Startup Competitors

Wes Barton is a farmer, turned lawyer, turned investor, and is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Third Prime, venture capital firm based out of New York City. Third Prime is focused primarily on investing at the seed stage that are quite young, generating nominal revenue. In our conversation, Wes shares a bit about his personal background and we spend most of our time discussing some of the things they look for in a potential investment opportunity and some of the big do’s and don’ts when looking for investors. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I hope you find value in it as I did.

Topics in this episode

The transition from angel investing in a couple of deals to creating an investment firm managing $100 million

Wes’ early investment experiences

The characteristics they are looking for in the initial conversation

Investing discipline and criteria now, versus when he started

Looking at the dynamic between co-founders

Asking entrepreneurs, “What could go wrong? What could make this fail?”

Sourcing channels and the entrepreneur community

Contact Info

Twitter: https://twitter.com/farmer_vc

Website: https://www.thirdprime.vc/

Email: [email protected]

Insurmi is a technology whose primary product, Violet, is an AI assistant built for insurance. In my conversation with founder and CEO, Sonny Patel, he shares the story of how he started Insurmi as a college student, originally as a B2C insurance solution. As they went through three different accelerators, Insurmi was able to pivot to B2B, find product-market fit, and really use the environment of the accelerator to grow their business to what it is today. Sonny also shares roll out strategies with new clients, some of the major challenges they’ve faced through the years, and the impact COVID has had on sales and networking, and the long-lasting effects this will have on the industry. This was a fascinating conversation and I hope you enjoy.

Topics in this episode

Why they created a solution specific to the insurance industry

The differences between the different accelerator programs they participated in

The need for an insurance-based solution, as opposed to a generic conversational AI

Benfits of pivoting from B2C to B2B

Categories of use cases and the measurables and KPIs for each

Using this time of COVID to improving remote sales skills

Making predictions at what business travel may look like after COVID

Networking within digital events and via DMs and Zoom

Contact Info

Website: https://insurmi.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonnypatel94/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonnypatel94/

In this episode, I talk with Scott Hansen, founder of Professional Chats, and the principle at Black Bison Group, where he does investing, coaching, and consulting, looking specifically at B2B hybrid software services companies. We have a wide-ranging conversation beginning with his background and the founding of Professional Chats, and how he leveraged the skills and knowledge he gained from that insight to now investing in companies that are in the associated medical space, looking to grow and understand the market better. He also shares the core values and key indicators he looks for with the founders of potential investment opportunities.

Topics in this episode

How software can produce better results for a service business

Evaluating a potential investment opportunity:

The process to figure out if a business owner is going to be a good fit

Sourcing deals through his network

New technologies coming for AI and data science

Making your service expensive for users at the start

Understanding buyers and your market in order to make the best marketing decisions for your business

Two core values that he will take with him to future start ups

Contact info

Website: http://blackbisongroup.com/

Email: [email protected]

Go Nimbly is a revenue operations consultancy and software company, helping businesses operate their revenue side of their business, which includes such areas as sales, marketing, and customer success, and the analytics that make those teams run. In this episode, I talk with Jason Reichl, co-founder and CEO of Go Nimbly. He details his background in design and product management, and the time he spent in Silicon Valley, seeing SaaS companies spring up all the time, which didn’t prioritize revenue operations in a way that made sense.

It was from this that the idea came to him and his co-founders to create a company that could help businesses see their revenue operations teams in a new way, and maximize their profit. In our conversation, he shares key strategies for unifying revenue operations teams within a company, the work of consultancy, and Jason details the book that the Go Nimbly team is writing to help the reader transform so that they can transform their business.

Topics in this episode

Working as a part of a revenue operations team

The revenue gains companies experience when they unify the revenue operations; sales, marketing, and customer success

Revenue impact statement

Why they target SasS companies

Three levels of operations teams out there

Intuition-based

Experiential

Customer-based

Four core metrics to measure the health of an operations team:

Volume

Value

Velocity

Conversion

Create a roadmap for operational projects in order to see if it has an impact on improving the value that you are looking at

Working with companies in the short-term, and being stick enough with them so that the partnership continues long-term

Contact Info

Go Nimbly blog: https://gonimbly.com/blog/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/betterjason/

TallyLab is an everything-tracker for consumers and an anything-tracker-maker for businesses. It’s a web-based application where users can set up trackers to track anything that happens as a moment in time, recording what they did, and when they did it. In this episode, I talk with co-founder and CEO, Jordyn Bonds, who saw first hand what happens with our everyday data, and how companies aggregate that data in ways that we do not opt into, and may not be ok with. It was this insight, as well as the need for a tracking app, that was the inspiration behind creating TallyLab with a high priority on data protection for end-users. She shares some of the effects of the pandemic on the company, the trends of data protection, and what she’s tracking everyday using TallyLab.

