Founder Coffee

- episode 53

Matthew Cleevely, Co-Founder of 10to8

"Stop being paralyzed by fear. You have to behave like your business is going to live forever... until it doesn't."

Salesflare | Jeroen Corthout

Welcome fellow founder

I’m Jeroen, Co-Founder of Salesflare, and this is Founder Coffee.

Every two weeks I have coffee with a different founder. We discuss life, passions, learnings, … in an intimate talk, getting to know the person behind the company.

Episode 52

Sussanne Klepsch

Co-Founder MeetFox

"Question your findings and look at them in a critical way. And then maybe change direction based on your findings. That is something we should have done better."

Episode 51

Ai Ching Goh

Co-Founder Piktochart

"Sometimes I have a really bad gut feeling about something, but I just go along. And then it slows us down a lot because of the hesitation. I just wish I had less self doubt."

Episode 50

Dave Will

Co-Founder PropFuel

"Shooting to the moon and everybody trying to change the world and stuff... that's cool... but is that you speaking or is that somebody else planting seeds."

Episode 49

Lisa Popovici

Co-Founder Cartloop

"Try to always think about how your customer would want your product to look, and what's important to the customer. Don't add anything except what's important to them and always validate it."

Episode 48

Udesh Jadnanansing

Co-Founder Mopinion

"Start selling as soon as possible. I think when we started we were really focusing on the product, thinking it needed to be perfect. At the same time, our competitors were entering the market."

Episode 47

Will van der Sanden

Founder Dux-Soup

"Don't build something that nobody understands and say, "It's their loss." No, it's not their loss. If you build something, make sure that you always listen and understand how people are using it."

Episode 46

Steven Benson

Founder Badger Maps

"I have my own theory that you get to keep about 10% of the value in the world that you create. So just look for ways to create value and things will all work out. Some of it will come back to you."

Episode 45

Nick Franklin

Founder ChartMogul

"Trust your gut. When you start, there's a lot of noise. And it's all good, but it's not really always relevant to you. Develop your own sense of what is right for your business."  

Episode 44

Amir Salihefendić

Founder Doist

"Something bad in our community is this very strong focus on the short term. Basically, raising money, building something and selling it. Let's think in terms of decades instead of years."  

Episode 43

Randy Rayess

Co-Founder Outgrow

"It doesn't need to be that all you do is work. You can still do well while sleeping and while enjoying your time at the same time. Entrepreneurs I think overdo things, including myself sometimes."  

Episode 42

Rand Fishkin

Co-Founder SparkToro

"Build a better working relationship with the people around you, be willing to have hard conversations. I think that that's under invested in by a lot of folks in our field."  

Episode 41

Veronika Riederle

Co-Founder Demodesk

"Some things you have to go through on your own in order to really learn them. I think sometimes it's just impossible to make a shortcut, and I think being a founder and founding a company might be one of these."  

Episode 40

Jason Fried

Co-Founder Basecamp

"Grow slowly and in control because you can very quickly lose control of your business and find yourself in a hole that you have to constantly be digging out of every day."  

Episode 39

Max Armbruster

Founder Talkpush

"It's hard to feel connected to the results when you're a part of an organization with many employees. Now I don't have the choice. I don't have to ask myself if I'm motivated. I get up and go."  

Episode 38

Alex Theuma

Founder SaaStock

"As a first time entrepreneur, I was looking at the revenue, and the vanity of revenue over the profitability in cash, certainly for the last few years. And now the mindset has definitely changed."  

Episode 37

Rahul Vohra

Co-Founder Superhuman

"Be clear in your own mind whether you are aiming for growth of users or growth of revenue because they will take you down two entirely different paths."

Episode 36

Mada Seghete

Co-Founder Branch

"It's just a really, really lonely and hard journey. And I don't think people talk enough about that."  

Episode 35

Darren Chait

Co-Founder Hugo

"The bit that creates value, the bit that makes you successful and your business successful is the underwater stuff that no one is ever going to care about or credit you for eventually."

Episode 34

Harrison Rose

Co-Founder Paddle

"As a founder, don't put off the things that would make you happier or more comfortable today, just because something might happen in the future. Concentrate more on the now."  

Episode 33

Xenia Muntean

Co-Founder Planable

"Postpone hiring as much as you can. That's important because it gives us, the co-founders, the chance to build a culture between the three of us and align ourselves in terms of values."  

Episode 32

Perttu Ojansuu

Co-Founder Happeo

"It's good to surround yourself with people who are like-minded and helpful, but I also think that it is important to remember to ask for help as well."  

Episode 31

Omer Molad

Co-Founder Vervoe

"Running a business is a marathon, not a sprint, and I think if you can stay healthy and focused and have a clear mind, you can make better decisions for your company."  

Episode 30

Allan Wille

Co-Founder Klipfolio

"We really should have dreamt bigger and then just acknowledge that if you have bigger dreams, you may fail more often. The businesses that are going to change the world, are the ones that think big."  

Episode 29

Chris Savage

Co-Founder Wistia

"Don't do something if you're not obsessed with it. It's just too easy to give up, and when there's too many challenges and you need blind faith, you have to be obsessed with solving the problem."  

Episode 28

Ilan Missulawin

Co-Founder ClickCease

"In the beginning, we didn't know exactly who was the right type of customer for us. I think we could have scaled faster if we knew exactly who our target market was from the get go."  

