Startup Blog

Recent Posts

• E1018: #AskJason! Avoiding first-time founder mistakes, causes of big-tech layoffs, participating in a Series A as an Angel, running a US-based startup as an international student, importance of having a strong lead investor & more!
• E1017: Open Office Hours LIVE! Jason helps founders with their biggest challenges: scaling as a solo founder, reducing churn, raising capital in a heavily regulated field, pivoting from one-time payments to SaaS & more @ WSGR
• E876: “Founder Lessons”: 5 founders whose startups range from shut down to scaling share their best advice, mistakes they will never repeat & strategies they will double-down on for future success @ LAUNCH Scale
• E875: Founder & CEO Andrew Parker built Papa to solve loneliness across generations with “grandkids on demand” companionship & non-skilled assistance, shares progress since YC, expanding & pursuing partnership w/ Medicare, & securing $2.4m from Alexis Ohanian
• E874: #AllAskJason Call-In: Jason’s candid feedback on getting investors’ attention pre- product-market fit, selling the big vision, conquering small markets before big, optimizing potential in apparel, breaking into tech from outside SV
• E873: The Syndicate Showcase: Jason presents 3 portfolio startups & reveals why he invested; founders demo & share accomplishments resulting from Jason’s accelerator & syndicate, w/ Cafe X (robotic coffee), LeadIQ (sales prospecting), Kush Marketplace (wholesale cannabis)
• E872: David Cohen, Techstars founder & world’s top angel with investments creating $80b+ value in 30 cities across 13 countries, shares insights on picking over-performers, prioritizing quality before quantity, data dilemmas & misplaced outrage, & the early-stage exhilaration of helping founders figure it out
• E871: Craig Newmark on founding & scaling profitable legend Craigslist with dogged dedication to customer service & no VC, now driven to fund the good work in the world, reverse misinformation & stay in touch with what’s real to get our country back on track
• E870: CEO Bentley Hall brings Good Eggs back from the brink to raise $50m Series C led by Bill Gurley, stays focused on foundation & happy customers before hyper-growth, shares inventory & plans to expand on a mission to make fresh food the default not the exception
• E869: Mar Hershenson, Pear VC: “Building Companies from 0 to 1” & what startups need to know to get from idea to Series A; & James Currier, NFX: “Network Effects Produces 70% of the Value in Tech” & how startups can create network effects for defensibility & scale @ LAUNCH SCALE
• E868: Calm Co-founder Alex Tew shares lessons on hyper-growth done well, finding the right investors, creating a new market & making a positive difference in the world with 1m+ subscribers, $80m revenue & a $250m valuation
• E867: Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra (prev., Rapportive) created instantaneous email to democratize productivity, demos why customers not only pay but evangelize (w/ 70k on waitlist), shares insights as 2nd-time founder on fundraising, churn, marketing & the workflow of the future
• E866: “Future of Early-Stage Investing” with Garry Tan (Initialized Capital), Hunter Walk (Homebrew), Andrea Zurek (XG Ventures): Insights on founder-market fit, the value of operators, outdated venture models, & helping startups break through Series A bottleneck
• E865: Nextdoor CEO & Co-founder Nirav Tolia on getting to 90% of US neighborhoods & 100m users globally with organic growth & hard choices, shares thoughts on parody, possible IPO, & becoming the unique social network that protects, as well as connects, its members
• E864: Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya on how he fell for the mythology & Ponzi scheme of Silicon Valley, is now getting back to solving problems that matter; urges founders to grow real, grow slow, & stay true to what they want to build in the world @ LAUNCH Scale