The Mentors

When Nigel Eccles met his technical co-founders at a networking event in Scotland, he didn't know they'd be running a $400 million business together a few years later. The team started building a political prediction app in 2007, but eventually pivoted into a fantasy sports betting business when they saw a much bigger opportunity in the space after attending SXSW and getting some inspiration from their early customers. Now Nigel and his team are disrupting another industry - podcasting. 

In part one of our interview with Nigel we talk about the early days of his career as a management consultant and how he landed a product management gig at a tech startup that inspired him to become an entrepreneur. Nigel discusses how he was able to quickly put together a founding team for his first startup idea after helping two engineers work on their business concept for six months. 

We also talk about some of the mistakes that Nigel made with his first startup, Hubdub, and why he decided that the business needed a drastic change if it was going to survive. 

In next week's episode Nigel describes how focusing on the team's strength and learning to listen to the market helped them pivot into a billion dollar opportunity with FanDuel, and the new opportunity he's identified in building communities of podcast listeners with his company Flick. If you're a listener and you want to join The Mentors community on Flick, click here.

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It's never too late to try something new, and for us this week that's improv. The first lesson that you learn in improv is that saying "yes, and..." is crucial for developing interesting ideas. 

The concept seems simple. You agree with anything that's happening in the scene and any idea that's introduced by someone else even if you thought it was going in a different direction. In practice, it takes a little while getting used to because in every day dialogue we tend to prioritize our ideas over others. 

In this episode we discuss why saying yes is an effective tool in any creative exercise, especially when brainstorming ideas for something. We give specific examples of how this technique can be used to generate new ideas, and how we used it this week to put together a presentation for a talk we're giving on Wednesday.

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When Dan Porter started his second company he had every intention of building a massive business and getting rich. In 2013, after creating one of the most viral mobile games on the planet he achieved his goal and sold his business to Zynga for $183 million. And now he plans to go even bigger with his new company Overtime. 

We got a chance to hear him speak last week to a small group of entrepreneurs that Sergei works with at the eLab at NYU, and we were inspired to share some of the insights and wisdom that Dan bestowed on us during his 60 minute conversation with the group. 

In this episode you will learn: 

1) How to compete with massive established companies and win

2) How to make products designed for a niche group, mainstream

3) The importance of relationships and how to cultivate them

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The founders of Facebook, Slack, and Twitter all started off building something completely different. How is it that they stumbled into creating some of the fastest growing and most impactful products of our generation? 

In this week's 5 Minute Pick Me Up we discuss why you should simply focus on getting started on creating something instead of waiting for some big idea to strike, and how opportunities eventually start presenting themselves once you're in motion.

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A lot of people want to start something, but most never actually do. Why? They simply don’t want it or need it enough, and find happiness in other ways.

But, some of us never get started for a handful of simple reasons.

• We don’t know what we want to do.
• We don’t know our own strengths.
• We doubt ourselves.
• We worry about what others think.

Fortunately, all of these obstacles can be overcome. In this episode, we discuss how to reframe your thinking to finally start acting towards your goals and dreams. We share our exact framework for getting out of the “funk” when you get to a point in your life when you’re constantly feeling unfulfilled.

We also give you specific examples of how we identified and improved on our respective strengths to gain the confidence to create.

Hear Sergei talk about how he got into acting, eventually landing a paid speaking role at an ABC pilot, and how Vadim became a lecturer at a University having never before taught in an academic setting.

The feeling of being stuck in your life can have a major impact on your overall happiness – follow these steps to quickly get out of that state of mind to continue to progress.

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Books can have the best mentorship moments. This week we have a story about Boris Berezovsky from The Oligarchs by David E. Hoffman. We recorded this episode on our drive from Boston to New York City this Sunday, so lucky for you Sergei's Nissan 300ZX makes a guest appearance. 

In this episode we discuss how it was possible for a career academic to become a billionaire, and how the same thing can be done today to create opportunities. 

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When you're inventing something completely new you don't have the benefit of following someone else's blueprint. So how do you know if you're on the right track? Patience, and good old fashioned trial and error. Within a few short years of coming up with his innovation for gluten free freshly baked bread, Tristaun LeClaire and his brother grew their business to half a million dollars in revenue and distribution in major stores like Whole Foods, but the business almost failed before they got their first major distributor. 

In our second interview recorded live at the FounderMade Discovery Show we chat with the founder of Simple Kneads about how he came up with the idea for his company, and the immediate demand he saw from the gluten intolerant community. We also talk about what happened when the company moved to North Carolina and hit a major obstacle when trying to scale production.  

Tristaun details how he got through that difficult moment, where they found their initial capital, and what the brothers did to get on the shelves of large distributors that quickly started generating cash flow for the business.

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People don't think their way into acting differently, they act their way into thinking differently. We recently heard that advice on the Armchair Expert podcast, and it reminded us of a story about our late dad. 

In this episode we talk about how after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 72 and not working for over a year our dad ended up creating a job opportunity for himself when he decided to go back to work. 

We all come up with excuses that prevent us from acting, but how can we break out of that cycle? In this episode you will learn how to:

1. Make it harder for yourself to not follow through 
2. Give yourself a good enough reason to act now

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How do you take an idea for a new hardware innovation and attract funding for it? You have to start with the prototype. In part two of our interview with Kevin Yoo we find out how the founder of WearWorks became so inspired to work on the R&D for his product for several years, getting accepted into BMW's URBAN-X accelerator and attracting half a million dollars in grants and investment in the process.

We discuss the importance of branding, especially for a physical product where the experience of the consumer begins when they first interact with the brand, heavily influencing how they feel when they first handle the product. Kevin also tells us why he would be happy to work on this business for the rest of his life, and the vision he sees for the future of navigation and his company. 

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This week we were invited to attend the FounderMade Discovery Show in NYC where hundreds of founders of consumer brands in food, beauty, nutrition and more showcased their products to consumers and store buyers in a huge exhibition downtown. 

In this edition of the 5 Minute Pick Me Up, we let you listen in on some takeaways from Christine Saleh, the founder of Skinvolve, who started her beauty brand with her sisters in Miami, and told us exactly how she grew the company to ultimately get on the shelves of Anthropologie. She also shared a unique distribution channel that she found to get the product in front of millions of potential customers. 

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