The Pitchwerks Podcast: Recent Episodes
Pitchwerks
Want to know how the best sales & marketing people think? Dreaming of a new career or a startup? Spend your time wisely - on personal & professional development. Learn everything from startup sales and initial marketing to account management and advertising.
Scot MacTaggart has been a sales rep, a marketer, a manager, a consultant, an executive and an advisor for over 20 years. He created The Pitchwerks Podcast to help you to reach your business goals by learning from the experiences of others.
Each week, Scot and his network of contacts provide insights and examples that let the audience see the world through fresh eyes.
This is our last episode of the year, and we’ve brought in a big guest for it! Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto is in the studio, telling Scot MacTaggart about how he and the city are working to attract top businesses and individual talents with a “4P” strategy that goes above and beyond the usual thinking. Mayor Peduto shares his ideas of how the city will further promote entrepreneurship, and cites Andrew Moore of Carnegie Mellon and Google fame in his argument for clean air and clean water as key tools to bring the best employers and opportunities to the city.
In honor of Thanksgiving, we’re giving you a giant feast of information to sink your teeth into! Leah Jakaitis is the head of marketing science at Tulco Labs, which uses data science to help their companies to compete in certain targeted industries. This week, Leah tells Scot MacTaggart all about the accountability and “janitorial work” of her job, and the ways in which she sees marketing - online and offline - getting better at serving everyone involved.
When it comes to telling stories by producing videos and other types of content, very few people can match Jordon Rooney, just in terms of sheer numbers alone. Whether you’re talking about impressions, conversions, engagement, or clients, Jordon has an incredible track record. He started off as a young guy making positive content for younger audiences, and now he’s a slightly-older young guy who makes content for all kinds of people, including well-known brands that take in billions in revenue each year. This week, Jordon shares tons of insights and observations with Scot MacTaggart and the Pitchwerks audience.
This week, John Dick, CEO of the super-advanced market research firm CivicScience is in the Epicast studios, and he’s got the goods, turning his appearance into one of the strongest shows we’ve ever done. Talking with Scot MacTaggart about everything from unexplored market connections to the specific mechanics of the CivicScience sales funnel, John gives a master class in managing your business, explaining mature tactics and philosophies that are making CivicScience into the obvious choice for major consumer brands.
A few years ago, Jon Shanahan was making a good living, following a fairly mainstream career path, and decided to start a YouTube channel called The Kavalier, where he reviews and recommends mens clothing, shoes, watches and more. He’s now produced well over 600 videos, he has 90,000 subscribers, and The Kavalier is his full-time job. This week, Jon comes in to talk to Scot MacTaggart about how he mustered the courage and energy to pivot out of a perfectly good career situation, overcome the predictable doubts about his new path, and put food on the table for his kids.
This week, we take it a little easy and let Scot MacTaggart’s friend Mitch Turck bring Origin, his new card game into the studio so our celebrity panel can try it out! Origin is a combination of history trivia and poker, where the players guess when events happened, and try to convince other players that their guesses are correct. By day, Mitch is a transportation and autonomous vehicles expert, but in his spare time, he has been developing Origin to launch on Kickstarter where it can now be found. The other players in the room are Jared Raszewski, the CEO of Dissolves from last week’s show, and Marta Mazzoni from the popular Epicast travel and entertainment podcast Marta on the Move.
If you’re tired of measuring and scooping powdered drink mix, this week’s guest will interest you. Jared Raszewski is the founder of Dissolves, and he has invented the Tide Pod of drink mixes. Like the name says, the pod dissolves in your drink! It’s completely safe for all diets, and solves a lot of different problems of measuring, mixing, and cleanup. Jared talks to Scot about what he learned in the University of Pittsburgh’s Blast Furnace, Founder Institute and AlphaLab Gear, the decisions he has made along the way, and where he sees things going from here.
Whether you call it “people operations”, “human resources”, or something else entirely, you have to admit that there seems to be a lot more marketing floating around in the department that deals with people and talent and such lately. This week’s guest is Anessa Fike, the founder and CEO of Fike and Co, and she’s here to tell Scot MacTaggart all about that marketing mindset that has taken hold, and is now called “employer branding”. Anessa was once in charge of recruiting for The Motley Fool, one of the best-loved employers in the country, and has shared her knowledge with employers of all sizes ever since.
Jim Krenn is the creator and co-host of the successful “No Restrictions” podcast, now produced by the team at the Pittsburgh Current. He has stayed local to his hometown of Pittsburgh and still remained successful in his entertainment career, which now spans more than 30 years. Jim Krenn will always be a comedian -- many Pittsburghers think of him as the personality that put the WDVE morning show on the map, others as the backbone of Nickelodeon’s cult hit “Action League Now!”
This week, Jim comes into the Epicast Studios to talk with Scot MacTaggart about his many innovative and entrepreneurial reinventions - from his new “Yinzer” line of cards and candy to a brand-new live show in December that will feature him doing musical impressions - and the mindset that he uses to stay grounded so he can succeed.
It’s October, so let’s talk about Scarehouse, the nation’s top haunted attraction! Scot’s friend Katie Dudas - aka Dudders - is the sales and marketing director for the all of the various Scarehouse projects and attractions, and this week she opens her playbook all the way up for Pitchwerks listeners. Immersive experiences, data analytics, geography, social media, customer reviews, and what regular retailers can learn from attractions like Scarehouse and its sister properties -- everything’s on the table. If you’re in the area, be sure to thank Katie for sharing her insights by checking out the Scarehouse “Scream District” in Pittsburgh’s Strip District all this month!
From the individual operator working a sales or marketing job on their own, to the major ad agency or corporate brand, everyone’s in the media business right now. This week’s Pitchwerks features Andrew Knox of AKM Productions. AKM is the company behind a couple of media production toolboxes, such as Remaster Media and Kontent Core, and Andrew is the CEO and founder behind all of it. With Remaster Media, Andrew is looking to give content creators a fast way to master their products, and with Kontent Core, he provides professionally produced clips through an efficient self-service window. Andrew talks to Scot about making your own material, the complexities of licensing tracks, and what he has learned from building all of these products.
There was a time, not that long ago, when selling ads and sponsorships in a “pro-cannabis lifestyle magazine” would have sounded like an insurmountable challenge in Western Pennsylvania. Things are changing though, because Gina Vensel is bringing Sensi - a free, pro-cannabis lifestyle magazine - to her hometown of Pittsburgh. Gina has assembled the sponsors and advertisers necessary to make Sensi Pittsburgh successful, and this week she answers Scot MacTaggart’s questions on messaging, strategy and how Gina and her team target prospective clients as they build the Pittsburgh version of a well-known publication.
