Just Go Grind

Rishi Mandal is the co-founder and CEO of Future, backed by Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund. Future is an online personal training platform that pairs clients with their own world-class coach. Future is creating the most personal training experience ever by using a combination of technology, content, and elite personal trainers to empower members through fitness. Their custom-made training plans with personalized audio coaching are designed to keep you coming back. With Future, you can reach your goals at home, in the gym, or at your group fitness classes, when and where it’s most convenient for you. Their team comes from Apple, Google, Airbnb, Square, Fitbit, the NCAA, and the NBA. Rishi was previously the CEO of Sosh (acquired by Postmates) and a product leader at Google. Prior to tech, Rishi was an astrophysics researcher at NASA and Stanford University. Some of the Topics Covered by Rishi Mandal in this Episode What Future is and why Rishi decided to start it How Rishi identified the problem he wanted to tackle with Future and the discovery process that followed The shift and benefit as a coach using Future Future's focus on diversity when recruiting coaches How they approached customer acquisition and how it has shifted Building the coach-trainee connection digitally Underbuilding the original product to test its validity and product market fit The big vision for Future and how they're getting there by building the business in phases How they designed Future's pricing model and business model Rishi's insights on planning and fundraising How Rishi views relationship building Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Charlie O'Donnell is the sole Partner and Founder at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.  The fund makes seed and pre-seed investments and was the first venture firm located in Brooklyn--where he was born and raised.  Brooklyn Bridge invested in the first rounds of The Wing, Canary, Hungryroot, Ample Hills, Clubhouse, Imagen, and goTenna among others. Charlie has a reputation for being early to identifying important companies.  Nick Bilton identifies him as an influence on early Twitter investors in his book, Hatching Twitter.  Dennis Crowley credits him as having helped kick off the first funding of Foursquare before other VCs had said yes. Working in venture capital since 2001, he apprenticed his way through the asset class with analyst roles on the original Union Square Ventures team as well as at the General Motors pension fund--a long time limited partner in many top tier funds. Charlie is one of only a dozen individuals to be named to Business Insider's 100 Most Influential People in NY Tech five or more times. He served on the founding board of the New York Tech Meetup and is one of the group's first 100 members. He was recently named to City & State Magazine’s Tech Power 50. His blog, This is Going to Be BIG!, is one of the ten most widely read VC blogs in the country and over 13,000 people read his weekly NYC tech newsletter. He has spoken at SXSW and Techcrunch Disrupt. Some of the Topics Covered by Charlie O'Donnell in this Episode How Charlie started his career at GM and what he learned there How he ended up joining Union Square Ventures early on and why he decided to get into VC, particularly working in tech in New York Deciding to start his own fund Raising his first fund--how he failed at first and what he learned Having 50 investors in his first fund The challenge Charlie ran into when fundraising at first due to the nature of his network and how he overcame it How raising for his second fund compared to the first experience How Charlie approaches deal sourcing Taking the Pre-Series A Offsite event online at the beginning of the pandemic Curating and choreographing events to maximize value for the audience How Charlie approaches blogging and how it plays into his role as a VC Making yourself findable Charlie's perspective on the future of learning and work Startup ecosystems and what it takes to make one successful Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Jordan DeCicco is the co-founder of Super Coffee, an enhanced coffee company that now offers a variety of products, from bottled coffee to creamers, grounds and pods. Their products are non-GMO, Gluten-Free, Lactose-Free, Soy-Free, Low-Calorie, and have no added sugar and zero-artificial-ingredients. As a collegiate student-athlete, Jordan was tired. His campus store offered energy products with empty caffeine, excessive sugar and harmful chemicals. He wanted a drink that promised powerful energy and delicious flavor from healthy, organic ingredients. Not one to settle, Jordan turned his dorm room into a culinary kitchen and got to work! Determined to solve his energy crisis, he consciously blended organic Colombian coffee with grass-fed milk protein, and healthy fats from coconut oil to create an unparalleled source of focused energy. This side project became his passion and now purpose as he and his two older brothers lead the youngest, hungriest team in the business. They believe in positive energy for positive change because if you can change your energy you can change your world. Some