Madhav Bhandari helped take StoryLane from $900K to $8M in just 3 years. His approach? Don’t follow the playbook. Break it. We started this episode planning to talk about using your product to sell your product. But partway through, pattern interrupt marketing interrupted the episode itself — and we pivoted the whole conversation. From coffee carts with branded latte art to a mobile demo truck parked outside conferences, Madhav has made a habit of zigging when everyone else zags. Now as StoryLan...
Jun 29, 2025•52 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Tired of pitches that fall flat? Ready to become the ONLY choice instead of just another option? This week on the GTM Show we've got a bonus episode — a replay of my appearance on the Expert Connexions Podcast at the 2025 Startup Grind Conference in Silicon Valley. Their host Julie Holton-Smith sat down with me on-site, and in this 10-minute lightning interview I share how to be the ONLY in your industry, how to make your audience feel SEEN instead of sold to, real examples of good pitches, and ...
Jun 22, 2025•13 min
Alisha Elenz went from cashier to prep cook to Executive Chef by 23. She became a two-time James Beard nominee, won Rising Chef of the Year, and cooked her way to Top Chef Season 21. But climbing the ranks wasn’t the finish line—building her own thing was. Now she runs Whisk the Night Away , a private dining company where she’s rewriting the rules as a chefpreneur. In this week’s episode—recorded live at Startup Grind Chicago—Chef Alisha steps to the mic to share how she built her lane, what it ...
Jun 15, 2025•48 min•Season 4Ep. 3
You've heard of Go To Market. But have you heard of Go To CUSTOMER? GTC is going beyond getting the product in customer's hands and being intentional about the program(s) you build around the product to ensure uptake, produce successful outcomes, lower churn, and create advocates. It's the 'hidden' stuff that hedges against friction being your rate limiting factor. Sid Khaitan is an experienced product marketer (currently with BeeKeeper). He also currently serves as Content Artist at Startup Hyp...
Jun 08, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 2
If you were a PGA golfer you'd seemingly have the perfect career, right? Get paid to play golf, while playing on the best courses possible. From 5 years old, Soo Ahn worked his whole life to make it onto the PGA Tour. His hard work paid off when he got his Tour Card. He had made it into the top 1% of his field. But once he had 'made it', playing golf didn't play out as he had dreamed. So he made a huge pivot. As entrepreneurs, sometimes we have to pivot. That pivot could mean a new audience, a n...
Jun 01, 2025•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 1
What's your superpower? Every Founder has one. At the same time, not every founder has the SAME one. Which means just because Sara Blakely or Bill Gates did things one way, doesn't mean you also have to do things that way. When you know your superpower you can better make strategic decisions, acknowledge what should stay on your plate versus what you should delegate, and perhaps most importantly, be aware of your blind spots. Michelle Denogean has spent decades in the "Director's chair" for seve...
Jul 14, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Planning a fundraise? Then you need to know HOW to get in front of investors. Enjoy this special episode, a replay of my interview with Supply Change Capital Managing Partner Shayna Harris live from a Startup Grind Chicago event. Shayna shares what catches her eye, how funds are structured, the flow of money in a VC system, and why all that matters for founders. Original interview date: June 11, 2024. Find Shayna online: LinkedIn Find Supply Change Capital online: Website This episode is brought...
Jul 07, 2024•54 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and...venture capital? In 2023 the Chicago Cubs spun off a fund by the name of Marquee Ventures. Marquee invests at the intersection of sports, media, commerce, and their enabling infrastructure. Enjoy this special episode, a replay of my interview with Marquee's Cofounder & Managing Partner Erik Hammer live from the Startup Grind Chicago 2nd Annual Health & Sportstech Showcase in March 2024. Erik covers how Marquee assesses deals, what catches their eye, h...
Jun 30, 2024•55 min•Season 3Ep. 10
One of the biggest struggles of an early stage startup is creating content. Or, really I should say creating GOOD content. It's pretty easy to publish a whitepaper that no one cares about, make Linkedin posts that don't get traction, or start a podcast but quit after 5 episodes. Creating content isn't hard, creating content that actually drives leads is hard. Erin Balsa is a content strategy expert who has written for the likes of Hubspot, Monday.com, G2, and more. At Haus of Bold, she focuses o...
Jun 23, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Have you ever worked really hard on a piece of content, only for it to get like 5 likes online? It could be a bad distribution strategy or bad timing, but more likely it's because the content doesn't resonate. What if instead of approaching your content like a tech or product company, you approached it like a media company? Tyler Lessard didn't just approach it like a media company, he in fact launched an entire media brand called Sales Feed. 150,000 followers and subscribers later, something's ...
Jun 16, 2024•56 min•Season 3Ep. 8
What if instead of rushing to social media, paid ads, or even a traditional outbound sales motion, you used live events as a customer acquisition strategy? You immediately provide value to your target customer, created a shared experience, and get valuable face time with them. Sales Assembly has bootstrapped to 7-figure annual revenue, growing 300% from 2020 - 2024. The secret to their success? EVENTS. Ahead of all other GTM channels, live events have been the backbone of their customer acquisit...
