The Peel with Turner Novak

Listen to Rahul Sonwalkar, Founder and CEO of Julius, share insights on his viral Twitter prank, lessons from failed startups, speed of execution, building Julius, user acquisition hacks, product-market fit, the power of small teams, and the future of AI in coding.

Bill Shufelt, Founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing, talks about creating the non-alcoholic beer market in the US, struggles with investors, designing cool cans, and explosive growth in 2019. The discussion includes health benefits, starting the company, meeting the perfect co-founder, and using TikTok for product launches.

Dane Atkinson, CEO of Odeko, shares lessons on selling to SMBs, surviving COVID, and hitting $150M revenue. Topics include not always listening to customers, simplicity for SMBs, navigating pivots, re-designing the food system, and empowering local makers.

Josh Miller, CEO and co-founder of The Browser Company, discusses the origins of the company, the challenges of building a new internet browser, the importance of effective hiring, and the reasons behind launching Arc Search. He also delves into the history of browsers, the impact of COVID-19 on the tech industry, and the strategies for building a successful team in the startup world.

Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, discusses VC market trends such as increasing seed valuations, AI startup valuations, and the potential biotech bubble. He also touches on topics like downrounds, emerging manager fundraising, startup shutdowns, and co-founder equity splits.

Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Chris Bakke has founded and sold three companies for between $25-100 million to Zillow, Indeed, and most recently Twitter / X. He shares how he convinced Elon to buy his company, what it's like working for Elon, exactly how the Twitter algorithm works, and all his meme making secrets. — — — — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:52) Inside Twitter’s acquisition of Laskie(05:38) Why Twitter / X works so well for recruiting(08:11) A sneak peek at upcoming Premium features(13:58) How the X algorithm works(20:48) Why “dwell time” is the most important metric(24:07) What it’s like reporting to Elon(27:40) Elon’s crazy ability to context-switch(29:16) Why you should consider selling your company for $25-100 million(35:39) The reasons large M&A deals are so rare(42:07) Surviving inside Big Tech as a founder(46:23) Chris's philosophy on company building(51:23) Why “Time in Market” is so underrated(53:44) YC’s “sandwich incident”(55:44) How to use memes for marketing(58:55) Chris’ 100+ page Google Slide meme library(1:01:46) His top three favorite meme templates(1:03:48) His favorite proprietary trade secret at X(1:05:03) Turning down jobs at Coinbase and WhatsApp — — — — Twitter jobs: https://twitter.com/jobs — — — — Where to find Chris Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bakk3/ Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/

Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel Mike is currently a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Before Lightspeed, he spent five years building Anchor, which he sold to Spotify in 2020, and then led Spotify’s podcast, video, and live products for three years. It's probably safe to assume every podcast you listen to uses Mike’s product, and we go way back to the very beginning and talk through how the team at Anchor pulled it all off.Mike also shares his frameworks of “Doing the Dumb Thing” and "Super Goals," which are high-stakes, focusing goals with a clear and urgent time frame, open-ended method of achievement, and a single measure of success. Chapters: (00:00) Intro (4:22) Why AI makes consumer investing interesting again (8:05) Podcasting in the early 2010’s (14:03) The benefits and drawbacks of RSS (21:50) Building v1 “Instagram for audio” (25:53) Advice for building a close-knit community (29:28) Raising their first small round (31:38) Inside their splashy launch at SXSW (39:17) Why the first product failed, but allowed them to raise money to build Anchor (45:26) What makes a good product founder (47:39) Re-launching v2 a year later (53:51) What is a Super Goal (56:32) Finding Product Market Fit with months of runway left (59:02) Getting to a million podcast creators (01:02:09) Launching the first podcast ad network (01:04:10) Why anchor started sponsoring its own ad network (01:08:13) Spotify’s acquisition of Anchor (01:14:22) How Spotify won in podcast market share (01:16:34) Why the future of podcasts is video Referenced: Mike’s Podcast “Generative Now”: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXW6zY9x-gk1oPyjZ_qBCDEYKTbPpGa8S Mike’s blog posts: https://mignano.substack.com/p/the-standards-innovation-paradox https://mignano.substack.com/p/the-power-of-supergoals https://mignano.substack.com/p/startups-vs-incumbents-the-battle https://mignano.substack.com/p/all-podcast-roads-lead-to-video Where to find Mike: Twitter: https://twitter.com/mignano LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mignano Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/

Eric Newcomer is the founder of Newcomer, a publication he launched in October of 2020 to cover the business of startups and venture capital. He had just left Bloomberg after nearly six years, and was previously the first employee at The Information. — — — — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:46) The current state of media (05:59) Anchoring his 4th grade newscast (07:21) Becoming the 1st employee at The Information (09:34) How reporters get stories (21:12) The moment he quit Bloomberg to start Newcomer (26:02) Why he writes for VC insiders (32:19) The VC top fund survey (34:01) The Founders Choice VC leaderboard (35:51) Why leaked documents grow his newsletter the fastest (39:45) When Eric knew Newcomer was going to work (43:31) How events become Newcomers most profitable business (51:56) Why Eric invested in Substack (57:42) Why its harder to cover tech’s downturn than boom times (59:10) How to pitch a story to a reporter (01:02:59) Why the internet incentivizes negative media coverage (01:06:06) Advice for starting a media company (01:10:33) Why media works so well to sell adjacent products (01:12:55) Newcomer Banking Summit (01:14:27) The $1.3B acquisition that happened at his first conference (01:20:05) New products Eric’s thinking about — — — — Referenced: Newcomer Passes $1m in Revenue: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/04/substack-writer-eric-newcomer-says-his-revenue-surpassed-1m-in-2023 Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/ Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ Mike Solana’s Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Mentioned Newcomer Articles: VC Survey: https://www.newcomer.co/p/sequoia-founders-fund-usv-elad-gil Founder's Choice: https://www.newcomer.co/p/founders-choice-vc-rankings-revealed Paywalled Bill Gurley Interview: https://www.newcomer.co/p/above-the-crowd SBF’s Leaked FTX Email: https://www.newcomer.co/p/exclusive-read-sam-bankman-frieds Eric’s first article on Sequoia: https://www.newcomer.co/p/sequoias-political-paradox — — — — Where to find Eric: Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricNewcomer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericpnewcomer/ Newsletter: https://www.twitter.com/newcomer Email: newcomer@newcomer.co Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/

Siqi Chen shares his secrets to going viral, transforming B2B software, and building successful startups. From creating Facebook games to working on NASA rovers, his entrepreneurial journey is filled with twists and turns. He also delves into growth strategies, overcoming challenges, and empowering employees through business knowledge at Runway.

The podcast discusses automating the $80 billion compliance market with Secureframe's CEO, Shrav Mehta. He shares insights on recruiting, scaling teams, finding product market fit, and fundraising advice. Other topics include learning programming, joining early-stage startups like Lob and Scale, unconventional college experiences, hiring tactics, sending effective cold emails, and the never-ending search for product-market fit.