Tech Uncensored, Crucial Analysis in Tech, is a bi-weekly podcast brought to you by Altitude Accelerator. Hosted by Hessie Jones, we explore emerging news, and relevant topics that startups care about. We speak to subject matter experts, founders and advisors in Investment: Venture Capital, Equity Crowdfunding, and across Industry: Clean Tech, Biotech, Generative AI, Blockchain, Web3, Privacy, Security etc. who weigh in on the challenges that startup founders face today, as well as the profo ...
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Startups Transformed is a bi-weekly podcast that explores how tech startups have climbed their way to success. Host and Altitude Accelerator board member Patrick McGuire interviews entrepreneurs and business leaders on lessons learned so that you can get a head start on your next big idea. Scale your tech startup to new heights with Altitude Accelerator at https://hubs.ly/H0-ytzm0.
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Episode 60 Navigating Trust, Compliance, and Innovation with OneTrust CEO, Kabir Barday
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We met Kabir Barday, CEO of OneTrust, at Collision, Toronto where we discussed the evolving landscape of data privacy, responsible AI use, and regulatory compliance. OneTrust helps companies responsibly and securely use data and AI with its suite of security, privacy, governance, risk, ethics and compliance solutions. The company recently reported …
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Episode 59 Tripian is Disrupting Travel with True Personalization
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This is one of the video interviews we conducted at Collision, Toronto June 17-20, 2024. Tripian was initially launched in 2016 as a consumer-facing travel app, equipped with trip planning tools available in only five cities. In mid-2018, the company pivoted to a B2B SaaS model, offering its services to the travel industry. Today, Tripian provides …
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Episode 58 Resilience is Pioneering a New Approach to Managing Cyber Risk
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This is one of the video interviews we conducted at Collision, Toronto June 17-20, 2024. Resilience is not your traditional insurance provider. Dr. Ann Irvine is the company's Chief Data & Analytics Officer, and has spent her career sitting at the intersection of data science and cybersecurity. We spoke to Dr. Irvine about managing cyber risk in th…
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Episode 57 The Art and Science of Building Successful Teams
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A critical milestone in scaling a startup for growth involves building a high-performing and well-rounded team that can make or break a venture's success. The guiding hypothesis is that we tend to gravitate towards people with similar interests, and values. That is a foundation at the very early stages for moving the company the right direction. Th…
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Episode 56 Ryan Pannell - Lessons from a Successful Serial Entrepreneur
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Hessie Jones met Ryan Pannell over a decade ago when she first ventured into entrepreneurship. At that time, he was an executive producer and it was the film industry where he began his career, working his way up to be a writer, producer and director. He directed his first feature film, Dragon City, when he was 26 years old. In 2001 he moved into s…
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Episode 55 Myths, Facts and the Future of LLMs with Amir Feizpour
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Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile artificial intelligence technologies of our time. By training massive neural networks on vast datasets of human-generated text, LLMs have developed an unprecedented ability to understand and generate human-like language with robust fluency and comprehension. This br…
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Episode 54 Cybersecurity Challenges in the Era of Large Language Models
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With the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the speed of adoption, how we communicate, how we research, how we improve our productivity has greatly transformed society. While these powerful tools offer remarkable capabilities in natural language understanding and generation of more accurate human-like language, they have also introduced …
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Episode 53 The Intelligent City - Towards Progress and Sustainability
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By 2050, 70% of the world’s population is projected to live in cities. We will evolve into an increasingly urban economy. Urban centers will adapt and evolve to meet the needs of their growing populations. Urbanization can lead to 1) economic growth, 2) improved living standards, and 3) cultural diversity. Some key stats about the rise of the urban…
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Episode 52 Steering Growth Stage Founders Towards Sustainable Businesses
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David Peterson, known as the Optimization Coach, assists growth-stage companies in 2X their revenue growth to achieve their 10X goal. He helps them become more appealing to investors or (if they choose) achieve their status as a successful founder-owned businesses. At this juncture, early-stage founders are already generating revenue and may aim to…
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Episode 51 Make or Break: Establishing Product Market Fit is Crucial to Success
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Product Market Fit is a make-or-break factor for startups. Even the best products can fail without market demand, while an average product can succeed if the demand exists. What does success look like once companies reach this critical milestone? The product resonates with the market means that: Customer actively buys, uses and recommends the produ…
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Episode 50 Traditional Demand Generation is Broken. There is a better way to Improve Win Rates
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Demand Generation is a broad marketing practice aimed at creating awareness and interest in a company’s products or services. It involves using various tactics across numerous channels, such as content marketing, social media ads, and more While the practice has been around for as long as brands have existed, it has undergone some significant chang…
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Episode 49 Evolving DEI within Venture Capital with Gayatri Sarkar of Advaita Capital
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Today we’re facing headwinds in this fast-paced tech economy. There is this global race to win in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence between the East and the West, however there are clear impediments that persist to drive change in current technologies that are hampering the speed to win. There is this realization of the how brittle our sys…
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Episode 48 Building your Personal Brand as a Tech Leader
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These days there has been this surge of people who are developing influence within their specific corner of the market. They are digital creators who specialize in a niche and begin to establish themselves as experts in their field. The rise of influence has been less about celebrity, but these days it’s a strategic advantage for many entrepreneurs…
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Episode 47 Startup Resilience Navigating Relationships for Early-Stage Founders
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Growth Hackers' determined that the greatest indicator of startup success is resilience: “You might feel that things are moving slow in your company – that is natural. You may make decisions, that, in retrospect may lead to undesired consequences, or perceived setbacks in your goal to reach critical milestones. If you are an entrepreneur building a…
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Episode 46 Is 2024 The Year of Investor Restraint and Startup Resilience?
