Startup Grind

Barry Nalebuff is the Milton Steinbach Professor of Economics and Management at the Yale School of Management. A graduate of MIT, a Rhodes Scholar and Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University. In addition to founding Honest Tea, Professor Nalebuff also serves on the board of Nationwide Insurance. An expert on game theory, Barry has written extensively on its application to business strategy. His most recent book, Mission in a Bottle, is written with Honest Tea Co-Founder Seth Goldman. In graphic format, the book tells the story of Honest Tea and provides strategic advice for entrepreneurs. lets listen into Barry Nalebuff interviewed by our startup grind new haven chapter director Adam Muniz. 

Mike Cassidy who is currently a vice president at Google and Project leader on Google x’s project loon which is an attempt to blanket the globe in wireless connectivity using hot air balloons. Before joining google Mike was a serial entrepreneur founding companies like rubber, xfire, direct hit, and stylus innovation.  Mike has a BS/MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and graduated from the Harvard Business School.

Christine Tsai, the founding partner of 500 Startups, one of the worlds most active, well known, and internationally focused incubators. Tsai has invested in over 150 companies including Ipsy, Sprig, Bombfell, and Storefront, and also oversees the accelerator and distribution teams at 500. Prior to 500 Christine was in product marketing at Google and YouTube for many years. She worked on Developer Platforms and Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference. She also worked on Google AdSense, Analytics and YouTube syndication. Before that, Christine held roles in international sales at OSIsoft and ChevronTexaco. Christine has a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley. She is also a ballet dancer of 25 years. 

Sarah Wood the founder of the video ad tech startup Unruly. Sarah co-founded Unruly in 2010 and it was named the UK’s second fastest growing tech companies in 2012. Unruly’s core mission is to deliver the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. They are currently the leading programmatic platform for social video advertising, powered by their proprietary supply side mobile distribution technology which make campaigns scalable in native formats. Prior to being named one of inc magazines top 15 women to watch in tech, Sarah was an academic and professor and currently still teaches as an associate lecturer at the university of Cambridge. Unruly was recently acquired by News Corp for 176 million dollars. 

Paul Singh who is a former partner at 500 Startups and currently the director of the 1776 incubator co-working space in Washington DC. previously Paul was the founder of Disruption Corporation which provided tools, research and advisory services to corporations, angel investors and venture capital firms. Paul is also an investor via the Crystal Tech Fund. Previously, he was a Partner at 500 Startups and has overseen the investments in 525+ companies across 35+ countries. He is currently serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Let’s listen into Paul Singh interviewed by Oleg Yefymov our chapter director in Halifax, Canada. 

Steve is one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs and a pioneer in making the Internet part of everyday life. He currently serves as Chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a Washington, D.C.- based investment firm he co-founded in 2005, where he partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build significant “built to last” new businesses. The mission is to establish Revolution as the premier firm outside of Silicon Valley. Steve’s entrepreneurial career began in 1985 when he co-founded America Online (AOL). Under Steve’s leadership, AOL became the world’s largest and most valuable Internet company, driving the worldwide adoption of a medium that has transformed business and society. AOL was the first Internet company to go public and among the best performing stocks of the 1990s, delivering an 11,616% return to shareholders.  At its peak, nearly half of Internet users in the United States used AOL.  Steve’s passion for helping entrepreneurs remains his driving force. He was the founding chair

Gagan Biyani is CEO and co-founder of Sprig, whose mission it is to make eating well simple. Open your phone when you're hungry, tap a button and get a healthy meal delivered in 15 minutes. Sprig has raised $57M from Greylock Partners and Social Capital Partnership and is available in San Francisco, Chicago and Palo Alto. Prior to founding Sprig, he was a Growth Advisor for Lyft where he led supply and demand acquisition for their launch in Los Angeles. Gagan previously was co-founder and President of the education marketplace, Udemy, which has raised $113M and has over 7 million students worldwide. Gagan will be interviewed by Greylock Partner, Simon Rothman. Simon invests in entrepreneurs building consumer networks and platforms, and he leads Greylock’s $100 million commitment to marketplace investments. His area of focus includes network effects businesses and transaction-based startups with a specialty around marketplaces.

