Founder Secrets with Taylor and Flaviu
Join Taylor (@ttrusty) and Flaviu (@FlaviuSim) as they interview inspiring founders, and discuss entrepreneur ideas, news, experiences, struggles and successes. This is Founder Secrets. Watch the episodes here: https://www.youtube.com/@foundersecretspod
Episodes
Jeremy flew in from Miami to join Taylor and Flaviu in the NYC studio and discuss YPO, and his background scaling a healthcare business once, and now getting ready to do it again.
(1:35) The value of Young Presidents Organization (YPO)
(2:35) How often do you cry?
(3:10) Overview of how Jeremy built Bluetree Network
(5:10) Service vs Product Businesses
(9:20) How to build a high performing culture as you scale
(13:05) How do y...
Maggie started Us Two Tea in 2020 with the vision of reinventing Asian tea and bringing a modern, tasty, healthy, and sustainable product to the market. We also each shared a few stories of raising money early on from angels vs. VC.
(2:35) Us Two Tea Story
(4:01) What does it meant to be an Asian Owned Tea Brand
(5:44) Challenge of importing tea from China
(7:08) How UsTwoTea became Google’s tea
(8:06) The Blue Bottle of Tea
(9:41)...
Peter Ungureanu, a Romanian-American serial entrepreneur with a recent exit comes from Taiwan to join Flaviu and Taylor in the NYC studio. They chat the value of Entrepreneur Organization (EO), peer groups in general, and share lots of tips.
(1:20) The value of EO and Peer Groups
(6:19) Difference between Taiwan and US Entrepreneurship
(11:08) Best startup ideas we’ve seen recently
(17:55) Tome - The AI-powered storytelling format
...
Flaviu, Taylor and guest Mindie Kaplan (from the Male Room podcast) riffed today on VR, DAOs, Scrappy Sales playbooks, AR, and some lessons from selling a startup.
(0:15) The best and worst of building a company and living in New York City
(4:25) Virtual Reality (VR) Business Applications
(8:58) Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in Sports
(12:10) How Mindie launched her VR company and a great story about The Fat Jewish ...
(0:17) How would you market a painting business?
(4:54) How would you get the first customer?
(5:27) Taylor’s attempt of going door-to-door
(9:09) Flaviu’s process to getting a job as a waiter
(13:33) Can service businesses scale 10x?
(17:20) Thumbtack penalizing users that can pay more
(22:15) No more free lunches
(23:12) C Corp vs LLC Decision
Taylor and Flaviu speak with Bryan Cush of Tidal Health Group, a digital agency focused on companies in the healthcare space. We talked Bryan’s learnings from working on a cruise ship, to how Tidal helps doctor groups with key insights and SEO.
(0:12) Living on a cruise ship for 3 years
(7:41) From cruises to starting an agency
(18:14) Doctors have 1 million dollar ad budgets
Taylor chats with Adriaan Kolff, co-founder of MatcHR and Pantala about starting his company in Ukraine, meeting his wife at Burning Man, and advice from past failures as well as a few successes.
(0:43) How Adriaan met his wife at Burning Man
(5:55) Starting a business in Kiev
(8:37) Moving and building a business based on a spreadsheet
(10:26) Early misconceptions of starting a recruiting business
(12:24) Covid - a blessing in dis...
Taylor and Flaviu interview Marc Schwartzberg about the journey of a family business from 1920 to 2022 and the many changes and restarts that had to happen to get Marc where he is today. We also talk about the office space industry, where things are heading and any tips Marc offers younger entrepreneurs
Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcschwartzberg/
Office Furniture Heaven: https://www.officefurnitureheaven.com/
(0:35) Dallek ...
Amina Abubakar was a delight this week as she inspired Taylor and Flaviu in this podcast episode. Amina represents the American Dream, and she is a stellar entrepreneur that is a leader in the pharmacy world in the US. She also finds time to give back to her home continent through rohovoyage.com , a way to travel with purpose in Kenya and beyond. Check it out!
(1:26) How Amina raised the money to get from Kenya to America
(4:18) Wh...
Taylor and Flaviu have a lot of fun talking about AI and how to decide on a startup idea, a cofounder, and much more.
(1:20) What is Chat GPT?
