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 Incredible Health, a medical and health platform that connects health systems with nurses.   He unpacks their $80M Series B round and analyzes the healthcare technology industry's first health talent unicorn.

Daniel James, CEO of Zen, joins the aSaaSins podcast to discuss:
- How Daniel's experience transitioning from being a Division 1 collegiate athlete to a working professional led to the opportunity around improving posture at work.
- How Daniel and his team have navigated questions and concerns around privacy while building a solution that's providing real customer value.
- Daniel's focus around building an experience that meets employees where they work.

On the aSaaSins 'Money Morning Quarterback' segment, our hosts Justin Vandehey and special guest host 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 Boulevard, a platform that helps appointment based businesses (like Spas and Salons) streamline their operations, and Ben, an employee benefits and rewards platform.  They unpack Boulevard's $70M Series C and Ben's $16M Series A.

BJ Schaknowski, CEO of symplr joins the aSaaSins pod to talk about:
- How BJ helped me "flip the switch" from being a disengaged poor performer to becoming a top performer at Intuit.
- BJ's guidance on effective leadership and the importance of balancing the "what" (work output) with the "how" (how we accomplish those objectives).
- The importance of being direct and helping your teammates understand the "why" behind your actions.
- The value and importance of bringing your authentic self to work, maintaining a learning mindset, and building a diverse and balanced team.
- BJ's decision to join and lead symplr, his noble purpose, and the opportunity to achieve better health outcomes through the business he's building.
- What should first time founders be thinking about if they want to start a venture in healthcare.

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 Arena, a platform that helps large enterprises make high frequency decisions (like pricing and inventory) fully autonomously.   He unpacks their $32M Series A round and analyzes the market opportunity in the Big Data and Business Analytics space..

Ram Jambunathan, SVP and GM of SAP.io (SAP's strategic investment and incubation arm) joins the aSaaSins Podcast to discuss:
- Ram's experience as a founder, advisor and investor, and how those experiences have  shaped his approach to supporting early stage founders.
- What founders should think about when raising capital from strategic or corporate investors.
- The real incentives behind corporate strategic investment.
- How corporate development and M&A really work inside of a large enterprise software company.

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 Sage, a platform that helps improve care with better caregiver tools that ensures older adults receive individual care.  He unpacks their $9M Seed round and analyzes the market opportunity to improve the caregiver and resident experience inside assisted living facilities.

Jay Srinivasan, CEO of Spoke, joins the aSaaSins podcast to talk about.
- Going after large incumbents like ServiceNow, SAP, and Salesforce, and how he landed on the problem space for Spoke.
- The differences between being a second time aSaaSin vs. a first time aSaaSin, and what has been easier and harder about each venture.
- Advice he WOULDN'T offer to first time founders and when is the right time to sell your startup.
- The importance of product, go-to-market fit when scaling, and why this is more important than product-market fit.
- Walking through the acquisition process for Jay's two startups, Appurify (Google) and Spoke (Okta).

Summary:
- Ben shares how Octane thought about early traction channels and platform partners when launching their business.  Specifically their partnership with Shopify.
- He discusses the process he went through in writing and authoring his book, "Captivology".
- Ben provides suggestions on how entrepreneurs can tap into 7 different triggers to get above the noise and captivate audiences to grow their startups.
- How Ben got Rick Ross and DJ Khaled's attention.  

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 FairPlay, the world's first Fairness-as-a-Service company, to unpack their $10M Series A round and analyzes the market opportunity to make applying for a mortgage a more fair and transparent process.