Pixability is a startup that is helping large brands find the right audience of customers for their video marketing. The company is in the top 10% of the Inc. 5000, a list of America’s fastest-growing companies, for a second year. It was not always so. Its founder, Bettina Hein, took the company through some pivots before finding the right business model. Bettina Hein had also been co-founder of SVOX, a Swiss startup sold to Nuance Communications for $125MM. She knows a lot about finding success in technology startups selling to businesses.
I was excited for the opportunity to interview this “Fearless Founder” as she has been called. In past episodes of the Angel Invest Boston Podcast (Podcast Website) Bettina Hein’s name has come up frequently as the exemplary founder. She epitomizes that combination of tenacity and openness to evidence that is so crucial to startups trying to find their market niche.
Here are the most consequent lessons I think she teaches us:
- Being a solo founder is hard and lonely but it can be done by delegation and empowering your team.
- “Many beginning entrepreneurs are scared of having a board. They fear the meddling in their business. They fear that people will force decisions on them, on the board. I have not seen that ever happen.”
- “For me, often times the exercise of preparing for a board meeting is almost more important than the board meeting itself because it allows me to really think through the narrative of the company.”
- Raising money is selling. Have a real sales process for your fundraising.
You can listen to the interview on the podcast website Bettina Hein Podcast Page or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes at iTunes Page or Google Play at Google Play Page. Search for Angel Invest Boston in Overcast, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Pocket Casts and other places.
Below are other topics touched on as well as some quotes:
- Bettina Hein Bio
- How Bettina Hein Found Her Entrepreneurial Path in Life
- Bettina Hein Used to Write Computer Programs in Fourth Grade but Did Not Learn to Code in College; Why?
- Professors Discouraged Bettina Hein from Pursuing a Career in the Sciences
- “If I had to go back, I would probably get an undergraduate degree in either electrical engineering or computer science.”
- “I think I wanted to be an entrepreneur very early on. There's just that example that was set in my family. There's no one in my family that has had a nine to five job ever, except my brother…”
- Bettina Hein Founds an Entrepreneurship Initiative for Students at her University Called Start, that Leads her to Brains-to-Venture, Which Connects Her with Her co-founders in SVOX
- SVOX Has a $125 MM Exit to Nuance Communications
- Bettina Hein Starts Pixability – Looked for Co-founders But Could Not Find Any Willing Takers – How She made Being a Solo Founder Work
- Pixability’s Storied Pivots
- “We help large brands and their agencies place their video advertising and optimize it on YouTube, and we've expanded to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.”
- How Pixability’s Platform Impacts the Viewing Public
- “Consumers like it better, and brands get more out of it.”
- Sal Daher Reads an iTunes Review from HealthTech617 – Asks You to Leave a Review on iTunes
- Bettina Hein’s Advice on Fundraising for a Startup
- Bettina Hein on How Things Change Once a Startup Gets Venture Funding
- Bettina Hein Thinks Founders Are Scared of Having a Board So They Miss out on a Lot
- Bettina Hein’s Way of Balancing Work & Family
- Bettina Hein on Fundraising While Pregnant
- Bettina Hein on Marketing Technology’s Crowded Landscape