HackToStart

Jordan Scheltgen is the co-founder and Managing Partner at CaveSocial, a marketing agency that he started during University and that now spans across 3 major North American cities. Originally from Surrey, BC, Jordan moved to Toronto for school and football. Through that experience, Jordan started a blog which would later become Cave Social the agency. Jordan joins us to share his story, how he got into business and marketing, he shares his keys to a great story, as well as how brands should approach telling stories, what it’s been like growing an agency model business across 3 major cities, and much more.

Jonah Lupton is the founder of SoundGuard, the world’s first sound proof paint. Jonah has spent the better part of the last 10 years launching several brands across completely different industries. From social media software, to non-profit funding platforms, to white labeled supplement companies, to industrial manufacturing with SoundGuard, Jonah has prototyped, built, and launched ideas he’s been passionate about and learnt a ton along the way. Jonah joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what he’s learnt from launching several brands, what it’s been like creating a physical, manufactured product, the challenges of bootstrapping, and much more.

Jess Brown is the Director of UX at Vice Media. She’s spent the past couple of years building the team that’s lead the company’s efforts on re-designing Vice’s brand from the ground up - across the web and all mobile properties. But before joining Vice, Jess was based in San Francisco working on a fashion startup of her own called Threadflip, she was introduced to the team at Rent The Runway in New York. Jess ended up joining the team there for several years. There she helped create and deliver a better user experience through a mix of design and product thinking. Jess joins us to share her story, how she got into design & startups, how she approaches building products through user experience, what it was like completely redesigning the Vice brand from the ground up, and much more.

Tom Levesque is the Co-founder at Rey.ai. Tom is a Software Developer turned Product Manager. After graduating and working with a local startup in Waterloo, Tom decided to move to the valley where he ended up joining Wildfire before it was acquired by Google. Before he’d even graduated as a Software Developer from the University of Waterloo, Tom had found an interest in Product Management. He then joined a series of startups in Canada, Silicon Valley and the UK, including Wildfire (which was acquired by Google), VigLink (where he helped raised a $20M Series B round) and more. Today, he’s the cofounder and developer of Rey.ai, an AI based email platform that’s redefining our conception of a “social network”. Tom joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he approaches building products, what he’s currently working on with Rey.ai, and much more.

Oscar Falmer is the Founder and developer behind the world’s first augmented reality Twitter client - TweetReality. Oscar is only a few months away from graduating from the University of Eastern-Paris Marne-La-Vallee with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. TweetReality is the 7th app he’s released to the Apple App Store - and it’s the biggest challenge he’s undertaken. TweetReality has gotten over 20,000 downloads, 500+ upvotes on Product Hunt, been featured in over 150+ articles in 20+ countries, including on The Verge, Fox News, CNN, The Next Web & more! Oscar joins us to share his story, what it’s been like working all over the world, what motivated him to launch TweetReality, what it been like putting this app out there, and much more.

Amir Shevat is the Director of Developer Relations at Slack. Amir originally fell into Developer Relations by mistake, volunteering to work with a community of developers early on in his career. He’s since led Developer Groups at Microsoft & Google for many years before joining Slack to focus on driving growth around the Slack Developers Platform. Amir is particularly passionate about bots. He joined Slack before bots were as popular as they are today and has seen many of them launch on that platform and others. He’s even the author of “Designing Bots: Creating Conversational Experience through O'Reilly. Amir joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he approaches building developer communities, why he’s so passionate about bots, what it was like joining Slack, and much more.

Brian Balfour is the Founder & CEO of Reforge, an organization that offers selective growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering. Brian was previously the VP of Growth at Hubspot and an EIR at Trinity Ventures before that. Brian has raised over $30M in venture funding for various startups he launched or joined. Brian also has extensive experience building growth teams and strategies. He’s one of the leading experts on user acquisition and retention and frequently writes on Reforge and his personal blog. Brian joins us to share his story, how he got into tech & startups, how he’s approached developing a growth mindset, how to prioritize growth strategies, why he started Reforge, and much more.

Lydia White is a Design Lead at Beme, an independent, and wildly ambitious technology+media company bringing a wider range of perspectives to the news that was cofounded by YouTuber Casey Neistat & Matt Hackett. Lydia started her design career with an academic background in fine art and photography, but growing up she had the chance to learn a lot from her dad. Later Lydia started her career as a developer at agencies, before moving into a dedicated design role. After moving to the East coast and freelancing for a few years, Lydia eventually joined the team at Tumblr where she had the chance to work on some big projects that had a big impact on the evolution of the platform and it’s community as Tumblr made the move to mobile. Lydia was later recruited to join the small team at Beme, where she’s helping to change the way news stories are told and delivered. Through new products like Panols, Beme is creating a unique and youthful blend of technology and storytelling. Lydia joins us to share her story, how she got into design & startups, how she created the opportunity to join the team at Tumblr, what it was like building a user research team there, some of the challenges they faced as they moved into mobile, what it was like joining the team at Beme, some of the early challenges in building an entirely new type of company, and much more.

