Calendly, Zoom, Dropbox, Canva - are all great examples of Product-led Growth companies or what is commonly known as PLG for short. So, what is PLG? 

As defined on OpenView’s website, PLG is an end user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion.

It’s a term that was actually coined by Blake in 2016 and has become the dream business model for entrepreneurs. Thus, I was really excited to interview Blake for our podcast as it was an opportunity to do a deep dive with the expert on PLG models and strategies, which is exactly where we begin our conversation. We take a look at some specific company examples and he shares some great advice on how to adopt an effective PLG strategy.

In this episode of our podcast, we also cover:

* Blake’s background story and how he got into the investing world including his time spent at Battery Ventures.
* All the details on OpenView and the types of investments he is looking to make.
* Portfolio company examples, including Calendly.
* Advice for companies scaling their hiring during the expansion stage.
* And so much more.

If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Episode 241: Blake Bartlett - Partner, OpenView

VPD is a financial service app brought to you by part of the team that delivered VoguePay (a leading payment solutions provider that was founded in 2012 and is now operating across 5 continents). &nbsp; Our Vision To be the financial service of choice for anyone thinking borderless, as well as being the number one choice for digital banking experience. &nbsp; Our Mission VPD Money is a financial technology firm whose purpose is to be the leader in developing and providing financial services that empower individuals, drive intra-trade by African and international SMEs as well as serve the diaspora community. For more information, visit  If you have the next big idea, apply to the Expert Dojo Accelerator:

E233 VPD Money-The Future of Banking Now

&nbsp;is the Founder &amp; CEO @&nbsp;, a global platform for instant retail delivery at a hyper-local scale serving both the US and LATAM. Ralf has raised over $260M for the company, most recently valuing it at $1.2BN. Prior to JOKR, Ralf spent 7 years as the Founder &amp; CEO @ foodpanda, as well as, enjoying roles as Chief Strategy Officer @ Delivery Hero, Interim Chief Product and Experience Officer @ WeWork and even moving to the other side of the table as a Managing Partner with Softbank.   In Today’s Episode with Ralf Wenzel You Will Learn:   1.) What is the unit economic breakdown for quick commerce business models? What levers can be used to improve it over time?   2.)&nbsp;Comparing the US to LATAM:    What is the AOV (average order value) in the US vs LATAM? What is the order frequency in the US vs LATAM? How does labour cost vary when comparing LATAM to the US? How does real estate cost for fulfilment centres differ when comparing LATAM to the US? How do product margins on a per product basis differ when comparing US to LATAM?    3.)&nbsp;New Market Growth and Maturation:    What is the payback period for new markets? How has this changed over time? How does the payback period reduce with every new market being opened? What % of AOV is spent on marketing when a new market is opened? How does this marketing spend change over time? In mature markets, how much new customer acquisition is organic vs paid? What is the average weekly growth rate in new vs mature markets?    4.)&nbsp;Business Model Expansions:    How does Ralf and JOKR approach the potential for private label goods? How does private label change the margin structure of the goods? What have been their lessons from starting their first private label goods? How does Ralf approach the ability to integrate advertising and paid search? What is needed for paid search and advertising to be a meaningful part of the business?

20VC: The Memo: Never Before Revealed Metrics; A Full Breakdown of Unit Economics Behind JOKR, How Does Emerging Markets Compare to Developed Economies & The Biggest Misnomers on Quick Commerce with Ralf Wenzel, Founder & CEO @ JOKR

In this episode of The Space Capital Podcast, we’re speaking with Nathan Kundtz, founder and CEO of Rendered.ai, about the company’s upcoming launch and how it will further advance their competitive lead to overcome costs and challenges in acquiring and using real-world data for training machine learning and artificial intelligence systems. Rendered.ai has developed the Platform as a Service for Creating Synthetic Data, a Common Application Framework to enable the production of physics-based synthetic datasets for AI training and validation.

Ep. 2.1 - The Promise of Synthetic Data

For many, crypto's an outlet for degeneracy. For Bryn and his quant trading team, it's an undeveloped market to deploy heavy artillery and eat their lunch.

Conversations with talented traders—in stocks, futures, options, forex and crypto markets.

