Growing Blockchain.com to $14B - The Story of Peter Smith
Release Date: 11/10/2022
The Secret To Achieving Product-Market Fit - With Lama.ai Founder
Billion Dollar Tech
“Something that doesn't slice the pie differently or steal someone else's breakfast, but something with a potential to grow the overall pie,” is Omri Yacubovich’s description of Lama.ai, of which he is co-founder and CEO. Lama.ai provides business lending to banks, credit unions, SaaS companies, fintech and B2B brands. Through his research, Omri found that 80 percent of businesses that applied for a loan through their primary banking relationship were declined. Alternative methods included exorbitant APRs that could reach as much as 400%, as well as a very high cost of acquisition and...
info_outline
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence - Public Company CEO Shares
Billion Dollar Tech
“You probably can’t overemphasize the importance of your co-founder relationship,” says Noah Abelson-Gertler, founder coach and former public company CEO, explaining that 50% of startups and scaleups that fail do so due to co-founder relationships. Co-founders have an intimacy that is like marriage without the romance—you experience highs and lows, make major decisions together, you’re dependent on each other, and can often spend more time together than you do with your actual spouse. That is why it is so important to be as thorough as possible in getting to know your potential...
info_outline
Top Hostage Negotiator Teaches You How to Be a World-Class Communicator
Billion Dollar Tech
“We're emotional beings that think, not thinking beings that feel,” says Scott Walker, leadership coach, former Scotland Yard detective and one of the world’s most experienced kidnap for ransom negotiators. Scott joins the podcast today to share what engaging in covert counterterrorism and kidnapping operations has taught him about communicating in life and in the corporate world. The process, Scott explains, is a matter of taking your emotions—as well as your ego—out of the equation. At the same time, you must be very aware of the other person’s emotions, what they want and need...
info_outline
A Revolution in Blue Collar Jobs - How Sh1ft Creates 10X More Opportunity!
Billion Dollar Tech
“We started to feel like there was something bigger here, that this could be transformational,” says Jason Radisson, co-founder and CEO of Sh1ft, which brings push button technology to blue collar and middle class work, and is transforming HR in the B2B spaces by implementing gig economy-style automation and efficiency. Sh1ft promises to eliminate 80 to 90 percent of a traditional HR employee’s role by resolving issues such as schedule inefficiencies and time fraud. Sh1ft is currently making great strides in the professions of engineering, construction, and nursing. Born to a...
info_outline
From $0 - $3B | Peek Inside Crypto Unicorn Anchorage Digital
Billion Dollar Tech
“What if we could do it better than anyone else in the ecosystem?” Nathan McCauley asked himself while co-founding Anchorage Digital, a unicorn assets platform that provides instantly settled key storage and custody—holding investments on behalf of investors—for digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Before starting this venture, he worked at financial services platform Square, where he performed what he called “financial security” for four years with his future Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Monica. There the two helped to design the digital card reader with Jack Dorsey....
info_outline
Magic Words: Master the art of persuasion | NYT Best Seller Jonah Berger
Billion Dollar Tech
New York Times bestselling author Jonah Berger’s cutting-edge research reveals how six types of words can increase your impact in every area of life: from persuading others and building stronger relationships, to boosting creativity and motivating teams. He labels them SPEACC (“speak,” phonetically), and they are crucial to understanding if one wants to be a more effective and charismatic speaker. Meanwhile, Jonah explains–using words like seems, think, should–-lessens the effectiveness of speech overall. More specifically, though, there are certain hedging phrases which yield more...
info_outline
The Entrepreneur Success Story of Tony Jamous [Secrets of Building Two Unicorn Companies]
Billion Dollar Tech
“What drives me is the mission,” says Tony Jamous, founder and CEO of Oyster HR, a business that, as Brendan puts it, is “stewarding the remote work revolution.” Oyster, Tony’s second unicorn company, works to allow businesses to hire anyone from around the world without restriction. With their needs fulfilled, companies can then focus on their growth. This starts with everyone establishing their mission, collectively and individually. As Brendan points out, being mission driven ensures that your business is solving an actual problem. Yet, so many workers don’t know why they are...
