The Yaro Podcast

The Yaro Podcast⁠

Anthony Zhang is the co-founder of Vinovest.co, a platform and marketplace for investing in wine and whiskey as an asset class.

Anthony explains in this podcast how to add wine and whiskey to your portfolio and takes us through the origin story of his startup.

This is an interesting business model, with one part very much internet driven matching buyers and sellers online, but also a very offline business to source and store the product safely (sometimes even located in medieval caves!).

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

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Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

The Yaro Podcast What is the difference between 'intent' based marketing and 'discovery' based marketing when growing your online business? Listen to this solo episode as I break down these two very important online marketing concepts. Enjoy the episode. Yaro YARO'S NEWSLETTER Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter: ✉️ ⁠https://yaro.blog/newsletter/⁠ YARO'S BLOG 💻 ⁠https://yaro.blog⁠ YARO ON SOCIAL 👔 LinkedIn: ⁠https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/⁠ 🐤 Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/yarostarak⁠ ABOUT YARO 🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: ⁠https://yaro.blog/about⁠ Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

The Yaro Podcast

Brian Nichols in 2014 had an offer to work at Facebook, Twitter or Lyft.

He chose Lyft. This was just one of the early startups he worked out, many of which turned into great experiences, but no big financial gains.

This lead Brian to realize he'd rather have a small piece of lots of startups rather than have all his eggs in one basket as an early employee at one.

Hence he became an investor.

It wasn't easy though, no venture fund wanted him, and he wasn't rich so couldn't fund investments by himself.

He found a solution by launching an angel investment syndicate for Lyft alumni, people who had made money as early employees at Lyft.

Brian explains on this podcast his path into venture capital, which eventually lead him to Hustle Fund, where today he leads the Angel Squad group -- education, deal flow and networking for angels.

• Brian offered an Angel investing start kit here.
• You can find out more about Angel Squad here.
• You can connect with Brian on LinkedIn here.

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

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ABOUT YARO

🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about

Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

Podcast guesting agency mentioned: https://podcastconnection.org/

Matheus Riolfi Co-founder & CEO of Tint.ai, an AI powered insurance solution for companies to embed insurance as part of their product offering.

A good example is Turo, a peer-to-peer car sharing service, which requires custom insurance for each part of the world it enters. Matheus previously worked as the head of international expansion at Turo, which gave him an insight (and the eventual idea for Tint) because he spent so much time figuring out the insurance challenge.

In this interview with Matheus, we hear the origin story behind Tint, innovation in the insurance industry and how Matheus left Brazil and crafted a very specific path to entrepreneurship.

Enjoy the episode, and please leave a review on Apple and Spotify.

Yaro

Krish Ramineni is the co-founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai, a meeting assistant and voice intelligence platform. 

In this interview Krish shares the story behind his two previous startup ideas -- a drone delivery company and an AI chatbot, which he built along with his co-founder. These companies are directly connected to what Fireflies is today, but not always in obvious ways.

Krish also shares with us how Fireflies has grown, how they built the early version of the tool (the MVP) and why it doesn't work the same way today. 

Enjoy the interview!

Yaro

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ABOUT YARO

🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about

Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

Yoav Vilner is the co-founder and CEO of Walnut.io, a SAAS platform creating an entire new category of no-code, cloud-based, product demonstration technology.  

Walnut gives sales and marketing teams the ability to create stable interactive product demos and collect insights on their usage. They are growing very fast, as you will hear in this interview with Yoav, as he explains how the idea for Walnut came to be and how they first launched the company.

VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST

🎙️https://vestedcapitalpodcast.com

YARO'S NEWSLETTER

Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter:

✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter

LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY

Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy:

🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com

YARO'S BLOG

💻 https://yaro.blog

YARO ON SOCIAL

👔 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/

🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/

ABOUT YARO

🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about

Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

Yahya Mokhtarzada, along with two of his brothers, founded Truebill, which was acquired by Rocket Companies for $1.275 billion.

In this interview you will hear the origin story for the Truebill app, how they tested the MVP idea of cancelling credit card subscriptions, how they acquired their first 30,000 users, switched on premium services, scaled to $100,000,000 ARR and then sold for $1.275 billion dollars.

VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST

🎙️https://vestedcapitalpodcast.com

YARO'S NEWSLETTER

Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter:

✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter

LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY

Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy:

🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com

YARO'S BLOG

💻 https://yaro.blog

YARO ON SOCIAL

👔 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/yarostarak/

🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/

ABOUT YARO

🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about

Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

Michelle Tascoe is based in LA and has one of the longest running private one-on-one financial advice coaching practices.

She's now earning over half a million a year, but it wasn't always like this. It's been a long and steady journey to become a seven figure coach. You will hear that story in today's podcast interview.

