Listen Now

Matheus Riolfi Co-founder & CEO of Tint.ai, an AI powered insurance solution for companies to embed insurance as part of their product offering. A good example is Turo, a peer-to-peer car sharing service, which requires custom insurance for each part of the world it enters. Matheus previously worked as the head of international expansion at Turo, which gave him an insight (and the eventual idea for Tint) because he spent so much time figuring out the insurance challenge. In this interview with Matheus, we hear the origin story behind Tint, innovation in the insurance industry and how Matheus left Brazil and crafted a very specific path to entrepreneurship. Enjoy the episode, and please leave a review on Apple and Spotify. Yaro --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Krish Ramineni is the co-founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai, a meeting assistant and voice intelligence platform.  In this interview Krish shares the story behind his two previous startup ideas -- a drone delivery company and an AI chatbot, which he built along with his co-founder. These companies are directly connected to what Fireflies is today, but not always in obvious ways. Krish also shares with us how Fireflies has grown, how they built the early version of the tool (the MVP) and why it doesn't work the same way today.  Enjoy the interview! Yaro YARO'S NEWSLETTER Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter:  ✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy: 🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com YARO'S BLOG 💻 https://yaro.blog VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST 🎙️ http://vestedcapitalpodcast.com YARO ON SOCIAL 👔 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/ 🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/ ABOUT YARO 🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Yoav Vilner is the co-founder and CEO of Walnut.io, a SAAS platform creating an entire new category of no-code, cloud-based, product demonstration technology.   Walnut gives sales and marketing teams the ability to create stable interactive product demos and collect insights on their usage. They are growing very fast, as you will hear in this interview with Yoav, as he explains how the idea for Walnut came to be and how they first launched the company. VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST 🎙️https://vestedcapitalpodcast.com YARO'S NEWSLETTER Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter: ✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy: 🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com YARO'S BLOG 💻 https://yaro.blog YARO ON SOCIAL 👔 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/ 🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/ ABOUT YARO 🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Yahya Mokhtarzada, along with two of his brothers, founded Truebill, which was acquired by Rocket Companies for $1.275 billion. In this interview you will hear the origin story for the Truebill app, how they tested the MVP idea of cancelling credit card subscriptions, how they acquired their first 30,000 users, switched on premium services, scaled to $100,000,000 ARR and then sold for $1.275 billion dollars. VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST 🎙️https://vestedcapitalpodcast.com YARO'S NEWSLETTER Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter: ✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy: 🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com YARO'S BLOG 💻 https://yaro.blog YARO ON SOCIAL 👔 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/ 🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/ ABOUT YARO 🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Michelle Tascoe is based in LA and has one of the longest running private one-on-one financial advice coaching practices. She's now earning over half a million a year, but it wasn't always like this. It's been a long and steady journey to become a seven figure coach. You will hear that story in today's podcast interview. VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST 🎙️https://vestedcapitalpodcast.com YARO'S NEWSLETTER Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter: ✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy: 🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com YARO'S BLOG 💻 https://yaro.blog YARO ON SOCIAL 👔 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/ 🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/ ABOUT YARO 🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

This is Vested Capital episode 32, featuring Thomas Smale, the founder of FE International, a leading M&A firm.   I first interviewed Thomas 9 years ago (https://yaro.blog/11850/thomas-smale/).  At the time his company had helped to facilitate over $5 Million in deals. Now that number is over a billion dollars in business acquisitions.   I asked Thomas what led to the growth and how his team has expanded. We also talked about what business models leads to the biggest exit prices, what types of businesses are popular with buyers and more. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

To kick off 2022 I'm reviewing how I am investing my capital, including what went well and what did not go so well with my investments and business in the previous year, and what I am focusing on for this new year. If you have any guest suggestions for the show, email me - yaro@yaro.blog --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Mikkel Thorup hosts The Expat Money Show podcast (I was on episode 155) and has spent over 21 years in continual travel around the world, visiting more than 100 countries including Colombia, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Iran.  Mikkel runs a consultancy to help high net worth individuals move overseas, providing guidance on tax structure, visas, residencies, passports, raising your family (education, lifestyle), company structure and banking. I asked Mikkel on to Vested Capital, first to learn about his background and how he left Canada and became a world traveler, and then how he was able to learn such a unique and dynamic skillset -- staying up to date with everything an expat needs to consider when moving overseas. During the second half of the interview I asked Mikkel all the big questions, including which countries should we consider moving to, how to avoid paying tax and where to setup your company and bank accounts.  Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Arthur Menard is the CEO and co-founder of Lambs, a clothing brand that blocks 99% of EMFs (cellphone, 4G, 5G, Wifi, Bluetooth radiation) as well as 10x the amount of UVs compared to traditional clothing. His company is doing 8-figures in sales, having got their start selling men's underwear online -- which I actually purchased several years ago. Arthur has an interesting backstory, having first got started as an entrepreneur selling online training, then later co-founding a local marketing app supporting French bakeries.  The story behind Lambs however, is the most interesting, given he was blazing a trail with a new form of clothing. If you're selling anything DTC (direct to consumer) or looking to invent a new category, this podcast will be insightful. Enjoy the interview. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

