Learn From Proven Entrepreneurs

$40 million. That’s how much Jeff Pulver got for the conference business he sold one day before September 11th.

In this interview, you’ll hear how he went from being an under-appreciated Wall Street employee to the forefront of an industry. And wait till you hear what happened after that.

How do you bootstrap a company to over $45 million in revenue?

To answer that question, I invited the founder of a company that recently passed that milestone. Dan Engel is the co-founder of FastSpring, a company that helps businesses sell software, games, eBooks, and other digital products online.

For Jean-Daniel Muller of Siel Bleu it’s not about the money. He got hooked on the idea of using exercise to help people in nursing homes have more fun and get healthier.

At first he felt a lot of criticism from people who thought he was endangering the elderly, but then…

How do you pioneer a new category and grow to over 1 million customers?

Joining me in this interview is David Friend, co-founder of Carbonite, the cloud-based backup solution that works automatically.

I invited him to Mixergy to hear how he built the business.

How do you make sure that you’re building a real business instead of just creating an overwhelming full-time job for yourself?

John Warrillow says build your business with its sale in mind. John used that mindset to transform his company, Warrillow & Co, from boutique consultancy into a…

Of all the ideas that T. A. McCan helped incubate at Vulcan Capital, what was it about Gist, the social address book, that made him want to run the company?

To me, his answer to that question is one of the most interesting parts of the interview. When you listen to him explain how he evaluated his options, I think it’ll…

Back by popular demand: Ken Yarmosh on Mobile Apps

Ben Chong says he didn’t know about the airline industry before co-founding Jetabroad, one of Australia’s leading online travel companies. This is the story of how he learned and why knowing how to run a business may be more important than understanding the industry it’s in.

We also spend a lot of time in this interview talking about Mobile Stop, the mobile phone reseller Ben co-founded in the late 90s.

I’ve never republished an old interview, but after reading Kara Swisher’s post about Wufoo’s sale to SurveyMonkey, I thought to myself, my audience has to hear the Wufoo story.

In this interview you’ll hear…

Most people will ignore this post because I used the word “failed” in the headline. Don’t make the mistake that they’ll make.

If you only admire successful companies and don’t examine the failed ones you won’t get a complete understanding of what it takes to build a business.

Eric Ingram gave one of the most insightful and useful startup postmortems that I’ve ever heard. If you listen to this interview, you’ll hear how RedTagCrazy generated over $800,000…

How does an upstart with no money become a giant in the mobile space.

The short answer is persistence. For the longer, more meaningful answer, listen to this interview. You’ll hear the story of how Ty Morse’s persistence helped him make Songwhale into a company that turns users with mobile phones into viral marketing machines.

I’m working on an upcoming Master Class on the business of mobile app development. Ken Yarmosh of Savvy Apps, who will be leading the course, offered to give 3 scholarships. If you want one, all you have to do is apply.