Reformers Andrew Oved

For our eleventh (and 2022 season debut) episode of Reformers: The gritty details behind the world’s greatest bootstrap successes, we are excited to share our interview with Chris Meade, the Founder & CMO at CROSSNET, a new sport that combines the best elements of four square and volleyball. Chris founded CROSSNET with his brother in 2017 and has built it into a rapidly-growing sport with tens of millions in revenue, all while raising no outside capital. In this interview, Chris shares his incredible journey including key insights and lessons learned that can be implemented in your own business.

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Reformers host Andrew Oved is the Founder & General Partner at Reformation Partners, a pioneer in early growth equity. The firm invests in the best capital efficient enterprise and consumer companies at their point of breakout and supports their growth through profitability, future financing rounds, and / or exit.

For our tenth (and 2021 season finale) episode of Reformers: The gritty details behind the world’s greatest bootstrap successes, we are excited to share our interview with Jonathan Strauss, the Founder & CEO at Create Music Group, a media and technology company that helps creators and artists better analyze, optimize, and discover audiences for their content. Jonathan was a serial entrepreneur at a young age who, after losing his entire net worth in an earlier venture, eventually went on to found Create Music Group in 2015. Since its founding, CMG has grown from a singular product that helps artists get paid on YouTube into a suite of products (including a variety of financing options for artists, as well as one of the largest TikTok accounts in the world: flighthouse) that has led to CMG becoming the second-fastest growing company in the country, all while raising minimal outside capital. In this interview, Jonathan shares his incredible journey including key insights and lessons learned that can be implemented in your own business.

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Reformers host Andrew Oved is the Founder & General Partner at Reformation Partners, a pioneer in early growth equity. The firm invests in the best capital efficient enterprise and consumer companies at their point of breakout and supports their growth through profitability, future financing rounds, and / or exit.

Chris Zarou is the Founder & CEO at Visionary Music Group, a music management company with clients including Logic, Jon Bellion, Jeremy Zucker, and Quinn XCII. Chris is a former Division 1 soccer player turned entrepreneur who founded Visionary after being rejected by every music internship and job he applied to. Since its founding, Visionary has grown from being solely an independent music manager into a record label that boasts a 50/50 partnership with Sony Music, all while being completely bootstrapped. In this interview, Chris shares his key insights and lessons learned that can be implemented in your own business.

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Reformers host Andrew Oved is the Founder & General Partner at Reformation Partners, a pioneer in early growth equity. The firm invests in the best capital efficient enterprise and consumer companies at their point of breakout and supports their growth through profitability, future financing rounds, and / or exit.

Andy Prochazka is the Founder & COO at Article, which is the leading e-commerce brand for beautiful modern furniture. Andy is an engineer by background and a serial entrepreneur who has launched a handful of companies during his career, the most recent being Article in 2011. Since its founding, Article has grown from four co-founders into a global organization consisting of more than 900 employees and nine-figures in revenue, all while being majority self-funded by the founders. In this interview, Andy shares his key insights and lessons learned that can be implemented in your own business. 

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Reformers host Andrew Oved is the Founder & General Partner at Reformation Partners, a pioneer in early growth equity. The firm invests in the best capital efficient enterprise and consumer companies at their point of breakout and supports their growth through profitability, future financing rounds, and / or exit.

Alex Klokus is the Founder and Chairman of Gravity Blanket, which created the exploding weighted blankets category. Alex launched Gravity in 2017 as a spinout of Futurism, a media business he founded in 2015 that focused on breakthrough science and technology. Gravity was a hit out of the gate and raised $4.7M on Kickstarter, making it one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns of all time. After four years of operating Gravity without raising any outside equity, Alex and team decided to sell the business to Win Brands Group, a new holding company of leading e-commerce brands. During this interview, Alex shared his key insights and lessons learned, which can be implemented in your own business.

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Reformers host Andrew Oved is the Founder & General Partner at Reformation Partners, a pioneer in early growth equity. The firm invests in the best capital efficient enterprise and consumer companies at their point of breakout and supports their growth through profitability, future financing rounds, and / or exit.

Blaine Vess is the Founder and Former CEO at Student Brands, an education technology company that operates multiple direct-to-student businesses. Blaine Vess founded Student Brands in his freshman dorm room in 1999. After slow and steady growth for the first 5 years, Student Brands hit an inflection point that saw tremendous user and revenue growth, much of which was due to a business model pivot and an unconventional M&A strategy that Blaine executed. By 2017, after 18 years of operating the business without raising any outside funding, Blaine decided to sell Student Brands to Barnes & Noble Education for $58.5M. Below are some of Blaine’s key insights and lessons learned that he shared during the interview, which can be implemented in your own business.

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Reformers host Andrew Oved is the Founder & General Partner at Reformation Partners, a pioneer in early growth equity. The firm invests in the best capital efficient enterprise and consumer companies at their point of breakout and supports their growth through profitability, future financing rounds, and / or exit.