Selina Tobaccowala is a serial entrepreneur who started coding in her Stanford dorm room in the late 1990s. Selina and her college friend Al Leib co-founded Evite, which was the dominant platform for online invitations. After Ticketmaster acquired Evite, she served as Senior Vice President of Product and Technology at Ticketmaster. She left Ticketmaster to become the President and CTO of SurveyMonkey.
Selina is now back to being a founder. She started Gixo, a live fitness app that aims to improve global health. Gixo offers professional coaches teaching live classes to people of all fitness levels in all locations, making exercise more accessible in people’s busy lives.
If you sign up for Gixo and input the promo code OZAN, you’ll get a free trial and a discount on the membership. [Note: This is not an affiliate deal. I don’t make a dime from any sign-ups. It’s simply Selina’s generous offer to the audience].
In the interview, Selina and I discuss:
How Selina literally stumbled upon the idea for Evite when she was in college. The three questions her father asked Selina to help her decide whether she should go with the uncertainty of a start-up as opposed to the certainty of salaried job. The most valuable failures she experienced in growing Evite How Selina and the SurveyMonkey were able to scale the company rapidly How businesses can go beyond paying lip service to failure and actually create a company culture where people are willing to fail and share those failures Why she decided to go back to being a founder again.Resources mentioned:
Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
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Get your FREE copy of my e-book. Text OZAN to 345345 or navigate to weeklycontrarian.com to download a free copy of my e-book, The Contrarian Handbook: 8 Principles for Innovating Your Thinking. Along with your free e-book, you’ll get the Weekly Contrarian — a newsletter that challenges conventional wisdom and changes the way we look at the world (plus access to exclusive content for subscribers only).
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As always, thanks for listening.
End of Season 1
Derek Sivers on What It Means to Fail
Cathy Heller on the Power of Radical Empathy
3 Key Insights from Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Baya Voce on the Cure for the Loneliness Epidemic
Dorie Clark on Failure and the Entrepreneurial Journey
Jessica Kriegel on How You Should Ditch Generational Stereotypes
Neil Pasricha: Ask Me Anything
Tara Schuster on Rising Up From Rock Bottom
Frans Johansson on Why Diversity Drives Innovation
Scott Harrison on Transforming Himself and Ending the Water Crisis
BJ Fogg on How Tiny Habits Can Spark Big Life Changes
Laura Vanderkam on Why You Have More Time Than You Think
What to Do When You Make a Mistake
Rene Denfeld on Healing Trauma and Telling Her Story
Why the "Fail Fast" Mantra is a Recipe for Failure
Whitney Johnson on Disrupting Yourself
Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Tim Urban on Overcoming Procrastination and Finding His Voice Through Experimentation
Lindsey Horan on Winning the Women’s World Cup
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