The Seed – The Startup Journey

If you’re a student like me who's interested in startups, you might have this question… What do I do after graduation? 

Should I start my own company right away, or get some experience at a larger company? Or maybe I should work at a startup? 

Well, today we’ll be chatting with Allan Chow. Allan has worked at a large corporation – Boeing, was at Grubhub when it was transitioning to a public company, and was also one of the first few employees at Chowbus. 

Now, Allan is the CTO at Bucket Listers. I hope that through exploring his journey, you can derive some insights as to what you might wish to do with your career!

NFTs? The Metaverse? MILLION-dollar sales of ape pictures??  

You've probably wondered... WHY? Are these people crazy??  

One of the hardest things to do is to create something from nothing. To go from zero to one.

Today we’ll be chatting with someone who has done that SIX times – Jeff Solomon. Jeff is a 6-time serial entrepreneur with 3 exits, the most notable one being the selling of his SaaS CRM company Velocify in 2017 for $128M. Jeff also Co-Founded the accelerator Amplify.La, and he is also a high school entrepreneurship teacher! 

Okay, that's making entrepreneurship sound too easy... it's not! Jeff's first venture actually crashed and burned! Let’s explore his startup journey!

Magic Portal:

(00:38) – Have you always known you wanted to become an entrepreneur?

(01:41) – Failing Macroeconomics & Switching to English Major??

(03:23) – The first venture (crashed and burned)

(06:07) – After that failure... what did you do next?

(07:14) – What motivates you?

(08:44) – When do you decide to exit your company?

(10:45) – Most challenging part about entrepreneurship

(12:50) – Common qualities between successful entrepreneurs

(14:15) – Common mistakes entrepreneurs make

(16:14) – Advice for students interested in startups

(18:29) – This or That!

Learn more about Jeff and his companies below!

Why is it that every time we chat with a 16-year-old, their stories just get crazier and crazier?

At 16, Calix Huang has already started... and SOLD TWO of his companies. How did he do that? Let’s find out!

Did you know that the person who founded the “Y Combinator” of Taiwan is also the youngest telecom President?

Today we’ll be chatting with Jamie Lin, a serial entrepreneur, investor, and father. Jamie is the founder of AppWorks – an accelerator, VC, and school, built By Founders, For Founders. AppWorks has currently helped over 400 startups valued in total at over $17.4B!!

Oh, and did I mention Jamie is also the President of Taiwan Mobile?

This is a startup journey you don't want to miss!

Starting a company is like going on a roller coaster ride. According to Forbes, 72% of entrepreneurs are affected by mental health issues, and even if you’re not a founder, that number is still close to 50%. So… How do we deal with stress? 

Today, we’ll be chatting with Lynette Seow, the COO of Safe Space – a mental health startup in Singapore that’s providing online and offline counseling, and creating a safe space to process, understand, and heal.

Imagine switching high school five times (one of which is a school for pregnant teenagers), and getting into NONE of the colleges you wanted to go to...  

What do you do next?  

Today, we'll be chatting with James Graham, Founder and CEO of Community Phone. This is probably one of the best conversations on The Seed so far. Not just because James used to charge people to see molding raspberries in his locker, but because of his amazing journey going from what most people would consider a failure, to now a founder who’s gone through both the Thiel Fellowship and Y Combinator, both of which have a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.  

Magic Portal:

(00:00) – Intro

(00:44) – Molding Raspberries

(01:19) – Have you always known that you were going to be an entrepreneur?

(03:03) – Clearing the confusion

(05:02) – Community Phone

(06:25) – Why this idea?

(09:33) – Thiel Fellowship & Y Combinator

(13:36) – Darkest moments

(16:40) – Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

(19:49) – Underrated vs Overrated

(21:40) – Takeaways

How did Alan turn T-Mobile from bankruptcy to a $52 BILLION exit? 

What makes a great entrepreneur? 

If Alan could go back in time and give a piece of advice to the 20-year-old Alan, what would he say? 

T-Mobile went from 5 people in the early 90s, to now over 75,000 employees, with a market cap of over $180B dollars... But did you know that it once had to file for bankruptcy, and its Co-Founder had to wait in a freezing room for weeks, begging their vendors for money?  

Today we'll be chatting with the Co-Founder of T-Mobile USA – Alan Bender. This is one of the coolest startup journeys so far, and not only would Alan share his success and how he got there, he also talks about some of his darkest moments, as well as advice to aspiring entrepreneurs!

Magic Portal:

(00:00) – Intro

(00:55) – Have you always known you were going to start a business?

(01:34) – Origin story of T-Mobile

(03:12) – Finding the right Co-Founders

(04:37) – Darkest (and coldest) moments

(07:18) – What kept you going?

(08:48) – The $52 Billion Acquisition

(13:25) – What makes a great entrepreneur?

(17:14) – What advice would you give to the 20-year-old Alan?

(20:10) – This or That 

(21:21) – Takeaways

Okay if you’re still single, and not finding any luck on Tinder or Bumble, this is the episode for you 😜  

Today we'll be chatting with Vidya Madhavan, a Stanford student that’s building Schmooze, a new dating app that allows you to find your next match not through looks or copy and pasted pickup lines, but by swiping memes! They have their own humor-based matching algorithm and have now created more than 100,000 matches.

If you're a student, you don't want to miss this takeaway episode!

Today, we'll be sharing insights from our previous chat with Howard Sung, the Co-Founder & COO of Find Recruiter – Asia's largest recruiter hub. 

Takeaways:

1. A recruiter's insider tips on how to land your dream job – be hungry and desperate

2. As students, our biggest asset is TIME

3. Start a company first, or get some experience first?

4. Be your authentic self

Have you ever sent out 20 job applications, went through a super long interview process thinking you got the job, and ended up still getting rejected?   

Or maybe you’re like me, about to be a senior in college, yet still don’t really know what you want to do after graduation? 

Well, this is the episode for you!  

Our guest today is the Co-Founder & COO of Find Recruiter – Howard Sung. Howard will share with us not only his startup journey building Asia's largest recruiter hub, but also some insider secrets for landing your dream job!

In this episode, we'll be sharing insights from our previous chat with Scott Stephenson!

Scott is a dark matter physicist turned CEO, who is building Deepgram, a startup that’s reinventing automated speech recognition using end-to-end deep learning. 

Deepgram is backed by Nvidia, Slack, Y Combinator, and has been named by Forbes to be one of the Top 50 AI companies to watch for in 2021!

Takeaways:

1. Your previous experience could help you identify a market gap

2. How a startup could beat giants like Google, IBM, and Microsoft

3. Bonus advice from Y Combinator 🤫

Scott was in a lab deep underground studying dark matter... then he got too bored and decided to launch a company  

What??  

Today we’ll be chatting with Scott Stephenson – a dark matter physicist turned CEO! 

Scott is building Deepgram, a startup that’s reinventing automated speech recognition using end-to-end deep learning. Deepgram is backed by Nvidia, Slack, Y Combinator, and has been named by Forbes to be one of the Top 50 AI companies to watch for in 2021!

In this Startup Droplet 🌱, we'll be sharing insights from our previous episode with Patrick Lee!

Patrick was the CEO who led Rotten Tomatoes through very challenging times, including the dot com crash and 9-11. As of now, Patrick has started 6 companies, a true serial entrepreneur with an amazing startup journey!

Takeaways:

1. Get started fast! Lines of static HTML code can turn into one of the most viewed websites in the world

2. Entrepreneurship isn't always glamorous... maybe anime can help?

3. The Next Big Thing?? 

Should I watch Godzilla vs. Kong? 

Mortal Kombat?

Crazy Rich Asians? 

If you’ve ever searched for a movie and wondered if it’s worth watching, you’ve probably come across Rotten Tomatoes 🍅  

But did you know that the first version of Rotten Tomatoes was built in TWO WEEKS with only lines of static HTML? 

In this episode, we'll be chatting with Rotten Tomatoe's Co-Founder Patrick Lee! Patrick was the CEO who led the company through very challenging times, including the dot com crash and 9-11. As of now, Patrick has started 6 companies, a true serial entrepreneur with an amazing startup journey!

In this Startup Droplet 🌱, we'll be sharing insights from our previous episode with Darko Mandich! 

Darko is working on a super cool idea, which is to make honey WITHOUT BEES. Not only is honey not vegan-friendly, it turns out that current honey production practices are actually threatening the biodiversity of bees. Looking to solve this, Darko is creating honey, actual honey, without any bees in the process.

Takeaways:

1. Find your own journey

2. Stay true to yourself

3. The environment is neutral

We've all heard of Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods... but those are plant-based alternatives to meat.  

Similarly, there are also vegan alternatives to honey...but what if I told you you can actually make REAL honey WITHOUT bees??  

