Founder Fridays and the best TWiST episodes from the last year

Hey crew!

If you missed yesterday’s live news, you can catch up here. Jason and Alex covered a ton of topics, including StubHub’s delayed IPO, experience-based companies and the entertainment industry, and the venture landscape in Asia and Europe.

TWiST500

Alex and I are in build mode for the TWiST500 database and met with a rep at Coda the other day to improve it (incredibly helpful). It’s still a work in progress, so you can laugh at the startup labelled “Alex,” which is marked as a unicorn. If you have suggestions for a startup to add, email Alex at alex@launch.co.

Founder Fridays

Yesterday, Kassidy (Community Manager for Founder Fridays) and I hosted an IRL meetup in Calgary (my home base). We facilitated a roundtable on wins and challenges with four founders at a cafe called Higher Ground.

There was a solid turnout given Calgary is in full Stampede mode. Everyone in the city is dressed in Western wear, listening to country music, and checking out the epic fair. I got to watch Zach Top live the other night; he’s incredible! Here’s who I chatted with at the meetup:

• Ana Dumbrava is building LetsGo, a platform to help outdoor enthusiasts, like skiers, find ski buddies at their skill level.

• Bidzina Mosiashvili operates in the beekeeping space, using tech to streamline hive health monitoring and pollinator conservation.

• Mike Chen started MK Studio, an industrial 3D printing company.

  • Fun fact: He pitched his startup at the JMH Launchpad Pitch competition this year — the same competition I pitched my startup at a year ago, where I won $25K for the idea!

• Logan Grasby has been working on a platform that delivers autonomous AI agent solutions for business, called Azule.

You can host or join a Founder Friday in your city, too! If you have questions or ideas, email Kassidy at kassidy@launch.co.

TWiST Highlights

As we approach the 2000th TWiST episode, I'm going to pull and share some of my favorite moments on the pod. Here are two episodes that really stood out to me this year:

• Unreasonable Hospitality with Will Guidara: Will’s book is a must-read. In this episode, he and Jason relate his lessons to all businesses, including startups. I spent a big part of my early career working in restaurants and cafes. This episode reminded me of how meaningful it was to go above and beyond for the people at the places I worked, especially Ladybug Cafe. It’s a local cafe I worked at for almost three years, building tons of relationships with regulars. I was addicted to making them happy. One regular guest (almost 80 years old!) ended up telling me that he lost his daughter at a young age, and my kindness reminded him of her and got him through his weeks. A little goes a long way.

• Building a consumer app’s MVP and how to fundraise with Zest’s Jake Gutstein: Jake is an absolute rockstar. He attended the LAUNCH Accelerator’s 29th class. His app is simple — Duolingo for cooking. I love this episode because it’s so cool to hear Jake’s strategy with Zest behind the scenes. I follow their socials (which are hilarious) and use the app myself, and I truly love how they’ve gamified the experience. As someone who relies on pretty much everyone around me to cook, I needed this in my life. Check it out.

It’s fun to recap my favorite episodes of the pod (more to come), and I want to hear yours, too! Email me at bianca@launch.co with your favorites and why—after all, we are approaching Episode 2000.

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend, TWiST crew!

B