DealMakers: Recent Episodes

Alejandro Cremades

Welcome to the DealMakers show, hosted by Alejandro Cremades. Alejandro is a serial entrepreneur, best-selling author, and cofounder at Panthera Advisors (M&A and fundraising advisory). On this podcast you will find weekly interviews with entrepreneurs that have been very successful at raising capital or getting their company acquired. You can learn more at https://alejandrocream.wpengine.com

David Dorfman’s path to entrepreneurship often begins with a simple observation: something is broken, inefficient, or unnecessarily difficult. His first company is YAPI, a dental software platform and the second is Blue Navy Recovery.

Most founders dream of building a company that changes an industry—Alex Haro built one that changed how families stay connected. Co-founder of Life360, he is currently building Hubble Network and has raised over $100M for the company.

When Simon Bushell reflects on his journey, it doesn’t start in a boardroom or a lab—it starts outdoors. That early exposure to nature quietly shaped a worldview and a deep conviction that climate change is the most important problem humanity needs to solve.

Yoav Regev’s entrepreneurial path began with 25 years in the military and culminated in the founding of a category-defining cybersecurity company, Sentra. Today, he stands at the crux of resilience, people, and an obsession with solving one of the most basic problems in technology: securing data.

From sleeping on a closet floor in San Francisco to betting his company on a $1M GPU commitment with only $400K in the bank, Isaiah’s journey traces the path of hiring non-traditional talent, adapting to unfavorable capital markets, and operating with urgency when the odds are stacked against you.

Ali Agha is among the rare founders who have bridged the gap between the fascinating world of theoretical robotics and reliable, real-world applications. He has overcome the challenges in the promising field of robotics, which, up until now, has only been impressive in controlled spaces.

Frank Rotman’s journey is one of rare breadth—spanning early artificial intelligence (AI) research, hypergrowth fintech operations, venture investing at scale, and now a return to building from the ground up.

Instead of relying on institutional capital, he bootstrapped his way to building Spendbase into a $40M+ revenue business, guided by a simple but powerful principle: build products that deliver real value, and customers will sell them for you.

Michael Mandel’s entrepreneurial path began inside one of the most relationship-driven and data-fragmented industries in the world: commercial real estate.

What does it really take to move from building a company to backing the next generation of founders? For Bilal Baloch, the journey isn’t just a shift in role—it’s a complete rewiring of perspective.From growing up in immigrant communities in East London to building and exiting a company, and now investing out of Abu Dhabi in some of the most ambitious AI startups globally, Bilal’s story is a masterclass in pattern recognition, discipline, and understanding how the world truly works.

s journey is about perfecting timing and a deep understanding of the fundamentals of business.

What does it really take to build not just one—but multiple successful startups? For Ritik Malhotra, the answer isn’t just about intelligence, timing, or even luck; it’s about process, resilience, and an obsession with building.

co-founder Sankalp Arora, PhD, is one of them.

Most founders build companies from one world they know well. Thomas Tyler built his from two. On one side was music: a childhood followed by a full-time career as a musician. On the other was finance.

What does it take to go from $100K in startup capital to $100M in annual revenue—and finance and execute $750M worth of projects along the way? For Dylan Rudney, founder of Verano Energy, it isn’t just about vision or timing; it’s execution and adaptability.

Dan Wertman retraces his path through building, scaling, and raising financing for his company, Noetica, meeting his cofounders, and learning how to differentiate in the crazy world of AI.

Bill Lenihan’s entrepreneurial path didn’t start as an engineer, product builder, or early startup operator. Instead, his career began in the structured world of finance—investment banking and private equity—before evolving into technology operations and eventually entrepreneurship.

While many startup founders begin as engineers, product builders, or early-stage operators, John Howard took a very different path. His entrepreneurial journey began in unexpected places—the structured, high-stakes world of investment banking and private equity.

For Andrew Antos, the path to building a successful AI company began in an unlikely place: a family of scientists in the post-communist Czech Republic, followed by a brief career in law, and eventually a leap into the startup ecosystem at Harvard and MIT.

Constantin Schröder’s entrepreneurial journey started long before he launched his first company. The mindset—discipline, resilience, and the ability to learn from failure—developed through experiences that seemed unrelated at the time.

Few founders embody the entrepreneurship journey better than Jagdeep Singh. In reality, building transformative companies is a long journey of curiosity, persistence, and disciplined problem-solving. It’s never about a series of lightning strikes of ideas and overnight successes, as often portrayed.

Felipe grew up in Colombia, worked in consulting, studied at Harvard Business School, and witnessed firsthand the massive gap in healthcare access across Latin America. Today, he is building Welli, a fintech company that expands access to healthcare.

Most startup stories follow a familiar arc—an idea, early traction, a grind toward product-market fit, and eventually, scale. Wen Sang’s journey breaks that pattern. After building, scaling, and exiting his first company, he went on to start another startup, Genspark.ai.

David Metz is the founder and CEO of Prizeout, a fintech platform that powers rewards and monetization programs for financial institutions, David has raised over $64M and built a company on the brink of profitability. But his journey there was anything but linear.

For Tikue Anazodo, founder and CEO of Kudos, his entrepreneurial journey began long before Silicon Valley—long before Google, Microsoft, Affirm, or Shopify. It started in Lagos, Nigeria, in an environment where entrepreneurship wasn’t a career choice. It was a necessity.

