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Though venture funding has taken on a certain vanity factor in the media and tech worlds, it’s sometimes smarter to not take the money, or to take as little as possible. Operating lean can train founders for optimal practices and efficiencies that will serve them well in the long run, says Stadium Goods co-founder and CEO John McPheters, our latest guest on Heard on the Street.

“Less is better in my mind. Running cheap, lean—keep it tight. I don’t see the value in taking a huge check just because it’s there,” McPheters told us. “We started with so little that we scrapped together a bunch of stuff and marketed to grow it out. If we had had a lot of money to build things in the beginning, we may not have built it right.”

Check out the full episode above, which also includes lessons in operating e-commerce, the interplay of online and offline product sales, what’s driving the resurgence of sneaker culture globally, and several other nuggets.

This episode is also sponsored by Brandify Summit. Contact us if you’d like to sponsor an episode, find out more about Heard on the Street here, and stay tuned for episodes every two weeks.

Mike Boland is Street Fight’s lead analyst, author of the Road Map column, and producer of the Heard on the Street podcast. He covers AR & VR as chief analyst of ARtillry Intelligence and SF President of the VR/AR Association. He has been an analyst in the local space since 2005, covering mobile, social, and emerging tech.

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Mike Boland has been a tech & media analyst for the past two decades, specifically covering mobile, local, and emerging technologies. He has written for Street Fight since 2011. More can be seen at Localogy.com