John Coogan, who co-founded three companies and has been CEO, CTO, and CMO, shares his startup journey from a $17,000 failure in five months to Soylent raising over $80M and staying profitable for seven years. He explains his approach to analyzing startups and invites founders to connect.
Hey everyone, I'm John Coogan and here's why you should spend your valuable time listening to me talk about startups First. I'm an entrepreneur myself. I've been working on my own startup since 2012 and I've seen a lot of different perspectives that I think are important to share. I've been a co founder of three companies, I've been a CEO, a CTO and a cmo. I've served on multiple boards and have even been an investor. This variety of experience is important because companies are defined by their management team, their board of directors, and their shareholders. The incentives between these groups are not always perfectly aligned and it's important to understand how they can diverge. If you really want to know how startups work, I also have experience with companies at a variety of stages. While my first company only raised $17,000 before failing a mere five months after incorporation, my second company, Soylent, raised over $80 million and has been making money for over seven years now. The decisions faced by a two person team going through an incubator are usually pretty different from those faced by a series B company expanding into new markets. My goal is to bring this experience to bear when analyzing prominent business case studies as well as the more fundamental questions being debated in the startup community. Lastly, and more importantly than any credential or resume bullet, is the fact that I constantly strive to maintain a balanced view of the world. I I love testing counterfactuals and playing devil's advocate. I never turn down the opportunity to listen to someone with who I disagree and I'm always willing to re evaluate a deeply held position from first principles. I take a very deliberate approach with my media diet, always trying to find perspectives that I'm not hearing from and fill them in. There are always two sides to every story. Sometimes those sides are equally reasonable and sometimes one side is completely insane. But but it's still important in my opinion, to understand the other side. My hope is that you will find my opinions to be well researched and as objective as possible. My goal with this channel is a little different than other YouTube channels. I'm not trying to grow a large audience or monetize with ads or sponsorships. I want this channel to be my calling card in the business world and give you insight into how I think the decision to partner with someone in a business context shouldn't be taken lightly. Often you only have a few hours of real face to face interaction with someone before deciding to sign documents that could link you for years. I want anyone who plans on doing business with me to be able to spend as much time as they want diligencing my thought process, since my thought process is ultimately what you get when you work with me. I also want to connect with the next generation of entrepreneurs who may be searching YouTube for ways to solve a hard problem that they're facing. I want to be able to find and invest in the best startups out there. And the next generation of great entrepreneurs are watching YouTube right now. So if you're building something cool, please reach out to me. I really hope you enjoy my content and consider subscribing to the channel to get updates. I try and post new videos weekly and I'm always reading the comments. Thanks for watching this video and subscribing to the channel.
