Stay ConnectedExploring the world’s greatest startup stories.
Get a behind the scenes look into the founding stories of your favorite companies. Learn how the industries they operate in actually work, and learn playbooks and tactics you can use to launch and scale your own business.
Copyright: © Turner Novak
Get Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel Rahul Sonwalkar is the founder and CEO of Julius, an AI data scientist. He takes us inside his epic “Ligma Johnson” prank where he pretended to be fired from Twitter the day Elon acquired the company. He then goes inside his journey of building Julius, sharing lessons learned along the way and his vision for the product. Timestamps: (00:00) Preview
(04:16) The "Ligma Johnson" prank
(09:02) Meeting Elon
(13:10) Doing hackathons in college
(14:30) Scraping emails from Hacker News to get internships
(16:25) Using Twitter to learn and meet people
(22:26) Lessons from his first failed startup
(26:19) Taking too long to quit Big Tech & his failed startup idea in trucking
(32:12) Convincing Guillermo Rauch to invest with speed of execution
(34:48) How to avoid analysis paralysis
(36:15) Building Julius, the AI data scientist
(39:25) How COO of a hot tub company uses Julius
(40:40) Professor embracing AI, using Julius to teach his class
(42:47) Iterating on early versions of the product
(44:42) PMF is as much about the market as the product
(45:08) Building dozens of ChatGPT plugins to acquire Julius’ first users
(45:41) Using dev API keys and missing the first paying customers
(49:22) Talking to hundreds of early customers
(50:10) Why customers love when you ship new features every week
(52:14) The power of Julius’ small team
(54:38) Why Rahul gives his number to customers
(57:47) How to avoid idea backlogs
(59:27) Why Julius tests so many models
(01:01:44) Why it feels great when people love your product
(01:03:43) AI will write more code than humans
(01:06:33) Giving an AI a computer
(01:11:05) What happens to all the AI startups?
(01:12:36) Why you have to Ride the Tiger
(01:16:43) How NVIDIA beat 89 other graphics card startups
(01:20:14) Building a moat as a startup
(01:22:50) Rahul’s favorite AI companies
(01:25:11) Why Julius’ changes UI components based on the use case
(01:27:42) Benefits of lifting
(01:29:54) Why Rahul loves SF
(01:31:38) The early days of Microsoft
Referenced: https://julius.ai/ Guillermo’s tweet: https://x.com/rauchg/status/1773168477957919055 Where to find Rahul: Twitter: https://twitter.com/0interestrates LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulsonwalkar23 Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel
Bill Shufelt is the Founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing, the craft brewer that created the non-alcohol beer market in the US.
Bill takes us inside the early days of starting the company, including realizing there was an opportunity to make non-alcoholic beer, finding a co-founder, struggling to find early investors, building multiple breweries, and getting into Whole Foods before launching. Our conversation is a case study on creating a new market - I hope you enjoy.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Preview
(04:10) Becoming the #1 beer in Whole Foods
(05:54) The history of non-alcoholic beer
(10:41) Why an outsider had to create this new category
(15:34) Health benefits of avoiding alcohol
(17:51) Turner tries the beer
(22:49) Bill’s wife pushing him to start Athletic Brewing
(26:38) Writing a 96 page white paper on non-alcoholic beer
(28:42) Quitting his job to start six months of research and networking
(30:21) Meeting the perfect co-founder after 100’s of meetings
(32:34) Putting his life savings into a warehouse and brewing equipment
(33:04) The importance of setting company values early on
(34:23) Brewing the first beer in Gatorade jugs
(36:16) Selling the first bottles to retailers
(37:42) Explosive growth in 2019
(39:39) Why new products and D2C helped them scale so fast
(40:39) Using TikTok to sell-out new product launches in 30 seconds
(42:00) The value of doing early customer service himself
(44:45) Getting to 61% market share in non-alcoholic beer
(46:10) Struggling to raise the first angel round
(48:34) Using consistent investor updates to easily raise the Seed, Series A, and Series B
(50:47) Transitioning to institutional capital for its Series C
(52:33) Betting on a new category to expand market size
(55:44) Information access is enabling healthier consumer behavior
(58:11) Bill’s early strategy for marketing the product
(1:01:43) The importance of over communicating with your investors
(1:03:44) Why retailers like Athletic Brewing’s unique omni channel approach
