                Hugh Macleod

                Purple Cow

                Linchpin

                Leanbox

                Purple Carrot on Twitter

If you liked this episode:

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

Music by: Broke For Free

Jonathan Kim took an interesting path to becoming the founder of a tech company. A journalism major at BU, Jonathan taught himself how to code before becoming a software engineer at HubSpot. It was there that he identified the problem companies face with onboarding users to platforms. Instead of wanting to solve this problem with people, he wanted to solve it with product. To solve this he started Appcues, a user onboaring company for software companies.

In this episode, Jonathan shares amongst other things:

What most companies get wrong about user onboarding

When companies should start automating user onboarding

What frustrates users the most

How to use UX to gain the user's trust

Why he wouldn't focus on finding a co-founder if starting over

Why Appcues engineers also handle customer support

Links from this episode:

David Cancel

Fasten

Wistia

Litmus

Firebase

Keen IO

Price Intelligently

Buffer's transparency dashboard

Hojoko

The Advantage

Lean In

If you liked this episode:

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

Music by: Broke For Free

Sam Saltis moved to Boston from Australia to start his second company, Core dna. Sam spent over ten years working for one of Australia's largest banks before getting his MBA and deciding soon after, in 2000, that he was going to start his own business. It started off as a consulting business that then morphed into building websites for businesses. That company, bwired, continues in Australia as CoreDNA was started as a separate company in Boston after seeing the demand for the product getting larger than the services business, and the ability for the SaaS product to scale. Core dna allows you to manage all of your digital properties and applications from one dashboard that is production ready and without the need to re-platform in the future.  

In this episode, Sam shares amongst other things:

Why he chose Boston to start Core dna

What he calls startup 1.0

How he got through those moments of self-doubt

The benefits of SaaS

The effects of dynamic content

The risks of over designing the UX

His advice to first-time founders

What makes the Boston startup scene unique

Links from this episode:

Botkeeper

SaaStr

Shopify

Snapchat

WeWork

If you liked this episode:

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

Music by: Broke For Free

Vinayak Ranade started as a software engineer at Kayak.com and ended up running the Kayak mobile engineering team as well as technical recruiting. At the time, Kayak didn't have an in-house recruiting team, instead the recruiting was being done by the engineering managers. It was during this time, running the recruiting process at Kayak, that Vinayak realized this was something he really enjoyed. When he left Kayak, Vinayak knew the next problem he needed to solve was hiring, and thus, Drafted was born. Drafted, whose goal is to make recruiting fast, fun and rewarding for all involved, uses mutual connections to connect potential candidates with hiring managers through referrals.

In this episode, Vinayak shares amongst other things:

What he loves about the hiring process

What most companies get wrong about recruiting

The role of culture in recruiting

Why he started Drafted as an app

Why he thinks recruiting will become a marketing discipline

Links from this episode:

Lola

Blue Ocean Strategy

Lean Customer Development

Influence

Snapchat

Bumpers

Get Human

Shantaram

Drafted on Twitter

If you liked this episode:

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com

Music by: Broke For Free

Ty Danco is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and Program Director at Techstars Boston. Ty started his career on Wall St. then moved to Vermont where he founded, in 2000, and later sold, in 2006, eSecLending. A few years later he got involved with angel investing and made 'every mistake in the book'. He has made ~75 direct investments into companies, including Crashlytics (sold to Twitter), Codeship, EverTrue, Appcues, and Drizly. Ty currently splits his time between Boston and Burlington, Vermont.

In this episode, Ty shares amongst other things:

How he first got involved in Angel investing

How his approach to angel investing has changed over time

His decision making process

The role he likes to take as an investor

Why valuation is no longer a deciding factor for him

Why you should underprice your funding round

The types of entrepreneurs he looks for

Tips for getting into Techstars

Links from this episode:

AngelList

Danny Moon

Misfit wearables

John Sculley

Mark Suster

Boston Tech Guide

VentureFizz

Botstinno

Xconomy

Starthub

Boston.com

MassChallenge

Ty Danco's blog post on Phil Beauregard

Katie Rae

Brent Grinna

HubSpot

Fred Wilson's blog, AVC

Brad Feld's blog

Alex Danco

Social Capital

Kensho

Astreus Technologies

If you liked this episode:

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Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com