ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown: Recent Episodes
ScreamingBox
Thinking about starting a business that will make you $BILLIONS! Wondering what type of company to form with your partners?
We are going to get an accounting of what are the best company structures for your start-up and other accounting and tax advice from Shauna - The Tax Goddess in this ScreamingBox podcast interview.
In this 3rd episode of our podcast Interview series, we will be interviewing Shauna Wekherlien CPA, founder of Tax Goddess Business Services - to have a real accounting of corporate formation strategies, cutting-edge technologies for teams, navigating SAAS taxes, and celebrating women in the tech industry.
Your host is Dave Erickson, and his usual co-host Botond Seres is on holiday this week, which makes this podcast part of our interview series.
Shauna is a trailblazer in the field of finance and is a tech-savvy business expert in the world of corporate taxation. With years of experience and a passion for empowering businesses, she is the founder of Tax Goddess Business Services.
In this podcast Interview, we are going to get an accounting on which is the best company structure to start you business, SAAS accounting tips, Managing Remote workers and Women In Technology.
00:04 - Podcast begins.
01:54 - How did you get into the field of accounting?
05:00 - The tax strategy game of chess.
08:20 - What is the best kind of company entity?
14:11 - Start with an llc or switch to a c corp.
17:53 - Is there any liability associated with your business?
24:00 - Advice on how to start a business.
29:51 - How to choose the right tax software.
33:19 - Hire somebody in operations.
38:39 - Selling software on the internet.
44:03 - The importance of good communications.
48:53 - Experience as a woman in the technology space.
55:03 - Advice for young women interested in technology.
58:00 - Conclusion
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
GUEST: Shauna Wekherlien CPA = https://www.linkedin.com/in/taxgoddess/
Tax Goddess Business Services = https://taxgoddess.com/
To catch up with all our Podcasts, please go to = https://podcast.screamingbox.com/
Additional Info:
If you have dealt with other CPA firms, you will find Tax Goddess Business Servicesâs approach very refreshing â We are not a stuffy accounting firm, yet we understand that managing your accounting and taxes is serious business.
We know that bookkeeping is boring and filing tax returns is a pain⌠we get it. Accounting is a major pain in the gluteus maximus, and it diverts you from what you should be focusing on.
But it doesnât bother our collective gluteus â We love this stuff!
We are a bunch of highly-qualified finance professionals with tons of experience and results we can brag about. The Tax Goddess team is composed of a seasoned CPA, energetic tax savings experts, hardworking bookkeepers, and other finance gurus with awesome personalities at no extra charge!
Tax Goddess Business ServicesÂŽ is serious about your business. We have earned the extremely rare designation as a âCertified Tax Coachâ and we take a very strategic approach to tax planning with a main goal of reducing tax burden on your business.
We have been serving Arizona since 2004, and in the past year alone we saved our clients millions of dollars â We can help you save money too! In fact, we guarantee that with our knowledge, education, and training we can put a strategy together to reduce your business taxes and related gluteus maximus pains!
Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, Masters in Taxation, and Certified Tax Coach
President & CEO
Speaking English fluently is one of the most important business skills you can master, if you want to quickly grow your business globally!
There is now a new tool that can make you sound like a Million Dollars! This App uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help your pronunciation and speaking of English. We are going to put every word about fluency AI - under the microscope on this month's ScreamingBox podcast.
In this podcast, Dave Erickson and Botond Seres are going to try to understand language fluency with Ido Cohen - CEO of Fluento.ai.
Leading up to founding Fluento.ai, Ido was VP of Products for Dreamdata after working for Permutive and Microsoft on product development. He is also a mentor on Plato, helping product professionals at different levels build their careers and helping them focus on collaboration, prioritization, roadmap building vision and leadership skills.
Idoâs latest product is Fluento.ai, which is here to assist you throughout your English fluency journey - and creates a similar learning situation as if you were in an English class.
In this podcast, we are going to become fluent in how AI can help you become a better English speaker..
Summary:
00:03 - Why speaking English fluently is one of the most important business skills.
00:55 - Ido Cohen introduction.
02:01 - How to use AI to improve your fluency and confidence in English.
05:12 - Fluency is about imitating yourself.
10:58 - The most effective exercises in the classroom is to get two people to roleplay different situations.
16:29 - Integrating the AI to understand speakers and what they are saying.
21:07 - How to measure fluency and proficiency.
25:58 - Speaking to a specific goal, what do you do when youâre stuck?
32:47 - How does Fluento help you with slang?
36:47 - Why do some people want to sound more British and how to adapt the feedback based on that.
42:32 - Developing social skills and adapting your language.
48:55 - What keeps users engaged is not just the material, but also the experience.
50:51 - Cost of Language learning.
52:41 - How can businesses use Fluento?
55: 28 - What does the future of language learning look like?
59:37 - Conclusion.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Ido Cohen = https://www.linkedin.com/in/hireido/
Fluento.ai = https://www.fluento.ai/
To catch up with all our Podcasts, please go to = https://podcast.screamingbox.com/
You can find the video version of this Podcast here =Â
How to grow your Start-up and jump start your sales! What is your company's business culture and how can you use it to grow your business?
