Startup Grind (www.startupgrind.com)

Eric originally hails from Lawrenceville, Georgia. While he’s moved around the country a bit, Atlanta has always pulled him back. He currently lives with his wife, Shirley, and their dog, Maize, in Atlanta, Georgia. 

The Co-founder and COO at Flatfile, whose mission is to remove barriers between humans and their data. Hundreds of enterprises use Flatfile products to aggregate, import, and normalize data from disparate and variant sources. Previously, Eric was the first product lead at Envoy, whose workplace products help thousands of companies create delightful and welcoming office experiences. Other prior work experiences include RentPath, FullStory, RelateIQ, ProsumerGrid, Crimson Hexagon, and Epic. Eric attended college at Emory University and received his MBA from Georgia Tech in 2015.

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(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Alex Gorden).

Archana Vemulapalli, the Chief technology officer for the Mayor’s office for the district of columbia. The office manages over 10,000 employees overseeing 21 Departments, 33 independent agencies, roughly 69 legislatively mandated offices and 5 regional bodies. 

These include all city services, public property, police and fire protection, District of Columbia Public Schools, The University of the District of Columbia and the UDC-Community College. The mayor's office oversees an annual city budget of roughly $8.8 billion.

Prior to serving as DC's CTO, Archana served as the CTO for Pristine Environments with over 1,000 employees and as the CEO of Intelleva.

Ms. Vemulapalli was selected to participate in Leadership Greater Washington's Class of 2015 and the Women in Technology’s Leadership Foundry Class of 2014. Ms. Vemulapalli serves on the Trustees Council of Penn Women at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a NACD Board Governance Fellow.  

Archana has a MBA from Georgetown University, a masters from UPenn, and an engineering degree from the University of Madras IIT. 

Lets listen into Archana interviewed in Washington DC by Director Brian Park. 

Amish started his first company in 1998 when he was just 25. He has a proven track record in leadership, sales, marketing, strategy and recruiting. Venture Capital firms, C-level executives, and Founders of early and mid-stage startups from around the globe call on him directly for his consultation and advisement before making major decisions that will have an impact on their bottom line. Amish’s passion is contagious to the people around him, and his results oriented approach of getting things done paired with his success over the years have given him a keen eye for his firm SierraMaya360 when evaluating potential investments. He is also a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox News.

Lets listen into Amish Shah interviewed by Startup Grind Director Jeremy Berman in Charleston. 

Author Daniel Pink. Daniel Pink is the author of 5 disruptive books including 3 long-running New York Times best sellers including A Whole New Mind, Drive, and To Sell is Human. 

Dan’s books have been translated into 34 languages and have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Dan’s TED talk on the science of motivation is one of the 10 most-watched TED talks of all time, with more than 19 million views. He received a BA from Northwestern University and a JD from Yale Law School. Dan lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and three children. 

He drops some serious keys to success in this conversation including how to pitch, how to hire salespeople, and how to think about the problems you’re solving. The conversation started trending on twitter in Washington DC. 

Lets listen into Daniel Pink in Washington DC interviewed by Director Brian Park 

Barry Nalebuff is the Milton Steinbach Professor of Economics and Management at the Yale School of Management. A graduate of MIT, a Rhodes Scholar and Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University. In addition to founding Honest Tea, Professor Nalebuff also serves on the board of Nationwide Insurance. An expert on game theory, Barry has written extensively on its application to business strategy. His most recent book, Mission in a Bottle, is written with Honest Tea Co-Founder Seth Goldman. In graphic format, the book tells the story of Honest Tea and provides strategic advice for entrepreneurs. lets listen into Barry Nalebuff interviewed by our startup grind new haven chapter director Adam Muniz. 

Justin Kan is an internet entrepreneur. He is best known for founding Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar; Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform; Socialcam, a mobile video sharing app (acquired for $60mm by Autodesk in 2012); Twitch, a video game streaming platform (acquired by Amazon for $970mm); and Exec, an on demand maid service (acquired by Handybook in 2014). He is currently a partner at the seed fund Y Combinator. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Physics and Philosophy.

Misha de Sterke is partner at Innoleaps, managing the corporate innovation activities for Fortune 500 companies globally. Keynote speaker, nominated entrepreneur and lecturer at Universities.

He is a corporate innovation and startup expert and has extensive experience. In the corporate world as an interim manager and staff advisor on digital transformation, and as an entrepreneur building different tech-driven startups.
He advises C-level executives on how to build the 10X Growth Machine and he coaches startups on turning ideas into profitable businesses.

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Today we have a great conversation with the co-founder and CEO of Distil networks Rami Essaid. Rami was born in syria to a family known for their engineering talent. He later moved the united states and started working in sales and business. After realizing what a challenge spam and malware bots were posing to corporations rami decided to create a product that would protect against attacks. Rami then took the plunge and founded his company Distil in 2001. After a lot of testing with the beta product Distil networks has now become to go to solution for protecting against bot nets and brute force login attacks. Distil Networks secured $38 million in total funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Foundry Group and TechStars' Bullet Time Ventures, ff Venture Capital, IDEA Fund Partners, and Militello Capital. Rami attended North Carolina State University where he majored in computer engineering.Lets listen into Rami interviewed by Startup Grind’s DC chapter director Brian Park. 

Today we have a conversation with Peng T. Ong, one of the most successful entrepreneurs to come out of Singapore. Peng is the founder and CEO of Interwoven, which went public on the NASDAQ. Prior to Interwoven, Peng was co-founder of Match.com which was acquired by IAC. After Interwoven, Peng founded Encentuate, the leader in the enterprise identity management. The three businesses he started now generate annual revenues that total more than $1 billion. 

Peng earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Peng is also a passionate music lover and digital hifi fanatic. 

Lets listen into Peng Ong interviewed by our Singapore Chapter director earlier this year. 

Toptal is an amazing company. They've got over 2,500 developers and designers in their network.  They've screened them extensively so that you get to work with only the top 3%. So basically you just let Toptal know what you're looking for, they understand your business and technical requirements and they search for the right person for the job. 

You don't have to do all the screening and interviews that you normally would and they make it really easy for you. You can even do part time hires that are a few hours a week or full time hires too. 

You can get an amazing no risk free trial for up to 2 weeksl Get started with Toptal by emailing Laura@startupgrind.com.  the best part is that you can work with the developer or designer, and if you're not satisfied by the end of the trial, you don't pay anything.  Toptal pays the talent.  So to get started with this trial, email L a u r a @startupgrind.com

Today we have one of my favorite startup grind fireside chats. We recently had the honor of hosting Brad Feld of tech stars and the foundry group at our chapter in denver colorado. 

Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding the foundry group he co-founded mobius venture capital. Brad has been active with several nonprofit organizations and is currently chair of the national centre for women at information technology, and is on the board of up global. 

He’s also completed 23 marathons as part of his mission to finish a marathon in each of the 50 states.

Lets listen into this great interview with the amazing brad feld 

Today we have the Managing Director of the female centric crowdfunding site, Plum Alley. Plum Alley is a site specifically made for women consumers and women looking to crowdfund from other women. It further differentiates itself by offering expert help to crowdfunders which has created a funding success rate of near double kickstarter and quadruple that seen on indiegogo. Jan has also held high level positions at non-profits including the Girl Scouts, Teach For America, the Sierra Club and as the CFO of Planned Parenthood International. She then went on to found the 6 figures women network and her own client relations and brand management consultancy called Swig. 

Jan is interviewed by our Tampa Bay Chapter director Joy Randels. Let’s Listen in. 

Today we have the 2nd part of our podcast with the Co-founder of VaynerMedia and venture capitalist Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary's  first step as an entrepreneur was when he helped grow his family liquor store into a multimillion dollar enterprise and then launching winelibrary.com, one of America’s first wine e-commerce sites. After wine library, Gary founded VaynerMedia with his brother which today is one of the biggest digital shops focused on social media.Recently Gary launched VaynerRSE, a $25 million seed fund that will invest in and launch the next generation of world-changing technology companies. 

In part two of the interview, Gary discusses the importance of staying in your lane and the danger of pretending to have expertise in area's you don't know enough about.  

Gary is interviewed in LA by Startup Grind LA chapter director Joe Famalette.

Welcome to the Startup Grind podcast! We're back after a short break. This time from Hong Kong with the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk. We're talking about all things entrepreneurship, social media, China and self-awareness.  If you don't know Gary, here is a short intro:

Gary Vaynerchuk is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of VaynerMedia, a full-service digital agency servicing Fortune 500 clients across the company’s 4 locations.

Gary appears with Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba and Will.i.am on Apple’s first original series “Planet of the Apps” out now! (Click Here to Learn More!)

Gary rose to prominence in the late 90’s after establishing one of the first ecommerce wine sites, WineLibrary helping his father grow the family business from 4 to 60MM in sales.

Gary is also one of the most sought after public speakers alive today. He is a venture capitalist, 4-time New York Times bestselling author, and an early investor in companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo and Uber. Gary has been named to bothCrain’s and Fortune’s 40 Under 40 lists.

Gary is currently the subject of DailyVee, an online documentary series highlighting what it’s like to be a CEO and public figure in today’s digital world. He is also the host of #AskGaryVee, a business and advice Q&A show online.

