Andy Rachleff is not just a product expert; he literally coined the term “product-market fit.”

Wealthfront CEO, former VC backing companies such as eBay, Uber, and Twitter, and technology entrepreneurship instructor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Rachleff has a wealth of knowledge on creating and scaling powerful companies. I was excited to have the chance to pick his brain on everything from product-market fit, to how he started his company Wealthfront, to how he hires the best of the best to join his team.

In this interview, you will gain access to a true master, who has enjoyed a long career of investing in legendary companies and now gives back to today’s entrepreneurs and investors. Rachleff started his company Wealthfront, an automated investment service that manages $11 billion in assets, as a way to perform a social good by democratizing sophisticated financial advice. In our discussion, he was kind enough to divulge some of his wins and losses and top lessons learned in his storied entrepreneurial career. Enjoy!

Key Takeaways

• How to know when you’ve reached product-market fit
• The process Rachleff follows every time he builds a new product
• How to know when it’s the right time to launch a new product (or let go of a failing one)
• How to maintain a close-knit startup culture as the company grows
• Why perseverance does not lead to success in technology (and what does)
• What type of people he looks for and the three biggest things that make people to want to join his team

Key Resources From Our Interview With Andy Rachleff

• Follow Andy on Twitter
• Learn more about Wealthfront here

You may know former Moz CEO Rand Fishkin from his characteristic curly mustache, Whiteboard Friday videos, or his SEO mastery. But this interview isn’t about linking, Google rankings, or gray-hat practices. Or mustaches.

In our chat with Fishkin, he opens up about his battle with depression and how it has shaped his past decisions and guided his current ventures. He sympathizes with the many entrepreneurs who have also succumbed to loneliness and wondered why their business success wasn’t enough to make them happy.

Fishkin also talks about his new book, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. In it, he shares the conversations entrepreneurs have about their challenges and hardships, whether personal or in their businesses. Fishkin also shares details on his new software project and why he decided to venture into another startup.

If you want to be inspired, encouraged, and take away some great advice from a long-time founder, don’t miss this interview. We hope you find it as moving as we did!

Key Takeaways

• Why striving to emulate Silicon Valley startup culture can negatively affect your business growth
• How and why Moz’s customer acquisition costs went down after laying off half of his marketing team
• How to know when to sacrifice profit for growth
• The dark side of entrepreneurial leadership

We are always blown away by the success stories within the Foundr community, and we take every opportunity we can to shine the spotlight on them.

In today's podcast, I am thrilled to present to you three of our Start & Scale ecommerce course students who are absolutely crushing it! I got to sit down with each one and ask them how they got started with their businesses, what challenges they faced, and what successes they are now enjoying.

You will hear from:

Adam Hendle

Adam is the founder of men’s personal care product line, Ball Wash. Adam started his ecommerce journey only eight short months ago and has already made more than $1 million in revenue.

Shamanth Pereira

Shamanth is a busy mother who created a new leggings product, and put it to the test with a pre-sale Kickstarter campaign. In a short time, she received nearly £50,000 from more than 1,500 backers. Shamanth is in the process of fulfilling those orders and putting her shop online full time.

Monique and Chevalo Wilsondebriano

Monique and Chevalo run Charleston Gourmet Burger, which was already a $200,000-per-month business, but had yet to reach its potential in online sales. Their goal was turn their website into an online store so they could generate more sales. In two months, they earned nearly $22,000 and attracted 9,110 visits to their website.

We couldn’t be happier for these guys and are proud to be part of their journeys. Please join me in congratulating them. Way to go!

Key Takeaways

• Go behind the scenes to learn how three ecommerce stores became successful
• Discover the two primary marketing channels Ball Wash leveraged that allowed them to scale so fast
• How Shamanth conceptualized and developed her winning product idea
• The learning curve for Chevalo and Monique as they transitioned their product to sell online

While he always had a passion for entrepreneurship, Shane Snow started his career as a freelance journalist, and during that time noticed how many of his peers were struggling to market themselves and find work. This frustration fueled his desire to develop the global content marketing platform, Contently. Contently is a unified content marketing solution for the world’s biggest enterprise brands, and it’s also a tremendous source of income for creative freelancers. By Snow’s best estimates, Contently has paid out more than $46 million (and counting) to freelancers around the globe.

As successful as his time at Contently has been, Snow never stopped being a writer at heart, and now he's back at it. He recently hired a CMO for Contently and became “founder-at-large,” relieving himself of the day-to-day management and freeing up his time to reunite with his first career love.

Today, you can find Snow promoting his soon-to-be-published book, Dream Teams, and otherwise sharing his expertise on team building and storytelling for founders. In this interview, Snow shares his journey to the top of the entrepreneurial mountain and back home again, along with his best advice learned from a seven-year reign at Contently.

Key Takeaways

• The two realizations Snow had that sparked the idea for Contently
• How Snow transitioned out of his role as founder and returned back to his former love of journalism
• Snow's counterintuitive advice on team building and how it relates to innovation
• One of the most important things we can do as leaders and team members to build relationships

Key Resources From Our Interview With Shane Snow

• Find out more about Shane Snow here
• Follow Shane on Twitter
• Learn more about Contently

Hiten Shah has a killer track record when comes to creating software products. He and his co-founders have built several multimillion-dollar releases, including Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics, and many of their features were the first of their kind to hit the industry.

It might seem like Shah has stumbled onto a secret formula for software-building success. But to him, it’s simply a matter of creating what his audience wants. Solving a problem is the biggest determinant of a software’s success, and Shah builds this methodology into every new piece he creates.

In this informative interview, Shah shares the details behind his process, from planning the software build and ensuring a market fit, to hiring the right people to bring it to life. As an avid mentor and advisor, Shah also answers our own, real world questions about future software builds for Foundr. Listen in and get inspired!

Key Takeaways

• Learn about Shah’s newest software products to hit the market
• The secret to building a profitable software product (it starts long before the first line of code is written)
• How to avoid building something nobody wants
• When to hire internally and when to outsource when building a SaaS product
• Where most product managers go wrong during development
• How to prevent your software tool from getting too bloated and overcomplicated

Key Resources

• Sign up for Shah's newsletter here