Doug’s story also captures what it truly takes to build financial infrastructure in an emerging market: resilience, humility, and a deep respect for capital. In this engrossing interview, he discusses the challenges he faced in building, scaling, and raising funding for SWAP.

s is a story of how a kid from Startup Nation became a global entrepreneur, survived geopolitical gray zones, navigated China, COVID, capital markets, and ultimately built a platform designed to fix one of the most broken systems in the world: cross-border real estate ownership.

Ben Freeman’s story is not one of overnight success or neatly plotted career moves. It is a story of friction—between old-economy instincts and venture-scale ambition, between external validation and internal conviction, and between momentum and meaning.

Tomas Bercovich’s entrepreneurship path was never a straight line. All through, it has been a sequence of experiments, pivots, hard decisions, and compounding lessons; each one sharpening his instincts for what truly matters when building enduring companies.

When Philipp Heltewig talks about his journey, he does not describe “building a startup.” He talks about building a real company, one that hits its KPIs, scales globally, survives shocks like COVID, and rides new technology waves like generative AI.

Andrew Jamison, co-founder and CEO of Extend, chose an entrepreneurial path that didn’t involve a bold dive. Instead, he spent years quietly learning, observing, and accumulating enough pattern recognition to know when it’s finally time to build.

A) platform used by finance teams across 40+ countries. He has raised more than $100M from elite global funds like Scale Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Cathay Innovation, Creandum, and Atomico.

Aneesh Reddy belongs to that rare category of founders who have built their companies for nearly two decades through multiple cycles, reinvented their businesses through crises, expanded across continents, and still managed to retain over 100 employees who have stayed for more than 10 years.

Ryan Wang is building in one of the most consequential layers of modern software: the operational infrastructure that allows great ideas to scale without breaking. As the co-founder and CEO of Assembled, Ryan sits at the intersection of customer support, AI, and organizational design, an area most companies only confront once growth exposes their cracks.

Pierre Brossollet is the founder and CEO of Arverne, a geothermal energy company that has raised €220M ($258M), employs 250 people, has gone public, and is now pursuing more than €3B ($3.53B) in projects by 2030.

Founder of Dagster, Nick Schrock’s career defies the neat, linear playbooks often associated with Silicon Valley success. He didn’t follow a rigid five-year plan, nor did he obsess over titles or prestige early on. Instead, his journey has been shaped by systems thinking and cultural curiosity.

Founders like Joshua Silver are the architects of multiple companies, each bigger, more innovative, and more strategically positioned than the last. His entrepreneurial pathway traces his early days as a tinkerer and engineer to a $450M exit in healthcare payments.

Lyron Bentovim’s entrepreneurial career is anything but linear. His journey spans continents, cycles, and sectors. He started as an ice cream shop operator in Israel, a tech entrepreneur in the dot-com era, a hedge fund manager during the bust, and became a public company turnaround executive.

Orr Yarkoni’s path started in academic research and went on to building Colorifix, one of the world’s most ambitious biotech-textile companies that radically reframed how biology can power industry.

Rylan’s story is shaped by discipline, risk, curiosity, and a relentless drive to tackle problems on a global scale. Today, as the co-founder of Blue Water Autonomy, Rylan is building fully autonomous ocean-going vessels that can travel across open waters for months at a time.

Some founders are shaped by success. But Ben Borodach’s journey is forged by the lessons of failure, reflection, and the relentless pursuit of doing it better the second time around. The co-founder and CEO of april, he learned extensively from an early stumble.

Some founders plan every move years in advance. But Sudheesh Nair, the co-founder and CEO of TinyFish, thrives in the chaos of serendipity, making the right choices with the data at hand, learning quickly, and never looking back.

Some founders stumble into the frontier. Others live there by instinct. Stefano Ermon, an Italian-born scientist, Stanford professor, and co-founder of Inception, is firmly in the second camp. Stefano was working on the foundations of generative AI long before it became a phrase on every investor deck and conference stage.

Some founders dream of billion-dollar outcomes. Others quietly stack experiences, industry by industry and skill by skill, until their time arrives. Michel Tricot is the latter. Before co-founding Airbyte and raising $185M, Michel helped build two companies that sold for $300M and $115M, respectively.

Jason Johnson’s entrepreneurial journey is the kind that lives at the intersection of tech history and personal resilience. He talks about building, scaling, and exiting, as well as navigating the different cycles of company building with Darwin Networks and August Locks.

Henric Suuronen’s story is a masterclass in how childhood passion can evolve into global impact. His journey started from pirating games in cold Finnish winters and went on to building a $100M+ gaming company and investing nearly $500M into startups.

