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Today Philip Kasumu had the pleasure of speaking with Raz who's vision is fueled by wanting to leave a better environment for his children and the next generation, Rich ‘Raz’ Razgaitis is tackling a problem most people don’t even know they have: toxic drinking water. As Co-Founder & CEO of FloWater, which is the world’s most advanced water refill station and member of the Inc. 500 list, Raz is combining this vision with his 20+ years of leadership & tech experience to deliver a product that keeps 5.5 plastic water bottles from reaching our landfills and oceans every second (230+ million to date). startuphandmedowns.co 

Today's interview was with Amir Salihefendić the CEO and Founder of Doist and Twist. Amir has viewed life a little differently ever since his family fled war-torn Bosnia for Denmark. He began to see the world becoming borderless and that worldview has influenced his mission to shape the future of work as Founder and CEO of Doist, a fully distributed, bootstrapped company that creates productivity tools used by over 25 million people globally. Amir has always believed that the future of work is remote way before covid 19 and that innovation doesn’t only happen in offices. From day one, when Amir began working on his first productivity app (Todoist) from his dorm room, the Doist team has been fully distributed. It’s now made up of over 70 employees across 30 countries around the world, building tools like Todoist and Twist -  an anti-Slack, asynchronous communication tool made for the modern workplace. Having bootstrapped Doist to profitability from the beginning, Amir has zero plans of ever seeking outside investment or exiting the company.

In this episode, Philip spoke with Girish the co-founder & CEO at Shopalyst. Prior to Shopalyst, he was a Vice President at Infosys where he was responsible for their Retail Industry Solutions Business. An author of four patents that he helped commercialize, he is passionate about how data and technology are shaping our world. Besides adoption by global customers, his work is featured in MIT Tech Review, Businessweek, and Fast Company, among others. Girish is a Mechanical Engineer from UVCE Bangalore, and a management graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B). We talk all things; product, early upbringing and more. Startuphandmedowns.co

Peter Yared is the founder and CEO of InCountry, a regulatory technology company that is providing data residency-as-a-service worldwide. Peter is also a 7x founder with more than $500M in exits, A Silicon Valley veteran, Peter founded six enterprise software companies that were acquired by Sun, Oracle, Citrix, VMware and more. Previously, Peter was the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive, where he was responsible for bringing CBS into the cloud with the end-to-end replatform of its Comscore #7 group of Internet properties. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Application Server Division and the CTO of the Liberty federated identity consortium that designed SAML 2. Site: Startuphandmedowns.co

In this episode, Philip speaks with Kal Vepuri, serial investor and founder and CEO of Hero, the IoT-connected device that automatically dispenses medication when you need it, was inspired to build his company after his mother, who's an M.D., admitted herself to the hospital for quadruple bypass surgery. The surgery was successful, but it was what came next for his mother that opened her son's eyes to the difficulties millions of Americans face every day. Dr. Vepuri, herself a nationally renowned physician, underwent two readmissions that could have been prevented if she managed her medication as prescribed. Kal talks about the creation of Hero and the work that went into it before they had one customer. In addition to that, we talk about Kal's early success as a founder before he went to college and how he's managed to become a stellar angel investor as well as investing in some household names such as ClassPass, Sweetgreen, Warby Parker, Harry's and more.  Website: startuphandmdowns.co

John is the Founder, CEO, & Product Architect of Enemy Tree, a California, USA based technology startup whose products are wide-reaching experiments in hardware, software, and services that positively impact peoples lives. Previously, John spent nearly 6 years at Tesla Motors leading teams and internally innovating in areas like operations, sales, delivery, customer service, and marketing. This created an even deeper passion for startups that was already so strong it pulled JOhn to the West Coast. It gave him a profound appreciation for the incredible people who sacrifice so much to make a product and company great. Prior to that, JOhn not only built a very strong business and operations foundation by working at BIC Consumer Products and learned the roots of quality, systems, process, and execution but also dove deep into the practical and theoretical details of business In addition to building products now, John is also an active Angel Investor, as well as a mentor and advisor to several startups and entrepreneurs. John was an early investor in Gimlet Media which sold to Spotify for $200m. site: startuphandmedowns.co

(Rerun) This week we sat down with Austen Allred of Lambda School, Fit Marketing, Grasswire, and Lendup. On this episode we discuss: - Growth marketing galore - The free upfront model - When to invest Austen Allred has a super interesting origin story, having dropped out of university himself, he went on to co-found his own school and pushing the envelope for the future of education. For those of you who are out of the loop, Austen created Lambda School, a coding school that asks for no money up front in an exchange for a percentage of your salary after you get a job making more than 50k. Austen got his start in the business world at Stubtopia, a ticket brokering company that he started with his brother at 18. After handing over the reins to his brother, he went on to complete an LDS mission in Ukraine which ended up setting a tone of dedication and perseverance for his whole career. If you’re an entrepreneur trying to make your move, I suggest listening to what Austen has to say as he gives honest advice about growth, product market fit, fundraising, and how to take the right advice. Listen on Spotify, iTunes and anywhere else you listen to podcasts!

(Re-run) This week on Startup Handmedowns, we sat down with Gaston Tourn, CMO of Badoo which for those of you who don’t know is a dating app that is most popular in Europe and South America. Gaston describes himself as a writer and a poet, creating the narrative of the customer and integrating their stories into the product in question. Like many of us, Gaston once had the belief that marketers go out and trick people, that it’s more of a "slimy job", which makes his journey to marketing even more interesting. Hear how he didn’t set out to become a marketer at all, and how he was actually convinced by Google to try it out. I mean, if Google told me what job I’m meant for, I’d believe them too. Gaston talks about his time working on projects such as Google Adwords and Youtube before joining Badoo as CMO. The work he’s doing at Badoo is pretty impressive, and from the way he describes it in the interview, it totally makes sense that he sees himself as a writer and a poet. Gaston is working to fix online dating, on the whole, adding safety measures within the app and features to rid some of the common online dating problems and ultimately, get the users on more dates. As well as trying to mend online dating’s failures, he is focusing on the stories of couples who have found each other on Badoo and telling their stories. Gaston is super interesting and has a lot of great tips, especially if you’re marketing a new startup with a limited budget.

In this repeat episode, Philip speaks with Alex about how you should approach investors or attempt to raise money from the crowd?  We talk to the founder of Beam and JustPark's Ex-Ceo Alex Stefani about what it took to raise the largest Crowdfunding campaign of its time and to lead JustPark to become a household name. We discuss 1. Tips and tricks to a successful crowdfunding campaign 2. How to make it easier to launch projects when starting out 3. Why focus groups are dangerous and reliable alternatives for collecting data.

(Re-upload) In this week’s episode of Startup Handmedowns, we sit down with Ryan Walsh who is currently a partner at Floodgate. Ryan has had a very rich career history, from starting out as a performing DJ in San Francisco to co-founding his own startup, and working as the VP of product at Beats by Dre. His origin story is wild, as Ryan got his start as a raver in Pittsburg, taking pictures of the polished DJ’s equipment with a disposable camera to figure out how to emulate that sound. After figuring out that the party life of a DJ was not for him, Ryan went on to found a company called Pulselocker, which was meant as a DJ tool to cooperate with streaming services. If you’ve ever talked to a musician who has been playing pre-Napster, you’ve heard all about how much the music business has changed and how rapidly the way we buy and sell music shifts. Well, the way music was being consumed and DJ’d changed even faster than his company could develop a product, and he eventually left Pulselocker.

Ian the CEO of Mind Candy the creators of Moshi Monsters and more recently Moshi Sleeps. Ian's wealth of entertainment experience comes from his time at Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, which led to his role as International Managing Director at IGN where he was responsible for its global expansion and making IGN the #1 video games and entertainment media network in the world.  A father of two, Ian’s inspiration for Moshi comes from his vision of helping millions of families around the world become happier and healthier by helping kids sleep. https://www.moshisleep.com/

Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative VC an investment fund focused on supporting and investing in the shared future. The fund centers around two macro themes which are the growth of the creative class and the concept of collaborative consumption. Now, Morgan has a unique role at the fund because he's not actually an investing partner, he's a writer. He produces all the written content for the fund which was why I wanted to talk with him. In this episode, we talk about content marketing, whether money can buy happiness and his new book, The psychology of money. The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness Paperback: Pre-order: https://amzn.to/3fR3cZC

Tzahi (Zack) Weisfeld is a seasoned executive and a serial entrepreneur, with 25+ years of experience in tech consumer and enterprise markets. General manager and head of Ignite, Intel's Startup Mentorship Program. President of ASN (Accelerating Startup Nations), Zack was one of the founders of Microsoft Israel R&D site as well as a member of its management team for 8 years where he created Microsoft for startups which has gone on to be one of the most successful programmes in the world. startuphandmedowns.co

In this episode Philip spoke with serial entrepreneur and investor Haymo Meran. Haymo is currently the head of product at Usersnap which provides SaaS companies with feedback collection tools so that they can become more customer-centric and truly make use of the voice of the customer to improve their service.  But before this, Haymo built and sold 2 companies and that is what we spent of our time discussing. How to build meaningful products and what the production process should look like. We also discussed how he thinks about angel investing and how he got involved with Tier the Berlin-based unicorn e-scooter company.

