Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

“...Know what you are. Know what kind of business you want to build. Because this community only has so many resources. There are only so many micro-VCs and angel investors. And every person who takes money, and the amount of times you take money from an angel investor and don’t return it, that means somebody else doesn’t get that money, and you’re slowing the economy down.” -Scott Kitun, Technori CEOFull show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"...One of those people who signed a letter of intent kept calling us over and over again and she became our first client. She called us one day on a Friday and said, "Look--if you guys can start for me Monday, I need this to happen. I need you to help my business." It was that weekend when (we said) if we're going to actually learn how to build this product, why not do it with the customer? Why not actually build it side by side so we're building the right thing? And then we'll test it with other customers and make sure that it fits everyone, but why not try to iterate WITH them?"-Daniela Bolzmann, former WeDeliver Cofounder and Mindfull Goods FounderFull show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I think (messaging) is one of the most important things that startups can focus on, and it gets glossed over all the time. “It’s just messaging. It’s just positioning. It’s marketing, it’s sort of spin.” And I just think that’s wrong. It’s the core of how you’re going to communicate your business to potential customers. You need to activate them…the words you choose, or the graphics you show, or the demo, or whatever it is that you’re conveying—you have to figure out how you’ve tapped into a part of their brain that lights up, so you’re communicating your message in a way that resonates with them…It’s got to really make sense to them, and that is so hard to do. I think most companies fail at it, and that’s probably why a lot of them actually fail because they’ve sort of got a mismatch of what they’re trying to convey to how that customer wants to receive that information.”-Rajat Bhargava, serial entrepreneur, JumpCloud CEO, and Co-Author of The Startup PlaybookFull show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"You never know who calls you or who texts you about something. Sometimes you'll get a lead for a story from something random, people who you never expected to call or text you. It's something where when you start to be in a world of something, whether it's basketball, or music, or anything like that, you never know when worlds will collide, or when someone will reach out to you. There are times where I didn't expect a story to pop in my lap, and it did because you get a phone call from someone saying 'did you hear about this?'...The process of finding the stories is different every time."Full show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Stress. I can feel that it’s something that’s always on my mind. And it’s something that’s always pressing. And when it’s there, and it’s there daily, it kind of eats at you. And you’re like, “Am I doing something wrong? Is everything not in order as it should be?” And so I think it’s just better ahead of time as I’m just learning to get this all together, specifically the biggest thing stressing me out is making sure I’m recording everything financially.”-Greg Rothstein, Lifestyle & Startup PhotographerFull show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“In 2017, Mondays started feeling like Mondays...As we were pursuing profit as a company, a lot of startups have this -- you scale and you grow and you have to pursue profit...you become more of a household name. However, we were becoming siloed as founders, and this is a conversation that’s very important for cofounders and founders in general need to have with their team, is ‘what is it that you want to be doing? What’s very important to you that you want to hold onto?’ We had those conversations early on, but I should have checked in with myself more as we were pursuing profit. So I kept running and running towards profit without an end in sight, and it felt very unfulfilling to me.”-Alex Batdorf, Former Cofounder and CMO of Zipfit Denim and current Entrepreneur coach and public speaker.Full show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Awesome expands! You can now stream Discover Your Inner Awesome from SPOTIFY!! Search "Discover Your Inner Awesome" or "RajNation", and hit the Follow button, and you'll get every new episode refreshed automatically, PLUS our entire 100+ episode archive.Thank you to our past guests for helping us create a high-quality show, and especially to YOU our listeners, for getting us here.Cheers to more Awesome!-RajNATION Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Here’s what I wish we would have done from Day 1: I wish we would have turned on monetization before we even gave it to one person. Because then we can measure the value they’re getting out of it...It came down to we can either focus on developers, or we can focus on business customers, but we can’t focus on both. That was our challenge and ultimately led to our demise….You need to figure out from Day 1 how to get somebody to pay for your services so you can measurably show that the next person will pay, and how you show that is super important.”-Josh Carter, Former Brightworks.io founder and current Interim CEO of Patriot Bootcamp.Full show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"During interviews, of course you’ll get some of those reactions and think ‘Oh I’ve found the right person!’, and then as time goes you learn a bit more about the people you bring into your team. And you find that it’s really challenging. And you don’t really know until you come across an issue or challenge you have to address as a team, and that’s where I find out a lot about (them). Their skills, their ambition, their passion, how they think, how are they going to get out of this situation, what is the next solution, their problem solving, and that’s where you really find the true strength of your team. And how well they can transpire those skill sets across different kinds of challenges, and as a startup there are never-ending challenges."Lisa Sohanpal, Founder & CEO of Nom Noms World Food, joins us.Full show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“In the military you have this environment that allows transparency. It allows candor to just run rampant. And there’s a reason for that on so many different levels, it has to take place. For example, if I’m about to jump out of a plane, and I’ve got a guy in front of me who’s about to jump out of a plane, and your job is to check over their parachute and make sure it’s safe. Now if I tap that guy on the shoulder and I say, “Hey, your pack’s messed up”, and he looks over his shoulder and says, “F U man, I got this, I know what I’m doing,” that’s just not the case. But you see that a lot in the workplace where people are just not willing to listen to the people behind them saying ‘you messed up, you need to fix this’.”Justin Walker, CEO at Halo Group and Executive Director of Bunker Labs, joins us.Full show notes available at www.discoveryourinnerawesome.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.