347: Undaunted: How Kara Goldin Denied Self-Doubt To Launch A $200m Beverage Company

Justin Kan doesn’t come off as the type who lives for the spotlight. Which is funny, because at one point he live-streamed his life, 24/7 for the whole world to see, for months. That may seem like an unlikely path to a billion-dollar sale, but in fact, the early experiment in the world of live video got Kan and his partner Emmett Shear part of the way there. That unconventional level of dedication and curiosity is a testament to how these two have been willing to dive into the opportunities before them, leading them through a flurry of tech business successes. Kan’s CV speaks for itself: He co-founded hit companies Twitch, Justin.tv, Socialcam, Exec, and is now a partner at startup incubator Y Combinator, which invests millions annually into tech companies. A native of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, Kan was not an obvious candidate for someone who would succeed in tech. He has a certain natural charisma, but studied physics and philosophy at Yale, neither of which is necessarily a match for a career in startups. However, he received a crash course in entrepreneurship from an early age by watching his mother run her own real estate business, and it seems to have stuck. From there, Kan experienced his share of losses and ridiculously spectacular wins, developing a series of products that define the chapters of his fascinating career in tech startups. In this interview you will learn: The exact process of coming up with, developing and selling your startup idea When to pivot and the signs to look out for What startup accelerators like Y Combinator are looking out for How to hustle harder than everyone else around you and gain the competitive advantage Why you should bet on the founders and not the startup itself and the wins that come with it & much more!

14 Apr 201635min

From a very young age, it was clear that selling was encoded in Gary Tramer’s DNA. His aptitude for sales emerged early when he was a scrappy little kid riding his bike around the neighborhood with his friends. He and his gang would steal their neighbors’ plants, re-pot them into yogurt containers, and sell them back to the same neighbors. With the money they made, Tramer and company would indulge in Fizz Wiz, Warheads, and other junk from the candy shop. “We were crafting our humble entrepreneurial beginnings,” Tramer says. From these humble beginnings, Tramer has evolved to start and run several successful sales-focused businesses, up to today’s LeadChat company, where revenues reach over $1 million. He’s become a true master, with roots in face-to-face selling that he adapted and scaled up using cutting-edge digital tools. And he dished all of his secrets for us in this interview. In this interview you will learn: From start to finish, what goes into making and closing leads Dozens of helpful tools you can start using today for your own sales strategy The different ways you can test your ads without breaking the bank The process of utilizing traditional marketing techniques in a digital setting What it takes to train your salespeople with no experience into becoming absolute sales machines & much more!

7 Apr 201649min

“Lean Startup” has become a popular concept in the world of entrepreneurship. All founders and founders-to-be have phrases like “pivot” and “fail fast” on the tips of their tongues. But for Martin Hosking, lean isn’t just a fashionable trend. He’s lived it. And after applying and experiencing lean methods over decades of launching and running tech startups, the methodology has gained a more sophisticated meaning in Hosking’s mind. It is not just a clever strategy for testing markets, but rather staying nimble to truly fulfill the needs of the customer, something that drives him today. “What I really like about lean is it puts the customer at the center,” Hosking says, adding a caveat. “You need to have lean, but you need to have a good strategic orientation. The customer doesn’t always know what they want." Hosking’s nuanced understanding of lean startup methodology highlights the deep expertise he’s developed over the course his career. And it’s paid off. After experiencing more than his share of 1990s dot-com boom and bust, Hosking is now CEO of Redbubble, an Etsy-like online marketplace for artists that’s become highly successful. But as any successful entrepreneur will tell you, it’s not just smarts and experience that get you there. Passion is the vital ingredient that needs to be present to keep a company going during the hard times and bring it out of the shadows to phenomenal success. It’s a kind of passion that can’t be reeled in or held back. It comes out immediately when you meet a true entrepreneur. Martin Hosking is a prime example; the passion and dedication he has for his work spills out from his fast and excited manner of speaking. In this interview you will learn: What it really means to go lean and how to get there The secrets to developing a passionate group of users How to be prepared when the unexpected arises The processes that Martin goes through in order to make sure that his business is always running in top shape What goes into building a successful online business & much more!

29 Mars 201645min

As a full time software developer working for a large company, Rob Walling dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur – and more than a decade later he has obtained serial entrepreneur status. Rob Walling is many things…as a serial entrepreneur he has been at the helm of several tech companies including Drip, Micropreneur, HitTail and DotNetNovice. His personal brand is supported by regular posts to his blog which he forayed into a book, Start Small and Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup. In his spare time, he wears the hat of a podcaster, conference host, teacher, angel investor and audio book junkie. When the entrepreneurial itch first infiltrated Rob’s being, he left his full time job and began consulting and freelancing. The move was great at first but he soon found that freelancing and consulting was a lot like working for someone else – which was seriously uncool. His new dream was products – build something that people will buy on his own terms without the watchful gaze of a boss. But, it didn’t work like that…instead; Rob’s second transition came when he acquired a small software application and tasted true freedom. As Rob puts it, “My goal was to cobble together enough of a portfolio so that I could stop consulting.” His acquisitions ran the gamut from a site that sold beach towels (but ranked high on Google) to a book on bonsai trees but eventually, he was able to give up consulting completely. He developed a strategy built on incremental progress - a solid stair stepping approach that has made every acquisition, his biggest acquisition. In this interview you will learn: What to do when you want to bootstrap and how to make it work The secrets to keeping yourself in check and managing expectations The secrets to self-confidence in the startup world How to build yourself a top mastermind group What it takes to ensure that you have a proven product that people will love & much more!