Michael Karnjanaprakorn is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman at Skillshare. Michael has always had a passion and love for education and learning. His career in tech began as an outsider looking to prove himself. And so he ended up taking a pay cut to move to New York and join Scott Belsky at Behance with two things in mind: do whatever the team needed and learn as much as he could. While product/market fit was already found at Behance, Michael later dove into product at Hot Potato, both deepening his skillset and knowledge in this area, and getting to experience the search for product market fit first hand. He then dove into launching a startup of his own - Skillshare - by following 3 simple rules. Michael joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, how he and his cofounder proved to themselves that Skillshare would work, what it was like building the platform in the early days, how they’ve approached raising close to $25M, what’s next for Skillshare, and much more.

Stephanie Engle is a Product Designer at Cruise. Before joining the team there, Stephanie had a background in social products, starting her career off as an intern for the anonymous messaging app Secret, before joining Facebook to work on the Profile, and later joining the VR team. Stephanie recently joined Cruise as a Product Designer, helping to create and design solutions around the emerging self-driving cars industry. Stephanie joins us to share her story, how she got into design, how she created the opportunity to join the team at Facebook, what it was like tackling VR design challenges, how AR / VR and autonomous cars are a lot alike, what it’s like being part of the team at Cruise, and much more.

Jason Stoff is a Principal Digital Product Designer at Starbucks. Before joining the team at Starbucks, Jason had built a career as an Art Director and Senior Designer with various agencies. One day he shared a rebound of a Starbucks logo design on Dribbble, that eventually caught the eye of Starbucks. One year later, he had the chance to interview for a design role and moved his family across the country to join the team in Seattle. He and his team have helped to create international design standards, launch new Starbucks apps and experiences like the Apple Watch, iMessage gifting and more! Jason joins us to share his story, how he got into design, how he created the opportunity to join the team at Starbucks, what it was like transitioning from the agency to product world, what it’s like designing digital products at Starbucks, and much more.

Andy Carvell is the author of the Mobile Growth Stack and a Partner at Phiture, a mobile growth consultancy. Andy began his career as a mobile game developer with Nokia, where he created several games like Space Impact which was preloaded onto 150M+ devices. He then later led several different teams at Soundcloud as they transitioned from a web only application to mobile platforms. While leading growth and retention, Andy developed the Mobile Growth Stack as a framework for thinking about all the potential channel tactics and how they related back to high level business objectives or business verticals. The wide spread awareness gained around the presentation and sharing of the framework launched Andy and his co-founder Moritz Daan into the next phase of their careers with the launch of Phiture. Andy joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like leading several growth teams at Soundclound, what motivated him to create the Mobile Growth Stack, what it was like launching Phiture, some of the most common mistakes Andy sees others making when it comes to growth, and much more.

Jordan Kretchmer is the Founder & CEO of LiveFyre, which was acquired by Adobe in 2016, where he is now a Senior Director continuing to scale the Livefyre solution within the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Before starting Livefyre, Jordan worked for a few agencies as a Creative Director. He then joined Current.TV - a media platform backed by Al Gore - and saw the coming rise of user generated content. In 2009, he left Current to start LiveFyre. As a designer, Jordan created highly realistic mockups of the product he envisioned, but it took several more months before the first version launched. Livefyre raised over $52M in funding and grew to over 150 employees by the time it was acquired by Adobe in 2016. Jordan joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, the challenges involved in building Livefyre, especially in the early days, how founders need to approach product development, what it’s now like being a part of Adobe, and much more.

Leah Culver is the co-founder & CTO of Breaker - the best app for listening to podcasts. Leah has been building startups and products for over 10 years. She helped launch an early version and competitor to Twitter called Pownce with Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka in 2007. In 2011, she was working on a B2B chatting and instant messaging application that was accepted into Y Combinator, and has been also part of companies like Sincerely and Dropbox. Since 2016, she’s been focused on building Breaker, a new podcast app centred around discovery that was also part of Y Combinator earlier this year. Leah joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it’s been like building and working at startups in Silicon Valley for over 10 years, what it’s been like been like building Breaker, what it was like going through Y Combinator a second time, and much more.

Ajay Yadav is the Founder & CEO of Roomie, the leading marketplace for shared housing and apartments. Ajay has built several companies before Roomi, which was bootstrapped for the first 2 years and has raised over $6M to date. Ajay shares how he approached building the platform in the early days, from a Tumblr + Google forms MVP to building the first version of the mobile app himself. Today, Roomi has acquired a few other startups in the same industry and has a remote team of over 40 people. Ajay joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like building companies in the early days of the web, how he approaches fundraising, what it’s been like building and scaling a marketplace, and much more.