#6 - Fletcher Richman on Sales Robots, #GivingFirst And Professor-less Universities

Today's guest is Fletcher Richman, CEO & Cofounder of Halp, a company backed by Techstars and Slack that makes an internal helpdesk to streamline workflows for the teams at Adobe, HomeDepot, SeatGeek, and hundreds of other companies.Fletcher also helped found the Seed Angel Forum, an investor forum for early stage entrepreneurs and investors, and is a partner at Kokopelli Ventures, a micro venture fund in Boulder CO. In our conversation we explore Fletchers path into the world of business and creating things and his experience running a social impact venture (Spark).Fletcher received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Cum Laude, from The University of Colorado. As a student, Fletcher co-founded Spark Boulder, a co-working space for student entrepreneurs, which was supported by many community leaders, including Brad Feld and David Cohen, the Co-Founders of Techstars. Fletcher spent several years working as the Growth Engineer for PivotDesk, a Techstars Boulder graduate, and as the Platform Manager for Galvanize Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund. Fletcher's Blog: http://fletcher.io/Fletcher on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fletchrichman/Fletcher on Medium: https://medium.com/@fletchrichmanFletcher's company Halp: https://www.halp.com/The Seed Angel Forum: https://seedangel.co/Kokopelli Ventures: https://kokopelli.vc/Watson Institute: https://watson.is/Twitter: @FletcherRichmanShow Notes:2:58 Fletcher tells his story and the story of his first startup - yelp for college campuses.11:10 Fletchers strategy to get into the startup world - just test out startups products and send them feedback12:00 His first internship at PivotDesk and his beginnings in web development13:00 How he built a sales robot at PivotDesk and built the intern team14:00 The beginnings of Spark, the social impact co-working space he founded almost by accident to connect Boulder's University community with the Boulder tech ecosystem.17:00 Fletcher tells me about his first deck and fundraise for Spark Boulder and why they went with a non-profit structure17:30 The "Boulder Creek Divide" and how Spark Boulder was created to address it 20:53 Fletcher tells me about raising money and using the "sales robot" to reach out to the Boulder tech scene. 27:00 Fletcher tells me about his experience running accelerator programs out of Spark. 29:00 How the Boulder Denver tech scene works as a "doer-ocracy" 31:40 Fletchers thoughts on social entrepreneurship, Watson University, and the box of social impact entrepreneurship. 35:30 How it can hurt entrepreneurs to label themselves social impact entrepreneurs38:19 Do you think it's harder to build a social impact company than any other company?41:00 Fletchers "Elon Musk" strategy to learn how to build vanilla companies first, and then use his experience and resources to tackle harder problems

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Exploring the future of technology and humanity. Do you ever feel that no-one is having the conversations that matter? The conversations about where we're headed as a planet and as a species? conversations with a global perspective rooted in secular humanism? Evolving Earth is a podcast about our collective future, and how we can create a world where everybody wins. Evolving Earth explores futurism, social impact entrepreneurship, humanism, environmentalism, trauma healing, art, environmentalism, and more. Will Sacks is a social entrepreneur based in Boulder Colorado USA. He previously founded Kindara, a women's health platform that helps millions of women better understand their fertility. Join our community to be immersed in conversations that matter and that shed light on our evolving earth.