I Just Voted. You Should Too.

I just voted and you should too.

I am not going to remind you to take action or that voting is the patriotic thing to do. 

I am just going to briefly stress to you of the importance of this election. I am going to ask you to take a step back from all the noise and distractions around this election. To find even three to five quiet minutes today to stop what your doing and think clearly about what you really want our country to be over the next four years and beyond. Use those quiet moments to find some clarity using both your heart and your brain. Not just one or the other. Apply empathy to your perspective. 

Take that clarity and go vote today for the people on your ballot who you truly believe will make this country a BETTER place for ALL 318.9 million citizens of the United States of America. 

Presenting Founder Institute New York 12

FINY12: Summer 16

Tuesday of this week we had our Graduate Showcase event bringing together the graduating companies of Founder Institute New York 12 (Summer 16), our New York Founder X Alumni, and our monthly Startup Founder 101 Meetup. Here are some of the great photos from our event: 

The Founder Institute New York Summer 2016 cohort came to an end with 14 new companies graduating. The twelfth batch of the Founder Institute New York includes companies from across several industries such as virtual reality, international food, HR-tech, weddings, fashion, social media, and more.

I would like to thank the great mentors here in New York for the incredible lessons, experience, time, and wisdom brought to each semester's graduates. Without any further ado, I give you #FINY12.

Founder Institute New York 12

Bridal Playbook - Tell us your vision, sit back and relax while wedding vendors send you quotes.

Candogram - Job match technology using unique machine learning & big data.  

Factual VR - Capture and reproduce crime scenes using Virtual Reality technology. 

Happo - Simplifying your children's birthday planning.

Home Abroad - Discover Africa through textiles. 

Home Matcher -  Find your dream home before it's for sale.

Moro Labs - Bringing ethnic foods to their global diasporas with Baegopa. 

Nekai Leon - A socially conscious & contemporary fashion brand with a personalized shopping experience.

ONYO - The power of choice is yours, always get the food you want.

Own Your Crisis - SaaS for pre-planning family emergencies

Paxi - Native tongue ride sharing for international visitors. 

SocioSpree - A curated marketplace for successfully crowdfunded products. 

Tagland Toys - Simple, organic, fun plush toys for babies. 

The Weekend SPIN - Automatically capture and share your weekend. 

A Full Day With A Brand New Boosted Board Version 2

Central Park, East Side Drive

I grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo and started driving as soon as I could. I paid off my first car while bartending in college and grew up being used to having the freedom of, if you just want to go somewhere, you simply get in your car and go there.

Then I moved to New York City, sold my car, and learned the ropes of public transportation. While I love public transportation and have mastered the ropes; the subway, buses, trains, and taxi's do at times force you to submit to their binds a lot of times. As a result of those limitations I still craved a way to get around New York City just as I used to be able to get around with my car, on my own terms. As of today, I think I might finally have that freedom back! 

I just got my brand new Boosted Board Dual + Version 2 and yesterday was my first full day riding it. You may have seen these magical all electric "vehicles" around YouTube as a lot of the content creators have them already. Here are some of my initial thoughts so far.

High Praise 🙌 ! WOW! I am blown away! As a life long skater I can honestly say this is the dream. I started skating in my childhood driveway from before I can remember and more recently I have been longboarding around New York City on a good old fashioned non-motorized longboard for the past 3 years. This new board though, it is no joke. 

Boosted Board Power Modes

To give you some quick background the Boosted Board Dual + v2 is an all electric longboard with 2 motors. It can go up to 22 MPH and comes with a 6-7 mile range on average. An optional extended battery can increase the range to 12 miles on a single charge.

The amount of acceleration the board has, is nothing short of impressive. I was immediately blown away by how fast it actually accelerated me. After that I also wasn't sure how the board would handle going uphill. I quickly learned. When I approached my first big steep hill in midtown manhattan, I jumped the boosted board up one mode from Beginner to Eco and it climbed it like a champ. Again, even accelerating while carrying me up the hill. And, if you put the board in PRO mode, you essentially fly.

Now while getting speed and acceleration on traditional longboards is almost always somewhat easy, stopping can be challenging. Stopping a longboard with your foot is a skill that takes some getting used to when you first start riding. But not with Boosted. The brakes are built into the throttle. And even better they are regenerative so when you are braking your are actually putting power back into the battery.

Perhaps most importantly though, one of my favorite things about the Boosted Board is the fact that you are getting around the city above ground. It really is a small electric vehicle. It can become easy in a big city full of public transportation to only orient your understanding of the city around the subway stops you magically pop out of the underground from. With a Boosted Board however, something that can only be described as "experiencing the great outdoors" of New York City's concrete jungle might be my favorite feature. Not only is it at times faster to get somewhere via bike lanes then taking either the subway, bus, or a taxi through traffic, but it is mind freeing. You can't stare at your phone like you would on the train or in the back of a cab, so you are forced to just experience the city around you. Which I love! 