of the Topics Covered by Jordan DeCicco in this Episode What Super Coffee is and what spurred Jordan to start it as a freshman year student athlete in college The steps Jordan and his brother took to get the business started The decision to drop out of university and give up his athletic scholarship in order to pursue Super Coffee full time Raising capital first through a friends and family round, then angel investors From getting their product into their local Whole Foods to 50 Whole Foods stores in the first year while doing their own production and deliveries Learning what it takes to be a good manufacturer and distributor Their experience on Shark Tank Working with his two brothers as co-founders Scaling manufacturing, retail, and distribution Going from 100 stores to 35,000 stores and 500 distributors in 4 years Getting into e-commerce as a viable channel for their product How they evaluate resource allocation and prioritizing retail versus D2C The biggest challenges they've faced in scaling the business How Jordan and his brothers have approached product development Jordan's view on the competition How Jordan prioritizes his own physical and mental health Jordan's book recommendations Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Isabelle Kenyon is the Founder & CEO of Calibrate, the modern, medical metabolic health business that is changing the way the world treats weight. Calibrate's doctor-guided program defines a new standard of clinical care, bringing decades of academic research to everyone, everywhere. Their program combines FDA-approved metabolic medication with a holistic curriculum and 1:1 virtual coaching sessions that drive lasting behavior change. The result is a metabolic reset that delivers sustainable weight loss and success beyond the scale, with improved whole-body health that enables our members to embrace a new day-to-day. Prior to Calibrate, Isabelle led the business operations, growth, and strategic partnerships & communications teams at Capsule, a technology business that has raised $270 million to rebuild the pharmacy from the inside out. Before Capsule, Isabelle worked at beloved consumer brands in London and New York and was selected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Retail & E-commerce list in 2015. She began her career as an investment banker in Hong Kong and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Some of the Topics Covered by Isabelle Kenyon in this Episode What Calibrate is and what fueled Isabelle to start it The first steps she took to get the business off the ground Pitching investors Calibrate's go to market strategy Pivoting the business after the consumer research predicted the wrong demographic Founder market fit and waiting for the right idea Early customer acquisition What Calibrate's program entails Building and growing a team virtually during a global pandemic How Isabelle has approached pricing for Calibrate What's next for Calibrate and their big vision How Isabelle views partnerships and competition Isabelle's experience as a female founder The power of persistence Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Xiaoyin Qu is the Founder and CEO of Run The World, a leading virtual events platform for community building. Run The World is the one-stop-shop for experts, creators, community leaders and organizations to host and monetize from interactive online events such as workshops, meetups, summits or shows. Xiaoyin is a Forbes 30 under 30, Linkedin Top Voice, and Inc. Female Founder 100. Prior to dropping out of Stanford Graduate School of Business to start Run The World, she led product management at Facebook and Instagram. She is an active and well-published product writer and tech influencer, and is running her own product columns in China with 7000+ paid subscribers (Geektime), and working on her new upcoming book. She has been invited to speak at multiple international and national product conferences as well as top universities such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, Claremont Colleges and more. Xiaoyin is a contributor for Forbes China, Hacker Noon, and she runs her own tech columns in 36kr (leading tech media in China), Product Coalition (world's largest free Product Management community), woshiPM (China's leading product management media). She was selected to be a resident for Zhenfund, China's leading angel fund. Some of the Topics Covered by Xiaoyin Qu in this Episode What Run The World is and what differentiates them Coming to the U.S. from China at age 18 for college Working at Facebook and Instagram as a product manager Deciding to go to business school at Stanford and then dropping out to start Run The World Running her first virtual conference and how that led to funding Run The World Making Run The World a comprehensive event platform Early customer acquisition and organic growth Fundraising as a female founder Xiaoyin's advice for first time founders Building out a team for Run The World Determining roles and responsibilities with her co-founder How the COVID-19 pandemic affected their business as they were in the early stages of growth Managing a distributed team The business model for Run The World and how pricing