Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

You can, in theory, have high market need and a product that would be perfect to solve that need. But if the UX isn't on point, your market won't care. Especially when it comes to nontechnical people. The ones who aren't inherently tech-savvy are slow to adopt technology, and even when they do, they won't tolerate any friction in their user experience. Susannah Bailin is a seasoned entrepreneur, and Founder of AdviceCoach. Her product is used by physical and occupational therapists and their patients. A lot of people in this market prefer "the good 'ol days", so winning them over with product isn't easy. At first AdviceCoach struggled to build software that made sense for their target. Then they stumbled into an A-Ha moment that changed everything. I'll give you a clue: Context. Listen to our conversation for the rest.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/susannah-bailin-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Susannah where she breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I can't tell you the number of times I've seen startups just start building without having done any research into their audience. What happens? They build, release, and wonder why no one wants what they have. User research is critical early on (and even ongoing) if you want to build a lasting company. We've all heard of Product-Market Fit, but this week in my conversation with Humaira Ahmed, Founder & CEO of Locelle, she brings to the table a new term that will change how you think about your audience: PROBLEM-Market Fit. She shares her story of how focusing on Problem-market Fit out of the gate is what's helped Locelle get off the ground and generate revenue early on while bootstrapped.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/humaira-ahmed-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Humaira where she breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever paid waaay over face value on a site like StubHub to go to a concert or sports game? Yeah, me too. Richard Davies has too, and he decided enough was enough. So he created Twickets, an ethical ticket resale marketplace, to help fans resell their tickets to other fans at face value. Twickets has been endorsed as the official resale platform by the likes of Ed Sheeran, Sir Elton John, Muse, Pixies, and more. With names like these on its roster, and a user base of 750,000 and growing, it's fair to say Twickets has developed a high level of trust with its customers. In my conversation with Richard he shares why trust is the foundation to user acquisition, in both communication and technology, and takes us through a multi-step process on how he did it.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/richard-davies-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Richard where he breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Way before I was 'RajNATION', I was simply little Rajiv in elementary school. Every fall we had an assembly where this outside school fundraising group named Innisbrook would come talk to us about how our ‘cool’ factor could increase with the latest boombox, or a sleek-looking Wilson duffel bag we could take to baseball/softball practice, or they'd talk up other amazing prizes. I finished as a top-3 seller by building Superconnector relationships. Want to expand your own company's customer base? Listen up and learn how to think like a 3rd grader in this #HYPEtalk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

230k total users. 10k monthly active users. $1.6 million ARR. $0 in outside capital raised. These are the numbers behind SaaS startup Bubble.is, Cofounded by Emmanuel Straschnov. Oftentimes when we think of achieving scale, we jump straight to "I need to raise money to get more users!" Emmanuel took the opposite route because he realized that if Bubble raised money early, investors would have required mass user adoption at a time when the product wasn't ready to be mass adopted. Instead, he took a manageable growth approach over a 5 year time period. This approach turned into acquiring paying customers as means to fund the company's ongoing product development. At $1.6 million in revenue, I'd say they've funded it pretty well. I ask Emmanuel some tough questions and he has great answers for all of them, going into not only HOW to get customers to fund development, but WHY that makes your product better and builds a deeply loyal following. Oh and, the product itself is pretty amazing -- think Squarespace but for any web or mobile app.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/emmanuel-straschnov-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Emmanuel where he breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Once you raise your first growth round, or achieve a certain revenue milestone, you're likely ready to hire. Your first hire is so critically important because the wrong person can set your company back 6-9 months, potentially tank you entirely. Your next few hires carry a similar weight. We know that 9 out of 10 companies fail, and one of the top reasons for failure is 'wrong team'. That means most companies have a hiring process in place that leads them to hire the wrong people, which ultimately dooms their company. How do you be not like them? Chris Martinez, Founder & CEO of the whitelabel backend web dev company DUDE Agency, has built a process that attracts great talent, includes addressing potential failure points, and ultimately makes sure the person coming on is a 10/10 by their standards. This is a really good conversation where he walks through their exact hiring process for other companies like you to borrow and tweak. He also shares some powerful backstory around his upbringing that you won't want to miss.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/chris-martinez-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Chris where he breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week we had a cold and rainy day here in Chicago. I was downtown on Madison Street waiting for the #20 bus when a homeless man walked up to me and asked for a dollar. What happened next was a lesson in using social proof to build your case to customers or investors.Welcome to the first ever podcast #HYPEtalk! Short and punchy insight to help your startup. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's generally not a good idea to build a product that's for 'everyone'. But when you build a marketplace product (think AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Yelp, etc) by nature you're building for more than 1 audience, with the intention that the different audiences interact with one another to drive commerce. Marketplace products are incredibly attractive, but can often be more like the Sirens song luring you in to more than you bargained for. The challenge is each audience has its own value proposition and marketing. Shilpa Prasad is Chief Growth Officer at YouNoodle, a marketplace technology connecting corporations, accelerators, governments, and startups to drive innovation forward. She spent more than a year obsessing over YouNoodle's value propositions, going back and forth on which market to focus their attention to the most, and how to get in front of the right people. I'm so excited to have her step to the mic for this episode, because she has some really valuable firsthand insight to share.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/shilpa-prasad-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Shilpa where she breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's revenue growth, and then there's rapid revenue growth. This week on the podcast I'm joined by Steve Glaveski, Cofounder and CEO of Collective Campus in Melbourne, Australia. He also hosts the Future Squared Podcast AND recently authored the book "Employee To Entrepreneur: How To Win Your Freedom And Do Work That Matters". Steve shares the strategies he's implemented that have led Collective Campus to be named one of the Fastest Growing Startups In Australia. What I really like about what Steve shares is that it's not only about 'build your funnel like this' -- rapid revenue growth, according to Steve, has as much to do with how you run your operations and allocate your time, as it does with figuring out upsells. There's a lot packed into this episode, and I highly highly recommend you grab his book after listening. Even if you've been an entrepreneur for awhile like I have, it has a lot of very helpful information on optimizing operations and identifying weak spots you may have overlooked early on that are having a larger impact on your business today.Head to startuphypeman.com/articles/steve-glaveski-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Steve where he breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back and officially kicking off as the renamed Startup Hypeman: The Podcast! To start the new season we welcome Ajay Goel to the microphone. Ajay is Founder of GMass and Wordzen, both gmail plugins that boost your productivity. As a bootstrapped venture, GMass has amassed 350,000 users and 10,000 daily active users in only 3 years. My conversation with Ajay is unique in that most conventional wisdom says "focus on the customer -- take care of the customer -- service the customer."Ajay's taken the exact opposite approach. He's built a product his customers love (I'm one of them), but he's done so by providing hardly any customer service -- and it hasn't hurt his sales! He has a different philosophy on how companies should interact with customers and there's a lot of value you can gain from understanding his viewpoint.Listen to the episode, then head to startuphypeman.com/articles/ajay-goel-podcast for a bonus blog post written by Ajay where he breaks it down even further. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.