This week, we get a call from New York City! Elyce Henkin jumps on the line with Scot MacTaggart to talk about how marketing and advertising work in the world’s most competitive theater market. Elyce is the director of partnerships and brand experience at AKA NYC, and her firm handles the marketing for major Broadway shows like Come From Away, The Prom, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Elyce and Scot spend quite a bit of time talking about how important it is to find and use an authentic voice and approach when you’re marketing art with a specific message and point of view, and also analyze how partnerships are formed with brands like Kenneth Cole.
If you’re not familiar with the Awesome Foundation or Awesome Pittsburgh, then you have to check out this week’s show. If you go to an Awesome Pittsburgh pitch party, you’ll leave with a smile on your face, after seeing a bunch of locals proposing off-the-wall civic improvement ideas in search of a $1,000 grant. This week’s guest is Scot’s friend Mike Capsambelis, a founder and trustee of Awesome Pittsburgh who gets to vote on these pitches, and a very smart guy who oversees projects at Google. Mike explains what kinds of pitches they get, how they judge them, and what he thinks you should do if you want your project to be selected.
Later this year, Ingrid Cook and the SHzoom team will bring their long-awaited “Uptime” product to market to assist fleets with minor accidents and other types of service. Uptime’s release is the latest milestone on a 10-year journey that began when Ingrid had a regular job working for someone else. Along the way, Ingrid’s team has assembled a portfolio of patents, performed extensive customer discovery and market validation, and taken a beta version of the offering to test users. This week, Ingrid comes into the Epicast Studios to talk to Scot MacTaggart and the Pitchwerks audience about self-discipline, to debate about luck, and talk about some of the other paths that SHzoom could have taken.
Conturo Prototyping is a crazy place. They create the first few versions of new components so that inventions can be perfected and turned into new products. Right now, while you’re reading this, they’re building parts for new products that you probably haven’t even imagined, and they’re still a very young company. This week, John sits down with Scot MacTaggart to explain his company’s rapid success, the challenges of cash flow, and the business of building parts for autonomous trucks and mechanical lungs, and trying to level up so he can equip the International Space Station.
This week we’re talking strategic investment with our old friend Kevin Kelly, CEO of Rhabit Analytics, and Doug Reynolds, EVP of Development Dimensions International (DDI), who counts technology and innovation efforts among his responsibilities there. They came in the Epicast Studios to talk about their collaborative efforts, as DDI’s Venture Fund has now made a strategic investment in Rhabit, and to let Scot MacTaggart ask everything you ever wanted to know about strategic investment arrangements and the motivations behind them.
We did a show with Idea Foundry’s Jason Jones a few months back, but then lost the whole thing when our road kit ate the recording. Jason is a good sport though, and agreed to come back in to redo the show when he had time. We got him back into the studio, and halfway through, something major blew up on the utility pole and knocked out all the power on our block. NO EXCUSES IN THE PODCAST GAME THOUGH - we did the rest of the show with AA batteries and cell phone lights. You’ll be glad we did! Jason is a great guest, and Idea Foundry does important innovation and economic development work. Applications for their Equitable Entrepreneurship program (EE) are now being accepted through August 18th, and you are really going to want to tell someone about it.
This week’s guests are incredible! We have Toni Murphy, vice president of sales and marketing for Comcast, and Bill Flanagan, the iconic host of WPXI TV’s Our Region’s Business - and they’re in to talk about their work with the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. Specifically, they’re here talking about “Our Next 75”, the Allegheny Conference initiative that brought a diverse crowd of 1000 locals into one room to talk about what the area needs to grow and thrive for the next 75 years. The trio gets into the methodology behind the effort, the brand and message work necessary to make sure that it’s successful, and where things go from here.
After starting businesses across various fields, including robotics and software, John Feghali has now turned his attention to something for the younger generation. His latest venture is called Toaster Party, and this week we’re talking about how they are marketing their new product, Toaster Pets Animation Studio. John sees his whole career as a mission to make life’s best things available to everyone - and the Toaster Pets product is no different. The Animation Studio addresses one of the biggest requests that young people make of their parents: they want to make online videos. John says his cartoon video kit allows them to express themselves earlier, but in a safe and anonymous way. He adds that the storytelling process and a “build-on-your-failures” mindset prepares young people for the many jobs that will require the skills this product develops.
Super fun show this week! Milena Roucka - who wrestling fans will know better as WWE’s Rosa Mendes - comes into the studio to talk about Totally Fit Mama, the business she started with her partner Courtney Daylong. During the course of conversation, she manages to drop a number of motivational and endearing truths about all the major changes in her life the past few years, including the birth of her daughter, her retirement from WWE, the breakup of her relationship, and adjusting to a new life in a new city.
Kurt Schnieders has had the kind of career that most of us can only dream of. He is best known for having been the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Dick’s Sporting Goods, and before that he was the CIO of L Brands, the corporate parent of Victoria’s Secret. This week, Kurt stops into the Epicast Studios to talk to Pitchwerks host Scot MacTaggart about his post-corporate life as a consultant, the trends he sees in the technology space, and the frightening details of the stroke that he suffered in December of 2017. Kurt explains something most of us will never fully understand - the corporate CIO’s work day - and what the product, marketing, and sales landscape looks like from his perspective.
This week our good friend Aaron Watson, the host of Going Deep with Aaron Watson and the CEO of Piper Creative is here to demystify LinkedIn and social content strategy for all of us. Aaron and his partner Hannah Phillips have done a great job in developing their message, and in the short time that Piper has been in operation, they have learned to articulate the value of their services in a way that it seems truly effortless. Aaron is the first one to explain that that effortless appearance is actually the product of - you guessed it - tons of repetitions over long periods of time to get things right. Check out this week’s episode to learn a few of his LinkedIn and social video secrets, and to get a peek at some of the well-established philosophies at work behind these new tactics.
Our friend and prior guest Zak Slayback has written a new book called How to Get Ahead. Scot devoured it - cover to cover - in a couple of days, and found it to be well written and perfectly framed for those people that are looking for clear steps to follow in careers and business. This week, Zak tells us about how he took personal definitions of success into consideration in writing the book, he gets into how his collaboration with McGraw Hill Education publishing formed, and really explains the power of the personal website and email list that he recommends so strongly. Expect all that and a lot more this week, as these two fast talkers compare notes about the current state of career development!
