In this week’s special *bonus episode* executive coach Jason Gore quizzes Louis about his own experience being coached.

 

If you haven’t yet, you can listen to Jason’s full episode on executive coaching here. 

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @ https://rocketplace.com/blog/podcast-episode-6-bonus-executive-coach-jason-gore/. 

 

[Guest / Host bios] 

 

Guest: Jason Gore is half of the founding team of Neuberg, Gore & Associates, an executive coaching firm that supports startup CEOs in Boulder, SF, NYC and LA. 

 

Host: Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. When he's not building businesses (or talking about them!) Louis enjoys cooking for his family and talking at length about it to anyone who will listen. 

 

www.rocketplace.com/podcast

Jason Gore knows about change. As an executive coach, he’s guided executives in startupland through a recession, a boom, and most recently, a pandemic. This week Jason joins Louis to talk about his decades in the coaching business and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

 

Highlights include:

-Jason’s path from management consultant to executive coach

-The tricky relationship between VCs, coaches and CEOs

-The upsides (and downsides) of the co-founder relationship, and how to create space for disagreement 

-The biggest issues facing many of today’s startup CEOs 

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @ www.rocketplace.com/podcast. 

 

[Guest / Host bios] 

 

Guest: Jason Gore is half of the founding team of Neuberg, Gore & Associates, an executive coaching firm that supports startup CEOs in Boulder, SF, NYC and LA. 

 

Host: Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. When he's not building businesses (or talking about them!) Louis enjoys cooking for his family and talking at length about it to anyone who will listen. 

 

www.rocketplace.com/podcast

There’s no shortage of things that can go wrong when you’re a founder just starting up. Cashflow issues. Botched patents. That one time you literally ran out of product.

 

Few people understand this as well as Jessica Davidoff. She’s built a business around expecting these kinds of mistakes and stopping them before they happen.

 

Sprezzatura, a business and production management company, helps startups at every stage, from pre-launch ideation, to fundraising, financial planning, production pipelines and more.

 

We talked to Jessica about the strange art of starting up and how 2020 has complicated that alchemy.

 

Highlights include:

-The biggest hurdles for early-stage founders and how to avoid them

-Changing trends in entrepreneurship

-Financial planning considerations for 2020 & 2021 and how to think about runway in uncertain times

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @ https://rocketplace.com/blog/podcast-the-wolf-jessica-davidoff/.

 

[Guest / Host Bios]

 

Guest: Jessica Davidoff is the CEO and Managing Partner of Sprezzatura, a business and production management company in NYC. An experienced founder and a turnaround CEO, Jessica is known by her friends and colleagues as ‘The Wolf.” If you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, you’ll know why.

 

Host: Rocketplace is a curated marketplace of high quality professional service providers. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. When he’s not working or podcasting, Louis enjoys cooking for his family. His pizza, he’d like you to know, is incredible.

Secret agents. International rendezvous. Big bags of money.

 

This week, a journey into the weird and wonderful world of domain brokerage with longtime expert, Bill Sweetman. Bill's business, Name Ninja, rode the wave as domain buying transformed from a cottage industry into a complex international market of (literally) unknowable size. He journeyed back — and took us along for the ride.

 

Highlights include:

- Why domain brokerage is a little like home-buying

- How NOT to acquire a domain name

- Current trends, including a COVID-19 uptick and social media handles

- How to pick a great domain name (and buy it!)

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @ https://rocketplace.com/blog/podcast-episode-4-who-owns-the-internet-bill-sweetman/. 

 

[Guest / Host bios] 

 

Guest: Bill Sweetman is the founder of Name Ninja, a company that helps entrepreneurs acquire domain names and social media handles. A self-confessed domain name fanatic, Bill registered his first domain in 1994. He later sold it for five figures.

 

Host: Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. When he's not building businesses (or talking about them!) Louis enjoys cooking for his family and talking at length about it to anyone who will listen.

 

www.rocketplace.com/podcast

Ilya’s Brotzky has a global mindset. A Canadian national, Brotzky was born in Israel to Russian parents, and after graduating from college in the US landed in Brazil, where the local tech talent pool surprised him. He went on to found VanHack, an HR startup, in 2014 to help companies meet tech talent around the globe, and as of this recording, there are more than 200,000 high-qualified tech professionals on the platform. Ilya joined Louis from his office in Vancouver to discuss the state of the industry at a moment of massive global change. 

