Startup Mindsets

Arjun founded Solid in 2019 with the idea that they could enable every company to offer their own suite of fintech services. With every company thinking about how to create their own experiences powered by fintech, Arjun and team saw an opportunity to build the layer that powers this.  On today's show, we discuss (5:29) Fintech as a service, the value of companies owning the fintech experience for its customers (14:19)  Transitioning from seed to series A (18:09) Valuing investor feedback Solid offers a fully integrated & compliant suite of FinTech services. Integrate in minutes to build never-before-seen experiences.

How Hard Can It Be author, Arnaud Henneville Wedholm, joins startup mindsets to talk about his new book, How Hard Can It Be, Lessons From Trying to Take Down Facebook. Inspired from his efforts to build a startup that would be better than Facebook. Arnaud tells his story on how his startup, InternalDesk, became a "Broken Unicorn." We hear about what it's like to struggle as an entrepreneur and why success comes from trying and failing. InternalDesk was created to incentivize people to complete challenges to better themselves. Noteworthy Discussion Points The Social Media "Like" is the modern day tiger.  Why we should seek failure so we can prepare for it more. Overcoming fear and mental blocks  Why motivation comes from within and relating to purpose. Learn more about Arnaud and purchase his book: https://howhardcanitbethebook.com or at Amazon & Barnes & Noble.

Earl met David when he was in high school in the Philippines starting YouthHack, an international nonprofit helping students learn how to code in the Philippines. We discover the success a simple cold email to Huffington Post could have where he ended up becoming a contributing writer in college. David’s also been a part of Dorm Room Fund, First Round Capital’s fund for university entrepreneurs, Growth and Analytics at Amplitude and a recent investor and now operator at Rutter building the e-commerce API layer.

For this episode, we bring on Rene Morkos founder of ALICE an AI construction simulation and optimization software.  The value Alice brings to construction planners is how they are able to simulate over a million ways to build a building.  We talk in depth about Rene attaining a PhD in construction management at Stanford, creating Alice from his thesis, and life as a professor at Stanford. Meaningfully we found out what kept Rene pushing forward often spending 20 hour days working on getting a PhD and after hearing 300 rejections from potential investors. Today, Alice is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Merus Capital to name a few. Lastly we learn that Rene's startup mindset is pushing the boundaries and finding out when his breaking point would be.  Leave us a review and share us on social!

Selling and buying a car tends to be a hassle nowadays especially when you're trying to get the best bargain. Enter TopMarq a new way to compare the top car websites (Carvana, Carmax etc.) while listing or shopping. CEO of TopMarq, Quinn Osha, joins us on today's podcast to talk about what he's building as a solo founder.  Quinn takes us through his experience graduating CalTech and learning how to code on his own, where he gets the ability to tackle new obstacles in business such as learning marketing for the first time, raising funding, and championing progress over perfection.

Matt Spettel cofounded CoPilot while he was in undergrad at Carnegie Mellon. In this episode, we hear how it was balancing college and running a startup, how Matt met his cofounder Gabe, overcoming age bias, and building the company to what it is today.  We learn about his route to entrepreneurship as a kid who would make his own video games and sell them at school to pretending to be a personal trainer. Fresh off a 6M Series A Round led by Hyde Park Venture Partners with Maven Ventures and TenOneTen Ventures participating. Give CoPilot a try!

Karthik Suresh joins us for this episode of Startup Mindsets. Having a career that's varied from being an engineer on Wall Street writing code for algorithmic trading he wanted to pursue a profession that meant more than making money. This lead to an eventual career in product management having worked for Facebook as a product manager before leaving to start Ignition. Listen to learn how early stage product management differs from large corporations and why having more flexibility plays to your advantage as an entrepreneur.  Ignition makes launching a product easier by bringing different times together.  Go check Ignition out on Product Hunt and see how they can benefit your next launch!  Startup Mindsets is now a Bench.co Partner!!! Use our referral link for 30% off your businesses' book keeping services for the first 3 months.

The global risk management market is 17 billion and expected to grow exponentially by 2027.  Ferret.ai runs a background check that ensures business is done with the right people to deter being taken advantage of. We hear about his experience at UCLA Anderson and how what's learned in the classroom gets applied directly into the startup the next day then brought back to class to make an ultimate feedback loop.  Matt tells stories of when deals have gone wrong and what Ferret can do to prevent this from happening.

Frances Simowitz is CEO of Weve Acceleration formerly Numa New York. In on today's episode we learn about New York City's vibrant entrepreneurial scene. Moreover, we learn about Frances switching career goals from wanting to be an opera singer to a bona fide leader in bolstering the startup New York scene for international companies looking for a presence in the US.  Their New York office leverages New York’s thriving innovation ecosystem  to deliver immersive educational programming for startups and  multinational corporations. They offer virtual and in person startup acceleration programs to support US market entry of early and growth-stage international companies. (18:20) Mindset is the limiting factor (24:00) Proving doubters wrong (32:00) Advice to 20 year old self (35:00) Frances' Startup Mindset Startup Mindsets is now partners with Bench Accounting!!! Use our referral link for 30% off your businesses' book keeping services for the first 3 months.

Hall Martin a long time angel investor and creator of Texas Entrepreneurial Network aka Ten Capital joins Startup Mindsets to tell us about his experiences being alongside new ideas and startups for decades. Today TEN Capital helps startups and  growth companies everywhere raise venture funding.  To date TEN Capital has helped entrepreneurs who have raised over $644M.   Shortcuts 22:30 Being a Professor at University of Texas, Austin 25:50 Is Entrepreneurship born or made? 27:00 Trying to be innovative in corporations 29:00 It's the "WHY" that gets you through 31:00 Startup Team Skills 34:50 Picking out the white spaces and having a technology roadmap  Startup Mindsets is now a Bench.co Partner!!! Use our referral link for 30% your businesses' book keeping services for the first 3 months.