VESTED CAPITAL PODCAST

🎙️https://vestedcapitalpodcast.com

YARO'S NEWSLETTER

Join over 20,000 subscribers to the multiple streams of income newsletter:

✉️ https://yaro.blog/newsletter

LAPTOP LIFESTYLE ACADEMY

Learn the most important skill you need today -- how to use online content to sell anything. Join Yaro's coaching and training Academy:

🏫 https://laptoplifestyleacademy.com

YARO'S BLOG

💻 https://yaro.blog

YARO ON SOCIAL

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🐤 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yarostarak

📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/yarostarak/

ABOUT YARO

🏗️ Yaro's Current Projects: https://yaro.blog/about

Yaro is an entrepreneur, investor and creator, based in Canada but often found living the laptop lifestyle as a digital nomad traveling the world.

This is Vested Capital episode 32, featuring Thomas Smale, the founder of FE International, a leading M&A firm.  

I first interviewed Thomas 9 years ago (https://yaro.blog/11850/thomas-smale/). 

At the time his company had helped to facilitate over $5 Million in deals. Now that number is over a billion dollars in business acquisitions.  

I asked Thomas what led to the growth and how his team has expanded. We also talked about what business models leads to the biggest exit prices, what types of businesses are popular with buyers and more.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Mikkel Thorup hosts The Expat Money Show podcast (I was on episode 155) and has spent over 21 years in continual travel around the world, visiting more than 100 countries including Colombia, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Iran. 

Mikkel runs a consultancy to help high net worth individuals move overseas, providing guidance on tax structure, visas, residencies, passports, raising your family (education, lifestyle), company structure and banking.

I asked Mikkel on to Vested Capital, first to learn about his background and how he left Canada and became a world traveler, and then how he was able to learn such a unique and dynamic skillset -- staying up to date with everything an expat needs to consider when moving overseas.

During the second half of the interview I asked Mikkel all the big questions, including which countries should we consider moving to, how to avoid paying tax and where to setup your company and bank accounts. 

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Arthur Menard is the CEO and co-founder of Lambs, a clothing brand that blocks 99% of EMFs (cellphone, 4G, 5G, Wifi, Bluetooth radiation) as well as 10x the amount of UVs compared to traditional clothing.

His company is doing 8-figures in sales, having got their start selling men's underwear online -- which I actually purchased several years ago.

Arthur has an interesting backstory, having first got started as an entrepreneur selling online training, then later co-founding a local marketing app supporting French bakeries. 

The story behind Lambs however, is the most interesting, given he was blazing a trail with a new form of clothing.

If you're selling anything DTC (direct to consumer) or looking to invent a new category, this podcast will be insightful.

Enjoy the interview.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

David Ciccarelli is the CEO and founder of Voices.com.

Based in London, Canada, Voices.com provides an online marketplace, facilitating transactions between business clients and over two million voice over professionals.

In this interview David shares the origin story of Voices, how they first launched their platform, secured a great domain name, attracted new customers and new voice talent to make sure they had both supply and demand and then grew the company to the point where it is today, heading towards a Nasdaq listing after raising $18 Million from Morgan Stanley and others.

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Teddy Kyres is the founder of Groupe Orbis, a Montreal based mortgage brokerage firm, with over 60 brokers following the system Teddy created for succeeding as a mortgage broker.

Teddy is also my mortgage broker and helped me secure finance for investing in Montreal when I didn't have much of a tax history in Canada after moving here from Australia. The banks wouldn't loan to me, so Teddy helped me find alternative financing until I built up more history as a Canadian tax payer.

During this podcast we look at Teddy's early years as a mortgage broker and what he did to become one of the most successful in the entire country, doing over $100 Million in loans in a single year as one individual broker.

We then look at how Teddy branched out on his own starting a brokerage firm so he could expand by building a team.

Throughout the interview I also ask Teddy to break down his own property investing strategy, which as you would expect, has played a big part in Teddy's strategy for growing his net worth over time.

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Joshua Scigala knows a lot about crypto (thus this is a LONG episode!).

He was there when Satoshi first released Bitcoin and he was unfortunately there as well when the first major exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed.  

Today Joshua is leading a new Defi project called The Standard, a decentralized lending platform run by a DAO that focuses on hard and soft assets as collateral.

The protocol will have the ability for users to issue multiple fiat pegged algorithmic stablecoins starting with "Standard Euro" then USD, YEN and more to be rolled out.  

Before this he co-founded Vaultoro, one of the first platforms where you can directly trade Bitcoin and gold, allowing you to hedge against each asset class.   

During this interview we went back in time to hear about Joshua's early career and businesses in Australia, where he grew up and how he became aware of the emerging cryptocurrency movement.  

We also dive deep into all things crypto and how Joshua setup his two cryptocurrency projects. 