Episode 27

Cody Candee

Co-Founder Bounce

"Trust yourself, or take all advice with a grain of salt. You can hear advice telling you one thing, and great advice from another person on something exactly the opposite."  

Episode 26

Laura Roeder

Co-Founder MeetEdgar

"People don't fail, systems do. And that means whenever you have a human failure in your business, you first should always, always look at what was the system that failed behind this."  

Episode 25

Paul Katsen

Co-Founder Blockspring

"If you know what you want to work on, go work on it. If you don't, go figure things out. Go learn and go identify other problems through the course of living and talking to people."  

Episode 24

Matthieu Vaxelaire

Co-Founder Mention

"Never be afraid to have too big an ambition or expectation. Even if you don't reach it, you will aim high and you will end up higher than if you had started with lower expectations."  

Episode 23

Hampus Jakobsson

Co-Founder Brisk & TAT

"We have Neolithic brains that love sugar and attention and status and things, and a pretty bad self-confidence. And we have a very medieval institution. That's how we try to run the globe."  

Episode 22

Rick Perreault

Co-Founder Unbounce

"Sometimes, even as founders, we think everything is working perfectly, but under the hood there can be a lot of problems there. It's something I would advise people to be super aware of."  

Episode 21

Rob Walling

Co-Founder Drip

"I thought to myself: “How can I control my own time 24 hours a day, where I can do, and build, and make whatever I want?” And that was truly the switch that flipped for me."

Episode 20

Mikita Mikado

Co-Founder PandaDoc

"As long as your employees are happy, then your customers are going to be happy. Your customers are happy, you're going to do well. It's all connected."  

Episode 19

John Kim

Co-Founder SendBird

"This too shall pass. When you have great moments, make sure to plan for the future, don't get overly excited. And when there are really dark tunnels, there's almost always a way out."  

Episode 18

Bryant Chou

Co-Founder Webflow

"Understand which decisions are actually important, because you can't easily back away from it. Those are the ones that you have to really keep an eye on and those are the ones that you may regret."  

Episode 17

Kevin Beales

Co-Founder Refract.ai

"I play 'Dragon's Den' with my kids - Shark Tank in the US. I You know, they come up with their business ideas, and they think about pitching it, and then we have a negotiation."  

Episode 16

Krish Subramanian

Co-Founder Chargebee

"Priority in product roadmap, priority in hiring and also making sure that people are working on the right problems. I think those are the top three things that consume most of our time right now."  

Episode 15

Bart Lorang

Co-Founder of FullContact

"I think a lot of the people that work here are on some self-exploration and trying to understand themselves a little better, so they can be more awesome people. That keeps me going."

Episode 14

David Cancel

Co-Founder of Drift

"I always kind of coach people on my team to never have a one on one meeting sitting down in a meeting room. Because it doesn't feel like a natural discussion. It feels like an interrogation, right?"  

Episode 13

Guilherme Lopes

Co-Founder of RD Station

"Think early about your customer persona. We could have grown much faster if we had built software for that persona and if we had not tried to make other kinds of customers successful."  

Episode 12

Emeric Ernoult

Co-Founder of Agorapulse

"If you take a VC on board, do it for the money, because that's all you are going to get. If you get something else, good for you, but that's the cherry on top."  

Episode 11

David Henzel

Co-Founder of MaxCDN

"My favorite quote by Henry Ford is, “Whether you think you can do it and whether you think you can not do it, both times you’re right.” It’s a really big mindset thing."

Episode 10

David Darmanin

Co-Founder of Hotjar

"I think as a startup, when you are growing and you are doing well, it’s easy to have a little bit of an identity crisis in terms of what you really want to do. "

Episode 9

Patrick Campbell

Co-Founder of ProfitWell

"When something’s in your head, it doesn’t mean it’s in someone else’s head. You saying it once doesn’t mean that they get it or that it’s being imbued in their work."

Episode 8

Hannah Chaplin

Co-Founder of Receptive

"I really love the problem that we're solving and the team, and that's a massive motivating factor for me. If I wasn't as into the product and what we're doing, then it would be hard after a while."

Episode 7

Russ Heddleston

Co-Founder of DocSend

"You want to pick your customers carefully so they stick around for a long time. They also might ask you for random stuff you don’t want to build, and it can drag you in a variety of directions."

Episode 6

Des Traynor

Co-Founder of Intercom

"Don't use the confidence of your strength in one area to assume you’re going to be good at all the other functions. Be open to the idea that you might need to learn a lot about something before you even try it."

Episode 5

Louis Jonckheere

Co-Founder of Showpad

"It's amazing how much you can achieve with articulating a vision that resonates with people. The next company we start, we will do much more of storytelling from day one."

Episode 4

Sujan Patel

Co-Founder of Mailshake

"I learned all these lessons the hard way and it has gotten me where I am today. I’m fine with going on that route over and over again."

Episode 3

Aaron Ross

Co-Founder of Predictable Revenue

"A lot of people think that having a family while starting out is a burden or a distraction. It can actually be a huge help and support, and the motivation you need to keep going and be more successful than you could be on your own."

Episode 2

Hubert Palan

Co-Founder of Productboard

"The value that your personal network will have for you in the future is so huge. You take the people that you value the most with you from company to company, and from team to team."

Episode 1

Adam Hempy

Co-Founder of Better Proposals

"Just don’t do things you don’t want to do. Remember: it’s your life. Try not to have too many things that are pulling you in a direction you don’t want to go in."