My guest for Ep165 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Glenn Rogers, the Co-founder & CEO of Float.

Glenn and his Co-founder Lars started Float 11 years ago to solve some of the resource management issues they were seeing through their work at a New York based agency, Razorfish

They tried to raise capital at the start of their journey but were rejected by every VC fund and investor they spoke to, leading them to bootstrap the business and to operate it on the side of their full time roles in New York.

Fast forward to today and Float now employs over 40 people globally and has grown the business to $10M in ARR without external funding.

In this episode we dive into Glenn’s lessons and insights from taking Float from $0 to a $10M ARR business. Specifically we discuss:

• dealing with well capitalised competitors in a growing market
• building successful remote first team cultures
• the importance of constraints
• evolving the CEO’s role from scrappy startup to scale up
• and much more!

Timestamps 

• 3:34 – Glenn’s background
• 4:35 – Lessons from Glenn’s early career at Seek
• 6:06 – Float’s origin story
• 8:20 – Managing a FT job and launching/running Float as a side hustle
• 9:16 – Early plans to raise capital and their adjustment post rejections from VC funds
• 11:21 – How being forced to bootstrap setup constraints and shifted Float’s strategy and approach to growth
• 13:59 – Balancing meeting short term needs with long term objectives when working with limited resources
• 16:00 – Maintaining focus in the face of competition
• 18:50 – Building effective remote first culture
• 23:38 – Building trust and connection between remote teams
• 25:14 – Being hands on as a founder vs hands off as a manager
• 27:07 – Why Glenn maintained the “head of product” role alongside the CEO role
• 29:12 – How to judge when to continue or cancel experiments
• 33:28 – Transition from scrappy startup to scaleup
• 39:59 – The importance of mentors and advisors

Our partners

A big thank you to Simon Betschel and Josh Ismin for their help with this interview. Also a big thank you to our partners for this episode.

Lawpath

Lawpath’s Legal Advice Plan gives you access to lawyers on demand for one low monthly fee. Create legal documents, sign online and have a lawyer on-call to help you through any legal need for a fraction of the cost.  Lawpath has helped Australian businesses save over $100 million in legal fees, and are offering Startup Playbook listeners up to 20% off their most popular legal plans. Visit lawpath.com/playbook for your exclusive discount and discover an easier way to get your legals sorted.

Scendar 

We’re Scendar, an accounting and advisory practice better described as Finance as a Service (FaaS). We’re focused on founders, funders and startups. Clients that are ever-changing and adapting. We like fast movers. And as you might have guessed, we’re not your basic accountancy. We can take care of tax and the books whilst building a syndicate fund and a multimillion dollar exit strategy.  At Scendar, we’re empowered by our client’s potential. Find out more at Scendar.com

Dovetail Studios 

Dovetail Studios operates a venture studio and VC to transform ambitious ideas into unstoppable businesses. On top of being a renowned product development partner for startups like Afterpay, they also operate a VC fund to invest in early-stage companies that go through their venture studio program. So if you’re a non-technical, early-stage founder looking for a talented team to help supercharge your success, check out dovetailstudios.com

Links Mentioned 

Glenn’s Links 

• Glenn on Twitter

People mentioned

• Lars Gelfan – Float
• Paul Bassat – Square Peg Capital
• Andrew Bassat
• Siobhan Hayes – Float
• Matt Allen – Tractor Ventures

Companies mentioned:

• Seek
• Square Peg Capital
• Razorfish
• Basecamp
• Techstars
• Tractor Ventures

Feedback/connect/say hello:

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Don’t have iTunes? The podcast is also available on Spotify, Soundcloud & Stitcher Audio Player.

Find all links to the podcast here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS