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“I want to spend my time solving problems,” says Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest, a platform that uses climate data, science expertise and data modeling to help companies predict their climate risk. It measures the potential damage a company’s assets, like buildings, factories and property, could suffer from their surrounding weather conditions, and the potential resulting financial loss. With this data, it helps companies not mitigate risk, but adapt assets over time. Though it’s not just real estate firms or manufacturers that have to worry about extreme incidents like flooding or storms. As Iggy points out, all businesses across all industries are at risk from the everyday effects of climate change.
Iggy considers this his driving mission—to democratize this data and get it into the hands of decision makers in order to serve the greater good. He talks about the process and necessity of marrying the mission to the method, that to achieve its noble ends, a company must still follow a capitalistic business model and make itself competitive in the market. Both are equally necessary and as Brendan points out, making money and doing good works are not mutually exclusive.
It’s a matter of deciding what you want to invest your time in. It also means choosing the right people to be part of your mission. Iggy emphasizes the amount of time he spent and continues to spend considering his investors and encourages listeners to do the same.
Quotes:
“Most of our losses actually came because of these extreme events, we just couldn't predict them. We couldn't control them. So I think in 2014 I sort of picked up a climate model. It helps to think about climate modeling. I said, `I want to know what's going to happen to my facility, for my $6 million factory and tell me what's going to happen to this.” (8:14-8:38 | Iggy)
“I think there's a more fundamental question about, ‘Where do you want to spend your energy as well. I want to spend, personally, my energy on solving problems. So that's what really drives me is ‘Can we make an impact because we're all going to work hard, whether you're in for profit, or social sector, what is the purpose to the work?” (12:10-12:31 | Iggy)
“We are a B Corp that allows us to marry the mission with raising capital, creating a certain type of culture, which was all driven by a central mission. Can we take the power of plant intelligence into the hands of decision makers? Can we democratize this complex data? So people like me are not stuck on the farms going forward? People can get answers when they need them, how do I protect my assets? How do I adapt my assets? So we want this intelligence to be democratized as fast as possible at the lowest possible price point, potentially, with a freemium model as well, so that people can get a certain level of climate intelligence on their most critical assets for free. And then the larger banks, insurance companies and governments will actually pay for this.” (12:51-13:31 | Iggy)
“Even at the height of COVID, most global surveys, when they asked citizens the number one concern, it wasn't COVID, it was still climate. And climate is a number one concern across the world, when you ask the citizens, particularly the younger generations.” (25:21-25:37 | Iggy)
“I'm always always careful about who my capital partners are. I spent a long time focusing on choosing the right investment partners, because if you don't have that alignment, it can be catastrophic later on.” (33:53-34:05 | Iggy)
“I think there is a combination of mission driven people who are technically good, and people who've got method. So you have to marry mission with method. Because at the end of the day, it is a competitive business, it's a competitive market, you have to be able to sell this stuff into the marketplace, build a brilliant product. And you have to be a commercially orientated organization over time. So mission is great, method is also great. But you need a combination of the two, particularly if you're solving this type of problems.”(36:40-37:10 | Iggy)
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 Iggy Bassi:
Twitter:@IggyBassi
https://cervest.earth/
Check out Iggy’s recommended books:
Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide by Bill McGuire
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781785789205
Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitabh Ghosh and Sam Dastor
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9798212010450
Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781541617902
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