Learn From Proven Entrepreneurs

How do you take an idea that no one’s ever heard of before and make it into a business with 750,000 members?

I invited Jennifer Hyman & Jennifer Fleiss of Rent The Runway to Mixergy so we could learn they did it. Their innovative idea was to create a site that lets its members rent dresses and accessories at a fraction of the price of purchasing them. This is the story of how they tested, built and grew their vision.

How do you convert your product vision into an actual product?

Joining me for this program to help answer that question I invited Jess Pugsle of Fusionapps, because he’s the guy I call up when I’m trying to figure out how to use software to solve my audience’s problems.

This is the place where I usually write an intro to help you figure out if you should invest an hour and listen to the interview I recorded for you, but I can’t really put into text why this is such a good interview.

Yes, as…

The TechStars accelerator program is big with my audience because it helps launch dozens of smart startups every year.

I did this interview to learn about David Tisch, the man who brought TechStars to New York and is the local Managing Director of the program. In this interview you’ll hear about his entrepreneurial background (including a good example of why entrepreneurs shouldn’t allow themselves to be trapped inside big companies) and how he makes his investment decisions.

A few weeks ago I said that I wanted to create educational products that are so actionable the Mixergy audience would be eager to pay for them. The problem was, to quote that post, I had “no freakin’ idea what to create.”

Well…

Imagine leaving your country to go to school and suddenly there’s a revolution that prevents you from going back home. How would you rebuild your life?

That’s what happened to Saeed Amidi after the Iranian revolution. This is the story of how he hustled and built himself up, and how he went on to help hundreds of tech startups grow, including PayPal, which leased office space from him and became one of his first angel investments.

When OrganizedWisdom’s co-founder, Unity Stoakes, launched his business he wrote out his ideal list of advisers, supporters and board members. The list included tech investor and visionary Esther Dyson, and former Time Warner head, Gerald Levin.

This is the story of how he turned his wish list into reality and his advice for others who want to do the same.

Phil LaBoon was the wiz kid who got a lot of press for launching a company that sold breathalyzer keychains. From there he went on to build a real estate company that made millions. But a bad partnership led him to lose it all.

That’s when he…

As a high school student, Ben Milne say on his couch till he wore a deep groove in it and sold speakers online. He says his promotion strategy in the early days was answer audiophiles’ questions on message boards and link them to his online speaker store, Elemental Designs.

Listen to the full interview to hear how he got his first customers, how he celebrated his first million and why he decided to sell the company.

To follow that up, he created Dwolla, which is…

As a developer who worked for other companies, Amy Hoy says she felt like a kept woman. She was earning good (thought not great) money, but didn’t get to see a creative visions to completion.

This is the story of how she won her liberation by…

I was nervous on my trip to Atlanta because I was scheduled to give a keynote at StartupRiot and I didn’t have time to prepare a talk. To figure out a solution (and to prep for this interview) I read Peter Guber’s new book, Tell to Win, about how storytelling can make you more persuasive.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I gave my talk, and…

Using nothing but a phone and his willingness to keep going after repeatedly hearing “no,” Lawrence Watkins built Great Black Speakers into a $60,000 per month speakers’ bureau.

I invited him to hear both the story of how he built his company and how a speaker can go from obscurity to national prominence.