Season 2
Top Hostage Negotiator Teaches You How to Be a World-Class Communicator
March 24, 2023
“We're emotional beings that think, not thinking beings that feel,” says Scott Walker, leadership coach, former Scotland Yard detective and one of the world’s most experienced kidnap for ransom negotiators. Scott joins the p…
A Revolution in Blue Collar Jobs - How Sh1ft Creates 10X More Opportunity!
March 17, 2023
“We started to feel like there was something bigger here, that this could be transformational,” says Jason Radisson, co-founder and CEO of Sh1ft, which brings push button technology to blue collar and middle class work, and …
From $0 - $3B | Peek Inside Crypto Unicorn Anchorage Digital
March 13, 2023
“What if we could do it better than anyone else in the ecosystem?” Nathan McCauley asked himself while co-founding Anchorage Digital, a unicorn assets platform that provides instantly settled key storage and custody—holding …
The Entrepreneur Success Story of Tony Jamous [Secrets of Building Two Unicorn Companies]
Feb. 24, 2023
“What drives me is the mission,” says Tony Jamous, founder and CEO of Oyster HR, a business that, as Brendan puts it, is “stewarding the remote work revolution.” Oyster, Tony’s second unicorn company, works to allow business…
$1.6B CEO Reveals Secret to Identifying Undiscovered Niches
Feb. 17, 2023
“I had one job, which was to get the data right. Why was that so freaking hard?” asked Barr Moses, co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, the world’s first data observability platform, discussing what motivated her to create the…
Peel Back the Curtain! How To Build a $3.7B Technology Brand
Feb. 10, 2023
“Harness builds software for teams that build software,” says Scott Sanchez, CMO of Harness. Scott and his team recognize that software developers at larger companies spend an increasing amount of time doing everything but c…
From $0 to $3B Valuation - Marcelo Lebre, Co-Founder Remote.com
Feb. 2, 2023
“We knew we wanted to address the pain of remote work,” said Marcelo Lebre of the goal he and Job van der Voort shared when the two founded Remote.com in 2019. As it turns out, it was a worldwide pain. There were countless f…
Lessons Learned from $95M in Venture Capital Raised
Jan. 31, 2023
“Too many founders have solutions, and are looking for problems,” says Brendan on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. Today Brendan goes over the five key takeaways from his conversation with Trisha Kotari founder and …
Growing Unit 21 From $0 to $95M in Venture Funding
Jan. 26, 2023
“Fundraising is mostly about failing. Success is really the wartime,” says Trisha Kotari, founder and CEO of Unit 21, a risk and compliance infrastructure which helps companies and financial institutions combat fraud. In 201…
The 5 Keys To Scale Past the Founder-Led Sale
Jan. 24, 2023
“It’s just like being in a relationship,” says Brendan on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. Today, he discusses what happens to a lot of startups when they bring in an outside expert or salesperson to help them scale…
How to Bootstrap a Software Business to $30M in Revenue
Jan. 19, 2023
“I think, if you’re doing business right, you’re evolving every two or three years,” says Bryan Clayton Co-Founder and CEO of GreenPal, an app that works like an Uber for lawn services, which bootstrapped $30 million. And th…
Dissecting the Top 5 Reasons Why Start-Ups Fail
Jan. 17, 2023
“Most startups don’t fail outright, they fail to gain meaningful traction,” says Brendan on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. He gets more specific with five reasons that contribute to the failure. The first reason i…
How to Build a Successful Blockchain Start Up | Enya.Ai Founder
Jan. 12, 2023
“You have to be really agile and flexible, but also really stubborn about the problems you’re going to solve,” says Alan Chiu, co-founder of Boba and its contributing company Enya.ai, about the dual attributes successful fou…
5 Lessons Learned From $37M in Venture Capital Raised
Jan. 10, 2023
“It comes back to communication,“ says Brendan on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech, where he unpacks the five key takeaways from his recent interview with Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest. Iggy founded this dat…
How Climate Intelligence Will Save Your Business
Jan. 5, 2023
“I want to spend my time solving problems,” says Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest, a platform that uses climate data, science expertise and data modeling to help companies predict their climate risk. It measures the po…
Start Up FAQs: How To Target Multiple Personas
Jan. 3, 2023
“In a world where there’s so much overwhelming noise, you’ve got to be specific,” says Brendan in this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. This pertains to everything, from the benefit you’re providing to how you’re helping…
6 Lessons from Building a $1B B2B Technology Company
Dec. 27, 2022
In this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech, Brendan breaks down the highlights from his interview with Guy Tytunovich, founder of go to market security company Cheq.ai. Guy founded a unicorn company, and part of this discus…
Growing Cheq.ai from $0 to $1B valuation
Dec. 22, 2022
“Simply put, we protect the go-to-market worldwide,” says Guy Tytunovich, Founder and CEO of Cheq.ai who created the category of go to market security. During his ten years working in government cybersecurity, Guy realized t…
How to Build a $1B LinkedIn Ads Strategy
Dec. 20, 2022
“It’s the best place to target business buyers,” says Brendan of LinkedIn Ads. In this episode he’ll walk you through a set of tips to help you optimally utilize the platform, connect to your target audience, and get an opti…
Deconstructing the $1B psychedelics industry w/ VC Brom Rector
Dec. 15, 2022
“I want to fund the company that's inventing the Tesla Model S of psychedelics,” says Brom Rector, founder of Empath ventures, a venture capital firm investing in the future of psychedelic medicine. A consumer of psychedelic…
Growing ActivSurgical from $0 to $162M (and beyond)
Dec. 8, 2022
“We like to consider ourselves the Waze of surgery,” says Todd Usen, CEO of ActivSurgical. Waze gathers and presents data from the road in real time, so that driver’s can navigate their trip successfully and avoid problems b…
Should You Create a New Category?
