The VentureFizz Podcast

David and I go way back. We first met when he was the Executive Director of TUGG, a non-profit embedded in the tech industry in Boston. He is now back to his roots living in Rochester, NY which has a growing tech scene with several startups and lots of great academic institutions. Impellent Ventures is a fund that is supporting early stage startups. The firm has made investments in multiple regions like Boston, but a core piece to their strategy is to invest in startups in western NY. After returning to the area, it became apparent to David that there was a large opportunity to fund companies locally and help grow the ecosystem there. During our conversation, we get into the weeds on the startup scene in Rochester, NY which was very interesting to learn about because it has some parallels to the earlier days of the Boston ecosystem. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * How David got into venture and if he always had a goal of being an investor. * His foundational years and career path leading up to the start of a new venture firm. * All of the details on Impellent Ventures and a look at their current portfolio of companies. * Common pitch mistakes that entrepreneurs tend to make. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

In these podcast interviews, you’ve probably heard me talk about my background in recruiting. I ran a search firm called Dissero and product management was a core area of specialty. Thus, I was really excited to interview Nate, as he is one of the top product leaders in the tech industry and it was an opportunity to really geek out on the topic of product management. We discuss lots of great topics related to this field like how to determine if a career in product management is right for you, what are the key traits for a strong product manager, and what a day in the life of a product leader looks like. In this episode of our podcast, we also cover: * Nate’s appointment to the Board of Directors at Cockroach Labs and how this seems to be a growing trend of having more operating *. * executives on the board at companies. * A journey through his career including his decision to attend business school at MIT Sloan and being part of the team that won the famous MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. * How Nate groomed his career into a product management leadership role at a startup. * All the details on Cockroach Labs and its cloud-native, distributed SQL database. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

I always think the best ideas for a business are from entrepreneurs who are tackling the problems they have faced in the real world. As you’ll hear from this episode, NeighborSchools is a perfect example. Finding quality and affordable child care is a tricky thing and when you factor in the COVID-19 world we are living in, the stakes are even higher. It was this challenge that Bridget was facing as a new working mom. Brian, Bridget and their third co-founder, Cedric McDougal, all met while working together at InsightSquared and once they started to poke around the industry, they noticed some critical issues that were ripe for disruption through technology. Thus, NeighborSchools was born. The venture backed company provides a platform to help parents find trusted child care, while enabling child care providers with all the tools they need to successfully run their own home daycare. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Starting a podcast and the details behind their own podcast series called Work Like a Mother. * Their background stories leading up to working together at InsightSquared. * All of the details on NeighborSchools and how they are revolutionizing the child care industry through home daycare. * How they navigated the business through the pandemic. * Raising a $3.5M seed round led by Accomplice. * Challenges founders face when starting a company. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Sam is an investor and entrepreneur, who is one of the top product leaders in the tech scene. After leading product at BzzAgent and HubSpot, he went on to be a co-founder at InsightSquared, the leading provider of revenue intelligence solutions. At Accomplice, he is focused on making investments in B2B software and marketplace companies. He’s also part of the faculty at Harvard Business School where he teaches the early-stage startup course called Launching Tech Ventures. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * How Sam’s experience as a product leader and operator has helped influence his role as a Venture Capitalist. * His background story and how he ended up leading product teams. * The founding story of InsightSquared and how they built product market fit. * What led him down the path of becoming a VC again. * Lots of great tips for hiring product managers, including a useful secret on where to find them. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Did you know that 2.3B people in the world seek help for skin issues every year? Two-thirds of these cases are evaluated by non-specialists and the shocking statistic is that 50% of these cases are misdiagnosed. It’s a challenge because there are not enough dermatologists and most physicians only spend one week learning dermatology in medical school. So, what if you could leverage AI and computer vision to help physicians quickly and accurately identify skin conditions. It sounds like a perfect use case for AI and this is exactly what LuminDx is doing. The company recently closed a $2M seed round of funding led by Argon VC. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Advice for founders on how to give an awesome demo day pitch. * Susan’s background story and her time in academia. * How Susan’s diagnosis with melanoma, when she was 22 years old, led to the creation of LuminDx. * All of the details on LuminDx and the evolution of the company. * Her experience raising funding as a female founder. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

