Just Go Grind

This is a special episode pulled from the Just Go Grind vault! Dr. Iman Abuzeid is the Co-founder and CEO of Incredible Health, a career marketplace whose custom matching technology offers hospitals the fastest, most effective way to hire qualified permanent nursing staff. By 2024, the United States is poised to experience its biggest employment crisis to date, a shortage of one million nurses, putting patient care in jeopardy and hospitals at risk of significant financial loss. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the nursing shortage, highlighting the need for qualified nurses across the country. Incredible Health is on a mission to reinvent the hospital and healthcare staffing landscape, helping to solve the nursing shortage. As a former medical doctor whose immediate family includes three surgeons, Iman understands the importance of helping healthcare professionals find and do their best work. Incredible Health is based in San Francisco, backed by top tier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and is used by hundreds of leading hospitals across the country, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Stanford Healthcare, Baylor Scott & White and many more. Dr. Abuzeid holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In August 2022, Iman led Incredible Health to $1.65B unicorn status with an $80M Series B raise. This makes Incredible Health the highest valued tech-enabled career marketplace in healthcare. This new funding comes on the heels of several major milestones for Incredible Health. In 2021, revenue grew 500% as their marketplace grew exponentially. More than 10,000 US nurses now join Incredible Health’s platform every single week, and they’ve expanded from partnering with 200 hospitals to 600 hospitals. Their marketplace technology has reduced the average time to hire permanent nurses to only 14 days – from an industry standard of 82 days – while saving each hospital location at least $2M annually in travel nurse, overtime, and HR costs. Topics Covered by Iman Abuzeid in this Episode How Incredible Health got started Being 1 million nurses short in the U.S. by 2024 How Iman figured out what the initial version of Incredible Health would be Creating a solution that's 10x better than what's currently available How Iman met her co-founder, Rome, and the conversation around going into business together How Iman thought through the equity split early on Raising a few hundred thousand dollars from friends and family to get Incredible Health off the ground Raising a $2.4M Seed Round in 2-3 months after going through the NFX accelerator Raising a $15M Series A in 4-5 weeks led by Jeff Jordan at Andreessen Horowitz Iman's advice for fundraising and creating a process and how her own skills evolved How Iman brought on the first hospitals through cold-calling The MVP of Incredible Health and why you have to fight the urge to ship perfection How the team has grown for Incredible Health The values of Incredible Health and how it's part of everything they do How Incredible Health uses customer insights to develop their platform, operations, and marketing Why Incredible Health offers free continuing education for every nurse in the country How Iman thinks through the products and tools they're going to provide to their customers The sales process of getting hospitals on their platform The 3 biggest value adds of the investors Iman has for Incredible Health Questions that Iman asked of CEOs for reference checks on investors How Iman takes care of her own mental health and why she has a therapist How getting an MBA from Wharton impacted Iman's journey as an entrepreneur Books and blogs that Iman recommends How Iman recharges away from work and why she doesn't work on Saturdays Iman's experience as a minority woman founder Diversity debt Links from the Episode Rome Portlock NFX Jeff Jordan Andreessen Horowitz Obvious Ventures signal.nfx.com James Joaquin The Hard Thing About Hard Things Who (A book on hiring) Above the Crowd by Bill Gurley Stephanie Lampkin Blendoor Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Dave Fink is the CEO and Co-Founder of Postie, a marketing technology company that has transformed Direct Mail by enabling it to perform like a digital channel. In doing so, Postie has unleashed the medium's potential and unlocked growth for its advertisers, delivering an average campaign ROAS of 1,382%. From prospecting campaigns for new customers, to retargeting and CRM campaigns to maximize existing customers, Postie offers marketing solutions for every stage of the customer journey. With creative testing, real-time attribution, and campaign management tools Postie delivers an all-in-one platform to dynamically optimize your DM strategy. As a consumer internet and technology entrepreneur, Dave is most engaged when leveraging emerging technologies in simple ways to solve real-world problems. He is driven by the intellectual pursuit as much as the accomplishments they’re achieving at Postie. Topics Covered by Dave Fink in this Episode Postie as the only ad-serving technology solution specifically dedicated to the direct mail channel How the patterns Dave observed as a partner at Science incubator led to him founding Postie Postie’s early days of identifying their ideal customer profile, customer acquisition, and go-to-market How they manage such a wide range of customer profiles How Postie’s intuitive product and customer experience mimics the digital campaign experience Taking direct mail campaigns from a 60 to 3 day lead time Postie’s behind the scenes logistics and how they’ve been able to innovate and optimize efficiency How measurable results have fueled Postie’s growth Why they focused on building first and waited 5+ years to start marketing themselves as a company Choosing slow and steady growth instead of continually raising VC What’s next for Postie Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Connor Ellison is the CEO and Founder of POGR, a next-gen statistical platform for developers & gamers. POGR is a unique customizable profile system with centralized video game statistics. They closed $2.25M at a 20 million valuation earlier this year, and are building the statistical foundation for the future of gaming. Connor is a lifelong gamer and avid reader and learner. Topics Covered by Connor Ellison in this Episode How POGR is building the statistical foundation for the future of gaming POGR’s origin story Connor’s path to actually becoming a founder 1,000 emails to get their first $100k and raising their seed round pre-revenue Connor’s insights on cold outreach: scrappiness and high levels of personalization Connor’s successful cold outreach pitch and how he leverages tracking in the process Negotiating terms with investors POGR's business model and their multiple stakeholders The growth strategy for POGR Connor’s “jump and figure it out” approach as an entrepreneur and connecting with his co-founders through Discord Failure as an inevitable part of success Connor & Justin’s love for learning and their book and podcast recommendations The big vision for POGR Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Samiur Rahman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Heyday, an AI-powered research assistant that makes knowledge workers smarter. Heyday empowers your best thinking by working in the background as an assistant for your memory, automatically saving all your content for you and resurfacing it when you need it, enabling you to stop wasting energy remembering and focus on creating. Samiur is a software engineer capable of working across the stack (web, mobile, backend and embedded), focusing primarily on data science, algorithms and machine learning. He wants to create the next-generation of intelligent products using modern machine learning and neural networks. He’s particularly passionate about employing deep neural networks to tasks that were previously thought to be restricted to just humans. Prior to Heyday, Samiur and his co-founder Sam DeBrule founded another company, Journal, which they eventually pivoted into their current venture. Topics Covered by Samiur Rahman in this Episode Heyday: an AI-powered research assistant How Heyday was born from a pivot of Journal The challenging decision to shut down Journal and applying their learnings to building Heyday The process of defining their ideal customer Deciding to work with Sam DeBrule through multiple companies and the importance of complimentary co-founder skillsets Navigating go-to-market strategy and early customer acquisition Their experience getting Heyday featured as product of the day, week, and month on Product Hunt Getting ready to raise VC funding and working with Order Design How they approached VC fundraising How to get the most value out of relationships with your investors and why they love working with Kevin Thau at Spark Capital How they’re approaching sustainable customer acquisition at their current stage Finding and working with an ad agency Planning for their financial runway in the current market Samiur and Justin’s thoughts on Adam Neumann’s raise from a16z The big vision for Heyday Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Ryan Bartlett is the Co-Founder and CEO of True Classic, a D2C men’s clothing brand that has grown from $0 to $150M in revenue in just a few years. At True Classic, they understand that not every body is shaped the same. That’s where they come in, making premium, high-quality, everyday essentials for every type of person, with no gimmicks. Their goal with this company has always revolved around over-indexing on the value they give to their customers and communities. This means best in class customer service, entertaining ads that make you laugh, products that are intentionally designed to help you look better, and donating shirts at scale (40k+/month) to help homeless vets, shelters, schools, and other communities in need. Topics Covered by Ryan Bartlett in this Episode What True Classic is doing today Ryan’s background, True Classic’s origin story, and getting the business off the ground What differentiates True Classic and how Ryan thought about their market positioning Early manufacturing decisions and product development How Ryan approached early marketing The power Facebook marketing and how their changes in privacy policy have impacted companies How they became more intentional with their marketing by creating comedic video ads What enabled them to scale to $150M in revenue in 3 years Agencies vs. in-house marketing The benefits and dangers of moving at warp speed Lessons learned for successfully scaling manufacturing Developing their intentional hiring strategy Launching internationally Ryan’s big vision for True Classic The mission and impact aspect of True Classic Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Katie Reed is the Co-Founder and CEO of Balanced, a digital fitness platform to build a healthspan that matches our new lifespans. They are committed to helping older adults maintain vibrancy in their lives, with an exercise platform that promises community, joy, and a personalized experience to rebel against the decline of aging. Balanced meets older adults where they are with their heterogeneous profiles by taking into account chronic conditions, injuries, pain, and physical ability. Balanced was inspired by Katie and Kelly's families during COVID-19. While living with her grandmother during quarantine, Katie was distraught with the state of digital fitness for folks like her grandmother. At the same time, Kelly was virtually training her grandparents with cardio boxing via Facetime. With backgrounds in technology, startups, and fitness, the two knew that they could create a digital fitness experience to inspire and build community with healthy outcomes that all older adults deserve. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in New York City, Balanced has a growing number of fitness programs and content across its platform, available to members at anytime, from anywhere. Their world-class trainers teach live and on-demand classes across multiple fitness modalities with on-screen modifications, including pilates, strength training, cardio boxing, yoga, stretching, dance cardio, and walking. Topics Covered by Katie Reed in this Episode What Balanced is How Katie’s grandparents inspired her to found Balanced Initial testing for Balance How they networked to conduct original testing among both communities and trainers From bootstrapping to deciding to raise VC in order to become a market leader Building out production and branding after piloting their program Early decision-making to enable long-term quality and scalability Building out their MVP Capital deployment from their pre-seed round and positioning themselves to be a supplemental benefit for Medicare Advantage Plans Katie’s experience fundraising as a first-time founder and selling a vision that resonates Building out the team for Balanced Katie’s tips for finding great founding engineers How they’re using the funds with their most recent raise The Balanced user experience How they’re approaching motivation and adherence to the program What Katie’s biggest challenges have been building Balanced as a first-time founder How Katie manages her time and takes care of herself What’s next for Balanced Where Katie sees potential in the market of aging adults Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Haroon Mokhtarzada is the CEO and Co-Founder at Rocket Money, previously Truebill, a leading personal finance app with a mission to empower people to live their best financial lives. They offer their 3.4 million members a unique understanding of their finances and a suite of valuable services that save both time and money -- ultimately giving them a leg up on their financial journey. Members can manage their subscriptions, lower their bills, build budgets and automatically set aside money to reach their savings goals. They’ve saved their members $245 million and counting. Haroon is a Harvard Law grad turned serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He was the founder and CEO of Webs.com, a popular website creation platform that grew to 50 million users before being acquired by Vistaprint for over $100M. After Webs, Haroon co-founded Truebill in 2015. As CEO, Haroon grew Truebill into a leading personal finance app, topping 2.5 million members and over $100M in annual recurring revenue before being acquired by Rocket Companies in 2021 with the goal of creating a centralized destination for consumers to manage their entire financial lives. Haroon has a passion for technology startups, innovation, global change, and elegant problem solving. He has personally invested in over 100 technology startups including early stage investments in Instacart, Carta, Relativity Space, PlutoTV, and more. Haroon is a 2021 Henry Crown Fellow and has participated on several boards including the American Express Open Digital Advisory Board and the United Nations Global Entrepreneurs Council. Topics Covered by Haroon Mokhtarzada in this Episode What Truebill (now Rocket Money) is Deciding to start another company after a $100M+ exit The difference between building a company in 2001 and 2015 What enabled Haroon to go from 0 to $1B exit in 6 years Some of the other business ideas Haroon has had and how he chooses which to execute on Building a minimum lovable product Truebill’s go-to-market strategy The challenges they faced in funding a PFM (personal financial management) company The evolution that led to their unique pay what you want subscription model for a subscription-canceling product Being humble enough to not be too tied to your own intuition The performance marketing engine that allowed Truebill to go from $1M ARR to $100M ARR in 4 years Which metrics are the most important to focus on Choosing fully aligned investors Haroon’s evaluation of the other major players in the PFM space What made Truebill unique in a crowded industry, enabling their success Haroon’s thoughts on the FinTech regulatory environment and government’s appropriate role From manually cancelling subscriptions to automating and scaling their services Haroon’s takeaways from his exits How Haroon manages his time Why Haroon previously had a bit of a chip on his shoulder Why Haroon began angel investing and his approach to it now Balancing running a company with angel investing The benefits of co-founding with your siblings Experiences Haroon would like to have had and which company he would’ve liked to have founded Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Chelsey Roney is the Co-Founder and COO of Proxi, the geospatial powerhouse behind transformative, human-centered interactions with the real world making mapping and crowdsourcing geographic data accessible to everyone. Their no-code platform allows users to create, customize and embed highly interactive maps into social media accounts, websites, and apps. Enabling and hosting this curated content will power future tech-enabled, location-based experiences for both brands and individuals in the creator economy. Chelsey is a serial entrepreneur, a passionate business builder, and a marketing expert. After graduating from Texas A&M, Chelsey joined Boeing where she worked in financial planning and analysis and Microsoft where she worked in a demand center that focused on B2B omnichannel marketing. She grew and sold two businesses: a SaaS business in the University space, and a local services business. Chelsey is also an active member of her community, dedicated parent, and passionate supporter of women and business. Her persistence, attention to detail, and deep knowledge of finance and marketing have helped Proxi grow more than 100% month over month. Topics Covered by Chelsey Roney in this Episode What Proxi is and how the idea was born from the first pandemic