Enjoy the conversation.  

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Collis Ta'eed with his wife Cyan started out with an idea -- they wanted to create a marketplace where digital media producers could sell their creations to customers.

They began with the then popular Flash file format and later expanded into things like WordPress themes, music, video and code. Each type of media had a marketplace, including Themeforest for Wordpress and Audiojungle for music files.

As is typical for the marketplace model, they took a small fee from each transaction.

All these marketplaces would later be combined together under the company name Envato. 

Today Envato is still a privately held company having been bootstrapped from day one. Because they are private, we don't have any public numbers about how much money they generate, but based on what journalists in Australia have written, the company does about $300 Million a year in revenue.

Collis, at the time he stepped down as CEO of Envato in 2020, reported that they had crossed the major milestone of $1 Billion in creator earnings. 81,000 creators have earned through Envato since the company was founded.

The Early Days

I connected with Collis back when we were both part of the Australian blogging community around 2010.

Back then, Collis was the creator of a blog called Freelance Switch, supporting freelancers with advice and tutorials for growing their business.

That was early days for his marketplaces, but signs were already showing that he had a business that was scaling rapidly.

A few years later I was producing a new interview series as a subscription product for my education business and invited Collis to do a bonus interview for the program.

At the time Envato was already a multi-million dollar business selling a digital item every ten seconds.

Collis and I recorded this interview at a great time. They were successful, but they had yet to reach the point where he and his wife were appearing on the 'young rich list' in Australia, which immediately boosted their public profile significantly (making it a lot harder to get in touch with Collis!).

During the interview, Collis shared the entire foundation story of Envato, from going into $100,000 in debt and living with his inlaws, how they built their marketplaces and attracted creators and buyers and why they never took on investment finance and stayed bootstrapped the entire way.

A New-Old Interview

Although this interview is not brand new, it's never been released to the public before. Only members of my membership site had access until now.

I'm releasing it here on Vested Capital because it's a story of an Australian tech unicorn (not officially, but the numbers would justify the valuation if they ever did an IPO or raised finance privately) and shares how the company was started.

Marketplaces are still an amazing business model to go after today, so I know this interview will prove inspiring and insightful.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Gabriele Musella is a well-educated, well-traveled, co-founder of Coinrule.com, a company where you can build or copy sets of rules for automatically trading cryptocurrencies.

The company recently raised $3M+ from MKB Bank, Urban Innovation Fund, Zilliqa and many Business Angels (Kayak Co-founder, EightSleep Founder).

Before that they also successfully ran a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, providing funds which helped them to navigate the pandemic when capital briefly dried up.

During this podcast we dive into Gabriele's past, which is full of education (London School of Economics, MIT, Harvard), travels throughout Europe and the USA for various jobs (Nokia, Loyds Bank) and three previous startups before the current one, Coinrule. The most notable was Paylinko, a fintech payments app.

Gabriele has certainly lived a full life so far, and it was exciting to piece together all the highlights that came before his current project and then also spend some time talking about how to build a Crypto trading platform.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Kison Patel is the founder of DealRoom.net, a SAAS platform for managing the lifecycle of mergers and acquisitions.

Kison spent ten years of his life running his own boutique M&A advisory firm, participating in some way with 363 asset sales.

During this career, Kison noted how many processes of deals were handled with very 'old' technology, for example using spreadsheets for tracking due diligence. 

This lead to the idea for DealRoom, which at first as an MVP was an attempt to better document and add a communication layer to the due diligence process.

During the interview I wanted to learn more about M&A, as well as hear the story behind how Kison grew his SAAS company, which is 100% bootstrapped at the time of this recording.

I asked Kison for examples of deals he worked on, how he sourced deals, what's the difference between a business broker and M&A advisory services and we also talked about how he built what he calls a 'media company' within his SAAS as a marketing strategy.

If you're growing a SAAS in a legacy industry or thinking about starting one, make sure you listen to this interview.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Russ Heddleston is the co-founder and former CEO of DocSend, which was acquired by Dropbox for $165 Million in early 2021. Russ currently works at Dropbox continuing the vision he had for DocSend.

During this interview we hear how Russ went from studying at Stanford, to working at a startup called Greystripe, then as an intern at Dropbox, and then launching his own startup Pursuit.

Pursuit was later acquihired by Facebook, where Russ continued to work for two years. He shares some interesting insights into why Pursuit didn't take off and the lessons learned, which he then took into his next startup, DocSend.

We spend a good amount of time talking about what marketing Russ and his team did to grow DocSend, how they revised their positioning and copy on their website to add fuel to their growth and how eventually the deal with Dropbox happened.

If you like B2B SAAS startup stories, this interview is for you.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/ 

Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Sara Mauskopf is the co-founder and CEO of Winnie.com, a marketplace platform that connects parents looking for childcare and preschool providers with over 250,000 centres around the USA.

