Startup Competitors

Motor is bringing extra power to the electric car movement by uniting utility companies and drivers. Approximately 70% of Americans have never even been in an electric car, and it is Motor's primary goal to change that by changing the way we think about electric cars. In my conversation with co-founders Mike Barg and Bryan Bernard, they share how they create a seamless experience for customers in order to increase electric car usage, as well as what it was like launching Motor from a larger company. 

Leveraging the natural partnership between utility companies and electric car owners, Mark, Bryan and their team are accelerating the adoption of electric cars. We discuss the barriers to electric car ownership and usage, and they also talk about the win-win relationship they've created with utility companies. As an electric car owner myself, I was particularly fascinated by this conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

If you are interested in trying Motor, use the code STARTUP for a discount.

Topics In This Episode

Leveraging a changing market for growth

Customer service and product considerations in order to lower barriers for buyers

Addressing increasing product availability and customer retention

24-month plan: Increase awareness, bend the access curve, expand partnerships

Is Motor like a “loss leader”?

Innovation and subsidiary positioning: Zero emissions goals, streamlined service, including bill payment, delivery, strict safety guidelines, and working with vendors and contractors

Navigating the differences of direct corporate integration and the absence of investor pitching

Identifying buyer personas, exceeding forecasts and meeting KPIs

Contact Info

Website: MotorEv.net

[email protected]

833-MOTOR-EV

Facebook @MotorEVIndy

Instagram @motor_ev

Twitter @Motor_EV

Forecastr is an online software platform that helps founders build great financial models, so they can make better decisions, impress investors, and get funded. Financial forecasts are key to any business’s tool kit, particularly for startups, and Forecastr fills an important role of helping create financial models and support them over the long term. I talk with CEO and co-founder Steven Plappert about the recent launch of the beta product, and how they were able to launch with 87 clients already signed up and ready to go.

A key component of the Forecastr model is their use of white-glove onboarding of their clients, and in our conversation, we spend some time talking about how to scale this level of high-touch and analysis through the product roadmap. He also discusses some of the areas in which they plan to grow, as well as taking a look at the competitive landscape for financial modeling. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I’m already looking forward to a future episode, a part two, where Steven takes us through the onboarding process that he does with customers. To find out more, be sure to go to their website at: https://www.forecastr.co/

Topics in this episode

What it looks like to go through the white-glove onboarding for new clients

Supporting clients on an ongoing basis, after the models are built

The products they sold to customers before the beta was even built

What makes their product so important for the market 

The vision of Forecastr

Partnerships with incubators, accelerators, and VCs

Contact Info

Website: https://www.forecastr.co/

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/forecastr/

Jewelr is an all-encompassing software solution built specifically for the jewelry industry. Their MVP addresses everything a retail store needs to run as a whole, and the product roadmap seeks to address other facets of the jewelry industry as a whole. In my conversation with Natalie Whitmore and Richard Crowe, two of the four members of the founding team, they illustrate the current state of the technology within the jewelry industry and just how outdated it is. We spend a lot of time in our conversation talking about the product they are building, how they plan to bring it to the marketplace, and how they plan to remain competitive if and when another modern solution comes to the marketplace.

Topics in this episode

How they built their founding team

Moving clients to a SaaS model

What they are looking for with beta testers

Using beta testing to learn more about and address data migration to the Jewelr platform

Taking a different approach to marketing 

Additional products and services on the product roadmap

The result of the pandemic on the retail jewelry industry 

Contact Info

Website: https://www.jewelr.co/

[email protected]

[email protected]

Kennected completely simplifies and automates your lead-generation and outreach via LinkedIn by teaching you how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and think uniquely around finding your target audience. In this episode, I talk with Kennected co-founder and CEO Devin Johnson. We talk about how the team got started, what their product roadmap looks like beyond the their current product offering, and preparing the business for rapid growth. Devin also shares details about the mindset resources and tools that he uses which have helped him grow to this level of success, and how he intends to leverage those to achieve his goals.

Topics in this episode

Onboarding as a key differentiator

Focusing on the importance of customer education to fully demonstrate the features of the product

Why Devin really prioritizes the sales function of the business

As you grow, which is more important; marketing or sales?

What makes LinkedIn so hard? 

Preparing internal structures and creating strategy to be able to support future growth

Applying the abundant mindset, and the importance of goal-setting, visualization, and execution 

Resources

The 10X Rule, by Grant Cardone

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill

Contact Info

Website

LinkedIn

Instagram

Florida Funders is a combination of a venture capital group and a crowd network of about 1500 angel investors who finds, funds, and builds the next generation of great technology companies in the Southeast, primarily in Florida. In this episode, I have a super fun conversation with Tom Wallace, managing partner of Florida Funders, that is packed with a lot of information and advice, particularly for founders. Tom differentiates between active and passive investing, and why it is that 75% of their investments are active. He also details the role they play in helping founders and investors become educated so they can have the greatest chance for success.

