The MVP Show

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Youtube links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! Dropping out of uni to launch a start-up in his parent’s garage seemed crazy until some former Apple execs came knocking on this Aussie guy’s door. -- About Allen Liao After studying Electrical Engineering and Economics at the University of Sydney for two years, the 23-year-old dropped out and went to work in the basement of his familly home— building the world’s first unloseable sunglasses. After going viral on Time and WSJ, Allen and his team secured $60,000 worth of pre-orders in just 3 days. From there, he attracted some of the best investors in the world — Ron Johnson who built Apple retail from the ground up, Wordpress Founder Matt Mullenweg and even comedian Stephen Fry. -- Show Notes 0:00 Introduction 2:29 Genesis Story of Tzukuri 8:34 First Business, Prank Bills and NZ Federal Police 15:56 Kickstarting Tzukuri, $60k Pre-Orders in 3 days 20:18 Protyping Tzukuri v1 and Raising Capital From Apple Executives 28:48 Flying to Silicon Valley and Broken Prototypes 32:44 Constructing a Good Investor Story and Meeting with a16z 41:10 Manufacturing Complexity of Bluetooth in Sunglasses 45:32 Reflection, What Could Have Been Done Better? 50:57 Mental Health

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Youtube links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! About Eric Bahn Eric Bahn is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Hustle Fund invests in software startups at the pre-seed and seed stages, backing founders who exhibit great execution and high velocity (aka, hustle). Previous to Hustle Fund, Eric was an angel investor and partner at 500Startups. And prior to becoming a professional investor, he spent over a decade as an operator (Facebook, Instagram) and entrepreneur (Beat The GMAT, The Hustle). Eric draws from his product and growth experience to advise his founders in scaling their own enterprises. Eric is a native of Detroit, Michigan and first arrived to Silicon Valley to attend Stanford University (BA, MA), which launched his career into software and startups. Eric is happily married with two kids. Show Notes 0:00 intro 1:05 What does great execution mean? 3:29 Tactical product building advice from Instagram and Facebook 7:41 How do you run a good experiment? 11:29 How to curb Novelty Effect? 14:34 Privilege in Silicon Valley and how to fix it 21:02 How important is it that a startup be based in San Francisco? 27:56 How Beat The GMAT started 33:22 How big is the GMAT market? 35:54 Rebuilding the GMAT today in a different vertical 39:34 The story of how Daily Mail bought Beat the GMAT 44:16 How do you view failure? 48:29 How to stand out amongst the crowd in the Hustle Fund screening process? 52:53 Fun questions to wrap up

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! About Michael Batko Michael started as a business student following the traditional path into consulting and corporate life (Amex, PwC, KPMG) ...but then fell in love with the startup world growing two start-ups from a team of 2 to 5 (madpaws.com.au) and 10 to 50+ (expert360.com), including a $AUD 13M Series B capital raise. He then joined Startmate as their Head of Operations and is now CEO.  Shownotes 0:00 Introduction 0:52 From Intern to Startmate CEO in 4 Years 7:25 Startmate Business Model 15:20 Relationship between Blackbird and Startmate 18:39 Building a 1 million person startup city 27:28 BatkoOS and Productivity Hacks, Emoji Shortcuts and What CEO's Do 30:28 Emoji Shortcut 34:00 What does a CEO do? 36:00 Difference between CEO of 2 and 20 38:36 Clearly communicating vision and strategy to 30 people 45:25 Who do you think of when you hear the word successful?

This week's episode is sponsored by https://gems.closingbell.co. Sign up to this free newsletter for undervalued stocks w/ momentum and conversations from pro investors.  For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! -- For Episode 18 of The MVP Show I talk with a very special and different guest - 10k Diver.  With over 230k followers, 10k Diver has become the go to educational resource for finance and investing.  In this episode we cover: 0:00 State of the public markets 10:32 Is inflation here to stay 14:36 Breaking down Financial Statements 19:05 Float in Businesses (i.e. Starbucks) 28:02 Normalising financials 35:26 Things novice investors overlook in the Balance Sheet 40:23 Management, Capital Allocation, and Buybacks 48:51 Match.com 52:04 Who do you think of when you hear the word successful? You can follow 10K Diver on: - https://twitter.com/10kdiver, and  - https://10kdiver.com/twitter-threads/

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! --  Currently focussed on supporting and developing the New Zealand startup ecosystem via Phase One Ventures.  Mahesh has held multiple executive roles in some of Australia's most iconic startups. He has experienced how to build a global Unicorn from ground up as an early employee and the first Head of People at Canva (SAAS) helping to scale to 200+ people. He had the opportunity to drive operational excellence, helping Airtasker (marketplace) become profitable, go global and go public. He was the COO at Simply Wall St (Fintech), as it hit an inflection point setting up the right foundations for it to accelerate and grow.  You can follow along with Mahesh here: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maheshmuralidhar - https://www.phaseone.ventures/ --  In this episode, we talk about: - Mahesh's relentless hustle, getting Uber as a client through Tim Tams - Getting hired by Mel and Cliff at Canva to run their People Operations - Canva's hiring process, how to hire an A+ team  - Setting expectations w/ the Board, getting alignment - Working at Airtasker as VP People Operations and Simply Wall Street as COO - Supporting the NZ Startup Ecosystem and more...

