The Thread Podcast

Cody Candee, CEO of Bounce joins us to talk about:
-  How global travel unlocked his insight to found Bounce, and how he convinced total strangers to hand over and store their things with him for cash.   
- Cody's experience building a company that was dependent on travel in the midst of global travel lockdowns, and how his team persevered through that.  
- The signals that gave Cody and his team conviction to keep going, and how taking a 'helpful' approach to building solutions for their SMB customers unlocked new opportunities.
- Tactics on establishing and maintaining network effects at the earliest stages of founding your company.

Jassim Latif, Cofounder of Zipper and formerly Slack's first Platform and BD hire, joins the pod to talk about.
- Reflecting on the early days at Slack.
- Building an early ecosystem and raising capital on someone else's platform.  
-  Gathering insights to build Zipper and unlock cross functional teams.
-  The boldest things founders have done to get on Jassim's radar and hacks to get on larger platforms' radars.

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 Aquabyte, an AI Aquaculture company, to unpack their $25M Series B round and analyzes the market opportunity that technology has in the commercial fishing industry. 

Veronica Belmont, Product & Evangelism leader at Adobe (and Disco's first hire!)  joins the show  to share some insight into:

• How we convinced her to join as our first product hire.
• How values, culture, and company mission played into her selection criteria when joining our startup.  
• The value of onboarding employees through the lens of customer support to gain empathy
• Recommendations on how to build and foster community at the earliest stages.

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 StyleScan, a virtual dressing room, to unpack their $1M seed round and analyzes the market opportunity in fashion tech to decide whether or not he'd invest.  

This episode features cofounder of strongDM, Schuyler Brown as he shares his story on how strongDM raised its first round of financing BEFORE building their product.  He also talks about turning down his offer to join YC, the time they almost gave away a car to build hype, and how to run a fundraising process that maximizes your startup value.

This episode features legendary 500 Startups pitch coach and founder of sexual wellness company, O.school, Andrea Barrica where we talk about
- The psychology behind the founder's pitch
- How timing and hype cycles influence pitch strategy.
- The similarities behind selling money and sex