To date, Sara and her team have raised $15.5 Million in venture funding over three rounds, with the most recent $9 million series being led by Rethink Impact. 

In this interview we first dive back into Sara's history as a math major, then moving over to computer science, which led her to a job at Google after graduation. She later left Google for Twitter, then left again to join Postmates, where she met her co-founder, Anne Halsall.

Sara and Anne were a little unique as working parents inside Postmates, and realized how difficult it was to juggle raising children and maintaining full time jobs. One of the challenges was childcare, an industry that was still driven mostly by a word-of-mouth for finding good options.

Sara breaks down all the steps from making the first version of their platform, how they built the supply side up, attracted parents to the site, raised funding and currently make money.

There's a lot to learn from Sara and she shares a lot of wisdom, so don't miss this one.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/ 

Towards the end of the interviews Lee breaks down the three steps he currently teaches to help anyone tap into their own ‘inner MacGyver’. You can also learn the steps at his website, MacGyverSecret.com .

The MacGyver Origin Story

I couldn’t interview the creator of MacGyver without learning how the show was created. In particular, I was curious what the process was to come up with all the unique situations and solutions that the show featured every episode.

You can listen in to the first half of the episode to hear how Lee first got his start as a screenwriter, how he wrote the pilot episode and also what’s coming up for MacGyver currently.

Enjoy the interview, and make sure to test out the three steps to tap your own inner MacGyver next time you face a challenging situation.

Yaro Starak

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.bl og/ 

It's hard to summarize all the success of Wil Schroter. He's founded so many companies.

Today he's founder of Startups.com, a business education site and suite of tools and resources for entrepreneurs, some of which were previous startups by Wil (Fundable, Bizplan) and some were acquired (Zirtual, Clarity).

Wil got his start early online, initially exploring bulletin boards with a commodore computer. He then launched a web design agency, Blue Diesel, in 1994, again very early to a new industry.

His agency grew, later merging with a more traditional design agency, creating a full suite offline/online marketing firm. In a surprise success, the firm landed a massive client worth $250 Million in billings, beating out many larger agencies. 

Wil eventually exited his agency ownership shares when the company was acquired. As a youg guy of just 27 he had earned enough money to retire, yet he decided to get back into entrepreneurship.

I enjoyed this part of the podcast because Will explained why it was a mistake to be the founder of so many companies after exiting his first, yet why he wanted to and what his life was like back then working 16 hour days.

After a massive anxiety attack that landed Wil in the hospital, he realized things had to change (he was also about to have his first child, adding to his motivation to stay healthy and alive!).

This experience informed his decision to create Startups.com, and how he would still have multiple entities, but they would be integrated to serve the same customer and thus be easier to manage and grow together.

Towards the end of the podcast I asked Wil to explain how he is able to market and attract customers to so many different companies over the years, and also to briefly touch on his current personal investing strategy.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Tim Ferriss needs no introduction. 

Author, lifestyle design pioneer, angel investor (Wealthfront, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, Shopify, Duolingo), peak performance bio hacker, accelerated learning leader and of course, podcast host.

Tim first appeared on my original podcast all the way back in 2007 when few people knew his name and he was talking about his new book, the 4-Hour Workweek.

In 2012 he returned to my podcast to talk about how to accelerate your speed of mastering a skill, the main topic of his new book at the time, the 4-Hour Chef.

At the same time as we recorded that interview, I also asked Tim to record a secret interview just for my membership site members -- an interview where I asked Tim to explain what happened during the years BEFORE he wrote his first and most famous book.

Today I'm excited to release this special trilogy podcast featuring all three interviews, edited and re-released as one big Tim Ferriss flashback.

Tim is a superstar. So many entrepreneurs credit his book as a starting point for their entrepreneurial journey and millions more people listen to his podcasts.

These interviews I am publishing on this episode feature Tim during much earlier phases of his career, but of course Tim never disappoints, so there is timeless wisdom to be gained by listening in today.

 Enjoy the trilogy,

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Sonya Petcavich is the founder and CEO of Meowtel.com, an 'Uber for cat sitting' service where a vetted cat sitter will come to your house and look after your kitties for as long as you need them to.

Full disclosure: I am an angel investor in Meowtel and Sonya via the Jason Calacanis syndicate.  

When I first had the opportunity to invest in Meowtel I was immediately a yes because I love cats and would use a cat sitting service straight away since I travel as a digital nomad (assuming I had a cat again - I haven't since I left Australia in 2015).

I also couldn't believe this service wasn't already widely available under one dominant brand because I've heard of similar services for dogs, for example Rover, which recently announced an IPO via a SPAC.

Sonya is a great founder, who keeps us investors updated with regular reports on the progress of Meowtel. 

