Builders' Studio: a Founder School by Slush
Entrepreneurship
Builders’ Studio is dedicated to practical topics around company-building – everything a founder needs to know in order to build a groundbreaking company. These horizontally applicable insights are delivered by expert founders, investors and operators from companies like Spotify, Coinbase, Mulesoft, Spring Health, Lakestar and many more. In 30 episodes, Builders’ studio covers both pre- and post-product market fit topics. Put together alongside our last year's series, the talks form a timeless library of company-building advice, accessible to all aspiring founders in Europe and beyond.
Location:
United States
Description:
Builders’ Studio is dedicated to practical topics around company-building – everything a founder needs to know in order to build a groundbreaking company. These horizontally applicable insights are delivered by expert founders, investors and operators from companies like Spotify, Coinbase, Mulesoft, Spring Health, Lakestar and many more. In 30 episodes, Builders’ studio covers both pre- and post-product market fit topics. Put together alongside our last year's series, the talks form a timeless library of company-building advice, accessible to all aspiring founders in Europe and beyond.
Language:
English
Episodes
#30 How Not to Die? (Google) Marta Krupinska | Slush 2022
11/29/2022
Most startups die. It’s a painful, inevitable consequence of the exceptionally difficult task of finding an intense problem shared by many and solving it delightfully.
However, not all startup death is inevitable. In fact, a lot of it is caused by avoidable mistakes along the way.
Sometimes, failure can also be for the better. Failing fast in the face of impossible odds is better than failing slowly and excruciatingly because you didn’t let go.
Joining Builders’ Studio to prepare us...
Duration:00:27:21
#29 How to Deal with Hard Stuff as a Founder? – (Mulesoft) Ross Mason | Slush 2022
11/28/2022
An adjective that always comes up when successful founders look back on their journeys is hard. The early days are littered with decisions you’ve never made before and that will stay with your company for years. Later on, you become responsible for a growing number of team members and customers. Through it all, you never seem to have enough time to judge thoughtfully, and always lack people with whom you can be candid. As a result, every founder’s journey will be littered with difficulty –...
Duration:00:26:53
#28 Growth Crash Course: From Seed to Public – (Coinbase) Brian Ta | Slush 2022
11/27/2022
All companies grow, but startups are defined by growth. It means the process of being intentional about growing. It requires creating meaningful and predictable change while being able to ship fast and reiterate quickly.
Joining us to give a growth crash course from seed to public is Brian Ta, Product manager at Coinbase. Before Coinbase, he worked on Growth at Airbnb, Strava, and AngelList. Brian is also a regular speaker at YCombinator where he speaks about Growth to their newest batches.
Duration:00:26:04
#27 International Expansion – (La French Tech) Clara Chappaz | Slush 2022
11/26/2022
While some startups are built globally and require no or very little geographical customization, many will have to intentionally open up every new city, country or region. This is no easy task. Expansion is capital-intensive, and often requires hiring and setting up independent teams in unfamiliar locations. Cultural nuances often mean that every location will require some customization of product, offering, messaging or operations. What’s more – locations aren’t born equal. A fantastic one...
Duration:00:28:06
#26 Hiring Fantastic People at Scale – (Shopify) Shimona Mehta | Slush 2022
11/25/2022
One thing that doesn’t change as your company grows is that your people will remain your single biggest competitive advantage. While a single bad hire will no longer kill your company, an overall lapse in hiring quality almost definitely will.
At this point, you may be hiring dozens of people a month. Also, while you as a founder could once sit in on every single interview, you’ll struggle to do that now. So, how do you teach your organisation to find, convince and onboard fantastic people...
Duration:00:29:06
#25 Culture as You Scale – (Pleo) Niccolo Perra | Slush 2022
11/24/2022
Culture isn’t static, it constantly evolves as your company evolves and hires new people. Though all of that, the culture needs to be steered with intention so that it leans into the requirements of scale and great ideas that come along but stays anchored your values. You also constantly need to nurture and uphold the culture. After all, your values document doesn’t define your culture – the daily actions of every employee do. Joining us to share his insights on scaling culture at a...
Duration:00:26:07
#24 Bringing Bottom-up GTM to a Top-down Market - (Snyk) Guy Podjarny & (GV) Tom Hulme | Slush 2022
11/23/2022
For long, security used to be a top-down market – sales people selling a product to large chunks of a company in one go. Since 2015, Snyk has been on a mission to upend this model. Individual developers adopt the product long before it rolled out across the company. This motion is supported by a freemium tier and a deep focus on the user, rather than the buyer.
Now, Snyk’s Co-founder and President Guy Podjarny will get on stage with Tom Hulme of GV to unpack what other B2B founders can...
Duration:00:27:02
#23 Quantifying Quality - (Pebblebed) Keith Adams | Slush 2022
11/22/2022
From Facebook to Slack, Keith Adams has spent his life building and leading some of the most adored software on the planet. He suggests that, all too often, we view the quality of the software as something ineffable, subjective, and unmeasurable. Keith proposes a different approach – a unified metric for the quality of a product that spans performance, freedom from defects, and reliability. This way, companies can prioritize UX issues to fix and build better products, faster.
Duration:00:26:20
#22 Building Customer Love - (Pigment) Rebeca Tristan | Slush 2022
11/21/2022
Many early-stage startups might consider closing deals as the most important customer interaction. However, delivering an exceptional customer experience is one of the most important things you can do early on. Nurturing your customer relationship is crucial especially when the majority of sales come from existing customers. This might sound self-evident as everyone claims to be customer-first, but are you truly?
Joining us to share 5 steps of building true customer love is Rebeca Tristan,...
