Building founder/investor relationships and using grants to fund startups

Introducing The TechCrunch Live Podcast: Introducing The TechCrunch Live Podcast. Every Thursday we'll share the audio from TechCrunch Live which helps founders build better businesses and attract venture backing. We do this by engaging with experienced entrepreneurs and investors on their past wins and losses — particularly the pitches that helped build the business at an early stage. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

1 min listen

Raising capital from non-traditional investors: Okta's COO Frederic Kerrest and Front's Mathilde Collin speak on raising capital from non-traditional investors like operators. Throughout the episode, both Kerrest and Collin give actionable advice on fundraising, constructing pitch decks, and why a company should plan its next funding round based on confidence. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

60 min listen

Building Roboticists with Ayanna Howard and Ayah Bdeir: Ayanna Howard and Ayah Bdeir on the changing face of robotics. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

45 min listen

Building founder/investor relationships and using grants to fund startups: On this week's TechCrunch Live, Matt Burns hosted the CEO of Natel Energy and Breakthrough Energy Ventures partner, Libby Waymen. The pair spoke on building technology to address climate change, funding startups with non-dilutive capital, and creating and maintaining relationships with venture capitalists. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

56 min listen

Forethought AI's CEO explains the pitch deck that won Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2018: Hear Forethought AI's CEO talk through how the company found the best time to launch its service, win TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield, and navigate stiff competition. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

60 min listen

Building a better mobility fintech startup: QED incubated this auto financing company in 2016 and Kevin Bennett became CEO in 2018 and soon after raised its first seed round. It started as MotoRefi, and rebranded in November 2021 to Caribou. But the mission remains: Transforming consumers’ financial relationship with their cars. Since the founding, Bennett has raised $74 million for the company, including early angel funding from Rachel Holt. At the time, she was a rising executive in Uber — a post she left in 2020 when she co-founded Construct Capital. Hear how Bennett pitched early investors, and what investors like Holt can provide to mobility companies. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

61 min listen

Hear how Deel raised $629M without a pitch deck: Welcome to the TechCrunch Live Podcast. This week, we hear from Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Deel, and Anish Acharya, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) in this TechCrunch Live episode. This show is a little different, and it’s Alex’s fault. He doesn’t have a pitch deck, and TCL generally shows early pitch decks and pulls out insights. But Alex raised $629m without a pitch deck. In this episode, learn the strategies he used to pitch without a deck, and hear about the deck A16z used to pitch itself to Deel. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

55 min listen

How Olive pivoted 27 times on its way to be worth $4 billion: Olive CEO and Drive Capital co-founder and managing partner sit with TechCrunch's Managing Editor Matt Burns, and talk through the company's not-so-straight path on becoming a unicorn. This event is just one session of TechCrunch's look at the Columbus, Ohio startup ecosystem. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

35 min listen

Raising monster rounds for self-driving mobility startups: Raquel Urtasun founded Waabi in 2021 after spending nearly three years as Uber's R&D head of Advanced Technology Group (ATG). Waabi's mission is to develop the an AI-first approach to speed up the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles, starting with long-haul trucks. To do so, her company raised a $83.5 million Series A with Khosha Venture's Sven Strohband leading the round. Both will speak to Urtasun's unique (and commanding) perspective, and what allowed the company to raise the massive Series A. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

53 min listen

Mobility marketplaces and brake repair with Mike Ghaffary (Canvas Ventures) + Walker Drewett (NuBrakes): Walker Drewett founded NuBrakes in May 2019. According to Mike Ghaffary, GP at Canvas Ventures, Drewett is building a high-growth business powered by a marketplace model, which is why Ghaffary led the company's Series A. The product is simple: On-demand vehicle brake repair services. Join this episode to hear how Drewett raised capital and built NuBrakes on the learnings from his previous startup, NuWash (it's on-demand car washes, of course). by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

60 min listen

Culture first, product second: Mike Greene started Hi Marley to help improve communication in the insurance space. But we’re not talking about insurance at today’s TechCrunch Live event. Mike, along with Lily Lyman, are speaking on the importance of building a startup’s culture from the beginning. This is clearly a topic passionate to both Mike, as Hi Marley’s CEO, and Lily, an early investor and board observer. As you’ll hear at the event and the podcast, one of Hi Marley’s first hires helped define the culture, and Mike sees this is a critical step. This is a topic occasionally discussed at TechCrunch Live events. Internal tone and culture always spills outward and effects all aspects of a company’s growth from fundraising to selling products to clients. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