The post Mark Rampolla On Selling A Company To Coca-Cola for $200 Million, Repurchasing It, And Now Co-Founding A $600-Million AUM Private Equity Firm appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Alex Hawkinson On Selling A Company To Samsung For $200 Million, And Raising $78 Million To Automate Global Infrastructure For A Sustainable Future appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Jon Lensing On Building A $1 Billion Telehealth Company That Provides A Full-Stack, White-Labeled Platform To Support Virtual Care Services appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Rajeev Shah On Raising $135 Million To Build A Platform Providing Private 5G LAN (Local Area Network) Solutions For Enterprises appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Eric Remer On Selling Three Companies For Over $100 Million Each And Building A $2 Billion Valuation Company To Support SMBs With AI-Driven Business Solutions appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Krish Ramineni On Building A $1 Billion-Company To Provide Users With An AI Meeting Assistant appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Matias Recchia On Raising $45 Million To Provide AI-Powered Solutions For The Real Estate Industry appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Jesse Zhang On Raising $231 Million To Build A Conversational AI Platform That Empowers Enterprises To Provide An AI-Driven Concierge Customer Experience appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Lisa Falzone On Selling A Company For $250 Million And Now Building An AI-Powered Weapons Detection And Visitor Management System appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Tim Davis On Raising $130 Million To Build A Next-Generation AI Platform To Simplify AI Development And Deployment After Multiple Startups And Scaling AI At Google appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Itamar Friedman On Selling A Company To Alibaba And Now Raising $50 Million To Build A Quality-First AI Coding Platform To Help With Writing, Testing, And Reviewing Code appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Founder-Turned-Venture Capitalist Jeff Bussgang On Helping Build A Unicorn, Co-Founding A Company That Sold For $300 Million, And Now a Best-Seller Author and Harvard Business School Professor appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Brad Menezes On Raising $60 Million To Build An AI-Powered Platform That Helps Organizations Build And Manage Internal Applications More Efficiently appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Damian Pelliccione On Raising Millions To Build An LGBTQ+-First Streaming Media Network With Free Live TV, Movies, Series, News, And Exclusive Queer Programming appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Patrik Möller On Raising $147 Million To Develop Wave Energy Technology that Generates Clean Electricity From Ocean Waves appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Claire Tomkins On Raising Over $500 Million To Build A Platform To Help Couples Navigate Fertility Treatments Through Financial Support And Concierge Services appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Deniz Kent PhD On Raising $90 Million To Build A Technology That Uses Light For Therapeutic and Nutritional Proteins And Gene Therapy appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Abhi Sharma On Raising $60 Million To Build An AI Platform Helping Organizations Gain Visibility And Control Over Their Enterprise-Wide Data Processing appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Nitin Chhabra On Raising Over $50 Million To Build India’s Leading Tech-Native Retail Company, Specializing In Omnichannel Retail For Brands appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Claes Fredriksson has never taken the traditional path. Born in Sweden, raised across different continents from Australia to India, and later entrenched in global corporate life, his story is one of adaptability, grit, and a deep-seated desire to make the world greener.

The post Claes Fredriksson On Raising $65 Million To Create Carbon-Neutral Liquid Fuel From CO₂ And Green Hydrogen To Run The World’s Transportation first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Claes Fredriksson On Raising $65 Million To Create Carbon-Neutral Liquid Fuel From CO₂ And Green Hydrogen To Run The World’s Transportation appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Childhood friendships rarely turn into billion-dollar ideas. However, for Kelly Littlepage and Stephen Johnson, a shared curiosity in technology formed during their teenage years in suburban Colorado eventually became the foundation for building OneChronos.

The post Kelly Littlepage and Stephen Johnson On Raising $82 Million To Build A Tech Company That Designs And Operates Smart Markets Using Algorithms To Enable Trade first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Kelly Littlepage and Stephen Johnson On Raising $82 Million To Build A Tech Company That Designs And Operates Smart Markets Using Algorithms To Enable Trade appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

For Matt Price, entrepreneurship was not a sudden leap but the culmination of decades working at the forefront of tech innovation. His journey progressed from his early days in the UK tech scene to executive leadership at Zendesk and to launching Crescendo.

The post Matt Price On Raising $50M And Leveraging M&A Growth Strategies To Reimagine The Customer Support Experience And Disrupt A $500B Industry first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Matt Price On Raising $50M And Leveraging M&A Growth Strategies To Reimagine The Customer Support Experience And Disrupt A $500B Industry appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

It’s not every day you meet someone who was born without a name and went on to become an early backer of one of the most iconic communication platforms of our time—Discord. This sentence just touches on Peter Relan’s journey, which has culminated in impressive outcomes.

The post Peter Relan On Selling A Company For $50 Million, Running An Incubator For Aspiring Founders, And Building A Generative AI Math Tutor and Teaching Assistant for Higher Ed first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Peter Relan On Selling A Company For $50 Million, Running An Incubator For Aspiring Founders, And Building A Generative AI Math Tutor and Teaching Assistant for Higher Ed appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Tarun Raisoni is one of the rare “tier zero” founders who has not only built, scaled, and financed world-class businesses but also navigated them through full-cycle acquisition exits. Not once, but twice. He carries an aura not just of success, but of sustained, repeatable excellence.

The post Tarun Raisoni On Building And Exiting Two $270+ Million Companies And Now Providing A Suite Of AI-Driven Tech Solutions To Enterprises first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Tarun Raisoni On Building And Exiting Two $270+ Million Companies And Now Providing A Suite Of AI-Driven Tech Solutions To Enterprises appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Teddy Solomon has demonstrated that in the startup world, the best entrepreneurs aren't just born, they are forged through unexpected challenges, relentless creativity, and the courage to take leaps when the stakes are highest.

The post Teddy Solomon On Raising $41 Million To Build A Community-Based Social App For Gen Z first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Teddy Solomon On Raising $41 Million To Build A Community-Based Social App For Gen Z appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Christopher Pirie is one of the few founders in the biotech sphere who has explored multiple frontiers. In this conversation, he shared powerful lessons from his ventures, spanning synthetic biology, RNA vaccines, and sustainable manufacturing.

The post Christopher Pirie’s Companies Secured Hundreds of Millions And Now He’s Converting Waste Into Valuable Products To Decarbonize The Chemicals Industry first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Christopher Pirie’s Companies Secured Hundreds of Millions And Now He’s Converting Waste Into Valuable Products To Decarbonize The Chemicals Industry appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

In an era where mental health challenges are on the rise but access to care remains limited, Dr. Oliver Harrison has positioned himself to drive meaningful change. He is a trained psychiatrist turned entrepreneur with an extraordinary journey through technological innovation.

The post Dr. Oliver Harrison On Raising Over $34 Million To Provide Personalized And Integrated Mental Health Care From Prevention To Treatment first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Dr. Oliver Harrison On Raising Over $34 Million To Provide Personalized And Integrated Mental Health Care From Prevention To Treatment appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

In an era where mental health challenges are on the rise but access to care remains limited, Dr. Oliver Harrison has positioned himself to drive meaningful change. He is a trained psychiatrist turned entrepreneur with an extraordinary journey through technological innovation.

The post This Entrepreneur Raised Over $34 Million To Provide Personalized And Integrated Mental Health Care From Prevention To Treatment first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post This Entrepreneur Raised Over $34 Million To Provide Personalized And Integrated Mental Health Care From Prevention To Treatment appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Aron Alexander’s entrepreneurial journey is a powerful story of perseverance, reinvention, and vision. It spans from growing up in London’s independent retail scene to founding Runa, a company reshaping how digital money moves worldwide.

The post Aron Alexander On Raising $55 Million To Build A Digital Value Infrastructure That Allows Businesses And Individuals To Send And Receive Digital Value first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Aron Alexander On Raising $55 Million To Build A Digital Value Infrastructure That Allows Businesses And Individuals To Send And Receive Digital Value appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

When COVID-19 upended the global job market in 2020, John Diklev didn’t find a job—he built a company instead. His thesis-driven insights into the challenges of renewable energy evolved into FLOWER (Flexible Power), a cutting-edge energy tech company based in Sweden.

The post John Diklev On Raising Over $133 Million To Optimize And Manage Clean Energy Systems in Europe Using AI-Powered Tools first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post John Diklev On Raising Over $133 Million To Optimize And Manage Clean Energy Systems in Europe Using AI-Powered Tools appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

In today’s founder spotlight, we’re joined by a rare breed, Adam Schwartz, who has lived the full startup cycle, not once but multiple times, and has done so on his own terms. He is a founder who went from building scrappy marketplaces to scaling a profitable, venture-free company.

The post Adam Schwartz On Selling A Company For $40+ Million And Now Building An AI Tool To Help Organizations Manage Their Time Efficiently first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Adam Schwartz On Selling A Company For $40+ Million And Now Building An AI Tool To Help Organizations Manage Their Time Efficiently appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

If you’ve ever done data analysis in Python, there’s a good chance you’ve used Pandas, the groundbreaking open-source library that transformed how data scientists work. But behind Pandas is Wes McKinney’s story of intellectual curiosity, risk-taking, and a relentless drive to build useful tools for others.

The post Wes McKinney On Raising $110 Million To Develop And Promote Open-Source Standards And Tools For Data Analytics And Now Supporting Other Tech Founders first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Wes McKinney On Raising $110 Million To Develop And Promote Open-Source Standards And Tools For Data Analytics And Now Supporting Other Tech Founders appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

When you hear the term self-made, you might think of grit, long nights, and entrepreneurial tenacity. But in Suneera Madhani’s case, it’s a generational story—one forged in gas station aisles, sharpened in corporate boardrooms, and carried forward in billion-dollar exits.

The post Suneera Madhani On Founding And Selling A $1-Billion Payments Company And Now Building A Credit Assessment Platform For Small Businesses first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Suneera Madhani On Founding And Selling A $1-Billion Payments Company And Now Building A Credit Assessment Platform For Small Businesses appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

In a world where adult beverages have long been synonymous with alcohol, Bill Shufelt saw something different—a cultural and economic opportunity hidden in plain sight. He successfully navigated the startup ecosystem--scaling, manufacturing, building, and financing his company.

The post Bill Shufelt On Raising $225 Million To Revolutionize Craft Beer For The Modern Adult first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Bill Shufelt On Raising $225 Million To Revolutionize Craft Beer For The Modern Adult appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Some entrepreneurs build one company. Others become serial founders. Then there’s Vadim Rogovskiy — a rare breed who has built, scaled, sold, shut down, invested, and started all over again. His journey involved switching industries and switching sides on both sides of the table.

The post Vadim Rogovskiy On Building & Exiting Companies And Now Creating An AI Executive Assistant To Extend Human Capabilities first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Vadim Rogovskiy On Building & Exiting Companies And Now Creating An AI Executive Assistant To Extend Human Capabilities appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster ride, and few have navigated its twists and turns with as much grit and adaptability as Vikram Shekhawat. His journey is a testament to resilience, learning, and an unwavering vision when building, scaling, and exiting his many startups.

The post Vikram Shekhawat On Selling A Company To Blackboard And Now Building An AI Platform To Offer Companies A Suite Of Tools To Streamline Content Creation And Business Workflows first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Vikram Shekhawat On Selling A Company To Blackboard And Now Building An AI Platform To Offer Companies A Suite Of Tools To Streamline Content Creation And Business Workflows appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Rami Tamir is no stranger to the startup world. A seasoned entrepreneur with multiple successful exits, he has honed his ability to build, scale, and navigate acquisitions like a veteran baseball player hitting home runs with each venture.

The post Rami Tamir On Selling Two Companies To Cisco And Red Hat, A Third $500-Million Company To Oracle, And Now Helping Businesses Configure Their Applications first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Rami Tamir On Selling Two Companies To Cisco And Red Hat, A Third $500-Million Company To Oracle, And Now Helping Businesses Configure Their Applications appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

In the world of entrepreneurship, few stories embody resilience, vision, and adaptation like that of Colin Wiel. A four-time founder, Colin has built and scaled multiple companies, navigated financial crises, pioneered tech-driven real estate ventures, and is now at the forefront of AI innovation.

