Product Hunt Radio

On this episode Abadesi sits down with Reshma Sohoni, co-founder and managing partner of Seedcamp. She co-founded the firm in 2007 and works with the Seedcamp team and their portfolio companies to help push early stage companies from difficult times to household names. In this episode they discuss... How Seedcamp discovers, attracts (and retains!) hidden talent “We do recruit from odd places. Forty percent of our team are working mothers. On the accounting and legal side, it’s a job you can do remotely and can do with kids. We’ve recruited folks who are senior and could be doing other things, but we’ve given them flexibility and they’ve chosen to work with us.” Reshma talks about some of the unique ways they have been able to compete for talent that others in the industry miss. She also talks about why diversity is important to the team and how being authentic about their values has helped them find people who mesh well with the culture. How they’ve built a strong culture at Seedcamp Reshma explains why the

Abadesi talks to Veni Kunche, who is founder and CEO of Code with Veni, a newsletter for women in tech, and Diversify Tech, an awesome online resource for underrepresented groups trying to break into the industry. In this episode they discuss... How she got into tech and her advice for people trying to break into the industry “The first programming class that I ever took was Intro To Java Programming and I got a C in it. That disqualified me from entering the computer science program. I was completely lost and had no idea what to do. I think one of the reasons that I struggled was that a lot of times university intro classes are not actually intro classes. I had no idea what code was but my classmates all seemed to know.” Veni was the first woman in her family to go to college and she describes what that was like as someone who was unfamiliar with all the “unwritten rules” about college and the job market. She also speaks about her father, who is also a software engineer and was the first person in his fami

Abadesi talks to Sahil Lavingia, founder and CEO of Gumroad, an online platform that enables creators to sell directly to their customers. Sahil is a very authentic founder who is not afraid to speak uncomfortable truths, as you’ll see in the interview. They talk about... His journey starting Gumroad and what happened when they realized the company wasn’t going to be as successful as they had hoped Sahil was very young when he started Gumroad (he’s only 26 now!) and had worked a couple big tech companies where he saw that “there’s a lot more duct tape in the industry than people realize.” He recounts the ups and downs of the company and what precipitated the events described in his now-famous article. “We raised over ten million dollars from a great list of investors and realized when we were trying to raise a series B that that was unlikely to happen and went from 20 to 5 employees to get to profitability. Then we went from 5 to 1 when I could run the company by myself but luckily we’ve been able to grow th

Abadesi is back to host this episode with Saron Yitbarek, founder and CEO of CodeNewbie and the Codeland conference. Saron is a former journalist who started working in the tech industry and then pivoted to a technical role after learning to code from scratch. Aba and Saron talk about... What inspired her to get into tech, and the story of going from journalist to software engineer “Cold emailing will get you far in life.” Saron describes how reading the Walter Isaacson book about Steve Jobs showed her that tech can be about design and storytelling and that tech had a human side that fit with her liberal arts background. She explains how she got her first job at a tech company without any tech experience by cold emailing several founders in NYC. “Transitioning into a new career is hard. It’s a lot harder than we’ve been telling people that it is.” Her journey learning to code, including what she learned from the failed attempts “I said to myself I’m going to do this full-time, I’m going to give myself a

Scott Kupor joins Ryan on this episode to talk about his new book, Secrets of Sand Hill Road. Scott is Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and has been at the firm since it was founded. He has a long history with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, including working alongside them at Opsware in the early 2000s. Ryan and Scott talk about... How venture capital has changed over the past decade “The biggest shift has been the massive amount of seed funding growth that has happened. Something like five hundred new firms focusing on seed have been formed in the last ten years in the US alone.” Scott also points out that even though there has been an explosion in seed funding, it's still the case that less than 10% of all venture capital dollars are deployed at the seed stage. “You’ve got this interesting dichotomy, which massive new company formation happening at the seed stage but a winnowing down of the opportunities and increasingly more capital going to winners in particular ecosystems as they mature.” T