(1:06:16) How building its own breweries and supply chain enabled its unique strategy and better margins at scale
(1:09:04) Getting into Whole Foods before launching
(1:11:31) Doing unscaleable things over and over again
(1:13:50) Why entrepreneurship is a long game
(1:14:22) Most of Athletic’s new products come from the team
Check out Athletic Brewing: https://athleticbrewing.com/
Where to find Bill:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-shufelt-650059138
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Dane Atkinson is the Founder and CEO of Odeko, the all-in-one operations partner for local businesses. Dane has spent his entire career helping small businesses. This episode is a masterclass on selling to SMBs. He shares all his lessons learned as a founder, and how Odeko survived zero revenue during COVID and hit $150 million in revenue two years later. Timestamps (00:00) Intro (03:33) The magic formula to sell to SMBs (04:06) Why every small business starts as a dream (21:57) The reasons you shouldn’t listen to customers (25:16) Lessons running Squarespace for four years (27:12) Why simplicity is better for SMBs (28:58) How Squarespace ran the very first podcast ads (35:35) Lessons messing up his second company (37:46) How to demote an employee (50:29) Coming up with the idea for Odecco (52:05) Why VCs screw their portfolio companies (55:16) How to navigate pivots with your board (01:04:27) Growing revenue from zero to $100m+ in two years (01:12:10) Advice for first-time founders (01:14:18) How Dane would re-design the food system (01:15:39) Why our food is so bad for our health (01:16:17) How Odeko empowers local makers Check out Odeko: https://odeko.com/ Where to find Dane: Twitter: https://twitter.com/daneatkinson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daneatkinson Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Josh Miller is CEO and co-founder of The Browser Company, which is building a new internet browser. He explains why effective hiring requires caring a lot and trusting your taste and why Arc Search, a default mobile browser, could be The Browser Company’s next act.
TIMESTAMPS:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:35) Working for Obama
(00:03:55) Giving up 8-figures in Meta stock
(00:08:19) Barack Obama’s favorite web browser
(00:09:02) Why Arc released a mobile browser
(00:10:03) How Josh met Josh Kushner
(00:11:26) Becoming an EIR at Thrive Capital
(00:12:09) How The Browser Company got started
(00:15:51) Why they named it The Browser Company
(00:18:49) Pivoting to consumer when COVID hit
(00:20:37) Leaving Thrive to join as a Co-founder in February 2020
(00:21:05) Why COVID made browsers relevant
(00:22:42) How to hire a great team
(00:25:02) Hiring Josh Lee to edit their videos
(00:26:52) The biggest difference between Josh as a first-time and second-time founder
(00:28:46) Learning to delegate
(00:34:03) Why Thrive gave up double-digit equity back to the founders
(00:40:18) Launching
(00:40:52) Why build a web browser
(00:42:17) This history of browsers
(00:43:36) Why they’ve gotten worse over time
(00:50:26) The reasons people use Arc
(00:53:23) How Arc will make money
(00:56:45) Why Arc’s existential question is getting people to care about their browser
(00:59:47) The story behind Arc Search
(01:00:45) Arc’s potential growth flywheel
(01:09:17) Why Arc bet big on building in public on YouTube
(01:10:16) The publisher backlash to Arc Search
(01:11:33) Why praising your team publicly is so important
(01:13:39) How Josh hired Nate Parrott
More on The Browser Company:
www.youtube.com/c/TheBrowserCompany
Where to find Josh:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshm
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-miller-b31259106
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel Peter Walker is Head of Insights at Carta and writes a newsletter called “The Data Minute”, a weekly newsletter highlighting data from over 43,000 private tech companies that use Carta’s platform to manage their cap table. He gives us into a deep dive on VC valuation trends, the fundraising landscape, and startup strategies. Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(04:50) Valuation trends in 2023
(08:10) Why Seed valuations went up over the past two years
(12:27) AI startups are getting higher valuations
(17:40) Why Biotech might be the next big bubble
(19:15) Boston as the 2nd largest VC ecosystem
(21:15) How SAFE’s work
(24:06) The impending SAFE reckoning
(26:13) Why startups don’t pay dividends
(28:31) Downrounds were 2x more common in 2023
(32:11) Almost half of all 2023 Series As were extensions
(35:34) Is there really a lot of dry powder?
