Latest Accelerators Podcast Episodes

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When to Pivot and When to Stick (aka what to do with all your startup ideas) ITS Classic

Idea to Startup - April 10, 2024 09:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll talk about one of the most common hurdles entrepreneurs run into - getting tempted by a new idea a few months into working on their main idea. We lay out a framework to identify the first principles of the new idea fast so you can decide if it's worth a pivot. We also dig in on why ...

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How to Pick Your Startup's First Customer

Idea to Startup - April 03, 2024 09:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you pick your startup's first customer segment. This decision dooms a huge percentage of first time entrepreneurs - if you don't understand what the job of your first customer segment is, you'll likely pick a customer incapable of doing it. Your first customer has a unique resp...

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A System to Do Hard Things (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - March 21, 2024 09:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we help you become the type of founder who relishes uncomfortable things that lead to successful startups. There are no real secrets in the startup world - the hard, proactive, uncomfortable work leads to businesses that matter. This work doesn’t happen without a system. Today we help yo...

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How to Build the First (Magical) Version Of Your Product This Weekend (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - March 06, 2024 10:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today's classic episode will help you get the first version of your product up and out this weekend. We use a three-part framework to help you focus in on the one core feature you've got to nail that can be built by someone with no technical or product building skills in an afternoon. We also f...

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A System to Generate Ideas (aka how to let your brain be a brain)

Idea to Startup - February 29, 2024 10:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we talk through a 4-part system to generate ideas - one that'll tap into your brain's natural ability to develop novel solutions rather than just waiting (hoping) inspiration will strike. We'll do it with a little help from a baseball training facility, a corked wine bottle, and an MRI st...

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20-ish Minute Skill: The Concierge MVP (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - February 21, 2024 10:00 - 26 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today's classic ITS episode discusses the Concierge MVP, an indispensable tactic early stage entrepreneurs can use to get the feedback of a full product without the money and time required to build one. We go through the 4-step method that'll get you data from customers you can use to raise fund...

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How to Create a Strategy For Your Startup

Idea to Startup - February 14, 2024 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll talk about strategy - what good (and bad) strategy looks like for startups, and how most early-stage companies lack any strategy at all. Using a framework from Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, we'll explore the three core elements: diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action. We'll ex...

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How to Build a "Skeptical Startup" - 8k per month in 10 hours per week

Idea to Startup - January 31, 2024 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you tackle the big question for entrepreneurs with startup ideas and jobs - when's it time to quit the job and focus on the startup full-time? You should think about this question the second you start working on an idea, and you should use the Skeptical Startup framework - a go...

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The Magic of One-Sentence Marketing

Idea to Startup - January 11, 2024 10:00 - 15 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today’s episode is for everyone who struggles to summarize their startup in a sentence. We lay out a framework to do this well with help from a sticker on the street, a hedge fund, and a Vietnamese coffee shop. Tacklebox Idea to Startup Newsletter Idea to Startup Bot 00:33 One Sentence Marke...

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Designing a System to Actually Prioritize Your Startup This Year

Idea to Startup - January 04, 2024 10:00 - 17 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we dive into a practical, resilient system to help you carve out and hold time for your startup amidst the craziness of your life. Most startups fail because the founders lose momentum when predictable life things pop up - you were supposed to work on your startup but your kid was sick or...

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Seth Godin and Brian Go Through Startup Ideas (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - December 27, 2023 10:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Seth Godin (!) and Brian go through startup ideas. Seth gives his opinion on how he’d start everything from a pasta truck to an updated CSA program. We dive into risk, emotion, tension and doing things that matter. Seth talks about the distinction between entrepreneurs and freelancers and the da...

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How to Think Bigger (feat. The Problems and Opportunities Method)

Idea to Startup - December 20, 2023 10:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we’ll teach you how to avoid sabotaging your startup. Most founders think the best way to build a startup is to mitigate risks - to optimize for worst case scenarios. But the actual way to build a successful startup is to optimize for tasks with the highest ceiling - to do the things that...

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How to be Different, Part 1 (feat. The Personal Venn Diagram Method)

Idea to Startup - December 14, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you build a system to be different. We dive into the Persona Venn Diagram Method - a tool designed to help you identify and capitalize on your unique strengths - and we'll talk through how the path you might think holds the least risk actually guarantees the most. This is the f...

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Testing Another Startup Idea Live Part 1: Picking the Idea, Nudging the Boulder

Idea to Startup - December 06, 2023 10:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll kick off a new series where we'll start an idea live on the pod. Actually, we'll start two. One in the healthcare space, one in the AI space. The hope is that you've got an idea and can follow along with us. Today we'll cover when your idea is ready to start, how to structure the fi...

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The Quest for an Identity

Idea to Startup - November 30, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today we'll help you find an identity. An identity is something unique that you can organize your business beneath. A north star that can act as a lens for every decision you make. We talk through how to use category shifts and first principles to find and evaluate possible identities and when t...

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How to Find a Differentiator (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - November 22, 2023 10:00 - 18 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today we'll outline two frameworks that'll help you find a meaningful differentiator. We'll use a bunch of examples to show how Inversion + Before and After can change your business. A baseball academy, Krispy Kreme, and Nutrisystem help show us the way to a product your customers will happily o...

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Customers Speak Problem, But You’re Speaking Solution

Idea to Startup - November 16, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll talk about why so many entrepreneurs can't effectively explain what they're doing to their customers. The short answer is they speak the wrong language. Customers speak Problem, entrepreneurs speak Solution. It's like two people trying to have a conversation when one only speaks Lat...

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An SOP for Testing a Startup Idea

Idea to Startup - November 08, 2023 10:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you build an SOP for testing startup ideas. We'll use an example from a listener - a startup in the homeschooling space - as a guinea pig. The best way to have a great startup idea this time next year is to test out a bunch of ideas in the interim. This SOP will help you do it,...

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Two Ways to Approach Your Startup Idea Like A Pro (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - November 01, 2023 09:00 - 21 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll talk about pros and amateurs. Pros build businesses that have a shot - amateurs never leave the starting gate. Unfortunately, most amateurs don't know they're approaching their idea the wrong way. We talk through your vision and your internal system - the internal process you'll bu...

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Writing Persuasive Copy to Test an Idea

Idea to Startup - October 25, 2023 09:00 - 18 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we talk through how to write compelling copy. We go through a few counterintuitive archetypes you can use to dramatically increase the clarity of your messaging, which will allow you to increase your conversion rate and get more people involved earlier in the process. Copywriting is an id...

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How to Embrace Risk, Uncertainty, and Chaos

Idea to Startup - October 18, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you embrace risk, uncertainty, and chaos. The only way to get asymmetric results in life is to spend a lot of time in what we call the "chaos" zone - the uncomfortable place where you're finding things no one else has yet. This type of work (life) is uncomfortable and stressful...

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The Three Types of Problems Worth Your Time to Solve

Idea to Startup - October 11, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today we talk through the three types of problems that deserve a solution. We start off with a few higher level thoughts about problems and startups - specifically around achievement incentives and how some bad early decisions usually can't be salvaged by good decisions later on. Then we talk th...

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How to Find Your Wedge, feat. Bleeding Neck Problems (ITS Classic)

Idea to Startup - October 04, 2023 09:00 - 20 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
If you can't get traction, you likely need a wedge. Today, we talk through how to find one. We leverage a few frameworks we use at Tacklebox - the Bleeding Neck Problem, Productizing the First Step, and the 100 Character Landing Page. The goal is to solve an immediate, painful problem that'll bu...

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Are you a Freelancer or an Entrepreneur?

Idea to Startup - September 27, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you think through a deceptively tough question - are you a freelancer or an entrepreneur? Every decision you make needs to nest neatly below this core decision for your business to work, but tons of founders are either trying to do both simultaneously or think they're one when ...

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A System to Relish the Uncomfortable Stuff

Idea to Startup - September 20, 2023 09:00 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we help you become the type of founder who relishes uncomfortable things that lead to successful startups. There are no real secrets in the startup world - the hard, proactive, uncomfortable work leads to businesses that matter. This work doesn’t happen without a system. Today we help yo...

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How to Identify and Kill Bad Startup Ideas Masquerading As Good Ones

Idea to Startup - September 13, 2023 09:00 - 23 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll lay out a framework to help you identify and kill bad ideas. It's hard to objectively evaluate your idea early on - this framework helps you rise above your idea to do it effectively. A side-effect is that the framework will help you find and pursue the good ideas. We talk through ...

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A System to Test and Build Your Startup (Part III - Implementing Your System This Weekend)

Idea to Startup - September 06, 2023 09:00 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today is the last episode in the three-part series on an internal operating system for people working on startup ideas. We talk through the core pillars - Projects, Areas, Inbox - and the multipliers (like Keystone Actions) that'll make sure you're focused on the things that could be differentia...

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An Operating System to Help You Move Faster By Focusing On Less - Part 2 (feat. a monkey reciting Hamlet)

Idea to Startup - August 30, 2023 09:00 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today is part 2 of our series helping you build an internal operating system. We identify the four things you'll need to have happen for your startup to gain momentum, then we organize those into a system that'll help you move fast based on inertia. Tacklebox Beehiiv Monkeys and Shakespeare ...

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A Weekly System to Keep Entrepreneurs With Jobs Moving Fast (Part 1 - Strategy)

Idea to Startup - August 23, 2023 09:00 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll kick off a series that'll help people with jobs and startup ideas build an internal system that'll help them track progress and build momentum. Too many founders have no strategy or measurement system around how they pursue and test an idea - this series will help you do it. In par...

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The One Thing That Matters - How to Find a Differentiator That'll Support a Business

Idea to Startup - August 16, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutes ★★★★★ - 134 ratings
Today, we'll help you find a differentiator powerful enough that it can support your business. We'll talk through what a differentiator actually allows you to do, five prompts to help you uncover and test one for your business, and Brian's favorite current differentiator - Popup Bagels.  Tackle...

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