The modern gaming industry is massive, almost as big as the movie industry. However, things are tough, as game developers have to compete with user-generated content platforms like TikTok and YouTube. To keep up, game developers need to be able to produce quality content faster than ever before. That’s exactly the service offered by Nadav Benoudiz and his startup GenieLabs, which is a smart content engine for gaming studios. It’s been quite a journey for Nadav and GenieLabs in trying to gain traction in the gaming industry.
Nadav recently sat down with startup coach Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast. He told Roland about the challenges and learnings he’s had on his long startup journey.
How to get beyond the referral stage for acquiring new customers.
The importance of picking an industry where you have a passion.
The best way for early-stage founders to validate their idea.
Why it’s hard for founders to solve market problems.
The difference between being praised for a good idea and finding people who will pay for your product.
When it’s time for a founder to pivot and change course.
The gaming industry is always open to creative and innovative ideas. Mother Games is one startup that is doing just that, both in terms of gameplay and in the way that it operates. The company’s first game Le Zoo will be out soon, promising a transformational experience for players. But outside of the gameplay, Mother Games is doing things a little differently. Co-founder and CEO Kelsey Falter is taking her experience from a previous startup and applying those lessons to Mother Games.
Kelsey recently joined Roland Siebleink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about the inspiration behind Mother Games, what makes Le Zoo different from other games, and the approach Mother Games is taking to building both games and a company.
What it means to build in public and how Mother Games is allowing customers to participate in game design.
Why Mother Games is rethinking boilerplate privacy policies.
The best ways to gain the trust of customers.
What it’s like for Kelsey to navigate the uniqueness of a company as it grows.
How Mother Games constantly reorganizes the company around the strengths of its people.
We can all agree on the importance of public safety. Yet, in today’s world, many of the people in charge of public safety are doing their jobs with less information than an Uber driver. That is precisely the problem that Andre McGregor has set out to change with his startup ForceMetrics. Using his experience as a former FBI special agent and building cybersecurity software in Silicon Valley, McGregor is building a company that aims to deliver critical information to police and other public safety officials as efficiently as possible to help make us all safer.
Andre recently spoke with Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to talk about his idea, how ForceMetrics is changing the world, and his journey as a founder:
How ForceMetrics worked with real police officers to perfect its product.
The art of finding design partners and getting the most out of customer feedback.
How to find the right investors at the right time.
The things Andre is no longer allowed to do as a CEO.
The importance of not overcomplicating things.
What happens when a business is struggling despite having great technology and a useful product offering?
Just find someone with experience building startups to start from scratch. That’s the story of icetana AI, an AI-based security company based in Australia. The company had the technology to be successful, but was struggling to find success. But when experienced entrepreneur Kevin Brown was brought in as CEO and “re-founder,” everything changed for icetana AI.
Kevin joined his old friend Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to talk about icetana AI’s unique journey and how he helped put the company on the path to success.
How retaining one customer helped save icetana AI.
How to fix a startup that has a dying culture.
Why it’s best to keep a small team when doing enterprise sales.
Using competitors to educate customers.
Measuring business success in non-financial terms.
As amazing as modern technology can be, it doesn’t always work the way we want it to work. Sometimes your home Internet goes out or your new coffee machine isn’t cooperating. In those instances, calling customer support or having a technician visit isn’t always a smooth process either. Luckily, TechSee is revolutionizing how people receive customer support for their devices. For customers, technicians, and service providers, the entire process is simplified by TechSee’s solutions to reduce the time and money it takes to provide customer service solutions. On his recent appearance on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast, TechSee co-founder and CEO Eitan Cohen spoke to Roland Siebelink about how TechSee’s products are helping and the success they’ve achieved thus far.
How TechSee developed its product offering.
The importance of having a vision and not losing faith in it.
Why TechSee’s indirect distribution strategy is rare among startups.
How TechSee finds and brings value to its partners.
What it takes to get customers involved in the process.