Halloween in 2020 The evolution of Proxi’s crowdsourced mapping tool Deciding to raise VC and applying to Techstars Going full-time with Proxi The experience of going through Techstars and the value it provided Techstars’ Mentor Madness Raising a $1.2M VC round and the different expectations between being VC-backed, debt-backed, and bootstrapping Deciding to work with Leslie Feinzaig of Graham & Walker The big vision for Proxi and their pitch to investors Taking on Yelp and Google Maps The challenge of customer acquisition and narrowing down their ideal customer profile with such a large range of use cases Evolution and flexibility in Proxi’s business model Prioritizing hiring and marketing with the VC funds they raised Where they’ve focused their marketing allocations and navigating different strategies How they’re approaching product-led growth How they prioritize feedback about which new features to build and why they’re incorporating accounts into their product Why Chelsea loves entrepreneurship and how she finds balance and implements boundaries A special announcement about what’s next for Proxi Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Analisa Goodin is the founder and CEO of Catch+Release, a venture-backed startup that supports brands in building authentic, award-winning ad campaigns, while ensuring the creators are being compensated for their work. Catch+Release is a collaborative creative platform that helps storytellers curate and license Found Content from anywhere on the internet, solving a specific problem that touches almost every creative, producer and content creator in the production industry today: making it easy to discover the best content from the open web, and making it available for licensing to agencies and brands worldwide. Analisa took a unique path to get to where she is today and admirably stayed true to herself and her passions. While many business leaders have their MBA, Analisa is passionate about the arts and holds her Masters of the Arts. She spent several years in the creative ad world focused on image research. During her time in the agency world (at firms like Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) and as the leader of her own agency, she was able to understand the key pain points - that she would eventually go on to solve - firsthand. She has raised more than $26M from top venture capitalists at leading firms like Accel for her revolutionary technology that for the first time gives brands a way to leverage found content, meaning content that already exists on the internet today, uploaded by creators, including directors, photographers, producers, entrepreneurs, and everyday people. Over the years she has grown the company to include an amazing team of curators, licensing experts, engineers, product designers, and project managers. They relieve headaches for the best agencies and buyers around, including Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Anomaly, Goodby, Silverstein&Partners, Weiden+Kennedy, and more. Topics Covered by Analisa Goodin in this Episode What Catch+Release is and how they’re licensing the internet Catch+Release’s orgin story and where Analisa came up with the company’s name The evolution of Catch+Release’s product and vision as the creator economy has exploded The importance of early conversations with stakeholders The timeline from bootstrapping to seed round funding How Analisa approached fundraising and network building with minimal context as a first-time founder Company growth after raising a seed round and navigating the difference between Founder and CEO roles How and why Analisa incorporated improv as a key element in team-building What has fueled Catch+Release’s growth and how that has shifted over the years How they’re approaching expanding their customer base today Catch+Release’s re-launch and re-brand Analisa’s journey from creative to tech startup founder Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Herb Coakley is the Founder and CEO of Courial, a last-mile courier service that’s empowering gig workers nationwide with their people-first approach to technology. Created by gig-workers for gig-workers, their state of the art technology has modernized the courier industry by allowing any business or person to seamlessly connect with their community of on-demand couriers to deliver anything. They’re on a mission to change the on-demand gig economy paradigm. Better pay, true partnership, live dispatch support, paid PTO, transparency and a seat at the table, while reducing CO2 emissions in their communities. Herb is a serial entrepreneur, former physicist and film producer, with degrees from Howard University, UCLA and Columbia University. He’s also a self-taught developer, designer and former gig-economy driver with over 20,000 gigs. At his previous start-up, he created technology that allowed seamless app switching for gig drivers, enabling them to earn much more money while drastically reducing distracted driving. He is now considered an evangelist in the on-demand, gig economy sector, a distinction that has earned the admiration and trust of gig drivers nationwide. Topics Covered by Herb Coakley in this Episode How Courial is empowering frontline communities and gig workers Herb’s journey from physicist to filmmaker to entrepreneur Courial’s origin story and getting investors & the connection into Y Combinator while driving for Uber From stealth mode to launching their MVP and participating in climate tech incubator Elemental Courial's core concept, pivoting from B2C to B2B, and serving a variety of stakeholders Doing good while doing well What Herb learned from his first business as an inexperienced founder and going through Y Combinator How Herb taught himself to code How Herb has leveraged inexperienced talent How they’re diversifying investors Launching in new markets Herb’s unorthodox approach to being a people-first tech company Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212