The post Colin Wiel On Taking A $1 Billion-Company Public, Merging A $800 Million-Company, And Now Deploying and Managing Custom AI Workforces For Businesses first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Colin Wiel On Taking A $1 Billion-Company Public, Merging A $800 Million-Company, And Now Deploying and Managing Custom AI Workforces For Businesses appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Molham Aref’s journey as an entrepreneur is nothing short of fascinating. With multiple successful ventures, big exits, and a deep history in AI, his story offers insights into the trials, triumphs, and evolution of the tech world, especially around the rise of AI.

The post Molham Aref On Selling Two $100+ Million Companies And Now Raising $122 Million To Help Organizations In Efficient, Data And AI-Driven Decision-Making first appeared on Alejandro Cremades.

The post Molham Aref On Selling Two $100+ Million Companies And Now Raising $122 Million To Help Organizations In Efficient, Data And AI-Driven Decision-Making appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.

Entrepreneurship is often about taking big risks, and for Jonah Greenberger, that meant leaving behind a stable job at a global energy giant to venture into an entirely new country, industry, and business model.

From growing up in an academically inclined household to founding Bright, one of Mexico’s leading solar energy companies, Jonah’s journey is a masterclass in bold decision-making, resilience, and strategic execution.

Bright has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sierra Peterson, Ajax Strategies, and Soma Capital.

Every founder’s journey is a unique blend of ambition, resilience, and lessons learned the hard way. Yoseph West embodies this entrepreneurial spirit, having navigated the complexities of building, scaling, financing, and successfully exiting multiple startups. Yoseph's latest venture, Relay, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bain Capital Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Amaranthine, and Industry Ventures.

In the fast-paced world of startups, few entrepreneurs stand out quite like Henrik Werdelin. With roots in Copenhagen, a foundation in journalism, and a career spanning MTV, startups, and venture capital, Henrik’s story is a testament to embracing curiosity and adaptability. Henrik's latest venture, Audos is an AI-driven software platform and ecosystem designed to empower a new class of entrepreneurs—often individuals or very small teams—to rapidly build, launch, and scale profitable, million-dollar-a-year businesses.

Frederik Fahning’s entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of remarkable. His is a story interwoven with ambition, resilience, business experiences where he faced challenges like almost running out of runway and layoffs, and an unwavering commitment to values. Frederik has co-founde3d Zenjob which attracting funding from top-tier investors like Aragon Global Management, 500 Global, Acton Capital, Atlantic LabsFor, and estay Capital.

Quentin Sannié’s journey is a testament to the power of entrepreneurial vision, resilience, and the ability to adapt across vastly different industries. From his humble beginnings in Versailles to founding innovative companies like Devialet and Genesis, his story is about building dreams. Quentin's latest venture Genesis is the first Global Rating Agency for the ecological health of cultivated soils. Its researchers and engineers have built the first tool to measure the impact of agricultural practices on soils to improve their health, yield and resistance to risks. It is a tool designed and validated by the scientific community, enforceable and dynamic.

Saman Farid is no stranger to reinvention. From growing up as a cultural misfit in China to leading groundbreaking ventures in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), Saman's journey is a testament to resilience, curiosity, and a lifelong commitment to solving problems. Saman's latest venture, Formic, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Alumni Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Calm Ventures, Chapter One, and FJ Labs.

Steven Galanis, co-founder of Cameo, epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit. His story, steeped in family tradition, innovation, and grit, is a fascinating tale of navigating life's twists and turns to build a hyper-growth company in the talent world. Steven's latest venture, Cameo, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Valor Equity Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon Alexa Fund.

Zach Dunn’s entrepreneurial story is unique and intertwined with his twin brother, Sam. This blog explores their journey from starting a blog, scaling an agency, pivoting to product development, raising millions, and thriving through a pandemic—all while doing it together as twins. Zach and Sam's company, Robin, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Atlassian Ventures, Tola Capital, Allegion Ventures, and Accomplice. They are also building Rally.

Dominik Senn’s story is one of reinvention and relentless ambition. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1967, Dominik began his career as a competitive skier at just 16 years old. His experiences on the slopes defined his youth and laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial spirit. Dominik's latest project has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Southern Realty Trust.

Alexi Suvacioglu’s entrepreneurial story is about passion, resilience, and calculated risk-taking. Having successfully founded and exited multiple ventures, his journey is a testament to the transformative power of adaptability, teamwork, and vision. Alexi's latest venture, Because, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like 7GC & Co, Khosla Ventures, Almoayed Ventures, and Sprint VC.

When Sami Khoreibi took his first company public at just 26 years old, he marked the beginning of an extraordinary entrepreneurial journey. His story spans industries, continents, and cultures, offering valuable insights into building, scaling, and innovating businesses in dynamic global markets. Sami's latest venture, Wisewell, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like BECO Capital and Digital Rain Venture.

In the ever-evolving world of entrepreneurship, few journeys are as captivating as that of Lárus Ásgeirsson. Born in a small Icelandic fishing community, Lárus has transitioned from a mechanical engineer specializing in geothermal energy to a global business leader.

His latest venture, Laxey, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Blue Future Holding, Farvatn, Kjartan Olafsson, and Kontrari.

In the heart of a quiet French village, a young girl stared at the night sky, dreaming of the stars and the mysteries of space. That girl, Eloa Guillotin, would grow up to co-found Beyond Aero, a groundbreaking company building hydrogen-electric planes, redefining the future of aviation.

Beyond Aero has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bpifrance, Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and Female Funders Found.

Mark Heynen has successfully navigated the startup ecosystem several times, running the entire gamut from building, scaling, and funding companies to exiting them. His journey demonstrates the power of resilience, learning from failures, and successfully pivoting to adapt to market conditions.

Mark's latest venture is Knapsack, and he reveals what it means to build a rocket ship in the current environment. The company has Alphabet, Ascend Venture Capital (Seattle), FiDi Ventures, and Gradient Ventures.

In the fast-paced world of tech entrepreneurship, Daniel Lee stands out with a remarkable story of resilience, innovation, and vision. Co-founder of Nooks, an AI-powered platform transforming the productivity of sales teams, Daniel recently announced a $43M funding round, bringing the total raised to $70M. Nooks' top-tier investors include Kleiner Perkins, Lachy Groom, Stifel Venture Banking, and Tola Capital.

In the entrepreneurship world, stories often begin in predictable places: classrooms, tech hubs, or corporate boardrooms. Casper Henningsen’s tale, however, takes us to the soccer field.

As a former professional soccer player in Denmark’s top league, Casper pivoted from the high-stakes world of elite sports to the equally demanding landscape of business and startups. His startup, GetWhy has attracted funding from investors like PeakSpan, Arbejdernes Landsbank, Stig Holledig, and SwiftScale.

Sverre Dueholm’s entrepreneurial journey traces his remarkable successes and resilience in building and scaling not just the company but also the product and people. He talks about flying solo and prioritizing work over a social life, eventually learning to create the optimum balance. Sverre's latest venture is Comundo, where he successfully instituted a four-day workweek, achieving higher productivity and creativity levels. It has attracted funding from top-tier investors like People Ventures and Likeminded.vc.

Mary Lou Jepsen is an award-winning, trailblazing technologist, entrepreneur, and creative thinker whose career has spanned some of the most groundbreaking technological advancements–from building holographic video systems to creating the world’s first $100 laptop. Mary Lou's latest company, Openwater, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bold Capital Partners, Khosla Ventures, Plum Alley Investments, and Collab Fund.

Thomas Laurent's story is one of resilience, adaptability, and learning through experience. From his early days in Lyon, France, to leading Micropep Technologies as a pioneer in sustainable agriculture, he has gained valuable insights into entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovation. Thomas' latest venture, Micropep, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Corteva Agriscience, Sofinnova Partners, Denis Lucquin, and Sparkfood.

Sergio Fogel’s entrepreneurial journey is a testament to the power of adaptability, resilience, and innovation. Born in Uruguay and later traversing the world for education and business, Sergio has built and scaled multiple ventures. The latest venture is dLocal, a fintech unicorn valued at $18 billion at its peak. It has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Alkeon Capital, General Atlantic, Tiger Global Management, and D1 Capital Partners.

In the world of entrepreneurship, visionaries like Bradley Bostic repeatedly navigate the challenges of building, scaling, financing, and exiting companies. His story is about relentless innovation, learning from setbacks, and a deeply personal mission to revolutionize healthcare. This interview traces Brad’s journey to building Health Cloud Capital and the challenges he handled along the way. The company has invested in companies like DecisionRx, hc1, 3Aware, and Covance.

Shawn Weidmann’s story is one of transformation, resilience, and thoughtful decision-making. He is a fantastic operator-turned-entrepreneur who successfully raised $90M+ for his company, Zephyr, and scaled it to 300 employees. In this insightful interview, Shawn explores the key moments that shaped his career, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and raising funding in challenging markets from investors like Elda River and The Pritzker Organization.

Richard Socher, an AI pioneer and accomplished entrepreneur, has a story that exemplifies innovation, resilience, and the ability to transform cutting-edge technology into impactful businesses.

Richard has had an exceptional journey founding and scaling AI-driven companies like MetaMind and You.com. His latest venture You.com has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Marc Benioff, Salesforce Ventures, NVIDIA, Gen Digital, and SBVA (formerly Softbank Ventures Asia).

The entrepreneurial path is rarely a straight line, and for Brian O’Kelley, it’s been a winding road of remarkable successes, humbling failures, and surprising turns. He has built multiple companies, one of which was incredibly successful and culminated in a $1.6B exit. Brian's latest venture, Scope3, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Room40 Ventures, Google Ventures, Craft Venture, and Venrock.

David García Aceves, born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, embodies resilience and innovation. His story traces his journey through building two companies that didn’t quite work out before creating a new rocket ship, drawing valuable lessons from his failures. David's latest venture, Digitt, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Clocktower Ventures, Gilgamesh, New Stack Ventures, FJ Labs, and Treville.

A scientist-turned-entrepreneur, Bruce Lahn has successfully transitioned from academia to leading businesses like VectorBuilder and Cyagen, reshaping gene delivery and genetic research. Here's a dive into his extraordinary path and the lessons he's gleaned along the way. VectorBuilder has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Legend Capital, Operation Holding Group, Wanlian Securities Co., Guangzhou Yuexiu Industrial Investment Fund Management, and China Chengtong.

When Kristian Ranta reflects on his entrepreneurial journey, it’s a story filled with grit, resilience, and a profound sense of purpose. From his roots in Finland to founding ventures that span continents, Kristian’s experiences offer invaluable lessons for aspiring founders. His latest venture, Meru Health, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bold Capital Partners, Foundry Group, Freestyle VC, and FMZ Ventures.

