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Recruit Rockstars Podcast

Recruit Rockstars is the only podcast on the people part of PE & VC portfolio companies.
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Now displaying: December, 2021
Dec 24, 2021

The smartest Venture Capital firms invest heavily in talent for their portfolio companies. After they cut the check, the hard work just begins.

Here’s an example.

Jason Felger is Head of Operating Platform at Chicago-based Jump Capital. He works with the CEO’s across Jump’s portfolio to help them scale their businesses, particularly by putting a Rockstar in every seat.

Says Jason: “Right now, it’s all about the recruitment & retention of talent, more than I’ve ever seen.”

Jump Capital, which recently raised $350 Million for its 7th fund, provides series A & B capital to data-driven tech companies in FinTech, IT & Data Infrastructure, B2B SaaS, and Media. It also invests globally in cryptocurrency companies & projects.

Portfolio companies include Fast Radius, M1 Finance, Upshow, AcreTrader, Autopay, Balto, Sporttrade.

Jason’s unique qualified, as he’s sat on both the investing & operating sides of early-stage companies. As CEO, he led Food Genius (acquired by US Foods) following his service at Redbox/Coinstar & Chicago Ventures.

In this 20-minute conversation, Jason reveals what VC’s look for when they hire. And his observations on the biggest mistakes business leaders make when scaling their team.

 

Dec 22, 2021

If you’re like most business leaders, you spend plenty of time designing your company’s business model.

Mike Maples warns that you need to spend as much time designing your team, based on your company’s stage & strategy.

He should know.

Mike is Co-Founder & Partner at Floodgate, one of the original early-stage venture capital firms (i.e. writing the first $1M check) he formed 15 years ago.

Mike’s been named to the Forbes Midas List 8 times in the last decade, and for good reason..

He was an early investor in the companies you love: Twitter, Lyft, Bazaarvoice, Storable, TaskRabbit, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Chegg, Demandforce, Smule, Outreach, Okta, Weebly (acquired by Square)

Better still, he’s built companies on both sides of the table, starting as an executive at back-to-back startup IPOs: Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent)

He’s one of the most insightful investors I’ve met. Which is why I’m hooked on his Starting Greatness Podcast. On it, he talks about teams & hiring

Says Mike: “To build your bench, you must spend 25% of your time on recruiting, no matter what.”

Something tells me if Mike wasn’t a legendary VC investor, he’d make a remarkable recruiter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike shares how to design the right team for your business model & current stage.

 

Dec 21, 2021

Like you, I’m just too busy to listen to cruddy podcasts.

So, very few survive on my Podcasts app for more than an episode or two.

Mixergy is one of them. I never miss it.

Its creator & host Andrew Warner started Mixergy back in 2006, making it one of the top-ranked & longest-running business podcasts. Since then he’s interviewed over 2,000 entrepreneurs, business thought leaders, and authors.

(…including me in 2012 when my hair was thick & lustrous)

Andrew’s story is fascinating.

In his early 20’s, he started an internet company Bradford & Reed with his brother. They hit it big …like crazy big… by creating a website for sharing electronic greeting cards which processed over 400,000 greeting cards per day. With $1M in monthly revenue, the website’s traffic was ranked in the top 25 of ALL internet websites during the year 2000.

Then, Andrew burnt out. He sold the business, and decided to build a company helping entrepreneurs build their companies.

In addition to Mixergy, he’s also author of the new book “Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone” If you interview candidates, guests, customers, anyone… you’ll get a ton out of it.

In this 20-minute conversation, Andrew reveals how he scaled both businesses & what he’s learned from the world’s best entrepreneurs about the people part of growth-stage companies.

 

 

Dec 19, 2021

Charleston, South Carolina might seem like an unlikely place to find one of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies.

But it’s home to Digital Ignite.

Mike Samet leads this rollup of adtech, martech, and data businesses that was recently named to the Inc5000 list.

The full-service digital marketing agency using radical data-informed strategies to grow businesses & ignite sales

Their clients include national players like Hoover, Dominos, and Harris Teeter.

In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of the company.

 

Dec 13, 2021

They say that “the riches are in the niches.”

Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?)

He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies.

Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing.

He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees.

Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry)

In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.

Dec 12, 2021

They say that “the riches are in the niches.”

Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?)

He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies.

Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing.

He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees.

Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry)

In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.

 

Dec 5, 2021

Based in Golden, Colorado, Scott Lewis is CEO of Spartan Investment Group.

Spartan syndicates investor capital to develop & operate real estate assets. Under Scott’s leadership, the business has pivoted from residential real estate to commercial, much of which is self-storage.

It’s the 2-time Inc500 ranked company, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing.

Following a successful career in the US Army, Scott started the company which now has 70 employees.

He’s got some no-nonsense views on leadership & building an organization. And in this 20-minute conversation, you’ll discover how to do the same.

 

Dec 3, 2021

Few VC investors have seen more than David Hornik.

He’s Founding Partner at Lobby Capital, which he co-founded after 20 years as General Partner of the legendary VC firm August Capital.

Based on The Lobby Conference, David admits that Lobby Capital is about one simple understanding: “it’s all about the people.”

He’s invested in 40 companies, 5 of which grew into multi-billion-dollar businesses. His success stories include Splunk, Bill.com, Fastly, GitLab, MaintainX, Vowel, PayNearMe.

Along with his colleagues at August Capital, David started the first venture capital blog, VentureBlog, and the first venture capital podcast, VentureCast.

He’s received Deloitte’s Venture Capitalist of the Year award and has been honored by Forbes Magazine as a member of its Midas List of top Venture Capitalists.

When not investing, David teaches entrepreneurship & VC at Stanford Business School and Harvard Law School.

In this 20-minute conversation, David reveals what 20+ years as a VC have taught him about the people part of growth-stage companies.

 

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