Product Hunt Radio

Lee Jacobs and Brian Balfour join Ryan at AngelList HQ for this week's episode. Back in the day, Lee was one of the first syndicate leads on AngelList and later went on to join as a Partner. He previously started an education marketplace startup called Campus Dock. Ryan got to know Lee at AngelList a few years ago, when Lee was kind enough to help him craft his deck as he went out to raise his first fund. Lee is now a full-time investor with his own fund, Edelweiss, which he started with Brian Balfour, Elaine Wherry, and Todd Masonis. Brian Balfour invests part-time at Edelweiss and spends the majority of his time as CEO of Reforge, a professional education program for experienced practitioners. We've had some of our teammates here at Product Hunt go through the program. Prior to Reforge, Brian was the VP of Growth at HubSpot, EIR at Trinity Ventures, and the founder of several startups including Boundless Learning, POPSignal, and Viximo. In this episode we talk about: What kinds of questions Lee and Brian ask founders when they first meet them Some of the mistakes that first-time fund managers make and how to avoid them How to think about fund strategy and why the style of your fund should match your personality The importance of cultivating resilience, both as a founder and as an investor Of course, we talk about some of their favorite products as well. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Bubble, Spoka, and Dipsea for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Investing is actually a very time consuming thing. For any operators out there who are also thinking about investing, I would highly encourage you to consider finding a partner who has a completely opposite superpower than you.” — Brian “The key is figuring out who you are, what your investor-strategy fit is, and designing a strategy and a way that you’re going to get deal flow and what the right check size is going to be, based on who you are uniquely.” — Lee “There are some investors out there who are very thesis-driven and others that are very people-driven. The more I do this, the more I realize that we are not the best at forming and finding the most interesting ideas and markets. With so much interesting stuff going on, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know how it is going to play out. The entrepreneurs and people who have an organic connection are going to be the ones to find the interesting problems.” — Brian Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Dandelion Chocolate — A bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the Mission District in San Francisco. Five Minute Journal — The simplest, most effective way to be happier every day. Krisp — Mute background noise during calls. TweetDeck — Create a custom Twitter experience. Twttr — Twitter's new prototype app. YouTube TV— YouTube takes on the cable providers.

Today I'm joined by Everette Taylor, a fellow entrepreneur and community builder that I got to know back when he was building GrowthHackers.com five years ago. But well before this, Everette began his founder journey starting (and then selling) an events business in his teenage years. He later went on to join a few startups to run marketing and growth, including Skurt (a company I regularly used prior to its acquisition) and StickerMule (a company that makes our awesome Product Hunt stickers). Today Everette runs ET Enterprises, a collection of businesses that include PopSocial, Hayver, Millisense, and his newest venture, ArtX. In this episode we talk about: Everette's path to entrepreneurship, including dropping out of school The importance of being authentic in everything you do Some of his favorite self-care apps We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Bubble, Spoka, and Dipsea for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “We get so caught up in portraying an image that isn’t real or isn’t true and I think the best way to grow is just being genuine and true to who you are because people are going to see through it. What’s the point in building a huge brand and then getting exposed later for it not being true?” — Everette “Don’t get so caught up on the top layer of things, because at the end of the day if you’re able to build a skillset or provide value in some type of way, that’s where the magic really happens.” — Everette “Even though I started my own company I felt like I wasn’t really experienced in the startup space. I got offered an opportunity and I left literally a week later — dropped out of school and the rest was history.” — Everette Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Apple Music— All the ways you love music, all in one place. Cash App — Send money instantly. ChowNow — Online ordering built just for your restaurant. GOAT — The most trusted way to buy and sell sneakers on mobile. Headspace — Learn to meditate and live mindfully. Philz — Order your coffee ahead. PopSocial — Grow your social media brand. Roadtrip — A music listening app where you and your friends jam out together. Slack — Be less busy. Real-time messaging, archiving and search. Soothe — Massage delivered to you. Spotify — Music for everyone. Stripe — Payment integration and management. Tidal — Lossless music streaming service, backed by JAY-Z. Venmo — Make and share payments with friends.