Gary recently launched his podcast, The Gary Vaynerchuk Audio Experience. Enjoy the episode and let us know what you think! You can also reach out to us on Instagram (DM) @startup or Twitter @StartupGrind. If you're a founder looking to meet other amazing entrepreneurs, check out our Global Conference and globally community! #keepgrinding

Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, where he's spent the past five years as an active seed and previously worked at eBay. He is also a venture-stage investor. Previously, Chris was the co-founder and former CEO of two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch. Chris has been a website prolific seed investor, cofounding Founder Collective, a seed venture fund, and making a number of personal angel investments in various technology companies. Sonal Chokshi is Editor in Chief at Andreessen Horowitz, aka "a16z", which she joined in early 2014. Among other things, this includes building and showrunning the popular a16z Podcast, which she grew in listenership more than 10X; assigning and editing pieces such as "When One App Rules Them All" on the case study of WeChat and China, which was selected in the New York Times' Sidney Awards 2015 as one of the best long-form essays; leading production of the a16z Crypto Canon; and many more.

Leena Nair is the first female, first Asian and youngest ever CHRO of Unilever and member of the Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE).

Under her leadership Unilever has achieved a 50/50 gender balance across global leadership, led the design and implementation of progressive new working practices and models. She has continued to lead a pioneering agenda, playing an instrumental role in launching Unilever’s new social commitments, including a commitment to pay living wage across its whole supply chain.

Leena bears overall responsibility for the 150,000-strong human capital of Unilever, which operates across multiple regulatory and labour environments spread over 190 countries. Her expertise has driven continued growth for Unilever leading to the 50 billion euro business it is today. 

Leena began her Unilever career in Hindustan Unilever, where she became the first woman in the Management Committee in 90 years, heading HR. She was also appointed the first woman on the Unilever South Asia Leadership team and was responsible for Unilever’s growth in five markets with a business size of around 6 billion Euros.

She has continued to redefine how big business can contribute to the environment and society and has a reputation for putting the people at the heart of the business, driving growth and taking risks to create better business and a better society.

Recognised by HRH Queen Elizabeth II as one of the accomplished Indian Business Leaders in the UK, Leena is a trustee for the Leverhulme Trust. Her purpose is to “ignite the human spark for a better business and better world”.

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Bill Bryant is a partner at DFJ (formerly Draper Fisher Jurvetson), focused on early- and growth-stage investments in enterprise, consumer and disruptive technologies. Bill has had early and instrumental involvement in more than 25 leading software, mobile, and digital media companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor, and board member. 

He has had founding roles with Visio (now part of Microsoft), Netbot (acquired by Excite), Qpass (acquired by Amdocs), Medio (Nokia), Mixxer, and Airworks. 

Bill represents DFJ on the boards of Bright Computing, Chef, Ping Identity, Z2Live, Remitly, and The Clymb.  In addition to his DFJ investments, he is an active angel investor with investments in Winshuttle, LiquidPlanner, Bonanza, and Socrata.

Lets listen into Bill Bryant interview at our Seattle Chapter by director Mike Grabham. 

Joanne Wilson a prominent angel investor in New York City. Joanne has had several careers on her way as an investor. She started as a buyer at Macy’s, went on to run a company in the rag trade, and eventually ended up spearheading sales for a start-up magazine/events company called Silicon Alley Reporter. She has sat on a number of profit and non-profit boards and has been involved with a variety of big real estate transactions from beginning to end. Joanne has been blogging since 1994 under the name Gotham Gal and has been involved with the start-up community as an angel investor and adviser ever since.

Many of the companies she works with are owned or started by women. Companies like Food52, Dailyworth, The Sweeten, Windowfarms, Scoot, Blue Bottle Coffee, Lover.ly, littleBits, Nest.io, Le Tote, Curbed (Eater/Racked) as well as Ricks Picks, several restaurants and The Moon Group. She is the Chairperson of Hot Bread Kitchen and sits on the board of the Highline.

Lets listen into Joanne Wilson interviewed in NYC by director Peter Crysdale

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have a great interview with Tina Seelig, acclaimed stanford professor and bestselling author brought to us in Partnership with the Futurecast series a collaboration between the ATT Foundry & Ericsson. Tina Seelig is the Professor of Practice in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She is also a faculty director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, the entrepreneurship center at Stanford University's School of Engineering. 

She teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Tina also teaches and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Tina earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University School of Medicine where she studied neuroplasticity. 

She has worked as a management consultant for Booz, Allen, Hamilton, as a multimedia producer at Company Computer Corporation, and was the founder of a multimedia company called BookBrowser. She has also written 17 books and educational games.

Lets listen into Tina Seelig interviewed in Palo Alto at the ATT Foundry by Andrew Keen with some additional audience participation.

Today we have a chat with SoftLayer’s chief startup evangelist Joshua Krammes. As Softlayers startup evangelist Joshua creates awareness for soft layers efforts towards fostering innovation and investment in the global startup ecosystem. Specifically he serves as an advisor, mentor, friend and liaison for early stage startups. 

 He has partnered and mentored with several globally recognized startup organizations such as: Y Combinator, Founder’s Network, TechStars, 500 Startups, the Global Accelerator Network, and many more. 

Joshua is interviewed in Detroit by our Startup grind chapter direct Anamarie Sabagh 

Scott Belsky is an executive, entrepreneur, author, and investor (and all-around product obsessive). He currently serves as Adobe's Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. Scott's passion is to make the creative world more productive, connected, and adaptive to new technologies. Scott co-founded Behance in 2006, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Millions of people use Behance to display their portfolios, as well as track and find top talent across the creative industries. After Behance's acquisition, Scott helped reboot Adobe's mobile product strategy and led Behance until 2016, when he spent a few years as an investor and advisor to multiple businesses.

Alongside his role at Adobe, Scott actively advises and invests in businesses that cross the intersection of technology and design - and help empower people. He works closely with a number of venture capital firms including Benchmark and Homebrew, and is an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, sweetgreen, Carta, Cheddar, Flexport, Airtable, and Periscope (now part of Twitter) as well as several others in the early stages.

Over the years, Scott has pursued other projects to help organize and empower the careers of creative people. These include 99U, Behance's think tank and annual conference devoted to execution in the creative world; and a popular line of organizational paper products that help organize creative people and teams.

Scott is also the author of the international bestselling books  Making Ideas Happen (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, Apr, 2010), and The Messy Middle (Portfolio Imprint, Penguin Books, Oct, 2018).

Scott is an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower creative people and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. In 2010, Scott was also included in Fast Company's list of "100 Most Creative People in Business."

Prior to founding Behance in 2006, Scott helped grow the Pine Street Leadership Development Initiative at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Scott was especially focused on organizational improvement and strengthening relationships with clients. Scott serves on the Advisory Board of Cornell University's Entrepreneurship Program and the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. Scott and his family live in New York City and San Francisco.

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by Startup Grind's founder Derek Andersen).

Manish Chandra the founder and ceo of the poplar fashion community app Poshmark. Poshmark is the largest community marketplace for fashion where millions of women come to buy, sell and share their personal style. 

Manish has always been passionate about building communities and founded the first social shopping company, Kaboodle, which was acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 2007. With Poshmark, Manish has applied his understanding of technology to change the way women think about shopping, building a passionate community based around people’s love for fashion and each other. Manish received a Bachlors in Technology from  IIT Kanpur, and a Masters of Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and an the MBA from Haas School of Business. 

Steve is one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs and a pioneer in making the Internet part of everyday life. He currently serves as Chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a Washington, D.C.- based investment firm he co-founded in 2005, where he partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build significant “built to last” new businesses. The mission is to establish Revolution as the premier firm outside of Silicon Valley.

Steve’s entrepreneurial career began in 1985 when he co-founded America Online (AOL). Under Steve’s leadership, AOL became the world’s largest and most valuable Internet company, driving the worldwide adoption of a medium that has transformed business and society. AOL was the first Internet company to go public and among the best performing stocks of the 1990s, delivering an 11,616% return to shareholders. 

At its peak, nearly half of Internet users in the United States used AOL. 

Steve’s passion for helping entrepreneurs remains his driving force. He was the founding chair of the Startup America Partnership—an effort launched at the White House to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation.

 Steve is a leading voice in shaping government policy on issues related to entrepreneurship and working across the aisle to advance public policies that expand access to capital and talent.

Today we have a conversation with Jessica Herrin the co-founder of WeddingChannel.com and subsequently the stella & dot family of brands which does over $300M in annual revenue and empowers over 50,000 independent business owners. 

Jessica has been recognized for her entrepreneurial accomplishments and her passion on Oprah, in Fortune Magazine, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Glamour Magazine and more. In May , Jessica released her first book: “Find Your Extraordinary: How to Dream Bigger, Live Happier, and Achieve Success on Your Own Terms By Embracing the Entrepreneur In You”. She thrives on the mission of revolutionizing flexible opportunities for women with home parties that are hip. Jessica Graduated from Stanford University. 

lets listen into Jessica herrin interviewed by her wedding channel.com co-founder and freestyle capital partner jenny lefcourt. 

Jennifer Tejada, who is rare in the world of enterprise startups because of her gender, but whose marketing background makes her even more of an anomaly — and an asset.

 She is a veteran software industry executive and business leader with over 25 years of experience, spanning mass consumer products to disruptive cloud and software solutions. She has a successful track record in product innovation, optimizing operations and scaling public and private enterprise technology companies. She led PagerDuty through a strong IPO in April 2019.

In a world that’s going digital fast, Tejada knows PagerDuty can appeal to a far wider array of customers by selling them a product they can understand.

PagerDuty is  helping its clients become proactive. The idea, she says, is that “if you see traffic spiking on a website, you can orchestrate a team of content marketers or growth hackers and get them in that traffic stream right then, instead of reading about it in a demand-gen report a week later, where you’re, like, ‘Great, we totally missed that opportunity.’”