23 Mars 201648min

It's not easy to admit when you're wrong, but you'll rarely find a better time than when you're filing for personal bankruptcy. That's what Tim Fargo of Tweet Jukebox had to do when he was a young man in 1991 and found himself a little too in over his head. But today he's the founder of one of the most exciting and innovative social media automation engines in the world, right after selling his previous company for $20 million. So how does someone go from bankruptcy to $20 million? Well, you do it by paying attention and learning from your mistakes, which is exactly why Tim is where he is today. He's experienced both the lowest and highest points any entrepreneur can go through and he's walked away from a better businessman and all the wiser for it. We're very lucky to share with you today this episode of the Foundr podcast, in which he talks openly about the lessons he's learned throughout his career and all the different pitfalls and traps you need to avoid. If you ever wanted to learn from someone with over 25 years of highs and lows in the world of entrepreneurship, you don't want to miss this one. In this interview you will learn: What it's like to file for bankruptcy and how to recover from it The do's and dont's of cash flow management How to keep yourself in check and on the right track when starting a business The key steps to growing your business rapidly What you can learn from going broke & much more!

16 Mars 201650min

Gary Vaynerchuk is a bona fide Internet celebrity. At last count, he was sitting pretty at 1.21 million Twitter followers, and 226,000 Instagram followers. He’s appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Ellen, CNN, and MSNBC. He’s now the CEO of VaynerMedia, a digital agency with more than 600 staff. Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, investor, New York Times best-selling author, speaker, and, hailing from greater New York City, a fervent Jets fan. But his success all started with Wine Library TV, a video blog he started when YouTube was still a 1-year-old Internet debutante. From the start of his career, Vaynerchuk has mastered social media to draw attention to his online persona GaryVee, and since then has leveraged his fame to build success with over a decade of shrewd planning and execution. But there’s one secret to success that Vaynerchuk always comes back to. “The reason that I’m speaking to you is that I’ve worked harder than you.” These brazen words were uttered by Vaynerchuk during one of his many training videos. While it’s impossible to know just how true that is, this is a belief central to Vaynerchuk’s life. Hard work is everything. When discussing his success, the word hustle frequently bobs to the surface. “My hustle is better than everybody else’s,” he says, “so I have to bet on it. I bet on my strengths.” And despite living in an age of lifehacks and shortcuts, Vaynerchuk remains a staunch advocate of simple hard work. Armed with little more than his ball-of-fire personality and a will to succeed, he’s built an attention-hungry business empire worth millions. In this interview you will learn: The best strategies to leverage social media for your business What to look out for when it comes to creating the perfect social media strategy The secrets to creating valuable content and why it works How to take care of your employees and build long-lasting and loyal relationships The secrets behind each social media platform and how to take advantage of each one & much more! This podcast episode was brought to you by FreshBooks. When it comes to finding the perfect service to help you manage and track your invoices, time and expenses then you can't go past FreshBooks. Designed for the small businesses and entrepreneurs who don't need full-blown double-entry programming but still want to keep their finances in check, you can't go back once you start using it! Better yet, FreshBooks is offering a month of unrestricted use to all of Foundr listeners ­ totally free right now and you don’t need a credit card for the trial! To claim your free month, go to FreshBooks.com/FoundrMag and enter FoundrMag in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section to get started today!

9 Mars 201638min

Every day there’s an entrepreneur out there who believes that they’ve found the golden ticket. The one idea that is so revolutionary that it’s going to change the landscape of their niche and bring them a huge success. Unfortunately, no matter how great of an idea it may be, nothing happens unless you have a brilliant plan to execute it. So where to start in this crazy startup world? Well, according to Gretta Rose Van Riel, it starts off with finding not just the right product idea but the perfect one. By using a bit of research, and a little bit more patience, she was able to find the type of product that took her to over 600k in revenue in just under a year! By utilizing Instagram she managed to spread her brand’s message and exposure, growing to over 15 million followers in just a few years! It is very rare you’ll find anyone else as savvy as the founder of SkinnyMe Tea when it comes to the world of e-commerce. In this interview with Foundr Gretta breaks down for us the nitty gritty details of the e-commerce world and shows us just what it takes to make it as a 21st-century entrepreneur. In this interview you will learn: Learn the easiest and cheapest way to build a website for your business Important Insights on how to use Instagram to help start, grow and build up your brand account Learn how to identify trends and physical products that you can successfully sell online How to get your perfect funnel for you to start selling immediately The do's and don'ts of E-commerce & much more!

1 Mars 201656min

One type of entrepreneur we don't give enough credit to is the local business owner. While it seems that everyone in the startup world these days is trying to come up with the latest app, or next revolutionary SaaS, we often forget about that entrepreneur looking to create something on the ground. One of the biggest struggles for local business owners is finding a way to get their business out there. When you're running a brick-and-mortar business it can often feel like your options are limited when it comes to marketing and brand exposure. Ramy Georgy is about to change to way you think about local business. Ramy is a local dentist in Foundr's home base of Melbourne, Australia and today he runs one of Australia's most recognized and sought-after teeth-whitening clinics. The most impressive part? He achieved all of this within his first year of operation. By thinking creatively and using the power of Instagram and celebrity influence, Ramy has managed to turn his local business into an international one, proving once and for all that traditional and digital businesses don't have to live in separate worlds. In fact, when used together, you can produce some phenomenal results. In this interview you will learn: How Instagram works in turning your followers into actual clients for a local business Tips on how to sell your local product and increase your business internationally at the same The importance of having influencers on your side when taking on the global market Ways to start a business and be recognized in the dental industry Tips on choosing the right influencers to work with & much more!

23 Feb 201638min