Dan Bowyer co-founder and invest at Superseed VC. Dan invests in technical founders building smart B2B tech startups (SaaS/health/data), with a mission to help them to find global market fit. It's Dan's job to help them get out of startup mode using scalable, repeatable and profitable sales models. Ensuring they get the right people on the bus, create the right energy, infrastructure & activity to get to their first £1m in recurring revenue - which is definitely the most exciting and precarious stage for any tech startup. Before Dan was a VC he was a Tech entrepreneur, operator, and investor with 20 years experience building businesses and implementing digital. Having enjoyed some spectacular failures and some delightful successes. Dan has probably been one of the most interesting VCs I've met having started out his career in a boy band managed by Simon Cowell, I kid you not. In this episode talk all things from venture investing to COVID-19 and more.

In this episode Philip spoke with Andrea Hippeau is a Principal on our investment team. Prior to joining Lerer Hippeau, she held management and business development roles at portfolio companies. Andrea worked in corporate development while at Advance Publications and managed client relationships for Thomson Reuters. After studying French and business management at Skidmore College, she went on to get her MBA from Columbia Business School.  In this episode, Philip and Andrea talk all things venture capital, COVID-19, deal flow, and more.

Melissa has been an executive at high-growth companies for over twenty years. She is now Principal of Daimler Partners, working as an advisor, facilitator, and executive coach. Her primary focus is on helping leaders define and operationalize culture. Prior to starting Daimler Partners, Melissa was an executive who experienced multiple leadership viewpoints throughout her career. She led HR for a fast-growing venture-funded startup. She created and built Learning & Organizational Development functions for Adobe, Twitter, and WeWork. She built a coaching company while also the first employee of Coach University, one of the first leaders in the coaching field. Her experience as an executive and now as a consultant includes coaching executives, helping teams work more effectively, and building scale-proof organizational processes.

Mick is a Brooklyn-based multi-talented creative with influential footprints internationally – from New York to LA, London to Tokyo. He is a DJ, style influencer, tech investor, inspirational speaker, music curator and brand consultant. He's also a pretty cool dad from what I hear also! In this episode, we talk about Mick's approach to becoming the go-to DJ for many celebrities and how he's the ability to network and add value afforded him many opportunities. Many of these opportunities included giggs, sponsorship deals, and angel investment opportunities. One deal, in particular, was with podcast hosting platform Anchor which was recently acquired by Spotify for a reported $200m which isn't bad at all.

Peter Rojas is a founding partner at Betaworks Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund based in New York and San Francisco. He is also the co-founder of several startups, including Weblogs Inc. (acquired by AOL in 2005), where he created and was editor-in-chief of both Engadget and Joystiq; Gizmodo (formerly Gawker Media, now part of Univision); music discovery service RCRD LBL; and gdgt, a social commerce platform (acquired by AOL in 2013). Prior to Betaworks Ventures, he worked at AOL as VP of Strategy and later as Co-director of Alpha, the company's experimental products group. I really enjoyed this episode because I got to talk with Peter not only as an entrepreneur and founder but also as a venture capitalist which is always great as you get both perspectives on things.  startuphandmedowns.co

Hadley has done a little bit of everything on the path to co-founding Eniac. Starting as an engineer and development team lead at Pegasystems, he later took on roles as a product manager at Microsoft and strategist at Samsung, where it became clear that big companies were not for him. In 2007 he was very fortunate to join a very talented AI team out of MIT at Vlingo where he ran a few aspects of the business across product, strategy, and marketing until it was sold to Nuance for $225M. He rolled his experience building a successful startup into Thumb whereas CBO he helped the real-time recommendation app reach user engagement levels second only to Facebook before being acquired. In this episode, Philip and Hadley discuss product development, startups, consumer startups and the effects of Covid-19 on the ecosystems.  startuphandmedowns.co