(40:43) The emerging manager fundraising landscape
(48:19) Exit environment
(51:45) Why pre-Series B is the most common acquisition stage
(52:47) Liquidation preference & why an acquisition at Seed might make a founder more money than at a Series B
(55:59) Compensation market data
(56:38) Why the number of total startup employees shrank in 2023
(57:38) Why startup employees aren’t exercising their options
(1:00:57) Health of the secondary markets
(1:04:51) Most co-founder splits aren’t 50/50
(1:06:47) Why you should always vest co-founder equity
(1:09:30) 2023 record year for startup shutdowns
(1:17:19) Will other startup ecosystems ever catch Silicon Valley? Links: Carta’s Q4 ‘23 Private Market Report: https://carta.com/blog/state-of-private-markets-q4-2023/ Peter’s Newsletter: https://carta.com/subscribe/data-newsletter-sign-up/ Where to find Peter: Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeterJ_Walker LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjameswalker/ Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Chris Bakke has founded and sold three companies for between $25-100 million to Zillow, Indeed, and most recently Twitter / X. He shares how he convinced Elon to buy his company, what it's like working for Elon, exactly how the Twitter algorithm works, and all his meme making secrets.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:52) Inside Twitter’s acquisition of Laskie
(05:38) Why Twitter / X works so well for recruiting
(08:11) A sneak peek at upcoming Premium features
(13:58) How the X algorithm works
(20:48) Why “dwell time” is the most important metric
(24:07) What it’s like reporting to Elon
(27:40) Elon’s crazy ability to context-switch
(29:16) Why you should consider selling your company for $25-100 million
(35:39) The reasons large M&A deals are so rare
(42:07) Surviving inside Big Tech as a founder
(46:23) Chris's philosophy on company building
(51:23) Why “Time in Market” is so underrated
(53:44) YC’s “sandwich incident”
(55:44) How to use memes for marketing
(58:55) Chris’ 100+ page Google Slide meme library
(1:01:46) His top three favorite meme templates
(1:03:48) His favorite proprietary trade secret at X
(1:05:03) Turning down jobs at Coinbase and WhatsApp
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Twitter jobs: https://twitter.com/jobs
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Where to find Chris
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bakk3/
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel Mike is currently a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Before Lightspeed, he spent five years building Anchor, which he sold to Spotify in 2020, and then led Spotify’s podcast, video, and live products for three years. It's probably safe to assume every podcast you listen to uses Mike’s product, and we go way back to the very beginning and talk through how the team at Anchor pulled it all off.Mike also shares his frameworks of “Doing the Dumb Thing” and "Super Goals," which are high-stakes, focusing goals with a clear and urgent time frame, open-ended method of achievement, and a single measure of success. Chapters: (00:00) Intro (4:22) Why AI makes consumer investing interesting again (8:05) Podcasting in the early 2010’s (14:03) The benefits and drawbacks of RSS (21:50) Building v1 “Instagram for audio” (25:53) Advice for building a close-knit community (29:28) Raising their first small round (31:38) Inside their splashy launch at SXSW (39:17) Why the first product failed, but allowed them to raise money to build Anchor (45:26) What makes a good product founder (47:39) Re-launching v2 a year later (53:51) What is a Super Goal (56:32) Finding Product Market Fit with months of runway left (59:02) Getting to a million podcast creators (01:02:09) Launching the first podcast ad network (01:04:10) Why anchor started sponsoring its own ad network (01:08:13) Spotify’s acquisition of Anchor (01:14:22) How Spotify won in podcast market share (01:16:34) Why the future of podcasts is video Referenced: Mike’s Podcast “Generative Now”: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXW6zY9x-gk1oPyjZ_qBCDEYKTbPpGa8S Mike’s blog posts: https://mignano.substack.com/p/the-standards-innovation-paradox https://mignano.substack.com/p/the-power-of-supergoals https://mignano.substack.com/p/startups-vs-incumbents-the-battle https://mignano.substack.com/p/all-podcast-roads-lead-to-video Where to find Mike: Twitter: https://twitter.com/mignano LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mignano Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Eric Newcomer is the founder of Newcomer, a publication he launched in October of 2020 to cover the business of startups and venture capital. He had just left Bloomberg after nearly six years, and was previously the first employee at The Information.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:46) The current state of media
(05:59) Anchoring his 4th grade newscast
(07:21) Becoming the 1st employee at The Information
(09:34) How reporters get stories
(21:12) The moment he quit Bloomberg to start Newcomer
(26:02) Why he writes for VC insiders
(32:19) The VC top fund survey
(34:01) The Founders Choice VC leaderboard
(35:51) Why leaked documents grow his newsletter the fastest
(39:45) When Eric knew Newcomer was going to work
(43:31) How events become Newcomers most profitable business
(51:56) Why Eric invested in Substack
(57:42) Why its harder to cover tech’s downturn than boom times
(59:10) How to pitch a story to a reporter
(01:02:59) Why the internet incentivizes negative media coverage
(01:06:06) Advice for starting a media company
(01:10:33) Why media works so well to sell adjacent products
(01:12:55) Newcomer Banking Summit
(01:14:27) The $1.3B acquisition that happened at his first conference
(01:20:05) New products Eric’s thinking about
— — — —
Referenced:
Newcomer Passes $1m in Revenue: https://www.axios.com/2024/01/04/substack-writer-eric-newcomer-says-his-revenue-surpassed-1m-in-2023
Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
Lenny’s Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/
Mike Solana’s Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/
Mentioned Newcomer Articles:
VC Survey: https://www.newcomer.co/p/sequoia-founders-fund-usv-elad-gil
Founder's Choice: https://www.newcomer.co/p/founders-choice-vc-rankings-revealed
Paywalled Bill Gurley Interview: https://www.newcomer.co/p/above-the-crowd
SBF’s Leaked FTX Email: https://www.newcomer.co/p/exclusive-read-sam-bankman-frieds
Eric’s first article on Sequoia: https://www.newcomer.co/p/sequoias-political-paradox
— — — —
Where to find Eric:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricNewcomer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericpnewcomer/
Newsletter: https://www.twitter.com/newcomer
Email: newcomer@newcomer.co
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Siqi Chen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Runway, the modern and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. Or, in Siqi’s words, “revolutionizing the $80 trillion business industry”.