has evolved How Xiaoyin sees Run The World as a new media format How they're helping event organizers to create more value for people in order to generate revenue and monetize Managing feedback The biggest challenges of growing Run The World A typical day for Xiaoyin and balancing having team members across the world How Xiaoyin recharges away from work Learning how to be a manager Figuring out what success looks like in areas outside of your expertise What makes a successful online event How they're approaching specialization and narrowing down their use cases What Xiaoyin would do differently looking back The big vision for Run The World Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Wisam Dakka is the co-founder of Meemo, an AI-powered social finance app where your digital wallet meets your everyday life. Meemo allows you to send and receive money to friends and family, and is delighting users with automatic rewards based on their recent activity. This includes personalized offers and shopping deals, Weekly Review stories, useful transaction-based notifications, and more. The secure app can also be used to search and sort through accounts and transactions, and enjoy shareable insights uncovered by Meemo's powerful AI. Wisam Dakka and his co-founder, André Madeira are longtime product developers, coders and engineers who previously worked at Snap and Google. Some of the Topics Covered by Wisam Dakka in this Episode What Meemo is and where the idea came from The landscape for this type of service and having Google and Apple as potential competitors How Meemo is building trust with its users How they've gone about prioritizing features and why they had to have a unique approach Meemo's go-to-market strategy and how it has been affected by COVID How they have begun to acquire customers and how they've shifted their strategy How they have adapted the way their team works during COVID and keeping a remote team engaged What's next for Meemo Insights on building a consumer product that Wisam gained from working in big tech The transition from working in big tech to building a startup Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Colleen Cutcliffe, PhD, is co-founder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics, a biotech startup in San Francisco. Colleen stands alone among entrepreneurs: she is a scientist with a doctoral degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, a pioneer in the exploration of the human body’s microbiome, and a challenger of the probiotics industry and its 1970s-era formulas. Prior to Pendulum, Colleen led a team of scientists at Pacific Biosciences, a company famous for its DNA sequencing. Armed with this technology, Pendulum is doing groundbreaking microbiome research by extracting new bacterial strains, studying their impact on chronic conditions, and combining them in never-before-seen formulations. The company’s mission is to create probiotics as effective as prescription drugs, without any side effects. The company’s first offering, Pendulum Glucose Control, is the only probiotic in existence that has lowered blood sugar spikes and A1C levels in a clinical trial – welcome news for the 122 million Americans living with diabetes and prediabetes. Colleen completed her postdoctoral research at Northwestern Medicine’s Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. She received a doctoral degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Wellesley College.  Some of the Topics Covered by Colleen Cutcliffe in this Episode What Pendulum Therapeutics is doing today and how Colleen decided to start it Why working in microbiome science is so personal for Colleen The first steps that Colleen and her co-founders took to found Pendulum The incredible journey from learning what VCs are to getting their first investment in the form of a convertible note, to finally becoming fully venture-backed The catch-22 of VCs wanting to see the milestones that you're actually fundraising in order to reach The unexpected challenges Colleen faced when asked for her bank account information Pivoting from a service company to a product business Deciding which application of their technology to focus on first Creating the product over a decade Deciding between the pharmaceutical path or going D2C How they've begun to grow their customer base The anti-drug movement and shift towards pro-natural The ongoing question of pricing a very unique product As a scientist, how Colleen approached the field of marketing Colleen's leadership style and values How Colleen recharges and creates boundaries around work The importance of having investors that are fundamentally aligned with your values Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Erik Jacobson is the Founder and CEO of Lemonpie, a full service podcast PR and production agency. Erik first saw the power of podcasting after working with podcasters like Tim Ferriss. With Lemonpie, he now helps companies like FreshBooks, HubSpot, and Four Sigmatic use podcast strategies to build awareness and drive revenue. He also recently launched Hatch, which offers unlimited podcast editing. You can get deep-dive case studies, expert interviews, and all of Erik’s podcast strategies on his weekly show, Brands That Podcast.  