In today's episode, Ryan interviews Mathilde Collin, CEO of Front. Front is a shared inbox for your team and the company is used by startups big and small. They raised a whopping $66 million from Sequoia last year. Mathilde and Ryan met at Y Combinator, when they were in the same batch in Summer 2014. It was at that time that Ryan recognized something special about Mathilde and her team: they build fast and embrace a very transparent culture, which has no doubt led to their success. In this episode we talk about: Why it's important as a founder to remain humble. Why, contrary to reports of its demise, email is *not *dying. How Mathilde manages company culture at a fast-growing startup with offices in both San Francisco and Paris. The products she uses to stay sane and productive. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to FreshBooks, Bubble, Spoka, and Dipsea for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “There are two types of people: there are people that join the company because it’s most likely going to be successful and there are people that join because they want to make it successful. You should try to understand if the person is joining because they want to be part of the adventure or because they want to build this adventure.” — Mathilde “People seem to be pretty happy at Front, so I try to understand why. I asked them, 'why are you happy?' The most frequent answer was the fact that they understand how their work relates to the bigger vision that we have.” — Mathilde “It’s super important to hire people who are confident enough that they won’t care if something doesn’t work because the biggest mistake you can make is not acknowledging something isn’t working and keeping doing it. Self-confidence is something that I’ve been looking for in most hires.” — Mathilde Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Five Minute Journal — The simplest, most effective way to be happier every day. Front — Efficient email for teams. Headspace — Learn to meditate and live mindfully.

In today's episode we talk to two expert storytellers in startupland — who also happen to be Ryan's good friends. Carmel DeAmicis is an editor (aka word wiz) at Figma, a company that's reinventing how people design software and which recently announced a $40M round led by Sequoia. Prior to joining Figma, Ryan met Carmel when she was a reporter at Pando. She was the first journalist to write about Product Hunt and later went on to join GigaOM and Recode. Camille Ricketts is another friend and veteran storyteller. She recently joined Notion, a hot startup building an all-in-one workspace for your notes, docs, and to-dos. Prior to joining Notion she spent nearly five years at First Round, starting and leading their content and marketing efforts. You've likely read one or many of her First Round Review articles. Earlier in her career she was a reporter at Wall Street Journal and VentureBeat and also worked at Tesla, Kiva, and the White House. In this episode we talk about: How to tell the story of your startup. Both Camille and Carmel are former reporters and they share some of the secrets they've honed over the years on what to do and what not to do when it comes to crafting the narrative around your company. How Carmel and Camille ended up in their respective jobs at Figma and Notion, why it's important to take time between jobs to find the right role, and how to leverage your network to find out what a company is really like on the inside. The wild, weird, wonderful world of TikTok, and why the constraints it imposes generate such creativity. Carmel talks about opening up the app to check it out for the first time and ending up staying up until three in the morning watching TikToks. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to FreshBooks, Bubble, and Dipsea for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “It’s easy to tell a story about a company that just comes out as a collection of features but the better way to tell the story is to emphasize the outcomes that your audience actually wants.” — Camille “At Notion, they have pictures of Engelbart. At Figma, they threw a party on a Sunday on the exact 50th anniversary of the famous 'Mother of All Demos.'” — Carmel [In thinking about which company to join next] “You go through this conversion funnel where you maximize activity at the top of the funnel by emailing anyone who might have an idea for you, and then you winnow it down.” — Camille Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Figma — Styles, prototyping and design at scale. Notion — Increase your team intelligence. Superhuman — The best email experience ever made. TikTok — A creative music video clip maker.

Two active makers in the Product Hunt community join Ryan at AngelList in San Francisco for this week's episode of Product Hunt Radio. Hiten Shah was recently awarded Product Hunt Community Member of the year. While that's the honor of a lifetime, he's also accomplished much more than that. He co-founded a few SaaS companies over the years, including KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg (which is still going strong after 13 years). He's now working on FYI, a tool that makes it super easy to find your documents in a few clicks. Marie Prokopets is also a co-founder at FYI. Prior to jumping into the tech scene she was Director at Diageo, a spirit and wine company, and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers. In this episode we talk about: How Marie and Hiten built FYI. They talk about the challenges they faced in their product development process and how they've learned from them. Marie's transition from working in a big company (where she occasionally rode on private jets) to founder of a startup. The story of the MVP they built in just five days, and the tools they use to gather feedback from users. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList, FreshBooks and Bubble for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “If you want to get a few users using your product, that’s easy. Getting tons of usage or high retention takes a lot of work. Nail your product and then scale it is my new mantra these days.” — Hiten “We discovered we were solving the wrong problem and there was a completely different problem that we had the opportunity to solve. Sometimes you make mistakes but the really important thing is what did you learn from that?” — Marie “When I started, it was much easier to build something, launch it and get a whole bunch of users. Now it’s easier than ever to put something out — it’s harder than ever to make it work.” — Hiten Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Airtable — Realtime spreadsheet-database hybrid. Bear — A beautiful, flexible writing app for notes and prose. Coda — It's a new day for docs. Confluence — An open and shared workspace for teams. FYI — Find your documents, like magic. Glide — Create mobile apps from Google Sheets. Meadow — On-demand medical marijuana delivery. Notion — Increase your team intelligence. OneTab — Save memory by converting all your open tabs into a list. Periscope — 150X faster data analysis. Quip — Beautiful documents on any device. Vesper (RIP) — An elegant way to record your thoughts. Zapier — Connect and automate 500+ web apps.

