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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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$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...
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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...
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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“Fundraising is mostly about failing. Success is really the wartime,” says Trisha Kotari, founder and CEO of Unit 21, a risk and compliance infrastructure which helps companies and financial institutions combat fraud. In 2019, she started the business from scratch, cold calling potential investors and raising seed. She discusses the way she differentiated herself from a saturated market, and convinced a particularly risk-averse crowd to get on board, all despite having no idea how to do sales.
Throughout the process and to this day, Trisha pays attention to customer reaction. The customer was her source of truth and helped her iterate. It helped her realize that there was a real need for her product and that she could provide an actual solution.
Trisha discusses the challenges of the process that might be surprising, especially those with Type A personalities, the problem with following advice, and what she wishes she had discarded after hearing it.
Quotes:
This is an actual pain. And it's not a vitamin, it's not the small improvement that we thought this would be. (7:31-7:38 | Trisha)
“Every company is slightly different, especially in the financial services space. And the types of users they target are different, the vectors of attack are different. And that was the main thing that we learned from talking to hundreds of people is that no one is looking for exactly the same type of rule to find fraud.” (9:43-10:03 | Trisha)
“These people are naturally risk averse. They will go to jail if your software fails, and so it’s very difficult to get a full set of customers.” (14:48-14:57 | Trisha)
“The only advice that I would have for people is when starting a business is just expect a lot of rejection. And people are going to reject you because what do they have to go off of? And I think especially for a lot of high achievement focus people, it might become really startling to see that, ‘Okay, I'm going to talk to 50 people and 49 as a no.’” (16:29-16:57 | Trisha)
“Fundraising is mostly about failing. And the success is really the wartime.” (17:29-17:34 | Trisha)
“I wish I did not listen to all advice because every piece of advice and some kind of it's really based on someone's past experience. But your company, what you’re building, who you are, the situation, the industry or in the time that you're in even the same company 10 years ago, or 10 years from now, will this advice apply to me now?.” (28:56-29:20 | Trisha)
“It's pretty hard and it's something that is continuous. It's never a one time round thing. You are continuously learning, the market is continuing to evolve and it's a continuous effort.” (42:55-43:08 | Trisha)
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 Trisha Kotari:
LinkedIn: @trishkotari
Twitter:@trishakotari
www.unit21.ai
Check out Trisha Kotari’s recommended book:
Shoe Dog: A Memoir By the Founder of Nike by Phil Knight
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781501135927
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