Scaling Nerds | Startup PR, Thought Leadership and Storytelling for Startup Founders
Scaling Nerds (formerly Red to Green) helps science and tech founders master the essential communication skills for VC-backed growth: from branding and storytelling to media strategy and investor decks. Ranked in the top 5% globally, with listeners in 160+ countries, Scaling Nerds will help you win minds, markets, and your next fundraise. Hosted by strategic communications advisor Marina Schmidt. Scaling Nerds is a premier startup communications podcast on startup marketing, founder thought leadership, and storytelling for technical and science-driven companies.
Episodes
Imagine you are about to perform a three-minute startup pitch. You stand on stage, the countdown timer ticking. Precious seconds go by, and as you start talking about your business, you explain who you are. You mention the team — beep, beep — the time is up. What. Already. Well, that has happened to a lot of founders.
I can guarantee you, nailing a three-minute stage pitch is not easy, and it’s not something that most of us can just...
Okay, this was a really, really great episode. Today I'm helping another founder with a life pitch fix, and you are really in for a treat because on the one hand, Strong by Form, the company of today, is absolutely fascinating. And on the other hand, we are also going to be covering so many helpful concepts that will help you improve your pitch and your communication, all while working on a really interesting case study.
So to s...
Early-stage founders spend years learning how to fundraise from venture capitalists.
But very few ever look beyond the VC sitting across the table.
Just like founders need to fundraise from VCs, VCs need to fundraise from limited partners.
Who are the guys who give VCs the molah-molah?
What are the hidden incentives?
And how those dynamics quietly shape fundraising, timing, and pressure.
“Everyone thinks they’re pitching one person. The...
Find out how to solve the top 3 issues you may face in corporate sales: .1 not understanding the process, 2. the sale taking way too long, 3. getting ghosted or declined and not knowing why.
An absolute must-watch episode for any founder currently hustling for big client deals.
Links
Connect with Ben Kimura-Gross:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-k-g/
Check out Catalyne
https://www.thecatalyne.com/https://www.thecatalyne.com/
...
7. Skip Panels, Do This Instead: Founder Thought Leadership 101 with Sarah Rall from Cherry Ventures
Thought leadership. It's a big topic. You may know of Infarm, the vertical farming company that raised $600 Million before going bust after the Ukraine war drove up energy prices and made their business collapse.
Regarding their operations can say all you want, the CEO of Infarm was an exceptional fundraiser. But how did he do it?
One of my close friends worked for infarm and thats how I found out that they actually hired a ...
At pre-seed and seed stage, many scientific and technical startups don’t have a comms specialist on board. So pitch decks are puzzled together in endless iterations, website copy is written off the cuff, and the founders just riff in interviews.
That may work out fine until the company starts truly scaling and you may face a growing amount of media interest and scrutiny.
In this episode you will hear from Sarah Rall, Vice Preside...
How can you adapt your pitch on the fly to a potential customer, to an investor, or to a generalist audience? Today you can listen in on a live consulting session where I help a founder crack this question.
In this episode, I'm consulting Oliver Siegel, the co-founder and CEO of the deep tech startup Magmatic Bio. Magmatic designs synthetic proteins that separate critical metals from each other.
Connect with the host:
If your startup needs to speak to very different audiences — investors, corporates, consumers — this episode lays out why that skill matters more than most founders think.
How you explain your work changes depending on who’s in front of you, and that can decide whether people actually understand what you do. If you’re selling cookies, fine. If you’re building a complex solution to a complex problem, communication becomes core to th...
When you are working on a technical or scientific innovation, pitching a specialized VC firm may seem like the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, someone who will get it. Or… will they?
Today’s guest, Steve Molino, is Principal at Synthesis Capital based in New Jersey. And today’s episode asks: How can founders with complex tech craft pitch decks that help them get there, past the initial interest? Ironically, having cutting-e...
A crisp crash course on announcing your fundraise correctly, including:
a good timeline for drafting, reviewing, and sending out the press release
how to correctly manage stakeholder feedback
and how to maximize the benefits of the announcement
The guest you’ll hear from today, Elisheva Marcus, and I met at the Deep Tech Momentum conference in Berlin and connected over nerding out about comms.
Elisheva Marcus has an MSc in Biom...
Climate activism failed to inspire hope, can founders fill the void? Discover why the next cultural revolution won’t be led by politicians, but by startup leaders.
Episode Summary
In this solo episode, Marina Schmidt dissects how startup founders have become some of the most powerful public communicators of our time—and why that power matters. She explores the rise of founder evangelism, the cultural shift from corporate branding...
The food tech and biotech podcast Red to Green is becoming Scaling Nerds: the communications podcast for science & tech founders.
New episodes every two weeks!
Please share with friends, colleagues and whoever might be interested.
Connect with Marina Schmidt on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/
Need help with comms as a startup founder?
Check out https://www.wearekinetik.com/
Find out all the details about micro fermentation. Discover how Formo is using this process to churn out Koji protein-based cheese alternatives that are hitting over 2000 stores in the DACH region.
The episode breaks down the differences between micro and precision fermentation and why micro fermentation's quicker market route is so exciting.
Learn about the sustainability perks and the cool science behind cheese without cows...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Food W...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Fo...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Food W...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Fo...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Fo...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Fo...
- An old episode from the Red to Green Podcast on Food Tech & Bio Tech. Listen if you are interested in the future of food, but this isn’t Scaling Nerds.
Red to Green was a podcast that investigated how to transition the food industry from harmful to healthy, from polluting to sustainable, from Red to Green. Each season had a different topic
- Season: Cultivated Meat
- Season: Plastic Alternatives
- Season: Food History
- Season: Fo...
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