Jonathan Graeupner Podcasts

In today's episode, we talk to Nathan Beckord, founder and CEO at Foundersuite (foundersuite.com). Foundersuite provides a host of tools for founders, including a comprehensive investor database, tools to raise capital like investor CRM and data rooms, and more. Nathan's background in business and banking provided a significantly beneficial backdro…

In today's episode we talk to Colin Zarzou, co-founder at Koii, about his experience as a founder in the web3 space. We discuss his previous experience in the legal space, entering web3 as a non-technical cofounder, and legal pitfalls and considerations when building a token-based product. We also discuss briefly the Canadian startup landscape…

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk with Smriti Tomar, Founder of Stack, India’s first automated investing app. She shares how her work at Citibank and investing and trading her own money influenced her journey with Stack. Smriti shares how Stack not only focuses on helping people save for their life goals and invest even the smallest a…

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Thomas Mueller, CEO of Evan GmbH. Thomas shares his 20-year tech journey and passion for bringing tech into the real world. He reflects on the start of his tech journey when the internet first came out to where we are now with the emergence of web 3.0. Thomas shares how his experience led him to fo…

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Madeleine Nguyen and Janelle Tiulentino, Co-founders of Talentdrop. Madeleine and Janelle talk about their backgrounds and journeys in tech, meeting at Snapchat, and creating Talentdrop. They share how they were able to combine Madeleine’s recruiting experience with Janelle's technical capabilities…

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Chase Bonhag, founder of FirstIgnite. He shares about his start at Illinois Ventures, the venture capital arm of the University of Illinois, and how that shaped his path in creating FirstIgnite. He saw the intellectual capability available at universities that needed to be connected with the right …

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Nawaz Ahmed, an investor, and advisor from New Zealand. We talk about our shared experience of gaining a science background before switching to business and tech. He shares how he earned his bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences and quickly realized he did not want to be more than just a scienti…

In today’s episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Jannick Bendtsen, Co-Founder, and CEO of PipeBio. PipeBio is an innovative biotech cloud-based platform that enables faster development for antibody/peptide screening and drug development and allows scientists to analyze large sets of data. Jannick shares his journey from earning a master’s in mole…

In today’s podcast, we talk to Scott Absher, CEO of ShiftPixy (https://shiftpixy.com/). ShiftPixy is a revolutionary gig economy platform that serves as an all-in-one workforce management platform for operators and part-time workers. We talk about the emergence of the gig economy, ShiftPixy’s formation and how it is a culmination of Scott’s 30 plus…

In today’s episode, we talk to Ali Jamal, product and growth expert and founder of First Check Ventures. Ali has invested in over 150 companies over the years. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree from Stanford University. We talk about Ali's journey from investment banking to working with product and growth in tech startups to running his own…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Russ Heddleston, Head of Commercial at DropBox for DocSend. Russ initially co-founded DocSend in 2013 focused on helping sales teams find and share documents that close deals. DocSend was acquired by DropBox in March 2021 for $165M and shares his perspective on the acquisition process. Russ started…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Samuel Bosch, PhD candidate at MIT and founder of Assist-O. Assist-O is a company for remote staffing. It offers remote support to individuals and companies in the development, marketing, design, executive assistance, IT, and more. Samuel started his career as an intern at the D.E. Shaw Group, turn…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Mark Thomas, serial entrepreneur and founder of ZenSports. ZenSports is a mobile sports betting app, in which customers can choose to bet against the house or create their own bets with their own odds and terms (peer-to-peer) and much more. Mark previouslly co-founded Reesio, which was acquired in 2…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Niklas Bretschneider. Niklas is a venture capitalist with a focus on early stage startups and growth equity. He currently works for Picus Capital and Global Founders Capital. He started his career as a consultant at McKinsey, where he worked on various projects, including digital transformations, re…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to James O'Brien, first hire at AltoIRA and currenlty VP of Business Development and Crypto there. AltoIRA offers an easy-to-use investing platform that empowers everyday investors to diversify their IRAs by investing in alternative assets such as private equity, venture capital, real estate, loans, an…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to S2 and Zelko, founders of RoninDojo. RoninDojo is a full node bitcoin wallet focused on privacy and user friendliness. . We talk about their way into the startup world, privacy in the financial world without any formal engineering background, cryptocurrency and its community, and how blockchain can …