PagerDuty provides real-time operations platform, ensures less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams.

Today we have the CEO and co-founder of OfferUp Nick Huzar. OfferUp is a platform that aims to create the simplest and safest marketplace to buy and sell locally. OfferUp has grown rapidly to become the largest peer to peer mobile marketplace in the country. Previously, Nick was co-founder and CTO of Konnects, Inc, an early social networking startup where he raised $6M in capital and scaled to over 1M users within 18months. Earlier in his Career Nick held positions at T-Mobile and Microsoft.As a new father with a pile of unwanted things, Nick Huzar realized that there was no easy way to buy and sell locally. With that motivation, OfferUp was born with one mission in mind: to make buying and selling locally as easy as taking a photo. In this interview Nick discusses the importance of company culture and how being a good leader involves hiring the right people and getting out of their way.Nick is interviewed in Seattle by Startup Grind's Seattle chapter director Mike Grabham

Today we have a chat with one of the co-founders of the innovative sister led dating app Coffee Meets Bagel. 

Dawoon Kang and her two sisters Arum and Soo, founded Coffee Meets Bagel as an answer to many of the prevailing male centric, image overloaded apps that weren’t addressing the unique ways in which women prefer to date. Dawoon and her sisters became famous last year for rejecting the largest offer ever made on the popular TV show Shark Tank after they turned down Mark Cuban's $30M offer for their company. 

They then went on to raise $7.8M in Series A financing, and with that funding began their international expansion outside the US with Hong Kong as their first overseas market. Prior to CMB, Dawoon lived & worked in Korea, Japan, New York, India & Hong Kong, in a variety of roles that spanned from strategy & business development, marketing, research to investing/finance. 

Lets listen into Dawoon interviewed by our Hong Kong chapter director Joshua Steimle. 

Jon Steinberg who at the time was the President and COO of Buzzfeed. Following Buzzfeed he became CEO of the US version of the Daily Mail Online and a Board Member of Bustle. He is an Ex-Googler previously as a Strategic Partner Development Manager on Google’s SMB Partnerships team. Prior to Google, Jon was the Director of Business Development at Majestic Research and the founder of iBuilding, a commercial real estate software company backed by Tishman Speyer Properties, Benchmark Capital, and 12 Entrepreneuring. He is a graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

Lets listen into Jon Steinberg interviewed at our Startup Grind NYC Chapter in 2013.

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Soylent: Easy, sustained energy that goes where you go. Learn more at Soylent.com

Morgan DeBaun, Founder & CEO of Blavity. Fresh out of college, she headed to Silicon Valley to learn from the best and brightest about Product Management and Design. The St. Louis native became a growth hacker and small business advisor to aspiring entrepreneurs. In 2014, she launched Blavity - the largest media startup and lifestyle brand for black millennials. Under her leadership, Blavity has successfully acquired 2 companies, raised over 9 million in venture funding, and reaches millions of people a day online. Today, Morgan manages a team of over 65 employees and 100 contractors with offices in LA, ATL, SF and NYC.

Morgan is one of the first 15 American women to raise one million in venture funding. Her list of accolades includes: The Root Top 100 Most Influential Black Americans, Ebony 100, Black Enterprise Founder of the Year, Forbes 30 under 30, Silicon Valley Top Women in Tech, and has been profiled in Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, WSJ, Forbes, and many more.

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by Marlon Nichols, Managing Partner at Cross Culture VC.).
 

Elio Leoni Sceti is founder of The Craftory, a new $375M global investment fund exclusively focused on purpose driven FMCG brands.

The Craftory is a first mover at a time when the investment world is now recognising the need to look beyond profits alone. It is the first investor to focus solely on consumer brands that positively impact society and the planet. These include an $18m investment in food technology brand NotCo, who are using AI to transform the plant-based replacements for dairy products, and a further $18m in TomboyX, who are creating an innovative non-binary range of underwear.  

Elio’s ambition for The Craftory is to demonstrate once and for all that you can do good by doing well as an investor. 

He brings a wealth of retail experience to The Craftory, having spent 20 years heading up some of the world’s biggest FMCG brands. He is the former CEO of frozen-food giant Iglo, where he radically transformed the group’s fortunes while helping turn the business into a force for good – turning Captain Birdseye into an environmental campaigner in the process.

Prior to this, he was CEO of record label EMI and Executive VP at RB, the leading consumer health and hygiene company including brands such as Air Wick, Calgon, Dettol, Nurofen, Finish and Vanish. Elio is a board member of AB InBev – the world’s largest brewer – and Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest cocoa manufacturers. 

Interviewed by Chris Joannou @StartupGrind @DreamPushers

Today we have a great conversation with Silicon Valley Legend Vinod Khosla, co-founder of sun Microsystems and subsequently Khosla Ventures. 

Vinod has run Khosla ventures since 2004, prior to that Vinod spent time at the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Vinod studied engineering in India and at age 20 failed to start a soy milk company. After receiving degrees from in Electrical Engineering from IIT New Delhi, Biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business Vinod started Sun Microsystems in 1982 which eventually sold to Oracle for over $7 Billion. 

Lets listen into Vinod Khosla interviewed in Silicon Valley by Startup Grind’s founder Derek Andersen. 

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have an awesome chat with the legendary Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and Chief evangelist of Apple. He is the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media,Enchantment, and ten other books. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. 

Guy is interviewed by startup grind’s founder Derek Andersen for a globally held google hangout. streamed live from google hq in mountain view california. Lets listen in. 

Today we have a conversation with entrepreneur & investor and co founder of software development company Gigster Roger Dickey. 

Prior to founding Gigster, Roger led game studios at Zynga after joining when the company had just 30 employees after selling his first company Curiosoft to zynga. Roger oversaw MafiaWar’s explosive growth to over 100million users and 1billion dollars in revenue. 

Roger also as an international product team advisor for Zynga helping the company grow their games in India, Japan and China. 

Alongside his work at Zynga, Roger began advising & investing in bay-area startups in 2010. His investments include Docker, Addepar, iCracked, OpenGov, ClassDojo, and Wanelo. Advisory roles include Formation 8, Nest, OpenDoor, and The Thiel Fellowship.

Lets listen into Roger Dickey interviewed at our san Francisco chapter by startup grind editor in chief Michael Gasiorek. 

After studying journalism Ruud Hendriks (1959) started his career as a DJ on board legendary pirate station Radio Caroline. At the age of 20 he got his first opportunity as a TV-reporter and with public broadcaster Veronica. During a 9-year period Ruud anchored many Dutch TV programs mainly on news, current-affairs and sports.

He initiated the first non-stop Newsradio format in the Netherlands and several innovative TV formats.

In the late eighties Ruud became a co-founder of Sky Radio and Radio 10. In 1989 he wrote the business plans for TV stations RTL4 and RTL5 and became their first program director. Under his tenure RTL became the market leading TV broadcaster in the Netherlands.

In 1992 Ruud became President of NBC Europe in London and transformed Superchannel into NBC Superchannel and finally into CNBC Europe.

Back in the Netherlands where he became an executive member of TV-production company Endemol Entertainment. When Ruud joined in 1994 the company operated in 3 countries, when he left in 2001 Endemol had subsidiaries in 21 countries. Market value grew from 135 million Euros’ to 5.3 Billion.

During his stint at Endemol he was responsible for all its online activities, international expansion and distribution. Amongst others he developed the online business model for “Big Brother” making Endemol the most profitable online company of the Netherlands in the late nineties. He played a key role in Endemol’s I.P.O, the start of failed sports channel Sport 7, and the 2000 take over of the company by Telefonica from Spain.

After Endemol Ruud accepted several supervisory board positions at Eyeworks TV, Dutch bank Theodoor Gilissen and a member of the advisory boards of BSUR (ad agency), MAS Services, AIMgen (neuromarketing) and Mobitto (mobile sales).

Ruud is a regular speaker about innovation and media at seminars and host of two weekly current-affairs programs at BNR Newsradio.

Ruud is a co-founder of Startupbootcamp Amsterdam and Startupbootcamp Global.

Amy is Co-founder, former President, and a current board member of Medallia, a public enterprise SaaS company that pioneered Experience Management and is the leader in helping organizations capture and act on customer feedback.  At Medallia, Amy built and ran many key functions from Marketing and Sales to HR and Talent Acquisition. Since its founding, Medallia has grown to 1,500 employees and over $400M in annual revenue, and trades on the Nasdaq exchange (MDLA).

Prior to founding Medallia, Amy served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, an Aide on Capitol Hill, a consultant for BCG, and an Associate at Goldman Sachs. 

She holds an undergraduate degree in History from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford.

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by John Rampton, CEO of Calendar.com  ).

Today we have a conversation between Kevin Gibbon the co-founder of shyp and seed investor Hunter Walk. Kevin co-founded shyp in attempt to revolutionize the shipping industry by making shipping any item as easy as snapping a picture of it. They raised over 60 million dollars from firms like sherpa ventures, home-brew vc and, and Kleiner Perkins. With markets in a few cities in the us they are quickly expanding to help make shipping goods as easy as possible. Hunter walk is the co-founder of and partner at Homebrew VC. He lead product at YouTube for several years and interviews keyin at our chapter in San Francisco. Lets listen in. 

A quick break from Kevin Gibbon of Shyp for some recent startup headlines. 

Patrick Lee was born in the states—born in LA—grew up in Maryland,  went to school out in UC Berkeley.