Unfortunately, shortly after I invested Covid hit, which hurt Meowtel big time. Thanks to Sonya's decisive action downsizing her company, they survived the worst of Covid and in 2021 have been growing like crazy as people head out to travel again.

During this podcast Sonya shares the origin story of Meowtel, including how she 'wasted a lot of money' to build the first version of her platform, and also covers how she dealt with Covid, her strategy for growing a two-sided marketplace business and what the future holds for Meowtel.

Sonya is a first time venture-backed founder, so it was interesting to hear her thoughts on what it's like raising capital, and why if possible, she will avoid doing so in the future if Meowtel can continue to grow organically having just recently turned profitable for the first time.

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Paul Biggar got started as a computer engineer early in life. He became a specialist in the field of compilers (software engineers use compilers to test code to see if it works or not). He liked compilers so much he completed a PhD on the topic.

Paul had a few false starts as an entrepreneur, including a stint in the Y-Combinator program, but nothing really took off.

Eventually in his late twenties, while working at Mozilla, Paul foresaw that the process of compiling and testing software will move to the cloud. He had the skillset and experience to understand the need, so decided to launch another startup -- and CircleCi.com was born.

Paul, along with his co-founder, built the first version of CircleCi, charging a monthly fee for access. They were able to acquire early clients thanks to a strategic investor who introduced them to 20+ companies who needed what CircleCI offered.

The Road To A Billion Dollar Valuation

During the interview Paul said he didn't expect CircleCI to one day crack unicorn status. At the time of this recording, during the most recent round of funding, CircleCI was valued at $1.7 billion dollars.

Paul stayed on as CEO all the way up to their A round of funding, raising $6 million at a $20+ million valuation. He left after this, when he realized he was more of a product guy than a CEO who has to focus on culture and hiring.

Paul today remains on the board of directors of CircleCI, but is focussed on DarkLang.com, an ambitious project aimed to take out the layers of complexity that software developers have to deal with when coding applications.

In episode 8 of Vested Capital I featured an interview with VC and entrepreneur Elizabeth Yin.

During that interview Elizabeth shared the story of how she founded LaunchBit and later sold the business to Todd Garland, the founder of BuySellAds.com . This happened in 2013.

In 2012, I had Todd Garland on my podcast, where he explained how he came up with the idea and launched BuySellAds.com as a startup he created during nights and weekends while he was working at Hubspot.

I went back and listened to the interview and thought it offers some great insight into what Todd did to grow his company to an eight figure business. 

Hence I decided to resurface it for you today as a Vested Capital flashback episode.

Here's the original description I wrote for the podcast...

Todd Garland is the founder of BuySellAds.com, an advertising management platform and ad selling service that I have to say I am quite jealous of.

Why am I jealous?

Because Todd has built a company – a company doing over $10 million a year in revenue – with the same idea I had.

Amazingly enough, after talking to Todd for this interview it appears we had almost exactly the same idea around the same time (2007), except Todd went on to implement it straight away, where I waited another four years… sigh.

In this interview, you will hear how Todd was a college dropout and after both his mother and father died around the same time, found himself at a big crossroads. He managed to get work at a development firm, and eventually started a couple of design sites on the side – CSS Elite and 13 Styles.

His websites became popular and he started selling advertising. As a result of this experience, he had an idea for an advertising management service that would help you manage and sell ads. The key differences to any other platform at the time were that Todd wanted to sell ads for a monthly fee on subscription and he wanted his software to make the ad-buying process completely automated.

He coded up BuySellAds version 1.0 by himself and after waiting six months to get over the fear of releasing it, he finally did. Within two months he was making $5,000 a month and it grew from there.

Today BuySellAds is a leader in the direct advertising business. Todd is continuing to innovate, now offering more forms of advertising such as Twitter, RSS, App, and Email Newsletter ads. Listen to this interview and you will hear how it all began.

Enjoy the episode,

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Dan's first big success came in the early 1990s, when with his wife they launched a computer hardware business called PC Laptops. 

By offering an unlimited service warranty, using stickers to help spread the word and a crazy television ad campaign, they grew from negative $27,000 in year one, to a million dollars in year two, then five million in year three and kept growing from there.

Dan was quick to turn his business profits back into investments, buying stocks and property. This strategy continued throughout the almost thirty years since the company started, with Dan now having done over $600,000,000 in property deals.

More recently Dan and his team launched an e-commerce retailer focused on high-end computers for video gaming, called Xidax Pcs, and Storage Whale, a cloud based low-cost backup service.

Dan is clearly a deal maker, passionate about entrepreneurship, creating jobs and helping others to gain financial freedom.

Enjoy the interview.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Marcel Herz is co-founder and CEO of Tiliter, a company that is accelerating the democratization of computer vision.