In the world of cybersecurity entrepreneurship, few stories are as inspiring and insightful as that of Ayal Yogev, co-founder and CEO of Anjuna. Ayal's journey weaves through Israel’s renowned Unit 8200, Silicon Valley startups, and the transformative experiences of founding his own company. Anjuna has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Insight Partners, M Ventures, SineWave Ventures, and DCVC.

Matthew Kligerman’s path as a founder is a masterclass in vision, adaptability, and persistence. His entrepreneurial story is woven with bold moves, serendipitous moments, and relentless curiosity.

In this engrossing interview, Matthew talks about adapting his experiences as a climber into building, scaling, and financing his companies. He also reveals unique aspects of the adventure of building a company in Latin America.

Matthew's company, Escale, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Invus, QED Investors, Redpoint Eventures, and Kaszek.

Sky Kurtz’s entrepreneurial journey involves grit, transformation, and strategic excellence. His story traces his humble beginnings in Jerome, Arizona, to crafting multi-million-dollar exits in the tech and agribusiness sectors. Sky's latest venture, Pure Harvest Smart Farms, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like IMM Investment, Samarthya Investment Advisors, StartX (US), and Metric Capital Partners.

Fawn Weaver’s journey from Pasadena to founding successful businesses has been anything but traditional. In this interview, she talks at length about an interesting concept–how to approach challenges by ignoring them. Fawn also discusses her journey of building and raising funding for her company and her unique approach toward venture capital, private equity, and growing Uncle Nearest. The company has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Hybridge Capital Management, CB3 Holdings, Mosaic General Partnership, Strand Equity, and Still Capital Partners.

In the startup ecosystem, building a company from the ground up without extensive capital is an impressive feat, as Anand Chandra has demonstrated. But building one in agriculture—a sector with deeply embedded challenges—is a story of grit, vision, and tenacity. Anand's company, Arya Collateral has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Quona Capital, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp, Lightrock, and Stride Ventures.

In the AI industry, where innovation evolves at lightning speed, some founders set the pace by combining a unique cultural perspective with a relentless drive to create groundbreaking technology. Gaurav Misra, founder and CEO of Captions, is one of these visionaries. Captions has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Jared Leto.

In this insightful conversation, Amir Ben-Efraim takes us on a journey through his remarkable career in cybersecurity, from growing up in Silicon Valley to building and scaling two successful ventures—Altor Networks and Menlo Security. Menlo Security has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Vista Equity Partners, Neuberger Berman, General Catalyst, American Express Ventures, and Ericsson Ventures.

In a world driven by data, it takes a visionary to see beyond the noise and build something truly scalable. Viraj Parekh, co-founder of Astronomer, didn’t have a clear roadmap. His journey from childhood curiosity in technology to becoming a key figure in data orchestration is fascinating. Astronomer has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Venrock, Bain Capital Ventures, Insight Partners, and Sutter Hill Ventures.

In the field of enterprise SaaS, some founders set out with clear roadmaps, while others, like Khadim Batti, blaze new trails through sheer determination, pivots, and a deep-rooted commitment to solving customer pain points. In a recent conversation, Khadim delved into his journey from growing up in Mumbai to scaling his current venture, Whatfix. Whatfix has raised funding worth $270M from top-tier investors like Warburg Pincus, Softbank Vision Fund 2, Dragoneer, Peak XV Partners, and Eight Roads.

In today’s rapidly evolving venture capital landscape, one of the most exciting developments is the rise of investors like Kate McAndrew. Kate, a visionary founder and leader, recently launched Baukunst, a $100M fund. Baukunst has attracted funding from top-tier investors with whom Kate and her co-founders had built long-term relationships.

In the entrepreneurial world, every journey is unique. Alexander Jekowsky’s path from aspiring baseball player to tech entrepreneur was marked by unexpected turns, unrelenting passion, and an affinity for solving unconventional problems. In this riveting interview, he talks about vertical integration, verticalizing in the SaaS industry, and ultimately disrupting an industry many would consider far from glamorous—laundry. His company, Cents, has attracted investment from top-tier investors like Camber Creek, Contrarian Thinking Capital, Derive Ventures Management Company, and FJ Labs.

Adeniyi Abiodun’s career is a tale of foresight, adaptability, and relentless pursuit of innovation, from his early fascination with astrophysics to building large-scale Bitcoin mining operations. Along with his team at Mysten Labs, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Adeniyi is now launching groundbreaking decentralized protocols. His journey showcases the boldness of a true visionary.

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and entrepreneurship, few stories are as multifaceted and inspiring as that of Othman Laraki. This interview dives into Othman’s story, offering a deep exploration of the world of building, scaling, and transforming companies. Othman relates his experiences working in healthcare and artificial intelligence and eventually building Color Health. This venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst Partners, Viking Global Investors, Emerson Collective, and T. Rowe Price.

Chris Walti is a seasoned engineer and entrepreneur whose career spans across world-class companies like Tesla and innovative startups. His story is one of resilience, constant reinvention, and an unwavering passion for building, culminating in the establishment of Mytra. Mytra has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Greenoaks, Eclipse Ventures, 515 Ventures, and Promus Ventures.

Barney Balmforth's journey is a testament to calculated risk-taking, resilience, visionary leadership, and two pivotal lessons: the importance of taking calculated risks and pursuing meaningful endeavors. These values, along with the inspiration to work hard, drove Barney's career in the high-stakes world of tech and biotech startups. His latest startup, Biofidelity, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Agilent Technologies, Octopus Ventures, BlueYard Capital, and SBI Investment.

