Foundr Magazine Podcast | Learn From Successful Founders & Proven Entrepreneurs, The Ultimate Startup Podcast For Business

Simon Griffiths sat down for what he believed in and, it turned out, parking it on a toilet was an epic marketing win for a good cause. Griffiths and the team behind Who Gives a Crap toilet paper employed a clever stunt in which they livestreamed their co-founder sitting on a toilet until they reached their crowdfunding goal, and it worked. The company gives half of its profits to charity to increase access to toilets and sanitation in developing countries. But it takes more than a good cause and a good marketing ploy to have a successful crowdfunding campaign. The team also relied on thorough preparation and consistent messaging to blow away their goal. Griffiths and his co-founder Jehan Ratnatunga did a first take on their video in January 2012, hoping to launch soon after. But they realized that it wasn’t quite what they wanted, so they went back and tried again, even taking the time to get advice from an ad firm in Melbourne. The video wasn’t the only thing they had to prepare. The team wanted to be sure

The Canary team didn’t start their company with crowdfunding. In fact, they had been working on the idea for roughly a year before turning to Indiegogo. “We decided that crowdfunding would be a great way for us to validate the market a little bit,” says Jon Troutman, co-founder of the company, which offers networked home security systems. It took the team about a month and a half to plan and prepare the campaign, but Troutman notes that they had already developed a voice for their brand and a story for their product. They didn’t devote as much time to preparation as some campaigns because they could already picture the puzzle. They just had to fit the pieces together. And getting users involved in the process would be key to doing so. After working on Canary for a whole year, they needed an outside view. “What we’re building is so much about filling a need for people, that it felt weird to go too far into product development without bringing more people into the process,” Troutman says. One of the great thing

A team of doctors and engineers wanted a safer alternative to Q-Tips, so they created it. By understanding where potential users were coming from and staying on point with the idea that their product could alleviate those pains, the Oto-Tip gained the funding it needed to go big. The lesson from Oto-Tip is, before you start any crowdfunding campaign, you must know how your project will improve people’s lives, and you must explain it in a way that resonates emotionally with potential backers. In this week's episode, Lily Truong, co-founder of Oto-Tip and manager of its crowdfunding campaign, explains how they did it. “My key question I wanted to ask myself was … ‘Why would someone need this? Why would backers resonate with the story? What pain point are you really solving?’” Crowdfunding campaigns can reach their goals when they offer a clear way to deal with common struggles people experience. In the case of Truong’s campaign, Q-tips, cotton swabs, ear sticks, they all shove wax deeper into your ear, make you

The problem Eskil Nordhaug wanted to solve for people was simple. Videos taken with smartphones or small cameras are notoriously shaky. So he simply looked at the needs. He asked himself what it would take to build a company selling a mechanical video stabilizer that exceeded expectations—the kind of product consumers needed, the amount of money he would need, the coverage help press outlets needed, the info his project page would need.  The result was StayblCam, and it was precisely this needs-focused approach that led to a smash-hit Kickstarter campaign and the successful company that followed. Nordhaug says that the same principle can guide the way for any great crowdfunding campaign. “The most successful ones, generally speaking, are the ones that, there’s a need for it,” he says. “It solves a problem. It’s not just some fancy, weird thing that’s made for the sake of being made.” Crowdfunding appeals to ordinary people with limited funds, so they can’t back every project that breezes by. When people see y

There's a common thread in a lot of entrepreneurs' stories: They were facing a problem, couldn't find the solution they were looking for, so went ahead and built it themselves. That's exactly what Derek Flanzraich did when he started Greatist, a digital media startup that's all about health and fitness, without all the fluff and in-your-face marketing. As someone who has struggled with his weight his entire life, Flanzraich wanted to find a brand that would talk to him on a personal level and not as another client. Frustrated by the fact that the world was becoming more health conscious, yet at the time seemed to be more interested in shaming those who wanted to get in shape, Flanzraich set out to stake his own claim in an oversaturated market. The key difference, though, was that instead of making his audience feel bad, he would make them feel welcome. "It wasn't actually about the quality of what we're doing, which we felt that was gonna be best in class or whatever. It was actually the voice that really st

