The Side Hustle Project

Latest Episodes:

Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman on Freelancing, Building a Marketplace, and Growing a Startup Nov 02, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Micha Kaufman, the Founder and CEO at Fiverr - the world's largest and fastest growing freelance marketplace, built around the concept of hiring people to complete short-term gigs for you.

How to Get 450,000 Email Subscribers and 1.5 Million Followers in 6 Months with Chase Dimond Oct 26, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Chase Dimond, Head of Growth at The Discoverer, a community of more than 1.8 Million travelers across their social media accounts and newsletter.

I actually met Chase originally back during college, when he was working on one of his first projects. Chase is an entrepreneur at heart, and in one of his first jobs out of college was with StudentBrands—formerly known as StudyBlue before it was purchased by Barnes & Noble). At that job, Chase was essentially tasked with figuring out how to grow the business.

In his early twenties, he was building and running the company’s marketing team, brokering major partnerships, and testing out new growth tactics that netted the company major returns. After that, Chase went on to start and grow a couple of his own projects—one of which was in the social media space and got acquired by their largest competitor. All of this led Chase to meet his business partner at The Discoverer, where he’s led the charge on growing the company’s email list now to more than 450,000 subscribers in just 7 months. 7 months!

Starting a Blog (on the Side), Public Speaking, and Battling Burnout with Poornima Vijayashanker Oct 19, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Poornima Vijayashanker, a founding engineer at Mint—the
personal finance app that’d go on to be acquired by Intuit in 2009 for $170 Million dollars. As
one of the company’s first engineers, Poornima had a huge influence on building the product
and growing it with her college friend and founder, Aaron Patzer. As the daughter of an
engineer, Poornima began learning to code at a young age—and was a very early adopter of
the internet back when it was brand new. During her time working at Mint, Poornima was one of
just a small number of women who were vocal in the tech world. She started speaking,
advocating for women in tech, and in 2007 she started her blog, called Femgineer. Her blog
began as a side project—starting with the goal of sharing lessons learned helping to build Mint,
capturing all of her experiences as a woman in tech, and offering up actionable educational
content for her readers that wanted to become developers, themselves. Now, Femgineer has
grown into so much more—free resources, courses, books, videos, and her own podcast called
Build.

Getting 60,000 Blog Readers in 2 Months (on the Side) and Building a Personal Brand with Austin Belcak Oct 12, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Austin Belcak, who started the rapidly growing career blog, Cultivated Culture. Austin is a hardcore side hustler… he’s built his blog traffic up to 30,000 visitors per month, recently had a successful launch of his first online course, and has hosted multiple virtual summits with tens of thousands of attendees. Built around his experience landing jobs and interviews with companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Uber, Austin’s monetizing his skills (and interests) by helping other people land their dream jobs, negotiate higher salaries and navigate career transitions.

Building Side Projects and Validating Ideas with Cat Noone Oct 05, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Cat Noone, the founder, and CEO of her startup, Iris, where
they’re building a modern-day emergency alert application for smartphones. Cat’s been a
designer for over 8 years with experience designing several different products for companies
like ADP. Cat also finds time to speak at conferences, mentor startups through the accelerator
TechStars and angel invest in startups on the side. Cat is a huge proponent of using side
projects to test your way into potential new businesses.

Becoming a Marketing Consultant, Launching Digital Products, and Building Relationships with Brian Downard Sep 28, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Brian Downard, a marketing consultant, who’s been featured for his work on sites like Entrepreneur, Inc, HubSpot, and more. Brian focuses his consultancy specifically on lead generation and lead nurturing (think: helping his clients get more leads for their business through optimized channels like FB ads, GoogleAds, and organic traffic… then putting systems in place that convert more of those leads into customers). Brian started doing marketing consulting while he was still a full-time student in college, and has been at it for almost 10 years—he’s been through ups, downs, and has learned a hell of a lot when it comes to getting high quality clients. Now, Brian’s spending more of his time coaching and creating digital products for others who are looking to get into marketing consulting…

Selling Your Products at Nordstrom and Building an Online Brand with Jordan Jones of Packed Party Sep 26, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Jordan Jones, who started Packed Party - her company that sells highly curated gift boxes like birthday packages that feature confetti, champagne glasses, bath bombs, earrings and a hand-lettered card.

Whatever the occasion, she has a party package to match. Now in Austin, Texas, Jordan actually started the company back in 2013 while she was working a full-time job here in San Francisco.

The idea for Packed Party came to Jordan one night while she was sitting in her bedroom, on the phone with her mom complaining about her draining job and when her mom told her she needed to stop having a pity party for herself, a lightbulb went off, she thought, hey there might actually be something there around the idea of having a literal pity party and so the concept for her first package was born (the Pity Party Box—which comes with candy chill pills, a mini piñata filled with lemon candies, a handwritten card from the sender and other goodies).

Shortly after getting her idea off the ground, Jordan got an order from a mutual friend to create 10 party packages for a bridesmaids party… and she kept growing from there. Packed Party now has over 76,000 followers on Instagram, their products are sold in Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Papersource, and 5,000 retailers in the U.S. Now, Jordan’s raising her first round of investor funding to continue growing the business.

Validation and the Psychology of Building Great Products with Nir Eyal Sep 21, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Nir Eyal, the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Nir holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he’s also been a guest lecturer—Nir is a behavior investigator, angel investor, and entrepreneur who’s worked with companies like Eventbrite and ProductHunt. Nir’s started two tech companies himself, one of which was a gaming company that got acquired. On top of all this, Nir somehow finds time to sit down and write about psychology, technology, and business on his blog—nirandfar.com (and that’s spelled n-i-r-andfar.com).

Identifying Startup Opportunities and Validating Your Idea with Brad Feld & Dr. Sean Wise Sep 19, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to Brad Feld and Dr. Sean Wise, co-authors of the bestselling business book, Startup Opportunities—which just released a second edition featuring a forward written by legendary investor Chris Sacca and commentary from The 4-Hour Workweek’s Tim Ferriss. Brad and Sean however, are much more than just authors. Both have been in the world of startups and investing for a long time—and each started their first businesses while they were students. Brad went on to sell his first company, become an angel investor, co-found the startup accelerator TechStars, and is now a venture capitalist at his firm, Foundry Group based out of Boulder, Colorado. Sean, on the other hand… got his PhD in business, became a lawyer, university professor, venture capitalist, and talk show host… Now, they’re both incredibly active mentors for young entrepreneurs who want to skip past as many failures as possible, and build businesses that tackle big ideas.

Raising $1 Million Over Lunch and Growing a Startup on the Side with David Sanderson of Reelgood Sep 14, 2017

Show notes

In today’s episode, we’re talking to David Sanderson, the founder of Reelgood—and that’s spelled R-E-E-L-Good. Reelgood is an app that allows your to connect all of your different streaming platforms (like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime) into one single app on your computer (and soon, your mobile devices) so that you can stream everything in just one place. Originally from Canada, David has always been an entrepreneur at heart—from the traditional lemonade stand to tinkering with radios and building little projects in his free time. David eventually landed a job at Facebook here in Silicon Valley where he led one of the company’s biggest initiatives to launch Facebook’s self-serve ad platform… a feature that now brings in a substantial portion of their revenue. All the while, David was slowly making progress with his idea for Reelgood on the side of his work with Facebook… even hiring a sizable team of employees to get more traction… and eventually after landing his first $1 Million investment over lunch, David made the leap to working full-time on Reelgood.

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