Built in Seattle with Adam Schoenfeld

Adam Schoenfeld
  • 5.0 (94)
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Interviews with Seattle's top entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders. Hear how they think, how they operate, and how they're building in Seattle. Hosted by Adam Schoenfeld.

  1. 11/11/2021

    Laura Jennings (Founder & CEO at Knack) on developing a vision, responding to failure, and letting go of other what other people think

    After a long career as a VP at Microsoft in the 80s and 90s, Laura Jennings had a big vision for eCommerce. After founding Knack, her masterplan didn't play out exactly as designed. She was working out of a basement, shipping boxes, and learning how to sell merchandise with little experience. Her principles remained, but she updated her strategy after watching and listening. She created a culture that responds to mistakes by asking "what are we going to do about it?" instead of "who is at fault?" Now Knack is a growing profitable business and Laura is still looking forward.

    37 min

  2. 10/28/2021

    Julian Alvarez (Co-Founder & CEO at Logixboard) on building conviction, handling rejection, and blocking out the noise

    No technical co-founder, no domain expertise, and entering a market that nobody believed would buy tech. Julian didn't look so hot to VCs. Everyone said to pivot. Fast forward to 2021 and Logixboard was growing 30% M/M, raised a $13M series A led by RedPoint, and Julian's vision for freight forwarding software is coming true. Julian's story isn't a blind confidence in the face of doubt. It's about how to listen selectively and build conviction based on market understanding.

    37 min

  3. 10/14/2021

    Jessica Eggert (Founder & CEO at LegUp) on redefining success, creating a category, and saying yes

    Being a founder wasn't in Jessica's plan. After 15 years of climbing the ladder and checking off her goals, she was looking for a new definition of success. Instead of writing a new life plan, she starting opening to possibilities and "winging it" at times. She dug into her own problems and frustrations when getting child care for her young kids. Many iterations later she founded LegUp (legup.care) to fix the childcare enrollment process for providers and families.

    35 min

  4. 09/30/2021

    Gordon Hempton (Co-Founder & CEO at Spot.xyz) founder lessons from Outreach to Spot, establishing culture, and remote work

    Gordon co-founded Outreach in 2013. Now a multi-billion, 1000+ employee company, he's reached rare air. But he's starting again with Spot.xyz... all the way back to the ground flood. That means writing code, recruiting, and establishing a culture from the ground-up. Why would he do it again? Hear his founder lessons on this episode of The Built in Seattle Podcast.

    35 min

  5. 09/16/2021

    Laura Clise (Founder & CEO at Intentionalist) on building partnerships, managing change, and lessons from small business owners

    Laura Clise didn't intent to be an entrepreneur. She spent most of her career running corporate social responsibility programs at bigger companies as a self-described "intrapeneur." But she saw the need for Intentionalist after developing a strong point of view about the power of consumer spending choices. While Laura's mission is about social change, she specifically decided to take a business-driven approach to the problem. She's now growing her marketplace that helps consumers spend with intention and gives small businesses a platform to tell their story.

    47 min

  6. 06/10/2021

    Katie Curnutte (Founding Partner at KMG, Former SVP at Zillow) on data-driven PR, patience, and startup marketing

    Katie was SVP at Zillow where she had an 11-year career building their data-driven PR and brand strategy. Now she's Founding Partner at KMG (kingstonmarketing.group). Her story goes from small town Illinois to journalism and ends up landing her in Seattle's tech scene in Zillow's early day. She goes behind the scenes on principles for great PR, the "patience game," lessons from scaling Zillow's brand, and how to demystify marketing and PR in startups.

    41 min

  7. 05/27/2021

    Dave Rigotti (Inflection CEO & Co-Founder) on the path from marketer to founder, managing energy, and asking the right questions

    After starting his career at Microsoft, Dave was the first marketer at Bizible. As the company grew, Dave scaled to VP and then took on marketing leadership roles at Marketo and Adobe via acquisitions. He's now founder and CEO at Inflection - a new stealth marketing tech startup. Dave operates with a small-town Ohio style and says he cares more about the process than the destination. He talked about managing energy, growing from contributor to manager to executive, and learning through customer development.

    34 min

  8. 05/13/2021

    Omri Mor (Routable Co-Founder & CEO) on customer discovery, fundraising, and avoiding assumptions

    Routable's growth and $30M Series B are impressive headlines. But their customer discovery process really stood out. Omri interviewed over 300 customers before writing a single line of code. After learning from past pivots and mistakes, he was relentless in the process. That work give him conviction to move fast. Just 4 years later, Routable has raised $46M, accelerated growth, and earned the love of customers like Ticketmaster, Re-Max, and Snackpass. Omri went behind the scenes on his story and shared the principles driving Routable's growth.

    35 min
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Interviews with Seattle's top entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders. Hear how they think, how they operate, and how they're building in Seattle. Hosted by Adam Schoenfeld.

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