This Week in Startups - Video

Ari Levy of CNBC and Rolfe Winkler of The Wall Street Journal joined Jason for a must-see News Roundtable on This Week in Startups. An amazing discussion that kicked off with big deal of the week, Walmart snapping up Jet.com for $3b, that crackled on to Google, the government, anti-trust, the entire U.S. debt problem, the Chinese Market, the very future of energy (featuring, naturally, Elon), and the latest in startup CEOs behaving badly. And more.

There are few people in the industry who really do the work, and take the work seriously. Many investors don’t take the work as seriously as the founders take their work. Being an investor is a great privilege, especially if you started off as a founder first. There are very few examples of investors working harder or as hard as the founders that they invest in, but SaaStr founder, Jason Lemkin, is one of those rare exceptions of the people who take the investing seriously. In this episode, Jason gives an update to the presentation he gave at the Angel Summit.

Jason “jams out” a number of growth tips and e-commerce tips with founders in this special “Jam Session” episode of This Week in Startups. Melody McCloskey of StyleSeat talks about leveraging data to drive growth and engagement, while Edgar Blazona of BenchMade Modern shares tips on optimizing paid acquisition via segmentation and landing pages. Then, David Temple of Hello Scout explains how to use offline acquisition to create trust. At the end, Jason asks one of the most candid questions a founder can ask, “Tell me about a near death experience, the worst moment in running your business.”

George Hotz is known for unlocking the iPhone and PlayStation, but most recently, as being the founder of Comma.ai, an autonomous driving startup. He and his team built a driver assistant system that will get increasingly more sophisticated, also known as Level 3. George deconstructs the core components of his technology, and explains how it can compensate for human error in driving. And paired with the up-and-coming phone app called Chffr, soon, they will have technology where you can compare data and optimize your commute. His success has much to do with his philosophy of staying open--to build prototypes, to get it out there, and to move the world forward.

The world of startups is a dog-eat-dog world, and Antonio Garcia Martinez shares all in his brutally candid book “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley." Antonio shares his journey starting as a Wall Street Goldman Sachs Strat and witnessing the market crash, pursuing and enduring the trials and tribulations of startup life (complete with hefty legal and fundraising battles), negotiating a tricky twin Twitter acquisition deal that alienated his co-founders, landing as an esteemed Product Manager at Facebook during its heady crazy pre-IPO days, seeing his hard work in Ads come to a crushing, brutal end … only to be hired at Twitter. Trade secrets of tech giants, back-door deals, SV culture, personal hijinx -- all this and, believe it or not, much more.

Spanning 135 cities across the globe, and producing around 2000 companies per year, the Founder Institute has become one of the biggest, most impactful programs for early stage companies in the world. In this episode, Jason sits down with the Adeo Ressi, Founder and CEO of the Founder Institute, to find out what makes Adeo’s entrepreneurship program different from the host of other incubators and accelerators out there. Adeo gives some background and lessons learned as a founding member of TheFunded.com, and shares his process of detecting successful founders as well as predicting which entrepreneurs will fail. As the owner of the LAUNCH Incubator, Jason is in his element comparing and contrasting the structure and practice of the Founder Institute with his guest.

Today Jason is at San Quentin State Prison talking to prisoners participating in The Last Mile (TLM), a tech accelerator & training program to help prepare incarcerated individuals for successful reentry. Jason gives candid feedback on the products they’ve developed in their studies here. We see demos of Jason Jones’ GPA (Getting Parents Attention) that monitors and incentivizes good grades for student athletes, “Big Az” Ford’s f8, a connected fire prevention system, and Chris Schuhmacher’s Fitness Monkey, a platform to help users recover from addiction through health and fitness. Jason also answers tough questions about entrepreneurship, and the importance of making mistakes, overcoming obstacles, and staying true to oneself and one’s goals.

Jason connects with equity crowdfunding pioneer Ryan Feit to discuss the groundbreaking Title III law, giving way to a brand new form of startup fundraising. The fight to end “80-year-old laws” regulating investment freedom has come to an end under the new section of the JOBS Act. As the CEO and Co-Founder of SeedInvest, as well as being an integral player in the movement to pass legislation to allow civilians the right to invest in startups, Ryan’s expertise in this new era of fundraising is unparalleled.

Esteemed reporter Iain Thomson of The Register and seasoned entrepreneur Robert Scoble of Upload VR join Jason for a gripping News Roundtable on this episode of This Week in Startups. Robert starts off the discussion with some juicy background on some of the cutting edge tech in virtual reality, while Iain explains why nobody should be worried about Tesla’s autopilot feature following the fatal accident. The group then rips apart some of the more fantastical ventures, such as a new military beta-tested jetpack, and Larry Page’s investments in flying cars. Finally, with the world on the edge after Brexit, this news roundtable takes a natural turn into both global and domestic political issues, including terrorism, gun control, and national security.

“The internet is the great masterpiece of human civilization.” The world wide web has shaped the modern world in ways that the greatest creative minds of the past could never have imagined. Author, journalist, columnist and critic Virginia Heffernan joins Jason to discuss the impact of the internet and how that impact inspired her journey through the creation of her brand new book, “Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art.” With an unprecedented writing background ranging from Staff Writer at The New York Times to national correspondent at Yahoo News, Virginia has been long overdue for publishing her first book.

Immersive theater has been around for some time now, but “The Speakeasy” is turning heads -- since JOBS Act Title III took effect, it's the 1st crowdfunding theater project in the U.S. to offer equity. Jason sits down with David Gluck, the producer and general manager of the interactive 1920’s-themed theater experience “The Speakeasy,” to find out the process, pros and cons, and progress involved in the quest to opening day. Check out the show's Wefunder campaign here: https://wefunder.com/the.speakeasy.

Episode 653 of This Week in Startups is a special “Ask Jason” session filmed live at the Microsoft Reactor in front of an audience of up-and-coming entrepreneurs as a part of the Microsoft Global Startup Roadshow. From London, to Tel Aviv, to Beijing, founders from all over the world converge at Microsoft for this intimate Q&A session with Jason. One by one, Jason candidly answers questions on fundraising, mentorship & achieving product market fit as well as giving feedback on product pitches.

News Roundtable! Occupying the table with Jason are two distinguished tech journalists, Katie Benner of NYT Technology & Eric Newcomer of Bloomberg. There’s almost not enough time to cover all the biggest news in tech over the last few days. Between Gawker declaring bankruptcy, Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition and Walgreens ending its partnership with Theranos there is certainly no shortage of content today!

Trello CEO Michael Pryor sits down with Jason to talk about the business model that drove his company to such healthy and steady growth in Episode 651 of This Week in Startups. Grown to over 1.1 million users in just five years Trello has cemented itself in the world of enterprise software. Jason digs in deep to learn the secrets and hacks behind this young company’s success.

E650: Jam Session! Startup founders share best practices for customer management, satisfaction & success