Woodrow Levin Joins Me on Panic with Friends to Discuss Recovering from Failure and Building the ‘AppleCare’ of Online Retailers

I am going back to back with podcasts…today my conversation with my pal Woody Levin who is a great entrepreneur and founder of Extend which is a clever, fast growing product protection product offering.

You can listen to the episode right here on Apple or Spotify. A more detailed overview of the podcast follows below.

Guest: Woodrow (Woody) Levin

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Profile: Founder & CEO of Extend

Where to Find Him: LinkedIn, Twitter

Fun Fact: Before Woody’s entrepreneurial career, he had a successful athletic career, playing NCAA Division I hockey at Wisconsin. He says his time as a competitive athlete taught him “discipline and hard work can transform a burning desire for success into tangible results.”

What’s the Panic About:

This episode I had Woodrow Levin, or Woody as I like to call him. He’s a great entrepreneur, good friend and founder and CEO of Extend. His company, which was founded a little over a year ago, builds and handles extended warranties on their products in an effort to remove roadblocks for smaller merchants. Extend already works with companies like Peloton, iRobot and some 150 others. Not to mention, Woody is a limited partner (investor) in the Social Leverage funds. I’m grateful for his friendship and business relationship. Woody has had the entrepreneurial bug for a while. We were investors in a previous company Woody founded called Estate Assist which was acquired by Docusign where Woody took over as Vice President of Growth. He is also currently a board member at DraftKings (shout out to our previous Panic guest Jason Robins). In this episode, Woody and I discuss what it’s like growing a company really fast, crypto, DraftKings, Extend, dealing with failure, Shopify, markets, AppleCare and more.

We also dive deeply into a tough business period where like most entrepreneurs, Woody took some big losses along with his investors.

I think every investor and entrepreneur will enjoy this podcast!

The Takeaway:

Starting a company is hard. Period. End of sentence. It’s people who have a work ethic like Woody who can make it happen. Even though he has seen some losses, he continues to push forward – a good value to have.

Favorite Quotes:

“It’s one thing to lose your own money, it’s another to lose your friends’ and family’s money.”

“As an entrepreneur, I love supporting other entrepreneurs.”

“I think of bitcoin as a global store of value, not as a currency.”

Food for Thought:

If you’re interested in learning more about Woody’s company, check out their company blog here: https://www.extend.com/blog.

PS – I am now doing two ‘Panic With Friends’ podcasts per week. Thanks for listening and make sure you subscribe over on Spotify or Apple.