It took him nearly 10 years to graduate from college because he was too busy building companies on the side and the traumatizing years of his company.

Patrick is the co-founder of Hobo Labs, a mobile gaming company. But he’s best known for being one of the founders of Rotten Tomatoes. He’s a very seasoned, serial entrepreneur. He’s been through multiple market bubbles, crashes, and company exits.

The co-founder and the former CEO of Rotten Tomatoes (rottentomatoes.com), a leading entertainment website focused on movie reviews and news and one of the top 700 most trafficked sites in the world. As a serial entrepreneur, he founded six startups across three countries (US, China, Hong Kong), with four in the intersection of technology & entertainment. For the last decade, Patrick has been mentoring tech founders and been involved in various arts & humanitarian projects. 

Holly Liu studied at the UC Berkely and at the University of California, LOS Angeles.

Liu is the co-founded mobile gaming company KABAM in 2006; maker of the games: Kingdoms of Camelot The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth and Marvel Contest of Champions.

In January 2017, the majority of KABAM’s assets were acquired by Netmarble, South Korea’s largest mobile gaming company. Following her exit from Kabam, Liu took on a role as a visiting partner at Y Combinator, an accelerator providing seeded funding to nearly 2,000 startups with a combined value of over $80 billion.

She has been named one of Fortune’s “10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming”, Forbes’ “12 Women in Gaming to Watch.” and Forbes - "10 Women Entrepreneurs to Watch from Google Ventures' Portfolio Companies".

She was also named by Inc as a Top 10 female founder unicorn.

In 2018, she received the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Technology Entrepreneurship Award and she was featured among "America's Top 50 Women In Tech" by Forbes.

Bart Decrem  is a Belgian-born, Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur. He was SVP of mobile games at Disney until January, and cofounded mobile-game developer Tapulous. He was the head of marketing at the Mozilla Foundation until the launch of Firefox in 2004.

In 2003-2004, Decrem headed marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation. He coordinated Firefox marketing activities, including branding, the Firefox 1.0 launch and the creation of Spread Firefox, the community marketing effort for Firefox. He also headed up partnerships with Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Mozilla.

From July 2010 until June 2013 he was SVP and General Manager for Disney Mobile Games, the group behind the smartphone hits Where’s My Water, Temple Run: Oz and Where’s My Mickey.

Decrem was recognized as one of the fifty most creative people in business in 2009 by Fast Company and one of the 10 most creative people in the Music Biz by Fast Company. He has also been featured in Advertising Age's "2010 Creativity 50" by Creativity.

Thai Son has spent the last 15 years building a world-class eCommerce service provider, through SmartOSC, the business he co-founded with his childhood friend. Under his leadership, the business scaled from zero to more than 600 people, achieving a constant 50%+ YoY growth. Today, as the global CEO, he's responsible for driving expansion, innovation and setting the vision for the business. The company's portfolio includes 500+ clients globally including Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, ASUS, Sony, PayPal, Ricoh, etc., with a presence across 9 offices in 6 countries, and is recognized as one of APAC’s most prestigious eCommerce agencies. The company also built its own startup incubator and actively invests in solutions within fintech, digital, automation, and data. Thai Son currently lives in Hanoi with his wife and 2 lovely kids.

Adam Nash, CEO of Wealth Front. As president and CEO of Wealthfront, Adam has built the company around a centralized mission to always put the client first and change the bad practices that plague the financial services industry. Adam joined Wealthfront from Greylock Partners, where he was an Executive-in-Residence. Prior to Greylock, he was VP of Product Management at LinkedIn, where he built the teams responsible for core product, user experience, platform and mobile. Adam held a number of leadership roles at eBay that included Director of eBay Express, as well as strategic and technical roles at Atlas Venture Preview Systems and Apple. Adam holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Sarah Wood the founder of the video ad tech startup Unruly. Sarah co-founded Unruly in 2010 and it was named the UK’s second fastest growing tech companies in 2012. Unruly’s core mission is to deliver the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. They are currently the leading programmatic platform for social video advertising, powered by their proprietary supply side mobile distribution technology which make campaigns scalable in native formats. Prior to being named one of inc magazines top 15 women to watch in tech, Sarah was an academic and professor and currently still teaches as an associate lecturer at the university of Cambridge. Unruly was recently acquired by News Corp for 176 million dollars. 

Fenton created the online social hospitality network, the Couchsurfing Project which he began working on in 1999. Couchsurfing currently has over 15 million members worldwide. Fenton served as executive director of Couchsurfing until 2012 and the founding chairman of the board. Since exiting his position as CEO of Couchsurfing, he has also been a part of multiple startups including Sovolve (Wonder App) and Upstock.

Fenton was looking for ways to motivate his team at Couchsurfing & discovered major challenges with traditional equity systems.
He shares that while using stock option based equity, he actually saw productivity decline. Believing that every team should have access to tools that unite & build successful companies, he set out on a quest to repair the broken equity model. Thus Upstock was born. A digital, top-shelf legal equity system that combines performance equity with a visual dashboard. Now workers can watch their equity grow in real-time.

Bob is the co-author of the startup owners manual, a manual for starting up companies that aims at preventing many of the cardinal startup sins many founders make. together along with steve blank, the two spent 2 years conceiving, outlining, drafting, rewriting, and revising the global bestseller. A serial entrepreneur, bob left a lucrative broadcasting job at the age of 22 because the had a passion to start a company which he did 7 times over 3 decades. He describes his track record as 2 home runs, two base hits, and three great tax losses. Bob now teaches customer development and business modeling at columbia business school. he has also lead training session in mexico, russia, and other place around the world

Christine Tsai, the founding partner of 500 Startups, one of the worlds most active, well known, and internationally focused incubators. Tsai has invested in over 150 companies including Ipsy, Sprig, Bombfell, and Storefront, and also oversees the accelerator and distribution teams at 500. Prior to 500 Christine was in product marketing at Google and YouTube for many years. She worked on Developer Platforms and Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference. She also worked on Google AdSense, Analytics and YouTube syndication. Before that, Christine held roles in international sales at OSIsoft and ChevronTexaco. Christine has a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley. She is also a ballet dancer of 25 years. 

Today we have a really interesting fireside chat with a great arizona based entrepreneur. Hamid Shojaee is the iranian born founder of axosoft which makes the successful live chat software pure chat. Hamid is an ASU graduate and former microsoft employee. He’s very passionate about supporting the entrepreneurial community in Arizona and started the website aztechbeat and even an arizona based incubator. Lets listen into this great chat with hamid interviewed by our phoenix chapter director christie kerner. 

Before You Go I just wanted to let you know that 2 for 1 tickets to  our global event go on sale tomorrow. They are the cheapest tickets we have to offer and the event sold out early last year. Come and hear from key note speakers like the founders of the social + capital partnership, wanelo, thumbtack, cloud flare, joyous, Plus clayton christensen steve blank and the editor at large for the atlantic. Get tickets and more information at startup grind .com/conference. 

Elad Gil — most recently co-founder of Color Genomics, previously co-founder and CEO of Mixer Labs, which was acquired by Twitter. He was a  VP at Twitter focusing on scaling the company from 90 to 1500 people. 
Previously at Google he started their mobile team, and worked on AdSense. 
He is also flat out one of the best angel investors/advisors in the startup community. His portfolio includes Airbnb, Airtable, Anduril, Brex, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Gitlab, Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor, PagerDuty, Pinterest, Samsara, Square, Stripe, and Wish.
He has a kind of sight that makes the nonobvious appear obvious.

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Today we have bryan johnson the co-founder of braintree. 

Braintree is an online and mobile payments provider that prides itself on allowing it’s merchants to accept more payment types than anyone else. 

Bryan co-founded and helped Braintree work with some of the best customers in the world such as uber, github, opentable, airbnb, and opentable. 

in this interview Bryan discusses his goal of retiring at the age of 30 in order to allow himself to help others for the rest of his life. 

Our startup grind chapter director tom denison interviews bryan in chicago. Let’s listen in. 

Stefano is a project management practitioner and an academic with 20 years of experience, and the designer of the Team Alignment Map.

He has been leading digital projects for Swiss-based companies Rothschild and Pictet; advising cross-functional leaders and teams for Richemont, the World Economic Forum, Applied Materials and HSBC; teaching and doing research in project management at the University of Lausanne and at the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in partnership with Doctors Without Borders, Migros LeShop and Rolex.

He has also co-authored an A-ranking publication in JMIS (Journal of Management Informa

tion Systems), New York; published at ECIS 2014 (The European Conference on Information Systems). Awarded Best Paper Nominee, Best Research in Progress Runner-Up Award with Swiss researchers at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2015). He holds a PhD and a Master's Degree in Organisation and Business Information Systems (MBI), all obtained from the University of Lausanne.

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Render Capital wants you to apply for their 2021 Render Competition! The Render Competition invests $100,000 into eight early-stage startups each year to help them scale their solution and attract future investment. Learn more about the Render Competition and apply today at render.capital/competition/startupgrind

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Maximilian Tayenthal is co-founder and CFO of N26. Together with his business partner and friend Valentin Stalf, he has built one of the fastest-growing mobile banks in the world. 

Their vision is to create a bank that 100 million people around the world love to use, giving people the power to live and bank their way. 

Previously, Max worked in a variety of consulting and financial roles at leading professional services firms, including CMS and Booz & Company. Max holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics and business administration from the University of Vienna. He also has a master’s degree in economics from the Community of European Management Schools, as well as a law degree from the University of Vienna. Max is a CFA charter holder.