Ryan and Wade Foster have known each other through the internet for years before recently meeting in person in Mountain View. Ryan learned so much from the coffee chat that he asked if Wade would join the podcast to share some of his stories scaling Zapier. Like Product Hunt, Zapier is a fully distributed team, although they're much bigger with 200 people in over 20 countries. They're helping makers create no-code apps and helping everyone get work done more efficiently. Ryan and Wade talk about... Learnings from scaling a distributed team and Zapier's “delocation package” “We went through YC in summer 2012, and for the summer all three founders worked and lived together. That was the only time period in our company’s history where everyone was in the same location.” Zapier is a very large distributed team, with over 200 people working completely remotely. They've only worked together one time in their history, when the founders were all at YC together in 2012. Wade talks about some of the benefits to wor

On this episode Ryan is joined by Joel Gascoigne, CEO of Buffer, a simple tool manage all your social media accounts. We've been avid users, big fans, and paying customers for years. In this episode Ryan and Joel talk about... Joel's roundabout journey from the UK to the US via Hong Kong and Israel Joel started Buffer with his co-founder in the UK. They lived only thirty minutes away from one another but worked remotely most of the time, preferring Skype calls and chats. After moving to the Bay Area, they ended up having to leave the US because they weren't able to get visas. He tells the story of how they decided where to go next. “We were unable to get our visas, so we had to leave the US. I remember the three of us in an apartment in San Francisco looking at Google Maps, thinking ‘where should we go?’ We ended up going to Hong Kong for six months and then to Israel for three months.” What it's like to manage an 85-person completely distributed team “David Cancel, who’s at Drift now gave me really good a

Web Smith has a long history working in direct-to-consumer and e-commerce. He managed marketing spend for Rogue, a leading sports goods manufacturer back in 2011 before co-founding Mizzen + Main and later joining Gear Patrol. In 2015 he founded 2PM, a B2B media company for the commerce industry and advises leading executives in the space. Through 2PM Web also invests in early-stage DTC brands and platforms that support the consumer ecosystem. If you've ever thought about starting your own DTC brand or online shop, you'll want to heed Web's advice. In this episode Ryan and Web talk about... The state of direct-to-consumer today “It’s going to become a battle to discern which companies have sticking power and what a possible exit will look like. Casper’s potential IPO will set a standard for other brands looking to exit. We’re also looking at a lot of companies developing holding companies for these types of brands.” Web points out that only 12% of transactions are e-commerce today — the remaining 88% comes v

AJ is mysterious. He's a maker who goes by his initials only and is the creator of Carrd, an awesome tool for creating one-page websites without any code. AJ lives in Nashville and built Carrd entirely himself. He's a bootstrapped, solo entrepreneur and maker who's been able to make a great living building a product people love and pay for. Luckily, he agreed to be recorded without voice masking, as Startup L Jackson requested, when Park— er, Startup L Jackson came on in the first incarnation of Product Hunt Radio. In this episode Ryan and AJ talk about... How AJ started Carrd as a side project which morphed into a full-blown business... “It started out as trying to make my life easier but ended up making users’ lives easier as well. A one-page site builder sounds innocuous, but you’d be surprised at the directions something like this can go.” He explains how he started Carrd and why he decided not to take on the large, multi-page site builders of the world. ... and how Carrd's users transformed it into som

In 2013, Danielle Morrill was just starting up her blog, and writing about startups from a unique, data-driven lens. The blog turned out to be an MVP for what would later become Mattermark, a company she co-founded with her husband, Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks. Danielle's blog was also unique in that she opened up publicly about some of the challenges she was facing at the time, such as feeling lonely as a founder. She also admits to being a “secret introvert” and how over time, even with the level of transparency she brought to her writing, blogging “came to feel a bit like performance art.” “There’s so much content online but a lot of it is very impersonal... Pain is a little easier too bear when you share it. Sometimes it’s easy to believe when we’re struggling we’re going through something no one else has been through. But it’s not true.” In 2017, Mattermark was acquired by FullContact and Danielle moved to Denver Colorado, where she now resides. Danielle recently joined devops platform GitLab as GM

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 a

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

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

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.

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 buil

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 Podcas

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

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” an

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 favori

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