The Rocketship Podcast : Startups | Entrepreneurship | Growth

Ian Crosby, co-founder and CEO of Bench, talks with us about their journey from a totally manual process to something vastly more efficient and scalable. He also talks about how to think differently about the problems you’re solving and creating something people really want.

Nathan Chan, creator of FoundrMag, talks with us about how they’ve grown their Instagram following to over 300,000 followers, and how the channel is drastically more engaging (and profitable) than any other social outlet.

Allie O’Connell, Director of Marketing for Bellhops, talks with us about how they’ve 5x-ed their revenue since last year, with a focus on PR, TV, Print, and word-of-mouth. She's found significant success through traditional channels and shares some replicable techniques.

Jane Portman, creator of UI Breakfast and author of The UI Audit, talked with us about common mistakes founders make when they approach design and feature integration with their app. She knows most early-stage and bootstrapped companies can’t afford a dedicated UI designer up front, so she teaches some basic principles for making sure you keep things simple and effective for your core users.

Michael Conley, VP of Digital at The Cleveland Cavaliers, talked with us about the kinds of digital campaigns they're running to create an ultra personal experience for fans both inside and outside of the stadium, including ways to keep them engaged in the off-season. The kinds of things they're doing (and the scale at which they're executing them) are truly amazing - this is a great listen.

Cynthia Jamin, Founder of TwirlyGirl, talked with us about the very personal reasons for starting the business. She shares how she’s remained true to her purpose at every step along the way, even when it went against the grain of what everyone else said was “right”. She proves time and time again that staying authentic to your vision and your brand will never steer you wrong.

Mitch Wainer, co-founder and CMO of DigitalOcean, talks with us about how they’ve grown to over 150 people and the one of the top hosting providers, second only to AWS, in just a few short years. He shares how they’ve heavily leveraged content to fuel their growth and support existing customers.

Marti Wolf, the Chief Culture Officer at Mailchimp, talks with us about how they’ve maintained their culture of fun and weirdness as they’ve grown to over 400 people. She shares how everything is values-oriented and geared toward making sure everyone feels empowered to tinker, explore, grow, and have fun.

Jeremy Reeves, direct response copywriter, talks with us about how to methodically put together a sales funnel that provides real value to your potential customers. He starts by delivering value (usually in the form of content), before even trying to make a sale. From there, he continues to build the relationship so when the time to buy does come, it's a very easy sell.

Ankur Nagpal, founder of Fedora, talks with us about growing his marketplace. He shares ways he helps make customers successful, how he leverages Product Hunt to drive traffic back to the Fedora platform, and lessons he learned building too many features too fast in the beginning.

Ryan Negri, co-founder of Laicos, talks with us about his first company, Negri Electronics, and how he learned the importance of working with the right people and being able to delegate. He spent time working in all aspects of the business (including boxing merchandise) to really learn the ins-and-outs of every department. He shares how he hires months in advance of what’s needed, so he can take his time making sure the right people are brought on board, and ready to go when it’s time to hit the gas pedal.

Tom Leung, co-founder of Poachable, talked with us about how Poachable got started out of a pivot from a previous company. He opened up about false positives that led them to fail a little too slow with the previous company, and how they were hours away from an acquisition before closing a new round to pursue Poachable.

Richard White, CEO of UserVoice, talks with us about using behavioral data to help drive product decisions and feature iterations. He talks about finding the balance between looking at data and trusting your gut instincts, and how this changes as companies mature.

Flo Motlik, co-founder of Codeship, talked with us about focus and productivity within their engineering team. Wherever there’s an opportunity to remove a task pay for another piece of software to handle it, it’s a no-brainer. He also shares how they’ve changed the way they communicate as a team and the impact it’s had on everyone.

Eliot Peper, author of the Uncommon Stock fiction series, talks with us about the critical importance of nailing your story. From communicating with customers, to investors, to employees, your story has to matter. He shares some fantastic strategies and techniques to make sure you're framing your story in the most impactful way.