When you think about wine, you most likely imagine stern-faced sommeliers, or parties where tuxedos and hors d'oeuvres on silver platters are the norm. Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey do not fit the stereotype. You probably wouldn't even expect them to be wine-lovers, let alone the co-founders of Barefoot Wine, the largest wine brand in the world. But according to them, the reason they're so successful is precisely because they knew nothing about the industry going in. Houlihan and Harvey never planned on going into the wine business, but when the opportunity presented itself, they jumped on it. "If we had known then what we know now, there would be no Barefoot Wine. It's now the largest wine brand in the world, but it would not exist if we had a clue," Houlihan says. Not having a clue turned out to be their secret ingredient. Instead of being influenced by years of tradition and trying to fit the mold of the wine industry, they decided to do something different and make wine fun and accessible to the aver

When Zipcar first started it was nothing more than a green Volkswagen beetle named "Betsy." It was parked outside of Robin Chase's house and the key was hidden underneath a pillow on her porch. Inside the glove box was a piece of paper where you would write down the time you rented the car and the time you brought it back. That was it. These days, Zipcar is the largest car sharing service in the world, with more than 13,000 cars spread across almost every major city in the world. The first time Chase encountered her idea with Zipcar was when her co-founder came back from a vacation in Berlin. Among her many stories about her vacation, she told Chase about a peculiar business she had witnessed where she saw multiple people sharing a single car. Taken with the idea, Chase immediately began setting out to build a better version. "It's an idea that we didn't even invent. We just executed it way better than other people," Chase says. Zipcar launched within six months, with a founder who was a mother of three and h

Casey Fenton, like many of us in our 20s, wasn't entirely sure where he would go in life. Growing up in a small town in Maine, he started to think about this entire world that existed beyond the borders of his hometown, and all the experiences he had yet to have. One thing he knew for sure was that his small hometown wasn't going to be offering him any of the new experiences he was looking for. "That got me to start buying random plane tickets to anywhere in the world," he says. From there it was traveling from place to place, mingling with locals and getting a backstage pass to the world's greatest cities. It was then that Fenton formed an idea for a business that would end up spanning the globe. Today, Couchsurfing.com has more than 10 million members in over 20,000 cities around the world. When it launched in 2003, Couchsurfing was a revolutionary concept. It was one of the first businesses to truly harness the power of a sharing economy. Instead of spending money at hotels and backpacker hostels, traveler

For most entrepreneurs, the real test isn't whether or not you can grow a successful business, but how well you can bounce back from failure. For some, this will prove to be too much and they'll hang up the gloves and never try again. For the true entrepreneurs, though, they'll find a way to jump back into the ring no matter what. That is exactly what Eugene Woo, co-founder of Venngage, did. “I had like a taste of failure, but I still went ahead anyway and did it again,” Woo says. After his first startup went under, Woo found himself back in the corporate world feeling like a failure. Despite it all though, he dusted himself off, took it all as a learning experience and refused to give up. Armed with nothing but a nagging idea about helping job applicants by turning their resumes into beautiful infographics, Woo went ahead and pitched his idea at Startup Weekend in Toronto and, to his surprise, he won. One thing led to another and he found himself quitting his job once again to work on his startup full time.

Every morning of every day, Sujan Patel starts his day by getting out all of his creative energy onto paper. The process is relatively simple. He starts by recording himself talking about whatever topic he wants to write about as a way to order his thoughts. He'll then send this recording to a transcriptionist and when he gets it back he'll spend around an hour cranking out a 1,500-2,000 word blog post. For Sujan, this is the secret to being one of the world's best and most prolific content marketers today. Just 10 years ago, content marketing just wasn't a thing. Sure, blogs existed but they were rarely used in marketing. Today, content marketing is one of the go-to strategies for businesses everywhere. But with everyone eagerly jumping onto the content marketing bandwagon, simply having a high-quality blog just doesn't cut it anymore. In order to really harness the power of content marketing and see some tangible results, you're going to need a little out-of-the-box thinking. "Everyone's writing content for

