Startup Stories - Mixergy

Startup Stories - Mixergy

Business tips for startups by proven entrepreneurs

Episodes

#2273 What happened to our partnership?

March 5, 2025
Before I partnered with Jesse Pujji, we were buddy-buddy. Texting all the time. When we got started, we got excited about the world of possibilities for our company. Now? Something is missing. I asked him about it. And about where he put his money, why he’s not launching more companies now, what he’s building with AI, and more.

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#2272 Aux: >$10mil advising private equity

February 21, 2025
When Kasey Grelle heard that private equity companies paid marketing agencies to evaluate companies they wanted to buy, she spotted a business opportunity. That realization became Aux Insights, the firm that’s become “the office of the CMO” for private equity companies. Listen to how they got clients & built their business.

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#2271 Tucker Max left & his business crashed

November 29, 2024
Tucker Max thought his business was worth $64 million. Then it nearly died. This is the story of how Scribe, the ghostwriting and publishing company rose, crashed, and rose again.

Tucker Max first became famous for his best-selling “fratire” books. He shifted to entre...

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#2270 Zillow laid him off, so he started his own company

November 22, 2024
Zillow laid him off. So John Doherty launched Credo a digital agency matchmaking firm. Exactly 7 years later — to the day — he sold the company. This is the story of how he built and sold Credo, and how he’s building his latest company, EditorNinja, which offers outsourced text editing.

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#2269 How the “My First Million” Guy Made his Money

November 15, 2024
Shaan Puri was exceptional at doing the Silicon Valley thing. Still, he says his newsletter was the fastest way he’s ever made money. Within a year of its creation, The Milk Road grew to 250k readers and a reported 8-figure exit.

Shaan Puri is perhaps most ...

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#2268 How is beehiiv making $15 mil per year?

November 1, 2024
They feel like the millionth company to offer email newsletter publishing. How are they growing so fast despite the competition? Tyler Denk is a big reason. A former Morning Brew employee, he took their growth techniques and turned them into a software company: beehiiv.

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#2267 This listener got a Mixergy guest to invest in her startup

September 20, 2024
Vlada Lotkina noticed something wrong at her daughter’s school. So she built the solution and sold it for 8-figures. It’s called ClassTag, and it’s a platform where teachers, parents and school administrators can communicate and send out announcements. No flyers, no ridiculously long emails… My favorite part is that she’s a Mixergy listener herself. She literally called a previous guest of mine and got him to invest before her busi...

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#2266 The $21M ARR Business That Sells Your Email Address

September 13, 2024
Adam Robinson struggled to compete with MailChimp. So he built software that’s too dangerous for them to build. Businesses that use Retention.com can instantly grab email addresses from anonymous website visitors — even if they never fill out a form. To promote his software he made himself into one of the few interesting follows on LinkedIn by picking fights, bringing drama and adding production values.

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#1952 How Microshare spunout contact tracing for b2b

July 1, 2020
Today’s guest created software that kept track of things like how often the janitor cleaned a bathroom in an office building. When COVID hit, his customers began cutting back. He could have really freaked out, but he realized his technology could help companies ensure their people stay far apart from each other The software pivoted to contact tracing and other features that keep people safe at work. I want to find out how he did it...

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#1867 How to forge relationships with other proven founders

December 13, 2019
The company today’s guest started has gotten a lot of attention for its partnership with Kobe Bryant. I want to learn how he forged not only that relationship but also Brian Lee of The Honest Company. Matthias Metternich is the co-founder of Art of Sport, which offers high performance skin care products. I want to find out how he survived hemorrhaging cash while he found his customers and how he formed meaningful partnerships with...

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#1559 Cameron Herold coaches me on hiring (so I don’t collapse at my desk)

February 14, 2018
Hiring has been a huge issue for me. And in a past interview with Cameron Herold, I brought it up because he’s the founder of the COO Alliance, the world’s leading network for the second in command. I don’t get embarrassed by a lot of stuff. If you heard my interviews, you hear me get pretty frank about my flaws, my mistakes. But this issue is something I was embarrassed about. I think if I don’t hire somebo...

