Case Studies Archive • ROCK CENTER STARTUP GUIDE

Running a Hardware Startup: Hind Hobeika on Staying Motivated Through Failure & Cultural Isolation

Hind Hobeika shares her insights on the founder’s journey, including her decision to launch Instabeat as a solo-founder and staying motivated after manufacturing challenges caused her to miss delivering on a crowdfunding campaign. She reflects on manufacturing hurdles and other obstacles hardware startups face, as well as the difficulty navigating cultural differences and social isolation that she experienced as a young founder-CEO.

Dinesh Moorjani Shares Tips on How Investors Evaluate Teams & Ideas, Navigating Growth, the Role of Your Board, and Pivoting

Dinesh Moorjani reflects on Tinder’s journey and shares his insights on how investors evaluate teams and ideas, how growth affects teams, the role of your board, and tactics to use when pivoting.

Businessman, seated, discussing his decision to close his startup and start an investment firm.

Sunil Nagaraj on “Failing Well” & Investing in Early-Stage Deep-Tech Ventures

Entrepreneur and investor Sunil Nagaraj reviews how and why he decided to close his first venture and “fail well,” despite some encouraging signals. Learn the factors that influenced Nagaraj’s decision of whether to remain afloat or close and the steps he took to exit, and his transition to investing. Now the founder and Managing Partner at Ubiquity Ventures, a seed-stage institutional venture capital firm, Nagaraj shares the criteria he uses for investing in “nerdy and early”—early-stage deep-tech—ventures.

Two entrepreneurs seated, discussing challenges of scaling a startup

Practical Tips for Scaling CEOs: Rob Gierkink on Evolving Roles, Managing Your Board, Hiring & Firing

Serial entrepreneur Rob Gierkink discusses common challenges CEOs face when scaling their ventures. Reflecting on how the CEO’s role evolves, he shares insights on hiring, leadership challenges, and managing your board. He also provides tactical advice for CEOs about how—and when—to fire wisely.

Dinesh Moorjani: Insights on the Founder’s Journey & Tips on Hiring a Co-Founder or Product Head for B2C Startups

In an informal interview with Shikhar Ghosh, Moorjani discusses what he learned about hiring co-founders or heads of product for B2C startups.

Adam Enbar on the Power of Mission, Culture & People in Scaling Startups

Flatiron’s CEO, Adam Enbar shares his observations and experience on starting and scaling. Learn how having a co-founder, a strong mission and company culture can help you as you scale. And get tips on adapting your role as CEO, building your team, and managing your board.

Male entrepreneur seated for an interview, sharinf tips on fundraising and scaling a startup.

Nick Grouf Shares Insights on Fundraising & Scaling

What do common mistakes do most founders make when raising money and scaling? Nick Grouf shares insights on fundraising, founding teams, and how the role of founder-CEO changes as you scale.

CEO Matthew Bellows Shares Tips on Managing, Recruiting & Firing as You Scale

In a conversation with Shikhar Ghosh, serial entrepreneur Matthew Bellows discusses challenges CEOs commonly face while scaling, including building your team, recruiting, and assessing your staff—and yourself as a leader—as your venture scales. He also shares practical tactics for firing an employee when needed.

CEO Dulcie Madden on Navigating Cash Flow Shortages & Adversity while Raising Your Family & Team

How do you handle the more extreme lows on the founder’s journey, that you couldn’t predict, like an unexpected acquisition offer or being sued by a large manufacturer? Entrepreneur Dulcie Madden shares lessons she’s learned growing her hardware startup, Rest Devices. Madden’s story is compelling and unique. But her insights on founding team dynamics, marrying your business partner, being CEO while raising a family, leading a company through legal problems and cash flow shortages are useful to any entrepreneur.

Insights on Ideation, Founding Teams, and Hiring from AlleyCorp’s Wendy Tsu

AlleyCorp’s Wendy Tsu shares how she—and other investors—evaluate ideas, CEOs and other executives, and founding teams. She shares tips on ideation and recruiting, including practical steps for interviewing.

business woman, seated in chair, being interviewed about starting and scaling a venture.

Essential Tips for Starting & Scaling Ventures from Serial Entrepreneur Lara O’Connor Hodgson

NOW Corp’s Lara O’Connor Hodgson reviews essentials for starting and scaling a business, including choosing a co-founder, assigning value to contributions as your venture grows, dividing founder equity, navigating change, building your team, and managing your board.

Two businessmen seated in chairs discussing unique challenges technical hardware startups face

Rescale’s Joris Poort on Sales, Fundraising, Market Testing, Team-Building and Culture at Technical Hardware Startups

Rescale’s Joris Poort shares the insights he gained starting and scaling a technical hardware startup, including identifying key metrics for SaaS businesses. He discusses the challenges that fundraising, B2B sales, and product testing pose for hardware startups and he reviews how the role of CEO evolves and the importance of establishing culture as you scale.

Two businessmen seated in chairs facing one another in a conversation, discussing insights on hiring and team building at startups

AlleyCorp’s Kevin Ryan Shares Insights on Hiring, CEOs & Company Culture

AlleyCorp founder and CEO, Kevin Ryan has launched and scaled several billion-dollar tech ventures in divergent industries. He shares his insights on founding companies, including hiring CEOs, building strong and capable teams, scaling, establishing company culture, and having difficult conversations.

The Race to $1 Billion—How Rent the Runway Became a Unicorn

Rent the Runway co-founders Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss reflect on what they learned scaling their startup into a unicorn. Learn what they discovered about the importance of understanding market conditions, developing and testing your MVP, and unit economics when launching and scaling their venture.

two men, seated in chairs, facing one another with small table between them. They are discussing sales fundamentals for startups.

Sales Fundamentals for Startups: Insights from Lou Shipley

Lou Shipley and Shikhar Ghosh discuss sales fundamentals for startups, including the sales learning curve, the sales mentality, the sales funnel, sales forecasting, common mistakes in sales, and selling in a global market.