Episode #380: Rising From the Startup Ashes with Michael Fox
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
Release Date: 05/07/2020
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Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
Michael Thomsen is a freelancer writer, author, and UFC tragic from New York. He is the author of Cage Kings: How an Unlikely Group of Moguls, Champions & Hustlers Transformed the UFC into a $10 Billion Industry, which unpacks the rapid rise of the UFC an mixed martial arts, the UFC’s business model and economics, the one man tour de force that is longtime UFC president Dana White, the role of the UFC’s owners over time - SEG, Zuffa and Ari Emanuel, and the organization’s anti-competitive behaviors and adversarial relationship with its fighters, which aren’t employees,...
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Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
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428. Oliver Burkeman: Remember That You Will Die
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
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427. Building a Billion Dollar Venture Capital Fund with Blackbird's Niki Scevak
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
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426. The Mick Wall Story - Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n Roll
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
Mick Wall has spent over four decades interviewing rockstars and chronicling their amazing stories, and today, we're turning the tables on Mick Wall and unpacking his story in this marathon 3-hour and 40-minute, Joe Rogan-esque interview. Our conversation focuses on the early years, taking in Mick’s childhood all the way through to Sounds magazine, Heavy Publicity, and the inception of the world-famous magazine Kerrang! magazine. We touch on ghostwriting, his feud with Axl Rose, and revelations about the rock 'n roll lifestyle. As you might expect,...
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Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
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424. The Trillion Dollar Space Economy with Torsten Hoffmann
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
Torsten Hoffmann is a media entrepreneur, filmmaker, and technology investor. He has produced and directed several documentaries, including "Bitcoin: The End of Money As We Know It" and the award-winning "Cryptopia: Bitcoin, Blockchains and the Future of the Internet" Torsten joins me today to talk about his forthcoming feature documentary, FORTITUDE: Forging the Trillion Dollar Space Economy, which uncovers how a few influential individuals with utopian ideas and vast fortunes are forging a trillion-dollar off-world industry, while inspiring millions of us back on...
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423. Kevin Kelly: From Wired to Wisdom - Excellent Advice for Living
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
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422. Generative AI Risks and Opportunities with Mike Todasco
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
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Rebroadcast: Building Atomic Habits with James Clear
Future Squared with Steve Glaveski
Rebroadcast: This episode originally appeared in 2019. --- James Clear is an author and speaker focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. A freak baseball accident put James in a desperate place, fighting to recover from brain damage. The debilitating brain injury forced him to discover a new way of living. Recovery took James to a new understanding of habits and the power of stacking simple, easy habits, one on top of the other, to create momentum and change. His book, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, shares his learnings with the world. It has sold well...
info_outlineMichael Fox is an entrepreneur and investor, best known for co-founding Shoes of Prey, the online retail startup that raised US$25M and grew its team to 200 people, before lagging demand forced the company to famously call it a day in 2019. Today, he heads up plant-based meat alternative company, Fable Foods Co.
Michael joined me to unpack the Shoes of Prey journey, the highs, the lows, the lessons learned and on being a proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes.
We touched on so many big ticket items, but three that stood out for me were:
1 - how so-called market validation can lead startups astray if it is not performed carefully
2 - why raising venture capital isn’t always necessary for startup success and can sometimes come at a detriment to it
3 - how Michael consciously uncoupled from his wife Jodie but continued to work together as co-founders at Shoes of Prey for another 7 years
We unpacked this and a ton more, so strap yourself in for an enlightening conversation with the one and only, Michael Fox.
Topics Discussed:
- Michael’s early years as a lawyer and why and how he got out
- The early days of Shoes of Prey
- Organic growth v venture-backed growth
- Market research and validation - how it can set you astray
- Conscious customer feedback v unconscious reality
- What Michael would do differently next time
- Ethical manufacturing
- Media backlash
- Laying staff off empathetically
- Ethical manufacturing
- The cost of employee engagement and retention
- Being transparent without compromising employee motivation
- The importance of not deriving your entire self worth from one thing
- Conscious uncoupling
- Humility and ego amidst turmoil
- Why it can be darkest before the dawn
- Why 2019 was Michael’s best year
- Fable Food Co and its mission of ending industrial agriculture
Show Notes:
Twitter: @mmmichaelfox
Fable Foods: fablefood.co
IG: @fablefoodco
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