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This time on Startup Foundations we speak with Luke Deka, the CEO and co-founder of Growbots, a Polish startup building software to automate outbound email outreach and streamline lead generation for SMBs. Luke talks to us about the in’s and out’s of Growbots product, and how their software is helping companies automate and scale their sales efforts. We also discuss the origin story of Growbots, and how it evolved over the years, trying out different strategies for customer acquisition, fundraising and the product development. Luke and Greg also talk about the art of pricing your product the right way, and Luke shares the pricing changes they went through as a company and what eventually helped them bring their bottom line in shape. We also delve deeper into the startup ecosystem in Poland, and how the landscape for startups has evolved over the years. We cover the challenges of running an European startup in the US, and discuss interesting startups coming out of Poland.

Christina Gilbert is a co-founder of OneSchema, a Y-Combinator-backed startup working on data importing tools for SaaS companies. OneSchema was a part of the YC’s S21 cohort, and ever since has been gaining a lot of traction, supplying a well-researched product, that solves many pain points for “system of record” companies that deal with extensive databases. Christina talks to us about the customer base or OneSchema, and delves deeper into the features of their product. She also speaks on the process of finding her co-founder, Andrew Luo, and the origin story behind OneSchema. We discuss the challenges of building data import tools and the future roadmap for OneSchema, including building multi-file data migrations. Christina also shares her thoughts the value of going through Y Combinator and how it’s been helpful in getting their first customers for OneSchema. Christina also tells us how they were able to gain significant traction quickly and walks us through their product discovery process for OneSchema, and shares useful insights regarding fundraising and product building.

Richard White is a serial entrepreneur, founder & CEO of Fathom and previously User Voice. Richard’s current company is a Y-Combinator backed startup, working on a video plugin that enables recording and managing highlights from Zoom calls. In our conversation with Richard, we dig deeper into his current venture Fathom Video. We talk about the problem its trying to solve, which is, simply put, note-taking during sales and customer support calls. Richard also discusses potential use cases for their software and addresses the risks related to building a product that is so closely connected to one specific platform. We also discuss Richard’s fascinating startup journey, which starts with working on Kiko along with Justin Kan and Emmet Shear (who went on to found Twitch), going through the very first Y Combinator batch in 2005, selling Kiko on eBay for quarter million dollars, and eventually founding his first company User Voice. The User Voice days were still early days of startups in general, and Richard tells hilarious story of finding one of his co-founders on Craigslist. He also speaks on the division of labour between him and other co-founders, building the first MVP, incorporating and their first fundraising efforts. Richard also talks about his experience of doing Y Combinator as a repeat founder and shares battle-tested advice to first-time founders.

Jayce Hafner is the CEO and co-founder of FarmRaise, a startup streamlining the process for agricultural grants and funding. As someone who grew up on a family’s farm, Jayce knows how difficult getting farm funding can be. Hence her decision to build FarmRaise and improve the access to funding for modernizing farm operations. In our conversation with Jayce, we dig deeper into the funding situation of small and medium American farms, as well as Jayce's story and how she ended up building FarmRaise. Jayce talks about how she met her co-founder while doing MBA research for her agricultural business studies, and how they've eventually decided to found FarmRaise. Jayce also shares how they've been able to leverage social media to get the initial traction with their customers. We also discuss the innovation happening in the agricultural space, and what software tools are useful for farmers. Jayce shares her insights regarding the future of the agriculture and food tech industry and highlights the most important challenges lying ahead of us. Follow Jayce 👉 https://twitter.com/jaycehafner Follow FarmRaise 👉 https://www.farmraise.com/ Follow Greg 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/miaskiewicz/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel 👉 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmPH9V1NmTSFa0pYotiPVKQ

Nathan Morris is the co-founder and Chief Culture Officer of Filevine, a legal-tech company building software solutions to help law firms manage their clients’ projects and documents. Nathan was a practicing attorney before realizing how many processes in the legal space can be improved with digitization. He decided to start Filevine along with fellow legal practitioners Jim Blake and Ryan Anderson, and solve many problems that came with an out-of-date way of doing things. In our conversation we discuss the initial vision behind Filevine, how the Iron Man movies inspired the original MVP, and how Nathan’s company got their first paying customers. We also discuss the importance of customer feedback and the balancing act between staying on track with the product vision and satisfying feature requests from customers. Nathan also shares how they approached convincing legacy software users to switch, and speaks on the evolution and future of products in the legal tech space. We also discuss Filevine’s acquisition of Outlaw, and how Nathan views the challenge of integrating another company’s technology and culture into your own.

Ema Rouf is the co-founder of pave.dev - a fintech startup building cashflow API to analyze risk and build financial experiences. We talk about what pave.dev is building, and how their API helps other fintech companies understand and process their consumers’ financial data. Ema also shares the founding story of pave.dev, and takes us back to her ad tech days, where she worked with her husband on social shopping widgets for Facebook. Ema also shares her take on what it's like being married to your co-founder and how that influences fundraising. We also chat about the process of building pave.dev during the pandemic, getting the first customers, and what's next on the roadmap.

