Podcast

SPOS #855 – Mike Evans On The Startup Journey

Welcome to episode #855 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #855. The recently released book, Hangry, is a humorous, rags-to-riches, cautionary tale about Mike Evans, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who founded GrubHub in his basement and expanded it into the multi-billion dollar online food delivery colossus. Hungry and tired one night, Mike wanted a pizza, but getting a pizza delivered was a pain in the neck. He didn’t want to call a million restaurants to see what was open. So, as an avid coder, he created GrubHub in his spare bedroom to figure out who delivered to his apartment. Then, armed with a $140 check from his first customer and ignoring his crushing college debt he quit his job. Over the next decade, Mike grew GrubHub into the world’s premier online ordering website. In doing so, he entered the company of an elite few entrepreneurs to take a startup from an idea all the way to an IPO. GrubHub’s journey from Mike’s bedroom to Wall Street doesn’t fMit into how business schools teach entrepreneurship. With a razor-sharp wit, Mike reveals surprising insights about how people approach food, and hard-won truths about how startups succeed — and even harder-won truths about how startups fail. Shocking everyone, at the pinnacle of startup success, Mike left it all behind, quitting the company he started to bike across the United States in search of balance. But eventually, the grand vistas of America bring the lessons of the past into focus, driving the realization that for entrepreneurs a hunger for success doesn’t end, and he starts another company, even more ambitious than the first. The company is Fixer. Fixer is an on-demand handyperson service. The key to the business is that the fixers are W-2 employees with benefits, trained from scratch in-house. Their goal is to reboot trade education in the United States. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 46:16.
Hello from beautiful Montreal.
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Here is my conversation with Mike Evans.
Hangry.
GrubHub.
Fixer.
Follow Mike on LinkedIn.
Follow Mike on Twitter.
This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #855.

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Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.