#0060 - John Fein Chats About His Seed Stage Venture Fund, Firebrand Ventures

<p>On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear an interview that our team did with John Fein during our 2020 Summit. John is founder and Managing Partner at Firebrand Ventures, a seed stage venture fund.</p> <p>Prior to founding Firebrand, John served as Managing Director for Techstars, a leading startup accelerator with over 40 programs around the world. Before Techstars, he spent nine years at UnitedHealth Group, managing large scale projects including scaling a business from zero to $1.5 billion per year and 1,500 employees in four years.</p> <p>In addition to the interview, Frank Gruber, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Established and Co-Founder of Established Ventures, talks about our first event in Chicago 15 years ago, when the company was Tech Cocktail, which later became Tech.Co and then ultimately becoming Established.</p> <p>We hear the “VC Minute” segment from Rich Maloy of Established Ventures who provides some more helpful advice for startups that are raising capital.</p> <p>The 2021 Startup of the Year Application is open! The top 100 startups will come together for additional opportunities to connect, showcase, and potentially take home the title of Startup of the Year at our annual Summit. You can see if your startup fits our criteria and apply today at: soty.link/apply</p> <p>We also once again talk about Finmark, which is financial planning software for startups for revenue forecasting, cash projections, and runway. It is one of those few products that we truly believe in and I think that it will help a lot of our community members, so please go check out Finmark and signing up for 30-day free trial at est.us/finmark</p> <p>Lastly, we invite you all to join our community today to access the support, expert advice, and resources you need to to elevate your startup by going to: est.us/join</p> <p>Thank you for listening, and as always, please check out the Established website and subscribe to the newsletter at <a href= "http://www.est.us">www.est.us</a></p> <p>Checkout Startup of the Yea