The Boosted Board's basic functions have exceeded my expectations and I can't wait for my next ride. I am sure I will learn more about the Boosted Board as I continue to ride it, but my initial impressions are amazing. I truly love that it has the potential to expose me more to this great city I live in and I can't wait to explore more of it with my Boosted Board taking me there. 

Kelly Roach, From NFL Cheerleader To Million Dollar Brand

Kelly Roach

Kelly Roach is the founder of Kelly Roach Coaching and host of the Unstoppable Success Radio podcast. With a resume of NFL cheerleader, fitness enthusiast, and mother, Kelly doesn’t exactly fit the usual business coach profile. In Episode 22 of Ambition Today Kelly gives us some great insight into how she leverages her unique experience to grow her businesses, how she published an internationally bestselling book, and why she started the Unstoppable Success Radio podcast. 

Growing up in a financially struggling family, Kelly learned the value of hard work at a very early age while working for the NFL before she was 20. With an unparalleled work ethic she quickly climbed the ladder of success in Corporate America. Soon after she then realized her passion for aiding others in pursuit of their dreams. We cover how Kelly now does just that and more on this episode of Ambition Today:

• Going out and working for what you want at an early age.

• Applying her degree in Communications to create productive interactions in the business environment.

• The importance of travel in shaping a healthy lifestyle mentality.

• Lessons learned from holding multiple positions on an NFL team.

• Appreciating the value of lesser jobs to build knowledge before having your dream job.

• The inherent ebb and flow of startups.

• Lifestyle building via business development.

• Why building a personal brand is so important now.

• Publishing her bestselling book & starting a podcast.

• The necessity of human contact in growing your business.

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

"What does Ambition mean to you and how do you satisfy your personal ambition each day?"

Links from this episode:

• Kelly Roach Coaching

• Unstoppable Book

• Unstoppable Success Radio Podcast

• Philadelphia Eagles

• Kelly on Twitter

• Kelly on Facebook

• Founder Institute New York

• Audible

• Toptal

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

Ambition Today Episode Sponsors:

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Founder Institute New York

Pioneering The Social Media Frontier With Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO of Nuzzel

Jonathan Abrams

The godfather of social media, Jonathan Abrams, joins us on this episode of Ambition Today. He is now the founder & CEO of Nuzzel, a new platform to discover the top news from your friends and influencers. Letting users cut through the muddle of content on social media to emphasize only their most relevant content. Previously, Jonathan has founded several other companies; Socializr, HotLinks, Founder's Den and most notably Friendster. He is also a top-rated mentor at The Founder Institute and has been extensively involved in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial community for over ten years.

After growing up in Canada and working for Nortel he became an employee at Netscape during it's prime. Abrams went on to found Friendster in 2002 before the wider adoption of, at the time newcomers; MySpace (2003), Hi5 (2003), Facebook (2004) and other social networking sites. Friendster was one of the first of these sites to attain over 1 million members. In 2012, Abrams recognized a fallacy in the market of social news readers, when the programs of the time weren’t what he was looking for: fast, easy-to-use, and social. Today Jonathan talks about his solution to this problem with his new company Nuzzel, his appearance on Chelsea on Netflix, and much more:

• Navigating the seemingly minuscule Canadian computer science marketplace.

• Being a first-time entrepreneur during the dot-com boom and bust.

• How Friendster competed with Facebook in the developing market of social media.

• Using social curation to launch Nuzzel.

• Trying to reach a wide audience with relevant information.

• The future of Nuzzel.

• Why e-mail remains king in the world of social media.

• Surviving in Silicon Valley by not getting ahead of yourself.

• The future of the social landscape.

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

"What does Ambition mean to you and how do you satisfy your personal ambition each day?"

Links from this episode:

• Nuzzel

• Jabrams.com

• Jonathan Abrams on Twitter

• Jonathan Abrams on Nuzzel

• Kevin Siskar on Nuzzel

• Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure

• Jonathan Abrams at TEDx

• Founder Institute New York

• Audible

• Toptal

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

Ambition Today Episode Sponsors:

Toptal

Audible.com

Founder Institute New York

Jesse Middleton Talks Building WeWork Labs And Investing With Flybridge Capital

Jesse Middleton

Over the years WeWork has grown to become a $16 billion empire of co-working office spaces that are disrupting the traditional real estate markets all over the world. Our guest today, Jesse Middleton, joined the team as the founder of WeWork Labs, the company’s startup focused community. Since then he has helped the company grow into the giant it is today. Recently he has just joined the venture capital firm Flybridge as a General Partner.