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! --- Jeremy Moser is a co-founder at uSERP, a digital-brand-building agency. He's also the chief marketing officer at Wordable, which he acquired in 2020. On the side, he runs www.copycourse.io to teach copywriting. You can follow along with Jeremy here: - https://mobile.twitter.com/jmoserr - Learn to write high-converting landing pages in one week: https://www.copycourse.io/ --  In this episode we talk about: - Formula's for writing better landing page copy - Most common mistakes people make when writing copy - Building effective funnels from SEO - Hacks for finding SEO keywords - Substack vs custom blog to optimise SEO - Long-form vs short-form landing pages

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! --  Tractor Ventures Co-Founder and Startmate Mentor Matt Allen is on a mission to help founders hold onto as much of their equity as they want to, for as long as they like.  He is achieving this mission by bringing revenue-based financing into the mainstream Down Under.  In this episode we talk about: - Mike Cannon-Brookes and his AGL endeavors - Matt's start as a web developer and other career highlights - Revenue-based financing and the Tractor Ventures business model - How investment syndicates operate and Side Stage Ventures --- Since '96 Matt has:  - been a software developer, mostly on the web. - ran a hosting company. - co-founded and exited (with varying degrees of success) 5 tech startups. (River Dynamics, YourWeb, ProcessGo, Wattcost, DoneSafe). - become a partner at Lookahead Search, opened and ran the Melbourne office. - directed Founder Institute for two semesters in Melbourne. - was the President then Treasurer of Ruby Australia. - made 11 early stage investments (Pin Payments, Practice Ignition, Buildkite, Gyde, Hava, Teamsquare, Mentor Loop, Spaceship financial, CodeLingo, Making Things, Taggd). - helped Blackbird Ventures with deal flow - Invested in and mentored with StartMate since 2017 Sydney batch, Partner since MEL17 - joined the Amazon AWS Startup team in Melbourne, VC BD. - formed Tractor Ventures, Australia’s first Revenue Based investment fund. -- For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE! --- Tibo Maker is one-half of the creative force behind Pony Express Studio. The studio builds tools and services to help creators and makers launch and grow their audience or user base. The studio launched multiple products in 2021, experimenting with different ideas and concepts until one resonated with the audience. That one was Tweet Hunter, a Twitter growth tool that includes an AI writing assistant and advanced tweet scheduler. Both Tweet Hunter, and Pony Express, experienced a lot of success in 2021. In July, Pony Express received an acquisition offer for $100k. By October, Tibo shared that they had grown Tweet Hunter to $150k ARR. Feel free to check out and support his most recent projects TweetHunter (https://tweethunter.io) and Taplio (https://taplio.com)! --- In this episode, we talk about:  - Tibo's No-Code Process for Launching a Startup - Using Twitter for Distribution - Offering Equity to Early Influencers To Trigger Growth - Bootstrap vs Raising Capital For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod

For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod. Don't forgot to SUBSCRIBE!  --  Elizabeth Yin is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan. Elizabeth has reviewed over 20k startup pitches from around the world in the last few years and has helped numerous portfolio founders raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Her work and writing on startup fundraising has been featured in numerous publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, Huffington Post, BetaKit, and more. ---  In this episode, we talk about: - Elizabeth's early career and working in Switzerland, India and Japan - Building and Selling Launchbit to BuySellAds - Capital Knowledge and Networks - Current State of Valuations in Startups - Raising $10m for a Fund, Pitch Iteration For Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube and Website Links go to: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod

For #12 of MVP I talk to Victoria Harris, Co-Founder at The Curve and Portfolio Manager at Devon Funds Management.  --  The Curve was an idea conceived by Victoria Harris after she started taking note of the number of friends approaching her for advice around finance and investing — an industry in which she has worked for over 10 years (she is currently a portfolio manager at Devon Funds Management). Launched last year with the help of her business partner Sophie Hallwright, this platform — now comprising an Instagram and a website — has cultivated a fast following for the way it offers clear, concise information and advice around investing, skewed specifically to a female audience. “The Curve came about to provide a platform for women to learn more about investing in a non-scary environment,” Harris explains. “I wanted to create a forum where people could ask questions without feeling judged and where there wasn’t any confusing industry speak or intimidating jargon.”  So far, The Curve’s growth has been organic, driven by a groundswell of interest from women of all backgrounds and experience levels who want to up their financial literacy. --  For Spotify and Apple Podcasts go here: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod P.S. Excuse my raspy voice, Covid just hit me the week this was recorded!  If you want more episodes like this:  -  Hit the big red subscribe button above  - Go here for Spotify and Apple Podcasts: https://linktr.ee/MinimumViablePod - Subscribe by email for an episode every week: www.minimumviable.tv