Matt Mullengweg was a high school student looking for a better way to customize his blog when he discovered the open source software community and created the WordPress platform. A few years later, after dropping out of the University of Houston for a brief stint at CNET Networks, he founded Automattic, which he describes as a holding company for products such as WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, Simplenote, Longreads and The Atavist. And just like over 40% of the web today, they all run on W...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 82
As Co-Founder and Chairman of Techstars, David Cohen has spent nearly his entire career focused on helping entrepreneurs succeed. Aspiring founders and early-stage entrepreneurs from around the world apply to Techstars’ startup accelerators to get three months of hands-on mentorship, access to a worldwide network and a check for $20,000 in exchange for 6% of the startup. When I spoke with David for this episode back in 2008, the program was just two years old, part of a trend of structured angel...
Jul 19, 2021•45 min•Ep. 81
Originally from Denmark and now living in the US, Henrik Werdelin has been recognized as one of the “Top 100 Most Creative People In Business” by Fast Company and named to the “Silicon Alley 100” by Business Insider. His path to entrepreneurship took him through the BBC, MTV and Joost before he ended up creating Prehype, a “halfway house” for entrepreneurs like him, who didn’t know what to do next. Not only has Prehype incubated new ventures from scratch and in collaboration with Fortune 500 com...
Jul 05, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 80
Fabrice Grinda is one of the world’s leading Internet entrepreneurs and investors, with over 150 exits on 500 angel investments. When I first interviewed him for this podcast, way back in 2005, the then-31-year-old French native was in the process of packing up his office at Zingy, the mobile media start-up he’d founded in 2000. After growing Zingy to $200 million in revenue, Fabrice had sold the company for $80 million in 2004. Eighteen months later, he was stepping down as CEO and looking ahea...
Jun 22, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 79
Guy Kawasaki’s name has become almost synonymous with tech entrepreneurship and evangelism. Over the past 25 years, he’s had a hand in advising a generation of tech start-ups and innovators, either directly, through stints at Apple and Google, or through his writings, speaking engagements, podcast and numerous books. Guy has started up a few of his own companies as well, and the venture capital fund he launched, Garage Technology Ventures, has invested in a variety of early-stage technology comp...
Jun 07, 2021•44 min•Ep. 78
CD Baby founder Derek Sivers made two appearances on Venture Voice in the early days of this podcast. In our first conversation, he described the process of growing the company into one of the largest sellers and distributors of independent music online, with $25 million in revenue and 50 employees at the time. This week we’re revisiting our second conversation, which happened three years later. What a difference three years makes. In August 2008, Derek, who owned 100% of the equity, sold the co...
May 24, 2021•43 min•Ep. 77
Born into a family of entrepreneurs, LivePerson founder and CEO Robert LoCascio always had the entrepreneurial spirit, going back to his teens when he and a friend started an auto detailing business. After graduating college, he had a brief stint in a “real” job, but that experience — he ended up getting fired via fax — convinced him that he never wanted to work for someone else again. Determined to control his own destiny, he took out $50,000 on credit cards to fund his first business, IKON. Wh...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 76
This week we’re revisiting my 2007 interview with Tom Perkins, who was one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists. The firm Tom co-founded, Kleiner Perkins, is responsible for funding some of the most well-known companies of the past four decades, including Google, AOL, Genentech, Sun Microsystems, Compaq and Tandem Computers. With that track record, Tom’s name is now almost synonymous with venture capital. But he actually cut his teeth as an entrepreneur. Educated at MIT and Ha...
Apr 26, 2021•41 min•Ep. 75
Jon Oringer is not a professional photographer. But when he needed images to market his growing internet business, the traditional stock agencies were still stuck in the world of print, so he took the DIY approach. What started as a way to fill a need for his own company turned into a side business that quickly gained traction. So quickly, in fact, that he turned his attention to it full time. Jon built Shutterstock on a “two-sided marketplace” subscription model that has its roots in Pop-Up Eli...
Apr 12, 2021•59 min•Ep. 74
Fred Turner was only 16 when he built his first PCR machine, a tool used to amplify small segments of DNA or RNA. He was interested in sequencing his own genome, but he soon discovered there were others who had a need for these kinds of cheaper, faster testing capabilities. When English pedigree farmers came calling, he pivoted his attention to agriculture, but soon found himself in need of funding to be able to scale to meet demand. That led him to the US, where he went through Y Combinator, wh...
Mar 29, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 73
How do you start a whole new category of beverage — without any experience in the beverage industry? This week, we dip back into the archives for my 2005 interview with Sharelle Klaus, founder and CEO of DRY Soda. A former dot-com entrepreneur with a passion for food and wine, Sharelle was fed up with the lack of sophisticated beverage options available to her when she went out to eat while pregnant with each of her four children. She channeled that frustration into the launch of a startup focus...
Mar 15, 2021•49 min•Ep. 72
It was a real treat to interview Food52 CEO and co-founder Amanda Hesser, who’s an old friend going back to my early days in the New York startup community. Listening to her tell the story of her entrepreneurial journey, you get the sense that she’s lived many lives — from studying food history alongside classmates like Corby Kummer and Sheryl Julian to apprenticing in a bakery in Germany (where she was the only woman in the kitchen) to sharpening her cooking and writing skills at a Chateau in B...
Mar 01, 2021•55 min•Ep. 71
Sometimes, a big mistake can trigger a big idea. In 2003, Mike McDerment was running a small web design agency when he accidentally saved over an old invoice. Frustrated and looking for a better way to bill clients, he decided to build the better way himself. The solution he came up with would become the foundation for FreshBooks, a cloud-based accounting software for freelancers and service-business owners, which is now the #2 small business accounting software in America, with around 500 emplo...
Feb 15, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 70
We’re heading back to the archives, this time revisiting my 2006 interview with Steve Hindy, co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery. Steve’s career journey, both as a foreign correspondent before he took the entrepreneurial leap, and as a brewery owner, is the stuff of blockbuster movie fare. After all, being robbed at gunpoint and being threatened by the mob are not problems the average entrepreneur encounters (thankfully!). Steve and his co-founder Tom Potter forged ahead through the ups and downs of ...
Feb 01, 2021•45 min•Ep. 69
Like most successful entrepreneurs, Mark Wilson, CEO of Chime Solutions, is an ambitious and savvy business person who’s driven by a strong work ethic and desire to make an impact. But when Mark founded his first company, Ryla, he was inspired by more than just the opportunity to build a business. Throughout his life, he had seen how talented people from minority communities often didn’t get the same chances as others who had more advantages. First with Ryla, which he ultimately sold for $80 mil...
Jan 18, 2021•56 min•Ep. 68
Today, Evan Williams is most well-known for being the billionaire co-founder of Twitter, as well as Blogger and Medium. But back in 2005 when this episode was recorded, Twitter hadn’t even been conceived of yet. When we spoke, Ev had just raised about $2 million in venture capital money for a hot new podcasting company he was about to launch called Odeo. Spoiler alert: Odeo didn’t make it. But a little side project had promise, and about a year after this interview was conducted, he and his part...
Jan 04, 2021•40 min•Ep. 67
It’s a special holiday edition of Venture Voice, and the holiday we’re celebrating is Festivus. You may know it from the hit TV series Seinfeld, where the holiday “for the rest of us” is featured in the episode “The Strike” as an invention of George’s dad, Frank. Festivus was, in fact, invented by someone’s dad, but as you’ll hear in this episode, it wasn’t George Costanza’s; it was Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe’s. Dan shares how he reluctantly turned a family holiday memory he’d long tried to rep...
Dec 21, 2020•49 min•Ep. 66
Dec 07, 2020•52 min•Ep. 65
Nov 23, 2020•55 min•Ep. 64
Nov 09, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 63
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman was one of my first guests on Venture Voice, back in 2006. Even though LinkedIn had 7.2 million users by then, it was still very much a niche platform and had only 56 employees. Putting your resumé online for all the world to see was pretty uncommon at that time. But Reid was driven by a simple goal: to change the world. Revisiting this interview now, you can pick up on some of the clues as to why he would become so successful. He takes an almost philosophical appro...
Oct 26, 2020•55 min•Ep. 62
Mark Cuban has built and sold more than one company and invested in plenty of others, but you might be surprised to learn that what he values most is something a lot of entrepreneurs find much more elusive: time. It’s a lesson this natural-born businessman learned from his father and took to heart at an early age. This episode begins with a trip back to Mark’s early years and explores how he made his first million (and then billion) — and why he continues to be driven by the pursuit of freedom t...
Oct 13, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 61
Today’s media executives plotting to charge for their content would do well to hear how Larry Kramer beat Jim Cramer’s TheStreet.com by resisting pressure to put most content behind a pay wall while not relying entirely on advertising. To the average consumer, MarketWatch.com …...
Sep 27, 2009•1 hr 25 min
Any shareholder in a startup can tell you there’s a big difference between paper wealth and cash. Short of an IPO or outright acquisition, there are few options to cash out for the shareholders of even the most thriving private companies. …...
Aug 09, 2009•1 hr 4 min
“Dial 1 for sales, dial 2 for support…” Ten years ago it cost over $10,000 to get a phone system with the advanced options we’re used to hearing when we call big companies. Having a professional-sounding phone system was a surprisingly big challenge for small businesses short on cash. …...
May 20, 2009•1 hr 8 min
Craigslist seems unbeatable. It’s often blamed (or celebrated) for destroying the classifieds business that helped keep American newspapers afloat. Now second-time Venture Voice guest Fabrice Grinda is seeking to dominate online classifieds with OLX, his latest venture. Unlike Craigslist, OLX is translated into many languages and has a global focus. …...
Apr 27, 2009•1 hr 14 min
Joel Spolsky first came on Venture Voice over three years ago to discuss his company which he launched in a very different way from most entrepreneurs. Rather than start with the big idea and pay lip service to building a great team, Joel focused on getting great programmers first. …...
Apr 13, 2009•1 hr 9 min
Graham Hill started the blog TreeHugger to cover green issues in 2003. After a steady climb in traffic and advertising, Graham sold the company to Discovery Communications in 2007 for $10 million. Since launch and even after the acquisition, Graham ran his business virtually. …...
Mar 23, 2009•1 hr 5 min
It takes only a few seconds to customize a radio station on Pandora. Its founder Tim Westergren has been struggling for almost a decade to make it that way. Pandora was five years in the making before it streamed a single song to a user. …...
Mar 09, 2009•55 min
The title financier conjures images of mahogany desks and million dollar checks for most. But for anyone pitching to David Cohen’s TechStars, the outcome is getting accepted to what’s essentially a summer camp for entrepreneurs in Colorado and being offered a check of $18,000 or less in exchange for 6% of the startup. …...
Jan 28, 2009•51 min