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#1524 When does a startup founder need a COO?

November 22, 2017
A topic we don’t talk about on Mixergy is how to actually manage a company. I remember when I was in NYU as an undergrad I loved all my business classes, but management just didn’t feel like me. I always thought of the guys in Dilbert but entrepreneurs were the ones who were creating, the ones who were doing. Mixergy’s grown and I’ve been running it, but I have to be honest, I’m not doing a great job ...

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#1453 The future of chat (and interacting with your customers)

May 26, 2017
About a year ago I realized that no matter how much effort we’ve put into my email list, I could never double the response rate. We kept growing it, but people were not using email much. So I started looking around for solutions and I started looking at bots. Bots are basically software that communicates with humans via a chat app. I came across one company that looked too good to be true. It’s called ManyChat. And I sa...

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#1417 How Sam Ovens is helping everyday people start their own consulting businesses

March 3, 2017
I’ll be honest with you. I felt guilt about an interview that I did years ago with today’s guest. This was back in, let me see here, 2013. I interviewed Sam Ovens about how he built up this consulting business and was teaching people how to do consulting. I thought maybe I got taken for a ride. It was too good to be true. Then I started hearing people who were in his program talk about how big the program is. Then I sta...

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#1050 How a former lawyer built a multi-million dollar company that teaches social skills – with Jordan Harbinger

August 13, 2014
How does a former lawyer build a multi-million dollar company that teaches social skills. Jordan Harbinger is the co-founder of The Art of Charm, a company that teaches confidence and emotional intelligence.

Jordan Harbinger is the co-founder of The Art of Char...

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#1001 The 1,000 interview celebration

April 9, 2014
On August 4, 2008, I posted a video up on Mixergy where I looked up into the web cam on my computer and I said “I failed.” And I said that I was going to shut down my invitation business and start doing interviews with entrepreneurs and people in general who I admire so I can learn from them and take back what I’ve learned from them to build a more successful company in the future. And I said that along the way yo...

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#990 Andrew’s process for overcoming entrepreneurial stagnation – with Samantha Alford

March 10, 2014
A few weeks ago, Andrew was interviewed about his inner doubt by Samantha Alford of WomeninBusinesspodcast.com. I (Arie Saint) thought it was too good not to share with our audience, so I’m publishing it on Mixergy. Check it out and let’s talk about it in the comments.

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#715 HearAndPlay.com: Turning $70 Into A Multimillion Dollar Instruction Web Site – with Jermaine Griggs

April 23, 2012
Update: based on the comments we’re getting, Jermaine sent this PDF about Automation. How does a high school senior from the inner city turn $70 into a multimillion dollar instruction web site? Jermaine Griggs is the founder of HearAndPlay.com, which trains musicians to play by ear, trains them to play by ear with online music lessons and piano video tutorials.

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#710 iContact Founder Returns To Mixergy After $169M Sale – with Ryan Allis

April 9, 2012
How does a wristband help a founder build a $169 million company? Ryan Allis is the founder of iContact, a provider of email marketing tools for small businesses. And a company that was recently sold for $169 million to Vocus. Here’s a quote from the last time I interviewed him, “we incorporated in July ’03, lived in the office, slept on futons, cooked on a George Foreman grill, did whatever we had to do to keep expense...

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#400 Reddit Founder: “I Wish I Still Owned Reddit Now” – with Steve Huffman

October 20, 2010
Many founders I interviewed on Mixergy told me about how their companies virtually disappeared after they sold them. But 4 years after selling Reddit to Conde Nast, Steve Huffman is so proud of how much its grown that he’d be happy to still own it. I asked him to teach me how he grew his community, why some Y Combinator-backed founders, like him, succeed while others don’t get any traction and why he never resented his ...

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