106: Giving People The Power to Fund Anything with James Beshara of Tilt

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

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's most memorable campaigns in recent memory. Like sending the Jamaican bobsled team to the Sochi Olympics to raising over $180 thousand for several campaigns providing relief to the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Along the way though James has learnt some very valuable lessons on what it means to be the CEO and co-founder of a fast-growing startup. We chat with James today and he reveals his personal methods and strategies on how to build a startup that not only scales, but scales quick.

In this episode you will learn:

• The importance of waiting for the right co-founder
• How to get out of your own head and move fast, all while developing the best product possible
• Why the smartest people in the room might not necessarily give you the best advice
• How to design and build a product to grow as fast as possible
• The two key things every entrepreneurs needs to focus on if they want to succeed
• & much more!