Some of the Topics Covered by Erik Jacobson in this Episode What Lemonpie is and how Erik fell in love with podcasting How Erik ended up working for Tim Ferriss and Jason Calacanis How to know if a podcast strategy is right for your business and where to start The 3 different podcast strategies and the pros and cons of each Tips for how to approach and get the most out of each of the podcasting strategies Video vs audio podcasting Understanding the ROI of podcasting The logistics of creating your own podcast Growing your audience and distribution when starting a podcast Some example brands doing a great job with podcasting The services Lemonpie and Hatch offer and Erik's new course, Podcast in a Week How to avoid "podfade" Links from the Episode Tim Ferriss Jason Calacanis Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss Brands that Podcast: Ep04 Masterclass: Lessons from $20 Million Spent on Podcast Ads (w/ Glenn Rubenstein) Gong Balto Buffer The Science of Social Media (Buffer Podcast) Breaking Brand (Buffer Podcast) Brands that Podcast Rand Fishkin SparkToro Drift Seeking Wisdom: A Podcast From Drift Laura Roeder Edgar Brands that Podcast: Ep01 – How MeetEdgar Podcasts (w/ Laura Roeder) Hatch Podcast in a Week Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Eric Shoykhet is the Founder and CEO of Atom Finance, a modern financial knowledge platform empowering investors to make informed investing decisions with best-in-class research, software, and data. Eric founded Atom to fill a white space he identified in the market. As an institutional analyst at Blackstone and Governor’s Lane, Eric had access to enterprise platforms like CapIQ and Bloomberg. He quickly identified the massive information gap between those platforms and what was readily available to retail investors via Yahoo! Finance, etc. Eric founded Atom Finance in 2018 to bridge the gap and provide the same market research resources traditionally available only to Wall Street professionals into the hands of any investor via a powerful and intuitive platform that works anywhere. Some of the Topics Covered by Eric Shoykhet in this Episode What Atom Finance is and what led Eric to found it The early hurdles Eric faced in building Atom Finance How Eric approached customer discovery Early fundraising for Atom Finance and what Eric has learned during the process Why there weren't many competitors when Eric started Atom Finance Building the MVP for Atom Finance Early customer acquisition, what growth looks like for Atom Finance today and who their ideal customer is How Eric view pricing differently than others in the space How being an operator influences your perspective as an investor and vice versa The challenges of hiring and building company culture What makes Atom Finance stand out Resources Eric has found helpful as a first-time founder Eric's communication style with their investors How Eric prioritizes his time and energy and finds balance Eric's book recommendations on building a business The next steps and big picture for Atom Finance Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/

Krish Subramanian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Chargebee, a recurring billing and subscription management tool that helps SaaS and SaaS-like businesses streamline Revenue Operations. Chargebee integrates with the leading payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree, PayPal etc. around the world to let you automate recurring payment collection along with invoicing, taxes, accounting, email notifications, SaaS Metrics and customer management. Chargebee handles all your crucial workflows from lead to ledger with power-packed integrations that include Salesforce, Xero, Quickbooks, Avalara, Slack, among others. Some of the Topics Covered by Krish Subramanian in this Episode What Chargebee is and how Krish and his co-founders prepared to start the business Bootstrapping Chargebee in the beginning The framework they used to get Chargebee's first users How the business changed after raising capital and the "wandering phase" of finding their ideal customer Krish's advice for finding your ideal customers efficiently Realizing they were actually competing against homegrown solutions, not actual competitors How their pricing has evolved over time How to approach expanding features and improving the value of your product Which metrics to pay attention to How customer acquisition has evolved with the business Why Chargebee focuses on inbound sales Raising $105M in VC and Krish's advice for fundraising What problems Krish is trying to solve today as CEO of Chargebee Navigating the shift to remote work Some of Krish's recent reads How Krish recharges within the business Sign up for The Grind, for actionable insights and stories from successful entrepreneurs delivered to your inbox once per week: https://www.justgogrind.com/newsletter/ Listen to all episodes of the Just Go Grind Podcast: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/ Follow Justin Gordon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/justingordon212 Follow Justin Gordon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justingordon8/