 

Highlights include:

- A survey of global tech, including growing talent bases throughout Africa and South America

- The complicated US VISA process and how it differs from Canada’s

- What international hires are generally looking for in a country 

- Shifts in global hiring and the ramification of COVID-19 on the industry — including the uptick in remote work   

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @https://rocketplace.com/blog/hiring-globally-ilya-brotzky. 

 

[Guest / Host bios] 

 

Guest: Ilya Brotzky is the CEO and Co-Founder of VanHack, an HR startup that connects employers with more than 200,000 highly-qualified tech professionals around the world.

 

Host: Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. When he's not building businesses (or talking about them!) Louis enjoys cooking for his family and talking at length about it to anyone who will listen.

 

www.rocketplace.com/podcast

Daria Gonzales has a superpower: translation. 

 

The child of Russian and Cuban-born parents, Daria learned at a young age how to move between cultures, and later, between professions. She’s been an architect, a music booker, a travel journalist and a VC — and all of those experiences came together in creating Wunderdogs, a global design consultancy that helps bring cutting edge, often esoteric products to market. 

 

We talked to Daria about how her experience making sense of so much difference led to her success in branding, and why marketing matters more than ever at this moment, when things seem so complicated. 

 

Highlights include:

-Free & cheap marketing techniques all companies should be using right now  

-How to build a coherent brand around esoteric products like blockchain & AI  

-Current trends in branding and marketing 

-Daria’s top marketing tips for startups at this moment 

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @ www.rocketplace.com/podcast. 

 

[Guest / Host bios] 

 

Guest: Daria Gonzales is the co-founder & CEO (& “badass branding boss”) of Wunderdogs, a global design consultancy launched by ex-VCs and founders that works exclusively with technology-driven businesses.

 

Host: Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace, a curated marketplace of high quality professional service providers. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career at Andreessen Horowitz where he was a partner. When he's not working or podcasting, Louis enjoys baking for his family and makes a mean pizza.

 

www.rocketplace.com/podcast

Very few companies had the 2020 they expected. But is it all doom and gloom? According to Josh Withers, Founder and General Manager at True Search, no. 

 

This week on the podcast, Josh walks Louis through the year in search, including what companies are hiring for, and why — unexpectedly — so many search companies have been busier than ever. 

 

Highlights include:

- How to pick the right executive recruiter for your company 

- How remote teams are adapting & how hiring remotely has changed

- Current trends in search and executive leadership

- How True is making diversity a central element in all of their searches

 

More on today’s episode, including a full transcript @ https://rocketplace.com/blog/podcast-josh-withers-the-search-is-on 

 

[Guest / Host bios] 

 

Guest: Josh Withers is one of the founders of True Search and the general manager of True Search North America. He has more than 15 years of experience in executive search and is a specialist in the tech recruiting space.

 

Host: Louis Beryl is the founder and CEO of Rocketplace. A 3x founder, investor, and board member, Louis began his tech career as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. When he's not building businesses (or talking about them!) Louis enjoys cooking for his family and talking at length about it to anyone who will listen. 

 

www.rocketplace.com/podcast

Talking to the service providers on Rocketplace is the best part of my job. Their stories are incredible. Their tips are invaluable. Their jokes are…well, honestly the jokes are terrible, but you didn’t come for the comedy. 

So after months of talking with them and thinking “wow, someone should really be recording this” I did just that.

And now we have a podcast!

It’s a short thirty(ish)-minute series that explores sometimes obscure Rocketplace service areas like SEO or global recruiting through interviews with some of Rocketplace’s best providers.

We’ll also get to know these often hidden entrepreneurs, the ones behind so many great startups. What did they build and how did they do it? What were the hard parts and where do they see their industry heading next? (Plus much, much more.)

We’re calling it The Startup Stack, and it’s hosted by me, Louis Beryl. 

If you want to know how to secure a domain name, or when to hire a CFO, or what executives are talking to their coaches about mid-COVID-19 — we have the answers!

You’ll also hear a lot of great stories — and many (many) awful jokes. 

The show launches September 7th and we have new episodes weekly.

So give it a listen! And if you like it, subscribe. 

Talk to you soon.