Early on with entrepreneurial parents, Jesse learned that he did not have to take the traditional path in life and that he could forge his own future. He started to do just that, as he founded his first company before even going to college. Fast forward to Fast Company magazine once comparing Jesse to Jack Dorsey, then onto his time building WeWork Labs, and now his time as a VC at Flybridge. Jesse has a great story full of many lessons, such as:  

• Recognizing at an early age the ability to create your own path in life.

• The importance of keeping a clear focus at the early stages of a new company.

• How Jesse founded WeWork Labs.

• Just get started and go.

• The lessons from actively helping grow a $16 billion company.

• Why long term vision is so important for the founders of companies.

• What is next for WeWork Labs.

• The intersection of community building and being an investor.

• The future of Venture Capital.

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

“What does Ambition mean to you and how has it driven you?”

Links from this episode:

• WeWork Labs

• WeWork

• JesseMiddleton.com

• Jesse on Twitter

• Flybridge Capital

• Drexel University

• Founder Institute New York

• Audible

• Toptal

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

Ambition Today Episode Sponsors:

Toptal

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Founder Institute New York

It's Friday Night

It's Friday night.

What are you doing tonight? What did you do this past week? Did you take action and enjoy your week? Or was it one of those weeks you just dreaded going through?

If you think this week could have been better then you should take the minute and forty seven seconds to watch the below video from Gary Vaynerchuk. I could say more, but I think Gary said it all for me. Enjoy! 

Taking Action

September 27th is National Voter Registration Day in the United States. As such, I could list off a bunch of information about the current political landscape, the Electoral College, or democracy in general just to convince you that the system is worth your time. But I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to even talk about the candidates. I just want to talk about taking action.

Yes, all the systems, processes, and entities above could be stronger. But something being broken doesn't mean it is hopeless.

I watch entrepreneurs beat the odds day after day to improve and fix the broken systems, industries, and entities in the world. They do so using only the scarce tools and resources provided to them. So, why is that they can do what others can't? It's simple. It's because they take action. They take action instinctively, again and again, day after day, without hesitation. 

A handful of people who we call entrepreneurs take action and change the world over time. So imagine if everyone seized each day and took action without hesitation in their own lives. I am not going to ask you to register to vote. Nor am I here to tell you that need to vote on November 4th. Instead I am going to ask you to take action, in order to solve the problems in the world that you see. If there are tools at your disposal, don't squander opportunity and watch them waste away. Use the opportunities in your life to make the world better.  

In other news, here are some tools I happened to find on the cyber; I mean Internet:  

• TurboVote: Sign up to receive election reminders, get registered to vote, & apply for your absentee ballot.
• Vote.org: Everything you need to vote.
• VotePlz: Get ready to vote.
• And many more! 

See what I did there? 😉. Hope it helps! 

A Product Hunt Live Chat Interview With Me

The wonderful folks at Product Hunt have asked me to do a Product Hunt Live Chat on September 20th at 1:00pm EST (10:00am PST). You can click the link below to sign up a head of time or submit a question now! You will be reminded before the event starts if you sign up now. Then on September 20th be sure to join and ask me anything you'd like. 

You can ask me what my time as Managing Director of the Founder Institute New York helping and advising dozens of startups, teams and founders has been like. Why I started the Ambition Today podcast. Or ask me about the time in college I sent the worst e-mail of my life to one of the top VC's in the country, when I worked for Jason Calacanis, how I pitched Arianna Huffington, my degree in Cognitive Neuroscience, my time as an actual King, or anything else on your mind! 

Product Hunt LIVE is a series of informal, Q&A style chats with entrepreneurs, authors, investors, entertainers and makers from all industries with the Product Hunt community. They are all an hour long and are open to anyone who signs up on Product Hunt. Sign up now!

Swallow The Frog 🐸

"Swallow The Frog." 

I heard that phrase recently. It wasn't the first time I heard it and apparently Mark Twain originally said it quite some time ago. His original Swallow The Frog quote was: 

“If you know you have to swallow a frog, swallow it first thing in the morning. If there are two frogs, swallow the biggest one first.” -Mark Twain

As human's we are all guilty of procrastination. In fact, it is actually programmed in us to do so. 

Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn't make sense, but he's never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window -- and encourages us to think harder about what we're really procrastinating on, before we run out of time.

Making sure you swallow a frog on your todo list each day is so important for progress in one's life and especially in entrepreneurship. 

For some reason when Matt Rodak reminded me of the swallow the frog meaning in a recent conversation, it stuck with me. I woke up the next day, looked at my Todo list in ToDoist and starting swallowing some of the larger frogs on my list! I completed the items that I really hated doing normally and that had this stench of anxiety around completing. And I felt great afterword! 

The best part about swallowing the frog earlier in the day is you don't spend the whole rest of the day thinking about it. It's done. It's gone. The progress is made and you can now use your brain power in other productive ways. And if you do the worst part of your day first thing in the morning then when bad things happen the rest of the day, they are quickly put in perspective as not that awful. 