Duration:00:21:26
#21 Best Practices for EPD Teams - (Lakestar) Steven Jacobs | Slush 2022
11/20/2022
Engineering, product & design form the core team that is needed to define and deliver fantastic products to the world. Out of these three, the product manager takes the main responsibility of making sure that the business goals are achieved. It involves defining the vision, discovering customer needs, planning the product roadmap, prioritizing product features and much more. However, many startups face the challenge of finding the most efficient and scalable practices for the role of the...
Duration:00:26:48
#20 How to Build a Winning Go-To-Market Team? - (Pitch) Åsa Liden | Slush 2022
11/19/2022
At some point, every startup needs to move beyond things that don’t scale and build a team that can intentionally and efficiently take its product to market. However, what kind of profiles should you be hiring first – and how should you onboard them? How should they be structured? What are the right goals and incentives to have in place? Who makes for a good GTM hire when both the market you operate in and the strategy for winning it may be blurry? Åsa Lidén, COO of next-gen presentation...
Duration:00:28:03
#19 Product-driven Culture - (Founders Fund) Leigh Marie Braswell | Slush 2022
11/18/2022
Product-driven companies put their users’ painpoints and the extent to which their product solves those front and center. When necessary, they do so at the cost of short-term sales.
Product managers work at the core of these choices. After all, they are the ones that translate customer understanding into product roadmaps. Leigh Marie Braswell was the first product manager at Scale AI before turning to early-stage investing at Founders Fund. She will join us to share insights on how...
Duration:00:26:34
#18 Evolving Co-founder Dynamics & Responsibilities - (Ledgy) Yoko Spirig | Slush 2022
11/17/2022
At the inception, you will work side-by-side in a room with your co-founders every day. Each of you will understand every part of the business, and you can make most decision together. What a joy!
However, if everything goes well, this dynamic will look very different a few years down the line. Each of you will have real C-level roles at a real company. Someone needs to be CEO. You can no longer stay on top of every detail and decision in each other’s domains. How do you nurture trust and...
Duration:00:19:48
#17 Diversity - (Apple) Esther Hare & (Herping Holding) Louise Herping Ellegaard | Slush 2022
11/16/2022
Organisations often talk about the importance of diverse perspectives but how can founders really ensure the broadest range of voices are heard? What steps can founders take to embed diversity in their organisations to build the best products and services for users?
In a fireside chat Danish business angel Louise Herping Ellegaard speaks to Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Developer Marketing and Executive Sponsor Women@Apple, as they share their experiences as leaders in...
Duration:00:25:09
#16 How to Avoid the “Big Company Disease” When Growing? - (Qonto) Steve Anavi | Slush 2022
11/15/2022
In the early days, a startup’s competitive edge is almost always agility, speed, and relentless passion for the problem. Founders tend to have an intimate knowledge of the customer pain and, early on, are able to project that understanding onto almost every detail in the company.
As companies scale and mature, they risk losing this and becoming the very behemoths they set out to disrupt. However, Qonto Co-founder and CEO Steve Anavi argues that it doesn’t have to be like this. He will join...
Duration:00:26:39
#15 Building the Product Proposition - (Spotify) Sten Garmark | Slush 2022
11/14/2022
Fundamentally, a product proposition answers the question: why should someone buy this product? This is a question that any startup is going to have to answer very clearly before they can dream of product-market fit. So how do you narrow down from a rough idea to a specific product proposition?
Now, for many companies, the work doesn’t stop there. That was the case for Spotify, who’s Global Head of Consumer Experience Sten Garmark join us for this talk. After achieving exceptional success...
Duration:00:25:54
#14 Branding - (Seedcamp) Natasha Lytton | Slush 2022
11/13/2022
We all know a good brand when we see one. However, the amount of established brands have forced nascent ones to go to increasing lengths to stand out and break through the noise.
Joining us to uncover what it takes to create brands that users connect with on an emotional level is Natasha Lytton, Head of Brand, Network & Portfolio at Seedcamp. Her talk will take us from the foundational moments all the way through to how your brand might need to evolve and expand as your product and user...
Duration:00:27:12
#13 Startup Sales: How to Break Through the Noise? - (Vanta) Paulo Rodriguez | Slush 2022
11/12/2022
Not all startup growth is product-led and self-serve (and even when it is, you’ll probably need sales) – many products are sold by sales people. One of those products is Vanta, a compliance and security platform designed for companies with 100s to 1,000s of employees.
Vanta’s VP of International Paulo Rodriguez joins us for a masterclass on how startups can convince huge companies to adopt a scrappy incumbent’s product. As part of that, he’ll talk about how to empower sales teams to reach...
Duration:00:26:18
#12 The Startup Storytelling Playbook - (Obvious Ventures) Gabe Kleinman | Slush 2022
11/11/2022
Everyone knows your story matters to you, but is it a compelling one that can break through the clutter? No matter how big the need is, how great your tech is, or how talented your team is, you will need to craft your own story. Joining us to fight for relevance and attention through startup storytelling is Gabe Kleinman, who works on Founder Solutions & Marketing at the purpose-focused VC fund Obvious Ventures.
After the keynote, you’ll walk out with a practical playbook on Startup...
Duration:00:25:53
#11 Category Creation - (Terraformation) Yee Lee | Slush 2022
11/10/2022
One of the most common misguided pieces of startup advice is: “go find a huge market and claim a small share of it”. However, very few iconic companies are built this way. Much more often, great startups create new categories that exist adjacent to, in the intersection of or totally outside of the existing market. These markets are often originally very small, or non-existent. However, when the time is right, companies are able to rapidly grow these spaces and turn them into huge ones in a...
Duration:00:21:49