info_outline
$1.6B CEO Reveals Secret to Identifying Undiscovered Niches
Billion Dollar Tech
“I had one job, which was to get the data right. Why was that so freaking hard?” asked Barr Moses, co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, the world’s first data observability platform, discussing what motivated her to create the product. Having worked with data for 15 years, she realized so many people across the industry couldn’t seem to get it right, nor did they have a systematic, scalable way to make sure data was accurate. In the world we’re living in, where so many people have access to data, just a few minutes of inaccurate data can lead to poor customer experience and millions of...
info_outline
Peel Back the Curtain! How To Build a $3.7B Technology Brand
Billion Dollar Tech
“Harness builds software for teams that build software,” says Scott Sanchez, CMO of Harness. Scott and his team recognize that software developers at larger companies spend an increasing amount of time doing everything but coding. Harness provides a series of end to end products which ensure that that coding is high quality and delivered quickly and securely. He explains the importance of positioning and individuating in an industry in which an increasing number of people are selling a similar product. A large part of setting your business apart is providing thoughtful, valuable...
info_outline
From $0 to $3B Valuation - Marcelo Lebre, Co-Founder Remote.com
Billion Dollar Tech
“We knew we wanted to address the pain of remote work,” said Marcelo Lebre of the goal he and Job van der Voort shared when the two founded Remote.com in 2019. As it turns out, it was a worldwide pain. There were countless freelancers who were waiting to be matched with opportunities and vice versa. Remote.com scaled the problem on a global level so that the right talent could be pooled from anywhere. Currently, the majority of the site’s business is inbound and via word of mouth. As Marcelo points out, this is due to the power of the brand, but also of the pain itself. A major feature...
info_outline“Increasing human freedom and economic freedom around the world is just a mission that I'm really passionate about,” says Peter Smith, Founder and CEO of Blockchain.com. That mission has remained at the heart of Blockchain since its inception in 2009. When still a graduate student at the London School of Economics, Peter became interested in the intersection of economy and technology, long before they were attached at the hip as they are now. Today, digital money is the greatest example of this intersection, and the Internet is the world’s largest GDP.
One major misunderstanding that persists is how long it takes to adopt new technology. Success requires being in it for the long haul, and Peter says that too many entrepreneurs want too much too soon. He shares examples of companies that have finally found major success, but only after years of struggle and even ridicule.
Being a CEO comes with a great deal of responsibility, stress and fluctuation. Hear Peter discuss the best approach to dealing with it all, and why all entrepreneurs have something wrong with them.
Quotes:
“It's actually a common misconception that people don't know about the image of Bitcoin, which is that there was a 10-year plus period of attempts to create digital cash.” (7:24-7:40 | Peter)
“It's really important to us that we build tools that enable people to hold their assets themselves, but their own key. And you know, this is our original slogan, be your own bank.” (12:56-13:05 | Peter)
“One of the things I miss most about early crypto, was that it was not a business. It was a mission.” (16:19-16:25 | Peter)
“When I got into crypto, it wasn't it wasn't to make money. It was like, wow, if we pull this off, really cool. We can build a financial system that lives on the internet that anyone can be part of, and I can honestly look back and say, I spent my early adult life doing that, no matter how it works out. It's like a regret minimization framework. I could spend the next five years reinventing some enterprise SAAS tool, which is probably more likely to be successful, especially in 2000, and exit a lot faster. It's really hard to exit crypto businesses. But when I look back on that life, I'm not going to be proud of that.” (19:45-20:40 | Peter)
“You have to be very rooted in reality as a founder. And I think anytime you're not, anytime you're too optimistic, you're just waiting to get lucky. That's a very dangerous mode to be in. But you also have to realize as a founder that not everything is under your control.” (33:14-33:29 | Peter)
Connect with Brendan Dell:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell
Instagram: @thebrendandell
TikTok: @brendandell39
Buy a copy of Brendan’s Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926
Connect with Peter Smith:
Website: Blockchain.com
Twitter: @justonemorepeter
Facebook:@justonemorepeter
Instagram:@justonemorepeter
Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!
Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm