The Thread Podcast

Henry Shi, Co founder of Super, joins the show to talk about

• Building a savings super app focussed on the everyday American, and Super's approach to customer segmentation.
• Henry and Hussein's approach to finding product market fit for their consumer focused startup, and Henry's thoughts on how this differs from finding PM fit in building a B2B company.
• Super's initial focus on the travel vertical, and what they learned in the process of shipping their first product that accelerated their business growth and expansion into other product verticals.
• How Super has secured $100M+ in financing and landed the real baby faced assassin Steph Curry, as an investor in the business.
• The product market model channel (PMMC) fit and getting all four right to build a hundred million dollar plus business.

David Booth, CEO of On Deck, joins the show to talk about:

• How On Deck helps founders get leverage on their time and lean into community to build exceptional companies, as well as how On Deck differs from traditional accelerators like YC and 500 Startups.
• David's "three edges" framework to evaluate On Deck's founder candidates, and evaluating the mindset that many founders have before taking the leap to start their companies
• The importance of building founder relationships and communities in-person, and the evolution of the "Sand Hill Road" entrepreneur.
• David's advice to founders and companies operating in our current market conditions, and who has the better job, founders or investors?

Jacob Jaber, Chairman and Co founder of Philz Coffee joins the show to talk about:

• The founder's story behind building one of the industry's most successful specialty coffee brands.
• Creating a culture of "Grandma's house hospitality" and a personalized approach to building product and delivering service to customers, one cup of coffee at a time.
• How Philz harnessed initial customer fandom and built the flywheel around the Phil's brand.
• The role of the Philz barista, finding and empowering great people to extend the culture you're creating.
• Competing against global coffee brands like Starbucks and Peets, disrupting the coffee space, and thinking big but acting small
• How a lost bag at an airport resulted in a game changing distribution deal with Virgin America.
• Jacob's focus as an investor and building companies and products that people have a personal relationship with.

Justin rounds out the week with a quick recap from the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and talks about

• The future of fan engagement and personalization in sports.
• The evolution of the athlete, player empowerment, and the "look at me" generation
• Leadership lessons from WNBA legend, Sue Bird, Miami Heat VP of Analytics, Shane Battier, and Celtics GM Brad Stevens.

Ben Emmrich, CEO and Co founder of Tusk joins the show to talk about:

• Disrupting FedEx and UPS with a better way to ship.
• The process Ben went through to sell and establish Tusk's first network partners.
• Diagnosing customer pain by checking the labels on the purchases we make every day.
• Ben's hustle selling dry ice and his approach to constructing monopolies. 

Jesse Lipson, CEO and Co founder of Levitate and ShareFile, joins the show to talk about

• Bootstrapping his SaaS company, ShareFile, to a $93M acquisition by Citrix.
• What the acquisition process looked like during the sale of ShareFile to Citrix.
• The keys to building successful companies with and without venture capital.
• Becoming the diagonal aSaaSin and dominating in categories that cut across verticals.
• Building really big businesses in the Raleigh tech scene.

Stephanie Bowker, Co Founder and CMO of Ourspace, joins the show to talk about

• The "people puzzle problem", and the biggest challenge individual contributors face as they transition to managers of people.
• The rise of the marketing aSaaSin and why marketers make great founders.
• Brand building and positioning during the stage of going from 0 to 1.
• The growth of the international tech scene and founding a company from Paris.

Bryant Chou, Co founder and CTO of Webflow, joins the show to talk about

• Bryant, Sergie and Vlad's journey to building a unicorn, and the three signals that gave Bryant conviction they were on to something really big with Webflow
• Bryant's suggestions for entrepreneurs looking for a technical co founder and traits of what makes an exceptional founding CTO
• Webflow's origins as a self-service business and how the company has matured into an enterprise grade solution

Bryan Tublin, Owner and Co Founder of Kitava, joins the show to talk about

• Taking the leap to leave a stable tech job to start a restaurant.
• How Bryan validated the concept for his restaurant by bringing soup to house parties.
• His process for gathering customer and employee feedback to inform his menu and dining experience
• Bryan's decision to expand Kitava to multiple locations and how he used partnerships to test new markets before going all-in.
• Gourmet PB&Js and growth hacking through pop-up stands and food trucks.

Howard Lerman, CEO and Co founder of Roam and Yext joins the show to talk about

• Building Yext, pivoting after $20M in ARR, and replacing the Yellow Pages
• Whether or not remote work is here to stay, the impact of the Zoom meeting boom, and the death of the recurring meeting with Roam.
• The importance of founder stock and making employees founders.