David Ciccarelli is the CEO and founder of Voices.com. Based in London, Canada, Voices.com provides an online marketplace, facilitating transactions between business clients and over two million voice over professionals. In this interview David shares the origin story of Voices, how they first launched their platform, secured a great domain name, attracted new customers and new voice talent to make sure they had both supply and demand and then grew the company to the point where it is today, heading towards a Nasdaq listing after raising $18 Million from Morgan Stanley and others. Enjoy the episode. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Teddy Kyres is the founder of Groupe Orbis, a Montreal based mortgage brokerage firm, with over 60 brokers following the system Teddy created for succeeding as a mortgage broker. Teddy is also my mortgage broker and helped me secure finance for investing in Montreal when I didn't have much of a tax history in Canada after moving here from Australia. The banks wouldn't loan to me, so Teddy helped me find alternative financing until I built up more history as a Canadian tax payer. During this podcast we look at Teddy's early years as a mortgage broker and what he did to become one of the most successful in the entire country, doing over $100 Million in loans in a single year as one individual broker. We then look at how Teddy branched out on his own starting a brokerage firm so he could expand by building a team. Throughout the interview I also ask Teddy to break down his own property investing strategy, which as you would expect, has played a big part in Teddy's strategy for growing his net worth over time. Enjoy the episode. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Joshua Scigala knows a lot about crypto (thus this is a LONG episode!). He was there when Satoshi first released Bitcoin and he was unfortunately there as well when the first major exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed.   Today Joshua is leading a new Defi project called The Standard, a decentralized lending platform run by a DAO that focuses on hard and soft assets as collateral. The protocol will have the ability for users to issue multiple fiat pegged algorithmic stablecoins starting with "Standard Euro" then USD, YEN and more to be rolled out.   Before this he co-founded Vaultoro, one of the first platforms where you can directly trade Bitcoin and gold, allowing you to hedge against each asset class.    During this interview we went back in time to hear about Joshua's early career and businesses in Australia, where he grew up and how he became aware of the emerging cryptocurrency movement.   We also dive deep into all things crypto and how Joshua setup his two cryptocurrency projects.  Enjoy the conversation.   Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Collis Ta'eed with his wife Cyan started out with an idea -- they wanted to create a marketplace where digital media producers could sell their creations to customers. They began with the then popular Flash file format and later expanded into things like WordPress themes, music, video and code. Each type of media had a marketplace, including Themeforest for Wordpress and Audiojungle for music files. As is typical for the marketplace model, they took a small fee from each transaction. All these marketplaces would later be combined together under the company name Envato.  Today Envato is still a privately held company having been bootstrapped from day one. Because they are private, we don't have any public numbers about how much money they generate, but based on what journalists in Australia have written, the company does about $300 Million a year in revenue. Collis, at the time he stepped down as CEO of Envato in 2020, reported that they had crossed the major milestone of $1 Billion in creator earnings. 81,000 creators have earned through Envato since the company was founded. The Early Days I connected with Collis back when we were both part of the Australian blogging community around 2010. Back then, Collis was the creator of a blog called Freelance Switch, supporting freelancers with advice and tutorials for growing their business. That was early days for his marketplaces, but signs were already showing that he had a business that was scaling rapidly. A few years later I was producing a new interview series as a subscription product for my education business and invited Collis to do a bonus interview for the program. At the time Envato was already a multi-million dollar business selling a digital item every ten seconds. Collis and I recorded this interview at a great time. They were successful, but they had yet to reach the point where he and his wife were appearing on the 'young rich list' in Australia, which immediately boosted their public profile significantly (making it a lot harder to get in touch with Collis!). During the interview, Collis shared the entire foundation story of Envato, from going into $100,000 in debt and living with his inlaws, how they built their marketplaces and attracted creators and buyers and why they never took on investment finance and stayed bootstrapped the entire way. A New-Old Interview Although this interview is not brand new, it's never been released to the public before. Only members of my membership site had access until now. I'm releasing it here on Vested Capital because it's a story of an Australian tech unicorn (not officially, but the numbers would justify the valuation if they ever did an IPO or raised finance privately) and shares how the company was started. Marketplaces are still an amazing business model to go after today, so I know this interview will prove inspiring and insightful. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Gabriele Musella is a well-educated, well-traveled, co-founder of Coinrule.com, a company where you can build or copy sets of rules for automatically trading cryptocurrencies. The company recently raised $3M+ from MKB Bank, Urban Innovation Fund, Zilliqa and many Business Angels (Kayak Co-founder, EightSleep Founder). Before that they also successfully ran a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, providing funds which helped them to navigate the pandemic when capital briefly dried up. During this podcast we dive into Gabriele's past, which is full of education (London School of Economics, MIT, Harvard), travels throughout Europe and the USA for various jobs (Nokia, Loyds Bank) and three previous startups before the current one, Coinrule. The most notable was Paylinko, a fintech payments app. Gabriele has certainly lived a full life so far, and it was exciting to piece together all the highlights that came before his current project and then also spend some time talking about how to build a Crypto trading platform. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Kison Patel is the founder of DealRoom.net, a SAAS platform for managing the lifecycle of mergers and acquisitions. Kison spent ten years of his life running his own boutique M&A advisory firm, participating in some way with 363 asset sales. During this career, Kison noted how many processes of deals were handled with very 'old' technology, for example using spreadsheets for tracking due diligence.  This lead to the idea for DealRoom, which at first as an MVP was an attempt to better document and add a communication layer to the due diligence process. During the interview I wanted to learn more about M&A, as well as hear the story behind how Kison grew his SAAS company, which is 100% bootstrapped at the time of this recording. I asked Kison for examples of deals he worked on, how he sourced deals, what's the difference between a business broker and M&A advisory services and we also talked about how he built what he calls a 'media company' within his SAAS as a marketing strategy. If you're growing a SAAS in a legacy industry or thinking about starting one, make sure you listen to this interview. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Russ Heddleston is the co-founder and former CEO of DocSend, which was acquired by Dropbox for $165 Million in early 2021. Russ currently works at Dropbox continuing the vision he had for DocSend. During this interview we hear how Russ went from studying at Stanford, to working at a startup called Greystripe, then as an intern at Dropbox, and then launching his own startup Pursuit. Pursuit was later acquihired by Facebook, where Russ continued to work for two years. He shares some interesting insights into why Pursuit didn't take off and the lessons learned, which he then took into his next startup, DocSend. We spend a good amount of time talking about what marketing Russ and his team did to grow DocSend, how they revised their positioning and copy on their website to add fuel to their growth and how eventually the deal with Dropbox happened. If you like B2B SAAS startup stories, this interview is for you. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/  Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Sara Mauskopf is the co-founder and CEO of Winnie.com, a marketplace platform that connects parents looking for childcare and preschool providers with over 250,000 centres around the USA. To date, Sara and her team have raised $15.5 Million in venture funding over three rounds, with the most recent $9 million series being led by Rethink Impact.  In this interview we first dive back into Sara's history as a math major, then moving over to computer science, which led her to a job at Google after graduation. She later left Google for Twitter, then left again to join Postmates, where she met her co-founder, Anne Halsall. Sara and Anne were a little unique as working parents inside Postmates, and realized how difficult it was to juggle raising children and maintaining full time jobs. One of the challenges was childcare, an industry that was still driven mostly by a word-of-mouth for finding good options. Sara breaks down all the steps from making the first version of their platform, how they built the supply side up, attracted parents to the site, raised funding and currently make money. There's a lot to learn from Sara and she shares a lot of wisdom, so don't miss this one. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