One little productivity hack I started to use that I think you might find useful is this. When I caught myself snoozing an item on my todo list or I found myself feeling anxiety around an item to work on, I started adding the frog emoji 🐸 in front of the task's name. That way the next time I looked at my todo list, I knew exactly which I item's I needed to accomplish first that day. 

So tomorrow wake up and Swallow The Frog. Ensure you get the tasks you dread the most, done first each day! And if you have to swallow more then one frog each day (as most startups founders do) then make sure you swallow the ugliest and wart-iest first! And if you still need help, someone even wrote a swallow the frog book, which might be helpful.

Paul Polizzotto Transforms Advertising Into Real World Positive Social Change With CBS EcoMedia

Paul Polizzotto (Eric J. Smith / CBS EcoMedia)

From the CBS EcoMedia office’s in New York City, Serial Social Entrepreneur Paul Polizzotto, who is one of the most passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs I know, joins us for episode 19. Paul is the founder and CEO of CBS EcoMedia, which harnesses the power of advertising and transforms it into a powerful engine for positive social change. 

Paul’s personal philosophy and actions around social entrepreneurship over his lifetime have created an incredible story thus far. His journey started in California when he was younger and used to surf the then polluted waters of Santa Monica Bay. Paul noticed that the existing companies in the contract cleaning industry were improperly discharging contaminated water into the storm drains, which then drained into the bay that his friends and him surfed in. His first company Property Prep helped to improve those conditions through a solution that properly disposed of the contaminated water. He now works to improve the world through his most recent company CBS EcoMedia, which was acquired by CBS and funds the most effective non profit companies that are taking on the most urgent social issues of our time. In this episode we also discuss:

• Seeing opportunity around you in the world everyday.

• How surfing and risk taking has influenced Paul as an entrepreneur.

• What happens at the intersection of art and engineering.

• Difference between working hard FOR an idea and working hard ON an idea.

• How to be receptive to the right ideas in your life.

• Paul’s 4 criteria for knowing if an idea is worthwhile to pursue.

• How Paul created the national Adopt-A-Waterway Program in the United States.

• Using existing business models to transform other industries.

• The partnership with CBS that led to EcoMedia being acquired.

• If you get exactly what you want, will you have the courage to follow through with it to meet your goals.

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

How should a person take an idea they have and navigate it into reality?

Links from this episode:

• CBS EcoMedia

• Paul Polizzotto on Twitter

• Viewers to Volunteers

• CBS

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

Ambition Today Episode Sponsors:

Toptal

Audible.com

Founder Institute New York

Amir Salihefendic Grew The Todoist App From Solo Project To Millions Of People

The most ambitious people “Get. Sh*t. Done.” and that is what today’s guest Amir Salihefendic specializes in. Joining us from Portugal, Amir is the founder of Doist, the company which makes the very popular Todoist app. With millions of users, Todoist is one of the top to-list apps in the Apple App Store & Google Play Store. 

Amir grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Denmark after his family moved from Bosnia. Starting projects seems to have been in Amir’s blood from an early age. When he was fifteen he sold his first website and invested the money he made in a new Macbook in order to start a new business building and selling websites. Later he went on to build Plurk, and fast forward to today, Amir has built Todoist. The to-do list app started as a personal project for just himself, but when he released it on his personal blog to only 300 people, he saw there was immediate demand for it. Todoist has since grown to millions of users. Throughout this episode we discuss how Amir built his company with remote teams, scaled to several million dollars annually in revenue, and also: 

• How having entrepreneurial parents influenced Amir.

• Why scaling too fast can hurt your company if you are not ready for it.

• How to keep your life organized and efficient.

• Why you should make powerful product features, simple.

• The impact that mission, passion and culture can have on a company.

• The best characteristics for employee's joining remote teams and where to find them.

• How your employees are your biggest investments.

• The importance of constantly investing in yourself across all the skill sets you need.

• Focusing on high impact work and actively working to avoid distractions.

• How to make the most of your To-do list and optimize it.

• Why you need to "swallow the frog" at the start of every day.

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

How do you define success?

Links from this episode:

• Amir on Twitter

• Todoist

• Doist

• Amir’s Blog

• Plurk

• Holocracy

• Drive by Daniel Pink

• Start With Why by Simon Sinek

• Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

• Nextjump

• An Everyone Culture

• Todoist for Teams

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next?  Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

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Founder Institute New York

The Night Pokemon Go Took Over The Suburbs & The Police Came

I started writing this at 1:40am on Friday night in the suburbs of Buffalo, NY. My brother and I were just pulled up on by State Troopers in a church parking lot for being there late. We stopped by this parking lot on our way home. This was no ordinary parking lot though. This parking lot contained a Pokemon gym.  The officer came up to us and asked for identification. We gave him our driver's license and he ask what are you doing here this late. I replied: "Officer, do you know what Augmented Reality is?". He gave me a strange look and said "nope". Fast forward a few minutes later to after my brief lesson on Augmented Reality and the new game Pokemon Go, he told us to have a nice night and left.