Bob is the co-author of the startup owners manual, a manual for starting up companies that aims at preventing many of the cardinal startup sins many founders make. together along with steve blank, the two spent 2 years conceiving, outlining, drafting, rewriting, and revising the global bestseller. A serial entrepreneur, bob left a lucrative broadcasting job at the age of 22 because the had a passion to start a company which he did 7 times over 3 decades. He describes his track record as 2 home runs, two base hits, and three great tax losses. Bob now teaches customer development and business modeling at columbia business school. he has also lead training session in mexico, russia, and other place around the world

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have an awesome chat with the legendary Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and Chief evangelist of Apple. He is the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media,Enchantment, and ten other books. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.    Guy is interviewed by startup grind’s founder Derek Andersen for a globally held google hangout. streamed live from google hq in mountain view california. Lets listen in. 

Hey there and welcome to wednesday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have a great chat with Adam Lashinsky, author of the wildly popular and revealing book "inside apple". Adam is the senior editor at large for fortune covering silicon valley and wall street. He’s been on the magazines staff since 2001. Prior to that he worked at the Street.com and the san jose mercury news. He is also a weekly panelist on foxes cavuto on business program. Adam  co-chairs fortunes annual technology conference Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and is a seasoned speaker and panel moderator. Lets listen into this great interview between adam and startup grind’s founder Derek Andersen recorded in 2013. 

Hey There and welcome to Monday's episode of the startup grind podcast. This week we have a truly awesome interview with one of Silicon Valley’s biggest personalities. Chamath Palihapitiya. Chamath is the founder and managing partner of the Social Capital Partnership, a venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CA that incubates and invests in breakthrough companies in Healthcare, Education, Fincancial services, mobile, and enterprise software. Preceding his focus as an investor, Chamath was the longest tenured member of Facebooks senior executive team and helped drive its ascension to one of the most important companies in the world. Chamath is also an owner and director of the NBA’s golden state warriors. Chamath was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in canada, and graduated with a degreee in electrical engineering from the university of waterloo.  In this very honest and insightful interview chamath speaks with startup grind’s founder derek andersen in Palo Alto about his early life, time at Facebook, encounters w

Today we have an episode with Bill Clerico the founder of WePay. WePay is a payment’s platform with a built in fraud analyzer that powers some of the worlds best known marketplaces including Care.com, Constant Contact, Freshbooks, GoFundMe and Meetup.  WePay protects its partners from risk and regulatory exposure, while supporting a great experience for their end-users. Prior to WePay, Bill was a technology investment banker and has a degree in computer science from Boston College. lets listen into Bill interview in Silicon Valley with Startup Grind’s own TD Lowe. 

Hey there and welcome’s to Monday's episode of the startup Grind podcast! Today we have the founder of the virally popular live streaming app Meerkat. Ben Rubin is the Israeli born founder of Life on Air whose primary product is Meerkat, a real time streaming application that grew to over 700k users in just 8 weeks after blowing up at the SXSW festival last year. Prior to founding Meerkat Ben was the founder of Yevvo an similar app that allowed users to tune into live on air video broadcasts. Life on Air has currently raised 18 million dollars to continue to create ephemeral and real time experiences. Ben is interviewed by Startup Grind’s founder Derek andersen at our Chapter in San Francisco. 

Today we have a chat with David Zhu the co-founder of Divide which is a mobile enterprise company that made it possible for employees to separate their work and personal life on 1 device. Prior to founding Divide with partners Andrew and Alexander, David was the 1 employee at smule the company responsible for #1 apps like Ocarina, sonic lighter, and I am T-Pain. After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in computer science David went on to work at companies like Morgan Stanley, Jarna, and HP.  Last year Divide was acquired by google and David went to become an engineering director on the android platform. Lets into this great interview with david interviewed by our Hong Kong chapter director where he talks mobile technology, what it’s like to be acquired by google, and even the chinese education system. 

