Founders with Pek

S3E9 An interview with Jeroen Courthout, Founder at Salesflare

Jeroen Corthout is the Founder at SalesFlare,  an intelligent CRM startups and small businesses love to use. It's a zero-input sales pipeline tool that thinks and works for its user, not the other way around. No more manual data entry. Salesflare fills out address book and keeps track of all interactions with the people users in contact with. Jeroen loves building great experiences, tinkering with products, reading on diverse topics, optimizing health. In this episode, we talked about: * Difference of SalesFlare in any other CRM * Jeroen’s background, interests and family background * Challenges in starting a new company * Jeroen talks about his previous company Doctura * The idea on how he started SalesFlare * What works and doesn’t work in building a successful business * How did they got their first early customers? * Partnering with Appsumo deal in getting more sales * Building and growing SalesFlare team * And MUCH MORE! Links: USE PEK25 code to get 25% for the first 3 months https://salesflare.com/ [https://salesflare.com/] Connect with Jeroen [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroencorthout/?originalSubdomain=be] https://salesflare.com/ [https://salesflare.com/] Zapier [https://zapier.com/]

S3E8 An interview with Matthew Stephens, Cofounder of DeviantArt

Matthew worked at the intersection of design and technology for over 22 years, most recently as VP of Design at The Zebra. He builds high-performing teams and designs award-winning products and brands. Beyond that, he also writes about ethics, accessibility, diversity, and education within design. At The Zebra, he scaled a Design Org from 3 to 22 in 3 years. His teams included product and marketing design, research, and design operations. They built a suite of products that increased revenue from $1M to $100M, along with a 100% retention rate on his team. Before The Zebra, he was the Co-Founder of DeviantArt.com, the largest online art gallery in the world. With over 30 million works of art and 300 million users. He’s also involved in the larger design community, both in Austin and abroad. He’s been a member of Invision’s Design Leadership Forum and is currently serving on the Advisory Board for Austin Design Week. He also donates his time and design skills to various non-profits, including American Cancer Society. In this episode, we talked about How did DeviantArt.com start? Some feature Matthew designed in the early days Deviant Art system Dealing with copyrights and how did they manage it Building and engaging with the community Career after DeviantArt Starting The Zebra What is The Zebra and how it serves people How did he scale design org And MUCH MORE Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewstephens/ https://matthewstephens.com/ https://www.deviantart.com/matteo https://dribbble.com/matthewlarn

S3E8 An Interview with Jane Portman, Cofounder of UserList and Host of UIBreakfast podcast

Jane Portman is a UI/UX consultant specializing in web application design, founder of UI Breakfast and Userlist. At Userlist, Jane's goal is to provide flawless onboarding and engagement for SaaS companies through a simple customer messaging platform. Jane has also been running UI Breakfast Podcast since 2014. In this episode, we talked about: How did Jane get into design? Software design and Saas Products Life as UI/UX consultant Productized Consulting Jane’s workflow and process in writing a book How to network? Podcasting to build a network What is Userlist and what designers need to think about as entrepreneurs And MUCH MORE! Links: UI Breakfast Podcast Better Done Than Perfect https://userlist.com/ UI Audit by Jane Portman Authority by Nathan Berry Write Useful Books by Rob Fitzpatrick Stacking the Bricks with Amy Hoy - https://stackingthebricks.com/ The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick USE PEK300 as a code to get $300 OFF - https://userlist.com/

S3E7 From $10M Landscaping business to Uber of Landscaping app with CEO Bryan Clayton

Bryan Clayton is CEO and co-founder of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 200,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day. Before starting GreenPal Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc. one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee growing it to over $10 million a year in annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013. Bryan‘s interests and expertise are related to entrepreneurialism, small business growth, marketing and bootstrapping businesses from zero revenue to profitability and exit. In this episode, we talked about: How Bryan scaled his business into the most profitable landscaping business in the state of Tennessee What led to launching GreenPal Starting a tech company with no tech background Hustling and reinventing into a tech entrepreneur Common mistakes when starting a business Learning skills from building a startup Some of the big challenges with growing small business And much MORE! Links: http://yourgreenpal.com/ https://www.facebook.com/greenpallawncare/ https://www.instagram.com/yourgreenpal/ https://twitter.com/YourGreenPal

S3E6 An interview with Llama Life solopreneur Marie Ng

Marie is the developer and designer of Llama Life, a tool that helps you work THROUGH to-do lists, not just make them. She's a 4th time founder (sold 2 companies) and previously designed an app that was featured by Apple and ranked in the Top 10 Productivity apps. Currently based in Melbourne, Australia, but spent 12yrs living in London and New York where she got her foundation in the Branding and Advertising world. Marie shares her journey of starting up Llama Life helping thousands of people around the world be more productive and what it differs from other productivity apps. Co-founded an app praised by Apple as one of the "best new apps"