Angelneers: Insights From Startup Builders

Chris O'Neill is an operator, advisor, and investor with over 20 years of experience. His most recent operating role was as the turnaround CEO and Chairman of Evernote. Over the course of his career as a technology operator, Chris has seen his share of storms — from the dot-com bust to the financial crisis of ‘08-’09, as well as the turnarounds of some iconic brands. In this episode, we talk with Chris about the lessons learned and mistakes made from operating in previous downturns and turning around Evernote.

Eugene Fooksman is a software pioneer and one of the first hires at WhatsApp. In this episode, Eugene shares his insider's perspective on the world's largest communications network.

Nicolai Baldin is the Co-Founder and CEO at Synthesized, a startup built by Machine Learning researchers from the University of Cambridge. In this episode, we are talking about Nicolai's experiences of facing and overcoming challenges as the 1st-time founder. 

Cameron Kramlich is a VC turned entrepreneur. He co-founded and then catalyzed businesses that generate over $300 million in annual revenue while creating thousands of jobs on 2 continents. In this episode, Cameron shares his insights about developing a Billion Dollar Idea.

Eldar Sadikov is the Co-Founder and CEO at Jetlore, a SaaS machine learning platform for e-commerce personalization and product recommendation. Jetlore ranked #12 among the Fastest Growing Companies in the Bay Area in 2017. It was acquired by PayPal in 2018. In this episode, we are going to talk about Eldar's experiences of facing and overcoming the Founder's challenges. 

In this episode, we discuss how to find a Go-To-Market Fit with Bob Tinker, the founding CEO of MobileIron, which was named the fastest growing technology company in the world and ranked #1 in Deloitte’s Fast 500 Index as it experienced explosive growth during a 5 year stretch from 2009 to 2013. In addition, Bob co-authored two books on the topic of building enterprise startups called "Survival to Thrival".

In this episode, we are discussing the ethics of AI with Cameron Turner, CEO of Datorium, a company that creates AI solutions for Fortune 500 companies and major organizations. In the past, Cameron has led a number of startups. He is an angel investor and has authored several patents and publications.

Mark Swendsen brings two decades of experience leading global sales teams for startups and public companies. He is a Chief Revenue Officer at DNAnexus and has expertise in creating go-to-market focus, as well as scaling the revenue engines of emerging tech companies. In this episode, we are addressing two topics. First, how a startup should build a sales organization that fits its stage, and, second, how startups can leverage account-based marketing campaigns.

Jim Obsitnik brings 25 years of experience building successful Internet businesses in healthcare, logistics, retail, automotive, manufacturing, and mortgage industries. Most recently Jim was a Chief Operating Officer at Capsilon, a cloud-based digital platform for mortgage space that was acquired by Ellie Mae in October of 2019. He's also a founding investor and advisor to numerous startups at the Batchery incubator. In this episode we discuss what founders should know about defining core values and culture for startups.

Marc Degenkolb is an Operating Partner at Angelneers. He brings a wealth of 20 years of experience building enterprise software sales teams and delivering revenue growth for both established and startup companies. In Part 2 of the episode, we continue discussing sales best practices.

Marc Degenkolb is an Operating Partner at Angelneers. He brings 20 years of experience building enterprise software sales teams and delivering revenue growth for both established and startup companies. In Part 1 of this episode, we begin to tackle sales best practices.

Julian Zegelman is an emerging venture investor, serial entrepreneur, and the founding partner at Jaguar Capital Advisors, a boutique investment bank and multi-family office. In this episode, we talk about the nuances of fundraising for Seed and Series A rounds.

Gustav Lindqvist brings well over a decade of experience in data science with a demonstrated history of leading teams building data infrastructure, data products as well as uncovering actionable insights. Most recently he headed data science at Medium and prior to that led product and tech analytics at Spotify. Gustav currently consults several SF Bay Area-based startups.

Jeff Gray brings 20 years of experience in sales, software delivery, engineering, operations and strategy. Most recently he was a VP of Business Operations at Domino Data Lab, a machine learning platform that focuses on the needs of enterprises with large teams of code-first data scientists. The company is funded by Sequoia and several other VCs. Prior to that, Jeff was a VP of Business Operations at CoreOS, a leader in the Kubernetes community that was acquired by Red Hat for $250M in Jan of 2018. In this episode we talk about scaling a startup from $1 to $10 million in revenue.

Igor Plotnikov brings 30 years of technology product development experience. He has held a number of senior engineering management positions and had co-founded a string of startups that led to $1B+ in product sales. Two of his startups were acquired by F5 Networks and Cisco. One of the startups that he'd worked for during the mid-90s had been acquired by the Netscape Communications. In this episode, we talk about how to hire top-notch engineers and build highly productive teams.