Startup Mindsets

Our guest today is Will Peng born in Taiwan and immigrating to the U.S. he went to Princeton University. It was at his first job out of college that he realized it was hard to understand compensation packages from his employer on top of his personal challenges around student debt. Will's worked at Red Swan Ventures an early investor in Oscar, Warby Parker, Coinbase prior to creating Northstar.  Since 2016 Will has made it his mission by founding Northstar to guide people in their financial journeys.  Everyone deserves the best financial advice to make the best decisions for themselves. Employers who use Northstar give their employees access to certified financial planners. There's this unique intersection of financial advice and compensation/benefits from work.  We talk about landing top clients like Zoom, Snap, Serviceitan, and Nerdwallet to his first customer in the early days. Will also sheds light on what it was like founding the company doing uncomfortable sales calls and how design and sales are closely related. 

Serial entrepreneur Andrew Gazdecki joins Startup Mindsets to unpack his story of founding startups and leading them to several exits.  Andrew Gazdecki provides an enlightening conversation on how he as a student at Chico State created a majority bootstrapped startup, Bizness Apps, to hit 5 million in revenue and eventually selling it in offer from a private equity firm.  We go over, MicroAcquire's startup marketplace, how he build supply and demand, and when bootstrapping makes sense as a founder.  From selling beanie babies on Ebay to his successful stints creating startups, Andrew's story is proof that hardwork, timing, and doing what you love lead to noteworthy places.   We learn about his new mission of empowering startup founders to achieve liquidity by selling their startups on MicroAcquire's marketplace.  Andrew Gazdecki is a four-time startup founder with three-time exits, former CRO, and founder of MicroAcquire. Gazdecki has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, and Entrepreneur Magazine, as well as prominent industry blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat.

Meet Alyona Mysko, CEO of Fuelfinance as she details her experience running a startup while leading her company in the middle of a war. It was humbling to speak to someone going through such a challenging time, we were lost for words trying to fully comprehend the tragedy in Ukraine.  Alyona describes working from a bomb shelter and managing a team while trying to move the needle forward as a founder. Alyona talks about the importance of following a mission during a crisis and what's being done to look out for the team as they navigate Russia's attack.  If you're a startup exec and want the value a CFO can bring without having to hire one, check out Fuelfinance's product as they were also feature #1 on ProductHunt.  Head to Spend with Ukraine to support Ukraine founders and businesses.  Follow us on Instagram @startupmindsetspod

Meet Greg Shepard, he's been featured on TedX talks and university lectures worldwide. Founder of BOSS Capital Partners, a boutique investment firm focused on Series Seed through Series B technology businesses. We uncover his mindset which is unique because he is neurodivergent. Not being able to land a job led him to become an entrepreneur, finding out he could make money from an early age, he chose entrepreneurship. This included selling a snake and doing interesting things.  He's also former CTO at Pepperjam. Greg's been able to achieve some wild feats like being the heaviest person to base jump, meeting Obama, dead-lifting 500lbs on his 50th birthday, running a marathon with asthma and we learn what made all this possible. Every year he does an annual challenge which are pretty gnarly.  Greg is a 20 year startup veteran and  serial entrepreneur with 14 liquidity events under his belt in BioTech, TransitTech, AdTech and MarTech industries, two of which were sold as  part of a $925M transaction that won 4 private equity awards for  transactions between $250M-$1B Greg recommends starting with the end in mind so you'll be able to back into your goals. 

For this week’s episode, I bring on my cousin, Jim Narvios founder and attorney at Narvios Law Firm. Find out what inspired the leap from performing on stage as Rocko Stedy to fighting for clients’ cases in court. Be sure to follow @filipinoattorney to keep up with Jim’s journey or hit up Narvios Law Firm. We discover that motivation can come from failure and that your distinct creativity sometimes means you have to make your own company, corporation, and in Jim's case own law firm.

Meet Girish Redekar, he founded Sprinto to ensure software companies meet information security compliance requirements like GDPR, HIPPA, SOC2 without having to hire a consultant. Sprinto’s software does most of the work. We find out how security can be a sales asset in that it can allow deals to be approved faster and enhance a product's overall performance.   We hear about Sprinto raising from Accel, Blume Ventures, and Elevation Capital as well valuable tips for startups like going from months to days to get something done or enhance a product. Girish talks about how his mindset towards business changed once he became a founder, learning that startups actually grow the size of the economic pie. 

My guest today is Stefanie Pinsley, now known for her TikToks around marketing and entrepreneur mindset hacks. She's scaled her following on TikTok to 70k. Stef left Google to be a content creator (TikToker) and entrepreneur mindset coach.  Currently Stef is an personal branding coach for her own company Roadmap to Rise and you can check it here. We have thought filled discussion on the content creator lifestyle, building a personal brand, being a coach, and most importantly finding happiness and fulfillment in her career. Follow Stef @stef.pinsley on TikTok and Instagram. We learn that the value of your self worth doesn't come from what school you went to or what company you work for but instead how you align your passion with your purpose. We also touch on the emotional cycle of change and what you can do to make great content. Be sure to follow us on social @startupmindsetspod and subscribe to stay up to date!

On International Women's Day, 3/8, we welcome Senofer Mendoza to the podcast! Senofer and Adrian Mendoza started Mendoza Ventures to address the funding gap in the pre-seed investment stage for underrepresented founders. Senofer founded the first LatinX venture capital firm on the East Coast in 2016 and has since been leading the charge for investing in more diverse founders ever since! She is a former enterprise sales executive selling into large brands including Marriott, Fairmont, and Starwood. On today's show we catch up on market trends and have a thought based discussion on why there is a lack of real diversity in the tech industry and why women and minorities don't receive funding as easily.  *What you can do to invest in women without being a VC  * That the ideal pie chart for diversity looks like the census Pitch Mendoza Ventures

Ahmed Elsamidisi founded Narrator.ai when he experienced the problem of not knowing how to answer/taking too long to answer data queries at WeWork as a Data Engineer. He realized that he had to be the one to solve this problem after talking to companies who might be solving this but weren't. In the episode we discuss Ahmed's "Ah ha" moment💡, Getting into YCombinator, Living with your co-founders in the same house, funny stories while pitching venture capitalists and customers, and much more! We welcome guest host, Jovanni Lara, to go more in depth about the product and his experience trying to make sense of data.  Narrator  powers self-service analytics across all your data. It allows anyone to  get answers in minutes instead of weeks, using the same data as your  data team. Narrator helps your data team build a full customer 360 that covers every interaction customers have with your business (opened  emails, paid invoices, new support tickets, etc...), Anyone can answer quick questions and self-serve requests across all  your data without needing SQL and then integrate that data with your  existing tools (spreadsheets, BI, and SaaS tools like email providers). Provide the foundation for a comprehensive self-service experience for your company by going to Narrator.ai

Freddie Van Huynh has an incredible story, you've got to hear about. Born in Sweden as the son of Cambodian immigrants Freddie had a unique upbringing. Combining his love for travel and providing others opportunities led him to found Absolute Internship.  Fred has been to 50+ countries, speaks 7 languages,and practices Jiu Jitsu regularly.   He details his experience founding Absolute Internship, an international internship program for university students looking to intern abroad.  Not being able to take out salary until year 4 of founding the company, Freddie talks about living cheaply and often eating $2 pasta while chasing his dream. The journey wasn't easy, however, today Absolute Internship is one of the world's top international internship providers in the world having served 2,000+ students in more than 10 countries.  (26:50) NOTHING GROWS IN YOUR COMFORT ZONE Get 30% Startup & Small Business Accounting with our partner BENCH Accounting Here.