Joshua Wöhle is a London-based founder and serial entrepreneur, currently building Mindstone — a platform that allows anyone to create a course by curating a playlist from articles, podcasts, videos, and other resources. Here are the topics that we talked about: - Getting first customers for Mindstone - Backstory of London’s rise to prominence as the biggest startup hub in Europe - How startup ecosystems are created - Employee stock compensation in Europe and how it differs from US - Joshua’s previous venture - Super Awesome, and a successful exit to Epic Games - Joshua’s transition from being a fouder to also being an investor - The history of Super Awesome and building tools for children online privacy - Joshua’s take on Facebook and Instagram being bad for kids - Joshua’s advice to first-time founders

Tammy Camp is the CEO and co-founder of Stronghold, a financial infrastructure company that provides fast, secure, and accessible financial services through a simple API. Inspired by her previous entrepreneurial experiences across the technology and startup landscape, Tammy founded Stronghold in 2017 to bring better financial services to a broader range of market participants. Under her leadership, Stronghold also launched the highly successful digital currency SHx to provide real-time settlement, discounts in fees for business customers, and more, to its clients. Tammy was also the first Head of Growth for Stellar, the open-source payments platform for fiat and digital currencies. In this role, she helped the platform attract an astounding 4 million users within its first two months of operations. Tammy is a 2011 graduate of the Global Startup Program at Singularity University at NASA Ames and received her bachelor’s degree from Georgia State University. She holds the kiteboarding world record for most completed back loops in one minute. In our conversation with Tammy, we cover: - Virtual payment networks and how they work - How Stronghold combines services of legacy payment rails like ACH or credit cards with modern payments infrastructure using blockchain, Stellar, Ripple, Solana or Ethereum - Tammy’s startup journey, Singularity University, head of growth at Stellar, meeting her co-founder Sean Bennett, getting the idea for Stronghold - Interesting products built on top of Stronhold API’s - The fundraising process for Strongold - Tammy’s experience working with 500 Startups, and her take on why startups fail - Evolution and future of payment networks - Interesting fintech products currently on the market - Advice for first-time founders

Jon Edvald is the founder and CEO of Garden, an end-to-end cloud delivery platform that streamlines the process of building, deploying, and testing software applications. We chatted about Jon’s startup journey, the development of startup ecosystems in Iceland and Germany, and why Jon’s latest company is a Delaware C Corporation. We also discuss different taxation issues that European founders may face when selling their companies. Jon shares how he got the idea to build Garden and the difference in approach when building a startup for the second time. We dive deeper into the realm of DevOps and talk about challenges that developers face when building the backend of software applications. Jon also shares valuable advice for younger founders and talks about the importance of mental health, dealing with burnout, and maintaining the joy of building a company.

Emma Guo is the co-founder and CEO of Offsyte, a one-stop-shop for discovering and booking team-building events. We chat about the challenges that fully remote startups face when building company culture, pivoting and fundraising in the middle of the pandemic, and Emma’s previous experience working as an early engineer for Lyft. Emma also discusses her startup journey, getting the idea for Offsyte, and finding the right co-founder. Emma also shares her insights regarding building a two-sided marketplace and using SEO to drive customer acquisition and brand awareness. As a female engineer, Emma gives her thoughts on the issue of diversity in a workplace and how startups should approach the recruitment process to not struggle with the gender gap later on.

This time on Startup Foundations, we chatted with Chris Van Pelt, co-founder of Weights & Biases and previously co-founder and CTO of CrowdFlower/Figure Eight. We talk about neural networking, autonomous vehicles, Chris' experience building two companies in the AI and machine learning space, and whether we have to worry about machines ever taking control over humans. Chris also shares his insights regarding different approaches to selling developer's tools and highlights the effectiveness of the bottom-up approach to customer acquisition, where the developers themselves are the ones driving the adoption. We ask Chris about ethical issues surrounding the development of AI, particularly in the space of autonomous vehicles, and whether we can expect to see the singularity within our lifespans. Chris also shares how he got into entrepreneurship, got his first check from investors, and explains the division of labor in a company with three co-founders.

In the first installment of Startup Foundations in 2022, we chat with Vera Kutsenko, co-founder & CEO of Neverland — a marketplace and an online community for houseplant enthusiasts. Vera explains where she got the idea to start Neverland, and discusses the process of building a two-sided marketplace connecting plant lovers with gardening shops across the US. She shares some details about the educational functionality of their app, which includes guidance and support around taking care of houseplants. Vera talks us through the process of building an online community in an almost cult-like space of houseplant aficionados, and how they’ve used the content-first strategy to validate what consumers want. She also shares what tactics worked for her in the fundraising stage, including tips on how to effectively cold email VCs. Vera and Greg also discuss the emotional relationship that people have to plants, where it comes from, and how Neverland tries to leverage that sentiment to appeal to the younger generation and ultimately contribute to building empathy and care for nature.