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Will 2024 will be another challenging year for startup founders? The world bank came out with the following prediction for 2024: “Global growth is projected to slow for the third year in a row—from 2.6% last year to 2.4% in 2024, almost three-quarters of a percentage point below the average of the 2010s. Developing economies are projected to grow j…
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Episode 45: AI and the Future of Passwords with Jeff Shiner, CEO 1Password
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AI has consumed the tech space and mainstream business. What implications does generative AI have on cybersecurity? Will it change the threat landscape for better or worse? At Collision, Hessie Jones interviewed Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password to discuss the implications to personal information and how will passwordless technology help combat these t…
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Episode 44 Trinsic - Can We Safeguard our Identities in an Increasingly Automated Web?
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As of February 2023, 850 million people globally don’t have an ID: no birth certificate, national ID–a legal identification that enables access to basic services like setting up bank accounts, getting a job–a system we’ve taken for granted in the West. Solving the identity problem becomes more pronounced as societies become increasingly digital. Th…
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Theodora Lau recently wrote a Linkedin post called "Where are the Women?" This was a timely post that responded to the slap in the face to many women, who have made incredible strides to affect substantive change in AI, who saw the NYT article that snubbed the work of prominent women like Fei Fei Li, Timnit Gebru, Kate Crawford, Joy Buolamwini, Meg…
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Will new emerging technologies assist engineers in enhancing their capabilities or will their jobs simply be done for them? At Collision, 2023, Hessie Jones met with Maxim Fateev, CEO of Temporal and Anand Kulkarni, CEO of Crowdbotics. Both organizations are making it increasingly easier for engineers in light of the advances in Generative AI. One …
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Episode 41 Can the Metaverse Truly Unravel the Missteps of Web 2.0 and Create Web Solutions that We all Deserve?
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The future of the internet is really all about building on the promise of Web3 is about a decentralized internet, that brings more powers to creators, where monetization dispels of current ad models, and where people become the owners/purveyors of their identity and the things they create. I met Julie Smithson at Decoding Tech in Toronto. Julie is …
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Episode 40 The Rise and Fall... and Rise of Sam Altman has Grave Implications for AI Research and Humanity
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From the sidelines, reading the media reports on the weekend of November 17 it was a series of irrepressible events that unfolded that weekend and the coming days. It was considered a tumultuous weekend, a series of uncontrolled outcomes, each with its own significance to the fallout of OpenAI and its employees. While the world watched this drama u…
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Episode 39 Leadership for Startup Founders Post Pandemic with Carlos Granda
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We are currently living in a time of greater uncertainty. The Pandemic has created an environment that caused us to abandon the safety of what we once knew to be the tried and true, the way things have always been done and to trust in our instincts to create an environment that is safe, productive, effective without risking loss to the team or the …
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Episode 38 Turing Wants to Unleash Human Potential through AI Powered Tech Services
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In 2020, when the Pandemic mandated the move to remote work, Turing raised $32million in Series B funding to define a future where companies could push a button to spin up their engineering team instantly. In 2021, Fast Company listed Turing as one of the most innovative workplace companies. In great company with the likes of Asana, Atlassian, Gitl…
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Episode 37 The Distributed Ledger and its Impact on Future Infrastructure
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The value of the distributed ledger is baked into the promise of Web3, where equity, access and accountability occur within a shared governance and self-organizing ecosystem; and where creators can truly own what they produce and enable and control new value creation. We’ve purposely left out the word, “Blockchain” in this title because it has beco…
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Episode 36 Has AI Robotics Revolution Met Its ChatGPT Moment? A Chat with Covariant CEO
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2023 is a year that has been marked by technological leaps. It is not surprising to see the confluence of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics which promises to reshape industries and redefine labor. Today there are about 3,000,000 industrial robots around the globe, with roughly 400,000 new robots entering the market every year. And the globa…
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Episode 35 Decentralized Identity, Verifiable Credentials and the Future of Privacy
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In a digital environment rampant with adoption of emerging artificial intelligence technologies, data continues to drive considerable value. The risk to confidential and personal information continues to be an ongoing threat. Enter decentralized identity, an emerging paradigm of digital identity that champions the principles such as individuals hav…
