Traction: How Startups Start | NextView Ventures

Will Ahmed is the CEO and co-founder of WHOOP, a fitness tech startup working with high-performance athletes. Their users include LeBron James, Michael Phelps, pro teams like the Boston Red Sox, and thanks to a deal with the NFL Players' Association, every pro football player across the nation.

Visit whoop.com to learn more, or follow Will twitter.com/wahmmys

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Ellen Chisa is VP of product at Lola, a travel company combining the human element of travel agents with smart technology. While some entrepreneurs build their products in markets that feel wide open for the taking, travel is one of those industries with tons of noise and competition. So how does one gain a foothold? How do you break through, build something BIG and DIFFERENTIATED? All that, and much more, in this episode.

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Visit http://lolatravel.com to learn more about the company and their product

Follow Ellen on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ellenchisa

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Adam Marchick, CEO of VoiceLabs, sees the disruptive force on the horizon that is voice technology. Whether it's voice-based apps or voice inputs and outputs, all of us in tech should be watching this trend, and Adam is at the forefront of it.

Adam has led a remarkable career, spanning six different startups and seven-plus years as an investor. Today, NextView business school intern Jenny Jao from HBS discusses the major lessons he's learned and why his trajectory was, in his words, "like catching a tiger by the tail."

Subscribe to the NextView blog for future episodes and more resources for seed-stage startups: nextviewvc.com/blog

Visit voicelabs.co to learn more about the company and their product

Follow Adam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adammStanford

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Chad Laurans is the CEO of SimpliSafe, a large and growing tech company located in the Boston area. Years ago, in the span of 30 days, three of Chad's friends were robbed. The companies that should serve them well in those moments were anything but helpful, comforting, and simple to work with. That led to Chad's thriving business today.

Today, we discuss how Chad built an Internet of Things-like product before that phrase existed, before the hype helps your marketing or fundraising, and before anyone was thinking about the connected home.

Subscribe to the NextView blog for future episodes and more resources for seed-stage startups: http://nextviewvc.com/blog

Visit http://simplisafe.com to learn more about the company and their product

Follow Jay on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jayacunzo

Listen to Jay's show about creativity in business: http://unthinkable.fm

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Dan Reich is the CEO and co-founder of Troops, a company bringing artificial intelligence to your sales team's workflow, right in Slack. (Disclosure: NextView is an investor in Troops.)

Today, we discuss Dan's smart process hiring his early technical talent -- both leadership and front-line developers.

Subscribe to the NextView blog for future episodes and more resources for seed-stage startups: http://nextviewvc.com/blog

Follow Dan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanReich

Follow Troops on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Troops

Visit http://troops.ai to learn more about the company and their product

Follow Jay on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jayacunzo

Listen to Jay's show about creativity in business: http://unthinkable.fm

Kristen Craft is VP of business development and marketing at Ovia Health. For this episode, Jay sat down with Kristen while she was head of biz dev at video platform company Wistia. They talk about what business development roles actually do for their companies, and when and why a founder would hire someone to lead up the function.

This is a deep, nuanced exploration of a job role that doesn't often fit as neatly into departmental categories as engineering, product, sales, or marketing. And Kristen is one of the best in the biz to discuss it.

Follow Kristen: http://twitter.com/thecrafty

Follow Jay: http://twitter.com/jayacunzo

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Mike Russell is the CEO and co-founder of Paintzen, a NextView-backed company based in New York. Over the last couple years, they've experienced strong growth for their marketplace business, and today, we dive deep into the weeds of how Mike and team grew the business. More specifically, we learn about the approach and tactics used to grow the supply side of the Paintzen marketplace.

Mike is a candid guy who was willing to share a ton of truth behind his business, as well as some very personal stories about a diagnosis that affected his life, an early customer and partner with a famous name, and more.

Visit http://paintzen.com to learn more

This episode features two concerned and proactive members of New York's tech-startup community laying bare the facts and solutions to the problem of diversity in the local tech workforce. On the show today, Tim talks to Alex Qin, Skillshare engineer and founder of Code Cooperative.

Follow Alex - http://twitter.com/alexqin

Follow Tim - http://twitter.com/jayacunzo

Follow NextView - http://twitter.com/nextviewvc

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This episode features two veteran marketers going deep into the ins and outs of building an initial marketing team from scratch. On the show today, Jay talks to Mike Volpe, CMO of Cybereason and former CMO of HubSpot.

Follow Mike - http://twitter.com/mvolpe

Follow Jay - http://twitter.com/jayacunzo

Follow NextView - http://twitter.com/nextviewvc

Check out Jay's other marketing show - http://unthinkable.fm

Be sure to rate and review Traction on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

When you hear "brand marketing," what do you think about? Maybe big brands, big budgets, or even big wastes of money and time as a startup, right? But what if brand marketing could help you get actual results, whether that's user acquisition or raising a Series A?

In this episode, we talk to the VP of Brand Marketing at ecommerce company Wayfair, Nancy Go. She shares how brand marketing is really sales at scale, and helps us understand how to think about this approach to distribution and communication for young companies.

Visit wayfair.com to shop their store.

Follow Jay at twitter.com/jayacunzo or go behind-the-scenes of his creative process every day at snapchat.com/add/jayacunzo

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