How to Scale from Zero to being Acquired with Co-Founder of Hatchways, Shums Kassam

In one of our favorite episodes to date we had the pleasure of bringing on Erik Severinghaus a multiple time founder and current VP of strategy and development at Conexiom. Erik also has successfully scaled and climbed Mount Everest and talks about how that was easier then building a company! 

Erik shares the stories of entrepreneurship that no one talks about. He is very transparent on the challenges of being a founder and how hard it is mentality and physically to be successfully. It is why in many cases, founders deal with depression and talks about how to create a better support system. 

He shares the things he has learned that has lead him to launch his book, Be your own Everest: How to be a Resilient Entrepreneur, where he talks about these challenges and the best way to cope and keep driving your business forward. A super refreshing conversation that no one is talking about that I am sure people will enjoy. 

In Today's Episode you will learn: 

• What are the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship
• Why climbing Everest was easier then building a company 
• The dark side of being a founder and how it leads to anxiety and depression 
• How to create a more "real" founder ecosystem 
• His stories of climbing Mount Everest

In Today's episode of The Growth Equation we got to bring on Peter Zhi, The first growth hire at AllyO. Peter got to share his perspective of what life is like being the first growth hire and what growth means when you go from seed stage to all the way to being acquired. He had a very unique perspective on what growth teams should be focused at a very early stage and how they need to be focused on trying to experiment to learn and don't worry if something can scale. If you are looking to learn the purpose of a growth team in the early days then this is your episode. 

What is covered in this episode: 

• What a growth team does in early stage 
• How to drive growth with non scalable solutions 
• What AllyO did well when it came to growth 

Have you ever wonder what it is like to scale a fast growing company in an industry that is getting disrupted? Well in today's episode of the Growth Equation we got to bring on Steph, CEO of Tealbook. Steph is a two time entrepreneur who successfully built her own consulting company and then made the jump to starting her own tech company. Tealbook is disrupting the procurement space and growing at a rapid rate. Steph got to share her story as a solo female founder on the keys to leading and building a team that you don't get to hear many founders share. 

In today's episode we will cover: 

• What it is like leading Tealbook 
• The keys to building a high performing team 
• How to create an environment that has more female founders  
• The toughest thing when scaling a tech company 

In today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure to bring on Ralph Sadowski, Senior  Biz Ops Manager at Shopify. Ralph got to share his expertise of what biz ops does , how they can be a more strategic function and what is needed to be a high performing team. 

Ralph is a big believer on why biz ops is  the mix of strategy and execution and why it becomes a catch all and how this function will change as it becomes more mature. He got to share his experience both at Uber, Neo Financial and Shopify some of the leading business operations functions. 

This Episode will cover: 

• What  is the Biz Ops Function 
• How Biz Ops is changing over time 
• How Biz Ops is one of the key elements of growth 
• What Biz Ops teams are accountable on 

How you ever wondered what goes into bootstrapping a start-up and when it is time to start your next one while you  run your first one? Well in today's episode we got to bring on Diana Goodwin Founder & CEO of Marketbox & Aquamobile. Diana got to share her story of how she scaled and bootstrapped her marketplace company, Aquamobile.  We get to hear her story of scaling up her first company and when she made the decision to then launch her second company a SAAS business, Marketbox. 

Diana shares her amazing insights on what it takes to scale a bootstrap company and the keys of why building a marketplace company is so hard. We then here what motivated her to start her second company and what the difference is when building a SAAS business vs. a marketplace business.  

In today's episode we cover: 

• The keys of scaling a bootstrap start-up 
• The challenges of building a marketplace  business 
• The differences of scaling a marketplace to a SAAS business 
• How to start another company while still running your first 

Scaling a business is hard but building a healthy high performing culture is even harder. People always talk how culture is so important no one knows what are the keys to building a culture that people can do the best work of their lives.

Well in today's episode of The Growth Equation we got to bring on Larry Zolob and expert in building cultures. We had a great discussion on what makes a good work culture but also the right things  to focus when scaling a business.


In today's episode we covered:
- When to start building culture 
- Larry's 5 step framework of building culture 
- The areas of focus when scaling work culture 
- How to handle the changes to culture during COVID  

Building and leading a scale-up is hard but leading a company during turbulent times like COVID is even more challenging. In today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Naveed Ahmad, CEO of Heart Health Institute and leader of scale-ups. 

Naveed got to share his perspective of his key fundamentals of leading companies and what tech companies need to do a better when it comes to scaling. We got to hear his formula of what he thinks is important when building a company with sustainable growth and what he thinks is the negative consequences of growth at all costs. 

Finally he got to go into detail of how to navigate through turbulent times like COVID and how he thinks companies need to adapt. 

In today's episode we will cover: 

• The keys to building a high performing team 
• His formula of sustainable growth 
• How to navigate through challenge times like COVID 
• How companies can be accommodating to creating a remote work environment   

Marketplace are some of the toughest businesses to scale but what makes it so tough? Should you be supply or demand led when scaling? 

The jury is still out if marketplaces can ever be profitable and if you wonder wonder if these businesses can build sustainable growth then today is a can't miss episode. 

In today's episode we got to bring on Blake Connnoy, Founder of Hurrahome a consumer marketplace. Blake has dedicated years of his life within the marketplace space and shares his perspective on the keys and challenges of scaling these types of businesses. 

In this episode you will learn from Blake the following: 

• The right unit economics to focus on when scaling 
• If you should be supply or demand led marketplace business 
• Why marketplaces are so tough to scale 
• What will happen with marketplaces in a post COVID world 

Have you ever wondered how to create growth within your product? As channels become more and more expensive to acquire customers and people's willingness to pay go down, you need to think of new ways to drive growth of your company. 

Well on episode #7 of The Growth Equation, we talk to Wes Bush, founder of Product Led Growth Institute and a massive advocate of Product Led Growth frameworks.     

We had a great discussion on: 

• Attempt to define what product led growth is 
• Talk about why some companies who have a free-trial are still not taking a product led growth approach 
• Why product qualified leads are so much more qualified than marketing qualified leads 
• How to increase your freeium or free trial conversion 
• Some of the biggest mistakes when implementing product led growth frameworks 

In Today's episode of the Growth Equation we had the pleasure of bringing on Jesse Abrams, the CEO and Founder of Homewise. Jesse brought in an amazing perspective of someone who is a serial entrepreneur and has started his second company, first time in tech industry. He shared some of the untold stories inside a mind of a founder trying to scale a hyper growth business with radical transparency. You will not want to miss this episode to here a raw and transparent interview into the life as a founder and what they focus on to scale a start-up. 

In Today's Episode: 
- Jesse talks about how he started Homewise from scratch 
- What he looks for when building teams & culture 
- He shares the untold stories of the struggles of being an entrepreneur    
- Why he is excited with the problem Homewise is solving for