The Thread Podcast

On the aSaaSins 'Money Morning Quarterback' segment, our host Justin Vandehey breaks down the companies that raised their Seed, Series A, or Series B round of funding the prior week.

This week, Justin plays 'Money Morning Quarterback' with Pano AI, a hardware and software platform that helps fire professionals detect threats and respond to fire emergencies faster.   He unpacks their $20M Series A and the opportunity that Pano has to help fight wildfires.

Laura McGee, CEO and Co founder of Diversio joins the show to talk about
- Laura's experience raising capital for Diversio.
- How she bootstrapped the company to profitability before raising capital.
- The current state of the technology industry as it pertains to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

On the aSaaSins 'Money Morning Quarterback' segment, our hosts Justin Vandehey and Chris Yeh break down the companies that raised their Seed, Series A, or Series B round of funding the prior week.

This week, Justin and Chris play 'Money Morning Quarterback' with Verkada, an enterprise building security company, and Tract, a community and content marketplace for student-directed learning. They unpack Verkada's $205M round and Tract's $7M round. 

Christine Tao, CEO and Cofounder of SoundingBoard joins the aSaaSins Podcast to discuss:
- The future of leadership coaching and disrupting a category that has traditionally been limited to the highest earners in society.
- The challenges she faced when raising her seed round and additional challenges that female founders face when raising venture capital.
- The differences between raising SoundingBoard's Series B vs. their Seed and Series A. 
- How Christine built SoundingBoard's initial network of leadership coaches, and importance of experience quality when building out the hard side of their network.

On the aSaaSins 'Money Morning Quarterback' segment, our host Justin Vandehey breaks down the companies that raised their Seed, Series A, or Series B round of funding the prior week.

This week, Justin plays 'Money Morning Quarterback' with Muck Rack, a Public Relations Management platform.   He unpacks their $180M growth equity round and analyzes the opportunity in the media intelligence and PR space. 

Dan Reich, Co founder and CEO of Troops.ai joins the show to talk about:

• The story behind founding Troops and the sale of Troops to Slack.
• The story behind founding TULA, an industry leader in the skincare business, and the sale of TULA to P&G.
• The biggest differences and surprising similarities of running an enterprise SaaS business and D2C skincare company (and how to apply best practices across both business types to one another)
• His perspective on managing stress and pressure as an entrepreneur, and the importance of "thinking bigger" when building your business.

On the aSaaSins 'Money Morning Quarterback' segment, our host Justin Vandehey breaks down the companies that raised their Seed, Series A, or Series B round of funding the prior week.

This week, Justin plays 'Money Morning Quarterback' with Yesler, a lumber and building materials marketplace.   He unpacks their $5M round and analyzes the opportunity in the lumber management space.

Marvin Liao, Founder and Partner of Diaspora Ventures and formerly a General Partner at 500 Startups joins the aSaaSins podcast to talk about. 

- What are Marvin's assessment criteria for investing in pre-seed and seed stage companies.

- How long after a company joined 500 Startups did he know if a company was going to make it or not, and what differentiated those that made it from those that didn't.  

- How the incubator model is changing and evolving, and what this means for the future of seed stage companies going through incubator programs.

- How to improve your odds at getting accepted into an early stage accelerator, and alternative approaches and options founders can take to get support to go from zero to one.  

On the aSaaSins 'Money Morning Quarterback' segment, our host Justin Vandehey breaks down the companies that raised their Seed, Series A, or Series B round of funding the prior week.

This week, Justin plays 'Money Morning Quarterback' with CurbWaste, a waste management and business operations platform for physical waste haulers.   He unpacks their $6M seed round and analyzes the opportunity in the waste management space.

Jon Fasoli, Chief Product Officer of Mailchimp, joins the aSaaSins podcast to talk about.
- How he assesses the professional opportunities and projects that he invests his time and energy into.
- His experience running the product strategy for Intuit's $12B acquisition of Mailchimp.
- Future growth drivers and industries of interest for Intuit.
- Intuit's framework of 'horizon planning' and how early stage founders can use this framework to evaluate the progress they're making with their venture.