(3:31) Taylor’s AI Poem Business Idea loveseternalframe.com
(8:07) Book written by AI - What Makes Us Human: An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life's Biggest Questions
(10:27) Avatar AI Apps Taking over; LensaAI reaches 13M installs , AvatarAI.me
(13:59) AI Generated Business Emails on...
Taylor and Flaviu get to interview THE KELLY of kellyfaetanini.com - an amazing creative designer of wedding dresses, and an innovator in the bridal industry. So many insights below, from starting the business, to investor challenges, bridal industry secrets, and much more.
(1:14) Kelly Faetanini’s origins in San Marino
(3:58) Nature vs. Nurture in artistic talent
(5:37) The leap from designer to entrepreneur
(9:29) QR Code fo...
Flaviu and Taylor talk to Bryan Luoma, a half Filipino / half Finish entrepreneur who went from Civil Engineering in Minnesota to a rapidly growing business named Tahche in the Philippines.
(3:15) Being on stage is better than being in the audience
(5:43) Why Bryan became a Civil Engineer?
(8:25) What made Bryan take the plunge to Entrepreneurship?
(11:08) The Craigslist hack
(13:48) Misconceptions about staffing in the Philippines
...Taylor and Flaviu go over some tips, hacks, and stories of how they got their first customers and how they would get their first customer today. Also, covered some interesting stories of gratitude (Happy Thanksgiving!), how Wave Cars hacked Shark Tank, Bill Gurley giving some “advice”, alt lenders, and tax softwares that gave their customers’ data to Facebook (who does not want it).
(1:13) Tip: Bilt.com
This is the best episode of Founder Secrets yet! Flaviu and Taylor speak with Mona Patel, a creator, writer, founder, CEO, entrepreneur, and general amazing person. This is one you won't want to miss.
(5:15) - How do you know who to trust?
(6:36) - Writing "Reframe: Shift the Way You Work, Innovate, and Think"
(8:25) - Pre-Frame
(10:50) - Hiring your replacement
(17:05) - How you listen better?
(18:45) - Grey Zone, Sexual Hara...
In this episode, Taylor and Flaviu go over some news with FTX and Twitter, then deep dive on how to get the motivation to start a company, sharing some of their personal stories, discuss whether founders should do sales. Then they talk about donations as a company, and a liquor business that’s (maybe) successful in South Carolina.
(1:02) - FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried
(5:35) What is the price of Bitcoin in 6 months?
(7:01) Twitte...
In this episode, Taylor and Flaviu talk to Namu Park about her journey to starting The-Sloth.com , a fashion tech startup fighting consumerism by enabling everyone to resell their clothes.
(2:11) - Deciding to be an entrepreneur
(3:32) - What is The Sloths?
(9:18) - Why the name Sloth?
(11:45) - Learning Product Design and Product Management
(15:00) - To have or not have a cofounder
(18:22) - What is the vision?
(20:54) - How to ac...
This week Taylor and Flaviu are back in the studio and brought a serial entrepreneur friend from EO, Liz Reitman. Liz and and Casie Fariello are the founders of Other Parents Like Me (OPLM.com). They took their personal experience and saw a big need in mental health for parents supporting their children struggling with addiction. It is an amazing story and a big challenge they are taking on. So much to learn from these two.
(...
Taylor and Flaviu sit down with Retta Abraham in Ocho Rios, Jamaica to talk through his journey from being second generation immigrant from Ethiopia and Japan, building a successful career in finance, and then leaving it all to find personal balance, growth, and freedom via entrepreneurship. In particular Retta focused on Amazon seller businesses in ecommerce, and he shares some very valuable tips from his journey.
( 4:12 ) - Selli...
- Scaling Vimbly to 9 businesses
- Building intellectual property that can be licensed to other companies
- Fundraising to profitability
- Banking → Hedge Fund → Startup
- How to get traction, which products to double down on
- Finding a cofounder
- Minibet and how to try ideas that don't work out
- Keyboard shortcuts - email tips
- Optimizing your day - journaling (workflowy), reading, meetings, and thinking time
- Can people i...
Topics:
- Month in review - How to review the last year/month.
- Question-based project management
- Biden’s CTO problem
- Working out tips
- Zoom hack to focus better
- Apple review of current devices
- Being real vs. raising money
- Industries and startups succeeding though the recession
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