The NFX Podcast

"Doubt what you know, be curious about what you don't, and update your views based on new data."

NFX partner Pete Flint recently got together with organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant to discuss his new book, Think Again, about the counterintuitive and competitive advantages of rethinking.

Adam and Pete share the frameworks for:
- Rethinking vs. Contrarian Thinking
- Techniques from the World’s Best Superforecasters
- Jeff Bezos’s 2×2 Decision Framework
- The Top Killers of Co-founder Relationships
- Why Confident Humility Is A Founder Superpower
- & more

Read the NFX Essay - https://www.nfx.com/post/anti-patterns-of-10x-thinking/

Today we're announcing NFX Bio, a new fund initiative led by some of biotech's most successful Founder/CEOs. Our mission is to back seed-stage companies building bio-platforms that solve the biggest challenges facing humanity.

NFX Bio is led by Omri Amirav Drory, Ph.D., Founder/CEO of Genome Compiler (acquired by Twist Bioscience). Joining him on the Investment Committee is Emily LeProust, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CEO of Twist Bioscience (TWST - NASDAQ), as well as NFX GP's James Currier and Gigi Levy-Weiss.

By combining software/data tech with biology, and by architecting businesses with a platform approach, a whole new future of possibilities is unlocked.

Information technology has dominated human progress for forty years. And the next phase is going to be led by Scientist-Founders who build info-tech powered bio companies. The rise of the Scientist-Founder is now.

In this closed-door conversation, Omri, Emily, and James break down what they’re looking for, and what Scientists need to master in order to be CEOs.

Read the full NFX Essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/launching-nfx-bio/

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

This essay was written and published by James Currier, General Partner at NFX.

Read the full article here: https://www.nfx.com/post/psychology-startup-growth/

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release multiple supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List.

David Skok joined Matrix Partners as a General Partner in May 2001. He has a wealth of experience running companies. David started his first company in 1977 at age 22. Since then David has founded a total of four separate companies and performed one turn-around. Three of these companies went public.

This post looks at how to create scalable pricing using multiple pricing axes, and discusses the different types of axes that can be used. David's featured article in this episode:
- Scalable Pricing: A Key Tool For SaaS Success

Read the full NFX pricing essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing/

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release multiple supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List.

This is a two-part episode including two essays from Tomasz Tunguz (Venture Capitalist at Redpoint). He is also a board member of Looker, ERPLY, Electric imp, inc., AxialMarket, Quantifind, Expensify, and more. Prior to joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google's social media monetization team, including the Google-MySpace partnership.

Tomasz's featured articles in this episode:
- Ten Years Worth of Learnings About Pricing
- There are Only 3 Pricing Strategies for Your Startup

Read the full NFX pricing essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing/

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List.

Ash Maurya is the author of Running Lean and the creator of the one-page business modelling tool Lean Canvas. His posts and advice have been featured in Inc., Forbes, and Fortune. He regularly hosts sold out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, and Capital Factory. He serves on the advisory board of a number of startups and has consulted to new and established companies. Author, creator of Lean Canvas, and founder of LEANSTACK.

Ash's featured article in this episode:
- My Experiments in Lean Pricing

Read the full NFX pricing essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing/

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List.

Sean Ellis is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and startup advisor. He is the CEO of GrowthHackers and was previously founder and CEO of Qualaroo, an automated user research tool. He attended the University of California, Davis and graduated in 1994.

"An optimal price allows the startup to grow at the fastest possible rate by maximizing profitable investments in customer acquisition programs and/or offering a free version to drive broad user adoption."

Sean's featured article in this episode:
- How to Determine the Optimal Price for Your Web Service

Read the full NFX pricing essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing/

Madhavan Ramanujam is a legendary “pricing whisperer” among tech unicorns including Trulia, Etsy, Uber, Amazon, Evernote, and more. He is the author of 'Monetizing Innovation' and a partner at Simon-Kucher.

Today, Madhavan and Pete (General Partner at NFX) are sharing the frameworks, tactics, and hidden truths Founders need to know about pricing - and how, when done correctly, it can dramatically lever-up growth. Madhavan and Pete discuss topics in the pricing world like how:

- Pricing is a blindspot for startups.
- How to Test Willingness-to-Pay
- Acceptable, Expensive, or Prohibitively Expensive?
- How To Think About Pricing During Extreme Swings
- What to do when customer demand is spiking
- What to do when you are losing demand
- Think creatively about value and market share in a downturn
- How You Charge > How Much You Charge
- Five Monetization Models That Work, Time And Time Again
- Subscription
- Dynamic Pricing
- Market-Based Pricing
- Freemium
- Why 72% of Attempts to Monetize Innovation Fail
- The 4 Ways Your Monetization Fails
- Feature Shock
- Minivation
- Hidden Gems
- Undead
- Frameworks for Avoiding Monetizing Innovation Failures
- P.S. Pricing Principles Applied to Life

Madhavan also walks us through some never before heard pricing case studies on companies he's worked with like:
- Etsy
- Uber
- Amazon
- Evernote

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

Originally written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s original white paper titled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' was released over 12 years ago. Considered the most seminal piece of work in the cryptocurrency movement, the Bitcoin White Paper outlines blockchain technology and the entire decentralized revolution.

The content of this 9-page document incited what can only be described as a revolution in the world of fintech. More relevantly, Bitcoin’s white paper laid out an inspiring new definition of money at a time when faith in the traditional financial system was still being salvaged.

Satoshi launched the first Bitcoin client in early 2009 and then handed the project off to the community in 2010, where it has since thrived as the open-source of study, work, and fascination for millions across the globe. Today we bring this infamous memo to The Founders' List so you have a chance to listen to his original outline of such a world-changing idea. Examining the white paper origins is a great exercise in understanding why Bitcoin has the influence it has in today's world. Satoshi Nakamoto’s blueprint is the official “birth certificate” of Bitcoin.

Read the white paper here - https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

This is The Founders’ List – audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.

In 1960, David Packard gave an informal speech to the managers at HP that wasn’t intended for the public to hear. The speech resurfaced during the merger talks between Hewlett-Packard and Compaq. Packard addressed the overarching question of 'why HP exists' and shares insights on how to manage effectively, financial responsibility, and much more for someone to absorb and have a successful career.

You can find his speech in the book, 'The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company'.