The Growth Show

There are so many advantages to starting a company that didn’t exist 10 years ago, but founders and CEOs face more competition than ever. At Alchemist Accelerator, Ravi Belani has helped budding companies navigate these changes - and as a result, has many lessons to share. In this episode, Ravi gives some concrete advice about how to break into the startup scene in 2016, explains why growth purgatory is much worse than hell, and why persistence is more important than intelligence.

Chris Messina invented the hashtag and the concept of coworking spaces. Today, he works for Uber as a Developer Experience Lead. In this episode, Chris explains that the best thing you can do is to give your work away for free, why conversational interfaces will become commonplace by 2020, and how having an open source philosophy can make the internet a more diverse place.

A former journalist turned communications strategist, Karen Wickre has lead communication efforts for both Google and Twitter. Today, she advises other prominent companies on building an effective communication strategy. In this episode, she tells us where companies go wrong when trying to work with journalists, how to avoid mind-numbingly bad copy, and how content creators should work with the rest of the company to convince the rest of the company that their work is vital.

Buying clothing secondhand is nothing new -- but the way Anthony Marino is growing threadUP is. Before moving to thredUP, Marino worked for Virgin, under Richard Branson. He says thredUP is building many of Branson’s sensibilities into their growth strategy: Get the economics right first, then build your brand. In this episode, he talks about his personal crash course in ecommerce, how he innovates in a longstanding industry, and why consensus hiring is such a mistake for a growing company.

Hiten Shah has co-founded several successful businesses (Kissmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Quick Sprout), and advises an impressive roster of high-growth companies in his spare time. In this episode, Hiten shares some of his first-hand knowledge with us. He talks about how to avoid the common growth trap new companies fall into, what makes a great founder, and what you need to do to run a successful remote company. He even tells us a secret to parenthood!

Have you ever been tortured by an idea? Amy Chang, CEO of Accompany, knows this feeling well. In fact, it’s what drove her to leave her seven-year stint at Google to start something new. In this episode, Amy shares her thought process behind some of her bolder decisions - from leaving Google to raising $20 million in three years with a product in beta - and the lessons she learned along the way.

While at Stanford University 12 years ago, Ramit Sethi made a big promise to the readers of his blog: He would teach them to become rich. Though he may regret his website’s name today, no one can question the following his blog, subsequent best-selling book, and numerous spin-off projects have amassed. In this episode, Ramit shares his story of turning his side project full-time, along with his advice on receiving feedback, dodging the typical new entrepreneur pitfalls, and mastering the art of persuasion.

Earlier this year, all looked rosy at Buffer. But one day, Buffer’s CEO Joel Gascoigne and the rest of the management team realized their math didn’t add up. Buffer would be out of money in just five months. After running the numbers, the path seemed clear: They had to lay off 10% of their staff. In this episode, Joel shares how he navigated this tough decision, pivoted after realizing he made a mistake, and restored the company's faith in their vision through radical transparency.

Getting teams across an organization to work together fluidly, transparently, and productively can be a serious challenge - but it’s one Michael Pryor, CEO of Trello, is on a mission to solve. And for all measures, his company is on the fast track to solving it. In this episode, Michael shares the lessons he learned turning a side-project into an international company, and the tough things he had to learn along the way.

Rob Go, Co-Founder of NextView Ventures, knows what the future of business looks like. In fact, he’s invested in it. As an early-stage VC, he’s backed many companies that made it big. In this episode, Rob shares his thoughts on what it takes to get traction for your product and what else he looks for in companies he invests in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're bringing back one of our listeners' all-time favorite guests: Guy Kawasaki. In January 2015, Guy came on the show to talk about some of his counterintuitive social media strategies. Today, he joins us to talk about what's changed since then: the Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories debate; making the most of Facebook Live; and lessons from his book, The Art of the Start 2.0, on building great businesses.

Julie Herendeen, a pioneer of the freemium model, knows better than most that sometimes your best marketing is free -- freemium to be exact. Julie’s experience has earned her the trust of top companies looking to implement a freemium model -- and in this episode, we get to cover just that. Julie schools us on how to avoid common pitfalls, induce virality, and succeed using the freemium model - in addition to the lessons she’s learned along the way.

We all have habits -- some good, some bad. But why are some habits easy to form and others impossible to break? Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, has spent years trying to figure out what makes some products and behaviors more habitual than others. In this episode, Nir shares his findings on the secrets to creating habit-forming products and how to leverage these behaviors in your business, career, and life.

We all want to create content people remember (and hopefully, act on). But what makes some pieces of content easier to remember than others? The Neuroscientist Carmen Simon has researched just that and shared her findings in her book, Impossible to Ignore. In this episode, Carmen shares her researched-backed insights on how to create content that leaves a lasting impression.

Henry Ward, CEO of eShares, thinks that if you want to build a great product, a great team, and a great company, you've got to get real with yourself on what you're bad at. In this episode, we talk with Henry about some of his weaknesses, and hear his perspective on management, feedback, organizational structure, and a few other hot-button issues he's blogged about on Medium.

What if one moment could change the course of your entire business? That pivotal moment came to Mike Brown, Founder of Death Wish Coffee, in the form of a free Super Bowl ad. In one night, their small business became a household name, all because they won a contest with Intuit. In this episode, Mike shares the story behind winning the $5-million-dollar ad slot, what it meant for the business, and how they dealt with quadrupling in size and revenue.

Lorrie Norrington knows how to grow a company. She’s racked up over 30 years of experience as a senior business executive building companies like DIRECTV, GE, Intuit, and eBay. In this episode, Lorrie shares lessons from her storied career on the benefits of taking enough time to analyze your problems, leading your team with transparency, and watching what your customers do (not what they say).

People tend only buy one or two different types of wine, and one company is on a mission to change that. Winc uses machine learning to give subscribers personalized wine recommendations and deliver those recommendations to their doorsteps. In this episode, we chat with Xander Oxman, co-founder and CEO of Winc, about his experience building the wine recommendation service, and what advice he’d give other entrepreneurs on starting a company around their personal passions.

In high school, Danielle Morrill started working at her father's business. After spending time as an analyst and the Head of Marketing for Twilio, she founded Mattermark, a business that helps companies uncover actionable insights in the wealth of data at their fingertips. In this episode, Danielle talks about expanding Mattermark’s target market, finding “work-life balance” when you start a company with close friends, and building a team when you’re early on in your startup’s journey.

In 2011, IBM Watson beat Jeopardy mega-champion Ken Jennings, signaling a seismic shift in computing. Like the human mind, Watson can process massive amounts of information --- but in a fraction of the time it would take a normal person. In this episode, Zachary Walchuk, developer evangelist at IBM Watson, shares how computers are starting to think a lot more like humans and what it means for our future.