Jun 09, 2024•53 min•Season 3Ep. 7
If you're a CPG or retail brand, you know by default the importance of brand. It's what people buy into as much as the product itself. There's a reason why you choose to pay more for a Nike shirt when you could reasonably buy the same shirt without the logo. Brand is a promise. It's a value system. It's a marker of trust for your community and customers that signals an understanding and expectation of the product experience. In the software world, brand tends to get pushed to the side. It doesn'...
May 05, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Everyone wants to have a community. Everyone says they have a community. But just having a Slack or WhatsApp group doesn't actually mean you have community. Community is more about the interactions than the medium. And investing in community means playing the long game. Which is why so many brands don't think it's worth the effort. My friend Pablo Gonzalez has cracked the community code with a playbook that accrues short-term high-impact wins while waiting for the long game to play out. Through ...
Apr 19, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 3Ep. 5
What does it take to turn an idea for a boutique 7-11 into a tech-driven consumer market, into a national brand that merged with one of the biggest names in grocery? Enjoy this special episode, a replay of my interview with Foxtrot CEO & Cofounder Mike LaVitola live from the Startup Grind Chicago 4th Annual Great Chicago Food Bash in January 2024. Mike shares overcoming rejection for his crazy idea in the early days, to raising nearly $200M and scaling up nationally. He talks about the impor...
Apr 12, 2024•55 min•Season 3Ep. 4
I think we can all agree AI is seemingly everywhere. But what does that actually mean for a startup? Enjoy this special episode, a replay of my interview with Techstars Managing Director Tricia Martinez-Saab live from the Startup Grind Chicago AI Showcase in November 2023. Tricia leads the AI and deep-tech verticals at Techstars and shares her perspective on the good and bad of AI's permeation, how to approach integrating AI into your product, the ethics behind an AI-powered future, and how she ...
Apr 06, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 3
The 3-letter acronym every startup obsesses with is TAM. But what is your TAM comprised of, and specifically WHO makes up your TAM? When you go to market, you may think your target is one group, but then find it includes others you weren't previously considering. That was the case for Cardio Diagnostics, who built a solution with a clear end user but involved multiple ancillary decision makers and economic buyers, and alternative use cases. This forced them to expand their TAM in order to succes...
Mar 31, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 2
In a down economy, runway is everything. But it should also be everything in a boom economy. Great companies figure out how to spend less, and make more. Jordan Tepper cofounded the cocktail brand Apologue in 2017, and in the 7 years since he's achieved over $1M annual revenue, while raising just $2.5M in that time, and as of this writing still carrying $1M of that raise in the bank. For a CPG brand with significant fixed expenses, Apologue's story is a clinic on meaningful growth and spend. Jor...
Mar 23, 2024•47 min•Season 3Ep. 1
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 8
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 7
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•46 min•Season 2Ep. 6
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•52 min•Season 2Ep. 5
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 4
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•36 min•Season 2Ep. 3
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 2
We've officially dropped the first-ever startup hip-hop album, GOAT To Market! Season 2 of The GTM Show is a companion podcast on the making-of, where RajNATION gets interviewed by the album's Creative Director Pablo Gonzalez (founder of Be The Stage), for an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen. GOAT To Market is available now on all streaming platforms. Listen to the album in full then come here, or one track at a time and come here for each corresponding episode. However, you want to listen is ...
Sep 14, 2023•37 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Trying to hire for sales? Who you bring in first, and subsequently your next few hires after can be the deciding factor on if your company sinks or swims. So what do you look for in a candidate? What do you ask in an interview? How do you prep them and set goals? There's A LOT that can go terribly wrong, or, wonderfully right. Olivia Herron has stood up a sales team from zero at Facebook Labs, and is now at SamCart. She steps to the mic in our season finale to share her inside advice on getting ...
Aug 26, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 12
You've probably joined a virtual meeting where a phantom 3rd party named Fireflies also joined. Heck, maybe it was your personal Firefly that joined. You're not alone. In fact, Fireflies.ai has taken notes for over 5 million calls and is now used by over 150,000 organizations. It's no wonder Khosla Ventures led their $19M Series A round. When you hear those kinds of numbers, you think of massive marketing and sales budgets. But Fireflies did it without spending on either. Instead, they focused e...
Aug 19, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 11
We all know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of really good content. Whether it's a funny meme, an inspiring video, or an insightful whitepaper. Why then, are so many startups *so bad* at CREATING content for their audience? Is it bad source material, bad measurement, or just plain being bad at content? Whitney Durmick spent a half-decade running content for the Oracle startup accelerator and knows a thing or two about what clicks, connects, and converts. After several months freela...
Aug 06, 2023•57 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In part 2 of our powerhouse conversation, Lofty Angels' lead investor Chris Deutsch comes back to the mic to share how involved an angel investor should be in a startup, his framework for making investments, and the importance of more founders becoming angel investors themselves. Note: This episode is for educational and entertainment purposes and is NOT meant to serve as financial advice. Find Chris online: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdeutsch/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/chris_deuts...
Jul 30, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Ever say to yourself, "I want to invest in startups?". Even if you're a founder yourself, maybe you've had that moment of 'when I make it big, I'm gonna start investing in other founders'. Chris Deutsch wants to demystify the process for you. As founder of Lofty Angels, he's invested in over 150 founders, 80+ startups (75% by underrepresented founders), and experienced 5 exits. He's also started the Lofty Syndicate which acts as a vehicle to invest in rounds alongside Lofty Angels, and an educat...
Jul 23, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 8