Today we’ll be chatting with the Co-Founder & CEO of MeliBio – Darko Mandich. 

Darko is working on a super cool idea, which is to create something that matches and improves upon the molecular composition of bee-made honey, without involving any bees in the process!   

Not only is honey not vegan-friendly, but current honey production practices are also threatening the biodiversity of bees. Check out how Darko embarked on his startup journey to solve this problem!

Here's another episode of Startup Droplet 🌱, where we share our takeaways from chatting with our amazing guests!

In this Startup Droplet, we'll be sharing insights from our previous episode with Eric Sim! Eric started his startup journey back when he was still in school as a design student. From freelancing to getting clients for his own design studio, Eric is now running Epic Dialogue, a social impact marketing agency based in Singapore! 

Takeaways:

1. Be authentic, built trust, and a genuine human connection

2. Try to learn from your failures and move on from them as fast as you can

3. Work on your ability to create and your ability to sell

Starting a company is not easy.

In fact, Eric wanted to give up many, MANY times. The most recent? The pandemic rendered his event-booking platform useless and made him lose 5-figures worth of jobs.  

How did Eric keep it together? By maintaining his focus on one goal – to create something EPIC that fosters human connections.   

Today we’ll be chatting with the founder of Epic Dialogue – Eric Sim. Eric started his startup journey back when he was still in school as a design student. From freelancing to getting clients for his own design studio, Eric is now running Epic Dialogue, a social impact marketing agency based in Singapore!

Here's another episode of Startup Droplet 🌱, where we share our takeaways from chatting with our amazing guests!

In this Startup Droplet, we'll be sharing insights from our previous episode with Victoria Da Conceicao. Victoria started her company when she was 16. She was looking for a way to help her grandmother who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She found that coloring pages and essential oils make her grandma happy while improving her quality of life. She decided to turn those into custom care packages and launched her company to help others!

Takeaways:

1. Start a company when you have a problem you really want to solve
2. Have the ability (and courage) to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses
3. Stop seeking external validation

Victoria was waiting for her grandmother to pick her up from school. She didn't show up.  

Her grandmother was wandering around in a nearby park, seemingly lost, despite it being a familiar neighborhood. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  

Victoria wanted to help her grandmother, and she found that coloring pages and essential oils make her grandma happy while improving her quality of life. Wanting to help more people, Victoria decided to create custom care packages and launched her company Alzheimer's Brain Box at the age of 16!  

Currently, Victoria is a student at Northwestern who's continuing to fight Alzheimer's, one box at a time!

Here's another episode of Startup Droplet 🌱, where we share our takeaways from chatting with our amazing guests!

In this Startup Droplet, we'll be sharing insights from our previous episode with Wade Fletcher – the 20-year-old serial entrepreneur who's making student venture capital more equitable through UndercoverVC! Wade is also the Founder of CovIntern (helping students find remote internships during the pandemic), as well as the Founder of ScoreTwo Media (acquired last year)

Takeaways:

1. People will doubt you. It is up to you what you do in response to that doubt.
2. Productivity hack – time blocking and Spotify playlist!
3. "If you want to be a VC, go and be a VC"

Our guest today was balancing financial statements in third grade selling lemonades 🍋...  

Today’s episode is with the 20-year-old founder of UndercoverVC – Wade Fletcher, who’s bringing equity to student venture capital. Wade is also the founder of CovIntern, which helped students find remote internships during the pandemic, as well as the founder of ScoreTwo, a media company he started at 16 which was acquired last year!

Trying something new!

We'll be sharing our takeaways from chatting with our guests into separate episodes called Startup Droplets 🌱

In this Startup Droplet, we'll be sharing insights from our previous episode with Christian Johnson – a police officer, an Army National Guard, and the founder of Respond AI – an artificial intelligence robotics company for Public Safety and Defense. 

Takeaways:

1. Christian did not know how to code. Now, he’s writing algorithms that link up cameras to drones, capable of detecting objects and transmitting data for him to analyze. Check out how he got started!

2. Being in the army and experience as a police officer made Christian a better founder.

3. Don’t be so hard on yourself, and realize that you and the company need time to mature!

What superpower would make a police officer 10x more effective? 

Flight sounds like a good one? What if I tell you that is actually happening now?  

Christian Johnson – a police officer, an Army National Guard, and the Founder of Respond AI, is using drones and other robotics with artificial intelligence for Public Safety and Defense. So, not only is Christian fighting crime as a police officer, he’s also flying drones to keep our neighborhood safe!

MVP = Most Valuable Player? Series A? Product-Market Fit? What?? 

Interested in startups but have no idea what people are saying?  Check out this episode!!  

Terms discussed: 

• Lean Startup 
• MVP 
• Product/Market Fit 
• Pivot
• Bootstrapping
• VC
• Unicorn, Decacorn, Hectocorn
• Crowdfunding  

To hear our guests explain more about these terms:

What were you doing at 15? If you were like our host Rick, you might have been playing League of Legends or watching anime all day...  

Our guests today are two high schoolers – Arnav Chakravarthy & Arvind Kumar. At 15, they are building SciLynk, the world’s first science social network!  They might be young, but they are ambitious and driven. They learned how to code on their own and are now raising money for their startup!

Do you know how hard it is to put on a bra? For guys, think about tying a tie behind your back. Now imagine gluing your fingers together and doing that again. Today we'll be chatting with Emma Butler, a recent graduate of Brown university who's building Intimately, a Forbes Next 1000 startup that is igniting an inclusive revolution by selling functional and fashionable lingerie for women with disabilities!

He knows how to wire your lights, fly a plane, and dive underwater, all while running three businesses at the same time! Today we'll be chatting with James Jaron, a serial entrepreneur who owns an electrical contracting company, a lighting distribution company, AND a cannabis dispensary. Wondering how these businesses fit together, and how he's able to do it all while keeping himself mentally sane? Let’s find out!

You want an epic startup journey? 

This guy went door-to-door selling encyclopedia, then founded a podiatry clinic, then taught entrepreneurship and became a Top 100 Entrepreneurship Professor in the WORLD, then started a venture capital firm that is now one of the most active in the United States... 

He is Cliff Holekamp, Co-Founder, Managing Director, and General Partner at Cultivation Capital.

Derral is honestly one of the hardest guests for us to introduce so far. He was the executive producer of Squatty Potty’s ice cream pooping unicorn ad, as well as the executive producer for the TV show The Chosen. He’s also the founder of VidSummit, a conference that brings together top video creators and brands like Gary Vee. He’s ALSO the mentor of MrBeast, and has helped over 25 YouTube channels go from 0 to 1M+ subscribers... It’ll take way too long to list out all that he’s accomplished, just listen to this episode!!

This episode is PACKED with action! A Jujutsu match against a big Russian guy, recruiting the creator of Grand Theft Auto, and raising £2.5M in 2 weeks... 

Today we’ll be chatting with the Founder & CEO of Stakester – Tom Fairey. Tom's competitive nature and limitless energy led to the founding of Stakester, a platform where you could challenge anyone to your favorite game, like League of Legends, so that you could back yourself and win cash prizes!  

Also tried out something new this episode – Startup Droplets! Stick to the end to find out what it is 💧🌱

One of the CRAZIEST physical transformations AND brand creations we've ever seen... Today we'll be interviewing a Taiwanese fitness celebrity who went from 38% body fat to 8%. If you think that was impressive, he also created his own branded house. He is the one and only Peeta 葛格 – a YouTube star with a fitness studio Peeta Fitness, a restaurant Peeta TakeTake, and an ecommerce platform Peeta Mart.

If you're looking for another interview with a billionaire, this is not it. But if you're curious about me, the host of The Seed, and you want to know: 

• What I worked on in the past (online ordering system, feedback collection, umbrella sharing...)
• Why I started this podcast (and all sorts of weird names I came up with) 
• What I want to do in the future  

Then this is it!  

I hope you're not too bored with my journey 😅  

How do you know what you want to do in life? What do you do when your loved ones are against what you're doing? Is a college degree necessary?  

Today we'll be chatting with the Founder & CEO of Wurk Services – Xander Kazanowski. Xander’s passion is to connect people with their passion. He dropped out of college and started Wurk Services to connect freelancers and businesses with clients locally.

How do you build a billion-dollar business? How did Square survive an attack from Amazon? What does it mean to be an "entrepreneur"? 

We finally got our dream guest – Jim McKelvey!! As someone who’s in the McKelvey School of Engineering at WashU, I was super excited to have him on my podcast. Jim McKelvey is a serial entrepreneur, most well known for founding Square with Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter). If you’re not sure what Square is, whenever you walk into a store and you see a white device for swiping your cards when you pay, that is probably Square.

