Organic Growth via Twitter, Remote-First Company Culture, & Taking on Legacy Brands, w/ Andy Berman

Andrew Berman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vowel (https://www.vowel.com/), the world's first complete meeting solution designed to make every meeting more inclusive and worthwhile – before, during, and after. Vowel is a collaboration platform that makes meetings searchable, shareable centers of knowledge for your business. By redefining what data capture is capable of, they are optimizing the potential of every team.

They are a remote-first company whose 20+ employees span four continents. Their team is made up of engineers, designers, inventors, entrepreneurs and security experts – from leading organizations like Google, Bridgewater, Nanit, Airbnb, Casper, Recombine and others. They’re building both an inclusive product and an inclusive team that celebrates diverse cultures and backgrounds.

Andrew’s inspiration is to apply new technology to build products that can touch millions of people in ways that were impossible before. He is also the founder of Nanit, the first camera to track human behavior (the leading baby monitor), an experienced investor from seed to LBO stages (Silicon Valley, NY and other markets), and an active and experienced angel investor (with investments in SaaS, Security, Healthcare, Consumer and CV/AI).

Use coupon code: JUSTGOGRIND for 3 months free of unlimited seats on Vowel’s Pro plan (monthly only)!

Topics Covered by Andrew Berman in this Episode:

0:00 How vowel is creating instant searchable, shareable knowledge through a modern video conferencing tool
2:17 Andy’s journey to founding Vowel
4:21 How the idea for Vowel stemmed from Nanit’s pain points as a distributed team
6:57 Early distribution and organic growth through Twitter
8:34 How Vowel’s original use-cases have expanded naturally and leaning into user-led product development
10:34 Giving their users a 10x improved media experience through their next generation video platform
12:34 The challenges of building Vowel
14:05 Recruiting the original founding team
15:46 Building remote-first company culture
18:58 The fundraising process and Vowel’s powerful cap table of operator- angel investors
22:41 How to vet investors
24:32 Their B2B growth strategy
26:42 Developing their freemium business model
28:10 How they view competition and taking on legacy brands
33:11 Learnings as a multi-time founder and former VC
35:34 What motivates Andy to challenge the status quo and build innovative companies
37:03 Andy’s thoughts on the future of work and running remote teams
38:43 Snagging the vowel.com domain name

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Who am I?

Hey! I'm Justin :) Based in Los Angeles, I’m the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, host a podcast called Just Go Grind interviewing founders and investors, and write a newsletter from time to time.