Presently they are focused on the grocery store industry, offering a device used at checkout to scan and identify fruits, vegetables, baked goods - anything that is loose without a barcode.

This is just the tip of the iceberg however, as you can imagine being able to scan and identify real world objects will have countless applications, especially as the software gets better and quicker.

I made a small angel investment in Tiliter via the AngelList platform led by Brendan Hill, a previous guest on my podcast. I'm excited by the traction Tiliter already has - currently in hundreds of stores around the world - and also where this technology is heading.

You can listen in to this interview to learn how Marcel and his co-founders built the prototype of the Tiliter checkout, then began approaching large grocery store chains to test it out.

Enjoy the interview.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Bryan M Clayton is the co-founder of Green Pal, an 'Uber for lawncare' technology platform, connecting lawn mowing providers to customers all over the United States.

Bryan got his start as a teenager when his father forced him to cut a neighbours lawn to earn some money. Bryan liked being in charge of his income and over the next decade went on to build one of the largest lawncare companies in his city, earning over $10 Million a year in revenue with a team of 150+.

After a decade, Bryan decided to exit his company, selling the business. 

It didn't take long for Bryan to realize he needed a project to focus on to stay happy and passionate, so he decided to jump back into entrepreneurship and even stay in the same industry.

However, his new company was a pure technology play, connecting lawncare providers with customers using a website and app called Green Pal.

Bryan explains during this interview the very hard first five years of his new business. He didn't want to risk the money he made selling his first company (which he instead used to buy property), so along with his co-founders, they completely bootstrapped the project.

They wasted a whole bunch of money working with a development firm to build the first version of their app, then scrapped it all and learned how to code so they could build it themselves.

Bryan breaks down all the steps to grow the company from their first 100 customers to the point today where they do over $20 Million a year in revenue, having expanded across the entire country -- with international expansion coming soon!

This is an inspiring story and a great interview because Bryan was very transparent with what worked and what didn't.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Pili and Jason Yarusi are real estate investors who today focus on multi-family properties -- buildings that can house for example 90 apartments.

They didn't start out focusing on this type of property. Like many, they began with renovation flips, buying single family homes, upgrading them, then selling for a profit.

During this podcast Pili and Jason take us back through some of their pre-property investment days, including how they met working at a bar, but didn't get together for ten years.

We learn about their first investments, how they switched to investing interstate using the support of a turn-key provider (a partner who helped source properties for them in other cities) and eventually, the mindset shift that led them to think really big, going after the multi-family market.

As you can imagine, it costs a lot more to purchase a 90-unit building compared to a single family home. Jason explains some of the different types of financing they use today to purchase the larger buildings.

If property investing is part of your capital growth strategy, this podcast will definitely open up your mind to bigger possibilities.

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Nathan Barry is the founder and CEO of ConvertKit.com, an email newsletter platform for creators to send newsletters and run email marketing campaigns.

Nathan is well known for transparency, sharing the behind the scenes growth in revenue of his company from day one. At the time of this interview, ConvertKit is generating over $28 Million a year in sales.

During this podcast we first cover all the businesses and roles Nathan had before he started ConvertKit, from running a web design agency at 17, to building IOS apps, to running an information publishing business selling books and courses on digital interface design making as much as $250,000 a year.

Then we switched into the origin and early stage growth stage of ConvertKit. This was a super insightful part of the interview as Nathan explained how after two years of stagnation at $2,000/month in revenue, over the next two years he ramped it up to $500,000/month in revenue.

What a run that is!

I also asked Nathan to explain his philosophy around raising capital, staying private, sharing equity with his employees and what the future holds for ConvertKit.

Enjoy the interview.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Jonathan Little is a professional poker player with over $7 Million in career earnings from tournaments (both online and in person) and is one of the most popular poker coaches/personalities in the industry.

He's also co-founder of PokerCoaching.com, a membership site and training community with over 5500 paying members, making it a multiple seven-figure business.

I met Jonathan via Jason Calacanis and his angel investor syndicate. Jonathan is an active investor in all kinds of different asset classes, from NFTs to Magic: The Gathering cards, although he is of course most focused on poker.

During this interview we go back in time to learn how Jonathan got his start in poker, how he quickly became a professional, earning as much as $30,000 a month playing a specific type of poker online. We also learn how he upped his game to the point where he won over a million dollars from one tournament - twice.

There's a lot of wisdom in this interview, and while much of it seems specific to excelling at Poker, Jonathan's advice can be applied to other aspects of life, from being a startup founder, content marketing and when to invest versus when to spend your money to grow faster.

I enjoyed this one a lot, and I'm sure you will too.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/

Elizabeth Yin is the co-founder and General Partner of a venture capital firm that, and I quote from their website, invests in "hilariously early startups".