In this monthâs podcast, Dave Erickson and Botond Seres get some culture in this ScreamingBox podcast by talking with Russel Dubree - founder of Performance Faction.
Russel is a well respected business coach who is insanely passionate about helping Business owners scale their business in a way that brings profit, purpose, and meaning in their lives. After a tour as an officer in the United States Air Force, and a few other start-ups in between, he co-founded the digital agency Lifeblue.
After 15 years he sold a majority stake in the company in 2017 at an eight figure valuation. Near the end of 2021, he felt his time as a digital agency operator had reached its end, and decided to focus on helping other business owners create successful businesses that are profitable, sustainable, and built to last. To this end, he started Performance Faction Consulting; to help businesses reach their full potential by setting up the right foundations and a business culture needed for success.
In this podcast, we are going to discuss business culture and how it affects your growth - from startup to sales - how to make growth happen.
Summary:
00:04 - Does your startup or small business culture matter?
02:21 - What is business culture? What does it mean?
10:36 - What advice do you have for small businesses that have a small team with different personalities?
17:36 - The importance of having a mission statement in the beginning.
21:49 - How to internalize the concept of vastly different levels of motivation.
25:30 -Â As a business scales up, how do you keep it so that you can still motivate people not just with money, but with relationships and treating them well?
29:48 -Â How to mitigate or how to mediate the earn more/spend less conflict?
32:21 - Why remote work is still a hot topic for business owners.
36:26 - What role does AI play in business culture?
43:55 - Some people welcome change and want change, some people donât.
47:29 - Most small businesses struggle with sales and culture, how do they deal with that?
51:29 - How much should a business go into planning and figuring out what type of people they want in their business?
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Russel Dubree = https://www.linkedin.com/in/russeldubree/
Performance Faction = https://performancefaction.com/
To catch up with all our Podcasts, please go to = https://podcast.screamingbox.com/
For this monthâs ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast, your hosts Dave Erickson and Botond Seres, are interrogating Justin Jackson, who is the co-founder of Transistor.fm, a podcast hosting and distribution platform. They do podcast hosting and analytics for folks like indie hackers, Vegas Golden Knights, and VH1. ScreamingBox also uses Transistor.fm to distribute this podcast to 15 of the most popular podcasting platforms, such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify, and many others.
Previously, Justin was Head of Product Marketing for multiple startups and he's been blogging about bootstrapping in business since 2008. You can listen to his podcast at justinjackson.ca Justin also hosts the âbuild your SaaSâ podcast and publishes a companion newsletter, about what it's like to bootstrap a SaaS. He also runs Mega Maker, a community for bootstrappers and wrote marketing for developers, a book and course for programmers who want to learn marketing.
All his links are down below.
In this Podcast we explore and answer many questions of about Bootstrapping SaaS products and the Podcast market:
0:00 - Introduction to Justin Jackson.
1:49 - The importance of having an open schedule for your business.
4:56 - How did you get into the software industry?
11:06 - When starting Transistor, were you looking to fix some problems in podcasting?
16:24 - The rise of software as a service
23:59 - Whatâs the shift in the podcast hosting market?
25:02 - How do you get people to use or find your SaaS product?
32:00 - How bootstrapping and bootstrapped companies compete on the world stage.
36:36 - The democratization of technology and podcasting.
40:00 - The importance of open protocols
44:05 - How do you get a SaaS product to start growing its user base?
53:08 - The importance of partnering
54:51 - Building relationships and cultivating a lifestyle for your career.
59:59 - The new resume (CV) and how to build it.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Justin Jackson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinijackson/
Build Your SaaS Podcast = https://saas.transistor.fm/
MegaMaker Community = https://megamaker.co/
To catch up with all our Podcasts, please go to = https://podcast.screamingbox.com/
You can find the video version of this Podcast here = https://youtu.be/imNotYs6Wxk
Web3.0 (also known as Web3) is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics, AR and VR.The term "Web3" was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency enthusiasts, large technology companies, and venture capital firms.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is incredibly broad and allows NFTs to have many different categories, features and utilities including projects surrounding art, music, and much more as token-gated software is developed. Some NFTs are 1/1s while others are editions, or part of a larger collection, but all NFTs use blockchain technology to verify digital ownership of the asset.
In this Podcast, your host Dave Erickson and Botond Seres discuss many of the details of Web.30 and the growing NFT art movement with Web3.0 expert and surreal artist Rylee Armond from Omnicake.
During this podcast, we ask some of the critical questions that people have about Web3.0, NFTâs and Digital Art:
- 1:29 - Tell us about your art, and how you got started in web 3.0 technologies.
- 5:56 - Can you explain how NFTs work? What's that connection between an NFT and art?
- 7:27 - What kind of IP rights are tied to NFTâs? Is this like the right to the art?
- 9:27 - What is your definition of Web 3.0?
- 11:47 - What do you think is the connection between web 3.0 And The Metaverse?
- 14:27 - How easy is it for someone to start producing NFTs and making art something that people can own and putting together a room in The Metaverse?
- 26:55 - What will be the impact of the Ethereum merge and will it make it no longer profitable to mine Ethereum?
- 27:50 - Does it mean that crypto mining has kind of run its course and is no longer very profitable?
- 29:17 - If you are an artist, and you are going to put up an NFT of some of your art, do you need to go through the minting process?
- 29:54 - What does it cost to mint an NFT?
- 32:18 - In putting your art on an NFT, what was your goal of why you would do that? Why were you making your art in NFT? Was there a specific reason?
- 35:32 - What makes for a good NFT experience, whether it's art, or whether it's a piece of music, or a piece of code?
- 37:23 - How do people determine the value of an NFT in the art world?
- 39:30 - What type of scams or tricks are people trying to do in the NFT market?
- 42:00 - What is Omnicake? What kind of business is it?
- 45:07 - Are there any downsides to having NFTs or putting your art as NFTs? Are there challenges or downsides that people need to be aware of?
- 50:24 - What's the process for selling an NFT? And how difficult is it?
- 52:22 - If I just made an NFT, minted it and just stuck it up on any listing place what are the odds of somebody saying, Oh, wow, I want that, I'm gonna buy it?
- 53:20 - So if you are not a developer, and you wanted to kind of become a developer who could do their own blockchain and NFT work, besides some basic web 2.0 technologies, what would be the things that you would have done or what kind of development tools or languages would you need to learn in order to do that?
- 54:35 - Why are most smart contracts coded in Java?
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Rylee Armond = https://www.linkedin.com/in/rylee-armond/
Additional Info = https://linktr.ee/ryleenft
To catch up with all our Podcasts, please go to = https://podcast.screamingbox.com/
You can find the video version of this Podcast here = https://youtu.be/DB1oo5P20Vo
For this monthâs podcast we have invited Chris LaFerla, the Founder & CEO of Tatem, a B2B software company redesigning how work gets done.
Tatemâs first product is one of the simplest project management platforms on the planet, a radically different approach to project and task management.
Tatem is not just simple, itâs radically different, designed to help teams love their work. Though Tatem's journey began mere months ago in 2022, the business has already raised a $2.5M Seed Round, garnered an impressive roster of investors such as Caffeinated Capital, Signia Venture Partners, and The House Fund, and is empowering a growing number of teams.
Prior to Tatem, Chris Co-Founded his first company (an online marketplace for interior designers) and was an early employee at Faire working on strategy & finance. He started his career as an investment banker at Barclays covering internet and software. He holds a B.S. from UC Berkeleyâs Haas School of Business, where he studied as a Regents' and Chancellor's Scholar.
In this podcast, show hosts Dave Erickson and Botond Seres explore with Chris what it takes to create, design and build a project management SaaS application. We ask and get answers to weighty questions such as:
- How did he start Tatem?
- How did you take your kernel of an idea and actually turn it into the initial MVP?
- Why are current Project management apps so difficult to use?
- Why do many Project management platforms lack complete Metrics?
- What kind of Metrics should Task and Project Management Software have?
- What is the role that AI might have in task management and project management?
- If you're going to implement AI, how would you use AI in project management or task management?
- You can make something really simple, but it's not very usable, because it's so narrow. How do you make something simple that is also very usable?
- Why the name Tatem, does Tatem have a special meaning?
- What do you think was one of the biggest lessons that you learned in developing Tatem?
- Which metric is the most important in Project Management?
- What are your thoughts on trying to make it so that you don't cross that boundary and turn a person into basically a robot processing tickets as fast as they can? To keep their velocity known?
Our Podcast host Dave Erickson and Botond Seres get the answers to all these questions and more in this monthâs exciting ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast. You can catch all episodes at https://podcast.screamingbox.com/
If you wish to try Tatem for free, please go to: https://app.tatem.com/sign-up
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Chris Laferla = https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherlaferla/
Tatem Links:
Website = https://tatem.com/
LinkedIn = https://www.linkedin.com/company/tatemcompany/
Twitter = @tatem_co
https://screamingbox.com/
The Metaverse is Internet and Web 3.0 components that are viewed by many as a single, universal and immersive virtual world. Visiting this virtual âworldâ is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. Many people simply say the metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connections with users.
In this Podcast, your host Dave Erickson and Botond Seres discuss many of the details of the Metaverse with Web 3.0 and Metaverse expert Ely Santos from Metavertising.
The term "metaverse" was first described 30 years ago in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, as a combination of "meta" and "universe."Â
Currently, Metaverse development is often linked to advancing virtual reality technology due to increasing demands for user immersion, and now the primary motivator of the development of the Metaverse is Facebook, which changed itâs name to Meta just to show the world where it is going as a company.
In this Podcast, we start by discussing exactly what the Metaverse is, and how it is currently accessed and developed.
This raises lots of questions, such as:
- How much of Web 2.0 technologies are now considered Web 3.0 and part of the Metaverse?
- Can people experience the Metaverse without having AR goggles and all that VR stuff?
- Are they going to have to come up with either an updated browser or a new type of browser to allow people to experience Web 3.0 and the Metaverse more fully?
- How big a challenge is the interoperability of Metaverse components between the different sections of the Metaverse?
- What will shopping and buying be like in the Metaverse?
- What are some of the examples and case studies of how companies are trying to market and sell in the Metaverse?
- What are Avatars and what are some of the issues surrounding them in the Metaverse?
- What is the future of 3D virtual fashion?
- How is the Metaverse dealing with race and inclusion?
- How can businesses figure out how to do business in the Metaverse, and how they can take advantage of the Metaverse to grow their businesses?
- What roles do NFTâs play in the Metaverse?
Join our hosts and our guests, as they swim around the Metaverse and answer all these questions and more.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:Â
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Ely Santos = https://www.linkedin.com/in/ely-santos-digital/
Metavertising Podcast = https://open.spotify.com/show/33K6wejSodXtCPrVuIvVwM
For this episode (July #15), we have Botond join in to discuss CleanCode ethics and techniques and get into the technical aspects and applications of CleanCode with our special guest Robert Martin.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Robert âUncle Bobâ = https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-martin-7395b0/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleancoder/
www.CleanCoder.com
In this Podcast, we get Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin to go into detail about what is Clean Code, and how developers, companies and agencies can adapt Clean Code methodologies to advance their development practices.
Robert is considered a leading authority on Clean Code and Agile software development, and some of his instructional videos have had millions of views.
For this episode (June #14), we focus on Clean Code basics, concepts and business cases, and in next monthâs podcast (July #15) we will continue with Robert and have Botond join in to discuss Clean Code techniques and get into the technical aspects and applications of Clean Code.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Robert âUncle Bobâ = https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-martin-7395b0/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cleancoder/
www.CleanCoder.com
One of the most critical challenges for web based businesses such as B2B Services, eCommerce and Web Store Fronts, is how do you get the traffic flowing to the website, to actually convert into some kind of action? A big part of that question is also the question of what is the customer journey that traffic is looking for? James Hipkin has been dealing with these questions and challenges for many years, and has a great wealth of experience in Website traffic Conversion.
James has worked in Marketing and Advertising for almost 40 years, with clients such as Sprint, Apple, NestlĂŠ, and Toyota. He never loses track of whatâs important and he believes that when done right, Marketing creates value for customers as well as the business.
Today, James is passionate about websites and helping the rest of us understand online marketing. His clients value his jargon-free, common-sense approach.
In the podcast, we discuss several subject such as:
What are some of the realistic goals and priorities that a business might have for their website traffic?
When building or putting together the concept of your website, should you use a copywriter?
What is the difference between conversion versus confirmation?
What are the different types of call to actions?
How would you categorize call to actions?
How do you gamify the experience for visitors?
What is the Website Marketing Funnel, and how is it different from the Sales Funnel?
What are website traffic micro transactions and how do you use them?
Do technical things like page loading speeds, or eliminating page errors impact website visitors level of trust?
What exit intent pop-ups?
What is decoy pricing and is it effective or something you should do?
Do Chatbots help people or help websites convert traffic into a call to action, or are they best used for the Sales Funnel?
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: James Hipkin = https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshipkin/
From Sanity.io's website: Sanity.io is the platform for structured content. With Sanity.io you can manage your text, images, and other media with APIs. You can also use the open-source single page application Sanity Studio to quickly set up an editing environment that you can customize. With Sanity.io you have access to a bunch of APIs, libraries, and tooling that helps you leverage the benefits of having all your content available as a single source of truth.
Sanity Datastore
Querying for content
When you start a new project on Sanity.io, youâll get access to the real-time datastore. This is a schemaless backend that lets you store and query JSON documents, and subscribe to real-time changes. It comes with a query API that uses the query language GROQ to lets you quickly filter down to the documents you want and project exactly the data structured you want your content in. GROQ also let you join documents, both by values and by explicit bi-directional references.
Creating and updating documents
The data store also comes with a powerful API for mutation and patches. With an HTTP POST request, you can send transactions described in JSON which let you create and delete documents, set and unset keys with values, and change those values, even in nested structures. It also lets you update text strings using diff-match-patch, and work with arrays. You donât have to deal with document locking, and you can use revision ids if you want to explicitly prevent race conditions.
The asset pipeline
Sanity.io also comes with a complete asset pipeline that lets you upload files and images. When you upload images, Sanity.io will analyze them for metadata such as dimensions and color palettes, and extract a low-quality-image-placeholder data string and save this to an asset document. It's also possible to enable EXIF and GeoLocation metadata, which is turned off by default because of privacy. The asset CDN also accepts query parameters to transform images on demand. You can request custom resolution, formats, cropping, and out-of-the-box optimizations (such as webp).
Utility endpoints
The datastore also has other endpoints that let you quickly export all your documents in one go, query document revision history, set fine-grained custom access control, integrate with custom authentication controls, and set up webhooks.
Sanity Studio
Sanity Studio is the place where you edit and manage your content. Sanity Studio is an open-source CMS that connects to Sanity.ioâs datastore. Itâs a single page application written in React and published on npm. All its source code is published on GitHub. You can set up content types and their fields by setting up your schemas in plain JavaScript which Sanity Studio uses to build the editing environment. Once you have done your changes locally, you can build and deploy the Studio on any web host, for example by running sanity deploy in the command-line tool which will deploy the Sanity Studio to our servers.
Editorial workflows
If you want to change the way documents are structured and listed out for custom editorial workflows, you can do so using Structure Builder. With templates for initial values, you can give editors a head start by letting them create new documents of a type with prefilled values. You can define field validation with out-of-the-box methods, or write completely custom methods with JavaScript. You can also create your own widgets for the Dashboard, or whole custom Studio tools to augment editorial workflows, make shortcuts, and so on.
Advanced customization
Sanity Studio was designed for customization. It is what you want to use instead of building your own CMS. It comes with a bunch of extension points and a plugin ecosystem.
You donât need to know React to set up Sanity Studio, but if you do, you can customize it further by creating your own custom input components and custom previews. Thereâs very little need for state management since youâll be dealing with real-time content that propagates into the components via the props.
Accounts and projects
Users and organizations
You can create a new account on Sanity.io using your Google or GitHub credentials, or by making a new account with an email and password. An account can have access to any number of projects that youâre added to or have created yourself. You can either invite new, or add existing user accounts to get access to your projects. Users can be given different roles and access rights. You can also create organizations with billing information and connect your projects to those.
Gotcha
Looking to add a project to an organization? Projects are always assigned to an individual upon creation and can then be moved to an organization via the Manage interface.
Projects, datasets, and tokens
A project gives you a unique ID that you can use to connect to your datastore. Your JSON documents are stored in datasets. Documents within a dataset can reference each other, but not between. Assets that you upload to the datastore are also tied to a dataset. You can export and import datasets, and add more to your plan if you need to. You can toggle visibility for datasets to be private or public, or you can set up custom access permissions for more fine-grained visibility. Tokens are randomly generated strings that you can use to give your applications and services different types of access to your projects.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Simen Svale Skogsrud = https://www.linkedin.com/in/simenss/
Izzy Aspler heads a consulting agency that is focused on UX Design, market fit analysis and MVP development strategies. For this monthâs podcast, Dave Erickson, Iman Kaur and Botond Seres grill Izzy on the various aspects of Product Market Fit. In other words, how can you answer the questions that all Investors ask - âHow do you know your product fits the market need?â
Izzyâs wide range of business experience includes product design, leading design teams and holding business strategy sessions with stakeholders.
He has run his desktop publishing company since 2002 and began working with startups in 2016. He's predominantly focused on visual strategy, having worked as a technical illustrator, film animator, and storyboard designer. He combines those with UX design and programming knowledge to advise on the MVP's development process and teach underlying methods on finding a market fit.
As a Product Market Fit expert, he is bombarded by our hosts with questions such as: What is your definition of Product Market Fit? Can you describe at a very high-level, the basic Product Market Fit Process? Who in an organization is usually responsible for Product-Market Fit? How is Product-Market Fit Measured?
Laugh, cry and shake your head with our hosts and our special guest, as they try to stuff the concept of Product Market Fit into their heads and how businesses can use these techniques to build successful products.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Izzy Aspler = https://www.linkedin.com/in/izzyaspler/
Join our Host Dave Erickson and Botond Seres as they grill our guest Tyler Johnson about his 25 year experience entering new global markets, and the excitement of overcoming cultural and linguistic challenges and help Dell Technologies to enter the highly competitive Chinese and Asian markets.
Tyler Johnson is the Founder of Laowai Enterprises, a consulting company that specializes in go-to market strategies, product fit, use cases, sales/marketing, revenue streams across foreign countries and unknown environments. He advises executives and founders across medium sized companies and start-up automation technology companies on new products and alternative markets. He provides strategic views on various countries in order to analyze geopolitical risks, political strategies or geopolitical strategies for products and for offerings.
He spent 20+ years with Dell Technologies in Go To Market, Sales, Marketing across hardware/software/ services, and spent 10 of those years living in Shanghai China building Dellâs presence in China.
He is on the Board of advisors for the George H W Bush Foundation on US-China Relations, and is a Board Member Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce.
Tyler is also a Published Author with his book "The Way of The Laowai: The Importance of International Self-Awareness for Business.â
Laugh, cry and nod your head with our hosts and our special guest as they probe the darkness and opportunities surrounding foreign markets and cultures.
Find the answer to critical questions about entering new international markets: What should founders do who are looking to go outside of their home market into international markets? What are some of the things they need to think about and look at in order for them to do that? How do you find out the market needs for a certain demographic in international markets? Are businesses going to be looking at starting a business in other countries to get an advantage in taxes, growth and markets? How critical was it when working with Dell and hardware and software services and products to understand what was actually being developed in the local market? How much of that study do you have to do and how did you do that in a market that you are not familiar with the language? For an SMB or a startup that wants to go into an international market, what should they be focusing on first?
Check out Tyler Johnsonâs website https://thewayofthelaowai.com/ and to order his book âThe Way Of The Laowai: The Importance of International Self-Awareness for Businessâ.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Tyler Johnson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-johnson-834a163/
No-code development is a type of web development that allows non-programmers and programmers to create software using a graphical user interface, instead of writing code.
For over 20 years, Jen Kramer has been teaching & practicing web design, No-Code and Low-Code technologies and the meaning of âquality websitesâ.
She has taught web design, educational technology, and storytelling principles to students from Harvard University and other academic institutions, as well as teaching in workshops and corporate environments. She recently gave a great talk at The No-Code Conference 2021.
She is a published author with her most recent book is âBefore You Code: Validate Your Idea, Build a Better Product, and Plan Your Way to Successâ, co-authored with Heather OâNeill. Her previous books include Joomla Start to Finish (2010) and Joomla 24-Hour Trainer (2011).
Jen earned a Bachelor's degree in biology at the University of North Carolina. And she got a Master's degree in Internet Strategy Management at the Marlboro College Graduate School, and a graduate certificate in Learning Design and Technology from Harvard University Extension School.
In this month's ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast, we ask Jen what she means by teaching about building âQuality Websitesâ? What does she mean by that and how does No-Code fit into that teaching?
We also asked about how in the past No-Code elements were not very flexible or customizable, has that changed recently? How do developers add customization to No-Code projects? How has No-Code developed in the last few years?
Other questions we interrogated our guest with were should you use a design tool like Figma first, or should you design right in the No-code platform like Webflow? What does she see for the future of No-Code platforms and as a business direction for developers and agencies?
Some of No-Code / Low-Code platforms mentioned in this Podcast:
https://bubble.io
https://carrd.co/
https://www.figma.com/
https://www.weweb.io/
https://www.wix.com/
https://wordpress.com/
Laugh, cry and shake your head with our hosts and our special guest, as they try to define what are No-Code and Low-Code technologies, and just how businesses and development agencies apply them for lower cost coding.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
GUEST: Jen Kramer = https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen4web/
Margaux Helmholz is a Mindset Mentor & Self Mastery Coach, Speaker & Trainer, as well as a Master NLP Practitioner.
Sheâs currently serving businessmen who have surpassed the 6 figure mark in their careers and are looking to move forward in life with greater fulfillment, purpose & direction that isnât defined by career & finances.
She has refined her coaching and mentoring skills to achieve dramatic results. Some client results include doubling income goals in half the amount of time expected, attracting aligned intimate partnership and achieving mental and emotional mastery.
Her menâs group coaching program is launching early 2022. The best way to reach out for support or with questions is directly to her email at margauxxhelmholz@gmail.com or connect via Instagram: @margauxmentoring.
Contact Info for Podcast Interview Guest Margaux Helmholz:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaux-helmholz-b681a81a1/
If you have any questions for our Podcast Host, she can be reached here:
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
On the December installment of the ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast, our hosts discuss Team Management and TeamOPS with our special guest Myron McMillin of Botany.io
Myron McMillin is an accomplished product management and software engineering leader with over 20 years of software experience across large enterprises and early-stage, high-growth companies. He has delivered B2B, B2C, SaaS, and mobile products that have generated millions in revenue and solved real problems for customers worldwide.
Throughout his career, he has helped some of the largest high-growth companies on the globe (in industries as diverse as enterprise software, life sciences, automotive, mobile technology, politics, and gaming) to create innovative and empathetic solutions that drove real change. He has been solving product problems and building bulletproof high-performance teams for the past 20 years.
Myron also led diverse teams from 2-200 that have touched every facet of product development, from product management to design to engineering to marketing. He knows firsthand how to get cross-discipline groups to align and perform at their best.
Having spent many years studying individual and team dynamics, especially in the trenches of product development, he has become a TeamOPS expert. He helped many teams to improve by making the work environment more human and focusing on building great habits, culture, continuous feedback, mentorship, and leadership. His current work focuses on creating better products, teams, and companies through incremental changes to behaviors, culture, and leadership. His most recent venture, botany.io, is transformative data-driven software built to act as a personal coach for software engineering teams.
Ever wanted to know how working on product development was different 20 years ago versus now? Is the productivity of software development 20 years ago similar to the set productivity that we have now? Is development a âteam sportâ and what does Myron mean by that? Is there a productivity difference between a large team or a small team? Are there any recurring personality patterns that tend to emerge within the team? What is the ideal team split between analysis and or architecture, developments and QA? Who should be the product owner, and how do they fit within a development team? Myron McMillin answers these questions and more in this episode of the ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast.
Laugh, cry and shake your head with our hosts and our special guest, as they try to solve the worldâs biggest team management problems in a 60 minute podcast.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts or Guest, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
Podcast Guest: Myron McMillin = https://www.linkedin.com/in/myronmcmillin/
Facebook has been in the news lately with stories of promoting false information, political bias, the destruction of human civilization as we know it. Our hosts Dave Erickson and Botond Seres discuss Facebook's situation and impact on society and how itâs algorithm for promoting the most divisive content is having a real impact on todayâs society as we know it. Is there a better way?
What about the impact the Internet as a whole is having on society and business? How much Internet is too much Internet? Dave and Botond try to figure out is there really a problem with how much time someone spends on the Internet, or is the problem really how they spend their time on the Internet?
On the November installment of the ScreamingBox Technology and Business Rundown podcast, our hosts also discuss the $1 Trillion monster known as Tesla. $1 Trillion really? Is this a mistake, or is this reality? Can this company, which is not even one of the top 5 largest auto manufacturers, really be worth more than the world's biggest automakers?
Laugh, cry and shake your head with our hosts as they try to solve the worldâs biggest problems in a 40 minute podcast.
If you have questions for our Podcast Hosts, you can reach them here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
For this month's Podcast, our hosts Dave Erickson, Iman Kaur and David Levai take a deep dive into their experience in the development world and talk about how they made the transition from other careers to that of becoming a developer. Find out what these developers were doing before they became developers, and how they made the decision to become developers.
Laugh, cry and shake your head with them as they relive the life situations that made them think that becoming a developer would be an improvement.
If you have any questions for our Podcast Hosts, then can be reached here:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
David Levai = https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamdavidlevai/
Join us in an interview with Tony Ma, a co-founder of Benten Technologies ( http://www.bententech.com/ ) a Social Impact Company focused on the healthcare industry. Tony goes deep into his successful journey in the world of management consulting for large Enterprise firms, and how his global success motivated him to build a business that would have a real and lasting social impact.
Together with their partners at the local, state, federal, and international levels, Benten Technologies is working hard each and every day to provide cost-effective solutions and services that transform the lives of people around the world. They are focused on providing evidence-based solutions and services that are flexible, scalable, and efficient for their partners. The results of their work have improved the lives of people in the community and increased returns on investments.
Benten Technologies utilizes its proven user-centered design and agile methodologies and expertise as its backbone in delivering value-driven business solutions. With their methodologies and fundamentals, they have been delivering impact-driven solutions to their customers and the community.
Why Benten Technologies? Because They Want To Make a Difference
They constantly and continuously collaborate with the community and customers to solve real world problems
They leverage industry-best practices to maximize outcomes and impact
They implement theory-driven and evidence-based solutions
They improve the lives of people in the community through transformative technological solutions and research
They develop education solutions so the children of tomorrow reach their full potential
Main Services:
Research & Development
Application Development
GUEST: TONY X. MA, PMP - PRESIDENT AND CO-FOUNDER
You can contact Tony via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-ma-46538b/
Tony is the President and Owner of Benten Technologies, Inc. He has a Masters's Degree in Telecommunications and Computer Networks and is a certified PMP with over 15 years of experience managing, implementing, and delivering solutions for global enterprises. His experience includes work in industries such as federal and state government, telecommunications, financial, and health care. His expertise includes implementation of Program Management Offices, IT strategic planning and analysis, Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) evaluations, and research and development (R&D). Tony has worked with many organizations and agencies including Veterans Health Administration, State of Maryland (all 64 agencies), NIH Institutes (NIA, NIDA, NICHD, NCI, NIMHD, and CDC), FDA, MedStar Health, clinical setting, and various universities (University of Alabama at Birmingham, George Washington University, Northwestern University, and others). His hobbies are spending time with his kids and reading with the occasional hacking at golf.
Connect with this month's hosts below:
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
Our guest Cameron Powell, the founder of Credoscore⢠discusses the digital social reality platform that will let ordinary people wield trillions in consumer spending power, and leverage the value of their labor, to vote, buy, invest, partner, and work according to their own values.
Credoscore was developed to address important moral and social questions that most people have when they purchase something. Does the company making the product or providing the services line up with my values? Does the product or service line up with my values? How close are they to my values?
What if the time you spent on social media created a real, positive impact â in the real world?
What if your every response changed the fortunes of big corporations, politicians, and governments â instantly, and measurably?
In fact, what if every corporation and politician carried a score, customized to you, that reliably told you exactly how much their values agreed with yours?
Just imagine what you could do.
Credoscore represents the Moral Price of a company, product or service. With a true moral price attached to your choices of transactions and relationships, youâll be able to send a powerful message and make some of lifeâs biggest decisions â who to work for, buy from, invest in, and vote for â in true alignment with your values.
We call this moral price a Credoscore. Credoscore gives you a non-partisan tool to help you make a mark on the world. When the values you express on the platform create your Credoscores, and you use them, you can make the world a better place.
MESSAGING AROUND STRUCTURAL DETAILS
Most public policy (aka the laws we get) is controlled by billionaires and corporations with billions of Dollars. Meanwhile, governments and corporations surveil us, rate us, and use the information and ratings for control over our lives. China offers us one vision of the future, monitoring everything its citizens do, assigning every human a secret âsocial credit scoreâ that denies them schools, jobs, and loans with no reason given.
But new technologies now give us an historic opportunity to turn the tables - and to punch up. Credoscore aims to harness those technologies to empower âWe the Peopleâ not only to rate the behavior of politicians and corporations but actually to hold them accountable and change their behavior. The Credoscore journey begins on a social media kind of platform. The output is a moral price, customized to the user, for every major corporation, politician, and product - to help us make better and more impactful decisions in life, work, investing, and voting.
Credoscores can be placed on all kinds of websites, to publicly gather Credoscore data and to display a Company's Credoscore or a Productâs Credoscore on an eCommerce site; which will give consumers the ability to buy products and services that line up with their values.
The Credoscore⢠digital social reality platform will let ordinary people wield trillions in consumer spending power, and leverage the value of their labor, to vote, buy, invest, partner, and work according to their own values. Peopleâs aggregated power will also influence corporationsâ policies, their campaign contributions, and the laws we get in ways that serve the many more than the few. Americans alone channel $15 trillion a year in consumer spending. Combining such market power with transparency and accountability can, at scale, change the world.
GUEST INFO:
Cameron Powell
Linkedin = https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronpowell1/
GENERAL BIO
A founder or early employee of six tech startups across as many cities, Cameron Powell has helped raise tens of millions from angels and VCs for his own companies, and advised startup founders whoâve collectively raised over $600M. Applying a unique system of evidence-based storytelling built on experience in law, business, writing, and public speaking, he and High Performance Story have worked within accelerator programs, Harvard Business School Startup Partners, and the One Harvard New Venture Competition to advise startups on how to build and pitch fundable business models. Cameron has a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Colorado, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Cameron recently published the books Ordinary Magic: Promises I Made My Mother Through Life, Illness, and a Very Long Walk and a novella, True History of the Camino de Santiago, and is currently working on a book on reinventing talent.
Connect with this month's hosts below:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
How do you take an idea for a digital product and make it real? Our hosts Dave Erickson and Botond Seres have a detailed discussion with our guest Razvan Statescu, CoFounder and CTO of Brunch, a website feedback app that copywriters and website developers can use to increase quality by facilitating and simplifying both internal and external feedback workflows.
The discussion hits on topics such as idea development, tech stacks, getting funding, planning for the future, challenges of getting good website feedback and how digital agencies can use Brunch to increase quality and efficiency.
For more information about our guest Razvan Statescu, his company Brunch and its product go to: www.UseBrunch.com
Connect with this month's hosts below:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
The newest update of Google Apps was just released, and our hosts Dave Erickson, Iman Kaur and Botond Seres explore the answers to popular questions about the Apps. How do you use Google? Do you know about the new features, access or languages? How do the new Google Meet and other communication tools compare?
The Google Apps discussion leads to a deeper topic of Cyber Security, the latest Ransomware attacks and how businesses protect themselves, or at least ask the basic security questions. Hacking is now more of an organized crime operation than just random hackers trying to break into business for the fun of it. Smaller companies aren't even aware of the hacking problem and tend to deal with it by thinking antivirus software is enough, and also think ransomware only happens to large enterprise companies.
Connect with this month's hosts below:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Iman Kaur = https://www.linkedin.com/in/imanpreet-kaur-b69264106/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
Remote Work, some people love it and some donât. What about companies? Smaller businesses may like the light overhead requirements of remote work, but what about all those bigger companies who are not paying for office buildings that are empty?
For this podcast, join our hosts Dave Erickson, Kenlyn Terai and Botond Seres as we remotely examine where the remote work trend is going, what are the advantages and disadvantages and what are the tools and techniques that help make remote work better.
One of the main problems with remote work is that it's a two-dimensional kind of situation and people are working three and four-dimensional. So, with remote communication and remote working, you're only able to talk and say some things on video, and it is very different from meeting somebody in an office. There's a productivity issue here and there's also a personality issue. Letâs say you're just kind of having a conversation at the office, and maybe you bump into someone in the hallway, you can read a lot from body gestures and you can have a random conversation that might yield a new idea. So, a major issue in remote communications and remote work is that you donât have that kind of communication.. I think companies are seeing this and they have indicated that in a lot of the surveys that remote work has productivity taking a hit.
What about Creativity taking a hit with remote work? We discuss this much deeper in the Podcast.
Connect with this month's hosts below:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
Kenlyn Terai = https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenlynterai/
If youâre interested in all the latest happenings in and around the tech world and how it affects business, then youâre in the right place! Each month on ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown we discuss the latest digital technologies, analyze which technologies are gaining traction in the market, and examine the different ways those technologies are impacting or will affect business in the future. The show features guests who will share how technologies have impacted their lives and businesses and share their unique experiences.
Our guests will include experts in technology and digital development, CEOâs and CIOâs, business analysts, and technology and business thought leaders; who will help us take a thoughtful journey to explore the intersection of technology and business.
Connect with this month's hosts below:
Dave Erickson = https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveerickson1/
Botond Seres = https://www.linkedin.com/in/botondseres/
Kenlyn Terai = https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenlynterai/