Entrepreneur In Residence at Betaworks. Forbes 30 under 30. Co-founder of Stride app.

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Episode Overview

Andrew Dumont is the Entrepreneur in Residence at Betaworks, an early stage venture capital fund and incubator. He shares with us the importance of having a side project and how targeted partnerships can help you grow (and get acquired).

Previous to joining Betaworks, Andrew lead business development at Seemic (before they were acquired by Hootsuite). He then joined Moz in a very similar role helping grow the footprint of their SEO software. While at Moz, Andrew co-founded Stride app as a side project and grew it to 20k in subscription revenue in just over a year before it was acquired by CrazyEgg.

“We built it in the evenings and weekends and we got it to 20k, but we just couldn't keep up with it.”

Some Of The Questions We Ask

1:03
Where are you from, what did you study and how did your interest in entrepreneurship develop?

3:28
What is Betaworks and what do you do on a daily basis as EIR? What are some of the biggest insights/lessons you’ve learned from there so far?

6:44
Before being an EIR, you used to work at Seesmic as the director of Biz dev (before it was acquired by Hootsuite) then again at Moz (same role). How did you hack your way into these great opportunities and what were some of the biggest lessons you learned? What’s the difference between Biz-dev and sales?

11:07
You co-founded a “side project”, while working at Moz, called Stride. What was it and how did you hack it to $20k in subscription revenue before it was acquire by CrazyEgg?

15:18
You’ve obviously got a ton of expertise with distribution and growth. How do you identify and evaluate channel partnership?

19:06
Where do you think you're going to be in 10 years? Waht are you going to be doing?

20:05
What are some of your favourite apps/tools/books right now?

What You'll Learn In This Episode

• Why you should never apply to a job directly.
• The difference between business development and sales.
• Why side projects are critical to staying sharp and learning new things.
• The different types of growth.
• Why win-win partnerships are key to rapid growth.
• And more!

Important Links

Here are some of the most important links and resources mentioned throughout the show.

Twitter Handles & Websites

Andrew Dumont on Twitter
Andrew Dumont on the Web
Betaworks on Twitter
Betaworks on the Web
Stride on the Web
Tyler Copeland on Twitter
Franco Varriano on Twitter

Books & Apps

The Hard Things About Hard Things
The New New Thing
Flash Boys
Zirtual
Drop
Memoir