Startup Stories - Mixergy
Business tips for startups by proven entrepreneurs
Episodes
April 12, 2024
Brent Underwood had a business idea: buy an abandoned town and turn it into a tourist destination.
It didn’t work. Mostly because he tried running it remotely.
Then he moved in. He started looking around, diving into old mines, and finding old treasures.
He shot video of what he saw and of his renovations. That got hugely popular on social media, helped him raise money and allowed him to fund his project. It’s all in hi...
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March 1, 2024
Ryan Deiss’s business was too chaotic to grow beyond a few team members. So he tried creating SOP’s, you know those how-to docs that every business is told to create, but few people end up using.
He figured there had to be a better way. Through experiments with he came up with “an operating system for companies.” He says this approach helped him grow to over a dozen different companies which last year did revenue in exc...
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February 23, 2024
He built Art.com through the early days of the internet, despite the dotcom bust, and through heavy competition….After all that work, the company sold to a much bigger company….And that’s when the lawsuit came.
You’ll hear how Joshua Chodniewicz built that business and how his latest business, Fundify, is changing startup investing by making it super-simple.
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February 16, 2024
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February 9, 2024
This founder found a niche that Airbnb didn’t reach and rode it to $6 million in revenue.
Steve Satoru Naito’s Anyplace, accommodations come with big monitors, high-speed internet, an office setup, ergonomic chairs, webcams, and key lights, all tailored to create an optimal environment for remote work and zoom calls.
In this interview, you’ll hear Steve’s entrepreneurial journey from Japan to Silicon Valley, the unique ...
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Today’s guest created software that kept track of things like how often the janitor cleaned a bathroom in an office building. When COVID hit, his customers began cutting back.
He could have really freaked out, but he realized his technology could help companies ensure their people stay far apart from each other
The software pivoted to contact tracing and other features that keep people safe at work. I want to find out how he did it...
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December 13, 2019
The company today’s guest started has gotten a lot of attention for its partnership with Kobe Bryant. I want to learn how he forged not only that relationship but also Brian Lee of The Honest Company.
Matthias Metternich is the co-founder of Art of Sport, which offers high performance skin care products.
I want to find out how he survived hemorrhaging cash while he found his customers and how he formed meaningful partnerships with...
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Hiring has been a huge issue for me. And in a past interview with Cameron Herold, I brought it up because he’s the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s leading network for the second in command.
I don’t get embarrassed by a lot of stuff. If you heard my interviews, you hear me get pretty frank about my flaws, my mistakes. But this issue is something I was embarrassed about. I think if I don’t hire somebo...
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November 22, 2017
A topic we don’t talk about on Mixergy is how to actually manage a company. I remember when I was in NYU as an undergrad I loved all my business classes, but management just didn’t feel like me.
I always thought of the guys in Dilbert but entrepreneurs were the ones who were creating, the ones who were doing. Mixergy’s grown and I’ve been running it, but I have to be honest, I’m not doing a great job ...
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About a year ago I realized that no matter how much effort we’ve put into my email list, I could never double the response rate. We kept growing it, but people were not using email much.
So I started looking around for solutions and I started looking at bots. Bots are basically software that communicates with humans via a chat app. I came across one company that looked too good to be true. It’s called ManyChat. And I sa...
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I’ll be honest with you. I felt guilt about an interview that I did years ago with today’s guest. This was back in, let me see here, 2013. I interviewed Sam Ovens about how he built up this consulting business and was teaching people how to do consulting.
I thought maybe I got taken for a ride. It was too good to be true. Then I started hearing people who were in his program talk about how big the program is. Then I sta...
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April 9, 2014
On August 4, 2008, I posted a video up on Mixergy where I looked up into the web cam on my computer and I said “I failed.” And I said that I was going to shut down my invitation business and start doing interviews with entrepreneurs and people in general who I admire so I can learn from them and take back what I’ve learned from them to build a more successful company in the future. And I said that along the way yo...
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A few weeks ago, Andrew was interviewed about his inner doubt by Samantha Alford of WomeninBusinesspodcast.com.
I (Arie Saint) thought it was too good not to share with our audience, so I’m publishing it on Mixergy.
Check it out and let’s talk about it in the comments.
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Update: based on the comments we’re getting, Jermaine sent this PDF about Automation.
How does a high school senior from the inner city turn $70 into a multimillion dollar instruction web site?
Jermaine Griggs is the founder of HearAndPlay.com, which trains musicians to play by ear, trains them to play by ear with online music lessons and piano video tutorials.
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How does a wristband help a founder build a $169 million company?
Ryan Allis is the founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses. And a company that was recently sold for $169 million to Vocus.
Here’s a quote from the last time I interviewed him, “we incorporated in July ’03, lived in the office, slept on futons, cooked on a George Foreman grill, did whatever we had to do to keep expense...
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Many founders I interviewed on Mixergy told me about how their companies virtually disappeared after they sold them. But 4 years after selling Reddit to Conde Nast, Steve Huffman is so proud of how much its grown that he’d be happy to still own it.
I asked him to teach me how he grew his community, why some Y Combinator-backed founders, like him, succeed while others don’t get any traction and why he never resented his ...
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The founders of Airbnb are guys who couldn’t make rent a few years ago, but they kept turning desperation into creative solutions. In October 2007, eager to make extra money, they noticed that local hotels were booked up because of a conference. So they pumped up some inflatable mattresses and listed their place online as an “air bed and breakfast.” It was quirky and it worked. That little act of creativity became...
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You listen to my programs because I don’t do the cute “let’s get to know the author” interviews that others are known for. I hunt down information that you can use because I’m passionate about helping you build a business that your great-great-grandkids would admire you for.
That’s why I kept digging in this interview. I want you (and me too, frankly) to be able to produce the kind of hits that S...
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