Hustle Fund typically invests $25,000 as a starting point into startups that have yet to show any revenues. Instead, they look for traction in other ways, which Elizabeth explains in this interview.

We also go back in time looking at Elizabeth's own history as an entrepreneur, starting a company called LaunchBit, an advertising network, which was eventually acquired by BuySellAds.com.

Elizabeth and her company LaunchBit were graduates from the 500 Startups accelerator program. After selling her company, she returned to 500 Startups as an Entrepreneur in residence and later a partner.

This was her entry point into the world of venture capital. Elizabeth explains what she liked about the 500 Startups methodology -- a global perspective, any person can be a founder -- and how that informed her own strategy when forming Hustle Fund.

If you're considering raising money for your startup this podcast is definitely worth listening to. Elizabeth breaks down what she looks for in an investment and some strategies for early stage companies based on her own experiences as a founder.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Jennifer Beck is currently the founder of Jihi.com, a CBD skin and body care producer that aims to help high performing people sleep better and recover faster.

Before this, Jennifer was co-founder of Cannabase, a wholesale exchange platform for the legal cannabis industry, which was acquired for over seven figures by Helix TCS .

I knew the cannabis industry was heavily regulated, but I didn't realize how much of a challenge it presents to potential founders until I heard Jennifer explain what she went through.

While it's an exciting and growing industry, entrepreneurs who decide to get into the Cannabis space have to be ready to face roadblocks around financing, taking payments and even simple things like moving product from one place to another.

Despite the difficulties, Jennifer was able to raise capital, build a team, and exit with equity in a newly publicly traded company. She worked at the acquiring company for two years, before she left so she could sell some of her shares.

Using her capital, Jennifer then decided to fund a new company without outside investors, formulating her own CBD products and launching Jihi, a DTC and subscription CBD product range.

If you want to hear how a two-sided marketplace business was created and then acquired for over seven-figures, how Jennifer monetized her marketplace, and what it takes to launch a physical product in the CBD industry, this interview will definitely give you insights.

Enjoy the podcast.

Yaro

I am resurfacing my interview with Greg Smith, founder of Thinkific.com, a Vancouver based SAAS servicing course creators, because this year (2021) Thinkific did an IPO on the TSX (Toronto Stock Exchange) raising $160 Million.

As I type this, Thinkific has a market cap of $1.36 billion dollars, making it one of the rare Canadian tech unicorns.

Greg and his brother launched the company initially with a much more hands-on approach (it was more like an agency service to begin with), and then slowly built out a software service.

Today they offer a free and premium version of their platform, earning millions in recurring subscription revenue, employing over 70 full-time employees in Vancouver, all working to help people from around the world to deliver courses online.

Greg and I traveled back in time to his first business venture as an 11-year old. He built a marble ‘theme park’ and invited the neighborhood kids to come over and play, and then sold them candy he bulk purchased.

This was the first business project in a long line of entrepreneurial ventures Greg undertook as a young man, right up to the point where he graduated from university and became a lawyer.

While Greg was studying law, he created a blog to share lessons on how to pass the LSAT — the big test students need to pass in order to get into Law school.

He then created his first online course, also on the LSAT. It was very early days for selling courses back then, so Greg couldn’t find any good platforms to help, so he hired a programmer to whip up something basic within a month. That was 13 years ago, and his LSAT course is still selling online today!

Needless to say, the germ of the Thinkific business came from this first experience selling his own online course, but Greg would not begin his tech startup for many years yet. First, he had a career as a lawyer.

Although Greg loved working as a lawyer, he couldn’t fight the urge to build something of his own, and eventually left his job to start a business.

Greg explains how he made the decision to move back in with his parents to save money, and with his computer engineer brother as his partner, started the first version of what would become Thinkific.

I was particularly interested to learn how Thinkific grew into the company it is today, so we spent much of the second half of the interview diving deep into the journey of a software startup.

Greg talks about how they initially sold a much more hands-on service, how they decided who to hire first as they grew their team eventually to 70+ people (and still growing!), and why it eventually became clear they needed to build a platform to service their ideal customer.

If you’re interested in starting your own SAAS or subscription-based tech startup, I think you will find a lot of what Greg did with Thinkific during the early days very insightful.

Enjoy the interview,

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog:

Chris Bakke is currently founder of Laskie.com, a startup focused on becoming the Upwork for enterprise hiring.

Previously he was co-founder of Interviewed, which was acquired by Indeed for 'mid 8 figures' after just two and a half years.

Prior to this he worked as COO for 42Floors (acquired by Knotel) and RentJuice, which was acquired by Zillow, where Chris also worked for several years.

Chris in this interview explains his part in all these companies, first starting as an early employee in the real estate tech space, which led to his first exit, gaining shares in Zillow (he explains what he did with the shares during the episode).

