In the 8th episode of the Generation Builders podcast, we sat down with Stella Garber, co-founder and CEO of Hoop, a software company that helps teams make better decisions without meetings. Stella shares her experience as the first marketing hire at Trello and how she helped grow the company from its early days to its acquisition by Atlassian. She also discusses the importance of integrated marketing campaigns and collaboration between teams for success. Tune in to learn more about Stella's journey as a serial founder and startup person.Stella is the co-founder and CEO of Hoop, and Hoop is helping teams make better decisions faster (without meetings!).She was the first Marketing hire to join Trello and grew and led the Marketing team from the early days all the way to tens of millions of users and a $425 million acquisition by Atlassian. Since her early days, Stella has held the helm at 5 businesses, turning her into what we like to call a serial founder!We dived deeper into the following topics: Marketing deep-dive at TrelloWhy did you decide to join Trello?What was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Trello GTM? What were the key drivers of the organic growth of users in Trello? Trello is a horizontal product as well and can drive many use cases. On the content and SEO side, how did you try to cater to different use cases? Many early-stage companies delay the monetization to a later stage and focus on building and perfecting the product. When did you start monetizing Trello and why not earlier? How are you thinking of PR? For a typical software company, PR is usually not the biggest nor a scalable channel, what’s your take on how best to leverage PR for early-stage startups? What would you do differently if you joined Trello again? Let's talk about Trello’s acquisition. Being a small company, with a scrappy and doer team, suddenly getting acquired by a big company with a big marketing organization. Path to founding a companyWhat is Hoop? and what is your mission with it?You have recently launched Hoop Alpha, people can apply for early access. How do you stay close to customers and prioritize your product backlog at Hoop? What do you think about the dilemma of losing quality with speed vs perfecting the product before launch? What can startups do to build the execution and shipping muscle?Startup life is full of challenges, what have been the hardest challenges you have faced so far at Hoop? CommunityWhat role do Community and Education play especially in successfully growing these types of products and companies? The Future of no-codeHow are work and tools changing in modern organizations? What’s the next phase of tools and products that’ll empower the individual knowledge workers to adapt the tools to their workflow, and build their own solutions to the problems they are trying to solve? How will the new generation of kids learn software? will they build their own? Angel InvestingYou are also an angel investor in a number of amazing companies. How does that involvement help you be better at your own startup? Are there some things you are learning back from companies?

Join us as we explore Koen's journey, from building Sofa to its exciting acquisition by Facebook, to his latest venture, Framer. Discover the challenges and opportunities of creating a platform that empowers people to build professional websites without code. You'll learn from Koen's experience and insights into the world of software companies, and find out how the next generation will use and build software without needing to know how to code.Koen is the Founder and CEO of Framer, a platform to build professional websites. Koen used to work at Facebook as a product designer and previously founded a company called Sofa a software/design company, that was acquired by Facebook.We delve into the following topics with Koen:Path to founding a companyHow Koen made his way into the world of startups and how he came up with the idea for Sofa, then Framer?  How do you explain Framer to a 5-year-old? When starting a company, what do you think are the most important things to do first to be successful? (Create a product, build a team, find capital, or something else?) What do you know now that you wish you had known when starting out? Building a productWhat was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Framer? What’s your advice for new founders going through it today? How much effort do you put into your work perfecting things before launching products? SpeedHow important do you think the speed of execution is for startups? How do you stay close to customers and prioritize your product backlog at Framer? Finding product market fitWhat do you think about GTM for horizontal, built-yourself-type products? When did you know you had a true product-market fit with Framer? The startup is full of challenges, What have been the hardest challenges you have faced so far? TeamWhat are some key decisions you made, or beliefs you hold when making hiring decisions? CommunityHow have you guys nurtured the community around Framer? It's amazing how helpful, knowledgeable, and open everyone is. How do community and education fit within growth? Should you even be investing in the community? The Future of no-codeHow will the new generation of kids learn the software? will they build their own? What does the world look like in 5 years for the no-code ecosystem?

Join us on this episode as we chat with Jaclyn Rice Nelson, co-founder and CEO of Tribe, a community connecting top engineers and data leaders to solve real-world problems using AI. Dive into Jaclyn's journey from her time at Google and Capital G to her passion for unlocking the power of talent networks. Discover how Tribe has grown into a thriving, organic community that fosters meaningful connections through shared interests and expertise. Learn how Jaclyn built a successful business with minimal engineering resources and her thoughts on the future of AI and machine learning as the new standard in software development. Don't miss this insightful conversation packed with valuable lessons and insights!1. Coalition Operators FundWhy did you start Coalition Operators fund together with the rest of the amazing women? What’s the gap you noticed in the market that drove you to start a new fund? How big is the operator network and who are the people involved?  What are your fund’s advantages and the biggest value for founders and their startups?2. Tribe.aiYou call Tribe an AI Lab, for top machine learning engineers and data scientists. Why you started Tribe? How do you attract and retain this amazing talent / top tech talent? What role community plays in the company’s goals? What are some ways they leverage the community for learning, insight sharing, or just emotional connection? How do you get access to top ML talent, fast - one they would not possibly have access to without being the Googles and Apples of the world? 3. How Tribe leverages SoftrTribe is a self-funded company, without outside investor money. Can you please share what are some key decisions you made to help keep the company lean, and sustainable and build the product and the platforms to operate internally? Would be interesting to hear how you use Softr and other automation tools for different use cases and platforms.4. Open AIWith the new OpenAI advancements, and now AI and machine learning being democratized further, how do you think this will impact Tribe and new startups in the coming future?How big will the need become for more companies to leverage data and AI into their product or services to stay ahead of the curve?