Jason Jacobs wants it all. As a father to young children, he wants to be active in their lives, but as an ambitious founder, he’s compelled to build and chase down opportunities that often require sacrificing the time with his family that he longs for. This is not a new tension for a repeat founder, but the current moment has presented Jason with a…

Mikey Shulman is having a great time. He’s running a rocket ship of a company, has $100M+ in funding from some of the top VCs, and is working on an opportunity that he’s passionate about. Mikey hit my radar because of a text from my friend TJ. His firm was an early backer of Suno, and he said that if any company they work with was going to hit our …

Today’s conversation with Mike Salguero went in a direction I really wasn’t anticipating. Initially, I was interested in talking to Mike because he’s lived multiple lives as a Founder. First, buying and then raising 10s of millions for a crafts persons marketplace called Custommade.com. Then, after winding down Custommade, starting what he would te…

By Bryce Roberts

"Would you be mad at us if we raised more money?" That was the text I got late one night from Will Pearce, co-founder and CEO of Dreadnode, a company we'd funded about nine months prior. I'd gotten to know Will through a cold DM he sent me. The DM had nothing to do with tech or investing, just starting a conversation. At the time, Will was working …

It is incredibly rare to have your startup become a verb. Google and Uber immediately come to mind. But what about when a group of strangers or friends with shared interests decide they want to get together? They, Meetup. Scott Heifferman didn’t set out with becoming a verb in mind but he certainly started Meetup with the intent of building somethi…

This is a spicy one! 🌶️ This week we sat down with Brandon Arvanaghi from Meow.com to discuss his journey from money burning crypto company to profitable fintech. His tweet last year about hitting the profitability milestone had some obvious, and some less intuitive, take aways from their experience. Everything from opting out of the VC treadmill t…

Late last year, we sat down with Eric Ries, who fundamentally changed how we think about building startups through The Lean Startup. Only Eric can make corporate governance sound poetic. The conversation took an unexpected turn as we delved into what Ries calls "vampire founders" - leaders who feel immortal yet isolated, watching employees come and…

Making any kind of time bounded predictions about where AI will be in the year of our lord 2025 is a fools errand. But, we’re suckers for this stuff, so we asked Jackie from Tribe to revise the State of AI download we did last year and orient it to what she sees coming for AI in the enterprise in the new year. No sooner did we record the conversati…

On my flight to NYC last week, I casually asked if there were any events happening in the city while I was there. Reggie, who you may remember from his New Hardware video, and as the person who coined the term “indie-pilled”, replied that we should do one of our own. So we did. Thankfully we had our cameras in tow and were able to record the conver…

Chris Anderson can’t talk a lot about what he is up to these days. At least on camera. His LinkedIn profile says he’s currently an Engineer at “Stealth". Prior to this current professional opacity, he was at Kitty Hawk, the electric aircraft maker founded by Sebastian Thrun (legendary Stanford Professor and former lead of Google’s self-driving car …

Soleio Cuervo is more than a chin on the internet. He’s more than an early design leader at Facebook and Dropbox. And he's more than an epic angel investor. He’s a truth seeker and truth teller. Or at least the truth as he sees it. Soleio was one of Facebook’s earliest designers, joining in 2005 when the company was still finding its identity. Duri…

Throughout the first year of indie’s return, I’ve felt a real sense of tension. That tension sat at the intersection of what indie was and what indie wants to be. In its earliest days, indie was often framed as an anti-VC, profit maxi path. Rigid in its philosophy and dogmatic in its practices. This positioning served as a counterbalance to the inv…

Once upon a time, when MTV played music videos, their more mature sister channel, VH1, had a show called “Where Are They Now”. The idea behind the show was to track down notable artists of previous generations to see where life had taken them once they’d stepped out of the spotlight. OK boomer, what does this have to do with the indieverse specific…

There’s a section of our website that generates more reaction than any single piece of content I’ve ever written. It says: We’re obsessed with the idea that someone is going to build a business doing $100M in revenue with less than 10 employees and see it as this generation of founders’ 4 min mile. Once someone shows it can be done, many more will …

A few weeks back in this very email, I put out a request for a new content format we wanted to experiment with that we called “Startup Confessionals”. From my note: If you, or founders you know, are willing to share a startup confessional, we’d love to help. We can make these totally anonymized or public, whatever you're comfortable with. We'll be …

As someone who entered the venture industry in the wake of the Dot-com crash, I have a deep appreciation for new managers, their entry point into the industry, and how that shapes their world view. For me, it was pure carnage for the first few years of “investing”. I put that in quotes because it was mostly triaging the portfolio and trying to asse…

