The 60 Second Podcast
Big insights. One question. 60 seconds.
Hosted by TEDx speaker and 3X founder Matt McCoy, this podcast delivers fast, punchy interviews with the world’s top leaders — from billion-dollar CEOs to bold startup founders.
Each episode asks one powerful question to uncover the mindset, tactics, or story behind game-changing success — all in under a minute.
Perfect for ambitious listeners who want real answers, really fast.
The 60 Second Podcast
Michael J. Frank - Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Gildre
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What separates successful founders from those who struggle alone?
In this episode of The 60 Second Podcast, Matt McCoy sits down with Michael J. Frank, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Gildre, a global community of founders, operators, investors, and executives spanning more than 20 countries.
Michael explains why community has become one of the biggest competitive advantages in entrepreneurship. From mentorship and feedback to accountability and mental support, he shares why building a company is too difficult to do in isolation and how surrounding yourself with the right people can help you avoid costly mistakes and accelerate growth.
If you're building a business, considering a startup, or looking to level up your network, this conversation is a reminder that your greatest advantage may not be what you know, but who you're learning from.
Through Gilder, you've built a community of founders, operators, and investors across over 20 countries. Why do you believe community has become such a competitive advantage for modern entrepreneurs? Building anything is really hard. Building a startup is significantly hard. And if you don't have community around you to help you, it's that much harder. Community offers everything from feedback, potential partners, idea generation, things that you never would realize are out there that you need to take into consideration of what you're building. By being part of a community, you have an endless or guilder, you have an endless stream of education. We do weekly events, we have all sorts of pods and all sorts of offerings. So mentors, office hours. So you're not alone. And while you're spending your 50, 60, 70 hour weeks, or maybe you got a full-time job and you're building on nights and weekends, it helps to have these people and to be able to talk to these people. Like everyone should have a mentor, everyone should have people that they can go get real feedback from, not just friends that are just going to blow smoke up there and tell them how great they are, because in reality, there's lots of things that people have done, like me and other people on the platform, that can explain to you like that's just not gonna work. Like mathematically it looks right, or maybe it looks right to you, or maybe the AI is telling you it's right, but that's just a trap. It's that's not there. So having a community people to talk to, people to get help from, people to answer questions, people to support you mentally, you know, it's very, very tough building this and grinding and continuing to grind. And community is where it's at. And they're they're popping up all over the place. We've been doing this for three years, and we have lots of things going on, and I think anyone, you know, it's uh actually nominal. Like we almost consider ourselves an accelerator without equity. It's a very low monthly price. It's kind of dirt cheap. And uh, if you say you can't afford that, maybe you should give up your ten dollar Starbucks every day and and make yourself a gallon of iced tea for forty two cents and and do that, 'cause that's what I do.
