Luminate with Lan Anh Vu – Details, episodes & analysis

Today’s guest is Steve Blank, an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. Steve is widely regarded as the father of modern entrepreneurship. Prior to academia, Steve’s career spanned eight different startups.

Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Steve is also the renowned author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual. 

Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com.

In this episode, we dive into:

-       How Steve made his way into the world of startups and Silicon Valley and how that led to his creation of “The Lean Startup Movement”

-       The differences between large corporations and startups

-       How founders can transition to CEOs

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Today’s guest is Jessica Rolph, cofounder and CEO of Lovevery, a subscription brand that sells early-childhood development play kits and solutions.

To date, Jessica has raised over $132 million for Lovevery from top-tier investors, including, TCG, Google Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Lovevery has 350,000+ active subscribers. It has been named one of Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies" and has been recognized on TIME's list of "Best Inventions".

Prior to Lovevery, Jessica was the cofounder and COO of Happy Family, helping to launch, build and lead Happy Family to its position as a top organic baby and toddler brand in the US. Happy Family was acquired by Group Danone in 2013 for about $300 million.

Jessica also co-founded the Climate Collaborative , a non-profit organization helping companies in the natural products industry take meaningful steps to reverse climate change.

She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and was awarded the Park Leadership Fellowship.

 In this episode, we dive into:

• Jessica opens up about how she never thought of herself as an idea person when it came to starting a business
• How she found purpose in life and how she discovered a market for Happy Family and Lovevery
• How to find product market fit
• Why ugly prototypes are the way to go
• Exiting to Danone and dreaming about Lovevery
• Her fundraising experience and how she deals with rejection
• Delegation versus what to control as a leader

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Today’s guest is Doug Conant, an internationally respected business leader. Doug served as the President of Nabisco from 1999-2001, served a decade as President and CEO of The Campbell Soup Company and then spent three years as Chairman of Avon Products. In 2011 he founded ConantLeadership, a consulting company focused on championing leadership that works in the 21st century.

Doug is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times bestselling author, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and one of the 100 Most Influential Authors in the World.

He’s also the author of The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights, and Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.  

During this interview, Doug shares some of his personal story and leadership philosophy. He also talks about some of his first 100 days as CEO of Campbell Soup, how he saved Campbell’s Soup from freefall, the importance of focusing on the workplace before the marketplace and so much more. 

No matter where you may be positioned in your current work situation, the lessons Doug shares will bring your attention to how important a brilliant leader is for a business and how you can take concrete steps towards being one yourself.

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Today’s guest is Hristo Borisov, cofounder and CEO at Payhawk, a financial system that combines credit cards, payments, expenses, and cash into one integrated experience.

Hristo has raised over $236 million with Payhawk from Lightspeed Ventures, Greenoaks, QED investors, and many more. Today, Payhawk is valued at US$1 billion, making it the first Bulgarian startup to achieve Unicorn status.

Prior to founding Payhawk, Hristo worked at Telerik as software engineer and a product manager.

In this episode, we talk about his founding of Payhawk, the challenges he encountered as an entrepreneur, lessons learned from scaling Payhawk into 32 countries, and much more.

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Today’s guest is Hap Klopp, founder and former CEO of The North Face, one of the world's biggest apparel companies. Hap was CEO of The North Face for 20 years. During that time The North Face was honored with many awards for being the best managed company in its industry, including being lauded by Business Week Magazine for providing one of the highest quality products of any company in the United States. 

Hap is also an author of two highly acclaimed books "Conquering The North Face" and “Almost”.

We draw upon so much wisdom from Hap, especially around what it takes to build an iconic brand. Hap built a brand that has stood the test of time, and that brand has gone through all sorts of pivots and turns, but there’s a lot of fundamental lessons that Hap shares with us around core brand building, leadership that we can all take away and learn from.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s guest is Rahul Vohra, founder and CEO of Superhuman, the startup that has rebuilt the inbox from the ground up creating the fastest email experience ever made. 

To date, Rahul has raised over $108 million from some of the best in the business including a16z, IVP, First Round, Tiger Global Management and from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Will Smith and Arianna Huffington.

Rahul previously founded Rapportive, a much-loved product that added social profiles to Gmail; it became the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users, kickstarted a whole ecosystem of email enhancements, and was ultimately acquired by LinkedIn.

In this episode, we talk about Rahul entrepreneurial journey, how he founded Superhuman. We then discuss how to measure product market fit, and why you have to figure out positioning before pricing.

Resources:

Rahul on finding product-market fit on First Round Review: https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/

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Today’s guest is Yoni Assia, cofounder and CEO of eToro, the world’s largest social investment network. Yoni has raised over $412 million with eToro from ION group, SoftBank, Velvet Sea Ventures, Spark Capital and many more.

Prior to founding eToro, Yoni was the cofounder of CDRIDE, an on-ride video technology company that was acquired by Kodak in 2006.

Yoni was included by Financial News in its prestigious Fintech 40 ranking and by City A.M. as a Fintech 100 top influencer and by Fortune business magazine's 40 Under 40. 

In this episode, we discuss how Yoni built his empire, getting dinner with Warren Buffet, how he scaled the world’s largest social investment network and much much more.

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Today’s guest is Bill George, one of the world’s best-known experts on leadership. Bill was the chairman and CEO of the world’s largest medical technology company Medtronic, which grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion in market cap, under Bill’s leadership. After working 13 years at Medtronic, he then became a professor at Harvard Business School, where he taught Leadership for over 19 years.

Bill has written nine books; most notably, True North and now True North, Emerging Leader Edition.

Along the way, he has served as a director of Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, Novartis Target, the Mayo Clinic, and the World Economic Forum USA, and has received honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Auburns College and Bryant University.

Earlier in his career, he was a senior executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the US Department of Defense.

In this episode, we talk about his upbringing, his time at Honeywell, why he felt that joining Medtronic was the perfect move for him. And then we discuss how to find your own true north, and what it takes to be a purpose driven leader today, and much, much more.

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Today’s guest is Jason Fried, one of the pioneers in software as a service (SaaS). Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals, makers of Basecamp and HEY. He’s also the author of the hugely bestselling book “Rework”.

In this episode, Jason talks about his journey through building 37Signals, scaling a company without external funding and the number one thing he looks for when recruiting and hiring remote workers. Jason packs quite a punch in this interview and you are going to get a ton of insight from him.

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