In this episode Ryan visits Shots Studios HQ in Los Angeles to chat with the company's CEO John Shahidi (aka @john on Twitter). John and the Shots Studios team have a unique background. Ryan met John and his brother, a co-founder of the company, nearly five years ago when they were building a social network for teens. The app had no likes, comments, follower counts, or other mechanics that often enable anxiety and bullying. Their mission was to create a more positive and healthy community. They've since pivoted and built a massive network of artists, comedians, and creators that includes Alesso, Anwar, Rudy Mancuso, Lele Pons, and Anitta. In this episode we talk about: How entertainment business models have changed with the evolution of streaming platforms. Why Vine had such a major influence on the current generation of content creators. The end of the 22-minute-long TV episode. We also talk about some of John's favorite products and podcasts. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList, FreshBooks and Bubble for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Vine changed entertainment… What Vine did that no one else did is it taught a very young audience how to create a story in six seconds — beginning, middle and end.” “The streaming platforms are in the business of minutes on platform. They care about time on platform and don’t care if it’s an hour-and-a-half movie or ten nine-minute episodes. They don’t care, as long as people open up the app and stay on platform.” “Now I open up YouTube and it takes me to home, which is not what I subscribe to, it’s not trending, it’s just what the machine knows that I want and they’re almost always right.” Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Shots Studios — Entertainment company, production studio, and talent management firm. Snap — A new way to share the world. Spotify Canvas — Full-screen vertical video artwork for albums. Vine (RIP) — A community for sharing six-second video clips. YouTube — The essential video hosting site.

On this episode, Abadesi talks to Austen Allred, co-founder and CEO of Lambda School. Lambda School is a pioneer in the income-sharing agreement (ISA) space. They offer live online courses in software development, data science and design that are free until you get a job, at which point you re-pay a capped portion of your income to Lambda School. In this episode we talk about: Austen's adventures abroad prior to starting Lambda School, including what he learned through his travels as a missionary in Ukraine, and the time he booked a one-way ticket to Shanghai on a whim. The challenges inherent in the inflexibility of education and how Lambda School is hoping to change the traditional model of how people train for and find careers. Austen's leadership style at Lambda, why he took venture capital even though he had earlier said he would never do so, and how they work as a distributed team. We also talk about some of the tools that Austen and the team at Lambda School use to stay productive. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList, FreshBooks and Bubble for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Not much can influence somebody’s life and their outlook so much as their income. It’s crazy to me that there’s not a way of rapidly shifting people to where they should be in the economy.” — Austen “I crave that steep learning curve and the adventure of being extremely uncomfortable. You underestimate just how difficult day-to-day life can be when you’re trying to learn a second language.” — Austen “The problem that you want to solve is a problem that’s been around for a long time, it’s something that’s fundamental to humans — it’s not a side problem.” — Austen Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode AirPods — Wireless headphones from Apple. Amazon Echo — Smart speaker you control with your voice. Notion — The all-in-one workspace. Pocket — Save and read news, articles and videos that fuel your mind. Slack — Messaging for teams. Superhuman — The fastest email experience ever made.

On this episode, Ryan sits down with Eric Bahn from Hustle Fund in San Francisco. Hustle Fund invests in what they call “hilariously-early hustlers.” Prior to co-founding the fund, Eric worked in a number of operating roles, including as a product manager at Intuit, co-founder of a gaming company, founder of a startup to serve MBA students (that was later acquired), product manager at Facebook, co-founder of a media company called The Hustle, and EIR at 500 Startups (phew!). On this episode we take you behind the curtain to break down exactly how venture capital works. We talk about: Eric's advice on how to break into venture capital if you've never worked in the space before. Some of the common misconceptions about VC, including how much venture capitalists are actually paid (spoiler alert: unless you're at a big fund, it's not as much as you think). Hustle Fund's investing thesis, including their unique data-driven approach to investing in early stage companies. We also talk about the rise of “no code” and some of the best apps that are letting makers create amazing products without writing code. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Fundamentally our jobs are the most blessed in the world because we just surround ourselves with people who have a worldview, have a product, have an idea, that they wholeheartedly believe in. They’ve taken all the sacrifices to make that happen and you and I may not agree all the time with whether their vision is the correct one to be successful but it only leaves you with optimism.” — Eric “Our thesis is driven by the notion that the single best leading indicator of success for a team — that is discernible at the pre-seed stage, is this characteristic called hustle. Whatever the core metrics that are relevant for your business, the teams that are growing aggressively against those metrics tend to grind out the best results over time.” — Eric “These folks will look amazing on paper — maybe they worked at Facebook or Google or something previously, went to Stanford or MIT, checks all the boxes, and then you watch them work and you realize that person who was successful in the context of a larger company with more resources doesn’t necessarily have the skills that translate to cold-starting a business from scratch in a world of entropy where there’s no rules and no structure.” — Eric Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Bubble — Build a fully functional web app without any code. Retool — Build custom internal tools in minutes. Webflow — Build professional dynamic websites without any code. Articles Mentioned In This Episode Mark Suster, Both Sides: Invest in Lines, Not Dots Kate Clark, TechCrunch: This Is How Much VCs Are Paid

