Startup Mindsets

Startup Mindsets

By Dan GonzalesBusinessEntrepreneurship
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Startup Mindsets episodes

  • Neurodivergent/Autistic Entrepreneur & Investor Greg Shepard Founder of BOSS Capital on Pushing Passed Internal & External Barriers

    Meet Greg Shepard, he's been featured on TedX talks and university lectures worldwide. Founder of BOSS Capital Partners, a boutique investment firm focused on Series Seed through Series B technology businesses.

    We uncover his mindset which is unique because he is neurodivergent. Not being able to land a job led him to become an entrepreneur, finding out he could make money from an early age, he chose entrepreneurship. This included selling a snake and doing interesting things. 

    He's also former CTO at Pepperjam.

    Greg's been able to achieve some wild feats like being the heaviest person to base jump, meeting Obama, dead-lifting 500lbs on his 50th birthday, running a marathon with asthma and we learn what made all this possible. Every year he does an annual challenge which are pretty gnarly. 

    Greg is a 20 year startup veteran and  serial entrepreneur with 14 liquidity events under his belt in BioTech, TransitTech, AdTech and MarTech industries, two of which were sold as  part of a $925M transaction that won 4 private equity awards for  transactions between $250M-$1B

    Greg recommends starting with the end in mind so you'll be able to back into your goals. 

    1 hr 8 min
  • Hip Hop Artist to Attorney: Jim Narvios
    For this week’s episode, I bring on my cousin, Jim Narvios founder and attorney at Narvios Law Firm. Find out what inspired the leap from performing on stage as Rocko Stedy to fighting for clients’ cases in court. Be sure to follow @filipinoattorney to keep up with Jim’s journey or hit up Narvios Law Firm. We discover that motivation can come from failure and that your distinct creativity sometimes means you have to make your own company, corporation, and in Jim's case own law firm.
    1 hr
  • Information Security as a Service: Girish Redekar CEO of Sprinto (Backed by Accel)

    Meet Girish Redekar, he founded Sprinto to ensure software companies meet information security compliance requirements like GDPR, HIPPA, SOC2 without having to hire a consultant. Sprinto’s software does most of the work. We find out how security can be a sales asset in that it can allow deals to be approved faster and enhance a product's overall performance.  

    We hear about Sprinto raising from Accel, Blume Ventures, and Elevation Capital as well valuable tips for startups like going from months to days to get something done or enhance a product.

    Girish talks about how his mindset towards business changed once he became a founder, learning that startups actually grow the size of the economic pie. 

    53 min
  • Quitting Google to Be a Content Creator & Entrepreneur Stefanie Pinsley: Roadmap to Rise
    My guest today is Stefanie Pinsley, now known for her TikToks around marketing and entrepreneur mindset hacks. She's scaled her following on TikTok to 70k. Stef left Google to be a content creator (TikToker) and entrepreneur mindset coach. 
    Currently Stef is an personal branding coach for her own company Roadmap to Rise and you can check it here.
    We have thought filled discussion on the content creator lifestyle, building a personal brand, being a coach, and most importantly finding happiness and fulfillment in her career. Follow Stef @stef.pinsley on TikTok and Instagram. We learn that the value of your self worth doesn't come from what school you went to or what company you work for but instead how you align your passion with your purpose.
    We also touch on the emotional cycle of change and what you can do to make great content.
    Be sure to follow us on social @startupmindsetspod and subscribe to stay up to date!
    49 min
  • Mendoza Ventures’ Senofer Mendoza on investing in minority entrepreneurs
    On International Women's Day, 3/8, we welcome Senofer Mendoza to the podcast! Senofer and Adrian Mendoza started Mendoza Ventures to address the funding gap in the pre-seed investment stage for underrepresented founders.
    Senofer founded the first LatinX venture capital firm on the East Coast in 2016 and has since been leading the charge for investing in more diverse founders ever since! She is a former enterprise sales executive selling into large brands including Marriott, Fairmont, and Starwood. On today's show we catch up on market trends and have a thought based discussion on why there is a lack of real diversity in the tech industry and why women and minorities don't receive funding as easily. 
    *What you can do to invest in women without being a VC 
    * That the ideal pie chart for diversity looks like the census
    Pitch Mendoza Ventures
    39 min
  • Changing How Companies Sort & Understand Their Data with Ahmed CEO/Founder of Narrator YC S'19

    Ahmed Elsamidisi founded Narrator.ai when he experienced the problem of not knowing how to answer/taking too long to answer data queries at WeWork as a Data Engineer. He realized that he had to be the one to solve this problem after talking to companies who might be solving this but weren't. In the episode we discuss Ahmed's "Ah ha" moment💡, Getting into YCombinator, Living with your co-founders in the same house, funny stories while pitching venture capitalists and customers, and much more! We welcome guest host, Jovanni Lara, to go more in depth about the product and his experience trying to make sense of data. 