Topics in this episode

The importance of keeping UI simple, so users can start quickly

New projects, as a result of the COVID pandemic

The difference between an ideal customer, and one that becomes an actual customer

Cloud services are hackable, meaning, your data is at risk

Asking companies to leave data and opportunity on the table, in favor of protecting the privacy of their end-users

The regulatory landscape of data privacy

Users realize that they’re doing better with the thing they’re tracking than they think they are

Contact Info

Website: https://tallylab.com/

Email: [email protected]

Knowable is an audio-first learning platform where you can find high-quality educational courses, and listen and learn on the go, without having to stare at a screen. In this episode, I talk with co-founder and CEO Warren Shaeffer, who shares that the idea behind Knowable came from not a lack of time, but a lack of time he could devote to watching something and learning that way. Knowable is the third startup Warren and his co-founder have started. He details the other companies he created, and details one of his favorite courses on Knowable, Launch a Startup, in which well-known startup experts share their insights and expertise to help listeners prepare for building their own companies.

To take this course, or any other on Knowable: Use the code StartupComp at checkout for 50% off your first course.

Topics in this episode

Sourcing the content for the courses

Reaching out to experts and pitching to them to lead a course

Compensation and collaboration with experts

How COVID is increasing the rate of innovation in the education space

The experimental marketing efforts they’ve done so far while in beta

The difference between a podcast and an audio-first course

Apply to be a creator at: https://knowable.fyi/create

Contact Info

Website: https://knowable.fyi/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/wwshaef

Boson Motors electric commercial vehicles, focusing on dairies, planters, farmers, and agriculture utility vehicles. They may the only programmable vehicle in the world that runs on the Android operating system, making it open-source that any Android developer can deploy custom applications to. In this episode, I talk with co-founder and CEO Arun Seelam, who, along with his co-founder, are ex-Googlers, looking to take on the world of autonomous vehicles and electric trucks. In our conversation, Arun shares current status of the company, the setbacks that Boson Motors has experienced as a result of the COVID pandemic, as well as a silver lining they found along the way.

Topics in this episode

Why they are working toward an end goal of partial autonomy, as opposed to creating fully autonomous vehicles

Roadmap of production and how they plan to ramp up over the next two years

The process of creating the prototype, starting with a motorcycle

The impact of COVID on production, as well as on fundraising

Launching the product in California and India, and the regulatory differences in each place

Tracking competitors’ roadmaps

Giving farmers the ability to service their own vehicles, unlike with John Deere and other competitors

Contact Info

Website: https://www.bosonmotors.com/

Fringe Benefits is the world’s first fringe benefit marketplace as a way for employers to provide benefits that employees can use now, that they don’t have to be sick, disabled, or 65 years or older in order to benefit from. It’s a way for companies to provide a wide array of curated benefits that employees can choose from, that employees can then take with them upon leaving. In my conversation with co-founder and CEO Jordan Peace, he shares the launch and growth of Fringe with five co-founders, the selection process of working with vendors, and the successful utilization of their platform with employers using their service. He also details the role COVID has played in their growth, and helping companies to provide benefits for a work-from-home world.

Topics in this episode

Examples of benefits they provide

The importance of identifying companies that already have an established culture, instead of having to create that for an employer

Building a curated vendor list

Selling points of the marketplace to vendors

What a target vendor looks like

Detailing what product-marketplace fit looks like

Utilization of Fringe is over 90%

Future-proofing benefit system for employers

Contact Info

Website: https://www.hellofringe.co/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-peace-greenhousemoney/

Botco.ai is an intelligent chat nurturing solution helping businesses convert more customers by being always on and always available to answer their customer’s questions. In my conversation with co-founder and CEO Rebecca Clyde, she shares how Botco.ai was built out of a lack of a solution for enterprise companies and their customer’s need for on-demand assistance. Before Botco.ai, Rebecca owned a marketing automation company, and she explains how that role, and the process of leaving that role to hand over the reins, gave her a particular set of skills that prepared her for starting Botco.ai. We also discuss investor expectations, how to best use a marketing budget, and her role as a parent to prepare her children for the business world.

Topics in this episode

The impact a chatbot service has for conversion rates

Steps to take after releasing the MVP

Challenges of working with a chatbot service for an enterprise company

Competing with in-house development teams

How to identify that your product is needed in the market

The role of education, and how to take that on in a tangible way that leads to business opportunities

Where are you creating gaps in the customer experience, and how can you bridge those?

Generation Z’s relationship with technology, and the role that plays in the work force and our economy

The future of voice-assistance for Botco AI products

Resources

Aaron Ross

The Sandler Sales Methodology

Contact Info

Website: https://botco.ai/

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccaclyde/