Craftsman Founder with Lucas Carlson and Eliot Peper

Eliot Peper is an entrepreneur, an investor, an advisor... and now an author of startup fiction. His first book, Uncommon Stock (published by Brad Feld’s new publishing company FG Press) at its surface seems like an uncommon next step for most entrepreneurs. However if you treat a novel like a startup, you can understand the decision better. This week, I spend some time interviewing Eliot around a few topics:

• How is writing a novel like doing a startup?
• What can entrepreneurs learn from authors and vise-versa?
• How does an author promote and do marketing for his work?
• Are you a plotter or a pantser?
• What writing apps do you use?
• Who inspires you?
• You were originally going to self-publish?
• What attracted you to self-publishing?
• Was it hard to decide between FG Press and self-publishing?
• Was it harder than you expected to write the book?
• What do you like best about writing?
• What’s next for you?

If you got a Stanford MBA and then worked as an investment banker... what would be your next career move? Michelle Miller decided to write a novel called The Underwriting. But she didn't just write a novel and hope to get traditionally published, she treated her novel as a startup. She raised investment, secured brand sponsorships, created screen savers and playlists, made a video trailer and serialized her novel (a modern Charles Dickens). This week, I interviewed Michelle in the Craftsman Founder Podcast and ask a bunch of questions:

• Tell us about your background
• What is The Underwriting?
• What’s worked and what hasn’t worked well in promoting your novel?
• With your Stanford MBA and then investment banking background, how is writing a novel like doing a startup?
• What can entrepreneurs learn from authors and vise-versa?
• How does an author promote and do marketing for her work today?
• Are you a plotter or a pantser?
• What writing apps do you use?
• Who inspires you?
• Have you considered traditional publishing?
• What attracted you to self-publishing?
• Is fiction a viable investment for venture capitalists?
• Should more fiction authors consider trying to raise venture capital for their novels?
• What do you like best about writing?
• So what’s next for the Underwriting?

A few weeks ago, we interviewed online marketing guru Neil Patel. This week I talk to his other half, product guru Hiten Shah. Together they are responsible for epic great tools like KISSMetrics and CrazyEgg, and Hiten's focus is on growth hacking and product engineering... how to create a great product.

Hiten just started a weekly newsletter that covers SaaS topics: SaaS Weekly (http://hiten.com) that you should totally check out. In the mean time, here's my interview with this great man.

Entrepreneurs are perpetually interested in M&A and Venture Capital topics, but often have little direct experience themselves. The math behind this is pretty obvious: if an entrepreneur starts 3 or 4 startups in his career, there are only so many opportunities that an entrepreneur gets to learn about these kinds of deals.

On the other hand, the people who work inside of Corporate Development (those who do M&A deals as their job) and Venture Capital see hundreds of opportunities a year. To an entrepreneur, it is a big deal. On the other side of the table, it is just another day on the job.

This week on the podcast we talk to Tim Porter (@tmporter), managing partner at Madrona Venture Group and former investor in my startup, AppFog. Before that, he worked at Microsoft doing M&A and Corp Dev which gives him a lot of perspective that many entrepreneurs don't have. We pick his brain and try to learn as much as possible this week.

Many founders hope to one day take their company public on the stock market and have it be worth over $1B+ in market cap. To Dave Hersh, this dream is a reality with Jive Software, a company he founded and lead for 8 years and through 3 different business models.

Dave also happens to be one of my personal mentors and friends. This week we have the honor of interviewing Dave, who runs a brilliant startup blog and often talks about founder's impatience.

I ask Dave many tough and interesting questions this week like:

• You were involved with Jive for 8 years and stepped out right before it went public. Can you tell us why?
• What did you learn about work/life balance?
• Can you tell us about any bad startup ideas you had before Jive and how you knew Jive was different?
• What are the top 3 most common mistakes that you see startup founders make?
• What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received about starting companies?
• A few years ago, you became a Venture Capitalist with the top VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. What has being a VC taught you about startups and founders that you didn’t realize while being a founder?
• How has the way you approach and think about startups changed over the years?