Greg Coticchia has a way of inciting mischief in the Epicast Studios, and this time is no different. This week, the serial-entrepreneur-turned-educator is behind the mic talking about product management, a very useful discipline for those businesses that have expanded past the startup phase, and now need to organize their efforts. One thing that sparks a number of different conversation points is the fact that product managers typically have no authority or staff, so they have to use data, trust, and negotiation to win people over and get the support that they need to make their product successful.
We got an invitation to take a road trip to Youngstown, Ohio to visit our friend Robb Myer from Comeback Capital (comeback.vc) at the Comeback Conference on May 17, and we took it. If you’re not familiar, Comeback Capital tells founders to “be what they are, where they are”, and encourages investors to think of the area from Pittsburgh to Indiana as a potential target for venture capital investment. There were a lot of people there, and a lot of activity, and we tried to strip out as much ambient noise and crosstalk as possible, but just like past conference recordings that we’ve done, this episode doesn’t sound like one of the interviews we do back at home base. We got some great insights from attendees though, including some that we know. Here’s a list of everyone featured this episode:
- Robb Myer, Comeback Capital
- Jeff Ericson, RubyRide
- Andy Chan, VIT Initiative
- Toby Asbury, Parketer
- Tino Go, Baru
- Apurbva Desai, Vuclip and Comeback Capital
No one likes medical errors, and no one likes being bad at their job, but this week’s guest explains that lack of quality practice and insufficient access to hands-on training opportunities have created serious problems in healthcare. Dr. Doug Nelson is not a medical doctor. He’s a bioengineer and mathematician who took an interest in entrepreneurship after discovering a gap in the marketplace. This week, Doug tells Scot how he learned to give a great product demo, how he sells the value of Lumis, and the pair reflects on what makes practice and training more effective for the student.
This week’s a two-fer, as we talk about the business of professional consulting and also dig into the concepts and practices behind the economic development policy decisions that cities and states make as they move to foster entrepreneurship and create new jobs. Our guest is Courtney Zaugg, founder of Plaka (plakaassociates.com). Courtney is an economic development consultant based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and knows Scot MacTaggart after partnering with him and KRNLS on a couple of projects.
While visiting Pittsburgh on one such collaboration, Courtney brought her wealth of experience into the Epicast Studios, and shared information on how she became an independent consultant, and the differences between top-down economic development decision making and the “bottom-up” kind that Courtney recommends.
This week, college professor and entrepreneur Dr. John Stakeley comes in to talk to Scot about how our colleges and universities are teaching students about entrepreneurship, and reflecting on his personal experiences to tell that story. Dr. Stakeley teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, Robert Morris University, and Chatham University here in Pittsburgh, and brings experience as an entrepreneur, an investor, an Army officer and much more. Scot uses the interview to learn more about how entrepreneurship curriculum programs are devised, and seeks John’s insights on how to lead the upcoming Pitchwerks Professional Sales Bootcamp (krnls.co/bootcamp) which starts June 10th.
In 2019, if you’re selling professional services or technology, you’re sharing articles and blog posts with prospective clients. Curated third party articles from reputable sources are the name of the game - and they’re a really effective way to underline your points and prove that your product or business is as good as you say it is. Our guest this week is Scott Rogerson, the CEO of UpContent, and his product helps companies to find these articles, sort the good ones from the bad ones, showing clients that you’re credible, and that they won’t regret choosing you. This episode, Scott comes in to explain the new rules of social proof and content creation.
One thing we haven’t given enough time to on this show? Sales engineers. It’s a lucrative career path, and the people that do that job play a vitally important role. Meanwhile, we’ve barely mentioned them. (Sorry.) We fix that this week by talking to Lisa Conturo of the German American Chamber of Commerce, who are making a conscious effort to bring the German apprenticeship model to cities like Pittsburgh. Lisa and the GACC have actually developed a nicely compensated sales engineering apprenticeship that combines classroom learning with practical on-the-job training (OJT) that gives the learner thousands of hours of experience before they graduate.
For a long time, Scot has been waiting for an opportunity to point to a really effective partnership that matches his own personal preferences. This week, John Chamberlin and Rachael Rennebeck of YaJagoff Media come in to do just that. YaJagoff Media is best known for the podcast of the same name, but their show is just one component of the larger media and marketing company that they built. It’s a full-time job from which they make their living. Rachael and John are very honest with Scot throughout the entire interview - including a discussion about how they had been arguing the entire day before coming into the studio - but they also explain how when it comes time to set their differences aside and get to work, they’re some of the best in the business.
Fair warning - this week’s show is marked explicit because it’s a little spicy. Not bad - it’s like a 1.5 out of 5 on the podcast scale - but still, you might get in a bit of trouble if you work at an uptight place and bust out the speaker system.
This week, we talk professional art direction with Mark Ramdarass, who has recently moved to offering fractional services after building up a great list of brands that he has contributed to, including VaynerMedia, Nike, Michael Kors, Adidas, Budweiser and more. A graphic designer by education, Mark is here to make more sense of creative roles and art direction for those of us that aren’t trained in it, and to help us make sense of how it figures into the larger communications strategy of a business or brand. Find him on LinkedIn and reach out if you’re interested in more information!
The last time Vivek Kumar was in the studio, this fine program was celebrating its 40th episode, and Qlicket was primarily selling into the hospitality space. A lot has happened since then, including the addition of John Goldschmidt, who brought a history of sales, business development, and customer success. The company has been tested several times, and in several ways, since Vivek’s last visit. This week, Vivek and John come in to speak with Scot MacTaggart about pivots and struggles, and the huge month-over-month gains that they’re now seeing since they’ve adapted and survived.
This week’s episode has it all! Journalism, market validation, crowdfunding, Donald Trump, tasers, rocket-propelled grenades, the NFL, coal mines and steelworkers! Our guests this week are Matt Stroud and Carmen Gentile from Postindustrial Media, and they sit down with Scot MacTaggart to talk about the Kickstarter campaign they are doing with Scot and his partner Olga Pogoda, for a product that they are reluctant to call “slow news”. The trio talks about the value of telling “the full story” in the postindustrial region, which they define as the Rust Belt and Greater Appalachia, and use 2016 election coverage to illustrate the difference between what is available now, and what they seek to provide in the future. The campaign starts 4/22/2019 and will run for 30 days!
Curtis Wadsworth has been working in patent law for the last 12 years, and if he has his way, his new product Dorothy is going to change that field forever. This week, Scot MacTaggart gets under the hood of Curt’s very young patent search company to help Curt and Dorothy to get ready for the market. Just based on the sheer number of hours that law firms spend on patent searches, and the money they pour into that labor, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Dorothy will get a warm reception from IP attorneys throughout the country when its user interface is finished. Curt and Scot put their heads together to make sure that it all goes according to plan.
A great analytical mind steps into the Epicast studios this week as Prashant Ambe, president of TiE Pittsburgh - a nonprofit startup support network - gets behind the microphone. Prashant starts with his 3-axis theory on career development, recommending diversity in cultures, skills, and industries. After that, he shares recipes that build successful businesses, the importance of taking responsibility for your own path, and a deep dive into the history and mission of TiE and its Pittsburgh chapter. Be sure to check this week’s episode out!
This week, Scot is on the road in Columbus and talks to Matt Wald, President and CEO of the Columbus Collaboratory. Matt has a few surprises up his sleeves, like when he lists the giant organizations that have co-invested in the Collaboratory, or how difficult it can be for any organization to pivot to compete with digital-native firms. Matt explains how executive leadership of the 7 founding companies created the Columbus Collaboratory, how reluctant executives should look at their options, and what is waiting for them if they don’t build a good plan from the outset.
Kelauni Cook is the founder of Black Tech Nation, and we’ve been trying to get her into the studio for some time now because we have seen her sacrifice firsthand. Kelauni has made some real sacrifices to get where she is today. The Howard University grad is a software developer, a community builder, and now - a funded non-profit executive looking to create a space for black tech workers, who often find themselves feeling isolated. Kelauni talks to us about how she got here, what comes next, and how big of a factor time management is playing in her life now that she and BTN have built some momentum.
This week, Alison Falk gives us a glimpse of the future by explaining her advocacy of “sex tech” - and no, it isn’t just VR and robots. Alison is the brains behind SexTechSpace (.com), a digital publication that talks about everything related to the intersection between technology and human sexuality. Alison talks to Scot MacTaggart about her mission, the “boring realities” of building an industry, and in doing so details a very credible vision of future of what will eventually be a multi-billion-dollar space. Alison has one master’s degree and is a candidate for a second, and while she does that and runs SexTechSpace, and on top of all that, she runs Women In Tech Pittsburgh. Don’t miss this episode!
An entrepreneur who is 50% player, 50% coach, and 50% cheerleader, Kit Mueller is a hurricane of can-do builder spirit and supportive energy - with a definite mischievous streak - and Scot enjoys his company tremendously. Kit has had an open invitation to come to the Epicast Studios and appear on the Pitchwerks Podcast since the show started, but he has always suggested others for the show instead. This week he finally comes in and talks about what he thinks real mentorship looks like, and tells us about his efforts to bring the Startup Boost program to Pittsburgh, working with our friend Jim Gibbs and serial entrepreneur Mitch Turck. Applications for the first cohort will be closing soon, so if you’ve got a young company you might want to listen to this show right away!
If you’re not familiar with the Hardware Cup, it’s time to get familiar. Startups that make physical products are getting hot again, and the Hardware Cup is the leading pitch competition for entrepreneurs in that space. The Pittsburgh event is coming up on February 28th, so we invited Hardware Cup event coordinator Kayce Karlo to come into the studio and talk to us about what makes this event so special, what kinds of companies have competed in the past, the prizes and support the winners get to claim, and what’s going on in the United States with regard to building and making physical products.
Jon Providence is the Vice President of EagleDream Technologies, who holds the #1 spot among resellers of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the Northeast United States. It’s a very competitive space - there are 58,000 other AWS resellers out in the world, and considering just because of Boston and New York City alone, the Northeast is an incredibly competitive territory. Jon talks to Scot about how EagleDream climbed to the top spot, makes a few predictions regarding what the future might hold, and even tells us how he makes those predictions, providing instructive examples from history that tell us what we might expect from the future.
This is a special bonus episode of Pitchwerks, provided in addition to our usual Wednesday programming because EagleDream has just announced a partnership with KRNLS, the firm that Scot started with Olga Pogoda to help businesses grow. KRNLS is handling EagleDream’s launch in Pittsburgh, providing value-add tools and discounts to Amazon Web Services clients in the area.
If you’re interested in such things, check out krnls.co/eagledream
Hey kids! Do you like brilliance? Wanna know how to plan for change so it doesn’t kill yinz? This week we’ve got Ben Mosior, founder of Hired Thought, who was recommended to us by some of the smartest people we know. He’s a “go-to” strategic thinker who practices Wardley Mapping, among other things - and since we didn’t know what that was, we asked. It’s a huge, wide-ranging discipline that studies and diagrams complex systems to understand them, so we only focused on a couple of aspects of it for this episode. Ben explains the relative value of mapping - which includes efficiency and savings you get from doing things in a strategic order of operations - and then helps Scot to understand the evolution of ideas from genesis to commodity.
Francois Gau has managed major initiatives for some huge worldwide corporations including Honeywell and Kennametal, but he started out as an accountant and innovator in Toulouse in Southern France. He now owns Levy Industrial, which helps companies from $25 - $200 million per year to upgrade their processes and integrate their departments so that they can attract new clients, keep existing ones and multiply their revenues. In this extended-length episode, Francois tells Scot MacTaggart about his “sweet spot” method for quickly identifying opportunities for improvement, the value of ethnography (cultural study), and a practice he swears by called “hard listening”. These tactics have served him well over the years, and resulted in major improvements for manufacturing and industrial firms as well as their clients.
Trained as a lawyer, teaching classes in the Duquesne University MBA program, dragging a track record of high-dollar deals around with him, Mark Santo has seen a lot. This week, he visits Scot and Buzzy in the new podcast studio at the Pittsburgh Technology Council, looking out to the common outdoor area of Nova Place. Mark and Scot talk about right and reasonable timing and methodology in taking a business into the global international market, today’s competitive landscape, and how a young professional should prepare for the changes that are unfolding in the world.
LOTS OF GREAT STUFF THIS WEEK as Dr. Courtney Williamson, CEO of Abililife, checks into the Epicast Studios to talk to Scot about being the head of a medical equipment startup that is already assisting Parkinson’s patients in 40 of the 50 states after just a few short years. Courtney’s mom had Parkinson’s, so she assembled a team and invented the a product that could help with some of the physical challenges of the disease. The Calibrace+ is now accepted by Medicare and private insurance under prescription from a doctor. Courtney and Scot hit it off big time in this interview, hitting on the risks that passion presents to entrepreneurs, the importance of valuing process and time management, and of course Steve Urkel and Family Matters. Check it out!
This week, we’ve got one of those guests where it’s hard to figure out if we can - or should - cover everything he has done in his career. Andy Hannah is the CEO of Othot, an AI / machine learning company that assists colleges and university by predicting how likely it is that a prospective student will be a good match for one school or another. Andy has been a CFO and a college professor as well, and has been noteworthy for his success in startup fundraising over the last 25 years. Even better, he attributes his success to building good relationships, good karma, and doing what you say you’re going to do. You’re going to love this episode.
For the second week in a row, we’ve got a doctor in the house! This week our guest is Alan Martello, who used his PhD in Electrical and Electronics Engineering to bootstrap, build and operate a company called Horizon Control, which he exited in 2011. Alan has spent a lot of his time helping entrepreneurs since then, and from those efforts, the Entrepreneur Coloring Book was born. It’s a simple and direct set of exercises for entrepreneurs (and business development people!) to set their direction. This episode features discussion on bootstrapping, finding meaning, and how your locale can affect your beliefs and expectations.
Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is a well-traveled and experienced physician who wrote a book about certain soft skills that doctors can develop and use to become more efficient, and ultimately build better relationships with their patients. Scot read it, and immediately thought “this book is really about how to listen, and how to ask follow up questions to solve your customer’s true pain”. So this week, Jonathan’s in the studio, and the two men dig deeper on the traditional ways that we listen to each other, and how to develop a problem-solving mindset that combines listening and thoughtful follow-up questions.
Sports teams spend a lot of time and money on their annual drafts, trying to get their hands on top talent at rookie prices. It’s exciting. Done well, it can literally change the trajectory of your team forever. This week’s guest is Katie Grimm, Pittsburgh director of Venture for America, and VfA brings that kind of excitement to the startup scene by making similarly promising talent available to entrepreneurial ventures. In this episode, Scot MacTaggart talks to Katie about the sports draft analogy as a way to simplify the pitch and clarify the value that Venture for America brings to the 14 cities it supports.
DEEP DIVE! American Gas Lamp Works is a small Pittsburgh manufacturing company that dates all the way back to 1963. Like any business, the company has had to grow and adapt over that time. This week, Wendy Stover and Patrick Jardini come in to tell us how AGLW has adapted before, and is now doing it again. The conversation touches on pivoting to new sales channels, expanding the number of options available, maintaining “uncomfortable honesty” in communications, and giving the online buyer an easy way to customize their purchase.
This week’s guest was once homeless, and now he’s an award-winning business consultant, philanthropist, and community leader. He has won pitch competitions, been recognized by Congress, and was recently ranked in the Las Vegas 40 Under 40. Siloh Moses was barely off the streets himself when he started feeding the hungry in his hometown of Las Vegas, and from that first pot of spaghetti, Serving Hope LV began to take shape. His consulting practice is called WeWin360, and while his methods may have become sophisticated over time, the purpose is simple: using business as a force for good. Siloh helps each CEO to find the charitable mission that suits them, and helps them to excel in pursuing it.
In Western Pennsylvania, even people who don’t work in startups and entrepreneurship know this week’s guest Catherine Mott, and Blue Tree Allied Angels. We’re excited to have Catherine in the studio with Pitchwerks host Scot MacTaggart, talking about angel investment, including common mistakes that startup founders make, due diligence, matching up to the right angel group, and what Catherine looks for in a CEO.
This week’s guest has led, mentored, coached and advised more people than nearly anyone you’ll ever meet. Ray Milhem has spent the past year as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Lonprox, a startup that has developed a local positioning technology for indoor applications. Before that, he was VP of Enterprise Software Solutions and Cloud Deployments at ANSYS, the head of engineering for a Boeing subsidiary, a CTO at another startup, a VP at Motorola, Senior Director at Nokia, and the list goes on. Ray Milhem has seen leadership in large and small companies. He’s in our studio this week, talking to Scot about bringing your moral compass to work and leading with integrity.
This week, Scot is talking to Mary Jayne McCullough, founder of Global Wordsmiths, and MJ has facts on top of facts to explain how easy it is to underestimate the number of people in your audience - prospects, customers, constituents, etc - that prefer a language other than English. And when she explains how simple her team has made it to reach those people, you may reconsider your group’s lack of a language access strategy. MJ also tells Scot about the socially conscious aspects of her business model, in what seems to be a key differentiator between Global Wordsmiths and their high-volume competitors.
RoadBotics CEO, Carnegie Mellon professor, and veteran entrepreneur Mark DeSantis is our guest this week, sharing educational and inspiring insights with Scot MacTaggart in an extended edition of the Pitchwerks podcast. RoadBotics is an AI company, focusing on the “big and boring” problem of road inspection and analysis, saving municipal clients millions and millions of dollars. In just 20 months they have built a list of 80 clients and raised millions of dollars.
Ryan Green and his team at Gridwise have won over some very tough rooms on their journey so far, from the early days at Alphalab to last year’s Techstars Mobility cohort. He knows his way around investor pitches and negotiations, but now he’s here in our studio! This week, Ryan and Scot talk about the basic workings of Gridwise, which raises the earnings potential of rideshare drivers by supplying them with better intelligence. Other topics include ways to increase brand awareness, what to look for in angel and VC investors, and the unexpected ways that drivers cooperate. If you have friends that drive for Uber or Lyft, make sure they check out this week’s show!
Those of you that like the harder content are going to love this week’s show with Maddi Love, the director of sales at WebKite. Maddi is a true professional that was raised under strict sales processes, and she’s now working to help sales and marketing teams to find what she calls “purchase-ready buyers” faster than ever. WebKite uses machine learning technology to compose hundreds of thousands of ads that attract buyers to specific items in your inventory, and the effects are stunning.
When you’re making a travel and leisure purchase decision, how do you gather your list of products and services to consider? This week’s guest has a strategy that seems pretty solid. Adam Kunes and Have Fun Do Good (havefundogood.co) work in the “volunteer travel” space, and they know that you’ll be attracted by great photos and satisfied customers - especially if those satisfied customers happen to be your friends and family. Adam and Scot start by talking about leaving a job you hate to start a humble new company (even if it’s in a “jank RV”), and move on to what the photography and video gives the prospective client, and the company’s history of rock-solid reviews.
THE OUTSOURCED SALES MANAGER HERSELF! Lisa Davidson is back in the house, and this time we’re talking about how to start a new job where you have to bring in new customers. Lisa and Scot talk about everything, from the time-honored 30 / 60 / 90 plan to setting a pace, showing progress through promising failures, and even a clever tactical approach that Lisa started out using with business owners, technical founders and operations managers. It’s always fun when Lisa’s around, and we think you’ll learn some things too.
This week’s guest is the San Francisco Bay Area’s own Rashim Mogha, a speaker and author whose new book “Fast Track Your Leadership Career” goes on sale the same day that this show is released. Rashim is an accomplished female executive, with experience in some of the world’s largest technology companies...but once upon a time, she was a junior associate whose superiors scooped up the credit for her ideas just like everyone else. Listen to find out about her evolution from that point to being an effective manager, then a mentor, speaker and author on women’s tech and leadership.
This week we hear from Rachel Reid, the young and driven founder of Subtl Beauty (subtlbeauty.com), and then starting tomorrow (9/20/2018) we will all be able to follow along in real life, in real time to see how her Kickstarter product launch fares. Rachel’s an open book. She shares a number of useful anecdotes about how a fairly risk-averse corporate employee moved on to build a company, a product line and a pitch out of a hack she put together just for her own life. Listen to the show and then - starting tomorrow - follow Rachel’s journey through Kickstarter to find out whether that pitch resonates with real customers.
Fun show this week, as Nadyli Nuñez and Scot MacTaggart have a bunch of laughs talking about the UpPrize pitch competitions, the well-funded and socially responsible results of the combined efforts of BNY Mellon and the Forbes Funds to empower people that are working to assist non-profits and at-risk populations. Nadyli is a great guest, serving up a buoyant enthusiasm as well as shrewd analysis as she explains how UpPrize got where it is now, and how the program plans to expand.
Holy hell, we made it. Episode 100. We decided against making too big of a thing about it. In fact, this would be a totally regular show if we weren’t drinking champagne. Staying fairly true to form though, we drank the champagne out of whiskey tasting glasses, and talked to our old friend Kenny Chen about how he might pitch the speakers and panels at this year’s Thrival Festival to the people who might not have thought about attending. Kenny’s been up to a lot since we last spoke to him, getting a title bump to “Innovation Director” at Ascender / Thrival, getting deeply involved as an XPrize ambassador, and even working with the United Nations on AI for Good initiatives. Kenny’s a tremendous person, and we’re glad he joined us for our biggest milestone yet.
THIS WEEK: Dr. Noah Snyder gives us an inspiring peek into Interphase Materials, a company that specializes in the many places where technology interfaces with biology, which makes for a wide-ranging set of applications. During this week’s show, Noah speaks with Scot MacTaggart about how Interphase improves outcomes in medicine, and improves the efficiency of both Navy ships and HVAC systems. Be sure to listen for Noah’s advice about customer discovery, the pitfalls of startup fashion, and the quest for true purpose he thinks is key to his happiness as well as his success.
Remember a couple of months ago when all of a sudden you got emails from every website you’d ever heard of, telling you that they were updating their privacy policies? You can thank the EU for that. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) got everyone’s attention, but apparently not long enough to make sure that everyone knows what it is and how it works. That’s where this week’s guest Mark Bursic comes in. Mark is the founder of Critical Syntax, a company that focuses primarily on WordPress websites, and on September 11th, 2018, he and his colleagues are hosting a webinar on this very topic. We asked Mark to come into the studio and give us a sneak peek at the information he’ll be sharing, and explain GDPR to the Pitchwerks audience.
This week’s show is an absolute monster. The Vezt platform is a way for artists and creators to raise money - similar to the way an IPO works - by putting the royalty rights for songs, albums or full catalogs onto an open market. This week’s guest is Steve Stewart, a music industry veteran whose credentials include 10+ years managing a little band called Stone Temple Pilots. But Steve now spends his days explaining the virtues of fractional ownership and Ethereum blockchain technology. This week also marks the first guest co-host in Pitchwerks history, as the multi-talented Lyndsey Smith returns to the studio to help Scot to measure Vezt’s appeal to musicians. Together, Steve, Lyndsey and Scot discuss the recording industry’s problems, Vezt’s attempts to solve them, and what the future may hold.
This week, Scot has the electrifying Lyndsey Smith in the studio for the first of two back-to-back appearances on Pitchwerks, talking about the music business and what she’s learned since she got started. Just as it is with startups and salespeople, i’s very difficult for a new performer to find their authentic voice when they’re starting out. Lyndsey knows this well, and she has some hard-earned and heartfelt advice for those that are starting out on their journey. Next week, Lyndsey will return as Scot’s co-host, and the pair will interview Steve Stewart to analyze a new blockchain-powered music royalties and investment program called VEZT.
If we called HiberSense one of the hottest startups in Pittsburgh, Jake Kring and Bob Fields would probably think we were just trying to work in some climate control puns. It’s a cool idea, and we’re really big fans. Seriously though - there’s a lot of good stuff this week, staring with the amazing opportunity that HiberSense has in the American climate control market. Bob and Jake share the story of how they came to work together - an initial set of meetings described by both as being pretty intense - and everything they’ve accomplished since then.
This week, Scot brings a friend of nearly two decades - Blue Bastion’s Andy Hicks - into the studio to talk about selling advanced cybersecurity measures for large clients, including Blue Bastion’s Managed Detection and Response service. Andy has been awarded as a top performer in pretty much every role he has held since he was old enough to earn a paycheck. He’s worked for some of the largest names in information technology and network security, and this week, we’re looking inside his head to see what makes him tick.
Bharath Krishnamoorthy - “B” for short - is one of two founders of Axle Travel, a data-driven ride pooling service that launches on July 24th in Pittsburgh. Beginning with a basic strategy of simplifying trips to the airport, Axle is a web-based application that will eventually consolidate longer road trips to a variety of destinations. This week, B and Scot talk about Axle’s unique experiences at Techstars, the difficulty they had making pivots from one model to another, and the ways in which they selected Pittsburgh and other markets they’ve considered.
This week: Day Bracey - one half of the Drinking Partners podcast - is in to talk about Fresh Fest, an entrepreneurial new beer festival he is launching with partners and friends. Since Day is our good friend and Epicast Network neighbor, we’re giving his new venture the Pitchwerks treatment! Scot and Day get into the details on what the festival is, and how they communicate their unique value to all the beer-heads that might be interested. Bonus this week: Watch the Drinking Partners and Fresh Fest social media accounts to see custom pitches that Scot came up with to change up Fresh Fest’s messaging and help his friends to sell more tickets.
Happy 4th! If you were going to buy a bedding set right now, what would you be looking for? No matter what answer you came up with, chances are that “high tech features” wasn’t on the list. It's unexpected. The industry is kind of in a rut. A long history and familiarity with this product makes us think about price first. This week, we meet Allison Howard, Founder & CEO of Auratek Textiles, who took her chemical engineering degree and unique observations on skincare and turned them into a long-term business endeavor that has spent years in development. Auratek is now ready to reveal itself as a performance fabric maker for skin care applications, and Scot sits down and speaks with Allison about how she got her new materials in front of the right people to get to this point.
SO VERY MUCH THIS WEEK! Nick Comanici, the Chief Marketing Officer of Carney, comes in to talk about his perspectives on what works and what doesn’t. Nick has a couple of mantras. The first one - “Do the Hard Thing” - fits perfectly here in Pitchwerkstown. The second - “Email is NOT Dead” - has statistics and results to back it up. In a wide ranging conversation, Nick and Scot cover opinions on recruiting marketers, on building an email list, brand awareness versus funnel metrics, punk rock, movies, and overnight success schemes. You’re definitely getting your money’s worth this week!
Everybody loves Krystle - and part of that is because she’s a truly open book. When we last heard from Krystle, she had a different last name, had just quit agency life, and had gone out on her own. Her entrepreneurial adventures set her on the path to becoming the production manager on the first season of TV’s “Restored by the Fords”, and everything was going great. During this visit, Krystle talks about confidence, unexpected changes in your life’s plan, a new entrepreneurial venture, and some of the many nuances of social media and social listening. This episode is PACKED with good stuff!
This week, Scot indulges his obsession with materials startups by hosting Carmel Majidi and Navid Kazem, the founding team behind Arieca, who recently took up residence at Alphalab Gear. Arieca’s “Thubber” product is a soft non-brittle rubber product that can conduct heat or electricity. Regular rubber doesn’t conduct very well at all, and the few conductive rubbers that are currently available on the market are too brittle for the kinds of applications that Thubber was designed for. Scot talks to the two men about their plans to raise Thubber’s profile, drive adoption, and sell the new material to manufacturers.
It’s always fun to check in with the people that are doing REALLY difficult pitches, so we brought Ryan O’Shea, spokesperson for Grindhouse Wetware and the host of the Future Grind podcast (futuregrind.org) to come in and talk about ideas like human augmentation, implantable tech and biohacking. Ryan and Scot spend considerable time deconstructing the various things that make these ideas icky and foreign, despite their promise, and examine the ways that a product concept can move from being scary and foreign to being accepted and even ubiquitous.
This week, we take a look at DestyDo, a startup that recently launched after careful long-term planning and methodical execution. Cofounder Tyler Pratte is in charge of the company’s sales and marketing, and in his short visit to the Epicast studios, he offers Pitchwerks listeners a very clear picture of how orderly a startup can be. Tyler candidly discusses DestyDo’s partnerships, initial product outline, prototyping, market validation and messaging in an episode that might make some people very jealous.
It’s been nearly nine months since Josh Corcoran last appeared on Pitchwerks, and he’s been very busy in the interim. Josh and his friends at Spare Change (sparechange.tv) have begun their second season of their web series, which combines music and charity to create viral videos. The second season is more complex than the first, as the new season’s first episode sends the gang to Michigan in a loaner RV from Cruise America. The new season gets even more complex when you realize that Spare Change is about to launch a new series called Food Rescue Heroes, based on the popular 412 Food Rescue charity. This week, Josh takes us through what’s been changing, and how he’s managing everything.
This week, we take the show on the road! We’re at Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center to speak with some of the businesses represented on the floor of the Pittsburgh Business Show, where none of the booths has been prepped to be on the show. Scot speaks with seven different businesses, from food tech to coworking, to hear seven different pitches and how the booth representatives deal with probing questions under pressure. Featured companies include Darieth Chisolm’s 50 Shades of Silence, coworking provider Industrious, and our friend Priya Amin who happens to be working the Flexable booth when Scot comes calling.
If you’ve got your head in a rut, this episode is just what the doctor ordered. This week, Scot welcomes Dan Finnell into the Epicast Network studios to talk about MindMatrix, a sales enablement product...but the conversation covers a lot more ground than that. With 40+ years of sales and BD experience between them, Dan and Scot develop a fast rhythm early, and use it to laugh and commiserate on what makes the job hard, what makes it easier, and new ways to think about the challenges of a typical work day.
This week we’ve a real communications expert in the studio! Norm Goldberg is in the studio. Norm is one of two principals at ThoughtForm, a consulting firm that describes their mission as “beautiful clarity” as they help some of the world’s largest corporations to build and execute multi-layered strategies to improve understanding and collaboration in the corporate / enterprise environment. From the very beginning, Norm and Scot hit it off quickly, and the pace stays upbeat as a result.
Under the Peduto administration, the City of Pittsburgh has gone through some really interesting changes. One of them is the creation of the PGH Lab program, which partners startups with municipal agencies and authorities to run pilot programs and tackle real problems. Annia Aleman works in the city’s office of Innovation & Performance. Annia is the manager of the PGH Lab program, and this week, she’s in the studio telling us how a small new company with nothing but a prototype can get access to real users with real problems.
This week’s guest is helping to launch the Washington Area Business Incubator in Washington, Pennsylvania. Max Miller is a JD and an MBA, formerly of HJ Heinz, but now he’s a professor at Washington & Jefferson College, teaching entrepreneurship and related skills. Washington PA is a small town, W&J is a small college, and the strategy that they’ve developed along with other leaders in the area suits the people and opportunities of this small, somewhat rural area rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all approach.
How do you propose a large, complex project with a multitude of possible outcomes? We brought in an expert to answer that very question. That expert is Darrin Grove, the founder and CEO of Truefit, a development firm that has to pitch and plan such projects every day. This week’s show started with Darrin giving Pitchwerks host Scot MacTaggart a tour of his offices and development process, and then the two went to the Epicast studios to record this very special episode, where the two discuss sales qualification, the benefits of an iterative process, and Truefit’s historic headquarters.
Want to meet some of the most interesting and influential people in Pittsburgh, plus Pitchwerks host Scot MacTaggart? Grab a ticket for the PACE Inclusive Voices event at the Fairmont on April 13th. Born of the 1960s civil rights era, PACE empowers non-profits that strengthen the community, and the Inclusive Voices program connects ticket holders with CEOs, museum directors, and community leaders. Victoria Garner, Traci Thomas, and Hilary Ferencak are in the studio this week, pitching us all on PACE, the Inclusive Voices program, and the energy you get from talking to people from completely different backgrounds.
Our buddy Lisa Davidson is back, talking about all the various implications of how you manage your time as you try to build your book of business - and the result is a lot of fun. Lisa tells Scot about her own time management techniques, and how to balance the demands of managers, customers, and networking -- but the two old friends have a hard time staying serious the whole time.
Andy Chan’s a 23-year-old who broke his back playing football, and then tried to “walk it off”. For a year. This, coupled with an energetic personality and a strong desire to make something new, led he and his cofounder Connor Young to start VIT Initiative. VIT has all the buzzwords. They’ve launched a connected, cloud-enabled internet of things (IoT) workplace safety technology that reduces the risk of sprain and strain injuries. This week, Andy and Scot connect quickly and discuss starting a hardware company versus on that focuses on software alone, and they get into Andy’s interesting personal story.
Brad Kriel, founder of Velocity Robotics, is just coming off a regional victory in the AlphaLab Gear Hardware Cup, and will be moving on to the next round. The Hardware Cup is a pitch competition for early-stage hardware startups, and Brad is one of six US regional winners. The regional winners as well as the international winners are all competing to win the $50,000 grand prize, in the form of a convertible-debt investment by Startbot VC.
On this week’s show, Brad tells Scot MacTaggart about Autoset, a tool made by Velocity Robotics to make miter saw work more efficient. The two also spend time discussing how a return-on-investment (ROI) pitch gets made, and how Shark Tank can be bad for the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Very few people are working on a problem as large as this one! Mendel Bassman and his team of experts are working on ways to recycle used tires - recovering valuable substances like carbon black, oil and more. Mendel and Smart Tire Recycling recently won TiE Pittsburgh’s 4th Annual Startup Award & Business Mentoring Roundtable (BMR) Showcase, and are on a path toward major success. This week, Mendel talks to Scot about the practice he put in, the business plan he’s working, and what “supercritical fluid technology” actually means.
This week: a fun show with Tomer Borenstein, the CTO of Blastpoint, a Pittsburgh startup that specializes in providing usefully packaged geospatial data for people who need it. Economic development agencies, public utilities, franchisors and franchisees, car dealers and many, many more can use this kind of data to study their markets and devise strategic plans to serve them. Tomer and Scot also discuss the process the company followed in building its price schedule, a question that Scot gets from startups all the time.
This week, Dr. Rasu Shrestha, MBA comes into the Epicast studios to talk about his role as an innovation leader at both UPMC and its subsidiary, UPMC Enterprises. If you’re not already familiar with UPMC, it’s a major healthcare organization that grew out of the University of Pittsburgh, and not long ago it became the largest employer in Pennsylvania. UPMC Enterprises is the creative arm, building products and businesses with entrepreneurs.
Dr. Shrestha is a kind-hearted, design-thinking innovator, working to improve healthcare through technology and innovation in the age of defensive medicine and courtroom thinking. In this episode, he tells our host Scot MacTaggart about the current state of healthcare, about his experience with entrepreneur pitches, and what he is ultimately looking for from the startup community.
Just like all the TV commercials and web banner ads have been threatening, cybersecurity threats are everywhere. This week’s guest wants to fix the real problem you’re facing: your coworkers. You know how they leave the doors unlocked and that one time, the one manager left their key in the door? They’re just as careless with information security. So, Jon and his colleagues built Wuvavi, a platform that trains and tests everyone in your office to avoid getting hit. Three years later, the company has a long list of clients, large and small, and is now considering how they will build their sales and channel strategies to take the company to the next level.
Jim Gibbs is back for the first time since Episode 1! Meter Feeder has grown and changed a lot in the year and a half since his last appearance. The company is done raising cash for now, they’re working on a couple of different strategies that has the company growing at a very aggressive clip. They’re working on parking operators, self-driving cars, and on frictionless rollouts in new cities. This episode is also good for Jim’s perspective on app ratings, on asking for money, and on Pittsburgh as a home base. If you’re not already subscribed after 70 weeks, get there. It’s time!
Have you wondered how to attract real sponsors? Melinda Colaizzi knows that business. She’s the principal at Pitch Consulting, the founder of the Women Who Rock festival, and she’s an accomplished musician herself. This week, Scot attempts to make the most of all the expertise Melinda brings into the studio. Their conversation includes strategies for selling sponsorships, the hard shift toward buying local, and the reputation the Magee-Womens Research Institute has built that makes it the perfect beneficiary of the proceeds from the Women Who Rock event.
Women Who Rock Benefit Concert: May 10, 2018 at Pittsburgh’s Hard Rock Cafe. More information at womenwhorockpgh.com
This week’s show proves that no matter what field you’re in, it has a lot of parallels with other fields. Our guests for this episode are Alyssa and Don from SciVelo, a unique organization affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh. SciVelo calls their work “commercial translation” - and it’s not what you think. Rather than translating between spoken languages, SciVelo translates the work of one set of professionals for use by others, specializing in the research work done at Pitt. Pitchwerks listeners should hear a number of interesting things, especially how the SciVelo team organizes its inventory, its prospects and its opportunities like any other business.
This week on The Pitchwerks Podcast we’ve got three young men working to save the world - Tanner Cook, Grant Halleran and Aakash Pathak from CleanRobotics. Together with host Scot MacTaggart, the team analyzes buyer motivations, end user education, and a two-tiered demonstration strategy for their product, Trashbot. Trashbot solves a problem you might not even know that you have - the complexity of proper recycling - by analyzing waste and sending it automatically to the landfill or the recycling plant based on a number of factors.
AMAZINGLY sharp conversationalist Priya Amin comes into the studio this week, prepping for an investor pitch competition and talking about Flexable, the startup that she and cofounder Jessica Strong have grown into a common presence at major employers and events in Pittsburgh. This episode was recorded just before Priya left for the New England Venture Fair, so she and Scot work on her NEVF investor pitch a little bit, while also making time to discuss cofounder relationships and expansion strategy.
This week, familiar face Greg Coticchia (Pitchwerks #47) brings Randy Eager into the Epicast Studios to talk about upcoming free seminars in Pittsburgh from the Founder Institute, an idea-stage accelerator program that originated in California’s Bay Area. Greg and Randy have both been successful as entrepreneurs, and host Scot MacTaggart takes advantage of their visit to pick their brains for some insight that Pitchwerks listeners can apply in the new year. If you’re in the Pittsburgh area, be sure to check out the Founder Institute event on January 10 at 6pm, in the Truefit offices at 500 Grant Street. The event is free and the topic is the first step, ideation.