On this episode, Abadesi talks to Matt Navarra, a social media consultant from the UK. He is a self-described “Facebook geek” who has worked in digital communications for the UK government and was previously social media director at The Next Web. In this episode: Matt analyzes current trends in the social media landscape, including whether the current craze around ephemeral content is here to stay. He lays out his predictions for the future of social media 10-20 years from now, talks about the potential benefits of regulation of social media, and why algorithms need to have ethics. Matt also provides a ton of tips for founders and makers to help grow their social media following. We of course also talk about some of his favorite products to help up your social media game, tools that social media managers can't live without, and the smart home devices he loves. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support. 😸 Quotes From This Episode “If we were to spin forwards 10-20 years from now, I think that social media will look completely different. We’ve seen social media climb up the hill of ‘oh, this is amazing, we can share everything, we can touch everyone with everything we do in our lives…’ and now we’re on a downhill slide where people are saying actually this is not good. Having everyone able to talk to everyone openly with no censorship just doesn’t work.” — Matt “One of the big reasons that Facebook is pushing us towards Facebook Stories is to do with ad revenue growth. Within News Feed at the moment you probably see an ad every sixth or seventh post. If they try to increase that and you were getting an ad every third or fourth post, that really deteriorates the quality of the experience. So Stories is a whole new innovative format for brands to advertise on.” — Matt “Don’t worry about trying to be on every single platform. Think about who is your audience in terms of location, age, their interests. How does that marry up with the product or service that you’re selling? Use that to guide you towards the most appropriate platform.” — Matt Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Beam — Create video and slideshow posts for social media. Google Assistant — Your own personal Google, always ready to help. Kinzen — Refresh your news routine. NewsWhip — Check how viral your content is. Parse.ly Pulse — Understand audience attention. Philips Hue — Programmable internet-connected lightbulbs. Twitcher — Switch Twitter accounts without having to sign out/sign in.

On this episode, Abadesi interviews Linda Xie, co-founder of Scalar Capital. Scalar Capital is a San Francisco-based hedge fund specializing in crypto assets. Linda is also an advisor to 0x and former product manager at Coinbase. In this episode: Her extraordinary story of hustling to get a job at Coinbase, what it was like growing with the company as it scaled from only a few employees to one of the best-known companies in crypto, then leaving the company to start a fund with a fellow employee. How she first became interested in crypto (back when Bitcoin was $200), the coolest projects she's come across in the space, and the most exciting (and world-changing) applications of cryptocurrencies. The investing thesis at Scalar Capital, what kinds of companies they're looking to invest in, and how they use the power of communities to source deals. Of course, we also talk about some of her favorite products and what she uses to become more productive, including a chatbot that can improve your emotional health, a way to simplify scheduling meetings, and an app that lets you save highlights from physical books by taking a picture with your phone. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “I feel like people know a lot about crypto, they just feel like they don’t because they are very overwhelmed by information and news articles that people are posting.” “I wasn’t even positive that I wanted to do this yet, I was just floating the idea to him and he was like, 'yeah, that sounds awesome. Do you want to put in our two weeks today?' I was like, wow, okay, I’m not quite sure if I’m ready.” “It’s important to be able to ask dumb questions in a room. As a product manager, the worst things is if you’re totally missing something that someone’s telling you and you built the wrong product. You need to be comfortable asking someone to explain things to you.” Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Calendly — Simple, beautiful scheduling. Highlight — Save and share highlights from physical books. Superhuman — The fastest email experience ever made. Trello — Organize anything, together. Woebot — A chatbot to improve your mood using CBT.