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Great fundraising stories require robust financial models. Founders looking to raise capital need to be able to effectively articulate performance and future activities by defending their numbers. Investors want to understand your overall business strategy and the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ behind your performance and your projected financials. Your abili…
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Episode 33 Inside Superhuman's Quest for Email Perfection
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The inspiration behind Superhuman struck CEO, Rahul Vohra during an Uber ride, an experience that reshaped his perspective on productivity, giving users the gift of time. As the CEO of Superhuman, Rahul Vohra has dedicated himself to solving one of the most pressing challenges of our digital age - email overload. I met with Rahul Vohra, who proudly…
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Episode 32 Mastering Marketing ROI: How to Escape the Budget Black Hole
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Marketing ROI continues to be a budget black hole. The advent of digital has created mechanisms for marketing accountability. Before digital, it was difficult to validate the halo effect from television impressions or magazine or print reach. With the rise of digital came services within AdTech, the growth of SEO, SEM, attribution software. now mor…
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This is the state of Generative AI Today. The stunning speed of adoption of ChatGPT since its release in November 2022 has been extraordinary ChatGPT currently has 1.16 billion users. It crossed 1 billion users in March 2023. These numbers depicted an increase of almost 55% from February 2023 to March 2023. It managed to cross 1 million users withi…
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Episode 30 As AI Ubiquity Looms, CAST AI Balances Cloud Efficiency & Environmental Impact
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Today, we are witnessing the price of progress. As generative AI swiftly evolves amidst a booming landscape of adoption, the marvels of artificial intelligence are met with astounding costs and challenges. The allure from the VC community and tech giants, who have invested billions of dollars into startups specializing in generative AI technologies…
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Episode 29 Deconstructing Investment Myths for Early Stage Founders
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What investors want is not always aligned with what founders expect in how they appeal to investors. The gap between what investors expect and what founders believe when it comes to funding is often attributed to different goals and perspectives. Investors are primarily focused on maximizing return on their investments and managing risks while foun…
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Episode 28 Why You Should Consider Offshoring Your Development
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For founders who are in the early stages of their product concepts, they should begin the process of determining how to make their solution real. If you are bootstrapping founder who does not have a technical resource in-house, developing your MVP can be cost prohibitive if you choose to develop locally. Also, many non-technical founders, especiall…
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Episode 27 Signifyd's AI-Powered Response Solution to Combat Retail Fraud
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In an era that has given rise to e-commerce and digital transactions, fraud has become an ever-pressing challenge for retailers. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates cyber-crime cost organizations $1.9 million every minute, and with cybercrime costs predicted to grow by 15% to a staggering $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, businesses are grappling with …
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Episode 26 Everything you Need to Know about Building your First MVP
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You are ready to develop your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You’ve done your research and you feel you have everything you need to move to the development phase. Have you truly considered who you are developing for? Have you tapped into the earliest users and their needs? What are the essential functions and features? Have you developed a test plan…
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Episode 25 Preserving Privacy in the Surveillance Economy A Conversation with Andy Yen, CEO of Proton
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Privacy has become a precious commodity. It is often at odds with the pervasive nature of surveillance. Tech giants and governments alike have harnessed the power of technology to gain unprecedented access to personal data, raising concerns about individual privacy and the health of democratic societies. To examine this complex issue, I sat down wi…
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Episode 24 How Your Content Strategy Changes if TikTok is Permanently Banned
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Today, TikTok is arguably one of the most engaging social networking platforms in the world. Available in over 150 countries, with over 1 billion users, with downloads over 210 million times in the United States alone, this app is used by about 130 million Americans and 3.2 million Canadians per month. It is the 4th largest social networking site b…
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Episode 23 Admission Overseas Is Pioneering International Student Recruitment with Generative AI
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The International Education Market is expected to soar to $433Billion by 2030. Admission Overseas has developed a solution to move at the speed of global demand. Across the globe, the demand to pursue education in North American post-secondary institutions has witnessed an extraordinary surge. Students are increasingly drawn to the exceptional acad…
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Episode 22 Hero AI Seeks to Transform Mindsets in the Lagging Healthcare Sector
