Yo! Podcast

Matthew Smith (@whale) is a successful entrepreneur and product designer. He has worked with figures and organizations like Seth Godin, the Gates Foundation, and the US Postal Service. In 2014, he co-created Really Good Emails, which quickly became the world's premier source for email design inspiration. In 2021, driven by his pursuit of meaningful work, Smith co-founded Bunsen, a niche creative studio aiding science-oriented companies with strategy, branding, and messaging. We rap about our inherent desire to curate online inspiration, strategies for effective sales pitches to clients, and just how to find an industry you'll love working in.

Jorn van Dijk  is a Dutch designer, startup investor and CEO of the Framer website builder. After leaving his role as one of the early product designers at Facebook, he co-founded Framer in 2014, which was then a prototyping tool. Nine years and several strategic shifts later, Framer evolved into a robust website builder, earning admiration from top designers worldwide. We rap about the upcoming road to $100m revenue, explore their product roadmap, the potential impact of AI on the template building industry and just how Framer hype up a good product launch.

Michael Riddering AKA Ridd is an experienced designer who recently found huge success teaching online. After strategically providing a ton of free value across multiple networks, he launched his Figma Academy in 2022 earning over $300,000 in the first 4 months. This green-lit and helped boost his next startup Dive, an online learning platform with a world class team to help level up your design career. We rap about what it takes to stand out as a UX designer, how AI could assist online eduction and we get practical with a value-packed case study on how to plan, hype and launch a digital product if you have no audience.

Drew Wilson is an accomplished designer, developer and entrepreneur with a prolific portfolio of online projects. In 2014 he founded payment startup Plasso which was later acquired by GoDaddy. Drew now works on his new venture Logical to help startups visually build and launch web services. We rap about AI disrupting the film industry, surfing with beefy sharks, why Letter Banking closed down, film vs web, his passion project Ryte and exactly what angel investors are looking for in pitch decks.

• (01:17) Surfing or Legoland
• (02:36) Road trip across 48 United States
• (03:42) Sharks vs Orcas
• (05:34) Intermission: Overrated, Underrated
• (06:53) What is Logical all about?
• (12:04) How important is it to distill your idea down into a one liner for potential investors?
• (13:14) If you can’t narrow your idea to a tagline, is it fair to say you aren’t focused enough on a niche to launch?
• (14:18) What is essential to include in a deck for potential investors?  
• (16:47) Logical: will it cater for cached layers?
• (18:27) Logical: authentication types
• (19:37) Logical: team members
• (20:16) Logical: Any investors?
• (21:00) Intermission: No Context
• (22:05) Film vs web
• (23:13) If your Plasso exit was hypothetically 100x - what are you funding next?
• (26:15) Sonic movie success
• (27:22) Logan, one of his favourite movies
• (28:26) Early film projects
• (29:25) Is there an urge to fix something in film industry or do you want to make great stories?
• (31:20) Will AI disrupt film?    
• (36:00) Letter Banking: What happened?
• (38:35) Letter Banking:In hindsight do you think there were indicators?
• (39:40) Letter Banking: Could you not replace the Series A investor?
• (43:35) Letter Banking: What is the silver lining?
• (45:15) Is Logical a breath of fresh air after a banking startup?
• (47:37) Do you think startups are missing an opportunity for video to amplify their marketing efforts?
• (50:27) What is Ryte? Is it danger zone working dual with Logical?
• (55:14) Ryte: Are you breaking through some engineering feat that hasn't been built before?
• (55:40) Ryte: Do you build this to solve your own problems or to be acquired?
• (56:15) AI: What advice do you have for listeners scare of upcoming AI landscape? 

Dru Riley is the founder and editor of the successful Trends.vc newsletter. Boasting over 50,000 subscribers and 1,000 Pro members, Dru dedicates all his time to deliver highly informative reports to his growing community of business owners and marketers. We rap about the software he uses, growth vs retention, mental health, social media vs community, and what it takes to run a premium newsletter publication.

Danny Postma is a Dutch developer, maker and Landing Page specialist currently residing in Bali, Indonesia. In 2020 he paired his Landing Page expertise with a new passion for programming, to launch Headlime, an AI-powered headline generator for marketers. Fast forward a rollercoaster 7-months of working in public, with several product iterations, Danny sold Headlime for a USD 7-figures. Now financially independent, Danny spends his time building where his AI curiosity leads and has landed up working on StockAI.com and ProfilePicture.AI. We rap about AI trends, the shady lifetime deal black market, if dot com domains are worth the investment and the most common mistakes people are making with their Landing Pages. 

Matt D. Smith (@mds) is an exceptional UI designer with a prolific catalog of design-related side projects. His most recent offering is Shift Nudge, an online learning experience to master designing beautiful and accessible interfaces. We go  deep into course creation, the top 3 mistakes new UI designers are making, how he got his 3-letter Twitter handle and where we draw the line between copying a design and drawing inspiration.

Meagan and Andrew Couldwell are a designer/developer couple currently based in Los Angeles, California.

Meagan, originally from Florida, is a seasoned designer having worked with the likes of Twitter, Campaign Monitor and other leading startups.

Andrew, originally from Yorkshire, has also spent years in the game, leading the design of Adobe Portfolio and tasked to build the design systems for WeWork.

Together they published the book 'Laying The Foundations', a comprehensive guide to understanding and implementing Design Systems.

We have such a fun chat discussing book publishing, working with newborn twins, design inspiration from Disney, crafting color schemes, what makes a good boss, and even squeeze in a couples quiz right at the end:)

Oliur is a designer, photographer, YouTuber and entrepreneur based in the UK. Having amassed over 100,000 followers on several different platforms, Oliur has become well known for his slick, minimal style. This clean aesthetic is also evident in his growing catalog of beautifully crafted digital and tangible products. We have a chilled convo about humble beginnings, creating freedom through products, his upcoming course, minimalism, and why it's important to re-invest in yourself.