A few months ago, Runway’s new website went viral across the internet. Siqi takes us inside how that happened. He’s no stranger to going viral, having previously built multiple companies that went from zero to millions of users within weeks, including the fastest growing product ever before ChatGPT took the crown in late 2022.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:00) Sponsor: Attio
(02:59) How Siqi goes viral
(06:13) Why conversion doesn’t always matter
(11:23) How to make B2B software more fun
(14:31) Working on the Curiosity and Spirit rovers at NASA
(16:50) Re-designing at the entire codebase and product at his first startup job
(21:13) Earning the nickname “FB Millz” making a million dollars building Facebook games
(25:11) Selling to Zynga and building the fastest growing product before ChatGPT
(28:36) Building a game with 90% Day 1 retention
(30:09) Being played by Kim Kardashian, Jack Dorsey, and shut down by Tim Cook
(32:10) Almost getting fired building a growth team at Postmates
(35:04) Building Sandbox VR: “escape rooms in VR”
(40:35) Meeting Kanye
(44:38) Getting the idea for Runway when COVID hit
(47:32) Why spreadsheets run every business
(54:40) Disrupting the $80 trillion business industry
(57:55) Making formulas 50x easier than Excel
(01:02:32) Why Runway’s building a painkiller
(01:06:32) How to fundraise
(01:08:32) Why the first question from an investor is the reason they won’t invest
(01:11:28) How to tell a company’s story
(01:15:23) The three layers of a story
(01:17:28) The importance of positioning in storytelling
(01:18:56) Runway’s flexible remote work strategy
(01:21:34) Why their hiring strategy changed over time
(01:22:39) Siqi’s single interview question & the three traits he looks for when hiring
(01:26:10) Unlearning consumer to learn B2B
(01:30:26) Navigating the first three years of no customers
(01:31:45) What surprised Dylan Field the most about building Figma
— — — —
Referenced:
Runway’s website: https://runway.com/
Reform Collective Design Agency: https://www.reformcollective.com/
Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/
SandboxVR: https://sandboxvr.com/
Lulu Cheng’s Android Playbook: https://www.piratewires.com/p/anduril-comms-strategy-early-days
— — — —
Where to find Siqi:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blader
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siqic/
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Shrav Mehta is the Founder and CEO of Secureframe, which empowers businesses to build trust with customers by automating information security and compliance. Shrav started the company in 2019 after being an early employee at Scale, Pilot, Lob, and Hired, and has since raised from investors like Kleiner Perkins, Backend Capital, Soma Capital, and Banana Capital.
Shrav takes us inside how Secureframe’s automating the compliance market, lessons learned on recruiting and scaling teams, and his contrarian take on finding product market fit.
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Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (2:10) Automating the $80 billion compliance market (15:49) Learning to program building Android apps (22:50) Joining Lob, Hired, and Scale early (27:25) Joining Pilot to learn marketing and growth (33:31) Shrav’s secret discount furniture supplier (35:04) Finishing three years of college in one year (39:06) Getting 30-40 customers before starting Secureframe (44:24) Non-intuitive fundraising advice from pre-product to IPO (50:08) Why the IPO isn't the ultimate goal (54:40) How Shrav approaches hiring (58:04) Tactics for effective reference checks (1:01:01) Why warm intros are so helpful (1:02:32) How to send good cold emails (1:05:31) Why you should not use LinkedIn “open to work” (1:06:54) Lessons learned scaling teams (1:13:45) Why finding PMF is a 24/7 job and never ends
— — — —
Referenced:
Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/
Lob: https://www.lob.com/
Hired: https://hired.com/
Scale: https://scale.com/
Zapier’s Secrets to PMF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJMjuYt9jEc
What it took to raise a Series A in 2023: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/seed-to-series-a-funding-2023-jones-kruze — — — — Where to find Shrav:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shravvmehtaa/
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/shravmehta/
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/turnernovak/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
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