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The resistance to change is emblematic in a sector that has idealized practices and the legacy systems that have been working for decades. One founder seeks to disrupt this. AI adoption continues to lag in the healthcare sector. The complexity and sensitivity of patient data, how they’re governed and communicated within systems and between institut…
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Episode 21 Dispersa Seeks to Transform Clean Tech with Sustainable Biosurfactants
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Chemical surfactants, ubiquitous in our everyday lives, serve as critical ingredients in an array of consumer products, ranging from cleaning agents, personal care products to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. These compounds enable the effective dispersion of substances and are vital to enhancing the properties of the products we use today. Over time…
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Episode 20 An Interview with Paddy Cosgrave: Collision's Master Connector
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After an exhausting and exhilarating 3 days of Collision, we wrapped up the event with an interview with Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO of Web Summit and Collision, two of the fastest growing tech events in the world. The event which was hosted in Toronto since 2019 drew attendance of 36,378 from 118 countries in Toronto. In addition, a record-bre…
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Episode 19 Why SEO is Critical for Startup Founders Today, and Will it Be Tomorrow?
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Google continues to be the window to the internet. It is the intelligence that informs real time intentions, and what people are searching for. Great SEO continues for business to be the way to let search engines know that your business pages can answer people’s queries. The advent of Generative AI can uplevel the playing field and create avenues f…
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Episode 18 Tech Uncensored: The Sales Process is Stronger than the Outcome
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Sales is one of the toughest jobs in any industry. And it’s only going to get harder with evolving buyer behaviors towards digital engagement and self-directed research wreaking havoc on sales engagement strategies. Driving successful sales outcomes means the right composition of individuals and process. What does this look like? How do the two wor…
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Episode 17 Founders–How to Build the Right Team
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A business needs a leader, a builder, and a marketer. You may find that in one person, but often times, you will need to build a team with these complimentary skills in order to properly manage and scale a business. We welcomed David Peterson, who founded his own coaching company and was previously a regional manager for IT Operations for HSBC that…
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Episode 16 Is our Healthcare System Broken? Can Tech Startups Disrupt?
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“Collapse does not happen suddenly it is a result of an erosion over time until a breaking point arrives.” Andre Picard on the state of our healthcare system – Globe & Mail We were pleased to host Rishad Usmani, MD to discuss the state of healthcare system in Canada. From the ack of available nurses, long wait times, our doctor shortage and increas…
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Episode 15: Finding your Technical Cofounder
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Entrepreneurs have big ideas. They have a vision for how they want to change the world. They’ve validated their idea and want to get started in bringing this to fruition. They need someone who can, not only build this for them, but someone who is willing to become a significant member of the team to help in its growth and commit to the long term. F…
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It’s been called the toughest jobs in industry. For startups who are building their business from the ground up, finding the right customer who is willing to buy your product can be daunting. This is where all companies start out. They have an idea. They go out to talk to people to validate the idea. They build it with all this feedback in mind. An…
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Episode 13: Founders, Learning to Fail Fast and Pivot
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We are all familiar with the phrase “Fail Fast”. The “fail fast” philosophy values extensive testing and incremental development to determine whether the idea has value. The important goal of the philosophy is to cut losses when testing reveals something is not working and quickly try something else known as pivoting. The goal is not to perfect the…
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Episode 12: Every Startup - At Every Stage – Needs a Marketing Strategy
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We see it time and again. One of the last things companies invest in when they’re starting their company is marketing. The developer is hired before the marketer. The product is designed without consideration of who it’s for. The product is tweaked without talking to a customer. Marketing strategy takes a back seat to product strategy, and this is …
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Episode 11: Making Financial Modelling More Accessible for Start-ups
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For many start-ups developing a financial model is a daunting task. Why are they necessary? How do I build one? What should it include? Geoff Simonett, Investor, Advisor, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and formerly one of the founders of GreenSky Capital, and currently the President of Pinelands Capital, joins us to tackle this challenging topic for man…
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