I'm resurfacing this interview from 2016 because recently (2021) the team at MacGyver HQ has been sharing this interview on their social media, so I thought it would be a great time to share it with those new to Vested Capital. It was quite a thrill to see the actual MacGyver twitter account tweet out this podcast, especially as I was a kid who grew up watching the show on TV in Australia. Here's how it all came to happen... ****** When I received an email offering a chance to interview Lee Zlotoff, the creator of MacGyver for the my podcast, my initial reaction was mixed. I was excited to speak to someone who created such an iconic show, yet I wasn’t sure if he would be a good fit for a podcast about online entrepreneurship. As I investigated what Lee was up to currently, it became clear that although he was not an online entrepreneur, what he is teaching is so relevant for anyone building a business or trying to solve their financial problems. The MacGyver Secret Just as ‘Mac’ the lead character on MacGyver was able to solve problems using ingenious combinations of elements to get out of tricky situations, Lee explains that we all have access to the same ability to solve problems, if we can distract our conscious mind. In this podcast interview we go back in time to the point where Lee was an upcoming screenwriter, writing for one of his first television shows. There were only three writers and as a result he was under a lot of pressure to produce entire episodes with short deadlines. As you will hear Lee explain, he realized that his best ideas often came up during periods where his conscious mind was distracted, like while in the shower. He took this principle and formalized it, turning into a lifelong practice he tapped into whenever he needed to be creative (for example, when writing scripts) and to solve problems. Towards the end of the interviews Lee breaks down the three steps he currently teaches to help anyone tap into their own ‘inner MacGyver’. You can also learn the steps at his website, MacGyverSecret.com . The MacGyver Origin Story I couldn’t interview the creator of MacGyver without learning how the show was created. In particular, I was curious what the process was to come up with all the unique situations and solutions that the show featured every episode. You can listen in to the first half of the episode to hear how Lee first got his start as a screenwriter, how he wrote the pilot episode and also what’s coming up for MacGyver currently. Enjoy the interview, and make sure to test out the three steps to tap your own inner MacGyver next time you face a challenging situation. Yaro Starak Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/Blog: https://www.yaro.bl og/  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