After a couple of years at Zillow, Chris left to work for another real estate tech firm 42Floors, rising to become COO, and again enjoying an exit when Knotel bought the company.

Chris was then 'pushed' to become a founder himself, after his co-founders won a hackathon and several angel investors where throwing startup capital at them to back their recruitment testing tech idea.

This led to an amazing two and a half years where thanks to a lot of a hustle and a 'beachhead' client acquisition strategy, Chris and his co-founders grew Interviewed to $2.5Mil in annual run rate, and then the incredible sale to Indeed for almost $50 Million.

Thus Repost Network was born.

Jeff's idea proved to be a good one. Artists loved the service and of course loved getting paid for their work.

Musicians began to spread the word and Repost Network became a popular choice to help deal with music rights and negotiate with all the different music distributers - from YouTube, to Spotify and SoundCloud.

The word 'repost' in the name of Jeff's company refers to the goal of SoundCloud users - to get your tracks reposted so you can reach more people. Jeff maintained a close relationship with the SoundCloud team, which eventually led to an acquisition offer.

Repost Network was acquired for $15 Million in a cash and equity deal by SoundCloud in May of 2019. Jeff joined the SoundCloud team, where he still works at the time of recording this interview.

Jeff was very open during this podcast, sharing all the amazing steps that led to Repost Network growing to the point that SoundCloud was interested in an acquisition, and how the deal got done. 

Enjoy the episode.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

In the previous episode of Vested Capital (EP2), we talked with David Horne and Marty Balkema, founders of Calm Capital. They had recently acquired the company Wavve.

On this episode, Baird Hall, one of the co-founders of Wavve, shares the other side of that acquisition, as the seller of Wavve.

Baird takes us back in time to the origin story of Wavve, how it was a spinoff company from their first business when they needed to create audio snippets for sharing on social media.

The spinoff companies continued when they needed to create captions for audio within Wavve, which led to the creation of ZubTitle, a company Baird co-founded with a different partner.

Both Wavve and ZubTitle grew to earn over $100,000 a month each - 7-figure companies.

ChurnKey, Baird's latest company that helps subscription businesses deal with churn, was created as a result of needing to solve the churn problems within Wavve and Zubtitle.

Baird, as you can probably tell, is amazing at using a need in one company as the genesis to create a new company.

Of course, it's very challenging to grow one company, so working on two or even three at the same time rarely works. This is one of the reasons Baird and his partners made the choice to sell Wavve, so they could move on to focus on ChurnKey.

All of these companies are covered in this interview, which I know you will enjoy if you like SAAS startup stories leading all the way to exciting exits.

Enjoy the show.

Yaro

Podcast:

David Horne and Marty Balkema are founders of Calm Capital, a holding company with at the time of this recording, 10 companies under management with $8 Million in total annual revenue. 

The holding company model, popularized by Warren Buffet and Charlie Monger with Berkshire Hathaway, is becoming more and more common in the world of online business.

David and Marty help demystify what exactly a holding company investment strategy is and take us through an example acquisition, their first company purchase of Pttrns, in this podcast interview.

We also learn how the guys met, how they transitioned from being founders to investors and acquirers of other companies, and what financial structures they have used to finance their acquisitions.

I'm fascinated by this emerging trend of online holding companies for many reasons. It gives tech entrepreneurs an additional pathway for exiting their business, and it's an exciting way to compound your capital, increase cash flow and diversify your income as an owner of many companies. 

As an entrepreneur who enjoys having multiple projects, what Marty and David are doing really appeals to me. You get to enjoy owning companies in many different niches, but you're not stuck in the day-to-day trenches of running the companies.

Enjoy the interview, and please share it with anyone you think could benefit from hearing from these two trailblazing entrepreneurs.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Mark Asquith, otherwise known as the 'British Podcast Guy' is the founder of several podcast related companies, including Captivate.fm, a web hosting, analytics and distribution SAAS for podcasters.

Mark, like many entrepreneurs, got his start with an agency doing general web and media development services. Eventually this led to a spinoff podcast specific web design company, which Mark and his Co-Founder left the agency to focus on.

After entering the world of podcasting Mark never looked back, launching his own shows, attending conferences and building more support services for podcasters. He also has plans for a team engagement tool, which he recently patented and will be launching soon.

I wanted to speak to Mark because there is a difference between running an agency and building websites, to then diving into the world of SAAS and now also physical products. 

It's not easy to make all these different types of business models work, but as you will hear in the interview, Mark had a method and a plan for moving from one focus to the next, allowing a business to grow, adding a team, then moving on to the next step.

Enjoy the interview.

Yaro

Podcast: https://www.yaro.blog/pod/
Blog: https://www.yaro.blog/

Podcast: