Startup Advice

Please take the 2019 Acquired Survey. It takes 5-10 minutes, helps us immensely, and you may win a pair of new AirPods or a free 1-year subscription to the LP show! http://acquired.fm/survey We wrap ...Show More

Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says there's a lot about navigating the venture capital world that entrepreneurs don't understand. Some can't figure out how to get in the door. O...Show More

Alex Schultz gives an overview of Growth for startups, speaking from a position of authority as the VP of Growth at Facebook.Lecture Transcript: tech.genius.com/Alex-schultz-lecture-6-growth-annotated...Show More

Caterina Fake was on her way to life in academia as a Renaissance literature scholar when the tech world came knocking. She co-founded Flickr, the hugely popular photo-sharing site, and started a hand...Show More

When Sophia Amoruso started selling vintage clothing on eBay from her tiny San Francisco apartment, she had no idea that one day she would be at the helm of a fashion brand valued at 350 million dolla...Show More

When Andrew Mason started Groupon 10 years ago he was in his mid-20s, fresh out of grad school, and running a company for the first time ever. Within 2 years Groupon was called the fastest growing com...Show More

In this episode, Arlan shares an impromptu interview recorded on her iPhone with Brett deMarrais, Partner at Detroit-based Ludlow Ventures. Listen in as they discuss the challenges of scaling a pre-se...Show More

In your company’s darkest moment, remember: You CAN pivot from failure to success. But only if you slash and burn everything that isn’t working. Slack’s Co-Founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield has twic...Show More

On this episode I'm visiting Benchmark Capital, one of the world's most renowned venture capital firms, at their offices in the heart of the Tenderloin in San Francisco to chat with two of its general...Show More

Today's episode of Product Hunt Radio is the largest gathering yet, featuring Arlan, Christie, Bryan, and Amiah from the Backstage Capital team. Arlan Hamilton isn't your typical VC. She went from be...Show More

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm in the sunny hills of Los Angeles at the home of Sophia Amoruso with Suzy Ryoo. Sophia Amoruso is an incredible entrepreneur who I've gotten to know over th...Show More

I'm visiting Y Combinator's San Francisco headquarters to talk to two of the people who are integral to Y Combinator — Kat Manalac and Michael Seibel. Kat is a Partner at Y Combinator and one of the ...Show More

Anu Duggal and Sutian Dong are the partners of Female Founders Fund, where they invest in tech companies started by women. Anu began her career as an entrepreneur -- including starting India’s first w...Show More

At age 22, Whitney Wolfe helped launch Tinder, one of the world's most popular dating apps. But a few years later, she left Tinder and filed a lawsuit against the company alleging sexual harassment. T...Show More

Dreaming big is harder than you'd think. 

Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) has always been a product person. In a few short years, Ryan built an audience of tech enthusiasts from scratch and grew it into the massive and impactful community known as Pr...Show More

Why is it so difficult to recognize product-market fit before you find it? And how do you find it, anyway? Learn about the struggles the team behind Segment faced, and how everything changed after the...Show More

Jeff Ullrich was a struggling business manager with a drinking problem and a waning sense of professional direction when, in 2010, he saw an opportunity: podcasting. It was a brand new medium, and no ...Show More

In early 2015, Jen Rubio was racing through an airport to catch a flight when her suitcase broke, leaving a trail of clothing behind her. She tried to replace it with a stylish, durable, affordable su...Show More

In the early 1990s, Susan Griffin-Black was working for Esprit in San Francisco. On a business trip to London, she walked into a Covent Garden apothecary shop, picked up a bottle of lavender oil and t...Show More

In the second episode of our APLUSS(Z!) IPO saga, we dive into the history behind the planet’s largest non-social social network, Pinterest. From The Pirates of Silicon Valley to the bloggers of Salt ...Show More

What do Dropbox, Uber, AngelList, Front, Gusto and Boba Guys have in common? All have benefited from the sage advice of growth expert Andrew Chen. Now a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Andrew ...Show More

In 2004, two former Paypal engineers, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russ Simmons, were spit-balling new internet ideas. Out of their brainstorm came a site where you would email your friends asking for local ...Show More

No organization that’s entirely closed – or entirely open – can scale as successfully as an organization that combines both. Yes, organizations that are open invite a bit of chaos – but that chaos bre...Show More

Two active makers in the Product Hunt community join Ryan at AngelList in San Francisco for this week's episode of Product Hunt Radio. Hiten Shah was recently awarded Product Hunt Community Member of...Show More

Kimberly Kalb is the Head of Marketing & Growth at Houseparty, an app that takes the group chat to the next level with group video chat. Kimberly has a background in entertainment media technology, h...Show More

If you want to grow your business, your goal isn’t to beat the competition — it’s to escape the competition altogether. No one knows this better than Paypal founder Peter Thiel. “Competition is for lo...Show More

You can scale big with a simple idea (and a tiny team!) — but only if you catch the prevailing winds. That's what Kevin Systrom did when he co-founded Instagram: The simple photo app tapped the right ...Show More

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm in Los Angeles talking to Brian Norgard and Jeff Morris Jr., both of whom may be indirectly responsible for a generation of “Tinder babies”. Brian Norgard i...Show More

Want actionable advice from a founder who has built multiple tech companies and has invested the time to be open, introspective, and transparent about lessons learned? In this episode (which original...Show More

We’re so used to thinking of “community” as our friends, families, and neighbors. But what a community is, and who it is made of, has changed thanks to the internet, and without our noticing it. What ...Show More

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd knows: The smallest feature can make or break your product. The challenge is recognizing the impact of that feature – and making sure it’s actually positive. This is ...Show More

What is the number one cause for failure in early-stage startups? Team issues! In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, Tina Seelig interviews executive coach Michael Terrell. Michael is the founde...Show More

As tech companies come under fire for mishandling our data, with one blog post, a young software engineer forced these firms to share some of the most damning information they keep: the demographics o...Show More

Ritu Narayan founded Zūm in 2014 to solve a problem that working parents (herself included) face every day: transporting and caring for children before and after school. She describes her journey from...Show More

Casey Winters is the Growth Advisor in Residence at Greylock Partners. Casey got interested in growth via his background in marketing and his holistic approach to helping Apartments.com achieve quick...Show More

This episode, we're joined by Emily Lonetto, who works in growth at Clio and calls herself "strangely obsessed" with onboarding. She's built several onboarding flows in her career and gives us the ...Show More

Welcome back to another episode of Product to Product, the podcast for / by product people hosted by Roadmunk. This season, we’re taking a deep dive into growth and giving PMs practical, sustainabl...Show More

Three segments in this lecture:Tyler Bosmeny, founder and CEO of Clever, starts off today's lecture with an overview of the Sales Funnel, and how to get to your first $1 Million.Michael Seibel, founde...Show More

Mark Gainey is the co-founder and chairman of Strava, the rapidly growing social network used by more than 40 million people in 195 countries. From gold-medal efforts to weekend jogs around the park, ...Show More

Stitch Fix founder and CEO Katrina Lake talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the future of fashion, how the company has changed in the past nine years, and the rarity of female tech CEOs. In this ep...Show More

In this episode of To Be Continuous, Edith and Paul discuss how you should use the principles of Continuous Delivery to find product/market fit for your startup, tool, or service. Along the way, they ...Show More

YC Partner Kevin Hale walks us through the process of evaluating ideas and how founders should think about their startups.

YC Partner Eric Migicovsky outlines a framework for asking questions and collecting feedback from your users.

YC Partner Dalton Caldwell gives insight into how YC admissions works and what makes for a successful YC experience.Clarification on the Application video: Founders can splice together a video if they...Show More

Mari Sheibley is a Product Designer at Instagram. Mari has a background in fine arts, before she transition into graphic design. When she first moved to New York, she took a bunch of odd jobs to make...Show More

Hannah Donovan is the CEO & Co-founder of Trash, a new startup that’s currently building a predictive video editing platform for creators. Hannah’s passion for media and design in all forms goes back...Show More

Andy Carvell is the author of the Mobile Growth Stack and a Partner at Phiture, a mobile growth consultancy. Andy began his career as a mobile game developer with Nokia, where he created several game...Show More

"Punch above your weight" -- If there's one thing public relations (PR) should help startups and founders do, it's that. Unfortunately, some companies are actually punching below their weight when the...Show More

YC Partner Aaron Harris gives invaluable advice for how to most effectively and strategically meet with investors.Lecture SlidesLecture TranscriptVideo Link

YC Partner Kat Mañalac and Director of Marketing Craig Cannon describe the most effective ways to use PR and content to help your companies brand and to find more users.Lecture SlidesLecture Transcrip...Show More

As DTC brands grow up, they begin to look a lot like traditional brands. The challenge then, is differentiation. The solution: better data management. MM. LaFleur, the “bento box” pioneer of women’s w...Show More

Hunter Walk, a partner at early stage venture firm Homebrew, says reactions around brand safety are overblown. He talks advertising, investing and the problem of platforms in this show.

At #ProductSF, Greylock's Sarah Tavel is joined by Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann to talk about the evolution of his roles as both CEO and product leader at a high growth company. Ben shares how ...Show More

There is no consistent quantifiable definition of engagement across different products, but if you make user engagement a priority there are loads of quick wins to be had.

The Co-founder of Benchmark Capital & Wealthfront explains the most important goal of a startup: how do you find product-market fit? As the man who coined the term, he’s the expert—and in this episode...Show More

Nextdoor today is worth more than $2 Billion and is used by 250,000 neighborhoods throughout the world. Silicon Valley types had doubts about their approach, but Sarah offers valuable ideas for findin...Show More

With $12,000 and a mascot named Snoo, two former college roommates designed a web site they hoped would become "the front page of the Internet." Today, despite growing pains, personal issues and persi...Show More

Season 5, Episode 10: The Lean Startup and the Long-Term Stock Exchange (with Eric Ries) Acquired closes out Season 5 and 2019 with a radical look into both the past and future decades of startup com...Show More

We often get asked, “what type of content is on the Limited Partner Bonus Shows?” Well, we figure an episode is worth a thousand words (er, something like that), so we’re releasing one of our LP bonus...Show More

Gaurav Jain is Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital, one of the west coast's leading pre-seed funds with a $124M fund focused purely on pre-seed. To date, they have backed the likes of Petal,...Show More

The best opportunities are often in the long tail where no-one is looking. This is one of the reasons why startups have an advantage over established businesses - unique strategies can be quickly test...Show More

Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moores is the most influential book on technology go-to-market ever written, and for good reason. In this episode, Mike Maples Jr from Floodgate talks to Geoffrey Moore ...Show More

In this episode, Jake Tyler, the CEO of Finn.ai, talks conversational banking, scaling a business effectively with spend culture, and balancing growth perspectives while also being financially respons...Show More

The first in a series of special episodes with tools you need RIGHT NOW | Suddenly, many of us are remote workers. As companies radically reimagine their day-to-day in response to the pandemic, we all...Show More

What is Growth Marketing and what are the most effective ways to do it? How does content, SEO, and persona creation play into growth? In this episode, we sit down with growth expert Anum Hussain to di...Show More

with @annieduke, @pmarca, and @smc90 Every organization, whether small or big, early or late stage -- and every individual, whether for themselves or others -- makes countless decisions every day, un...Show More

Calling all K-Pop fans and music lovers to the stand! We brought on two of our resident K-Pop experts to discuss stan culture, the different expectations of artists in Korea, and what going “mainstrea...Show More

My guest this week is Turner Novak, a partner at Gelt VC. Many of the largest companies in the world today are consumer social companies, so Turner and I discuss the past, present, and future of those...Show More

My guest this week is Sarah Tavel, a general partner at Benchmark, working alongside past guests Bill Gurley and Chetan Puttagunta. Sarah has a long history as both an investor and as an operator.  Sh...Show More

THE DADDY OF ALL DADDIES HAS ARRIVED. Miley Fucking Cyrus joins the show this week and immediately hits it off with your father. Miley is officially Daddy Gang and spills an extreme amount of tea this...Show More

Today on the show we are chatting with Ned Fulmer. Ned is a member of The Try Guys, an online video comedy series, which was originally created with 3 other co-workers while working at BuzzFeed. The T...Show More

Jay Kennedy (@jameswkennedy), Chief of Staff at Floodgate, and Rishi Tripathy (@rishi_tripathy_), Chief of Staff at On Deck, join Erik on this episode. They discuss:- The Chief of Staff role and how i...Show More

A disagreement on Twitter leads to a Skype call

Sophia Amoruso returns to the Girlboss Radio podcast—but this time as a guest.  The founder and former CEO of Girlboss left in 2020 just after the pandemic hit. After all, what’s left for an events co...Show More

Reverse engineering success

Onboarding isn't just about employees. The often overlooked step-by-step process – to join a product or company – lays the foundation for everything that follows. No one knows this better than Melanie...Show More

Evan Britton is the founder of Famous Birthdays, the de facto celebrity wikipedia offering 200,000 biographies with a focus on Gen Z social media stars and creators. Evan founded Famous Birthdays in...Show More

After emigrating from Nigeria to the US to attend college, Tope Awotona worked as a door-to-door salesman and eventually set out to become a tech entrepreneur. He launched a series of e-commerce busi...Show More