Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur | Start and Grow Your Own Business

In this game-changing episode, Dan Novaes, the CEO and co-founder of Mode Inc., unpacks a business model that flips the script on how we value our time and data. He reveals the strategy behind rewarding over 100 million users for everyday phone activities—from playing games to reading news—and how his company turned a near-death experience into a $100 million crowdfunding success story. This episode is a masterclass for any entrepreneur who feels trapped by traditional growth and funding models. Dan breaks down why distribution is the ultimate moat in the age of AI and how acquiring smaller companies can be a more profitable and scalable user acquisition strategy than pouring money into ads. Tune in to learn how to build a movement, align incentives with your customers, and forge an unconventional path to massive scale.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
💰 How to leverage crowdfunding to raise millions and build a loyal community of investors, even when VCs say no.
🚀 Why M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) is the new user acquisition—and how buying cash-flow positive apps can be more effective than ad spend.
📉 How to navigate a near-death business crisis and pivot out of desperation into your most innovative and successful chapter yet.
🔗 The "Distribution is the Moat" playbook for the AI era and how to build an unshakeable competitive advantage.
🤝 The power of aligning incentives with your customers to create a transparent and equitable business model that people want to be a part of.
📈 How to get to a billion users by acquiring 1,000 apps with 1 million users each, rather than trying to hit the "lottery" of building the next TikTok.
📝 About Dan Novaes
Dan Novaes is the CEO and co-founder of Mode Inc., the tech company behind Mode Mobile and Earn OS. An entrepreneur since his teenage years, Dan scaled a dropshipping business to $2 million in annual revenue while still in college. He then dove into the world of mobile apps, which led him to co-found Mode, a company dedicated to rewarding consumers for their time and data. Dan's unique approach to growth, which includes a massive M&A strategy and raising over $100 million through crowdfunding, showcases his expertise in building scalable, consumer-focused businesses outside of the traditional VC-backed path.
🎯 Dan’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"You have to really find what's right for you and be authentic to yourself because the moment that that authenticity comes through, then I think amazing things happen."
📢 Memorable Quotes
“In the AI era, distribution is the moat.” – Dan Novaes
“There's two ways to get to a billion monthly active users. You can create the next Telegram, which... is effectively like hitting the lottery... Or you can go out and acquire 1,000 apps that have 1 million monthly active users each.” – Dan Novaes
"It was really out of desperation that initially even the idea [for crowdfunding] struck." – Dan Novaes
💡 Actionable Takeaways
✅ Explore Crowdfunding as a Funding Alternative: If the venture capital path isn't a fit for your business, research Regulation A (Reg A) crowdfunding as a viable way to raise capital directly from your customers and community.
✅ Analyze M&A as a Growth Strategy: Instead of defaulting to ad spend, research smaller, cash-flow positive businesses or apps in your niche. Consider if acquiring them could be a more profitable way to gain users and distribution.
✅ Conduct a "Personal Style" Audit: Take time to reflect on your authentic leadership style. Are you trying to emulate another entrepreneur? Identify what works for you and build your company's culture and strategy around your genuine strengths.
✅ Find Ways to Align Incentives: Look at your business model and ask, "How can I better align my success with my customers' success?" Whether through rewards, equity, or transparency, find a way to make your users feel like partners.
🔗 Links & Resources
Website: https://mode.inc
Invest: invest.modemobile.com
Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
Follow Mode Mobile on LinkedIn

Ever wonder what your business is actually worth? It’s a question every founder asks, but few know how to answer. This episode demystifies the entire process of business valuation and exit planning with expert Briana Berg. She reveals that understanding your company's value isn't just about selling—it's about building a stronger, more profitable, and more efficient business right now. Briana, an entrepreneur who has built and sold her own companies, breaks down the exact strategies you can implement today to increase your valuation, whether you plan to exit in five years or never. This is a masterclass in turning your hard work into tangible, bankable value.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
🚀 How to move beyond generic "country club valuations" and understand the three core methodologies that determine your business's true worth.
💰 Why buyers pay for past performance, not future potential—and how to build the operational frameworks that make your potential more attractive.
⚙️ The secret to valuing a service-based business, focusing on intangible assets like your team, processes, and recurring revenue.