Prior to this encounter with the law enforcement my brother and I were outside a local Chili's restaurant, another Pokemon Go gym, when three cars pulled up simultaneously. One guy got out and screamed, there is a Squirtle around here. While he began searching for the elusive rare Pokemon by walking around the parking lot, the others who were still in their cars, began attacking the "Big Red Chili Pepper" gym. Within two minutes the gym changed from Yellow to Red (two of the teams you can join in the game) as it was overtaken by a new champion. Five minutes later, they left. If your not on the move in Pokemon Go then your not really playing Pokemon Go. 

Even earlier in the evening, down the street, a different car pulled into the United States Post Office to capture another Pokemon gym. They saw our phones out, we saw their phones out and so said we said Hello to each other. It turns out that they were actually some old friends of my brothers through a friend of a friend. They exchanged numbers and agreed to re-connect again soon. Pokemon Go re-connected old friends on a sidewalk outside a United States Post Office. 

Now since Friday at 1:40am when I was explaining to a State Trooper what Augmented Reality is, I know similar stories have been told thousands of times as similar situations unfolded across the world. I am sure you have heard by now that Pokemon Go is a new augmented reality app that makes you and your phone (using it's built in GPS) the main character as you walk around the real world to find and capture Pokemon. It is not the first augmented reality game but it is certainly now the most popular.

It's truly amazing just how fast this game has gone viral considering not once inside the game is there a prompt to invite a friend or get some free game items for sharing. The virality of Pokemon Go has been almost all organically social and word of mouth. 

Since the mid 2000's a new world of tablets, iPhones, improved gaming systems, and more have slowly been keeping us in our routines. I love that this game get's people back outside, connecting with others on the street, and exploring the parts of the world their normal daily routines ignore. Yes, Pokemon Go could improve the whole head down toward the ground like zombies staring at our phone thing, but we will get there soon enough with improved technology. I'm looking at you Oculus, Samsung Gear VR, and Microsoft HoloLens. 

I wanted to share this story and experience as it felt truly unique to me. That night in the suburbs, people were out and about exploring the world instead of sitting inside somewhere. There was an energy in the air that night in the suburbs. An energy that you can easily take for granted living in a big city that never sleeps like New York. It was refreshing, light hearted, and fun. So before others try to ruin the fun, get out there and catch some Pokemon. If you can, catch them all, and while your at it remember to pick your head up from time to time to say Hi the other people around you. 

What Does Patriotism Mean

George Washington's Inauguration Site, Federal Hall, NYC

I think it is important to take time to reflect when life gives us the opportunity to do so. Over the July 4th weekend we celebrated the 240th anniversary of America's independence and I visited the inaugural location where George Washington was sworn in as the first President. If you want to visit too, it is located at the Federal Hall on Wall Street here in NYC. Just across from the New York Stock Exchange.

I was thinking about what does it mean to be an average American. What did it mean then and what does it mean 240 years later, today. There has been a lot of heated controversy in the media about this recently, due to the upcoming election.

Then my brother text me a youtube video of that I NEEDED to watch in honor of the weekend. The video is of John Cena explaining what Patriotism means in today's world. I watched it on my brothers recommendation and to my amazement thought the words leaving the WWE Champion's mouth were so perfect I would share it with you here. I promise to get back to startups in my next post, but for now watch what John Cena had to say below. You will be pleasantly surprised I think. 

Patriotism - devoted love, support, and defense of one's country.

 

Forget the Cronut, You Need To Try Mise En Place

It's time to bring people back around the dinner table, not back around the stove. Cooking dinner shouldn't require standing by the stove for the same amount of time as it takes to watch two episodes of Game of Thrones. Meticulously preparing, chopping, dicing, mixing, and cooking so you can eat for 20 minutes all before you have to clean up, is no longer ideal in todays fast paced world. I'm looking at you Grocery Stores, Fresh Direct, Blue Apron & Hello Fresh... 

It's the prepping and the clean up that are the biggest time consumers when cooking a fresh dinner. The cook part of cooking, is the part I actually enjoy. I have tried many meal kit companies in the past year but there is one that shines above the rest.

Mise en place (mepNYC for short & those that don't speak French) believes in bringing people back around the dinner table by designing a home cooking experience that is both convenient, and fulfilling. They successfully address the "last mile of cooking", the prep, and are the next evolution of the current meal-kit industry. And by handling all the prep work earlier in the day, you use many less dishes when cooking the meal so you save on the clean up too. 