During a creative career filled with awards and recognition, it took Alex Bogusky a while to realize that none of it mattered unless he loved the work. “You could win the Grand Prix at Cannes—the next day you’re going to go into your office and look at the same dude across the office and try to think of something. It doesn’t feel any better; it didn’t make you any smarter; it doesn’t make anything any easier,” Bogusky says. He did, in fact, win the most prestigious award at Cannes Advertising. Actually, under his leadership, the firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky won in all five categories, and became the world’s most awarded advertising agency. Bogusky himself was named Creative Director of the Decade by Adweek magazine, and Fast Company has called him both the Steve Jobs and the Elvis of advertising. Looking over his many endeavors, Bogusky is a hard person to pin down. There’s a friendly, surfery quality about him, but he’s also gained a reputation as a perfectionist and ferocious supervisor. He’s worked for bo

The future of media, if not the present, probably looks a lot like The Next Web, which is odd considering co-founder Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten says it’s not even really a media company. The Next Web instead thinks of itself as a tech company, firing on multiple cylinders at once, including international conferences, ecommerce, online courses, and of course, one of the most influential and trafficked news sites on the web. Soon they’re even opening up a brick and mortar space in Amsterdam that will serve as hub for technology startups. “For some people it’s sort of weird, ‘What, you’ve got a conference and a website and now you’re opening a space? That’s a totally different thing,’” Veldhuijzen van Zanten told Foundr (we’ll just call him Boris from now on). “For us, it’s a logical next step, instead of losing focus or branching out into different areas. They’re all connected by the brand and a curiosity in technology and the future of technology.” The Next Web actually started as a conference host. Its annu

No one ever "gives" an entrepreneur a job, they make one for themselves. Entrepreneurs don't ask for permission, they just do. And no one exemplifies this better than Ryan Holiday who has made an entire career out of refusing to play by the rules. As a writer he started off by dropping out of college to apprentice under Robert Greene as a research assistant. To date he's published 5 bestselling books, his first book now being taught in colleges around the world. As a marketer he got his first job as the Director of Marketing at American Apparel by starting off as a marketing consultant and catching the eye of founder Dov Charney. Today, he works as a world-renowned media strategist he can count among his list of clients the likes of Tim Ferriss, Tucker Max and Linkin Park just to name a few. So how did he manage to achieve so much all before turning 30? For Holiday it's a mastery of two things: the media and your own self-development. "I found that the more that I go out and learn stuff on my own, the more op

In 2012 James Beshara and his co-founder officially launched Tilt, a platform that aimed to make crowdfunding not only more personal but to make the process as easy as possible. But if you ask the Y-Combinator alum himself, he'll say that Tilt was created years before it even launched. Originally starting off as an offshoot of an earlier startup that he was working on, he soon found himself working on Tilt more and more. It was then he realised he was onto something. "For every young entrepreneur out there, starting, or building, or founding something. It always sounds like it just starts one day in February or starts one afternoon when you get hit with inspiration. When in truth I think it is the amalgamation of just always starting things, doing things, trying out ideas and one of them just starts to get pulled from you, and you start to spend more time on it." Ever since it's inception Tilt has been on a tear. In just four short years Tilt is now valued at $500 million and has crowdfunded some of the world

Something that most entrepreneurs struggle with the most is coming up with an idea for a startup. They'll study business forecasts and look at unique trends trying to find the next big thing. What most entrepreneurs forget though is that the most disruptive startups in the world were created to solve a single problem. Which is what exactly Polina Raygorodskaya was looking to do when she founded Wanderu, a platform that allows you to find, compare and book bus and train tickets anywhere within the United States. In just 4 years Wanderu have grown their database to over 5 million users. It turns out there were other people that were facing the same problem as Polina. A long time entrepreneur Polina came across the idea for WanderU while constantly commuting back and forth in New York. Often having to travel by bus or train she quickly found out, to her surprise, that there was no single database to allow commuters to easily find and book bus and train tickets. Sensing a startup opportunity she closed down her P

