PODCAST

Startup Stories - Mixergy

Andrew Warner

Business tips for startups by proven entrepreneurs

business management & marketing

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#2284 Why is Morning Brew’s founder selling “AI...

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/11/05

Coming into this interview I wasn’t even sure what “AI Transformation” was, let alone why so many companies pay for it.Here’s the deal: Tenex, the company founded by Alex Lieberman & Arman Hezarkhani, goes into companies hunting for ways to save or making them money using AI. Once they find that, it becomes a no brainer for companies to hire them to build it. But Tenex does more than AI Transformation. They also run a dev shop where their developers use AI to build super fast for clients. Alex

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#2283 How Dan Shipper uses AI to build artisanal AI apps

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/10/30

“Why did you launch yet another voice dictation app?” I asked Dan Shipper, founder of Every.I thought he’d tell me that there was some kind of research that showed people needed another one. Nah. It came down to his team’s taste and personal preference. They just wanted something different. So a single creator on the team built it. AI makes it easier for more people to create apps. So what’s the differentiator? From what I got in this interview — over and over

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#2282 Neil Patel’s insanely powerful AI sales machine

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/10/24

I’ve been talking with founders who used AI to build companies, but aren’t getting enough customers. I found the perfect person to show them how to grow.Neil Patel has been on the cutting edge of AI marketing. He’s going to show us what’s working for his customers and his company. At the end of the conversation, you’ll see the exact process his company, NP Digital, is using AI to scrape yellow pages, create custom offers, and get clients. Neil Patel is the co-founder

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#2281 Garry Tan: Y Combinator Startups Growing 5X...

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/10/17

AI changed everything. During their time at Y Combinator, startups typically grew revenue weekly by 2-4%. Now? 10-20%! PER WEEK. YC President Garry Tan told me the reason is simple: AI transformed software from a “nice to have” into an urgent necessity.“Before it was like, ‘Yeah, I know I need to replace my software.’…Today it’s becoming, ‘Oh. I see a demo. It’s really impressive… I need it right now. When can you start?'” Garry Tan

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#2280 Read.ai is adding 50k users per day

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/09/15

How can Read.ai keep growing when 1) there are loads of meeting note taking apps, and 2) platforms like Zoom keep adding note-taking features?That’s what I asked its founder David Shim David Shim is the founder and CEO of Read.ai, the fastest-growing AI meeting assistant with millions of users worldwide. Previously, he was CEO of Foursquare following its acquisition of his location analytics company, Placed, which had earlier been acquired by Snap. Today, David is building Read into the

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#2279 How are there so many AI agencies?

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/09/10

I keep seeing AI agencies pop up everywhere, offering to AI-ify businesses.But what are they AI’ing? How are they doing it? Seems too general and unfocused to work. Still, they do. I wanted to understand how, so I interviewed Rob Howard, who teaches agency owners how to sell and deliver AI services. Rob Howard is the founder of Howard Development & Consulting (HDC.net) and the creator of Innovating with AI, a program that has helped over 1,000 people start and grow AI consulting

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#2278 How to build a $15M/year AI company.

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/09/03

Pavel Doležal built Keboola to $15 million per year.How he did it: 1. Start with consulting, so clients tell you what they need 2. Build software that makes companies’ chaotic data accessible. NO agents yet. 3. Create agents that take action. That’s the hardest part. At the end of this interview, Pavel tells you how YOU should start an AI company and about the three successful companies that followed his advice. Pavel Doležal is the co-founder and CEO of Keboola, a cloud-based data

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#2277 My Body Tutor: Remote Coaching as a Service

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/07/09

Ever wish someone would text you every day to make sure you stuck to your goals?That’s exactly what Adam Gilbert built — first for fitness, now for business. He’s the founder of My Body Tutor and DoneDaily, two remote coaching services powered by daily accountability. I invited him to share how he turned simple check-ins into a multi-million dollar company. Adam Gilbert was a personal trainer who was frustrated by seeing clients not follow through on the diet and exercise programs they committed

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#2276 Close: The $50 Million / Year CRM

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/06/18

How is Close doing so well in the CRM space against such big competitors?The answer: focus. Instead of chasing enterprise clients or trying to build a CRM that does everything from web hosting to calendaring, Steli Efti focused on sales teams at small and mid-sized businesses. And he built a product with a tight set of features focused on more client conversations and less data entry. Steli Efti is the co-founder and CEO of Close, a CRM platform designed to eliminate manual data entry and make

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#2275 He’s doing SEO on ChatGPT

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/05/12

Have you noticed how AI search results are now linking to websites?Today’s guest runs an SEO agency that helps his clients’ sites show up in those chat responses. I invited Chirag Kulkarni founder of Taco to talk about how he’s doing it and how he built his agency. Chirag Kulkarni is the founder and CEO of Taco, an AI-powered SEO firm helping brands dominate emerging search platforms. Chirag and his team are building Taco into the go-to partner for companies navigating the shift

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#2274 1440: $20+mil / year newsletter

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/04/29

After closing a company that failed, Tim Huelskamp decided to keep it simple. He launched an email newsletter that briefed smart people about the day’s top news.Today his company, 1440, has over 4 million subscribers and generates over $20 million in annual revenue Tim Huelskamp is the co-founder of 1440, the fact-focused daily newsletter. Tim and his team are building 1440 into a trusted source for intellectually curious readers who want an inch-deep, mile-wide view of the world. More

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#2273 What happened to our partnership?

