Valley Talks Real Life Stories Of Silicon Valley Startups

Morado Venture Partners is a Silicon Valley based seed fund investing mostly at B2B and SaaS companies. Dominik meets about 50-100 startups every month and listens to their pitch. Since his role is to further recommend (or not recommend) startups to the fund’s parters, I’m asking him several (not necessarily most comfortable) questions to help us understand the investor’s point of view while meeting with a startup. What do investors pay attention to most during a pitch meeting? What do they like and what they don't like? How do they measure "quality of a founder"? What were the funny situations? Do they really mean they want to hear back from founders when they say "no" to them? In how many startups does Morado Ventures invest per month? What's their attitude towards "married founders"? What's the first thing founders should do when arriving to Silicon Valley? Listen to the interview and find out! You can also watch it at www.valleytalks.com. Big THANK YOU to our sponsor: UnStock — Mobile-First Video Marke

Ondrej Homola comes from Czech Republic. He is a co-founder and CEO of Lifeliqe – a tool for learning science with virtual and augmented reality currently used by 15K schools around the world. How did Ondrej and his team start their partnership with Microsoft? How did Ondrej’s company approach schools and convince them to start using virtual reality in classes? How is Ondrej financing his business and why is he avoiding raising money from investors? What were the reactions to Lifeliqe in Czech Republic? Watch the interview and hear about Ondrej’s impressive story! You can also watch the interview at www.valleytalks.com. A lovely shout out to our sponsor UnStock www.unstock.io – an on demand community and marketplace for mobile videographers!

Joe Vasquez has been involved in startups ever since. While he was at Stanford University, he co-founded StartX Accelerator – one of the top accelerators in USA. For the last couple years he’s been managing partnerships at Runway Incubator. Now he is starting Michelson Runway Accelerator that focuses on educational technology. Joe was born deaf, but as he says, he has the ability to listen incredibly well (not to mention that he also fluently speaks several languages!). Joe strongly emphasizes the importance of empathy, listening to users and continuous learning – components of lean startup method that Joe implements in his programs. In the interview we talk about: Why Joe decided to focus on startups that are working on improving educational system? What was his experience in gaining education as a deaf child? What’s the difference between an accelerator and an incubator? Do accelerators in Silicon Valley compete with each other? What’s the most common mistake that startup founders make? Is it true that Si

Petcube is the first ever smart camera for pet owners that lets you watch, talk to, and play with your pet remotely from a smartphone. Founders come from Kiev, Ukraine, and this is where in 2012 they came up with the idea. Soon, they decided to go for a Kickstarter campaign and moved to China to work on manufacturing. Their Kickstarter campaign just blew out, ending with impressive $250,000! Today, they are selling in Best Buy, Nordstrom and many other retail and online stores. However, things were not always so optimistic… What's the secret behind their great success on Kickstarter and how did they get so much press? Why did the company almost die right after the Kickstarter? How did they deal with so many pre orders? How and when did they start to get investors? When and how did they get to Y Combinator and what did YC help them with? How did they get the deal with Best Buy? What does Yaroslav think of the new competition coming in? Listen to the interview get insights on incredible Petcube story! You c

Ryan Rogowski created a very helpful, for some people even anxiety eliminating, product – Waygo – an app that allows to instantly translate Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Ryan, apparently not alone, experienced a huge language barrier during his one-year stay in China. He had trouble especially in restaurants, since he had no idea what he was ordering. He soon decided to develop an app, that would translate Chinese in real time while hovering a phone camera over the text. Today, after 5 years, it translates from three Asian languages and users have made over 7M translations. What were the first steps for Ryan to work on the idea? At what point did he decide to move to Silicon Valley? How did he end up on a 2-week trip with Dave McClure, Founder of 500 Startups, and did he get to the program? What user acquisition strategies does he use for Waygo? What would he do differently now? Listen to the interview and hear Ryan’s incredible story! You can also watch the interview at www.valleytalks.com. A lovely sh

Priya is a founder of Fidl – an intelligent shape wear that tracks body measurements. She studied engineering, gained lots of programming skills and won several hackatons in her home country – India (despite the fact that, as she underlines, she was not 100% good at math). Her dreams came true as she did several own projects and managed businesses in India. Eventually, she decided to leave her comfort zone and move to Silicon Valley for love. Today she works on an invention that stole women's hearts on one of San Francisco hackatons, where she and her team won the 1st prize. How did Priya start a new venture in Silicon Valley? How did she make it to legally work in USA? What's her strategy in devoting time and money into a new hardware startup? How is she approaching the smart body measurements market? Listen the interview and learn more about Priya's story! You can also watch the interview at www.valleytalks.com. A lovely shout out to our partners Runway Incubator and StyleBee!

Doug Rogers is a co-founder and Director of Product at Pretty Instant – a service that disrupts the industry of hiring photographers for family and business events. Pretty Instant started as an event photo booth service, then they (kind of by accident) applied to Y Combinator, got approved for the program and narrowed their focus to what they were doing extremely well – matching photographers with events. How come did they actually get clients before really having a product? How do they prevent any problems in delivering the service by their photographers? What is their story behind getting approved to YC? Do investors mind that the company is spread between Silicon Valley and Boston? Listen to the interview and learn lots of incredible insights on Pretty Instant’s story and their experience with Y Combinator! You can also watch the interview at www.valleytalks.com. A lovely shout out to our partner Runway and to our sponsor UnStock — an on demand community and marketplace for mobile videographers.

Adryenn Ashley is a movie and TV Producer, social media influencer (200K total followers on FB, Twitter, Instagram) and founder of CrowdedTV – a crowdfunding platform for reality TV, movies and talk shows. It is pretty much like Kickstarter for shows that aim to be broadcasted on TV. Adryenn decided to build the platform, in order for TV productions be easier and more independently funded than via traditional ways, which often act against the interest of producers. With CrowdedTV people can back shows not only with money, but also with their social media profiles, so that producers will know what type of audience is interested in watching their show. Why TV industry is so much behind with implementing the social aspect of their audience and why is it so important? What’s the hardest part in getting a show broadcasted on TV? How did Adryenn gain 200K social media followers? What does she mean by saying that she was doing online marketing even before the internet was born? How did she build the platform, how

Did you know that today hotel’s rooms availabilities need to be uploaded in excel spreadsheets, in order to submit updates to some of the biggest booking databases? Maksim Izmaylov is a co-founder and CEO of Roomstorm – a company that helps airlines and hotels deal with booking emergencies. Maksim’s B2B business targets hotels and airlines to help them reduce negative effects of overbooking or flight cancellations and deliver great customer experience. Also, Maksim is on his fantastic mission to disrupt travel industry by introducing automatization in various fields. Having been born and raised in Russia, how Maksim managed to start a business in Silicon Valley? How did he make a living before his project really took off? How did he make it into Y Combinator and what did the program help him with the most? How did he find first customers, including big, national airline? Why does he think travel industry is archaic and how is he going to change it? — Listen to the interview to find out! You can also watch v

Peeple allows rating other people, much like Yelp allows rating restaurants, services and places. As soon as the app concept became public, media storm broke out accusing Peeple founders of creating a tool for bullying people. Ironically, Julia Cordray — the app co-founder and CEO — became a bullied victim herself, she received thousands of aggressive messages and phone calls, even death threats. After this first media nightmare in the fall of 2015, she's now receiving a second wave of media attention after Peeple's launch in March 2016. We talked about the full story of Peeple app — from the idea to building the first version of the app, through Julia's thoughts on the media attention, their launch difficulties, and future plans for Peeple. Did Julia expect all the media controversy? Did she modify the app concept? How many people are using the app today? What does she think of their current 1.5 star review in the App Store? Does she believe the media storm worked for the better or worse for the company? L

Nick Larson is a co-founder and CEO of Evlo – platform to easily and conveniently buy local furniture and art. Evlo (Everything Local) not only helps to find the perfect piece, but the product can be brought to the customer with no obligation to buy. Sounds cool, right? Nick is a Silicon Valley native and was raised in Los Gatos. He studied marketing and business at San Jose State University, then worked full time as an Account Executive, and today he is in 100% devoted to his startup. Since he was raised here, finding the team was rather easy – Nick asked his friends to join. However, all the rest is a challenge – from finding the first furniture suppliers, through figuring out the logistics necessary to deliver the products, finding first clients and getting funded. How does Nick compare being full-time employed to running his own startup? At what point did he decide to leave the job? How did he find the first partnerships in San Francisco? How does “Try before you buy” option work out for Evlo? What is i

We've all heard about The Social Network movie, which portrays the founding of Facebook and the resulting lawsuits. In the movie, as well as in reality, Winklevoss brothers claimed that Facebook was their idea, and Facebook’s co-founder Eduardo Saverin claimed that the was purposely induced to sign an agreement that led to significant dilution of his shares. The issues leading to the above lawsuits are not an uncommon thing in the startup world. I invited Mark Howitson to join me on the show and share his thoughts about whether similar problems can be avoided by startup founders, and how. Mark also comments on how much truth about the Facebook’s lawsuits is conveyed in the movie and published on the Internet. I feel very honored that Mark accepted my invitation, since he doesn’t appear much in media, and until now he hadn’t publicly commented on Facebook’s cases. Listen to the interview carefully, as we refer to the lawsuits throughout our talk. You can also watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com.

Neuroon had huge success on Kickstarter in 2014, reaching their $100K goal in one day and raising nearly $500K in total. Now, the company is selling the mask to thousands of people worldwide. Neuroon was first planned to be the mask for polyphasic sleep, today it helps to manage sleep better using bright light therapy. I met with Tomasz at Runway Incubator in San Francisco to talk about how Neuroon works and what are its best applications. In what way did the purpose of the mask change over time and why? What was the reaction of Kickstarter backers to the product’s changes and the delay of delivery? How did the founders deal with their backers’ responses? How did they manage to keep company’s operations after Kickstarter funding? Did they look for investors? How did they find first customers outside of Kickstarter? Listen to the interview and discover the insights of Neuroon’s amazing story! You can also watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com.

Emily Baum is the CEO of Keyrious — high-tech fine jewelry – that unlocks extraordinary experiences with a turn of a key. Emily lived in New York, studied in Chicago, and then moved to San Francisco to pursue her dream of running a business. She tells about the beginnings of Keyrious, the first steps of getting settled in SF, her experience building a team, raising angel investment in Silicon Valley as a female founder, and many more lessons learned along the way. Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com

Nomiku cooks food in a controlled low-temperature water bath. It had massively succeeded in two Kickstarter campaigns and is one of the highest funded food category campaign on Kickstarter. What was the story behind creating Nomiku? What were the first steps to produce and sell first Nomiku appliances? How did Lisa and her team triple their Kickstarter campaigns goals two times? Why do they manufacture in San Francisco, and finally, how it is to run a startup with a spouse? Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com

Fulfil.io is a platform that combines inventories from multiple marketplaces like Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, e-Bay. Sharoon and his co-founders founded the company in June 2015 in India, and only few months later they got approved to 500 Startups accelerator program in Mountain View. Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com

Jon Vlassopulos is an angel investor, entrepreneur and founder of Fabric — a platform to discover new movies, shows and songs with people who share your taste. He also launched Fab.fm — a platform to build and share music playlists in the simplest and easiest way. Jon has spent majority of his career in the film and music industry, gaining experience in Asia, the UK and the US. Now, he is an angel investor and runs his own startups in San Francisco. Does Jon see himself more as an investor or as an entrepreneur? Why sharing interests and tastes is more fun than sharing friends? How much of the knowledge that he shares with founders does he implement into his own businesses? Does being an investor give him extra credibility when raising money for his startups? What advice does he give to startup founders, being able to actually wear both hats? While admiring a stunning view of San Francisco downtown, we talk about these, and other amazing topics. Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com

Neelam creates Oroola – an innovative collaboration platform designed to connect parents whose kids attend classes in the same school. She spent the first year of her startup life with her former co-founder only to discover, that he would quit and take all the code. We talk about moving from India to SV, working in a corporate world, tough startup beginnings, founders drama and finding a good partner. Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com

Fauzia quit working at Microsoft to pursue her dream of creating a smoothie vending machine. “One of the advice I got from several investors, is not to ask for investment too early. They have told me: ‘Push out on asking for investment as long as you can.’“. Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com

Bullz-i is a producer of THE RiNG – a strong, slim, stylish and versatile addition to any phone. They just kicked off with their kickstarter campaign. What is their strategy to raising funds and what are their plans for after Kickstarter? Watch video interview at www.valleytalks.com