There are no shortcuts when it comes to good online marketing, something that Dave Hobson knows all too well. As the resident expert on all things marketing at Foundr we give you a very special episode today about Dave from how he came to be at Foundr to his thoughts on successful online marketing. Funnily enough, it is entirely possible that Foundr would not be around if Dave had not cold-called Nathan nearly four years ago. At the time Nathan had only just started Foundr and Dave was at a job where he had to cold-call people and try to make a sale over the phone. Instead of making the sale the founder of Foundr and Dave got to chatting and they eventually became friends. In order to understand why Foundr may have never existed without Dave Hobson you first must understand his role at Foundr. Essentially he's Nathan right-hand man, the go-to guy whenever a discussion needs to be had about marketing, strategy or the future of Foundr. Even before he started officially working at Foundr, Dave has always been in

The term "unicorn company" describes a startup valued at over $1 billion that managed to get there in a relatively short period of time. Usually when we talk about unicorn companies, we're dealing with Silicon Valley and the cutting edge of the tech scene. Companies that are disruptive in the sense that they've created something totally new. Rarely, however, do we find a unicorn company that started out in an overcrowded and declining market. Yet somehow, despite the odds, Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of Quest Nutrition, turned a fledgling startup into a powerhouse in just six years. When Quest Nutrition first hit the scene with their protein bars, they were told by almost every expert in the space that it was insane and that it was guaranteed to fail. Yet Bilyeu and his co-founders persevered and tackled the problem in a way that no one else had thought of before. First they focused on their customers, to empower them and actually help them make healthy and positive changes in their lives. In short, they treated t

When Hal Elrod was 19 he was involved in a car accident with a drunk driver that left him with brain damage, 11 broken bones, and doctors telling him that he'd never walk again. While many people would understandably give into grief or anger or any other whirlwind of emotions that come after such a traumatic event, Elrod instead made the conscious choice to be at peace with himself. He knew there was nothing he could control about his situation, but he could control how the situation affected him. While he accepted the fact that he might never be able to use his legs again and was at peace with it, he was also determined to find a way to walk again. “I’m going accept the worst-case scenario, while I focus on the best case scenario.” Three weeks later, defying all odds and expectations, he began to walk again. Since then, he's called upon his life story and lessons he's learned along the way to become a highly sought-after motivational speaker and bestselling author of the book The Miracle Morning. Through his

Brian Scudamore of O2E brands knew all along that he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Relying on that sense of determination, he's built up a sprawling multimillion-dollar business empire, with franchises all over the world. But it all began with junk. To be specific, it all started in a McDonalds drive-thru, with Scudamore sitting in his car trying to figure out how he would pay for college. What he saw was an old pick-up truck filled to the brim with junk, and he immediately knew that this would be his ticket to chase his entrepreneurial dream. "A week later, I had a business hauling away junk, and that was the way into my job and a career path that's now been 27 years of pure entrepreneurial passion," he says. The first business he founded was 1-800-Got-Junk, which has since turned into multiple franchises all around the world and spun off into three more business in the home services niche. Altogether they generate a revenue of $250 million per year! But it hasn't been smooth sailing over the past 27 years,

On November 9, 2013, I released the first episode of the Foundr Podcast. It was with Fabio Rosati, then-CEO of Elance. To be completely honest, I wasn't quite sure what I was trying to achieve by releasing a podcast. At the time, it was just another way for us to give to our community, by releasing the audio of our interviews for free. Fast-forward to today and I can't believe we're at our 100th episode! It's flown by and so much has changed since. But the entire time I've kept in mind this piece of advice from my friend Daniel DiPiazza: "Keep producing content on a consistent basis every single week, keep getting next-level epic interviews, and people will come.” He was totally right. In the years since that first episode, we've managed to become one of the top 10 podcasts for business, we have over 70,000 downloads a month, and it's done wonders for our business. So to mark this occasion, we decided to do something a little different in this episode. Instead of me asking all the questions, I'll be the one g