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/03/05

Before I partnered with Jesse Pujji, we were buddy-buddy. Texting all the time. When we got started, we got excited about the world of possibilities for our company.Now? Something is missing. I asked him about it. And about where he put his money, why he’s not launching more companies now, what he’s building with AI, and more. Jesse Pujji is the founder of Gateway X, the venture studio. Jesse & Andrew are building Bootstrapped Giants, a resource for ambitious, unfunded

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#2272 Aux: >$10mil advising private equity

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2025/02/21

When Kasey Grelle heard that private equity companies paid marketing agencies to evaluate companies they wanted to buy, she spotted a business opportunity. That realization became Aux Insights, the firm that’s become “the office of the CMO” for private equity companies. Listen to how they got clients & built their business.Kasey is a former reporter who founded Aux Insights, a global advisory firm that acts as the office of the CMO for private equity firms, specializing in

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#2271 Tucker Max left & his business crashed

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/11/29

Tucker Max thought his business was worth $64 million.Then it nearly died. This is the story of how Scribe, the ghostwriting and publishing company rose, crashed, and rose again. Tucker Max first became famous for his best-selling “fratire” books. He shifted to entrepreneurship when he launched Scribe, a book ghostwriting and publishing company. Today he spends time on his ranch where he grows his own food, and runs Tell Your Story Memoir Academy, which helps authors document their truth. Sponsored

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#2270 Zillow laid him off, so he started his own company

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/11/22

Zillow laid him off. So John Doherty launched Credo a digital agency matchmaking firm. Exactly 7 years later — to the day — he sold the company.This is the story of how he built and sold Credo, and how he’s building his latest company, EditorNinja, which offers outsourced text editing. John Doherty is the founder of Credo, which matches digital agencies with clients. After an exit in 2022, he built his professional editing/SEO service EditorNinja. When he’s not doing that,

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#2269 How the “My First Million” Guy Made his Money

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/11/15

Shaan Puri was exceptional at doing the Silicon Valley thing.Still, he says his newsletter was the fastest way he’s ever made money. Within a year of its creation, The Milk Road grew to 250k readers and a reported 8-figure exit. Shaan Puri is perhaps most famous for co-hosting the My First Million podcast with Sam Parr, which has garnered over 200 million YouTube views since it started in 2019. Some of his additional projects include Bebo (sold to Twitch in 2019), Blab (live-streaming service with

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#2268 How is beehiiv making $15 mil per year?

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/11/01

They feel like the millionth company to offer email newsletter publishing. How are they growing so fast despite the competition?Tyler Denk is a big reason. A former Morning Brew employee, he took their growth techniques and turned them into a software company: beehiiv. Tyler Denk was the second-ever employee at Morning Brew. After growing it to the reported biggest exit of any newsletter business, he started building beehiiv. Now, they’re doing $15 million in ARR as a growing underdog. More

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#2267 This listener got a Mixergy guest to invest in...

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/09/20

Vlada Lotkina noticed something wrong at her daughter’s school.So she built the solution and sold it for 8-figures. It’s called ClassTag, and it’s a platform where teachers, parents and school administrators can communicate and send out announcements. No flyers, no ridiculously long emails… My favorite part is that she’s a Mixergy listener herself. She literally called a previous guest of mine and got him to invest before her business took off. Vlada Lotkina is the co-founder and CEO of ClassTag,

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#2266 The $21M ARR Business That Sells Your Email...

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/09/13

Adam Robinson struggled to compete with MailChimp.So he built software that’s too dangerous for them to build. Businesses that use Retention.com can instantly grab email addresses from anonymous website visitors — even if they never fill out a form. To promote his software he made himself into one of the few interesting follows on LinkedIn by picking fights, bringing drama and adding production values. Adam Robinson is the founder and CEO of Retention.com, which identifies email

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#2265 He Bought a Ghost Town

Startup Stories - Mixergy ·

2024/04/12

Brent Underwood had a business idea: buy an abandoned town and turn it into a tourist destination.It didn’t work. Mostly because he tried running it remotely. Then he moved in. He started looking around, diving into old mines, and finding old treasures. He shot video of what he saw and of his renovations. That got hugely popular on social media, helped him raise money and allowed him to fund his project. It’s all in his book, Ghost Town Living, and in this interview. Brent Underwood is

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