In my honest opinion the food is delicious. If you want to try Mise En Place use the code "siskarlovesmep" and you will get $15 off your first order! If you want to bring your family back around the dinner table, I highly recommend giving mise en place a try! 

10 Thousand Users In The First Month

This post has been co-authored with the Founder Institute.  I wanted to share it with you here, as there are some great insights and powerful tools you can start using right away. 

Launching your first product is an exciting and stressful time for every startup, as the initial success of a company’s offering often determines how well the product will do in the long run. And with the large number of overnight success stories out there, the pressure to release a hot product right out of the gate is higher than ever.

Luckily, if you’re getting ready to launch your product and want to learn how to get the most from your release, this guide can help you get started as it is filled with insights from someone who managed to attract over ten thousand users in just four weeks of launching their product - WITHOUT a marketing plan or budget. That someone is Manoj Khani, a Graduate of the Los Angeles Founder Institute and the founder of the photo management app PhotoPanda.

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Like most first time entrepreneurs, when we first started building PhotoPanda, I only had a rough idea of how we were going to get in front of users, but not a tested Go To Market plan. We were busy building the product with a small team that consisted of a Designer, Developer, and a Product Manager, but not a marketer. Also, our assumptions about who our best users were, haven’t been validated in any statically significant environments. Yet, despite a lack of early planning and our decision to not invest in paid acquisition until we found out user lifetime value data; we were able to acquire over 10,000 passionate users within the first 4 weeks of launch.

So how did we grow 100x from our first one hundred beta testers while only spending <$100 and what did we learn?

1. Promote Your Company on Product Hunt

We asked one of our mentors to submit us to Product Hunt. Product Hunt is great for spreading the word among early adopters, especially if you have a consumer product. Its users will not only try your product, but also give you valuable feedback. Various tech journalists also frequent the site daily looking for new products to write about.

Here are a few points to keep in mind when promoting your product on Product Hunt:

• Apart from finding someone who has submission rights, you will need to make sure your product looks ready and delivers value. A rickety beta will cost you the opportunity inherent in the launch of a brand new product, as the site showcases new releases only.
• Also, you will need to make sure that when your product does go live on the site, you are 100% available to respond to all comments and feedback from its users.
• Being on time zone 12 hours ahead when PhotoPanda went live, my ability to not rapidly get back to the commenters limited the amount of upvotes we received.

2. Reach Out to Bloggers and Journalists

Product reviews by bloggers/journalists are a win-win, as it means they do the work for getting you in front of interested eyeballs and in return their users benefit from it. Getting a positive product review from a trusted author is far more effective than any sort of paid advertising to that user base. Bloggers know their readers and will write only when the product is relevant and useful to their readers.

Below are some tips to keep in mind to utilize bloggers and journalists to expand your user base:

• Reach out to as many writers as possible. We submitted PhotoPanda to the App Store, and immediately started reaching out to tech journalists and mommy bloggers. We had put together a contact list of 100+ journalists and reached out individually to all of them. I followed them on Twitter and started engaging with their posts.
• Don’t give up. Unless you have an existing relationship or the blogger wants to write about that space, the conversion is low here. So don’t get demoralized; it is still better than nothing! In the second week of doing this and leveraging the Product Hunt announcement, we got our first review published in AppAdvice. The online tech magazine has a significant audience and soon after, CultOfMac included us in their “Apps of the Week” section. These positive articles propelled us towards our first thousand users.

Go international. Seeing this traction domestically, we started reaching out to bloggers internationally in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Southeast Asia – places where we expected our core demography to be. After many translated emails (we used Gengo for professional translations), we received reviews in two major Japanese outlets techjo.jp, appps.jp, followed by stories in Indonesia and Hong Kong. This brought us our next several thousand users in a matter of days.

3. Submit to Product Review Sites

There are quite a few sites that will help you submit your new product to many technology websites at once. After trying a few, I ended up using StartupLister, which helped us submit to over 40 other websites like Mashable, The Verge etc., for $89 only. Not only did this save us valuable time in the race to get the word out, we also got accepted by many upcoming sites like BetaBound, Startup blink and Killer Startups, that we would not have otherwise known of.

A word of caution: Some sites will ask you to pay to publish your review faster. I would advise against this. The best reviews are ones in which the blogger/journalists loved your product or found it relevant and wanted to write about it to their users can benefit from it.

4. Boost Your Social Media Presence

Since PhotoPanda is in the photos space, Instagram was the obvious choice for social media. We were frustrated with the amount of effort it took to grow the audience, so we used an automation tool (Boostagram) to help us get up to a 1,000 new followers per month. This helped us gain a presence on social media and an early communication outlet for our users. However, converting social media to paying users is a separate challenge and the topic of another post.

