In today's episode, we talk to Nathan Beckord, founder and CEO at Foundersuite (foundersuite.com). Foundersuite provides a host of tools for founders, including a comprehensive investor database, tools to raise capital like investor CRM and data rooms, and more. Nathan's background in business and banking provided a significantly beneficial backdrop to launch Foundersuite. He talks in depth about the challenges first time founders face, getting traction with investors, and best practices to...

In today's episode we talk to Colin Zarzou, co-founder at Koii, about his experience as a founder in the web3 space. We discuss his previous experience in the legal space, entering web3 as a non-technical cofounder, and legal pitfalls and considerations when building a token-based product. We also discuss briefly the Canadian startup landscape

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk with Smriti Tomar, Founder of Stack, India’s first automated investing app. She shares how her work at Citibank and investing and trading her own money influenced her journey with Stack. Smriti shares how Stack not only focuses on helping people save for their life goals and invest even the smallest amount of money but also focuses on education. Stack creates webinars and other content to educate the community and this has ultimately been how...

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Thomas Mueller, CEO of Evan GmbH. Thomas shares his 20-year tech journey and passion for bringing tech into the real world. He reflects on the start of his tech journey when the internet first came out to where we are now with the emergence of web 3.0. Thomas shares how his experience led him to found the start-up, Evan GmhH with the idea of bringing blockchain and web 3.0 technology into the traditional real economy. We talk extensively...

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Madeleine Nguyen and Janelle Tiulentino, Co-founders of Talentdrop. Madeleine and Janelle talk about their backgrounds and journeys in tech, meeting at Snapchat, and creating Talentdrop. They share how they were able to combine Madeleine’s recruiting experience with Janelle's technical capabilities into creating a unique approach to recruiting. Talentdrop is a decentralized form of recruiting in which anyone can refer a candidate and receive...

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Chase Bonhag, founder of FirstIgnite. He shares about his start at Illinois Ventures, the venture capital arm of the University of Illinois, and how that shaped his path in creating FirstIgnite. He saw the intellectual capability available at universities that needed to be connected with the right companies. Chase shares about the evolution of FirstIgnite. How it began with helping universities market their research to companies and evolved...

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Nawaz Ahmed, an investor, and advisor from New Zealand. We talk about our shared experience of gaining a science background before switching to business and tech. He shares how he earned his bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences and quickly realized he did not want to be more than just a scientist in his career. He moved towards the business side and earned his master's in that field. Nawaz shares about his early start-up experience of...

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Jannick Bendtsen, Co-Founder, and CEO of PipeBio. PipeBio is an innovative biotech cloud-based platform that enables faster development for antibody/peptide screening and drug development and allows scientists to analyze large sets of data. Jannick shares his journey from earning a master’s in molecular biology and a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, to leaving academia and working for bioinformatics companies, to meeting his co-founder Owen and...

In today’s podcast, we talk to Scott Absher, CEO of ShiftPixy (https://shiftpixy.com/). ShiftPixy is a revolutionary gig economy platform that serves as an all-in-one workforce management platform for operators and part-time workers. We talk about the emergence of the gig economy, ShiftPixy’s formation and how it is a culmination of Scott’s 30 plus years of experience in human capital and his work in M&A. Scott shares what SPACs are and his process in choosing to go with a SPAC when...