Dec. 6, 2022
“In the next five to seven minutes, I'm going to try to give you a very concise and declarative answer as to whether or not you should create your own category,” says Brendan In this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. This…
The Tech Career Toolkit - From MIT's Famed Career Accelerator Program
Dec. 1, 2022
“Leadership isn’t a single thing. It’s a bunch of things together,” says Mark Herschberg, the co-founder and one of the principal developers of MIT’s famed Career Accelerator Program. The program teaches future tech leaders …
How to Use AI to 10X Your Sales Pipeline
Nov. 24, 2022
“Wouldn't you respond to someone that knows you like a friend better than someone who called like a robot that's just doing outreach?” asks Leena Joshi, Co-Founder and CEO of Closefactor, which applies machine learning, arti…
Growing TopHat from $0 - $130M & Founding a Crypto Fund
Nov. 17, 2022
“Be perpetually paranoid and constantly thinking about how you're going to die," Mike Silagadze jokes about the mindset it takes to navigate the constant fluctuations and risks (and resulting stress) of founding a company, e…
Growing Blockchain.com to $14B - The Story of Peter Smith
Nov. 10, 2022
“Increasing human freedom and economic freedom around the world is just a mission that I'm really passionate about,” says Peter Smith, Founder and CEO of Blockchain.com. That mission has remained at the heart of Blockchain s…
Time Management Secrets for High Performers
Nov. 1, 2022
“A lot of people mistake activity for progress,” says Fineas Tatar, Co-CEO and Founder of Viva, “What matters is is working on priorities that actually move the needle forward.” Many CEOs, particularly of startups, don’t kno…
$30M Series B: How I Evaluated My First Venture Investment
Oct. 27, 2022
“You’ve got to be willing to swing, which means, by definition, sometimes you’re going to miss,” Brendan says on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech, as he takes us step by step through the set of criteria he used to ev…
Billion Dollar Breakdown: Matt Kerbel of Lyft, MeUndies, Call of Duty
Oct. 25, 2022
“Once people form an opinion it’s almost impossible to change their minds even in the face of overwhelming evidence,” Brendan explains. That’s why it’s so important to establish your brand’s identity and make your market tru…
How to Build $1B Brand [Meundies, Lyft, Call of Duty]
Oct. 20, 2022
“The purpose of marketing is to find that intersection between what’s important to people, what they’re looking to do and solve for in their lives, and how your company can uniquely help them achieve that,” says Matt Kerbel,…
Billion Dollar Breakdown: SoftLedger
Oct. 18, 2022
“Patience is just so overrated,” Brendan says on this episode of the Billion Dollar Breakdown, where he comments on the key takeaways from his interview with SoftLedger co-founder Ben Taylor. Patience is a virtue that runs t…
How to Take on $1B Incumbents
Oct. 13, 2022
“Making things quicker is the theme for what we’re working on,” says Ben Taylor, founder of SoftLedger, accounting software that’s disrupting the software space. After working in accounting for a number of years, Ben saw a n…
The Future of AI (It's Closer Than You Think)
Oct. 6, 2022
“We’re going to have a number of paradigm shifts in the next five years, so it should be a fun time,” says Michael Shuffett, co-founder and CEO of Compose.ai. “There’s going to be a new way of creating all of that.” This par…
Billion Dollar Breakdown: 3X's Founders Top 5 Lessons for Growing
Oct. 4, 2022
“You almost can’t be too narrow at the beginning,” Brendan says to succinctly summarize one of the many important lessons extracted from his interview with Adam Honig, CEO of Spiro. Narrowing your focus is the main theme tha…
How Adam Honig is Taking on the $54B CRM Industry
Sept. 29, 2022
“We’re going to build Scarlett Johansonn for Salesforce!” Adam Honig declared to his business partner after watching the Spike Jonez movie Her, starring the actress. Frustrated with Salesforce and other CRM services, he thou…
Realizing the Unfulfilled Promise of Blockchain
Sept. 22, 2022
“Block chains are basically an attempt to do a more efficient transaction by replacing trust with proof,” explains Sam Bizri, founder and CEO of Zeconomy. Until recently, transactions were committed via a trust-based bureauc…