In addition to Boostagram, check out the following tools to help you get the most out of your social media accounts:

• EveryPost enables you to curate your company’s visual content, schedule customized posts, and share content to all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Tumblr.
• Bit.ly lets you shorten your url and tracks clicks to help you monitor how well your content is converting traffic to your website.
• Hootsuite, a social media management tool that lets you schedule and analyze your social media marketing campaigns.
• Crowd Booster optimizes your social media marketing decisions by automatically sending you analytics on a regular basis.

5. Promote Your Product on TV

The year prior to going completely digital, we had been on a Fox morning show on Cyber Monday. The audience of the morning show, airing in Santa Barbara, was not quite what we were targeting, so while it helped from a press perspective, it did not have any real impact on sales.

If you plan on promoting your product on a TV show, keep the following points in mind:

• Remember that appearing on television won’t guarantee a sudden surge in users, so make sure you’re targeting the right audience.
• The smaller and more localized the TV program, the smaller and more localized your audience will be.
• If you are able to promote your product on television, plan a major social media campaign before, during, and after your appearance.
• In the event that your TV show appearance does reach a wide audience, block off the next few days after the program airs to ensure you’re prepared for increased volume.

6. Hire a Growth Hacker

With the number of early stage startups ballooning, there is a surge of “growth” companies and growth hackers or social engineers. Most of these cost money and need several weeks or months before building any real traction. Prior to hiring such help, you will need to understand whether they specialize in the audience you are targeting and how exactly they will help.

In the Entrepreneur article, “The Entrepreneur's Guide to Hiring a Kickass Growth Hacker”, Neil Patel outlines several important tips to consider before bringing on a growth hacker. Here are a few of the highlights below:

1. Remember that growth hacking is more of a mindset than a set of methods or skills, as it requires more creative thinking than technical methods.
2. Look for a strategist rather than a technician. Growth hackers are less concerned with technical details than they are with the way in which the details work together.
3. Don’t hire a growth hacker; instead look for a content marketer with a growth hacker mindset. “Growth Hacker” isn’t an official title, so hire someone with a mix of old and new strategies.
4. Look for someone with experience, someone who has successfully hacked their way to growth at previous companies, as they will be better equipped to identify your needs.

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Quick Takeaways

1. Plan your “go-to market” before starting to build the product. Test it during development, and have an audience that can benefit from your product, ready to try your beta/MVP.
2. Leverage third party tools to submit to as many early adopters sites as possible. Follow up at least a few times with the ones that are relevant to your product/vertical.
3. Figure out the best social media channel and use automation tools to build your following faster and more effectively.
4. Be hyperactive when interacting with early adopters and responding to their feedback, reviews, and comments to establish your credibility.
5. Try free channels to validate your core users and product assumptions first before investing significantly in paid channels or hiring outside companies.

A lot of effort goes into building a good product. Almost similar effort, if not more is needed to get it out in front of the audience that will benefit from it the most. Trying multiple routes to understand and acquire these users before investing in paid channels is a scrappy way for refining your product quickly. It will also grease the wheels of any inherent viral components, setting you up for more organic growth and accelerated learnings.

David S. Rose Explains How The New Startup Crowdfunding Rules Affect You & His New Book The Startup Checklist

David Rose, The Startup Checklist

On this episode of Ambition Today David S. Rose explains his new book The Startup Checklist, how the new startup crowdfunding rules affect you & angel investing 101. A third generation serial entrepreneur, David's new book The Startup Checklist which is now a New York Times Bestseller. David is also the author of the Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups, as well as the Founder and CEO at Gust. 

A man of many titles: Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, Mentor, and Author; David has had an incredible career starting several businesses. Crain's New York Business has called David "the father of angel investing in New York".

Today we learn about how he got started as a founder, became an angel investor, and where he is now as an Author and CEO. We cover the basics of how angel investing in startups works and unpack what the new SEC crowdfunding rules actually mean for startups, your friends, your family and you. We also learn about: 

• How an Urban Affairs degree enhanced David's views on business.

• Why he started Angel Investing.

• How NY Angels was created.

• How do you set the foundation for a great startup company.

• Angel Investing 101.

• What is an Accredited Investor.

• How Title 3 of the JOBS Act impacts startups and you.

• What the new SEC crowdfunding rules mean if your income or net worth is below $100k.

• What the new SEC crowdfunding rules mean if your income or net worth is above $100k.

• If a founder decides to fundraise from non-accredited civilians, what do they need to know?

• What platforms are enabling crowdfunding right now?

• How can you invest in startups now.

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

Why does success matter in the first place? Why not just live a simple life in a fishing town?