📈 How to create recurring revenue models that massively increase your company’s value and make it irresistible to buyers.
📊 The critical operational and financial tweaks (like cleaning up your books) that make your business "sell-ready" at all times.
🤝 How to find a "strategic buyer" who sees unique synergies in your business and will pay a premium for it.
🧠 Why exit planning is just as much about your personal fulfillment as it is about your business, and how to avoid the regret 75% of founders feel post-sale.
📝 About Briana Berg
Briana Berg is a Certified Valuation Analyst and a Certified Exit Planning Advisor who specializes in helping entrepreneurs understand and maximize their business's value. But she’s not just an analyst; she's an entrepreneur first. Having built and sold her own companies, Briana brings a rare blend of technical expertise and practical, in-the-trenches experience to the table. Her unique perspective allows her to guide business owners through the complex financial and emotional journey of building a valuable, sellable asset.
🎯 Briana’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"Trust your instinct and your gut... lean into that, and just go for it."
📢 Memorable Quotes
"A buyer pays for performance." – Briana Berg
"Valuation is our best calculation, but price comes down to negotiation. It really comes down to who the buyer is at the table and how they view your business and what it unlocks for them." – Briana Berg
"75% of business owners regretted the sale of their business. And it really comes down to lack of planning around the personal side as well." – Briana Berg
💡 Actionable Takeaways
✅ Clean Up Your Books NOW: Start separating personal and business expenses immediately. A buyer wants to see clean, predictable financials, not a business propped up by personal funds or used to minimize taxes.
✅ Document Your Key Processes: Create simple Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for your most critical functions. A business that can run without you is infinitely more valuable.
✅ Brainstorm One Recurring Revenue Stream: Even if you're a project-based service business, could you offer a monthly retainer, a subscription service, or a maintenance plan? Predictable income is a massive value driver.
✅ Conduct a "Sell-Ready" Audit: Ask yourself: "If a perfect buyer made an offer tomorrow, would I be ready?" Identify the gaps in your operations, finances, and team that you’d need to fix.
🔗 Links & Resources
Website: https://www.northkendrick.com/
Course: https://www.sellready.co
Connect with Briana on LinkedIn
Follow North Kendrick Advisors on LinkedIn

Tired of hearing about AI chatbots and ready for the next evolution? In this episode, serial tech entrepreneur Bradley Younge pulls back the curtain on Agentic AI—the future of business automation. Bradley, who helped scale his last company (SkyKick) to over $45 million in ARR, explains why he’s betting his next chapter on building an autonomous AI workforce for small businesses. He shares how his new company, Outermind, is giving entrepreneurs an "unfair advantage" by deploying AI agents directly inside Microsoft 365 to handle operations, sales, and content. This episode is a masterclass in how to stop using AI as a simple tool and start deploying it as a proactive team member that drives real business growth.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
The crucial difference between assistive AI (like ChatGPT) and a proactive, autonomous AI workforce that accomplishes goals without constant prompting.
How small businesses can leverage their agility to adopt AI agents faster and more effectively than slow-moving, billion-dollar companies.
A practical framework for implementing your first "AI Chief of Staff" to oversee business goals, manage tasks, and integrate tools like QuickBooks and HubSpot.
Real-world examples of how AI agents can automate weekly reports, manage your sales pipeline from lead to invoice, and free you from mind-numbing administrative work.
How to build trust with AI by implementing critical guardrails, controls, and human-in-the-loop oversight so your agents work for you, safely.
Why the future of competitive advantage lies not in working harder, but in building a business that intelligently delegates to an AI workforce.
📝 About Bradley Younge
Bradley Younge is the founder and CEO of Outermind, a company building an AI agentic workforce to help small and mid-sized businesses automate their most critical functions. A seasoned technology leader with a history of being at the forefront of innovation, Bradley’s journey includes being the third employee at drugstore.com during the dot-com boom and co-founding Skykick, a SaaS company he helped grow to over $45 million in annual recurring revenue. His deep experience in both the startup and enterprise worlds gives him a unique perspective on how small businesses can leverage cutting-edge technology to compete and win.