50 min listen

Sell the vision, not the business: No one likes compliance training, but Ethena aims to improve the experience for everyone involved. Join Ethena’s CEO and co-founder, Roxanne Petraeus, and Homebrew’s Hunter Walk on this TechCrunch Live event to hear the strategies used to tackle and grow in underserved market segments. As you'll hear in the event, Roxanne Petraeus founded Ethena after the realization that compliance training hasn't evolved to meet the modern workplace. Instead of forcing employees to watch hour-long videos, Petraeus's company presents employees with bite-sized, quick takes that when completed in series, achieves the same compliance goal. During the early days of the company, Petraeus turned to Hunter Walk at Homebrew for venture capital fundraising. He somewhat turned her down, he said during this TechCrunch Live event, though still participated in the company's seed round -- just at a much smaller size. Why? Petraeus pitched Ethena's business rather than her visio by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

56 min listen

iRobot CEO talks, what else, robots: iRobot's cofounder and CEO Colin Angle joins us to discuss the state -- and future -- of the home robot. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

52 min listen

Convoy.com's secret growth hack (hint: truck stops): Dan Lewis launched Convoy in 2015 into the highly fragmented industry of trucking. Now worth $3.8 billion, the company is a leader in bringing digital services to trucking and freight. I’m thrilled to have him on TechCrunch Live this week, along with Chris Howard, founding partner at Fuel Capital, which invested in Convoy’s first several rounds. As you’ll hear, in 2014 and 2015, freight was ready for reinvention. Uber was becoming a verb, and the trucking industry needed a digital solution to connect the different parts of the industry. Convoy launched at the right time, CEO Chris Howard told me. Starting in 2014 wireless carriers started offering free smartphones, and once truckers got their hands on these devices, the industry quickly started to change. But there's more to this story than just free smartphones. Lewis and his fellow co-founders spent countless hours with truckers, trying to understand the market and how digital se by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

57 min listen

Selling technical services to non-technical customers and investors by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

62 min listen

Why you must build a moat around early customers: Benchling's success didn't come overnight. Some ten years after its founding, the company is worth more than $6 billion, and the founder sees the company going public in the future. The company's future looks like its past: talking to customers and building for power users. Benchling's CEO and co-founder, Sajith Wickramasekara, recently spoke at a TechCrunch Live event along with one of its early investors, Miles Grimshaw, general partner at Benchmark. Together, the two explained Benchling's early strategy that tapped a small entry market, which eventually led to widespread adoption. As Wickramasekara explained, early funding was hard to secure. It was 2012, and Benchling sat alone between SaaS companies and biotech. "Every software investor thought what we were doing was small and unimportant," Wickramasekara said, adding later, "and then we went to science investors, and every science investor understood the challenges of R&D, but t by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

52 min listen

How to bring life to (and fund) an API: So you've made an API. It connects one thing to another, and it works well. How do you turn that into a business? On this week's TechCrunch Live, I host the perfect pairing of guests to talk about this. Stephany Kirkpatrick co-founded and runs Orum and has raised $82m for the company, which sells the Momentum API Orum calls it "A simple, smart payments API." It enables customers and businesses access to real-time payment rails without requiring a bank integration. This is a hugely impressive feat – but we're not here to talk about the API itself but how you get investors to fund an API. With Stephanie, we have Matt Sueoka from AMEX Ventures – the VC arm of American Express. They participated in Orum's Series A. And I think this makes for an interesting setup. AMEX Ventures is a corporate venture capital firm, and they tend to have different goals and operational input than a traditional VC fund. And because of that, you, as a startup founder, by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

49 min listen

Be the best listener in the room: If you listen to Ursheet Parikh, partner at Mayfield, Trevor Martin has a unique trait: He's always the best listener in the room. And as the leader of a leading CRISPR startup, it's a critical ability. Mammoth Biosciences employs leading bioengineers including Jennifer Doudna, the Noble prize winning scientist who co-developed CRISPR. Doudna co-founded Mammoth Biosciences with Martin, Lucas Harrington, and Janice Chan. In this TechCrunch Live event you'll hear how Martin attracted the best partners to form Mammoth Biosciences including Parikh, who wrote an early funding check. Step one? It starts with the vision and mission. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

44 min listen

One market is easy, scaling to a hundred is hard (obviously): TechCrunch Live took a virtual trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota for this week's event. And it was a great trip! This event is extra long, and includes conversations with some of the best founders and investors from the region. Following the panels and interviews, three Minneapolis startups competed for free tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

128 min listen

Pulling the right levers on startup profitability and fundraising: This week, Matt Burns is joined by Sameer Shariff, CEO and co-founder of Cambly, and Sarah Tavel, a long-time investor at Benchmark and previously Graylock to talk all about raising first dollars. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

47 min listen

How to pitch a Series A, and other fun things: This TechCrunch Live is all about raising a Series A. Jenny Lefcourt from Freestyle Partners and Guillaume de Zwirek CEO and co-founder of WELL Health talk on the specific steps founders should follow. We start the event talking about fundraising WELL Health’s seed round, and hear the lessons Guillaume de Zwirek learned along the way. As you’ll hear from Lefourt and de Zwirek, there are notable differences between raising a seed round and a Series A round. Investors look at different aspects of the company, and the founder must prepare for the fundraising differently. Rather than selling a story, they’re selling a company. This is a serious topic for Jenny Lefcourt. To help even more founders, she’s prepared an extensive blog post to go along with her TechCrunch Live appearance that goes even deeper into raising a Series A. Read that post here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/31/how-to-fundraise-a-series-a/ by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

55 min listen

The TechCrunch Live Podcast Teaser: The TechCrunch Live Podcast is back for season 2 on February 6! Matt Burns sits down with experienced entrepreneurs and investors -- including market leaders from Benchmark, Sequoia, Index and Kleiner Perkins -- to help founders build better venture-backed businesses. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

1 min listen

Co-founder matchmaking with David Blumberg and Tanis Jorge: This week, Matt Burns spoke to Trulioo co-founder, Tanis Jorge, and David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital about founding a co-founder, building partnerships, and navigating the equity split. As always, we closed out the show with questions from the audience and a round of Pitch Practice. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

40 min listen

How to build a better board of directors: Matt Burns spoke with CEO and co-founder of Tonkean, Sagi Eliyahu, and Foundation Capital partner, Joanne Chen all about addressing blind spots in leadership and the best ways for founders to work with their board of directors. Tonkean started in 2015 as a no-code development platform, and added Joanne to its board of directors when it raised its seed round in 2019. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

36 min listen

How to battle burnout and profit off human thriving, according to Thrive Global's Ariana Huffington: This week, Alex Wilhelm spoke to Kleiner Perkins partner Mamoon Hamid and Founder & CEO of Thrive Global and co-founder of Huffington Post, Ariana Huffington about employee well-being, burnout, and how to provide mental health support. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

42 min listen

Meeting the users where they're at with Cube and Mayfield: Matt Burns went live with CFO-turned-CEO Christina Ross and her Mayfield Fund partner, Rajeev Batra, to talk about the story behind Ross's company, Cube, and how it meets its customers where they’re at. Hear how this novel approach was developed, and attracted investments from major firms. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

38 min listen

Managing uncertainty with Habi and Inspired Capital: Matt Burns spoke to Mark Batsiyan, a co-founder and partner at Inspired Capital, and Brynne McNulty Rojas, who's the co-founder and CEO of Habi, the hot real estate startup out of Colombia which reached unicorn status last year. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

41 min listen

How to Scale Without Venture Capital with Vanta and Sequoia: This week, TechCrunch Security Editor, Zack Whittaker, interviewed Sequoia partner Andrew Reed and Christina Cacioppo, co-founder and CEO of Vanta. The trio discussed why startups should focus on compliance early, the value of making SOC 2 easy and low-cost for companies, and what VCs are looking for in compliance-focused companies. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

35 min listen

How Cambrian BioPharma is reinventing drug - and drug company - development: We're talking about developing therapeutics for anti-aging. Matt Burns interviewed James Peyer, the co-founder of Cambrian BioPharma, and Maryanna Saenko, co-founder and partner at Future Ventures. Cambrian BioPharma bills itself as a new pharmaceutical company with a revolutionary approach to developing and managing drug development and raised over $180 million to accelerate the development of medicine designed to target the causes of age-related diseases. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

57 min listen

AI innovation for in vitro fertilization with Root Ventures and Oma Fertility: Building a company during the pandemic was hard; but raising $71.5 million in the fertility sector is hard during a pandemic or not. And today on TechCrunch Live, we have Oma Fertility co-founder Kiran Joshi and Root Ventures Partner Chrissy Meyer talk through how Oma is building an impressive company to radically improve in vitro fertilization. by The TechCrunch Live Podcast

35 min listen

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Building founder/investor relationships and using grants to fund startups

Building founder/investor relationships and using grants to fund startups

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