Venture Madness '22, Homage to Oscar, and Weekend Reads and Listens

Last week was pretty busy due to it being Venture Madness '22. Congrats to all the winners - Botco.ai, PWR Labs, Neon, Frites, and Taproot. You can tell they did a lot of work preparing for this competition. I was lucky enough to serve as a judge on the tech track.

It was a brutal weekend for the Paul family. We lost our 12-year old golden retriever named Oscar. My wife and I were devastated by we ended up with feelings of gratitude for how lucky we were to have a dog that lived its entire life expectancy with us. Onward.

I also had some time to do some quick reading. The following article was on the emergence of Solo GPs as a fund manager persona. It is very long by had good stuff.

Capital Stack Podcast: iTunes and Spotify
Tim Hargis is a serial entrepreneur and lover of all things startup. He was featured among the top 35 Entrepreneurs under 35 by Arizona Republic. He has actively served as a mentor and advisor for many startup companies while supporting young innovators and entrepreneurs through SkySong, ASU’s Scottsdale Innovation Center. 

After the sale of his precious metals franchise company, Tim joined Tuft & Needle (mattresses online) in their early stages and played an integral role helping the company grow from $9m to $200m (while remaining profitable and bootstrapped) by leveraging his expertise and network in the digital marketing arena. In addition, he helped build the wholesale distribution channel for the business by successfully landing and negotiating multiple big-box retail partnerships with companies such as Lowe’s, Crate & Barrel, and Walmart.

What You’ll Learn:

• Tim’s story of how he got started as a serial entrepreneur

• Using Google Analytics to determine where to open locations

• Understanding margins to find value

• Finding a market that can be disrupted

• Finding early adopters

• Iterating a product which results in less returns

• Using Google search terms for marketing

• Using Google Ads

• Decision-making between staying bootstrapped vs. raising venture capital

• Creative marketing – billboard marketing considerations

• Buying a memorable domain name (one word dotcoms)

Favorite Quote:

“When you are bootstrapped, it forces you to be resourceful. It reinforces building good fundamentals. You have to find a space where you have an edge.” - Tim Hargis