In today’s episode, we talk to Ali Jamal, product and growth expert and founder of First Check Ventures. Ali has invested in over 150 companies over the years. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree from Stanford University. We talk about Ali's journey from investment banking to working with product and growth in tech startups to running his own Angel Syndicate. He is currently working in emerging markets, including leading a couple of unicorns in LatAm. He shares his expertise in product...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Russ Heddleston, Head of Commercial at DropBox for DocSend. Russ initially co-founded DocSend in 2013 focused on helping sales teams find and share documents that close deals. DocSend was acquired by DropBox in March 2021 for $165M and shares his perspective on the acquisition process. Russ started his journey as a PM Intern at Dropbox in 2010 and already sold his first startup to Facebook in 2011. We talk about his personal journey of...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Samuel Bosch, PhD candidate at MIT and founder of Assist-O. Assist-O is a company for remote staffing. It offers remote support to individuals and companies in the development, marketing, design, executive assistance, IT, and more. Samuel started his career as an intern at the D.E. Shaw Group, turned to an academic career, and ended up co-founding Assist-O while pursuing his PhD in CS and Electrical Engineering. We talk about his personal...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Mark Thomas, serial entrepreneur and founder of ZenSports. ZenSports is a mobile sports betting app, in which customers can choose to bet against the house or create their own bets with their own odds and terms (peer-to-peer) and much more. Mark previouslly co-founded Reesio, which was acquired in 2015. As a serial founder, he’s been able to build a holistic skillset around product, marketing & growth, business development, recruiting, and...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Niklas Bretschneider. Niklas is a venture capitalist with a focus on early stage startups and growth equity. He currently works for Picus Capital and Global Founders Capital. He started his career as a consultant at McKinsey, where he worked on various projects, including digital transformations, revenue growth accelerations, consumer analytics, and digital marketing boosts. We talk about his story of moving to the United States from Germany,...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to James O'Brien, first hire at AltoIRA and currenlty VP of Business Development and Crypto there. AltoIRA offers an easy-to-use investing platform that empowers everyday investors to diversify their IRAs by investing in alternative assets such as private equity, venture capital, real estate, loans, and cryptocurrency. James focuses on strategic opportunities within the world of investment platforms, regulation crowdfunding, funds, venture,...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to S2 and Zelko, founders of RoninDojo. RoninDojo is a full node bitcoin wallet focused on privacy and user friendliness. . We talk about their way into the startup world, privacy in the financial world without any formal engineering background, cryptocurrency and its community, and how blockchain can contribute to a fairer and more transparent future

In today's episode of Minimally Viable I talk to Chris Duffus, founder and CEO of Fonbnk. Fonbnk allows a frictionless, financial onramp for frontier and emerging markets. Christan started his career at Goldman Sachs, decided to go his own way and has founded multiple startups in the FinTech space. We talk about the story of Fonbnk, ethereum (along with it's promises and some it's failures to deliver on its promise 😐), success and failure as a startup founder, growth for startups, and hiring...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Matthew Wilson, Angel Investor and Founder of Allied VC. Allied is a Canadian based investor group with hundreds of global members. Matt was always an entrepreneur by heart, he started his first business at age 11, founded and exited his CPG startup after being one of the top performers at both Nestlé and Coca-Cola . We talk about the story of Allied Partners, building a syndicate from scratch, connecting the Canadian startup ecosystem with...

In today's episode, we talk to Drew Elliott, founder and CEO at RoundlyX. RoundlyX allows you to invest your spare change from everyday transactions into crypto on your favorite exchange. We discuss his military background, finding a co-founder through your personal network, trying out various ideas before finding the right one and fully committing. Drew also extensively discusses his view of a crypto-first world, tokenizing any asset, and democratizing various industries through crypto and...

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Sarah Hum, founder and CEO at Canny. Canny helps SaaS companies build better products by being better at listening to and acting on user feedback. Sarah started her career as a Product Designer at Facebook and founded Canny 4 years ago. Today, Canny has over 900 customers. We Canny's story, pricing strategies when building a SaaS tool, teamwork in a remote startup, and how to approach growth and sales from a designer's perspective

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Matt Lerner, previous 500 Startups Partner and founder and CEO of Startup Core Strengths. Matt started his startup career at the early stages of Paypal in 2004 and joined 500 Startups as a Partner in 2015 to advise startups on how to grow. Today, he helps founders grow and shape their startups with Startup Core Strengths. We discuss PMF, growth, ownership and common mistakes founders make in their founding journey

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Ben Matcalfe, Founder and Managing Partner at Monochrome.vc. Ben has spent time at Uber, was one of the founders of WPEngine, and as an investor while at Ridge Ventures. Ben's focus at Monochrome is on early-stage and AI-driven startups. We talke about his history at Uber, his migration to an investor while at Ridge and how to get traction as an early-stage B2B SaaS company.

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Nitesh Agrawal, founder and CEO at letsdive. Nitesh started letsdive after meeting remote workers while traveling in Vietnam. He discusses in depth his learnings from being one of the early hires and using that experience to become a serial founder. In particular, Nitesh's approach to feature prioritization is quite unique and we also discuss how letsdive prioritizes features by mapping them against specific KPIs

On today's episode of Minimally Viable we discuss branch.gg - a virtual office for people sick of sitting in Zoom all day. We discuss Dayton's background in gaming and how that allowed him to rethink team communication. Branch launched during Covid which definitely helped inspire their thinking on virtual and allowed their customers to rethink how their teams were working. We discuss how Dayton and Branch are building their own team and the tricks and secrets around their execution.