20VC: When To Transition From Growth to Profitability & The KPI's of The On Demand Economy with Frank Mycroft @ Booster Fuels

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Frank Mycroft is the Founder & CEO @ Booster Fuels, the on-demand fuel delivery service backed by the likes of our friends at Maveron and Version One. As for Frank himself, he is literally a former rocket scientist with Nasa and has more degrees that I have done podcast episodes, making him one of the smartest guests we have ever had on the show. Directly prior to Booster Fuels, Frank was the VP of Strategy @ Planetary Resources, the Redmond based, asteroid mining company.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Frank came to Found Booster Fuels from his days with Nasa?

2.) How important a role does naivety play for founders starting building their company?

3.) With Fuel being such a low margin business, how does Frank balance growth vs profitability with Booster Fuels? What are the tips for doing so in the on-demand economy?

4.) When is the transition point between growth at all costs to focusing on profitability and unit economics?

5.) To what extent is regulation a limiting factor for the growth of Booster fuels?

6.) Question from Dave Wu @ Maveron: What did Frank look for in his Series A investors? Question from Angela @ Version One: What is Frank's wider vision for the future of on demand and Booster Fuels?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Frank’s Fave Book: Oh The Places You'll Go

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Frank on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Founders Friday on the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings, who you can
0:04.8	add on Snapchat at H. Stebbings. Now for today's founder, I'm not using any official bio for the
0:10.8	intro because I'm just not sure it'll do him justice. I think he's one of the smartest guests we've ever
0:15.6	had on the show. So joining me today is Frank Microft. Now Frank is the founder and CEO at Booster Fuels.
0:22.4	You might recognize the name Booster Fuels, as they've been mentioned on previous episodes
0:26.5	with Boris and Angela from version 1 and Rebecca from Avron, all of whom have invested in Booster,
0:32.7	who are essentially an on-demand delivery service for fuel. As for Frank himself, where do I start? I mean, he's
0:38.4	literally an ex-rocket scientist with NASA. He has more degrees than I've done podcast interviews,
0:44.1	and we all know that's substantial, and from universities like Princeton, Stanford, and Harvard
0:49.0	Business School, and directly prior to booster fuels, he was VP of Strategy at Planetary Resources, the Redmond-based
0:56.2	asteroid mining company, such a background, my word, and on the theme of background and design,
1:01.6	if you're stuck for ideas around how to develop your logo, website, design, or business cards,
1:07.4	design crowd can give you access to 500,000 creative minds from around the world,
1:12.6	and rather than paying expensive fees to an agency, you simply launch a project, designers submit
1:18.2	their designs, and you can quickly then build your gallery of favourite designs, and select the
1:22.9	ones that you want to proceed with. And all of this can be done in just three days, with the
1:27.3	files being sent to you. And even better, can be done in just three days with the files being
1:27.9	sent to you. And even better, if you don't like the designs on Design Crowd, they offer a complete
1:32.5	money-back guarantee. So head over to designcrowd.com forward slash VC and enter the promo code
1:38.4	VC-100 for an incredible $100 off. However, without further ado, I'm delighted to hand over to the rocket scientist himself,
1:47.8	Frank Microff, founder and CEO at Booster Fuels.
1:55.1	You have now arrived at your destination.
	...

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