In today's episode of Minimally Viable I talk to Chris Duffus, founder and CEO of Fonbnk. Fonbnk allows a frictionless, financial onramp for frontier and emerging markets. Christan started his career at Goldman Sachs, decided to go his own way and has founded multiple startups in the FinTech space. We talk about the story of Fonbnk, ethereum (along…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Matthew Wilson, Angel Investor and Founder of Allied VC. Allied is a Canadian based investor group with hundreds of global members. Matt was always an entrepreneur by heart, he started his first business at age 11, founded and exited his CPG startup after being one of the top performers at both Nest…

In today's episode, we talk to Drew Elliott, founder and CEO at RoundlyX. RoundlyX allows you to invest your spare change from everyday transactions into crypto on your favorite exchange. We discuss his military background, finding a co-founder through your personal network, trying out various ideas before finding the right one and fully committing…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Sarah Hum, founder and CEO at Canny. Canny helps SaaS companies build better products by being better at listening to and acting on user feedback. Sarah started her career as a Product Designer at Facebook and founded Canny 4 years ago. Today, Canny has over 900 customers. We discuss Canny's story, …

In today's episode of Minimally Viable we talk to Matt Lerner, previous 500 Startups Partner and founder and CEO of Startup Core Strengths. Matt started his startup career at the early stages of Paypal in 2004 and joined 500 Startups as a Partner in 2015 to advise startups on how to grow. Today, he helps founders grow and shape their startups with …

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Ben Matcalfe, Founder and Managing Partner at Monochrome.vc. Ben has spent time at Uber, was one of the founders of WPEngine, and as an investor while at Ridge Ventures. Ben's focus at Monochrome is on early-stage and AI-driven startups. We talke about his history at Uber, his migration to an inves…

In today's episode of Minimally Viable, we talk to Nitesh Agrawal, founder and CEO at letsdive. Nitesh started letsdive after meeting remote workers while traveling in Vietnam. He discusses in depth his learnings from being one of the early hires and using that experience to become a serial founder. In particular, Nitesh's approach to feature prior…

On today's episode of Minimally Viable we discuss branch.gg - a virtual office for people sick of sitting in Zoom all day. We discuss Dayton's background in gaming and how that allowed him to rethink team communication. Branch launched during Covid which definitely helped inspire their thinking on virtual and allowed their customers to rethink how …

On today's episode we discuss Yada.ai with Petar Ojdrovic. We discuss how Yada focused on early product market fit and building a minimally viable product. Petar talks about the AI space, how they're focused on building a team, and how you innovate in AI when companies like OpenAI are rapidly executing. Petar has a background in tech so we also dis…

In this episode, we talk to Max Azarov, co-founder and CEO at Novakid, about his experience as a serial founder, his thoughts on the EdTech space, and how he grew the startup to over 150 employees. He talks about his experience of seeing a similar idea during a trip to China and implementing it in Europe. Novakid is an online learning platform for …

In this episode, we talk to Victor Vatus, co-founder at Makesales on how his career in sales led him to found a sales startup. He also talks about the importance of finding the right co-founder, and his thoughts on how to write the best sales emailsBy Jonathan Graeupner and Kevin Burton

In this episode, we chat with Johannes Radig, founder at Leadsie. He previously advised startups at 500 Startups, led growth at an early-stage startup, and got his start in the tech world at Paypal. As a founder and advisor focused on growth, we dive deep into his step-by-step approach for doing growth at early-stage startups, iterating on growth t…

Ahmed Khairy is founder and CEO at Gameball, a 500 Startups-backed startups that brings turns gamification into a SaaS play. In this episode, he talks about his experience transitioning from doing consulting in the Middle East to the tech world and founding a startupBy Jonathan Graeupner and Kevin Burton

Robert McLaws is founder and CEO at Burnrate.io, a platform that helps founders manage their finances and combine operational and financial data to manage their run rate. In this episode, we dive deeper into his thoughts on fundraising, managing finances during the early stages, and iterating on features and product market fit…

In this episode, we talk to Justin Michtell, the founder of YAC. YAC is an asynchronous communication tool for remote-first teams. He discusses in detail building a remote-firststartup, from hiring to daily communication. We also discuss his approach to prioritizing features with limited resources, and delve into his thoughts on growing at an early…

In this episode, we talk to Sherif Ali, founder at Funnelll. He discusses how his struggles in marketing led him to found Funnell, a no-code tool to help startups and SMBs build out their funnel. We also look deeper into growth strategies for early-stage startups, iterating on pricing, prioritizing when too many tasks need to get finished, and of c…

Martijn De Wever is founder at Floww - a tool that helps investors streamline their administrative work and help startups fundraise based on hard data. In this episode, we explore his thoughts on the fundraising process and becoming a founder after many years on the other side as an invesor.By Jonathan Graeupner and Kevin Burton