    Narrator  powers self-service analytics across all your data. It allows anyone to  get answers in minutes instead of weeks, using the same data as your  data team. Narrator helps your data team build a full customer 360 that covers every interaction customers have with your business (opened  emails, paid invoices, new support tickets, etc...), Anyone can answer quick questions and self-serve requests across all  your data without needing SQL and then integrate that data with your  existing tools (spreadsheets, BI, and SaaS tools like email providers). Provide the foundation for a comprehensive self-service experience for your company by going to Narrator.ai



    55 min
  • Freddie Van Huynh's Story of Creating & Scaling Absolute Internship
    Freddie Van Huynh has an incredible story, you've got to hear about. Born in Sweden as the son of Cambodian immigrants Freddie had a unique upbringing. Combining his love for travel and providing others opportunities led him to found Absolute Internship.  Fred has been to 50+ countries, speaks 7 languages,and practices Jiu Jitsu regularly. 
     He details his experience founding Absolute Internship, an international internship program for university students looking to intern abroad.  Not being able to take out salary until year 4 of founding the company, Freddie talks about living cheaply and often eating $2 pasta while chasing his dream. The journey wasn't easy, however, today Absolute Internship is one of the world's top international internship providers in the world having served 2,000+ students in more than 10 countries. 
    (26:50) NOTHING GROWS IN YOUR COMFORT ZONE
    Get 30% Startup & Small Business Accounting with our partner BENCH Accounting Here.
    44 min
  • Building The Twilio For Fintech: Solid CEO Arjun Thyagarajan
    Arjun founded Solid in 2019 with the idea that they could enable every company to offer their own suite of fintech services. With every company thinking about how to create their own experiences powered by fintech, Arjun and team saw an opportunity to build the layer that powers this.  On today's show, we discuss (5:29) Fintech as a service, the value of companies owning the fintech experience for its customers (14:19)  Transitioning from seed to series A (18:09) Valuing investor feedback Solid offers a fully integrated & compliant suite of FinTech services. Integrate in minutes to build never-before-seen experiences.
    33 min
  • Arnaud Henneville Wedholm Author of How Hard Can It Be: Lessons From Trying to Take Down Facebook

    How Hard Can It Be author, Arnaud Henneville Wedholm, joins startup mindsets to talk about his new book, How Hard Can It Be, Lessons From Trying to Take Down Facebook. Inspired from his efforts to build a startup that would be better than Facebook. Arnaud tells his story on how his startup, InternalDesk, became a "Broken Unicorn." We hear about what it's like to struggle as an entrepreneur and why success comes from trying and failing. InternalDesk was created to incentivize people to complete challenges to better themselves.

    Noteworthy Discussion Points

    • The Social Media "Like" is the modern day tiger. 
    • Why we should seek failure so we can prepare for it more.
    • Overcoming fear and mental blocks 
    • Why motivation comes from within and relating to purpose.

      • Learn more about Arnaud and purchase his book: https://howhardcanitbethebook.com or at Amazon & Barnes & Noble.

      45 min
    • David Ongchoco: Founder, Investor, Operator

      Earl met David when he was in high school in the Philippines starting YouthHack, an international nonprofit helping students learn how to code in the Philippines. We discover the success a simple cold email to Huffington Post could have where he ended up becoming a contributing writer in college. David’s also been a part of Dorm Room Fund, First Round Capital’s fund for university entrepreneurs, Growth and Analytics at Amplitude and a recent investor and now operator at Rutter building the e-commerce API layer.



      37 min

    About Startup Mindsets

    From the publisher's feed

    Welcome to Startup Mindsets! Dan Gonzales is your host! Each week, we'll dive into how founders across technology and innovation leaders think about running their business and why entrepreneurship is important in today's world. Subscribe & discover your Startup Mindset today!