My guest for Ep142 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Founder & CEO of Simply Wall St., Al Bentley.

Al started Simply Wall St (then known as Ninjavest) as a weekend project from a startup weekend competition back in 2013.

Fast forward 8 years later and the company now has more than 3M users and has raised $3.4M including it’s last round of $2.4M in funding that it raised from its own member base.

In this interview we covered a range of topics including:

• How Al built an organic growth engine that allowed Simply Wall St to acquire 3M users
• How to prioritise feedback on product requests from customers
• How Al created scarcity when fundraising 
• & much more!

Timestamps 

• 1.51 – Als’ story of starting Simply Wall St. 
• 3.01 – His background as a Naval Architect 
• 4.22 – Launching Simply Wall St. as Ninja Vest at a startup competition weekend 
• 7.10 – The importance of validation and Als’ takeaways from the startup weekend
• 9.35 – How Simply Wall St. was developed following the weekend
• 15.29 – Finding a co-founder and why you need one 
• 23.22 – Advice for founders about listening to customer feedback and making decisions on what is worth pursuing 
• 27.27 – The importance of product market fit 
• 32.48 – Focusing on building a quality team and bringing Mahesh onboard
• 37.34 – Managing a growing team
• 41.28 – How to identify the needs of the organisation when hiring
• 42.57 – How and why Simply Wall St. co-founder Nick stepped back from the company 
• 44.47 – Als’ approach to growth
• 52.39 – Prioritising resource allocation and choosing focus areas 
• 56.46 – Als’ recommended resources for founders 
• 1.02.14 – The challenges of fundraising 
• 1.09.52 – Questions you should be asking investors to ensure alignment 
• 1.13.37 – Where you can find Simply Wall St. 

Links Mentioned 

Al Bently’s Links

• Simply Wall St
• Al Bentley Twitter
• Al Bentley About Me

People:

• Sam Birmingham 
• Marcus Tan
• Bill Tai
• Rick Baker
• Ben Heap
• Toby Heap
• Nick van den Berg
• Marty Cagan (product expert) 
• Zac Brookes
• Melanie Perkins
• Mahesh Muralidhar
• Sean Ellis
• Andrew Chen
• Alex Schultz

Events

• West Tech Fest 
• Startup Weekend

Resources

• Angel List
• Canva
• The Mom Test Book
• Marty Cagan Product Books
• Jobs to be done 

Past Episodes

• Ep139 – Mahesh Muralidhar 
• Ep141 – Alex Zaccaria

Special Thanks:

Special thanks to Nick van den Berg and Zac Brookes for their help with research for this interview ? .

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams

Other channels:

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