Crypto Domination—Playing For Keeps w/ Bryn Solomon

226: Crypto Domination — Playing For Keeps w/ Bryn Solomon

In this healthcare podcast, I’m talking about direct contracting IRL (in real life) with Katy Talento. This is a conversation that’s more about the reality of direct contracting than the theory of direct contracting, and this was not an accident. So much of healthcare transformation is really easy to say and much harder to actually do. So … direct contracting. In the context we discuss in this episode, generally direct contracting means when an employer or their benefits consultant, more likely, hooks up with a provider organization, lots of times a hospital or a health system. Moving forward here, I’m just gonna say employer when I sort of really mean the employer and their TPA and their repricer, the constellation of consultants and other vendors that are working with the employer. So, just for simplicity, the employer says to the provider organization, “Hey, let’s cut out the middleman here” (middleman likely being some insurance carrier). “I will just pay you directly, and it will be a win-win because no one is sucking out up to 15% to 20% right out of the middle, and also I’ll steer my employees/patients/members your direction, which is great for us as a self-insured plan because money saved and also because I’ve done some quality analytics and I think you’re relatively good at delivering care … so I’m happy to help my members find you.” The employer will, in general broad strokes, pay the provider organization some percentage over the Medicare rate for procedures or codes or bundles. By the way, the dollar amount over Medicare for the bundles or procedures or codes can vary depending on factors like what service line it is because, unlike RBP (reference-based pricing), direct contracting is a negotiation. It’s a two-way deal. RBP, a lot of times, is the payer/employer deciding what they’re gonna pay and then paying it—without sitting around a table with the provider figuring all this out together. So, if only from this one dimension, direct contracting is something that you’d think that hospitals/health systems/providers would be kind of into and up for. One thing that I didn’t really understand before this conversation is that, if we’re talking about an employer direct contracting with, say, a hospital, the list of direct-contracted procedures or codes or bundles might include pretty much all of the services that the hospital can perform; but, in general, the employer is only going to steer members there or make it financially attractive to go to the hospital for, for example, emergency or unavoidable procedures. Why? Because no employer wants patients going to the hospital for things that they could get a whole lot cheaper in an outpatient setting with no less quality. So, unless a hospital is willing to compete on price with other care settings, then an employer is not going to steer their members there. If you’re a hospital, you might take this as a con. But, on the other hand, consider that if there’s a few hospitals in the area, the general direction will be to go to the one with the direct contract. Furthermore, if a plan is gonna steer members, they’re gonna steer them whether they have a direct contract with you or not. Katy makes one point early and often throughout this conversation. From a hospital perspective, doing a direct contract is and should be pretty easy. From an employer perspective, too, there should not be a lot of disruption or friction for employees. There doesn’t need to be. Done right, it should be a win-win for the employer, provider, and, most of all, the patient who doesn’t get stuck with high bills, balance bills, and lower-quality care than might be available to them through their benefits. Katy goes through the steps to create a direct contract and the challenges she has faced along the way. We also get into the wonderful world of payviders, so you could consider this an extension to the episode with Jeb Dunkelberger () from last...

EP350: Employers Direct Contracting With Hospitals, in Real Life, With Katy Talento

is the Founder &amp; CEO @ , the world's first and largest NFT marketplace allowing you to discover, collect, and sell extraordinary NFTs. To date, Devin has raised over $423M for the company with their last $300M round valuing Opensea at $13.3BN. Before changing the world of NFTs, Devin co-founded ClaimDog which was acquired by Credit Karma and before founding ClaimDog, Devin was an engineer at Pinterest. Do want to say, I always love Semil Shah's startup of the year, for 2021 it was Opensea, check out his piece .   In Today’s Episode with&nbsp;Devin Finzer You Will Learn:   1.) How Devin made his way into the world of NFTs and came to found the first and largest NFT marketplace in the form of Opensea?   2.)&nbsp;The Scaling Story:    What were the first early signs that Opensea was working when they were in YC? What core metrics did they look at to determine success? Given NFTs not being "hot" at the time, how was the fundraising process for Opensea coming out of YC? What were the early investors most excited about? What was the inflection point when Opensea and NFTs really started to take off? What most surprised Devin about the way in which the inflection point happened? When scaling from $150M to $4BN in GMV, what are the first things to break in a company? How does Devin maintain company morale with such volatile crypto and NFT markets?    3.)&nbsp;The Next Decade of NFTs:    How does Devin predict large brands and companies will utilise NFTs for their businesses? In what ways does Devin think creators and celebrities will use NFTs moving forward to create more efficient business models? How does Devin respond to the statement, "NFTs do more to harm than help income inequality?" What are Devin's biggest concerns moving forward when analysing the NFT market? How does Devin see the future for the development and experimentation of NFTs?    4.)&nbsp;The Future of NFT &amp; Gaming:    How does Devin see NFTs impacting the world of gaming most? How does Devin think about interacting with these gaming communities that are external to the centralised Opensea marketplace?    Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with&nbsp;Devin Finzer   Devin’s Favourite Book:&nbsp;

20VC: Opensea Founder, Devin Finzer on Scaling GMV from $150M to $3BN in 18 Months, How Brands and Celebrities Will Harness NFTs To Change Their Business, The Impact of NFTs on Gaming & What is in Devin's Metamask Wallet?!

