Cash is king. No one knows the truth of that statement better than a startup founder who suddenly finds himself owing his suppliers, his employees and his landlord all within a week of each other. Growth is exciting, but it’s easy to lose sight of your cash flow and end up “growing yourself into a hole.”

In this episode, Mark shares the hard stories from his time at GiftCertificates.com and Hayneedle that taught him valuable lessons of cash management. We discuss the importance of relationships, how to minimize dilution in the critical early stages, and how to connect with the right investors for your company. Tune in for the whole conversation!

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It’s a common saying in the business world, and it’s also one of the most important truths that the most successful startups understand. Too many founders think that culture is as simple as putting a ping pong table in the breakroom or taking the team out for drinks once a quarter, but it’s so much more than that.

In this episode, we discuss the role culture played in the success of companies like Hammocks.com (which would later become Hayneedle), Sports Authority, and Office Depot. Plus, we get into how culture and employee engagement are directly tied to the most important business results. The great news is that investing in culture doesn’t require you to do anything big. Tune in for the whole conversation!

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

More often than not, when we ask founders how they’re implementing AI in their day-to-day, we’re met with blank stares. Artificial intelligence is changing the landscape for businesses everywhere, so why aren’t more founders leveraging it to make their companies more scalable and profitable?

In today’s episode, we’re sharing our favorite ways business leaders can use AI. Whether it’s gaining small insights from mountains of data, figuring out how your business can be faster and better, empowering employees to think at a higher level, or creating agents that help you analyze your business every day, AI is here to stay – and it’s here to help!

If you’re still wondering what all the AI fuss is about – or you’re just looking for a way to up your AI game – you won’t want to miss this one!

Resources mentioned in this episode:
Shopify Magic

Connect with us:
Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners:
Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

Welcome back to “From Grit to Growth,” where we discuss what it takes to be a successful founder. In this episode, we’re talking about health. While many people don’t make the connection between physical health and success at work, we find that the founder’s personal commitment to health can be a pretty good predictor of a startup’s success level. In short, the healthier the founder, the healthier the company.

We share our experience with founders who were healthy and unhealthy, and how we saw those situations play out. We also discuss the role mental health plays in all of this, with stress and anxiety driving unhealthy behavior. Tune in to learn more!

Key Topics

• The connection between physical health and business health: The two are linked closer than you may expect
• Health is the foundation of the Founders’ Pyramid: It’s not “hustle” or “ability to sell”
• Our key starting place for getting healthy: Why addressing sleep and stress is essential

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

In this episode of “From Grit to Growth,” we’re back with our thoughts on cash.

Mark shares a story about a founder who wanted $1 million for desks and “probably a CTO” and a few other things. Mark’s response: “If I gave you that $1 million today, how would your business look different in a year?” What followed was an eye-opening discussion that left the founder with a totally different understanding of the role of cash.

Very few founders and CEOs have a proper understanding of the financials of their business. They know they have money in the company checking account, so things must be okay. Or they know they’re selling products, so they assume the cash flow is positive.

As business leaders and investors, Mark and Jennifer share why the balance sheet is king, the two numbers every CEO knows (and why those numbers could be lying to you), and which numbers you need to know to truly understand the health of your business.

Key Topics

• The two numbers every CEO knows: Why revenue and ROAS don’t tell the whole story
• The most important financial statements: Balance sheet is king, followed by an income sheet
• Why your cash flow could be eroding beneath a positive veneer: And how to know the real story

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website

Welcome to the inaugural episode of “From Grit to Growth!” In this episode, you'll hear from Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta. With a combined 50+ years of executive experience in retail, technology, and financial services, Mark and Jennifer have played pivotal roles in the success of several Fortune 500 companies. In this first podcast episode, they talk about the four key factors of successful founders, how to find the why behind what you do, and much more.

Amidst the pressures of rapid growth, talent acquisition challenges, cash flow concerns, and daily operational demands, founders can find themselves feeling stuck and isolated after years of dedicated work. If that’s you, check out this episode for some inspirational wisdom!

Key Topics

• Getting back to your original "why": Reconnecting with the passion that started it all.
• The four must-focus-on areas for every founder: We're talking cash, talent, strategy, and execution.
• Why loneliness hits founders so hard: It's one of the toughest challenges out there.

Connect with us:

• Jennifer DiMotta on LinkedIn
• Mark Hasebroock on LinkedIn

About Dundee Growth Partners

Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started.

• Visit the Dundee Growth Partners website