Links from this episode:

• DavidSRose.com

• David Rose Twitter

• Gust

• The Startup Checklist

• Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups

• Peter Diamandis

• Ray Kurzweil

• Singularity University

• NY Angels

• Digital.NYC

• Tech.London

• Toptal

• Audible

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next?  Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

Ambition Today Episode Sponsors:

Toptal

 

Audible.com

Founder Institute New York

FINY11 Graduates Founder Institute New York

Founder Institute New York Spring 2016 

Last week the Founder Institute New York graduated the Spring 2016 cohort with 12 promising new companies. The eleventh batch of the Founder Institute in New York includes companies from across several industries such as film, childhood education, real estate, fin-tech, retail, HR-tech, fashion and more. As always, I am very grateful for the incredible lessons, experience, and wisdom brought to each semester's graduates by our great mentors here in New York.

Founder Institute New York 11

Clapper - Streamlining communication and logistics for media productions.

GigSesh - Helping professionals make extra cash by connecting them to advice seekers.

Mindsprinkles - Sprinkling culture into your child’s screentime.

NvestN - Low cost robo-investing platform for the underserved market of investors.

PicketFencer - Find a hometown that fits.

Prix Fixed - Where planning is not the event. 

Real Assembly - The future of real estate crowdfunding.

Skour - Mobile storefront for brick and mortar boutiques.

SquarePeg - Intelligent assessment based job matching for candidates and employers.

TeddyMozart - Let your memories transcend borders and time.

TellyVizion - Where artist's work and shows are compensated directly by the audience.

Ushu - Custom tailored shoes to your unique foot's shape.

Startup Of The Week: TeddyMozart

I am starting a new blog segment called the "Startup Of The Week", or S.O.T.W.™ for short, where I plan to highlight some great startups. There are several startups working to make the world a better place and I want to tell you a little bit more about some of them.

The Startup Of The Week I have selected for the week of May 30th is TeddyMozart. 

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Company: TeddyMozart

Founder: Carlton Bennett, Founder & CEO

Headquarters: Brooklyn, New York          Operating: Globally

One sentence pitch: The first smart toy dedicated to connecting families across the world to share love and inspire growth in young children through music.

In my words: The app technology and the plush bear that come together to make TeddyMozart, create a unique experience that allows a child and family member to feel connected in a fun, loving, engaging and playful way.  

In their words: “Families can use the TeddyMozart app and easily record and store a family's traditional songs, lullabies and stories from anywhere and share it with young children from generation to generation, forever. Young children get to listen to these musical experiences through the comfort of a high quality TeddyMozart plush toy.”

Accomplishments: 

• Founder Institute New York
• 2016 Kickstarter – Launched May 31st

Who is product for:

• Family members who believe in preserving their voice through memories.
• Parents who want to set the mood or inspire kids with a song.
• Busy parents who like to set playlists of songs unique to their child's daily routine.
• Family members wanting to provide a unique and memorable gift experience.
• Parents who want to provide a great companion for their kids.

How It Works:

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Be sure you check out and support the Kickstarter campaign for TeddyMozart!

If you want to learn more about the company or team behind this week's Startup Of The Week you can contact me here. 

How Jeff Stewart Helps Loan Money To Strangers All Over The World With Lenddo

Lend an ear as we interview how NY Serial Entrepreneur Jeff Stewart founded numerous companies, including his most recent business, Lenddo.

Jeff was a pioneer in the early days of the internet. He started Square Earth in the mid 90's and it eventually got acquired. His second company Mimeo was started in 1998 and is still operating today. Now he is the Founder and Chairman of Lenddo, which uses non-traditional data such as your social media profiles to provide credit scoring and verification to economically empower the emerging middle class around the world. To hear about the rest of Jeff's business ventures and life lessons be sure to check out the whole episode, including: 

• How Dale Carnegie's writing influenced Jeff's early years.

• The advantages of understanding the technology within your products.

• How Jeff watched the internet double in size in one day.

• Jeff's experience guiding Mimeo through the financial dot com crash.

• The parallels between the dot com crash and the 2015-2016 "tech bubble".

• What is an Entrepreneur in Residence?

• The power of having customers before you have a company.

• The pains of being too early to market within an industry.

• How do you verify a person's identity?

• The importance of having the right team.

• How to find the a great advisor!

Ambition Today Question of the Day™:

How important is being the right location to achieving one’s goals?

Links from this episode:

• Jeff Stewart

• Lenddo

• Mimeo

• Urgent Speed

• DFJ Gotham

• Six Degrees

• Toptal

Thank you so much for listening and applying these useful tips and strategies to your life! If you have a chance, please drop by and leave a review for the show on iTunes by clicking here. Also, who should I interview next?  Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review in the comments below. It keeps me going…

Be sure to listen and subscribe to Ambition Today in the iTunes Store for iOS, on Google Play Music or Stitcher for Android. 

Listen to this episode now: 

 

Ambition Today Episode Sponsors:

Toptal

 

Audible.com

 

Founder Institute New York