On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Ali Tamaseb, partner at Data Collective Venture Capital (DCVC). &nbsp; What are the key traits of billion dollar startups? &nbsp; Ali embarked on a journey to answer that question with real data. &nbsp; In the process, he has collected the largest data set on startups (30,000+ data points) to analyze every piece of them and understand what makes super founders and unicorns.&nbsp; &nbsp; What makes this even more incredible is the fact that he did this manually over the span of four years.&nbsp; &nbsp; This labor of love was done with the intent of figuring out what really separated unicorn companies from the rest. Was it luck? Was it a specific skillet? A specific journey? &nbsp; Ali joined us to share his learnings and discuss how you can use them to scale to unicorn status. &nbsp; Podcast Highlights: 10:24 - The key traits of a Super Founder 21:37 - Eight ingredients of a unicorn 27:30 - The deliberate ideation process behind successful startups 40:37 - Venture capital vs. bootstrapping 41:43 - How to be opportunistic to win big 44: 59 - How to choose between different ideas in different industries 50:33 - Founder stories and failures you can learn from &nbsp; Connect with Ali Tamaseb:  &nbsp; Learn more about DCVC at  &nbsp; This episode is brought to you by: &nbsp;&nbsp;

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion Dollar Startups with Ali Tamaseb

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of Zoho Corporation (moderated by Frederic Lardinois at TechCrunch). &nbsp; Sridhar built Zoho, a software product firm valued at over a billion dollars, without a rupee of external funding—almost completely bootstrapped. Months before the pandemic, he moved from Silicon Valley to a village in Tamil Nadu, where he is now based. Years before Atmanirbhar Bharat became a slogan, Sridhar championed the cause of self-reliance and the creation of local employment. &nbsp; We hear about inequality, college debt, and a lot of other issues. Sridhar believes that the private sector has to solve these problems.&nbsp; &nbsp; "We are entrepreneurs and capitalists, and all of us have a responsibility." &nbsp; This is Sridhar's passion now. &nbsp; With exceptional clarity, superlative focus, and a philosophical "zen" like approach to both life in general and building software, Sridhar is the original “Sage of Software 2.0.” &nbsp; Podcast highlights: 1:43 - What Zoho used to be vs what it is now 6:20 - Doing things right against competitors 9:48 - Starting out without any venture capital 14:51 - The temptation to IPO 18:31 - How to market 44 products 19:52 - Additional potential Zoho products 22:55 - How to stay focused 24:07 - Zoho University &nbsp; Connect with Sridhar Vembu:  &nbsp; Learn more about Zoho at  &nbsp; This episode is brought to you by: &nbsp;&nbsp;

A Bootstrapper's Guide to $500 Million in Revenue with Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corporation

On this episode of the Traction podcast, I welcome Andy Johns, venture partner at Unusual Ventures. &nbsp; Some of the fastest-growing products have artfully constructed a series of content flywheels, resulting in nearly unstoppable organic growth for years or decades. To put the power of a content flywheel in perspective, Reddit recently claimed 430M monthly active users—it’s 15 years old and still spreading its wings. &nbsp; But how do you create such a platform? In this episode, Andy describes what the ingredients are, how they work, and what you can do about them in pursuit of building your own startup fueled by a flywheel. Specifically, Andy covers: &nbsp; 12:22 - How do you define growth? 22:25 - What is a flywheel? 26:20 - The different types of flywheels and the key ingredients to make them successful 35:35 - How to keep users engaged and constantly coming back 41:39 - How to make your users are a source of repeatable organic growth 46:40 - Successful flywheels in B2B and B2C companies and what you can learn from them 53:05 - Bringing new people into your network 1:03:11 - What to look for in early-stage startups before investing &nbsp; Tune in by clicking the link below and don't forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Building Flywheels for Unstoppable Organic Growth with Andy Johns

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI features a talk by Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark from the IRL Traction Conference in Vancouver. Sarah started her career at Bessemer Venture Partners, and invested in Pinterest when it was a small five person company with about 30,000 registered users. She loved the company so much that she joined Pinterest to become their first product manager. Sarah led product at Pinterest through a period of hyper-growth, and when she left the company they had 100 million monthly active users.&nbsp;  In this session, Sarah shares the framework to build iconic businesses covering:  Hierarchy of engagement Growing engaged users Retaining users once you've brought them in Building mounting loss and accruing benefits into your product Making your product self-perpetuating with virtuous loops  Learn more about the Traction community at &nbsp; Connect with Sarah Tavel:   Learn more about Benchmark at  This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&amp;D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at . Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit &nbsp; Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at

Traction Podcast