How do you join a company and lead from the day one? And how do you do that when you come from a completely different work experience than your startup?&nbsp; Trevor Thompson of TerraClear had a 14 year career in the Navy, including a decade as a Navy Seal, &nbsp;and is now president of #agtech company,  He talks to investor  about the opportunity for companies to hire experienced veterans and how the company is executing on its mission to make a farmer’s life a little bit easier with their rock picker robot. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Trevor Thompson of TerraClear on Leadership, AgTech and Building for Farmers

Atlanta is the fastest-growing venture capital ecosystem in the country--and the most diverse. Could the VC climate get any hotter? Listen up as insiders Renee Montgomery, Robin Bienfait, Gary Peat, William Leonard and Lisa Calhoun of Valor Ventures help founders and investors get a compass on a new normal.

2022 Atlanta Venture Capital Trends

This week we bring you big news stories featuring Tencent, Roche, GoStudent and Tul.

Global Venturing Review

17 January 2022 – Tencent Helps Serve Up $100m for Flipdish

Conversations with talented traders—in stocks, futures, options, forex and crypto markets. Podcast hosted by Aaron Fifield.

A look back over the last week in corporate, government and university venturing news from all over the world. The podcast covers exits, investments, mergers and acquisitions, staff changes and more. Presented by James Mawson, founder and editor-in-chief of  Global Corporate Venturing, and Thierry Heles, editor of Global University Venturing and Global Government Venturing. 

"The Art of Start Up War" is a weekly startup investment podcast created by Brian MacMahon, the CEO of The Expert Dojo Startup Accelerator in Santa Monica, California.  This podcast was built to educate entrepreneurs on how to avoid the 98% failure rate that ALL new businesses face.  Your host and Sensei Brian, interviews the most influential global movers and shakers of early stage angel and venture investment right here in Silicon Beach.  Tune in for new episodes each week on Tuesday at 10am (PST) helping you fight the war against start up failure.

The VentureFizz Podcast is the flagship podcast of VentureFizz.com, the leading authority for jobs & careers in tech. In this podcast, VentureFizz Founder Keith Cline interviews the top founders and investors in the tech industry.

American Healthcare Entrepreneurs and Executives You Might Want to Know. Talking.

Relentless Health Value is a weekly interview podcast hosted by Stacey Richter since 2014. A dynamic healthcare entrepreneur and innovator, Richter has spent more than twenty years mentoring clients and colleagues in the shared pursuit of healthcare value. Subscribe to the podcast and spend an hour with us every Thursday.

Relentless Health Value is the show that connects you with other healthcare leaders trying to achieve the Triple Aim of improving population health and patient experience, while managing costs effectively. Our mission is to help transform healthcare by breaking down silos and connecting disconnected parts of our industry. The first step toward collaboration is simply knowing what others are working on and wrestling to overcome.

Relentless Health Value is for business leaders working in payer and provider organizations, as well as for pharma, medical device, patient advocacy and other healthcare businesses. It’s an ideal resource for health industry innovators and entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, who strive to improve healthcare every day. “No outcome, no income,” is the mantra we live daily.

We all know the healthcare business is not, and has never been, an easy business. The barrier to entry is often high, the cost of doing business, equally high. Success is often a frustrating tangle of regulations, litigation risks, perverse incentives and technology requirements.

However, those of us not daunted by the challenge can thrive in these times of great change. The Affordable Care Act has reset incentives ─ value over volume. Healthcare value has become more than an intellectual talking point. It is now a business imperative. We’re in an era of evolution and disruption. And while change breeds pain, it also is the genie of great opportunity.

Let’s get inspired. Let’s talk to healthcare leaders and innovators who are making waves in our industry and who can inspire us. Let’s hear from the boisterous and from those who are quietly achieving greatness. Let’s support those who can turn disjointed healthcare services into value-based systems. Finally, let’s join healthcare builders and disrupters who share our goals to reorder the healthcare universe.

Everyone working in the healthcare industry has a story to tell.

Startup stories from the heart of the hustle--Atlanta.

New tracks tagged #venture capital