Topics in this episode

Educating angel investors on the “why”s and “how”s of investing

The process of getting funded through Florida Funders

Importance in diversifying for investors

Managing expectations around time frames for investments 

Valuation as a key indicator when making investments 

Getting involved with and helping CEOs 

Their “secret sauce” for investors and the two things they look at most 

Advice from some of the best pitches they’ve heard

Contact Info

Website

Email: [email protected]

Today we have a fun conversation with Patrick Kelley, one of the co-founders of Shorca Wood. Patrick is my 10 year old son, who confounded Shorca Wood with his friend. In this conversation, we talk about how the business started, what he learned about business this year, and what’s next for Shorca Wood. I hope you enjoy

GenoPalate is a nutrition intelligence company, with the mission to change food-buying behaviors in the future to fight obesity and diabetes. The technology is based on nutrigenetics, using DNA information to create personalized nutrition and eating plans for each person. In this fascinating conversation with Sherry Zhang, she talks about her background in microbiology and the previous companies she founded, before creating GenoPalate. We also discuss some recent books we have found to be impactful, and the future of where GenoPalate can go in the future. 

Topics in this episode

User experience of GenoPalate 

Obtaining and providing DNA data 

How this information forms behavior changes for users

The secret of success for consumer wellness products

The biggest hurdles in getting this business off the ground

The process of finding mentors and building relationships

Book Recommendations

Think Bigger, by Michael W. Sonnenfeldt

Category Creation, by Anthony Kennada 

Deep Medicine, by Eric Topol

Business Adventures, by John Brooks 

Flip the Script by Oren Klaff

Contact Info

Website

Email: [email protected]

FastDemocracy is a legislative analytics platform designed to put the government at your fingertips, giving users the ability to track legislation, share it, and really understand what is going on with legislation, and understand the inflection points in order to create change. In this conversation, I talk with co-founders Anatolij Gelimson and Sara Baker, a married co-founding team, about how each of their skill sets combined to create this product, how they market it to nonprofits and companies, as well as the education gaps they each had to fill along the way. 

And of course, I couldn’t let them go without asking about what it’s like to be a married co-founding partnership. This was a really interesting conversation, and as you’re listening to this, the app for FastDemocracy just dropped, so be sure to check it out and thank them for coming on the show. 

Topics in this episode

Fast Democracy currently provides data for government at both the national and state levels, which includes all 50 states

The outdated systems most states still have in place

Selling to nonprofits, business associations, companies

Their competitive advantage

The process of collecting all the data that is available on the platform

The use of a comment section and the power and helpfulness found there within legislation and lobbying efforts 

Making the decision to invest in team growth

Contact Info

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]

Website

IdeaWake is a software platform that helps capture, evaluate, and implement ideas from front-line employees. They also have a product offering that allows for a front-line employee to take an idea, validate it, prototype it, and actually pitch it to someone within the organization that owns the budget for implementing it. IdeaWake is all centered around the idea that people who are closest to the customer and to a process have the best ideas on how to improve that process. In my conversation with co-founder and CEO Coby Skonord, he shares the background from the very early idea stages, to how they became a global company whose product is used in 39 countries, and the metrics they used along the way to measure success.

Topics in this episode

How they handle being a global company

Breaking up the competition into 2 categories: competitors for the current state of the company, and competitors for where you want to go 

Getting specific about the market and ideal target customer

Offering consulting within the product offering

The launch check-list they work through with new clients

The impact of covid for them and their customers, using employee-sourced ideas to respond to the challenges they faced

Transitioning customers over to a new system 

Contact Info

Website

Email: [email protected]

Benekiva is a claims and customer service platform, working to bridge the gap between insurance carriers, policyholders, and beneficiaries. In this episode, I talk with Brent Williams, the founder and CEO of Benekiva about where the idea for Benekiva came from, how it was developed, and the product roadmap for the company. He talks about the process for implementing Benekiva within a carrier’s system, how they made implementation a quick and easy process, and how claims teams became their biggest cheerleaders within their client’s teams. I really enjoyed this conversation with Brent, and I hope you do as well.

Topics in this episode

Completing three years of research to determine the issues within the insurance industry and how they could address them

Building a platform that carriers would pay for

The mutually beneficial relationship between this platform and insurance carriers 

Having two separate development teams

Operating on the Apple model

Sales and implementation with enterprise companies 

Creating a tool that communicates with a company’s existing systems in order to shorten implementation time

Contact Info

Website

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (515) 202-0862