Today we have a chat with one of the co-founders of the innovative sister led dating app Coffee Meets Bagel.    Dawoon Kang and her two sisters Arum and Soo, founded Coffee Meets Bagel as an answer to many of the prevailing male centric, image overloaded apps that weren’t addressing the unique ways in which women prefer to date. Dawoon and her sisters became famous last year for rejecting the largest offer ever made on the popular TV show Shark Tank after they turned down Mark Cuban's $30M offer for their company.    They then went on to raise $7.8M in Series A financing, and with that funding began their international expansion outside the US with Hong Kong as their first overseas market. Prior to CMB, Dawoon lived & worked in Korea, Japan, New York, India & Hong Kong, in a variety of roles that spanned from strategy & business development, marketing, research to investing/finance.    Lets listen into Dawoon interviewed by our Hong Kong chapter director Joshua Steimle. 

Hey there and welcome to wednesday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. today we have a chat with Paddy cosgrave co-founder of the Web Summit conference. Web Summit attracts thousands of attendees from dozens of countries to dublin ireland for its annual gathering of the technology industries greats. Paddy graduated from trinity college with a BA  in Political Science and economics and worked in a number of start-ups before founding the event which grew from a few hundred attendees to many thousands in just a few short years. Lets listen into the chat between paddy cosgrave and our london chapter director Marian Gazdik. 

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have something a bit different. our founder Derek andersen who is also our Silicon Valley chapter director is used to asking the questions at his events; is in this episode he is the featured guest at our chapter in phoenix Arizona. Director Christie Kerner goes over Derek’s early life, professional experience and the origin story of the worlds largest entrepreneurial community. Lets listen into this chat with Startup Grind’s Founder and CEO Derek Andersen: 

Today we have an amazing chat with the founder of 500 Startups Dave McClure, interviewed by our chapter director in Gaza Palestine. The audio quality is slightly reduced and the power goes out at 1 point during the interview but it is a great opportunity to hear advice from a silicon valley entrepreneur/venture capitalist given to the community in palestine.  Dave is the founding partner of 500 Startups, a venture capital firm and startup incubator in Silicon Valley with over $125M under management. He has been an investor in hundreds of companies around the world including Credit Karma, Twilio, MakerBot, Wildfire Interactive, Viki, Mashery, SendGrid, Mint.com, and SlideShare, among others. Dave has been geeking out in Silicon Valley for over twenty-five years as a developer, entrepreneur, blogger, investor, and internet marketing nerd. 

Today we have a great conversation with the co-founder and CEO of Distil networks Rami Essaid. Rami was born in syria to a family known for their engineering talent. He later moved the united states and started working in sales and business. After realizing what a challenge spam and malware bots were posing to corporations rami decided to create a product that would protect against attacks. Rami then took the plunge and founded his company Distil in 2001. After a lot of testing with the beta product Distil networks has now become to go to solution for protecting against bot nets and brute force login attacks. Distil Networks secured $38 million in total funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Foundry Group and TechStars' Bullet Time Ventures, ff Venture Capital, IDEA Fund Partners, and Militello Capital. Rami attended North Carolina State University where he majored in computer engineering.Lets listen into Rami interviewed by Startup Grind’s DC chapter director Brian Park. 

Today we have a great chat with the co-founder and CEO of Postmates. Bastian Lehmann. Bastian is originally from Munich and graduate of the AngelPad Accelerator in San Francisco. He originally founded Postmates in 2011 and has seen incredible growth fueled by revolutionary partnerships with companies like Chipotle, Starbucks. and 7-Eleven. Postmates now operates the largest on-demand delivery fleet with 13,000 Postmates in 28 metropolitan markets. Lets listen into this great interview with Bastian interviewed by Startup Grind’s founder Derek Andersen in San Francisco.