Mike & Kass Lazerow - From Zero to $745M | The Simple Truth About Growth

➡️ Join 321,000 people who read my free weekly newsletter: https://newsletter.scottdclary.com   ➡️ Like The Podcast? Leave A Rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/successstory Mike and Kass Lazerow are married serial entrepreneurs and investors best known as the co-founders of Golf.com and Buddy Media, a social media marketing platform that sold to Salesforce in 2012 for $745 million. Their entrepreneurial journey began after they reconnected at a mutual friend's wedding in 1996, and two years later they co-founded Golf.com before marrying in 1999. After selling Golf.com to Time Warner in 2006 for $24 million, they launched Buddy Media. Since then, they have supported nearly 100 early-stage startup founders as angel investors and advisors, with their investments generating more than $10 billion in realized gains, including notable successes like Scopely and Liquid Death. They are authors of "Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story" and have received numerous accolades, including being ranked number one on Business Insider's Silicon Alley 100.    ➡️ Show Links https://www.instagram.com/kassandmike/ https://kassandmike.com/    ➡️ Podcast Sponsors Hubspot - https://hubspot.com/   ShipStation - https://www.shipstation.com/ (Code: SuccessStory) Square - https://square.com/go/success  SurveyMonkey - https://www.surveymonkey.com/scott  Monarch Money - https://www.monarchmoney.com (Code: Success) Claude - https://claude.ai/success  Huel - https://huel.com/scott (Code: scott) Revenued - https://www.revenued.com/  NetSuite - https://netsuite.com/scottclary/  Indeed - https://indeed.com/clary   ➡️ Talking Points 00:00 – Intro 01:28 – Why Building a Company Is Awful and Amazing 04:33 – How Not to Destroy a Relationship in Business 08:16 – Turning Each Other’s Weaknesses Into an Edge 11:45 – Building a Company With Your Partner 13:56 – Pivot or Die: Surviving the Hard Moments 18:26 – When to Quit vs. When to Push Through 23:29 – Sponsor Break 26:13 – Getting Your Team to Truly Buy In 33:03 – The 3 Real Reasons Companies Fail 35:46 – Why They Hired a Coach After Raising $100M 42:15 – Health, Burnout, and Long-Term Success 51:50 – Sponsor Break 53:45 – The Traits They Bet On as Investors 1:05:38 – Is Social Media Breaking Entrepreneurs? 1:10:38 – The “Go Gauge” Decision Framework 1:15:59 – The Founder Delusion That Kills Great Ideas 1:17:26 – What They Respect Most About Each Other 1:18:23 – The One Lesson They’d Teach Their Kids