Crazy Wisdom
Maia Bittner: Startups, Business and Life in SF
- Money & Sovereignty
- Entrepreneurship & Startups
- startups
- fundraising
- san francisco tech
- entrepreneurship
- business strategy
- personal development
About this episode
Maia Bittner (@maiab), co-founder @Pinch and @Rocksbox, is a startup advisor and investor, as well as an alumna at Olin College of Engineering. Currently based in San Francisco, she likes "drinking dirty chais, making web sites, and climbing rocks".
In this episode, you'll hear us talk about
- How to Negotiate Your Rent (yes, you heard that right!)
- Entrepreneurship: from kid to adult
- Social Media, and Vulnerability
- Self-worth and Independence
- Business, and Hustle Culture
- Uncertainty and Risk-taking
- Death and Decision-making
- Asymmetric Opportunities
- Traveling, and Adaptation
- Ambition, and hard-work
- Remote, office, or both?
- NYC, and its culture
- Imposter Syndrome
- Start-up loneliness
- Community in SF
- Planning
Timeline
(02:31) How is the community of SF changing? Ambition and incentives.
(05:18) Seizing opportunities: how did Maia learn business?
(08:32) Traveling, Negotiation, and Sales
(13:46) What challenge is Maia currently struggling with?
(15:59) Death or Future Self: two methods for better decision-making
(19:03) Scheduling: to plan or not to plan
(22:06) Work virtually, Live personally
(27:35) Maia's social life: how do you live anonymously?
(38:22) What sets the Olin College of Engineering apart from others?
(41:25) What was the greatest challenge about starting two companies?
(45:36) The biggest lesson that Maia has recently learned
(48:12) Social skills, and social media; Closing thoughts
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Episode transcript
When they invented like price tags on things. I think the other impact that had is it reduces some sort of cognitive overhead. Like you don't have to worry about if you're getting a fair price or not. You can just go buy the things you want and like not stress. And getting rid of that stress I think really like frees your brain up to do lots of other things, but
it also makes us unlearned or untrained in how to do negotiation for things that you really care about. Welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. Today was a special interview I did with Maya Bittner. She is a graduate of Olin College and has been in technology for a while and I'll let her explain and let her introduce herself so you can know more about her. But I really enjoyed this interview. Definitely talked a lot about stuff from what Stephen Covey talks about in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective Individuals. I hope you enjoy this episode. I do want to let you guys know that I am doing an online course with Anders Jones, CEO of Facet wealth, who raised $40 million in a series A. So if you're a startup founder looking to raise your seed stage or your Series A, highly recommend applying to this. It is application only so that we can the right people on the on board. So go ahead and apply@stuartalsoft.substack.com again that's stuartalsoft.substack.Com it's going to be a great course. I'm really excited about it. It's going to be live training so you'll have an opportunity to ask him questions. And he's at the hyper growth scale, so he's raised at seed stage a Series A and he's now got the money to basically put fuel on the fire and take this thing to the moon. And that's a really important stage for people who are just starting out. Because the way that I've figured out how to prevent the most stress, future stress, is to pay attention to people who have recently done something that you're about to do. And so Anders is doing that right now. So he's raised money so he can tell you what it's like in 2019 to raise money. Probably want to do it quicker rather than later because a recession probably is coming. We are in the longest, we are the longest bull market in recent history probably for a long time. So you probably want to do it quickly. And so yeah, Anders has a lot of information about that. So if you want to check out the course, it's stuartalsop.substack.com Please let me know your thoughts on this episode. I'm at Twitter Ewart, Allsop. I, I, I, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you do like it, please leave us a review on itunes. Spotify, Stitcher, any of those places. Have a great day. So welcome to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast. My guest here is Maya Bittner. I got that right, right?
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