In this episode, show hosts Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn along with show producer Hung Pham break down last week's episode with guest Sid Viswanathan, co-founder of Truepill, and share their reactions, thoughts, and insights.

Coming up with a viable business idea is hard.  

Coming up with the right type of business that aligns with your personality and vision such that you can’t sleep at night is even harder.

We call that “founder-market fit” and when you find it, you increase your chances of building a truly transformative company. 

That’s because having founder-market fit keeps you 100% focused on the problem with an obsessive, almost maniacal commitment.

So much so that it may make your product best-in-class.

A perfect example is our guest this week on First Pitches, Sid Viswanathan, co-founder of Truepill, a startup revolutionizing the healthcare patient experience.

Think Shopify for healthcare.

Before Truepill, Sid was the co-founder of CardMunch, a business-card scanning app acquired by LinkedIn in 2011.  Under Sid’s leadership at LinkedIn, CardMunch was named one of Time Magazine’s Best Apps of 2012

But after four years at LinkedIn, Sid had a founder’s itch to scratch.  The problem?  He didn’t know what to do next.

And that’s when a random encounter with a LinkedIn status update changed Sid’s life forever.

You’re gonna have to listen to find out how what happens next.

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In this episode, show hosts Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn along with show producer Hung Pham break down last week's episode with guest Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, and share their reactions, thoughts, and insights.

Founders are a rare breed and that’s because It takes a certain kind of person to create a startup. 

Not everyone can stomach the financial risk that comes with being a founder, the responsibility of managing employees with an uncertain future, and the constant self-doubt when nothing is going right. 

But when you believe you have a truly world-changing startup, it becomes a calling that you can’t ignore.

Our guest this week on First Pitches, Cindy Gallop, has just that. Cindy is the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, a startup making money by changing how the world has sex.

Cindy is also a sought-after speaker on marketing, business innovation, and gender issues and was also voted Advertising Woman of the Year in 2003.

But over 10 years ago, it was a different story. 

As accomplished as Cindy was, she could not get a single investor to invest in MakeLoveNotPorn; not because they didn’t believe in Cindy or the business, but because they were worried, “what others might think.”

At one point she almost gave up, but the flood of public emails thanking her for breaking taboos inspired her to carry on.  

And in 2018, she was able to raise 2M to continue MakeLoveNotPorn’s mission of disrupting social media by socializing sex and improving our sex lives for the better. 

Listen to find out how Cindy is changing the world to fit her mission.

In this episode, show hosts Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn along with show producer Hung Pham break down last week's episode with guest Arlan Hamilton, founder of Backstage Capital, and share their reactions, thoughts, and insights.

According to author Angela Ducksworth, the secret to success is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.”

In short, it’s the ability to persist in the face of hardship to achieve your goals no matter how long it takes.

When you have this type of grit you become a force to be reckoned with, much like our guest on this week’s episode of First Pitches.

We’re talking about Arlan Hamilton, founder of Backstage Capital.

You may have seen Arlan before as she’s graced the cover of Fast Company as the first black businesswoman and is the author of an Amazon Best Seller: It’s About Damn Time. 

She also happens to be friends with the cast of the daytime soap show, General Hospital.

But just five years ago, it was a different story. She was just another underestimated founder.

In 2015, Arlan was quickly judged as being: an LGBT black female; non-college-educated, and at one point, homeless--sleeping at SFO airport while she raised money.

Since then, she’s managed to hustle her way through all these headwinds and raised a combined $12 million for Backstage Capital and the ArlanWasHere Investments fund. 

And through these vehicles, Arlan has invested in over 130 underestimated founders. 

Interested in learning how Arlan developed her grit? Listen to find out how.

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In this episode, show hosts Lolita Taub and Eric Bahn along with show producer Hung Pham break down last week's episode with guest Elias Torres, CTO and co-founder of Drift, and share their reactions, thoughts, and insights.

How do you define the American dream?

For most, it’s the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone.

But for others, it’s a pipe dream, a fairy tale, a false hope. 

Because no matter how hard they work or how much time and effort they put into something, it is virtually impossible for them to achieve success.

And that’s due to the country and societal class they were born into; there are too many barriers for upward mobility.

But the silver lining in all this is that it builds grit, and when grit meets opportunity, well, you’ve got a force of nature.

On this episode of First Pitches, we talk with an entrepreneur who became just that.

Elias Torres is the co-founder and CTO of Drift, a conversational marketing platform valued at over 360M dollars.

Elias arrives in the United States in 1993 as a poor 17-year-old from Nicaragua; his family home was destroyed the year before.

But with this new opportunity, he hustles his way into a college scholarship, works at IBM, and at the start of the great recession--upends his security to follow his dream of starting a startup.

And even then, success isn’t guaranteed. He fails again and again until he finally lands on an idea that would become Drift.

Drift and Elias’s overnight success has been 10 years in the making, and his story will leave you speechless. 

Listen to find out why.

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