Rocketship.fm

Stefan Martinovic, Co-Founder of Create.io, talks with us about automating the very time intensive, archaic process of pricing projects and estimating the economic outcome of real estate development projects. They took a manual process that previously took many weeks and could cost over $10k can now be done in minutes. He shares about how he’s been traveling the country to meet people face to face in order to get buy-in from a variety of stakeholders, city by city, to methodically grow the business. The human element is crucial in this industry, and they’re using that to their advantage.

Rob Meadows, CEO of Originate, talks about how the barrier to entry to starting a new venture has never been lower, and why finding the one thing that’s unique to you is more important than ever. He gives some great examples and great perspective on creating an unfair advantage for yourself.

Robert Mueller, Co-Founder of FastMail, talks with us about growing the company since 1999 and surviving the first dot com bust. During this 15-year journey they were acquired, but subsequently bought the company back a few years later and are now wholly owned by the staff. He also shares his initial fears and realities of taking the leap into founding a startup, especially during those early days.

Mattan Griffel, growth expert and founder and CEO of OneMonth, talks about customer acquisition and activation. He discusses what metrics you should be tracking and tweaking, and common mistakes he sees people make time and time again.

Ryan Carson, Co-Founder and CEO of Treehouse, talks with us about following his passion and the drive to do something big. He also shares with us how he was able to restructure his company into a flat organization with no managers or executives.

Adda Birni, Founder and CEO of Skillcrush, talks with us about the “trough of sorrow” and how she fought and clawed her way to significant month over month growth in revenue. We also chat about the blind spots of tech in silicon valley and the opportunities that exist with the rest of the population that isn’t saturated with tech 24/7.

Chris Shepherd, Founder of HashRabbit, talks all about a building a startup around Bitcoin. He’s facing some really interesting challenges and shares unique insights into the whole Bitcoin movement and what it’ll take to reach mass adoption.

Thomas Knoll, Founder of PrimeLoop, talks about why he’s baked the “no internal email” rule into his company. He talks about the insane benefits to workflow, culture, and sanity, as well as how any company can start to implement the same processes, regardless of size. He shares what tools they use to replace the need for email and why each is so much more efficient both in the short, and the long run.

Ian Heidt, Co-Founder and CEO of Housecall, talks about the extreme lengths they’ve gone to build early traction in their local market. From dressing up like elves and delivering Christmas trees, personally fulfilling services through the app, and giving back to the community, they represent the epitome of hustle. And through these processes, they’ve discovered the tactics that will help them massively scale.

Eliot Peper, author of tech startup fiction thriller Uncommon Stock, talks with us about the carry-over lessons between tech startups and publishing a novel. We learned a ton about the new publishing options available, how he stays on track to get the writing done, and how he came up with the idea to do a tech thriller in the first place.

Leslie Bradshaw, Managing Partner at Made by Many NY, talks about how they capture and use both qualitative and quantitative data to make key product decisions, like what features to build. She talks about finding insights in behavioral patterns, and using something as simple as a pencil and paper to prototype an idea. She also talks about developing yourself as a thought leader through content marketing to win bigger clients and higher-caliber work.

Brian Balfour, VP of Growth at HubSpot and author of the Coelevate blog, talks with us in-depth about his process for building a growth machine. He walks us through each step of their experiments and how they determine what to focus on. He talks about the key differences between being iterative vs. incremental. This was an incredibly enlightening interview.

We attended Tech Cocktail's Celebrate Conference in Downtown Las Vegas and put together an absolutely killer episode with the very best highlights of the event. The overarching theme is all about building strong startup communities. We talk to a couple key players in the success of building up the Las Vegas tech scene, and have clips of Tony Hsieh's keynote talk about "Cities as Startups".

Jeff Berg, Founder and Developer at Planning Center, talks about how he's grown his self-funded company to over 30 employees and over 3 million users across their suite of apps. He shares his 3 principles for success with us, and how he's able to maintain such an awesome culture and team as they continue to grow.

Rob Mallery, VP of Talent at Originate, talks with us about attracting top-notch technical and creative talent. He describes how his company is attempting to disrupt the investment space by investing talent rather than money, and how they’ve created a process for matching passions and talent with the right companies.