The Thread Podcast

Rajat Suri, CEO and Co founder of Presto and previous Co founder of Lyft joins the show to talk about:

• The customer insight that led to starting Zimride (aka Lyft)
• "Fork in the road" moments that have defined Raj's career as an entrepreneur.
• The thought process that led Raj to drop out of MIT to wait tables in a restaurant, and ultimately found Presto.
• Raj's decision to take Presto public and what that process looked like.
• Presto's position as an anti-metaverse idea and opportunities for automation in the physical world.

Roger Obando, CTO at Loyalsnap and Co founder of Baker Technologies (acquired by TILT Holdings), joins the show to talk about

• The evolution of the cannabis space, customer segmentation in weed, and the customer profile of the Chardonnay mom!
• Roger and team's experience raising capital for Baker, and his experience authoring his book, "The Highest Common Denominator", 
• The differences of being a CTO that takes a company from 0 to 1 and a CTO that takes a company from 1 to 100 (and beyond).

Bill Clerico, Founder and Managing Partner at Convective Capital, and Co founder and CEO of WePay, joins the show to talk about

• Building companies in a recession and Bill's model for evaluating investment opportunities.
• How Bill and his team uncovered PM fit for WePay, and the signals that helped WePay make the transition from a consumer to B2B company.
• Current state of the payments industry and picking categories that are less evolved for disruption.
• Hiring the right profile of employee for the right stage of your venture.
• Bill's advice for navigating the fundraising market over the next 18 months as a startup founder, and why more founders should be building in climate, and more specifically, fire tech.

Brian Wang, founder and executive coach at Dashing Leadership joins the show to talk about:

• The similarities and differences of starting a venture backed startup and a coaching and services business.
• How early stage startup founders and leaders can get the best out of their people, specifically creating an environment that encourages risk taking and setting a clear short term AND long term vision.
• How founders can build more successful relationships with their investors and the importance of pushing back and embracing difficult conversations with your investors.

Cam Doody, Co founder and GP of the Brickyard, joins the show to talk about:

• Cam's first successful venture, Bellhop, and how he scaled one of the fastest growing companies in the moving industry. 
• Brickyard's approach to accelerating and "insulating" great companies
• The benefit of relocating your early team to an island and the importance of physically working together in the early stages of building your culture and company.
• The best advice I've heard someone offer a founder when going through the grind, courtesy of Mr. Doody Sr.

AJ Forsythe and Jordan Barnes, Co founders of Coop, join the show to talk about

• Building the world's largest decentralized food network.
• The future of AgTech and putting automated agriculture systems on the moon.
• Pros and Cons of raising (and then being asked to spend) Venture Capital.
• Most importantly, unpacking what a cheese factory is all about.

Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, CEO and Co founder of Polymath Robotics, joins the show to talk about

• The importance of timing when tackling an emerging category.
• How Polymath thinks about customer segmentation and the customer profile(s) it's solving for.
• Finding the right technical co founder and building a strong engineering team.
• Opportunities for automation in specific verticals and the future and role of robots over the next 50 years.

Troy Vosseller, Co founder of the Gener8tor accelerator and Co founder of Sconnie Nation joins the show to talk about

• Troy's experience founding a startup accelerator, and the similarities and differences of being an entrepreneur and investor.
• The story behind Sconnie Nation and how Troy established a meaningful and lasting brand.
• How Troy got into the business of selling his own brand of beer, and how he thinks about category expansion.

• How Filmhub approached the BD and enterprise sales process to secure distrubtion deals with incredible partners like Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.
• The importance of focusing on partners that have high growth potential, versus only focusing on partners with the greatest market share.
• The future of the film and entertainment industry, democratizing film production, and spitballing ideas for TV series that could be huge (or fail miserably)

Anu Shukla, Co founder and Executive Chairman of Botco.ai, joins the show to talk about:
- The keys to finding product market fit as an entrepreneur, and her experience finding product market fit, multiple times, in various market conditions.
- Anu's experiences as a pioneer in the marketing automation space, as well as the ups and downs of building on someone else's platform. 
- Anu's evolution as an entrepreneur from a specialist to a portfolio aSaaSin.