🎯 Brad's BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"Jump on the AI wagon... Don't let this pass you by. You've just got to start using it because it's going to be the way the business world is working in the near future. So don't let it pass you by and don't get behind."
📢 Memorable Quotes
“Small businesses, if they could be given the right tools… could move a lot, lot faster and hopefully start really taking it to the enterprise and competing with them.” – Bradley Younge
“We can move so fast and we can get such high-quality stuff done by using AI in the proper mechanism... it's really exciting to be able to try to take that out to the small businesses and give them kind of an unfair advantage against the enterprises.” – Bradley Younge
“You're really just using [AI] as a tool. And that was kind of the other aspect of the vision, was to really make these agents—to create an agent workforce that is proactive.” – Bradley Younge
💡 Actionable Takeaways
✅ Audit your "busy work" now. Identify 1-2 repetitive weekly tasks (like summarizing industry news, following up on invoices, or updating your CRM) that an AI agent could automate immediately.
✅ Frame your first AI hire. Conceptualize an "AI Chief of Staff." What are the core business goals, risks, and worries you would delegate to this role if it existed?
✅ Think integration, not isolation. Look for AI platforms that connect with the systems you already use (like Microsoft 365, QuickBooks, and HubSpot) to unlock true, seamless automation.
✅ Prioritize governance and safety. When exploring AI solutions, ask about controls, auditing, and "human-in-the-loop" approvals for critical actions like external communications or financial transactions.
🔗 Links & Resources
Website: https://outermind.ai/
Connect with Bradley on LinkedIn
Follow Outermind on LinkedIn

Worried that implementing AI in your business means navigating a minefield of risks? In this episode, AI governance expert and CEO Will Coffey flips the script, revealing how "governance" isn't about restriction—it's about acceleration. He breaks down why putting the right systems in place is the key to unlocking AI's full potential safely and responsibly. For any entrepreneur looking to innovate without gambling their company's data, reputation, or intellectual property, this conversation is a masterclass in proactive strategy. Drawing from 27 years of experience leading tech teams from the Marine Corps to global consulting, Will provides a clear, actionable roadmap for using AI with confidence and a competitive edge.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
🚀 How to reframe AI governance as an accelerator for innovation, not a set of rules that slows you down.
🤔 Why focusing on your business processes and goals is more critical than having "perfectly clean data" before you start with AI.
🚧 A practical guide to creating dynamic AI guardrails that focus on business outcomes instead of just blocking tools.
📈 The framework for assessing your business's readiness to adopt AI, ensuring you build on a solid foundation.
🛡️ How to protect your company's most valuable assets—your IP, customer data, and reputation—from emerging AI risks.
🧠 Why continuous learning is the single most important habit for entrepreneurs to survive and thrive in the age of AI.
🤖 An inside look at how "policy as code" can automatically enforce your AI usage rules, protecting your business 24/7.
📝 About Will Coffey
Will Coffey is the CEO of Pythagorithm and a seasoned technology leader with over 27 years of experience. His impressive journey began as a Data Chief in the Marine Corps and evolved through high-level roles in global consulting firms, where he specialized in governance, risk, compliance (GRC), and cybersecurity. As one of only approximately 260 ServiceNow Certified Master Architects in the world, Will brings a rare depth of expertise to the complex world of AI. He stands at the critical intersection of advanced technology and the human element, making him the perfect guide for entrepreneurs aiming to adopt AI safely and strategically.
🎯 Will’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"The second you stop [learning] is the second you start becoming obsolete and somebody will overtake you."
📢 Memorable Quotes
“AI governance is fundamentally different because it's really there to help accelerate your adoption of AI. It's not there to be an impediment. It's not there to be a blocker.” – Will Coffey
“You can't hang your hat on like the data has to be clean. But what you do need to make sure is that your processes and your policies and the work that you want to do is defined.” – Will Coffey
“The world will never move as fast as it is today. Meaning that it will only get faster and better and more crazy going forward. So you have to continuously evolve.” – Will Coffey
💡 Actionable Takeaways
✅ Before jumping into new AI tools, conduct a simple readiness assessment. Ask: "What specific business outcome do we want to achieve with this?"
✅ Reframe "governance" in your team meetings. Discuss it as a framework for safe innovation and competitive advantage, not just a list of restrictions.
✅ Block out 30 minutes on your calendar each week dedicated solely to learning about new AI developments.
✅ When adopting AI, focus on measuring outcomes (e.g., increased profitability, faster mission success) rather than just outputs (e.g., number of reports generated).
✅ Don't just write an AI usage policy and hope people follow it. Explore tools and systems that can help enforce it automatically to protect your business.
🔗 Links & Resources
Website: https://pythagorithm.ai/
Connect with Will on LinkedIn
Follow Pythagorithm.ai on LinkedIn

In this episode, Brian sits down with Vraj Shroff, the founder of How To Student, an AI-powered platform transforming college readiness. Vraj shares his journey from experiencing the pain points of the education system as an immigrant student to building a sophisticated AI tutor as a Harvard MBA candidate. He breaks down how he’s tackling one of society’s biggest challenges by providing personalized, accessible, and high-quality education to students everywhere, especially those in underserved communities.
This conversation is a masterclass for any entrepreneur looking to build a business with real-world impact. You’ll learn how to develop a specialized AI tool that outperforms general platforms, the strategic power of focusing on an overlooked market (like Title I schools), and how to design a business model that prioritizes both mission and monetization. Vraj’s story is a powerful reminder that the most significant business opportunities often lie in solving the most pressing human problems.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
The Specialized AI Advantage: Discover why niche AI tools designed for specific problems (like education) can deliver far superior results than generalized models like ChatGPT.
Mission-Driven Market Strategy: Learn how Vraj strategically targeted Title I schools, proving that focusing on an underserved market can be a powerful way to gain traction and make a meaningful impact.
Building for Every Stakeholder: Understand the importance of designing a product that serves multiple stakeholders—from students and teachers to principals—and how to gather feedback from each to create a holistic solution.
User Environment is Everything: Hear how the design and "feel" of your platform can create an environment conducive to success, encouraging user engagement and better outcomes.
Leveraging Your "Status": Vraj shares how being a student opened doors with school principals, proving that you can turn your current position into a unique networking advantage.
Funding a Social Mission: Get insights into how leveraging institutional support, like grants from Harvard, can help you serve customers who may not have the budget, ensuring your mission is never compromised by a client’s inability to pay.
📝 About Vraj Shroff
Vraj Shroff is the visionary founder of How To Student, an AI-powered education platform focused on personalized learning and improving college readiness. Currently an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School, Vraj has a powerful background in product management at tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Capital One. Combining his personal experience as an immigrant student with his expertise in technology and business, Vraj is on a mission to use AI to expand access to high-quality education for every student, regardless of their background or location.
🎯 Vraj’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"Make sure you have that support system... startup life is just so different... making sure you have the support system so you don't feel like you're alone."
📢 Memorable Quotes
"Don't let AI replace you. Learning and education, it's not just about algebra and geometry. It's about learning from a human, interacting with a human... You're also not replacing educators. You're also not replacing humanity." – Vraj Shroff
"The status quo is broken for different segments of students. If you're an ELL student where you don't understand English properly, you can't understand math properly... it just falls through the cracks." – Vraj Shroff
"When I started this business, one of the mission statements was I would never say no to a school just because of their ability to pay. We can subsidize it, we'll figure something out." – Vraj Shroff
💡 Actionable Takeaways
Find the "Broken Status Quo": Look for inefficiencies or underserved groups within an industry you understand. This is often where the most impactful business ideas are born.
Talk to Everyone: Don't just get feedback from your primary customer. Interview all stakeholders involved to build a solution that truly solves the entire problem.
Design the Environment, Not Just the Tool: Consider the entire user experience. How can you create a digital space that encourages the exact behavior and outcome you want to achieve?
Build Your Support System Now: Intentionally reach out to friends, family, or fellow entrepreneurs. Schedule regular check-ins to build these relationships before you face your first major crisis.
Explore Non-Traditional Funding: If you have a social mission, research grants, academic funding, or impact investors who can help you serve your target audience without compromising your values.
🔗 Links & Resources
Website: http://howtostudent.com/
Connect with Vraj on LinkedIn
Follow How To Student on LinkedIn