In this episode of How Things Grow, we revisit the early days or ridesharing - and look at how bikesharing is beginning to evolve. My guest today is my good friend Dan Riaz. Dan’s had a checkered career and an interesting life. Dan managed mobile acquisition at Zynga just when Zynga started to shift its business from web to mobile. He then joined Lyft when they were in just 4 cities to head up their mobile user acquisition. At Lyft, he saw from close up the ascension of the ridesharing industry - and its emergence as the widespread mass market phenomenon it is today. Subsequently, while he was at 500 startups, he worked with Grab Taxi in South East Asia, and catalysed the growth of ridesharing in South East Asia. Afterward, he worked with the bikesharing company Limebike, where he helped drive the early adoption of bikesharing.   Dan has been close to the action from the early days of ridesharing and bikesharing. He brings some amazing stories from the time ridesharing was practically at risk of being shut down by the law - to its rapid growth to being an integral part of our lives today. Dan brings a rare level of insight into the very many non-obvious forces that drive the economics of transportation that moves our world today. I’m very excited to bring to you this amazing interview with Dan!

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/early-days-ridesharing-dan-riazscaleup-labs-500-startups-ex-lyft-ex-zynga/

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    Welcome to this week’s episode of How Things Grow! In this episode we explore the business of conferences, and of bringing people together. My guest today is Jay Weintraub, who is a true master of the art of the conference. Jay is a man who has started and grown 5 conferences in wildly different industries - mobile apps, call marketing, HR, lead generation and insurance. His conferences are such well-oiled machines and attended by thousands of people - and I’ve always wanted to sit down with him to ask him about what makes conference-businesses tick. Irrespective of whether you’ve attended conferences yourself - or merely passed by a trade show or a convention center and wondered why these halls seem packed to the gills, you’ll learn what goes on behind the scenes in a business that is structured around bringing people together. More importantly, Jay will talk about his own journey from being a first-time conference organizer to his second act to where he is now, organizing 5 conferences a year. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Jay is also an angel investor with over 30 investments and 5 exits. Jay is indeed a man of many parts - and one big reason I brought him on was simply to showcase the clarity of his thinking and his inner monologue during some of his biggest inflection points.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/art-conference-jay-weintraubgrow-co-mobile-apps-unlocked-contact-io-insuretech-connect-feathr-hrtech-connect/

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Welcome to this week’s episode of How Things Grow! In this episode we dive into the mechanics of ‘invite a friend’ flows - or referral marketing, testing ideas quickly and much much more. My guest today is the amazing Dominic 'DistroDom' Coryell. Dom founded his first company GarmentValet while he was still in college. He then founded the Talkable, which is one of the leading referral marketing companies in the world. He then became a partner at 500 startups, in which capacity he advised hundreds of startups on their growth. In his most recent role, he works as the VP Growth for the global shopping platform Grabr. Every time I meet him, he’s working on multiple new ideas and projects. In today’s episode, we talk about so much. We dive into how Dom recommends testing ideas quickly with minimal engineering effort. Dom gives some great examples, including one where he nonchalantly started a food delivery business over a weekend. We talk extensively about referral marketing - the ‘invite a friend’ offers that you see all over the internet and on your phones. We explore why the ‘invite-a-friend’ offers work, and how some of the smartest companies in the world structure their invite-a-friend referral programs so as to make a dramatic difference in their businesses. This is very much a masterclass on referrals - or invite-a-friend flows, which can often be innocuous yet very powerful parts of most digital businesses today.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/invite-a-friend-flows-referral-marketing-dominic-distrodom-coryell/

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Welcome to this week’s episode of How Things Grow! In this episode we dive into the nuances of how products go viral, about how companies and cultures are built for the long term - and much much more. My guest today is the amazing and wise Selina Tobaccowala, one of the most respected leaders in the Silicon Valley. She’s had an uncanny knack of reinventing herself, starting over and succeeding time and again. Selina co-founded Evite right after she graduated from Stanford, which was acquired by IAC. She then worked as the SVP of Product & Technology at Ticketmaster Europe. In her next role she joined SurveyMonkey as President & CTO when it was a 20 person team - and helped grow its revenues over 10x in the next 5 years. She is now a co-founder at her most recent venture Gixo. In today’s episode, we talk about it was like during the first internet boom when Selina started her first business Evite. We dive into the nuances of virality and freemium models. We also talk quite a bit about Dave Goldberg, the former CEO of SurveyMonkey who was a mentor to Selina. We go into health, the psychology of fitness - and how Selina’s new startup Gixo leverages both consumer psychology and technology to help people get fit.  This is a wide-ranging, in-depth conversation that I'm excited to bring to you this week!

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/surveys-invites-surveymonkey-evite-selina-tobaccowala-gixo/

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  It's finally here! After months of procrastination and fantasizing - and many more months of eventual research, reachouts, edits and agonizing.... the first episode of the How Things Grow podcast is here! My guest today is a man whom I’ve admired for a long time. Adam Lovallo runs some of the best-attended conferences in the mobile apps space.But before Adam started his first conference, he cut his teeth in the whirlwind that was the daily deals space. He worked at LivingSocial, where he came in as an intern - and grew to be the Head of User Acquisition & Growth, managing 9 figure budgets and a team of 15 people. He saw the company grow from 4 people to 5000 people. He saw from close up the meteoric rise, slowdown, crash and steady-state settling of the daily deals space. We dive into so many things - including, surprisingly, the hyper-viral growth of early Facebook apps. Keep listening to find out why we go there. :).

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/1-rise-decline-settling-daily-deals-adam-lovallo-grow-co-ex-livingsocial/

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How Things Grow tells the stories of the people who help companies, technologies and economic systems take off.  Each episode features an interview with one of the leading growth practitioners, entrepreneurs, experts or historians in the world today.   How Things Grow is presented by Shamanth Rao, mobile growth leader and writer. Shamanth is the VP of Growth at FreshPlanet, and led or managed growth leading up to two acquisitions in the past. He also was the travel editor of Mint Lounge(formerly partner newspaper of Wall Street Journal in India) - and has produced many acclaimed feature-length pieces as a writer. 

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