 While Max is based in Berlin he enjoys skiing in the mountains of Austria and Switzerland. 

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

After growing up in Cairo, Egypt, she earned a PhD in Cambridge University, and then joined the MIT Media Lab as a research scientist, where she spearheaded the application of emotion recognition technology in a variety of fields, including mental health and autism. She left MIT to co-found Affectiva and is a passionate advocate for humanizing technology, ethics in AI, women in technology and diversity. Rana has been recognized on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list, Forbes' Top 50 Women in Tech, Inc.’s Female Founders 100 list, and named one of the three Global Business pioneers by Bloomberg in 2017. Rana is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a Young Presidents' Organization member, and co-hosted a PBS NOVA series on AI.

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Today we have a chat between our seattle chapter director mike grabham and the CEO of RedFin Glenn Kelman. Glen started his career at the stanford technogloy group after graduating from UC berekely. STG was then acquired by IBM which spurred glenn to co-found his own company Plumtree. Plumb tree  then became a large publicly traded company in which glenn held various roles as an engineering lead, marketing lead, business development, and product management. Glen most recently Joined red fin as their CEO and is working to completely reinvent the real estate industry towards the consumers advantage. lets listen to this inspiring chat with a great founder. 

Emily Chang is the San Francisco-based anchor and executive producer of “Bloomberg Technology,” Bloomberg Television’s weekday technology program. She is the author of ""Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley,” which was published by Portfolio Books in February 2018.

Arlan Hamilton built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a fund that is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are of color, women, and/or LGBT.

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Today we have a great conversation with Des Traynor the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Intercom. Intercom has raised over $66 million dollars to fundamentally change how businesses communicate with customers. A lot of businesses seem to agree as Intercom has over 10,000 paying customers so far. Des’s main focus is on the product side and he has written extensively about managing product builds and iterations through Intercom’s series of books. Des studied computer science in college, and is a designer by trade. His favorite and only hobby is soccer. 

Lets listen into Des Traynor speaking live from Startup Grind’s Global Conference earlier this year. 

From supercomputers to innovating at incredible speed, Alex Dreiling’s work at  Clipchamp may sound like something from a Douglas Adams novel, but his successful startup began with an everyday idea and a down-to-earth attitude.

He shares that they created something no one else was doing, and managed to take it from an idea they had over lunch – to running software that’s been solving problems for millions around the world since they launched in 2014. It’s been an exciting – sometimes nail-biting – journey so far and the team has plenty of ideas of where they’ll go next.

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

We talk about the myths around remote work, how do we build the right culture at the company & deep dive into tons of challenges that becomes excuses for many to call their employees back to office. Some of the points we discussed include:

• Building the right culture
• Growing the team remotely
• Offsites or no offsited
• Cross team collaboration
• Global compliance
• Asynchronous work

I first met Job years ago during his time at Gitlab - it's one of the OG remote work companies, probably one of the first few who scaled to more than 1000+ employees all remote. Job has been building remote companies for a while now & I enjoyed every bit of our conversation - I'm sure you will too!

Today we have a presentation from our 2016 Global conference with Johan Brenner, General Partner of the European based Venture Capital Fund Creandum. 

Johan is one of Europe’s most experienced venture capital investors who has worked across a broad set of industries globally. He has built a number of successful businesses as an entrepreneur and has also been a Partner in several other  leading venture capital firms. 

Before Creandum, Johan spent more than 4 years as a General Partner at Balderton Capital (previously called Benchmark Capital Europe) with investments in companies like MySQL, Rebtel, Zopa, Habbo Hotel and Wonga.

Lets listen into Johan’s presentation on the European Startup Ecosystem at Startup Grind’s Global Conference earlier this year. 

Toptal is an amazing company. They've got over 2,500 developers and designers in their network.  They've screened them extensively so that you get to work with the top 3% of developers and designers. So basically what happens is that you let Toptal know what type of developer or designer you're looking for, they understand your business and technical requirements and they search for the right person for you.

You don't have to do all the screening and interviews that you normally would and they make it really easy for you. You can even do part time hires that are a few hours a week or full time hires as well. 

If you want to get connected to them, send me a note at  laura@startupgrind.com and I can personally introduce you to my friend Nelson. He's a VP at Toptal who will make sure you get an amazing experience. 

Today we have a great panel discussion between Simon Rothman, Partner at Greylock VC, Andrei Hagiu of the Harvard Business School, and Al Roth Nobel prize winning economist. 

Simon is a partner at Reid Hoffmans Greylock Venture Capital firm where he oversees their marketplace investments in companies like lyft and sprig. before greyloc simon built eBay motors from the ground up into a 14 billion a year global business. 

Andrei Hagiu is a professor in the strategy group at the Harvard Business School and prinicipal at Market Platform Dynamics. Andrei received a PHD in economics from Princeton University. 

Al Roth is the George Gund professor of economics and business administration at Harvard university. In 2012 he won the Nobel prize in economics for his work in matching doctors to hospitals, kidneys to patients and kids to high schools. 

Lets listen into Andrei, Simon and Al at Startup Grind’s Global Conference. 

Toptal is an amazing company. They've got over 2,500 developers and designers in their network.  They've screened them extensively so that you get to work with the top 3% of developers and designers. So basically what happens is that you let Toptal know what type of developer or designer you're looking for, they understand your business and technical requirements and they search for the right person for you.

You don't have to do all the screening and interviews that you normally would and they make it really easy for you. You can even do part time hires that are a few hours a week or full time hires as well. 

If you want to get connected to them, send me a note at  laura@startupgrind.com and I can personally introduce you to my friend Nelson. He's a VP at Toptal who will make sure you get an amazing experience. 

John Harthorne is the Founder and CEO of MassChallenge, the most startup-friendly accelerator on the planet. 

No equity and not-for-profit, MassChallenge is obsessed with helping entrepreneurs across any industry. 

They also reward the highest-impact startups through a competition to win a portion of several million dollars in equity-free cash awards. 

Through MassChallenge’s global network of accelerators in Boston, London, Jerusalem, Geneva, and Mexico City, and unrivalled access to corporate partners, entrepreneurs can have a massive impact - driving growth and creating value the world over. To date, 835 MassChallenge alumni have raised over $1.1 billion and created over 6,500 jobs. 

John earned his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2007. While at school, John won Grand Prize in the 2007 MIT $100K Business Plan Competition and received the 2007 Patrick J. McGovern Award for impact on quality and visibility of entrepreneurship at MIT. 

The World Economic Forum also elected John as one of the 2013 Young Global Leaders alongside Chelsea Clinton and Tony Hsieh. 

John is a life-long Massachusetts resident and an avid Red Sox fan. He currently lives in Newton with his wife, Natalia, their 9-year old son Max and their 5-year old girl Yulia.

Lets Listen into John Harthorne interviewed at our Startup Grind Boston chapter by Director Carlos Cardenas. 

Today we have a great presentation from our 2015 Global Conference. Paul Ahlstrom is an entrepreneur and investor who has focused his carreer on understanding the inner workings of early stage startups. He’s founded multiple high-technology startups and investment funds in the United States and Mexico. 

Paul’s current focus is opening up capital sources to Mexican entrepreneurs and supporting Mexico’s vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

In his presentation Paul discusses 3 ways to guarantee that your startup will fail. Lets listen in to this short but impactful talk. 

Mike Cassidy who is currently a vice president at Google and Project leader on Google x’s project loon which is an attempt to blanket the globe in wireless connectivity using hot air balloons. Before joining google Mike was a serial entrepreneur founding companies like rubber, xfire, direct hit, and stylus innovation. 

Mike has a BS/MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and graduated from the Harvard Business School.

Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a platform for modern parents. Moms & dads use the website or mobile apps to browse fun activities nearby, find quality childcare, or get advice in real-time on any parenting topic. Winnie is growing fast with over 1M users in 10K cities across the United States. 

International Best-Selling Author Lisa Q. Fetterman is the founder and CEO of Nomiku, the first home sous vide immersion circulator machine on the market. Lisa has been featured in Wired, MAKE, and Forbes, and was named on Forbes, Inc, and Zagat Survey’s 30 Under 30 lists for her pioneering work in the food space. Lisa has worked at some of the top restaurants in the country including Babbo and Jean-Georges in New York and Saison in San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco where she and her husband-cofounder have brought manufacturing back to the states with their new Wifi-Nomiku device. 

 

Noah Everett, founder of the popular Twitpic photo sharing service and most recently the messaging platform Pingly. 

Everett, a Carolina native is widely known as a pioneer of photo sharing on mobile phones and social media. Newly launched Pingly is a direct messaging platform that also works over email and SMS. His goal is to transform messaging into a simplistic and cohesive process that speaks across networks.

Before launching Pingly, Noah was most recently Founder and CEO of TwitPic. What started as a side project quickly turned into one of the largest photo sharing apps of its time, gaining over 30 million users which included many celebrities and politicians. In 2009 the young entrepreneur moved to Charleston, South Carolina just as his site began growing exponentially. TwitPic became one of the largest photo-sharing services on Twitter and was acquired by Twitter in late 2014.

Lets listen into Noah Everett interviewed in South Carolina by Director Jeremy Berman. 

Jean Oelwang is the CEO of Virgin Unite, the entrepreneurial foundation of the Virgin Group and a Partner in the Virgin Group focused on People Innovation. In 2003, Jean left her post as joint CEO of Virgin Mobile Australia to begin working with Richard Branson and the Virgin staff from around the world to create Virgin Unite. Over the last 10 years, Jean has worked with partners to create new approaches to social and environmental issues, such as the Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship and a global platform to support budding entrepreneurs. She has built collaborations to incubate a number of global leadership initiatives such as The Elders, the Carbon War Room and The B Team. In addition, Jean has been instrumental in working with over 25 Virgin businesses across 15 industries to put the wellbeing of people and planet at their core.