A few weeks back, I was the morning speaker at an event hosted by David Senra of FoundersPodcast (one of my favorite podcasts and people). The afternoon speaker was someone I’d never heard of before, Shegun Otulana. The story he told resonated deeply — a Nigerian immigrant who came to study at the University of Alabama. He had the drive to be an en…

When I reached out to Charles Broskoski, co-founder of Are.na, it was largely because I kept hearing mention of the service he'd built increasingly entering the zeitgeist among young, creative technologists. What I thought would be a conversation about the tension between creativity in technology ended up being a much more nuanced conversation. Som…

After wrapping this week’s conversation with published author and ReadySet’s CEO, Y-vonne Hutchinson, I stepped out of the studio, opened my phone, and X was ablaze. In the year of our Lord 2024, a startup had decided that an anti-woke marketing campaign was the best possible way for them to generate attention for their payroll software company. Th…

Walking through Madison Square Park a year ago, @schlaf talked about transitions, something he knew a lot about. I first met Steve when he was a junior investing partner at RRE, a venture capital firm in New York City. At the time, Schlaf had the NYC startup scene in a chokehold. He had a reputation for hustling hard and winning some of the hottest…

In April 2015, I read an article that elicited a reaction I’d only had a few other times prior. We had just closed applications for our first round of experimental indie investments and had made most of our selections. The article in question was titled Instagram’s TMZ, not exactly a title that would typically grab the attention of a Mormon dad in …

A few years back, I got a DM from a founder wanting to meet and swap stories about adventures in entrepreneurship. Despite being backed by some of the top VCs in the world, they were taking a very different approach from the classic VC blitzscaling playbook. As we sat on the back patio of a bar in Brooklyn, it was clear that how Jori and his foundi…

In this conversation we unpack their journey of building a “lifestyle business”. Some takeaways: — Chris and Brendan emphasize the importance of patience, focus, and long-term thinking in building a sustainable business. They challenge the notion that raising large amounts of venture capital is necessary for success by finding that being profitable…

— Shift in Funding Landscape: There has been a significant shift in the funding landscape, with a decrease in year-over-year growth rates for SaaS companies. This change underscores the need for venture capitalists to adapt and explore different investment opportunities. We do our best to highlight the importance of diversifying investment strategi…

Product-market fit requires both customers willing to pay and stay. It’s not just about initial sales, but also retention. Early-stage sales should focus on research and understanding customer problems rather than immediate revenue generation. Founders often skip this crucial research phase. Abstract solutions require focusing on specific problems …

— Capital has no insights Eric argues that venture capital alone doesn’t solve business problems, and having more capital doesn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes. — Compounding value vs. negative value The importance of building companies that compound positive value over time, rather than scaling prematurely and compounding negative value. Fun…

Some takeaways: — There’s a significant gap between the hype around AI and its actual implementation in businesses. Many companies are still in the experimental phase, with few AI solutions in production. The main barriers to AI adoptions are technical challenges, cost considerations, and lack of expertise. We’re still very early in realizing AI’s …

A few takeaways from this conversation: — Early crypto applications were challenging to use and primarily attracted tech enthusiasts and speculators. Over time, the technology matured, making applications more user-friendly and broadening the user base. While there’s still a long way to go, the maturation of the technology also led to a shift in fo…

When you end an essay with a line like: "Majoring in computer science today will be like majoring in journalism in the late 90’s.” You’re bound to ruffle some feathers. In the case of Chris Paik’s “End of Software” essay, not only were feathers ruffled, but the entire farm was flustered. And then the pitchforks came out… Given the violent response …

This is really one you should watch on our YouTube. Like, all of them are. But this one has Will going to a White Board. What if we could know whether the business idea you can’t shake is worth pursuing? What if we could ensure that we're pairing the right ideas with the right capital sources to ensure the best possible outcomes? Will Quist, from S…

My friend, Michael Dempsey, Managing Partner at Compound, and I have an ongoing thread about the intersection of indie ideals and his areas of focus in deep tech. Most of these conversations happen over meals or online, so we decided to dive in a bit with the cameras on. Our conversation was as fun as it was wide ranging. I’ve watched for years as …

We invited our friend, Reggie James, to help unpack what's happening in hardware and break down what's behind many of the recent negative viral product review videos currently hitting the internet. Reggie is a longtime friend to indie and prolific advisor to many of this new crop of hardware startups in market and in development. He cuts right to t…

One of the most frequent requests we get is to hear directly from indie founders. Today's conversation is just that. And we did it in style. James Nord, founder of Fohr, has had a front row seat to indie having been one of the very first investments we made. In turn, I've had a front row seat for their growth from hundreds of thousands in revenue t…

I had the opportunity to know Christina Cacioppo early in her time at Union Square Ventures. Always whip-smart and ever curious, we found ourselves drawn to similar founders and edges of emerging markets. When her time at USV ended, we lost touch. She moved from NYC to San Francisco, took a job at Dropbox, and carried on with her post-VC life. Fast…

A few weeks back, we had the unique opportunity to sit down with Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder and former CEO of Github. We met in a church he recently renovated into an incredible event space and rolled the cameras to capture our wide-ranging conversation. Over the better part of an hour, we covered his early years, the founding and scaling of Gi…

Man, myth, legend and long time friend Tim Halperin joins Eric and Parker on this episode of the podcast. The guys talk to Tim about his new music, relationship advice, and "the Redditor." Tim even recommends a Christmas song and improvs a theme song for Eric and Parker Talk About Things and Stuff. Don't forget to subscribe for automatic uploads of…

The guys try to escape the election by talking with Chip Hanna (former coworker of Eric's) about his newborn, Teddy, and some of the crazy technology he has set up at home. Chip recently hosted a two part episode on fatherhood and leadership over on his company podcast, For You Leaders. Eric and Parker also share awkward birthday stories. https://d…

William returns to the podcast to chat with the guys about his recent travels and standup adventures. Eric and Parker also discuss what tv show their lives could be like, and commiserate with William on the awkwardness of shady bus rides. Side Note: The guys are working to improve the show and would love as much feedback as possible. Please feel fr…

Eric and Parker test some new audio by creating their first Throwback Thursday episode. The guys cover the Harry Potter movies and books, a Parks and Rec reference, debunk a Stranger Things theory, and take a walk down the Harvard Sailing Team memory path. Eric even admits something he never knew about the 85 Chicago Bears. And yes, the audio came …

Zack Hawkins joins the guys to talk about his job as a brewer at the new Fort Worth brewery Wild Acre Brewing. They also discuss how Zack met the podcast's longest tenured fan and share some stories about grandfathers passing beers around. http://wildacrebrewing.com Eric And Parker Talk About Things and Stuff RSS…

In this episode, the guys catch up with Ella Hartley, Mountaineer Extraordinaire. Ella joins the podcast to discuss her time in Colorado the last few years, as well as the 5 month long backpacking trip to New Zealand and the Te Araroa ahead of her. Ella is raising money for the Gruffie Scholarship Fund, a scholarship that will give young women the …

The guys sit down with repeat guest Sean Morton to discuss his recent travels, The Players Championship, helicopter simulators and how to find his dream girl at the grocery store. Plus, Parker throws out a dare. Eric And Parker Talk About Things and Stuff RSSBy Your Neighbors' Musings

Eric and Parker are back! In the first episode of season two, they discuss big life changes, what to expect from EAPTATAS this year, and baseball. After some mutual love towards the White Sox, the guys run down their projected division winners. Boom. Hurr we go. Eric And Parker Talk About Things and Stuff RSS…

Brian sits down with Collin Sansom, co-founder of Craftwork Coffee Co., to discuss moving to Fort Worth, advice for entrepreneurs, and sharing a futon with Riley Kiltz. http://craftworkcoffeeco.com/ Starting with Schafer RSSBy Your Neighbors Musings

Brian sits down with founder, Riley Kiltz, to discuss coffee, starting a business, and being a dad, in part one of a series of episodes with Craftwork Coffee Co. Stay tuned for next week's episode with Riley's business partner, and all-around cool guy, Collin Sansom. http://craftworkcoffeeco.com/ Starting with Schafer RSS…

Eric sits down with Sean and Brian to discuss the MLB Division Series. They pick winners for the Cubs - Cardinals game, Astros - Royals game, Blue Jays - Rangers game, and the Mets - Dodgers game. If you haven't seen Your Neighbors Musings postseason predictions, head over to the Two Strikes and You're Out section of this site. As a reminder, the g…

Kevin Severino and Sean Morton join the guys to talk about the MLB Playoffs, specifically the Wild Card matchups. This kicks off the EAPTATAS postseason series, starting with a rundown of the Yankees, Astros, Pirates and Cubs. Eric And Parker Talk About Things and Stuff RSSBy Your Neighbors Musings

After a far too long hiatus, the guys sit down with Matt Stoltz of Biking4Baseball. In order to raise awareness for Big Brothers Big Sisters, Matt is riding his bike around the country, stopping at every Major League baseball stadium. Eric and Parker get him to talk about how the trip is going, what you think about on a bike all day, and so much mo…

Brian sits down with long-time friend and Navy helicopter pilot, Corey Rollins, to discuss following your dreams, perseverance, and the importance of good eyesight. Starting with Schafer RSSBy Your Neighbors Musings