CareAcademy recently announced its Series A round of funding, but I need to put this accomplishment into perspective. Raising capital is hard for any entrepreneur, but Helen had some extra obstacles in her way - a pandemic, she is a female founder, and a Black entrepreneur. The percentages for each independent scenario for raising capital are not favorable, never mind putting everything all together. No one could have predicted obstacles around a pandemic, but the other numbers around the other obstacles need to be improved, which I hope is finally starting to happen. But, as you’ll hear in this podcast interview, Helen is a resilient entrepreneur and her process of fundraising was incredibly thorough. It’s a process that all entrepreneurs need to pay attention to. CareAcademy is the leading home care & home health workforce empowerment platform, upskilling and preparing workers for the growing eldercare market and home care model. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The importance of storytelling and its impact on your company. * Helen’s background story as a multi-generational entrepreneur and experience in education. * A deep dive into CareAcademy and the opportunity ahead to transform the caregiver market. * How they were able to adapt & respond to Covid-19. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Klaviyo is one of the fastest-growing companies in the tech industry, but the path to their current scale is a fascinating story. It’s a story of a company that remained lean and bootstrapped for a long stretch of time. For the first three years of the company, it was just Andrew and his Co-Founder, Ed Hallen, handling everything. Even as they started to scale, it was a different philosophy versus what most startups decide to do in terms of rushing to raise venture capital as soon as possible. Instead, they focused on building a solid foundation for the business by iterating the platform to the point where they were solving critical problems for companies. Klaviyo did eventually raise a modest amount of venture capital over the years, but it wasn’t until last year when they raised a major growth round of $150M to add some high octane gas to the fire. Today, Klaviyo has over 400 employees and its platform helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing campaigns. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Andrew’s thoughts on space travel, the recent SpaceX launch, and the possibility of landing on Mars * The early foundational years of Andrew’s career. * A deep dive into the story of the early bootstrapping days at Klaviyo and how they started to get traction. * Why they finally decided to raise funding. * Lessons learned around scaling a company to over 400 employees. * Why resumes should be in chronological order - not reverse chronological. * Advice for founders on how to stay organized and productive * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

When I think of Chet, I think of an entrepreneur who is a builder and a massive risktaker. He has a track record of building companies that are completely transforming industries and disrupting the status quo. It’s a go big or go home philosophy, where the stakes are high and you can’t fear taking on the very powerful and established incumbents. In order to build the next generation of transformative companies, we need entrepreneurs like Chet who are up for the challenge and thrive on building real products that solve real problems at scale. His latest company is Starry which is building a better kind of internet service. When it comes to selecting your internet service provider, most consumers don’t have a choice. This leads to poor service, bloated pricing plans, and a bad customer service experience. We all know there needs to be a better option, especially if you are part of the rapidly growing segment of wire cutters. Starry is reinventing everything from the top - down with next generation technology and lightning fast internet service. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Chet’s foundational years and his first entrepreneurial venture as a teenager. * Navic Networks, Chet’s first company which transformed the interactive TV ad market and was acquired by Microsoft. * The full story behind Aereo, which was bringing over-the-air television on internet-connected devices and we discuss the legal battles that took matters all the way to the Supreme Court. * A deep dive into the story of Starry and the complexity of building a next-generation internet service provider. * Advice for founders on attracting the best talent for their teams. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Bill has a knack for noticing market opportunities where a company can scale. As either a founder or executive, the majority of the companies he’s been involved in have exited. We discuss this topic in terms of how he decides where to focus his time and how he evaluates the potential market need. Earlier in his career, he was a founding team member of SpeechWorks which went public, merged with Scansoft, and later became known as Nuance. Another more recent success story was Black Duck Software, where he was CTO & EVP of Engineering. The company was acquired by Snopsys. He is now the CEO of Fairwinds, the Kubernetes enablement company. The company’s software and services enable organizations to run secure, reliable, and scalable Kubernetes infrastructure. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A journey through Bill’s career and all the different companies. * The background story on Fairwinds which was formed via the acquisition of ReactiveOps and all the details on how they are helping their customers. * What is Kubernetes and why it is so popular these days? * Advice for founders on figuring out their Go-to-Market strategy. * Bill’s thoughts on how to build a career path to a CEO position. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Andrew is a serial entrepreneur with multiple companies under his belt like urbantag, which was tackling the trillion-dollar online-to-offline commerce market. It was acquired in 2012. His latest company is Teampay, which was born out of a realization around how software was helping companies collaborate and put controls in place across pretty much every business function. For example, Github helps with your source code repository, Marketo for your marketing cloud. So, what controls access to your company’s money? It was this realization that led him down the path of starting Teampay. The company’s distributed spend management platform gives high-growth companies total control and real-time visibility over purchasing, while empowering employees with smart, policy-driven access to company spend. Teampay has raised $16M in funding and is headquartered in New York City. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The end-user era and the shift towards a decentralized work environment. * Andrew’s journey into startups and a look at prior companies. * The full background story and all the details about Teampay. * Very unique advice on how to get a warm intro with your ideal investors. * How to scale your initial team and culture. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

You’ve probably heard of the PayPal Mafia on the west coast. In Boston, you have the Endeca mafia, where lots of alumni have gone off to start companies like Toast, Salsify, Parallel Wireless, and many others. Andrew is part of this crew, as he joined Endeca in the early days and was part of the team that helped scale the company, which later resulted in an acquisition by Oracle. Andrew’s latest company is Jellyfish, the leading Engineering Management Platform (EMP), which provides complete visibility into engineering organizations, the work they do, and how they operate. The company announced a $12M Series A round of funding back in May, which was led by Accel and Wing Venture Capital. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Andrew’s decision to study computer science at MIT and how working at a handful of internships helped shape his career. * A deep dive into his experience at Endeca, plus another startup he founded called LoopIt. * All the details on Jellyfish and how they are enabling the business of engineering. * Advice to entrepreneurs on idea creation and what is a viable product to build a business around. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

I have always been fascinated by how video games are created, especially the complexity of today’s games and storylines. So, I could wait to talk with Jon about this topic since his last company created games for major franchises like Game of Thrones and Star Trek. Jon is a serial entrepreneur going back to the very young age of 13 years old when he monetized his first game. He went on to start a very successful content management software company called Eprise which went public. After selling Disruptor Beam to Tilting Point, he is now focused on his latest startup called Beamable. The company enables game makers to easily add social, commerce and content management features to their games with drag-and-drop prefabs. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The story of how he monetized his first game, Space Empire Elite. * A journey through Jon’s entrepreneurial background and the companies he founded. * Disruptor Beam and how they were able to land such iconic titles. * How Beamable came to fruition and all the details on the company and its technology. * What the future of the video game industry may look like. * Advice for starting a career in the gaming industry. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

I have been a long time listener to Sal’s podcast, so I was really excited to collaborate with him for this bonus episode. If you’ve ever wanted to learn about the background story of VentureFizz and The VentureFizz Podcast, then this is an episode that you don’t want to miss. In this podcast interview, we also discuss: * My background and the entrepreneurial roots and work ethic that I learned from my dad. * How I got to the point of founding my own recruitment firm, which focused on working with venture-backed companies. * Lots of details on Sal’s professional career and how he got into angel investing, plus the details on his area of focus for making investments. * Tips on building a podcast and growing your audience, including the #1 channel that you should be focused on. * And, a lot of fun back and forth banter. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

TJ has a legendary background in the tech industry having founded and run several successful companies through multiple decades. A lot of these successes have been in partnership with another tech legend, that being Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and many other companies. Their latest company together is Beyond Identity which recently announced $30M in funding. The company is creating a new identity management platform that will hopefully put an end to all those dreaded and not so very secure passwords we all use. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * TJ’s foundational years - growing up in Hawaii and studying Computer Science at Virginia Tech. * The details on his role at Silicon Graphics as President & CEO, plus examples around how the company’s innovative technology was being leveraged. * His experience as Founding Chairman & CEO of @Home Network, where we discuss its merger with Excite, which was laying down the foundation of how consumers access the internet and content. * A journey through his other entrepreneurial endeavors as an operator or investor, including Ibotta, where he is a board member and investor. * All of the details on Beyond Identity and why this could be one of their biggest companies yet. * Advice on building out your leadership team. * And so much more.

I have been wanting to interview Lee for a long time, as he has played a key role in the early stages of two iconic tech companies. He was an early employee at PayPal and was part of the founding team at LinkedIn before becoming a venture capitalist. Needless to say, he’s worked with some amazing people like Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, David Sacks, and others. He shares some awesome stories around each company, especially how LinkedIn started to gain traction in the early days. Today, Lee is a Partner & Co-Founder of NextView Ventures, a seed stage investment firm that is focused on investing into companies that are redesigning the Everyday Economy. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Lee’s background and why he was so interested in joining a startup after college. * How he met Elon Musk which landed him a job at the startup he was working on that turned into PayPal. * A deep dive into the early foundational years at LinkedIn. * His transition into VC and all the details on NextView Ventures. * Why you shouldn't hire specialists for your startup. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.