#netowrking

Heard some good nuggets of advice and insight from this week in startups again, so I wanted to share them here.  

TWiST E540 David Rogier, MasterClass  https://youtu.be/L5DMuu67s4k

5:40 - Start of the story about how David got Dustin Hoffman. Take away: a lot of what founders have to do is centered around not giving up. It shows that sometimes, all it takes is for a founder to get a single yes. 

33:07 - “in the beginning you should try and do everything live” Take away: See how your clients use your product in-person to see how they interact with it. Then only after you understand how to make that interaction good do you then start thinking about scaling. After you have figured out the scaling, this is when you should start investing in scaling your product.

35:34 - Jason goes over why he missed investing in MasterClass. Take away: As an investor, sometimes the team is all that matters, if you see a team or person like this, just support them in any way that you can. On the flip side, as a founder, if you don’t have this “air” around you of being a winner, build a team around you that creates the feeling of “we are winners and we are going to win either here or the next one.”

TWIST E953  Neyborly CEO Ben Seidl  https://youtu.be/KO5uoeoX8nk

44:35 - “At the end of the day, if you can build a business that people can build businesses on top of, you got a really sticky and strong platform.” Take away: If you give people the tools and platform to build on, it makes you extremely defensible.

1:11:36 - “Right now we are a no-code business, it’s on Squarespace” Take away: Neyborly is a $1M business and they build it on a type form web builder platform. You don’t need to know how to code to start a business you just need to be creative and able to put the pieces together.  Also, Squarespace is a platform that allows people to build a business on top of it, showing off the point above this.

"When I evaluate companies, you’re really evaluating the person and their desire to win” - Jason Calacanis