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The Startup Junkies Podcast

The Startup Junkies podcast is hosted by Jeff Amerine and the team at Startup Junkie. We’ll cover topics ranging from getting started, planning, growing your business, proving your concept, leadership, marketing, exit strategies and so much more. We’ll interview business owners, entrepreneurs, experts and people we think will bring value to our audience. Subscribe, and together we'll take your business to the next level.
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This is the Startup Junkies Podcast. These are the stories of the people that are afflicted with creating the next great products and services that are going to change lives - not just in America, but worldwide. We're going to tell the stories of the next great beer producer, products and apparel makers, and the stories of people that don't accept the status quo and that want to make things better. 

Welcome to the Startup Junkies Podcast.

Aug 31, 2015

We talk with Hayseed Ventures COO Scott Andrews. Hayseed Ventures is a VC Production Studio located in Northwest Arkansas. They are actively working to change the face of startups in Northwest Arkansas and to cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship in beautiful downtown Fayetteville. 

Q : What do you do?

Scott: We are a startup that starts startups. We are a venture studio, with a team of 7, we partner with early stage companies and help them raise funds. Our goal is to work with 6 to 8 companies a year.

Q : Who is John James?

Scott: He is a physician by profession who likes to build businesses. He figured out how to arbitrage keywords back in the 90s with google adword traffic and became a huge portion of it, he built Grill Stuff and started Acumen brands (monetizing facebook).

Q: What is your competitive advantage?

Scott: Customer Acquisition. We understand the process of getting the data, analyzing it and creating the economic machine that drives it.

Q: What are some of your current portfolios.

Scott: We actually have 5. One is the Q-Ball, it's a quiz ball reloaded. We built the content behind the machine and then built a SaaS business around it and built an online platform for it

Q: What kind of companies you work for?

Scott: A company that is early but has some tractions, some customers and some revenues.

Example: Menguin (Online Tuxedo Rental)

Q: Your model, how it is different from venture fund or from incubator or accelerator?

Scott: Its kind a mixed of everything. Our revenue is like a venture fund. We are co-founder.

Q : How did you come to work for Hayseed Ventures?

Scott: My interest is to work with a lot of different engineers and to continuously learn and learn about new things.

Q: What advice could you give to entrepreneurs who might want to talk to Hayseed?

Scott: Any entrepreneur needs to understand the problem they are solving, If you have specific interest or understanding, turn into competitive advantage.

Q: What do you look for entrepreneurs or businesses to work with?

Scott: We have a checklist and the top 3 are: Can we test this quickly? Can we reiterate it quickly and can we do it cheaply? And aside from these, we also identify if the business is a 10 million dollar business, if not then it is not something that we mess with. Does it have a clear customer acquisition strategy?

Q: Why should entrepreneurs come to Hayseed?

Scott: With a team having different brains, you get a lot of experience thinking about you all the time and you get a lot of contacts. An accelerator would introduce you to a lot of people and say go figure it out; a venture capital groups would say here’s the check, go figure it out. We’ll say come work with us, we will help you figure it out. We are hands-on and we’re teacher, not doers. We will teach you how to run your social strategy, how to manage your website and how to raise capital.

Q: What needs to happen next to make this whole Northwest Arkansas rock and roll?

Scott: I think we need to continue the path that we’re going, we’re starting to create density. Find ways to retain talents.

Q: What is your message to big companies, why do they need to care about this startup things?

Scott: I think that when we do better, they’ll do better as well. They’re going to be able to attract more talents and provide more service to them.

Q: Why should they come to this region?

Scott: This region is the Silicon Valley for retail. You’ve got Fortune One and everything that supports it. There are vendors and world-class educational institution here.

Our contact info:

Jeff Amerine
jeff@startupjunkieconsulting.com
www.startupjunkieconsulting.com

Jon Cadieux
jon@455mediagroup.com
www.455mediagroup.com
www.bentonvilleworkplace.com