The Rocketship Podcast : Startups | Entrepreneurship | Growth

Carlos Eduardo Espinal, partner at Seedcamp talks with us about the state of tech, what they're looking for in companies, and what he's looking forward to in the future. He stresses the importance of building local relationships, no matter where in the world you are, instead of waiting until you get to a hub, like Silicon Valley.

In this special episode we bring you some of our favorite parts of CollisionConf. In particular, we break down a talk by Nicole Glaros, Partner at Techstars Ventures, where she hits on the main points of how to absolutely nail your pitch. More than that, she covers the fatal mistakes people make that can (and often do) kill what would have otherwise been a great pitch. In addition, we've pulled together a variety of startups that were exhibiting on the floor of the conference and try to bring you a taste of the conference experience.

Benedikt Lehnert, Chief Design Officer at Wunderlist, talked with us about how they approach design. They consistently go back to consider the thing they're replacing (in the case of Wunderlist, it's pen and paper), and design for the best possible experience, not just the prettiest app.

Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, talks with us about how they make difficult product decisions in respect to adding and removing features, changing pricing, and packaging the product. He talks about how he sees others struggle with weighing feedback, data, and instinct to make their own decisions about product.

Justin Mares, co-author of Traction and creator of SQL for Marketers and Programming for Marketers, talks with us about the whole new world of opportunities that open up when a non-technical marketer learns just enough to be dangerous. There’s so much that can be done with a few technical hacks and you don’t need to understand programming to leverage any of it.

Herbert Moore and Vicki Zhou, co-founders of WiseBanyan, talked with us about the barriers to entry of the financial/investment space and the regulatory red tape they’ve had to navigate. They also talk about the benefits of automating the investment process based on a variety of lifestyle choices and risk tolerances.

Maciej Zawadziński, CEO at Piwik, talks with us about how they turned Piwik, an originally open source product, into a full-fledged enterprise business.

Liz Wessel, co-founder of Campus Job, talked about how they're growing both sides of their marketplace - appealing to both students and companies looking for part-time employees. She shares what they learned coming out of Y Combinator and how they're scaling things rapidly.

Tucker Max, bestselling author of "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell", and founder of Book in a Box, talks with us about how he and his team help entrepreneurs tell their stories in publishable form. He also talks about moving on from the “fratire” type stories as he’s gotten older, and how his focus now is more on lessons learned in business.

Sara Chipps, co-founder of JewelBots, talks with us about the endeavor into building a hardware company, after spending so many years just focused on the software side.

Kate Matsudaira, founder of PopForms, Spark Notebook, and keynote speaker at this year’s Future Insights Conference, talks with us about taking ownership over your future. She talks about working backwards from where you want to be in 5 years (career, family, etc.) and doing the small things every day that will actually get you there.

Matt Schlicht, founder of ZapChain, talked with us about growing a community and keeping the quality of participation high. He also breaks down his uniquely effective, and usually funny, content strategy.

Geoffrey Radcliffe, co-founder of Post Launch, walks us through their content strategy process that they use with clients, and teaches us easy ways to get the most SEO juice out of each and every piece of writing. He also shares some uniquely easy ways to get the content floodgates open when you feel stuck.

Amit Viswanathan, co-founder of Doctible, talks with us about how their approach to a marketplace product. He shares how they’re able to generate sales on the supply side, and how they’ve come up with ways to generate value in the product beyond bringing the supply side (which often takes some time to grow).

Mike Brown Jr., partner at Bowery Capital, talks through his comprehensive list of SaaS tools for every stage of the sales funnel. He discusses why certain tools are necessary at different stages, and differences between similar software. Incredibly informative episode!