The publishing industry is what most would consider old and outdated, not exactly an ideal setting for an up-and-coming tech startup. But don’t tell that to Spines founder Yehuda Niv. Already established in the publishing world, Yehuda is using AI to disrupt and revolutionize the publishing industry the same way AI has done in countless other industries. Spines is off to a fast start early in its history with Yehuda hoping to one day (soon) make it the biggest publishing company on the planet. Naturally, that gave Yehuda a lot to talk about on his recent appearance on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast with Roland Siebelink.
What makes Spines the ideal alternative to traditional publishing?
How does Yehuda compare bootstrapping his first startup to working with VCs on Spines?
The key to getting investors interested in your startup.
Why it’s not the job of the CEO to solve the problems of team members?
How does Yehuda prevent his employees from interrupting him with questions so that he can focus on growing the company?
What if AI could make cybercrime too expensive for hackers to pursue?
In this episode of the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast, Ambuj Kumar, co-founder, and CEO of Simbian AI, discusses the power of intellectual honesty, innovation, and AI-driven cybersecurity in building scalable, impactful solutions. He emphasizes that true innovation comes from open challenges and discussions rather than blind loyalty, which is crucial for building meaningful solutions. Ambuj shares how Simbian is developing AI-powered cybersecurity agents to address the global shortage of security professionals by automating tasks at a fraction of the cost, ultimately aiming to make cybercrime economically unviable. He explains that their go-to-market strategy focuses on solving real customer problems, constantly improving through feedback, and scaling a strong, value-driven sales culture. Lastly, Ambuj highlights the importance of hypothesis-driven decision-making at all levels, ensuring continuous adaptation and avoiding stagnation as the company grows.
Join us as Ambuj Kumar shares how Simbian is revolutionizing cybersecurity with AI-powered agents, tackling industry challenges, and building a trillion-dollar vision!
Guest Ambuj Kumar:
Ambuj Kumar is co-founder and CEO of Simbian, the Gen AI fuelled security company whose mission is to solve security with AI. Ambuj is a recognized leader in the cryptography space, with more than 30 patents in the field—and multiple successful startups. Ambuj was also the lead architect at Cryptography Research Inc. where he led and developed many of the company's security technologies that go into millions of devices every year. Previously, he worked for NVIDIA, where he designed the world's most advanced computer chips, including the world's fastest memory controller.
Things You’ll Learn:
Founders who have never experienced coaching firsthand often wonder what it’s like to work with an experienced startup coach. At the Midstage Institute, we wanted to peel back the curtain a little to show you what it’s like during a coaching session.
I recently spoke with the co-founders of an estate planning startup called Inherit. With their permission, of course, I turned that into a podcast to give founders a little taste of what a coaching session is like and what was discussed.
Finding the right target group for the product.
How far along is the product.
What is the promise given to users?
Finding the balance between free and paid services.
Prioritizing actions for the founders moving forward.
How is someone with no investing experience or expertise supposed to get into the game without any know-how? Aren’t they just setting themselves up for failure? That’s no longer a concern with dub, which allows users to copy the portfolios of accomplished investors. Rather than having to pick individual stocks, dub allows users to invest in people and their ideas. It’s truly the next great innovation in investing.
Certified unicorn guide Roland Siebelink recently spoke with dub founder and CEO Steven Wang on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to discuss how dub fits into the investing world and what Steven’s journey has been like as a young startup founder.
What it’s like having a startup in a regulated industry.
The unique challenge of being a young founder and hiring people twice your age.
How the role of a CEO changes immediately after a product launches.
Why it can be best not to pre-define an ideal customer profile.
The one company-wide metric dub uses.
How dub is navigating a two-sided market.
Modern technology can give us so many great things, but it also creates new challenges. Over the last year, deep fakes have emerged as one of those great challenges. Deep fakes are a form of generative AI that aims to deceive and manipulate people with things that aren’t true. Luckily, a startup like Clarity.AI is working to address this problem. Clarity serves prominent news outlets, law firms, and other organizations to verify and authenticate audio, video, and images so that people know what is fake and what is real.
Clarity CEO and co-founder Michael Matias joined startup coach Roland Siebelink on the latest episode of the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to discuss the problem of deep fakes and how Clarity is solving the problem. They also discussed a variety of topics relevant to Clarity’s journey as a tech startup.
How Clarity approached its move from having a security solution to having a product.
Approaching the challenge of having so many potential use cases.
The importance of action-based learning and being “on the court.”
How startup leaders cope early on when their product is faltering.
Behavior patterns that are found in successful startup leaders.
Cybersecurity is one of the biggest markets emerging in the tech industry right now. There are several big players, yet there is plenty of room for startups that are being innovative and taking a different approach. LimaCharlie is the latter, creating a SecOps cloud platform that aims to bring together a variety of cybersecurity capabilities in a single platform. In other words, it’s a more simplified approach to cybersecurity in the modern era.
Naturally, by taking a different approach to things, LimaCharlie ran into some unique challenges during its startup journey. Founder & CEO Maxime Lamothe-Brassard joined startup coach Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to discuss some of those challenges.
The danger of working with investors who aren’t aligned with the company’s vision.
Balancing current investors versus new investors for subsequent funding rounds.
How to shift toward growth that gives the startup more control.
The challenge of tech-oriented founders becoming salesmen.
The shift from inbound-only sales to becoming more outbound.
How the core values of LimaCharlie have changed as the company has grown.
There is a point for all startups when it becomes necessary to ask for outside help. Sometimes that means hiring a fractional CMO to help get the go-to-market machine working. For startups in that position, there are consultants like Grwth.co available to help. Led by experienced founder Mosheh Poltorak, Grwth.co can provide fractional CMO services for startups while also having a plan to hand the reins to an in-house hire when the startup is ready.
Mosheh recently joined startup coach Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to discuss Grwth.co and share insight from his vast experience as a founder.
What does product-market-fit actually look like for startups?
Why product-market-fit is an ongoing journey rather than a destination.
How product-market-fit is different for B2B and B2C.
Why product marketing is a critical part of early startup success.
The importance of founders understanding their organic growth.
The ideal timeline and situation for startups to work with a fractional CMO.
For many midstage startups, finding an accelerator can be a great way to find useful guidance that can help drive better results. One of the top accelerators in the startup world today is Founders Space, which is run by Steve Hoffman (AKA Captain Hoff). Steve is a veteran of several startups and the author of several books about the startup world who brings a wealth of information and expertise to the startups that work with Founders Space.
Steve recently spoke to fellow author and startup coach Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast. The two covered a host of topics relevant to the journey of every founder:
Why it’s critical for startups to continue to innovate.
The qualities Steve looks for in founders that are destined for success.
The true meaning of product-market-fit.
How startups should balance growth versus and how the economic climate can be a factor.
The best way for startups to consider new possibilities without getting distracted.
How startups should pick investors and how to handle difficult investors.
When it comes to virtual and augmented reality technologies, the future that many of us have always dreamed about may already be here. That’s the case largely because of startups like Imascono, which is based in Spain. Imascono has done some amazing things while developing applied imagination and extended reality technologies that have the capacity to be used for entertainment, marketing, and industrial purposes.
Imascono co-founder Héctor Paz recently joined the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to talk with Roland Siebelink and Carlos Founaud about the long journey of the startup and key steps along the way.
How Imascono has been able to prevent employees from leaving the company.
How Imascono manages to connect the goals of the company with the goals of employees.
The methods Imascono uses to create transparency with employees.
The lessons Imascono has learned from negotiations involving a potential merger.
The biggest takeaways from Imascono’s experience in an accelerator program.
While the construction business is massive, it’s also rather complicated. Fortunately, there are tech startups like Constrafor that are helping both general contractors and subcontractors streamline everything they do, completing projects and getting everyone paid faster. Constrafor is a construction procurement platform that handles everything from insurance to invoicing. While only started in 2019, Constrafor is already striving to become the primary end-to-end procurement platform for the biggest general contractors in the U.S.
Constrafor CEO and founder Anwar Ghauche recently sat down with startup coach Roland
Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to discuss the journey so far. He shared some insight into how Constrafor operates, which is a little different from the average startup:
Why it makes sense for Constrafor to use an indirect monetization method.
The reason Constrafor spoke with potential customers before building a product.
The importance of a sales team, even in a product-led company.
How customer success at Constrafor is handled by everyone, not just one team.
How Anwar handles employees who do not fit the values of Constrafor.
Why Constrafor uses company-wide KPIs rather than team or individual KPIs.
With a growing population and climate change, it’s more important than ever for farmers to be able to grow as much food as possible as efficiently as possible. Fortunately, there are startups like Hydrosat that are trying to make that job a little easier for them. As its name implies, Hydrosat uses satellite data to help farmers, agribusinesses, and government agencies with important insights that can lead to more food being produced with less water while also cutting down on electricity and climate change contributors.
Hydrosat CEO and co-founder Pieter Fossel recently joined startup coach Roland Siebelink on the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast. Pieter explained the positive impact Hydrosat can potentially have on the world and a variety of other topics about Hydrosat’s startup journey:
How Hydrosat is able to address food security and climate change at the same time.
The importance of solving a customer’s problem while building a product over time.
Being able to find short-term success while maintaining a long-term vision.
How to work with big distributors without giving up leverage.
How Hydrosat has given both distributors and end users something new.
Experience is often a key ingredient for startup founders. Jimmy Kim, the CEO and founder of Sendlane, has plenty of experience with Sendlane being his third startup. With Sendlane, Jimmy is hoping to combine several MarTech tools into a single platform, dominating the space while creating a new category. Given his experience, Jimmy and Sendlane are well on their way to doing just that.
Jimmy joined startup coach Roland Siebelink on this week’s episode of the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to share how far Sendlane is in its journey. He also shared many key insights from the wealth of knowledge he’s gained as a founder.
Why it took Jimmy three attempts to build a successful sales team.
Why Sendlane decided to use outbound sales sooner than most startups.
Why a startup’s pricing shouldn’t be the driving force in winning the market.
Why offering the cheapest pricing can be a bad thing.
Why fundraising is no different from a sales cycle.
How many term sheets startups should aim to get while fundraising.
The ongoing fight against cancer requires all hands on deck. Fortunately, tech startups are starting to harness the power of AI and machine learning to help in the fight against cancer. Genialis is one startup that uses AI in the precision medicine industry to ensure cancer patients are getting the right treatment.
Genialis CEO and co-founder Rafael Rosengarten recently sat down with startup coach Roland Siebelink to discuss the role his startup is playing in treating cancer patients more effectively. Rafael also spoke about the journey Genialis has been on and his personal journey as a first-time founder.
What it was like being a founder without a business background.
The challenge of succeeding with a startup that hasn’t raised a lot of money.
How startup founders can recognize when it’s time to pivot their company.
Why Genialis doesn’t consider employee headcount an indicator of success.
What it means to build a great company before building a great business.
How Genialis links its values to its strategic initiatives.
It’s usually in the nature of startup leaders to conquer one market and expand to another. That is exactly the case with Hiberus, which is one of the premier tech startups in Spain but aspires to be so much more. Hiberus is a tech consulting startup that offers a variety of services and has offices all over Europe with over 3,000 employees. After experiencing such impressive growth and success in Europe, Hiberus is now expanding to operate in the U.S. and the Americas.
Hiberus Internacional CEO Marcos Latorre recently joined the Midstage Startup Momentum Podcast to speak with startup coaches Roland Siebelink and Carlos Founaud. Marcos talked about the past success and future goals of Hiberus while also sharing the secret sauce that has made Hiberus one of the biggest tech startups in Europe:
How to attract people to a small company in a small city.
Why Hiberus tries to create talent rather than just relying on acquiring talent.
What Hiberus has done to attract customers with a small sales team.
The three things Hiberus provides clients so that they never lose one.
The reason Hiberus prioritizes employees over customers and investors.
How the role of founders and CEOs change as startups grow and expand.
