Nigel Eccles is best known for being the co-founder of FanDuel, a company that pioneered the daily fantasy sports market in the US.

You may have seen their high impact commercials on TV, heard of them becoming one of the few unicorn $1bil startups to come out of Europe or their eventual sale to Paddypower/Betfair for $465mil. You may have even seen him featured in the infamous John Oliver “This Week Tonight” episode covering the industry he helped to create!

It’s safe to say – there are not many people on the planet that have the experience that Nigel has – after starting & selling multiple companies – he’s been around the block & back as a serial entrepreneur.

At Fanduel his experience includes raising $400mil+ in venture capital, competing with their closest rival, Draft Kings who raised over $1bil+, to investing hundreds of millions of dollars in customer acquisition on channels like TV, radio & paid digital.

In this revealing conversation, he opened up to share his perspective on:

• how to come up with business ideas in the first place
• raising venture capital vs bootstrapping
• how to accelerate paid customer acquisition & measure your marketing effectively
• building a high growth team
• the highs & lows of selling a company & lessons learned
• why founders & early employees might not always make a return from a sale because of preferred vs common stock
• creating a new market vs capturing an existing one
• why “going viral” isn’t a good strategy for paid products
• what to do if you’re a non-technical founder
• the process of taking an initial idea & evaluating its business potential
• applying the same logic to his new company, Flick, going after the podcast market

Subscribe to watch the episode on YouTube here.

Thank you to our sponsor who helps make this show possible -SquareFoot, where growing companies find their place, check out SquareFoot.com/creatorlab to find your next office space

How many times have you heard bitcoin, crypto, blockchain and thought to yourself – “what the hell are they talking about?” 

Well, you’re not the only one. This is a topic that has a lot of value but too often you’ll find so-called “experts” using complicated jargon to make things sound more complicated than it is.

In this conversation with Ali Hassan, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker & venture capitalist, turned entrepreneur – we try our best to simplify and discuss what bitcoin and blockchain is in simple terms and explore the practical applications of this technology.

Going beyond definitions – we discuss real use cases, why the value of bitcoin fluctuates so much, if bitcoin is a direct alternative to the traditional money supply system, comparing it to other assets like gold, and how his team has developed one of the leading passive index funds for investing in cryptocurrency

1. What is Bitcoin? And what is Blockchain in simple terms? – Ali describes in easy to understand language and with examples, what bitcoin is and why it’s a valuable asset & technology
    
2. Comparing Bitcoin to Gold – what makes an asset like gold valuable and why that idea can be applied to an asset like bitcoin.
    
3. Real World Applications – where can bitcoin and blockchain be useful in the real? From the idea of a bitcoin being a store of value, to ethereum helping to automate processes through smart contracts, to helping the unbanked people of the world – we discuss where blockchain could provide real utility in the long run
    
4. Comparing Ethereum to the Apple app store – we discuss in simple terms what ethereum is and why it’s allowing people to build on top of their ecosystem, similar to how Apple did with their app store
    
5. Creating An Index Fund For Crypto – why Ali and his team left their traditional finance roles at companies like Goldman Sachs & VC firms to create a leading passive crypto index fund, Crescent Crypto.