It's hard to summarize all the success of Wil Schroter. He's founded so many companies. Today he's founder of Startups.com, a business education site and suite of tools and resources for entrepreneurs, some of which were previous startups by Wil (Fundable, Bizplan) and some were acquired (Zirtual, Clarity). Wil got his start early online, initially exploring bulletin boards with a commodore computer. He then launched a web design agency, Blue Diesel, in 1994, again very early to a new industry. His agency grew, later merging with a more traditional design agency, creating a full suite offline/online marketing firm. In a surprise success, the firm landed a massive client worth $250 Million in billings, beating out many larger agencies.  Wil eventually exited his agency ownership shares when the company was acquired. As a youg guy of just 27 he had earned enough money to retire, yet he decided to get back into entrepreneurship. I enjoyed this part of the podcast because Will explained why it was a mistake to be the founder of so many companies after exiting his first, yet why he wanted to and what his life was like back then working 16 hour days. After a massive anxiety attack that landed Wil in the hospital, he realized things had to change (he was also about to have his first child, adding to his motivation to stay healthy and alive!). This experience informed his decision to create Startups.com, and how he would still have multiple entities, but they would be integrated to serve the same customer and thus be easier to manage and grow together. Towards the end of the podcast I asked Wil to explain how he is able to market and attract customers to so many different companies over the years, and also to briefly touch on his current personal investing strategy. Enjoy the podcast. Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message

Tim Ferriss needs no introduction.  Author, lifestyle design pioneer, angel investor (Wealthfront, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, Shopify, Duolingo), peak performance bio hacker, accelerated learning leader and of course, podcast host. Tim first appeared on my original podcast all the way back in 2007 when few people knew his name and he was talking about his new book, the 4-Hour Workweek. In 2012 he returned to my podcast to talk about how to accelerate your speed of mastering a skill, the main topic of his new book at the time, the 4-Hour Chef. At the same time as we recorded that interview, I also asked Tim to record a secret interview just for my membership site members -- an interview where I asked Tim to explain what happened during the years BEFORE he wrote his first and most famous book. Today I'm excited to release this special trilogy podcast featuring all three interviews, edited and re-released as one big Tim Ferriss flashback. Tim is a superstar. So many entrepreneurs credit his book as a starting point for their entrepreneurial journey and millions more people listen to his podcasts. These interviews I am publishing on this episode feature Tim during much earlier phases of his career, but of course Tim never disappoints, so there is timeless wisdom to be gained by listening in today.  Enjoy the trilogy, Yaro Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yaro/message