Billion Dollar Breakdown: Allstacks
Sept. 20, 2022
“If you cannot clearly articulate the vision of the future that you are trying to create to your people and the market in a way that they care, you have a problem,” Brendan says. Hersh Tapadia, co-founder of Allstacks and re…
How to Build a High-Impact Engineering Team with Allstacks CEO
Sept. 15, 2022
“Think about it like you have two train tracks,” explains Hersh Tapadia, co-founder and CEO of Allstacks, “with the engineering train and the business train. Occasionally they stop at the same station, and everyone gets exci…
Billion Dollar Breakdown | InEvent
Sept. 13, 2022
“He’s going to do a lot better not only in this business but in future businesses because he knows what it is to build a business and not just a product,” says Brendan on this latest Billion Dollar Breakdown. He’s speaking o…
How to Create Kick Ass Events, Navigating YC, and More with InEvent Founder Pedro Goes
Sept. 8, 2022
“We need to manage a 35,000 person meeting in real time where decisions will be made that will end up on the 7:00 PM news,” says Pedro Goes, founder and CEO of InEvent. This software platform provides streamlined features su…
Billion Dollar Breakdown: Topia
Sept. 6, 2022
“A lot of people, when they think of entrepreneurship, picture a CEO commanding an army, or a developer doing something very innovative, or a product genius,” says Brendan on this latest Billion Dollar Breakdown. Actually, a…
The Future of the Metaverse with Topia CEO Daniel Liebeskind
Sept. 1, 2022
“For us, the Metaverse is a way to increase accessibility to communities,” says Daniel Liebeskind, CEO of the platform Topia, part of the Metaverse that’s taking the internet from asynchronous, static forms like email and fo…
High-Impact B2B Product Strategy, Integrations, and Exits With a 2X Founder
Aug. 11, 2022
“There is no more complex strategy game in the world that I know of than building companies,” says Michael Zuerchner, CEO and Co-Founder of Prismatic. He would know. At age 19, he started a software company whose product int…
How to Build a Two-Sided Marketplace with Michelle Tinsley
Aug. 4, 2022
“Gig work is upscaling and becoming more professional,” says Michelle Tinsley, COO of Yellowbird. Yellowbird matches qualified professional Risk and Environmental Health and Safety workers with companies in demand of their s…
Lessons Learned From 500+ B2B Start-UPS with Sam Strasser
July 28, 2022
Sam Strasser founded Treasure Financial, a cash management platform that helps businesses transform idle cash into revenue. Many companies, even famous, large companies, make up to 80% of their revenue not from selling produ…
How to Make TV Ads Segmentable, Trackable Like Facebook Ads with Noah Palansky
July 21, 2022
“We make it so that TV commercials are as effective as a Facebook ad,” is how Noah Palanksy describes the mission of his AI company Taiv. Having a drink at a bar one night, he watched as the TV played an ad for another bar …
Start Up FAQS: What’s the First Thing I Should Prioritize for Growth?
July 19, 2022
“What is the first thing I should prioritize when I’m trying to grow my business?” This is one of the most common questions Brendan gets from business founders. Here, in this mini-episode, he attempts to answer this and othe…
How to Create a High-Impact Partnership Program with Sean Paulseth
July 14, 2022
“‘Why you?’ is the multi-million dollar question,” Sean Paulseth, SVP Partnerships at WedgeHR, says about getting your company noticed in a sea of other, often bigger, competitors. Incentive programs can pay off big time and…
$1B Pitch FAQs: What Makes an Effective Villain?
July 12, 2022
“It’s a story mechanism that’s baked into us as humans,” Brendan explains on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. “Every story has to have a villain.” For so many billion dollar companies, so often the villain in their …
How to Optimize Spend for Efficient Growth With Rose Punkunus, Sudozi CEO & Founder
July 7, 2022
Rose Punkunus has learned a lot about what it means to optimize growth in her impressive career thus far. She worked for AppleTV as one of its first data scientists and analysts, and then for Uber where she saw the first inc…