In her previous life, Jean lived and worked on five continents helping to lead successful mobile phone start-ups in South Africa, Colombia, Bulgaria, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and the US.

Jean has long explored the overlap of the business and not-for-profit sectors and has been involved in both, having worked for the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife in Australia, and in numerous volunteer roles, including a stint as a VISTA volunteer where she worked with – and learned from – homeless teens in Chicago.

She sits on the Advisory Council for The Elders and the Boards of the Carbon War Room, the B Team, the Ocean Elders and Just Capital.

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box at Startup Grind’s Global Conference earlier this year. Aaron has been CEO since co-founding the cloud storage company in 2005. Aaron served as the company’s product and platform strategy visionary. His plan incorporated traditional content management with elements of social business software. Aaron is also an advisor at 8 Partners and used to serve as an intern at Paramount Pictures. Aaron studied Business at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. 

Lets listen into Aaron Levie live at Startup Grind’s Global Conference Earlier This Year Interviewed by Fortune’s Michal Lev-Ram:  

This podcast is brought to you by HBX ­ Harvard Business School’s digital learning initiative. Introducing “Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen,” an engaging and interactive online learning experience from Harvard Business School’s HBX. Learn to create winning strategies to position your organization for long­term success by applying proven disruption and innovation theories from world renowned strategist Clay Christensen. Disruptive Strategy encourages active learning and peer collaboration, and requires a commitment of approximately thirty hours over six weeks. Applications are being accepted for upcoming cohorts in August and October. To learn more, visit disruptivestrategy.org

Chad West is Director of Marketing & Comms at Revolut, a UK financial technology company that offers banking services. He previously held the same position at Rocket Internet.

Alex Rodriguez Bacardit, Founder & CEO at MarsBased, a high-end development consultancy from Barcelona specialised in web and mobile applications developed with Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Angular, React and other Javascript frameworks. He is in charge of the growth of the company doing business development.

He is also Director of Startup Grind in Barcelona & Andorra. For three years, he helped the expansion of the Startup Grind brand in Southwestern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Malta, Andorra, Gibraltar) as Regional Director, leading the Barcelona chapter, awarded Best Chapter of the Year in 2016. 

Today we have a great chat with the co-founder and CEO of Postmates. Bastian Lehmann. Bastian is originally from Munich and graduate of the AngelPad Accelerator in San Francisco. He originally founded Postmates in 2011 and has seen incredible growth fueled by revolutionary partnerships with companies like Chipotle, Starbucks. and 7-Eleven. Postmates now operates the largest on-demand delivery fleet with 13,000 Postmates in 28 metropolitan markets. Lets listen into this great interview with Bastian interviewed by Startup Grind’s founder Derek Andersen in San Francisco. 

Maggie Zhou was appointed Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand in March 2016 for Alibaba Group. As one of the key veterans of the company, Maggie has witnessed major company developments as the company has expanded its businesses outside of China and as well as the progression and development of Mainland China’s e-commerce market. In her current role, as part of the company’s globalisation strategy, she is responsible for establishing a local presence for Alibaba in Australia and New Zealand to further develop infrastructure and help local merchants enter the vast China consumer market.

Prior to this role, Maggie worked closely with the Australia and New Zealand business development team on Tmall Global, a cross-border B2C business platform for Tmall, and was in charge of overall government and public affairs for the platform. In Maggie’s earlier days with Alibaba, she helped the Group establish Taobao Marketplace in 2003 as one of the nine founders of the C2C platform, and served as Executive Assistant to Jack Ma, the founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba, for almost five years. Maggie joined Alibaba in early 2000 as one of the veteran employees of the company.

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have something a bit different. our founder Derek andersen who is also our Silicon Valley chapter director is used to asking the questions at his events; is in this episode he is the featured guest at our chapter in phoenix Arizona. Director Christie Kerner goes over Derek’s early life, professional experience and the origin story of the worlds largest entrepreneurial community. Lets listen into this chat with Startup Grind’s Founder and CEO Derek Andersen: 

About the speakers:
Joe Gebbia is the co-founder and CPO of Airbnb, serving on the Board of Directors and Executive staff, while leading Samara, Airbnb’s in-house design and innovation studio. He is involved in crafting the company culture, shaping the design aesthetic, and innovating future growth opportunities.

Alfred Lin is a Partner at Sequoia Capital and works with inspiring founders focused on disrupting the mobile, marketplace, commerce, consumer services, and online-to-offline sectors. He currently represents Sequoia on the Boards of Airbnb, Cobalt Robotics, Dia & Co., DoorDash, Houzz, Stella & Dot, and Zipline and was previously on the Board of Achievers (HAWK), FutureAdvisor (BLK), Humble Bundle (JCOM), and Shopular (Ebates/Rakuten).

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Hey there and welcome to wednesday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have a great chat with Adam Lashinsky, author of the wildly popular and revealing book "inside apple". Adam is the senior editor at large for fortune covering silicon valley and wall street. He’s been on the magazines staff since 2001. Prior to that he worked at the Street.com and the san jose mercury news. He is also a weekly panelist on foxes cavuto on business program. Adam  co-chairs fortunes annual technology conference Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and is a seasoned speaker and panel moderator. Lets listen into this great interview between adam and startup grind’s founder Derek Andersen recorded in 2013. 

Following his remarkable success with the $780M acquisition of his startup, Vungle, by private equity giant Blackstone in 2019, Zain founded Zain Ventures, a family office with a diverse portfolio spanning various asset classes. Zain's investment philosophy is straightforward: strategically allocate capital to the right fund managers and partner with visionary industry leaders.

He leveraged his expertise to revolutionize the real estate investment sector, recognizing the need for advanced analytical tools. After orchestrating the impressive $780 million acquisition of his startup, Vungle, Zain founded Zain Ventures. This family office boasts a diverse asset portfolio, offering strategic capital allocation and visionary partnerships. Join us for a captivating conversation with Zain, where we delve into his remarkable journey and entrepreneurial insights.

Howie Liu is co-founder and CEO of Airtable, the platform democratizing software creation. Over 60,000 organizations, including half of the Fortune 1000, currently use Airtable to power their most ambitious operations. Launched in 2015, Airtable has raised over $70M in venture funding, and was recently added to Forbes’ “Cloud 100” list of the private companies leading cloud computing in 2018. 

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by Alexa von Tobel, CFP® is the Founder and Managing Partner of Inspired Capital ).

Freddy Vega is CEO and co-founder of Platzi, a fast-growing e-learning platform with an impressive 70% completion rate by students who take the company's courses. At the age of 16, he created a community called Cristalab, which, six years later, became the largest community of developers in Latin America. At this point, he merged his community with that of his co-founder, Christian Van Der Henst, and created Mejorando.la, a community with an educational offering. With this growing community a new technology platform for streaming live classes with tools for engaging the audience, Freddy co-founded Platzi in 2013. After graduating from the Winter 2015 class of YCombinator and continuing it's growth track, the company is setting it's sights on a global marketplace.

Startup Grind Bogota features incredible talks with entrepreneurs from Startup Grind’s world wide network. Startup
Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in more than 100 cities and 40 countries featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. Our monthly fireside chat interviews, startup mixers and annual conferences provide ample opportunities to connect with amazing startups and the people behind them, tap into a strong support network, form meaningful connections and gain inspiration for the startup journey ahead.

Subscribe to Startup Grind Local:

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Find a Startup Grind event in your area: www.startupgrind.com

Vlad Magdalin is the Founder & CEO at Webflow. the startup that allows you to build better business websites, faster, without coding. To date, Vlad has raised over $73m with Webflow from some dear friends of the show including Accel, Ron @ Rainfall, Brianne @ Work Life, Benjamin Ling and Y Combinator to name a few. Prior to founding Webflow, Vlad was a Senior Software Engineer @ Intuit. Before Intuit, Vlad co-founded Chatterfox, a web application allowing people to stay in touch with groups offriends, family, or co-workers.

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Juan Diego Calle the Founder of the .CO domain business. Prior to founding .CO which was  by Neustar, Inc. in April of 2014, while at the university of Miami, Juan Diego launched and ran TeRespondo.com, a performance-based advertising network, which he sold to Yahoo in 2005. 

Juan Diego also currently serves as the chairman of STRAAT, a company builder software based in Miami, Florida. Juan Diego also co-founded Building.co,  a collaborative work space for growing tech companies, Classic.com, a classic car restoration business, POP.co,  a platform designed to help entrepreneurs and businesses get online, and BoutiqueHotels.com a hand-curated list of boutique hotels around the world.  He’s an alumni of the Harvard Business School OPM program.  lets listen into Juan Diego Calle interviewed by our Bogota Colombia Chapter director. 

Jason joined Maveron in 2007 and is now a partner focused on investing in education, e-commerce and web-enabled consumer businesses. He is involved with the firm's investments in General Assembly, Common, TrueFacet, Julep, Everlane, CourseHero, Dolls Kill and Lively.  Prior to joining Maveron, Jason served as senior director of strategic operations for Career Education Corp., where he co-founded and led admissions and marketing for IADT Online, a for-profit design school. He has also served as an associate at Spinnaker Ventures, an expansion-stage venture capital fund.  Jason graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in economics from the University of Michigan  and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Guy Kawasaki
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, a graphics-design online service, and an executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and chief evangelist of Apple. He is also the author of APE, What the Plus!, Enchantment, and many other books. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Interviewed by:

Jule Lund
After 15 years hosting some of the biggest TV and Radio shows in the country, Jules Lund has now taken the audacious step of founding his own tech company,

TRIBE. Launched in Nov 2015, TRIBE is a digital marketplace that connects social media influencers with leading brands to transform word of mouth recommendations. Celebrity and everyday influencers who have built audiences around a particular passion or expertise, can now submit and get paid for posts featuring products they already use and love.

In 2013, Jules quickly became obsessed with social media as he led ‘The Fifi & Jules’ Facebook Page to become the most engaged brand-page in the entire country. Jules’ social insights have since made him a unique asset, being invited around the country to present to Australia’s biggest agencies on the power of Social Influencer Marketing.

Hosted by Chris Joannou

Startup Grind APAC Conference
Join us in Melbourne Dec 9-10th 2019.
https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-melbourne-presents-startup-grind-apac-conference/

CEO and the founder of America Online, Steve Case in Silicon Valley. Steve recently released his first book, The Third Wave, on what the next era of the american startup ecosystem will look like for entrepreneurs. Steve is now the founding partner of the investment firm, Revolution partners which bets on tech entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley. So far they’ve backed startups like LivingSocial, Sweetgreen, Bigcommerce, and Handy. Steve became CEO of AOL in 1991 and led the company until the Merger with Time Warner in 2001 in a $164 billion deal that was eventually deemed one of the worst mergers in history. Case attended the prestigious Punahou School, where Barack Obama also went to high school. In 2011 the president appointed him to lead the Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit aimed at spurring the growth of new companies.

His Case Foundation is devoted to employing the Internet for more effective and efficient philanthropy. Steve attended Williams College where he received a Bachelor’s degree. 

Lets listen into the Founder of the company that got america online, Steve Case interviewed in Silicon Valley Last month. 

Quick question. How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? Twenty thousand? 

If your email is anything like mine used to be, the answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how.

I knew I’d miss something important if I just deleted them all, and there were too many emails to go through one at a time. 

Thankfully I found SaneBox, and I can’t recommend it enough. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. 

There's also this amazing thing called BlackHole. Move an email into that folder and you’ll never hear from that sender again. It’s so rewarding. 

Visit sanebox.com/startupgrind today and get an extra $20 credit on top of the already free two-week trial.  

Check it out today and let me know if you love reaching inbox zero as easily as I do nowadays. 

Again, that’s S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com/startupgrind

Roy Mann is a career entrepreneur who became a coding expert at the university. He studied at Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel graduating with a degree in computer science. Besides studying at this university, he has also completed a computer-related course at Lehigh University and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev located in the United States of America and Israel respectively. In Ben-Gurion University, he majored in Electrical engineering.

Before becoming the CEO of Monday.com, Roy Mann started as a web-developer for Finjan Holdings in 1996. Later on, in May 2010, he became the Chief Technology Officer at Wix.com. it was here at wix.com that he discovered his true calling as an entrepreneur. He would, later on, venture out as the co-founder of Dapulse in 2012. This decision was based on the massive success that he alongside Eran was realizing in the development of web-based platforms.

Monday.com was arrived upon to give this business a more global perspective – Monday being the start of work-week. To date, Monday.com has grown immensely. Based in Israel, Monday.com now has got 130 employees who work tirelessly to ensure the success of this company. Alongside his co-founder Eran Zinman, this company has significantly doubled the revenue that to date it boasts of having a valuation of almost 1.9 billion dollars. 

Despite the huge achievements that he has achieved as an entrepreneur, little is known about Roy Mann.

Alex and Anthony Zaccaria, are the Founders of Linktree, the Australian tech platform giving users the ability to connect followers to their entire online ecosystem — not just one feed. Founded in 2016 and the first tool in market of its kind, Linktree helps users to share more, sell more, curate more and grow more. It’s become the front door to the online world of more than 3 million users worldwide (including the likes of Alicia Keys, Jamie Oliver and Chelsea Handler) and an invaluable tool for brands, influencers and celebrities online.

Just like Stripe and Slack before them, Linktree created a tool that many people didn’t know they even needed, and subsequently a new industry off the back of that.

The Melbournian Zaccaria brothers, Alex and Anthony originally set out to solve a pain point for the music industry - Instagram only allows one link in a user’s profile.

What started as a fix for #linkinbio, has grown into a multi-platform tool for connecting followers beyond a single social media channel – it links to a user’s entire online ecosystem.

Today we have a special interview with the Founder and CEO of Fiverr.com Micha Kauffman interviewed by director Ram Yonish in Tel Aviv earlier this year. Fiverr is the world's most transacted marketplace for services, creating economic opportunities for the entrepreneurs of the gig economy. Fiverr was founded by Shai Wininger and Micha Kaufman in 2009 and currently lists more than three million services on the site that range between $5 and $500. Fiverr.com has been ranked among the top 100 most popular sites in the U.S. and top 150 in the world since the beginning of 2013.

During August 2014, Fiverr announced that it has raised $30 million in a Series C round of funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel and other investors. The round brings their total funding to date to $50 million.

Micha is also an active angel investor

Payal is the Executive Chairman & Founder of ClassPass and the Artistic Director of The Sa Dance Company. Payal has been a “dancetrepreneur” since the age of 3 when she started training in Indian classical and folk styles of dance. It was her passion for dance, entrepreneurship, and making the world a more active, happy place that led to the founding of Classpass. ClassPass is a membership program for fitness classes across multiple gyms and studios, making working out more engaging, accessible, and affordable. Mollie Glick is a book agent at Creative Artists Agency. Glick works in the New York office and represents many top authors and thought leaders. 

 

Today we have a chat with a canadian based founder Ethan Song. Ethan is the co-founder of the popular menswear club Frank & Oak. Frank & Oak is a mens lifestyle brand that makes it easy for men to receive the latest fashions and trends right to their door. They also have a few retail locations which Ethan touches on as a core element of their brand as it bridges the gap between online and offline experiences. 

Ethan is interviewed at our Startup Grind Ottawa chapter by director Franco Varriano. Let’s listen in. 

Today we have an enlightening conversation with the Editor at Large of TechCrunch which is the biggest breaking news sites about the hottest tech companies. 

Mike has been named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph.

As well as being a long-time Writer, Broadcaster and Editor Mike is also co-founder of TechHub (@TechHub), a project to merge a thriving community with office space for fast-moving startups. Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman.

Mike arned his B.A. degree in History and English Literature from Australian National University.

His journey started when he started building products & wrote blogs for different companies - he was in New Zealand. He was the first writer for Mashable. All of this while he was just 14!

After sometime, he joined Teachable as a founding engineer. He grew in his role all the way to VP of product & with teachable doing reasonably well - he thought about why he origionally moved to the US.

Despite having his family in US, he took some hard decisions to leave the job & freelance for Gumroad to bootstrap. We also talk about raising the first $1M & getting an offer from Tiger Global for their Series A which they couldn't refuse.

This was such a fun podcast - going into a founder's life with every tiny detail. I had so much fun chatting with Sid, I'm sure you'll enjoy listening too! :) 

Ulf Gunnar Ekberg (born 6 December 1970), also known as Buddha, is a Swedish singer-songwriter, musician, businessman and television and film producer, best known as a founding member of the pop group Ace of Base, along with siblings Jonas Berggren, Linn Berggren and Jenny Berggren.

Today we have a conversation from the VC corner stage at Startup Grind's Global Conference held each year in Silicon Valley. Joining us today is a presentation by Clara Brenner co-founder and CEO of the Tumml Urban Solutions Accelerator which has supported supported companies like HandUp, Chariot, and Popupsters solve problems specifics to cities and dense populations. 

Prior to founding Tumml, she worked in real estate development – at a real estate tech startup called Fundrise, as well as at AECOM, GVA Advantis, and Monument Realty. 

Clara earned her MBA from MIT Sloan and her BA from NYU. She is a member of the MIT Sloan Alumni Board. In January 2014, Forbes listed her as one of its “30 Under 30” for Social Entrepreneurship.

Lets listen into Clara Brenner live from the VC stage at Startup Grind’s Global Conference 

Owner and General Manager of the Seattle Sounders, Adrian Hanauer. 

Prior to becoming the owner of the Sounders, Adrian was a seed stage investor in aQuantive Inc. and an early investor in Amazon.com. 

He is also the Director at the Cambridge United Football Club Limited and sits on the Board of Trustees for the Museum of History and the Industry Advisory Board at the of The University of Washington. Overall, Adrian has 15 years of business experience in a variety of industries and has invested in numerous early stage technology companies in gaming, advertising, infrastructure, and wireless communications. Adrain has earned an Intercollegiate Sports Master's degree. 

Lets listen into Adrian Hanauer interviewed by Startup Grind Seattle Director, Mike Grabham. 

Toptal is an amazing company. They've got over 2,500 developers and designers in their network.  They've screened them extensively so that you get to work with the top 3% of developers and designers. So basically what happens is that you let Toptal know what type of developer or designer you're looking for, they understand your business and technical requirements and they search for the right person for you.

You don't have to do all the screening and interviews that you normally would and they make it really easy for you. You can even do part time hires that are a few hours a week or full time hires as well. 

If you want to get connected to them, send me a note at  laura@startupgrind.com and I can personally introduce you to my friend Nelson. He's a VP at Toptal who will make sure you get an amazing experience. 

Leaders can change lives. 

Check out The Valuable 500 

Hosted by Chris Joannou @DREAMPUSHERS.

Leymah Gbowee (pronounced LAY–mah, BEAU-wee)

2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker and women’s rights advocate.

Ms. Gbowee’s leadership of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace – which brought together Christian and Muslim women in a nonviolent movement that played a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s civil war – is chronicled in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, and in the award-winning documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell.

After winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Ms. Gbowee established the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa. Ms. Gbowee also serves as the Executive Director of the Women, Peace and Security Program at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. 

Ms. Gbowee advises numerous organizations working for peace, women’s rights, youth, and sustainable development, and she travels internationally to advocate for human rights and peace and security.She has been named as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy by Apolitical and one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine. 

Ms. Gbowee is the proud mother of eight children. She lives between Monrovia and New York – and the many airports in between!

Amit Kapur who is the founder & managing partner at Dawn Patrol Ventures, a venture capital firm backed by AOL & Verizon. Amit loves building startups. He was the CEO of analytics company Gravity which was acquired by AOL for $90M. Prior to that he was the COO of Myspace, starting as a BD lead managing mobile and music efforts. MySpace was originally acquired by News Corp for $580M. Amit has a Mechanical Engineering degree from Stanford University. 

Let’s listen into Amit Kapur interviewed by Startup Grind Los Angeles Chapter Director Joe Famalette. 

Sage Group plc. is the UK’s largest tech firm with 12,000 employees serving over three million customers across 23 countries worldwide.

Debbie Wall is the EVP of the Sage Foundation, one of the largest corporate foundations globally. It is the corporate philanthropic division of Sage . It is the corporate philanthropic division of Sage Group.

Debbie"s approach called ‘action philanthropy’ is a model based not only on corporate financial giving but focused on making a more meaningful impact through employee time and expertise. 
As part of this approach, Debbie introduced the UK’s largest corporate volunteering scheme, offering every Sage employee up to 5 days of paid time to volunteer in their local communities. In 2020 alone, they have given 14,000 volunteering days from colleagues around the world. Debbie would be happy to talk about some of the programmes introduced and executed by the Sage Foundation to help local communities worldwide. These are based on maximising the tech skills of their employees to help rollout solutions including A Place To Call Home - helping tackle the root causes of youth homelessness and rAInbow - an AI-powered tool supporting victims of domestic violence.

Learn more about Oracle for Startups

(Interviewed by Chris Joannou @DREAMPUSHERS).

Kendrick Nguyen has a wealth of experience in finance and law, but his heart lies in cryptocurrency. He barely talks about his personal life, but he revealed that his past is what led to him being interested in the world of entrepreneurship. So far, his dream of helping private companies raise funds has continued to be fulfilled since in the last two years Republic has facilitated the launch of at least 40 companies. However, that is just the beginning since Kendrick has a far much bigger vision for his company. Let’s  know his experiences and how he has managed to be a successful entrepreneur.

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).

Anthony Soohoo is Co-Founder & CEO of Dot & Bo, a uniquely curated shopping experience that makes modern design accessible and inspires people to create their dream homes. Drawing upon his background in media and technology, he launched Dot & Bo in 2013 to solve for the often-frustrating experience of shopping for furniture, in which design advice is traditionally expensive and customer service is extremely limited.

Prior to starting Dot & Bo, Anthony was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Entertainment Division at CBS Interactive which included CBS.com, CBS Audience Network, TV.com, The Insider.com, Chow, Chowhound, UrbanBaby, and CBS Interactive Web Original Studio. During his tenure, Soohoo helped grow the CBS Interactive Entertainment Division to become one of the leading entertainment networks on the web. He joined CBS in 2007 with its acquisition of Dotspotter, one of the fastest growing community-powered entertainment properties on the Internet where he served as Co-Founder and CEO. Prior to Dotspotter, Soohoo held product and leadership roles at Yahoo!, Inktomi and Apple.

Soohoo earned his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Davis and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He was selected in TechCrunch's “40 Over 40” list and The Hollywood Reporter's Digital Power List as one of the top 50 executives leading the charge in new media. He is an advisor/investor to a number of consumer startups.

Today we have a conversation from our 2016 global conference with SoftTech VC Partner & Principal Stephanie Palmeri. Stephanie has over a decade of experience working at the intersection of marketing and technology. Stephanie joined at SoftTech in 2011 and served as its a Senior Associate. Previously, she served as an Associate at NYC Seed and launched the NYC SeedStart incubator. 

She also worked at Lot18, Accenture, and Estee Lauder and has built SaaS applications for SAP AG, JP Morgan, and Diageo. Her early experiences include Accenture's market data practice working with investment banking clients like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. 

Stephanie represents SoftTech VC as a board member for Niche, Ubooly, Chariot, Envoy Commerce Corp., Educents, Fatherly, and Spoon Media Inc. Stephanie holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and graduated magna cum laude from Villanova University with joint degrees in Marketing and Management Information Systems.

Lets listen into Stephanie Palmeri live from Startup Grind’s Global Conference in silicon valley this past february. 

Melanie Perkins is an Australian technology entrepreneur. She is known as the CEO and co-founder of Canva, an online design and publishing tool which makes graphic design simple for everyone.

Melanie is one of the youngest female CEO to be leading a tech start-up valued at over a billion dollars. Melanie has raised more than $166 million from investors including Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman, and funds such as Bond, General Catalyst, Felicis Ventures and Blackbird.

Today we are doing something a bit different and feature content from the Futurecast thought leadership series which is a collaboration between the ATT foundry & Ericsson. The featured guest of the event is young guru who is an esteemed 

audio engineer, DJ, and producer on more than 10 of jay-z’s albums including his hit track “empire state of mind” 

Young guru takes the audience on an exploration of technology, content creation, and the democratization of content. Andrew keen is the moderator of the discussion and executive director of the future cast series. Author of popular books like the cult of the amateur & the internet is not the answer, keen was named 1 of GQ’s 100 most connected men in 2015. 

Directly prior to the discussion you are about to hear, several music industry related products were demoed to the audience. We’ll hear a bit about those products from their founders starting around halfway into the interview. 

Running an hour and 20 minutes this episode is a bit longer than our normal ones but it is definitely worth it. It’s a true deep dive into the music industry and how new disruptive digital technologies are shaping it for better or for worse. 

Lets listen into Young Guru interviewed in February by moderator Andrew Keen at the ATT foundry in Palo Alto. 

Today we have a great chat between 5 different tech stars partners including co-founder david cohen. The guests include David Cohen, Ari Newman, Jason Seats, Mark Solon, Nicole Glaros. Tech stars is one the worlds top accelerators with locations in over a dozen cities. It also powers vertical focused programs with partners like Disney, Qualcomm, Mike, Ford, and many more. Lets listen into this great chat with 5 top partners in one 1 room at our startup grind chapter in Boise Idaho. The discussion is moderated by boise director jess whiting. Lets listen. 

Check out:

Startupgrind.com

TheHustle.co

Trends.co

A respected technologist and business leader, Steven Sinofsky is an investor, adviser, as well as a Board Partner at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm. He began his career at Microsoft in 1989. He started as a software design engineer in development tools. Working in product management, he grew to be one of the company's senior executives on Microsoft Office overseeing six major releases of the full range of Office apps and creation of Office servers. Most recently he served as President of the Windows division through 2012, delivering two major releases of Windows as well as the creation of Microsoft Surface, and Windows Services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive and Identity. Sinofsky frequently comments on products, development and management at his blog, https://medium.learningbyshipping.com, and on twitter, @stevesi. He earned a BA in both computer science and chemistry from Cornell and an MS from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Aaron Levie is the Co-founder of cloud-based content management and collaboration platform.

Henry Ward is the CEO and co-founder of Carta, a company that continues to revolutionize the way founders, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership. Since founding Carta in 2012, Carta has grown to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity. Companies including Intercom, Samsara, and Flexport trust Carta to provide things like fund administration, 409A valuations, cap table management and scenario modeling. Carta has been included on the Forbes “World’s Best Cloud Companies”, Fast Company's Most Innovative list, and Inc.’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.

Prior to Carta, Henry was founder and CEO of Secondsight, a portfolio optimization platform for retail investors. He also held leadership positions at software companies including Reddwerks Inc. and BetweenMarkets. Henry graduated from University of Michigan with a BGS in Mathematics and Computer Science and holds a MSC in Market Finance from EDHEC Business School.

Carta helps private companies and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. Its platform offers portfolio insights and dashboards, scenario modeling, board management, fund administrators, LP management, and other services. Private companies use Carta to streamline how they manage equity from their founding phase to their IPO. Investors use the firm’s services to efficiently manage their portfolios and streamline their back office activities including valuations, fund administration and scenario modeling. CartaX is its new offering - a vertically integrated market ecosystem that offers private equity investors the ability to sell their equity to other investors.

Carta has been included on the Forbes “World’s Best Cloud Companies”, Fast Company's Most Innovative list, and Inc.’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.

(Interviewed by Alexa von Tobel the co-founder and managing partner of Inspired Capital).

Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world’s most influential innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. 

Ranked No. 4​ of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Osterwalder is known for​       simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. He invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map – practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies. 

Strategyzer, Osterwalder’s company, provides online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth and transformation. 

His books include the international bestseller ​Business Model Generation​, ​Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want,​ ​Testing Business Ideas​ and The Invincible Company​, to publish in spring 2020. 

(Interviewed by StartupGrind's Chris Joannou).