How did MrBeast become one of the most successful YouTubers in the world? What advice does he have for content creators, and what are his next steps?  In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, we will be doing something new. Instead of interviewing entrepreneurs like we used to, we will be exploring the journey of MrBeast! We will also be sharing his tips on creating content, his thoughts on platforms like TikTok, as well as his predictions of YouTube.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, we will be interviewing Karan Dalal & Arnuv Tandon, two of the youngest entrepreneurs to be on our podcast! Karan and Arnuv are students at Homestead High School in Cupertino as well as Co-Founders of PetCode – the ultimate pet management system that uses QR tag, website, and mobile app to help you easily manage all aspects of your pet's life.

For today's episode, we are super excited to have the Co-Founder & CEO of Enso Connect – Francois Gouelo with us on the podcast. Francois went for a weekend ski trip when his Airbnb’s key was found frozen under the doormat when he arrived. The host wasn’t responding to his messages and he later also encountered problems with the heating system. This led to the creation of Enso Connect – a property management automation software that leverages smart home devices and AI communication to provide a seamless experience to homeowners, property managers, and guests.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, I will be interviewing Brad Luttrell. Brad is an amazing storyteller with experience in editorial and advertising. He is also an outdoor enthusiast who is building a social commerce platform – GoWild – and is now changing how people share their outdoor journey and shop for outdoor gear.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, we will be chatting with Dancho Dimkov. Dancho started as a business consultant and a digital nomad, traveling around the world while working as a freelancer.  Now, Dancho is a serial entrepreneur running BizzBee Solutions, a company that is Helping Entrepreneurs become Startups, Startups become SMEs, and SMEs achieve exponential growth.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, we are super excited to have Doug Villhard on our podcast! Doug started out working at Disney and was one of the first to work on Disney.com. He then went on to start multiple companies, one of which is Second Street, the ultimate promotions platform that allows you to easily create digital promotions. He is also the Professor of Practice and the Academic Director for Entrepreneurship at WashU.  

Having taken his class, Rick knows that Doug is very experienced and has many great advice for young entrepreneurs. In this episode alone, Doug talked about what to look for in Co-Founders, what to do as students interested in entrepreneurship, and much more!

We are super excited to have Buster Scher on our podcast! Buster started blogging about Fantasy Basketball at the age of 14, and now at 20 years old, he’s working with the NBA and running HoopsNation, a brand with 660,000 followers on Facebook, 1 million on Instagram, and 4 million on TikTok.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, I will be interviewing Bryon Pierson. Bryon is a data analyst and a former high school wrestling coach who spent the last six years studying the college financial process. Now, he is leading EDUrain, a company that provides you with a one-stop software to apply for financial aid, scholarships, grants and off-campus housing.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, I will be interviewing Marc Bernstein. Marc is a WashU alumnus who seems to have always been entrepreneurial. Having started organizations and businesses throughout high school and college, Marc is now leading Balto – a company building real-time guidance for contact centers – on their way to becoming a market-leading tech company in St. Louis. Balto is currently in rapid growth, having recently closed its $10M Series A funding!

For our 20th episode, we are super excited to have Suzanne Langlois with us on our podcast! Suzanne is the Co-Founder of Kaldi's Coffee, a specialty coffee roasting company that has been around since 1994. You may have seen Kaldi's presence on the Washington University in St. Louis campus, or in supermarkets like Schnucks. 

But did you know that their first source of funding is from a car crash? Or that they got their first tables and chairs from bulldozed buildings?

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, I will be going in-person to a new restaurant on the Delmar Loop next to WashU – American Falafel to interview its founder Mohammed Qadadeh.

 American Falafel is a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant that opened on May 30th, the same day that COVID cases in St. Louis reached almost 2,000 cumulatively. Before founding American Falafel, Moh was at MasterCard for 18 years, serving as the VP and Country Manager in the regions of Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine before leaving to go on his startup journey.

In this episode of The Seed – The Startup Journey, I'm very excited to interview the CEO of JIOS Aerogel – Stephen Kang. JIOS is a company in Korea and Singapore that is using its patented JIOS AeroVa technology to create the world’s lightest man-made material, aerogel, at an affordable cost. JIOS Aerogel powder is 3x the weight of air, fire-resistant, hydrophobic, and can even dampen sound! Since its inception in 2013, it has now created many innovative applications, including the aerogel blanket, coating, tape, and many more.