Mario Schlosser's story resonates with entrepreneurs navigating the complexities of building companies across different cultures, facing financial hardships, navigating board dynamics, and even being fired from their own startups. Mario's latest venture is Oscar Health that has raised funding from top-tier investors like Lakestar, Alphabet, Coatue, Baillie Gifford, and Reinvent Capital.

Jeffrey Wessler’s story is a captivating blend of medicine, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He is a cardiologist and the founder of Heartbeat Health, the largest, countrywide virtual cardiologist practice in the US. Heartbeat Health has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Cressey & Company, 406 Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, Optum Ventures, and Kindred Ventures.

Guilherme Weigert's story is one of remarkable transitions—from growing up in Rio de Janeiro to founding successful companies reshaping the healthcare landscape in Latin America. In this riveting interview, Guilherme talks about pivoting, driving his company, Conexa, from growth to profitability, and navigating the ups and downs of building a business. Conexa has attracted investment from top-tier investors like Vivo Ventures, Endeavor Promessas, Wayra Brazil, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity.

Entrepreneurship is a journey filled with successes, failures, and countless lessons. Evan Richardson, founder of Form Health, the national leader in science-based obesity care, offers an insightful look into building and scaling a business based on his experiences and hard-learned lessons from the ventures he's led.

In this engaging interview, Diane Yu, a repeated founder and highly successful entrepreneur, offers valuable insights into her extraordinary journey from a young graduate to a leading force in the technology and finance sectors. From her early days at DoubleClick to her role in building FreeWheel, which Comcast acquired for about $400M, and now her current venture, TidalWave, Diane has consistently focused on innovation, learning, and building strong relationships. TidalWave has attracted funding from top-tier investors like RevTech Labs Capital.

Micha Grueber’s story stands out in the dynamic world of entrepreneurship thanks to the resilience, adaptability, and strategic foresight he has demonstrated. Micha is the founder of 1KOMMA5°, a home electrification company with a vision to revolutionize adopting clean energy. 1KOMMA5° has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, G2 Venture Partners, and b2venture.

When you think of the pioneers in cryptography and cybersecurity, one name that stands out is Dr. Taher Elgamal. He has had an incredible journey spanning decades of innovation, from growing up in Cairo and studying at Stanford to building and selling companies. Today, Taher is an investor in Evolution Equity Partners, a $2B operation deploying capital to upcoming companies like Torq, Protect AI, Cytactic, and Anvilogic.

Kieran Donovan’s journey is a fascinating tale of creativity, resilience, and the unexplored paths of entrepreneurship. His professional experiences have taken him across continents, from New York to London, Hong Kong, and now Singapore, where he co-founded k-ID. Kieran’s company, k-ID, navigates the complex regulatory landscape of kids’ and teenagers’ online privacy and has raised capital worth over $50M from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Z Venture Capital, and Everywhere Ventures.

In the world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as inspiring as that of Ran Shaul, a serial entrepreneur who embodies the resilience, adaptability, and foresight required to build and scale companies on a global level. Ran also offers insights into raising $380M for K Health from top-tier investors like Valor Equity Partners, 14W, Mangrove Capital Partners, GGV Capital, and Comcast Ventures.

Few stories in the world of entrepreneurship depict the perfect blend of grit, vision, and serendipity like Shawn Marcell's. A seasoned entrepreneur with a knack for founding, scaling, and exiting multiple ventures, his story offers a wealth of lessons. Shawn's company, Torus Biosystems, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like David R. Walt and Northpond Ventures.

Tanuj Mohan is no stranger to the world of entrepreneurship. From growing up in India to becoming a successful, repeated founder, his journey is a testament to innovation, perseverance, and a deep understanding of technology. Tanuj's latest company is AirEye, which has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Canaan, USVP, toDay Ventures, and Steve Krausz.

In a rapidly changing world, navigating uncertainty, building scalable solutions, and creating positive social impact are more critical than ever. These were the focal points of the conversation with Maheen Rahman, a trailblazing entrepreneur and finance leader who has raised over $400M. Her company, Infra Zamin. has attracted funding from top-tier investors like InfraCo Asia Investments and Karandaaz Pakistan.

In an era where environmental concerns are more pressing than ever, Daphna Nissenbaum is a shining example of how passion and determination can spark innovative solutions. She is the CEO of TIPA®, a company dedicated to creating fully compostable packaging. TIPA has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Blue Horizon Ventures, Triodos Organic Growth Fund, Horizons Ventures, and Greensoil Investments.

Tomer London, co-founder of Gusto, a company with over 2,500 employees, relates what it means to go from humble beginnings to building a hypergrowth business. His journey is an exciting blend of personal history, entrepreneurial lessons, and hard-earned wisdom. Gusto has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, Sands Capital, Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC, and Cross Creek.

In a candid and insightful conversation, Bence Jendruszak, co-founder of a leading fraud prevention company, shared his entrepreneurial journey, offering a blueprint for aspiring founders on scaling a global business, leadership growth, and staying ahead of market trends. Bence talks about how Seon has offices in four locations worldwide with over 270 employees. It has raised $100M from top-tier investors like Creandum, IVP, Fielder Capital, and PortfoLion Capital Partners.

Few stories in the world of technology and entrepreneurship demonstrate resilience, constantly reinventing technology and lessons learned from hard-fought battles better than that of Greg Mulholland, founder of Citrine Informatics. Greg's story is a valuable resource for entrepreneurs facing similar challenges in building a lasting company in an old-line industry like chemicals and materials. Citrine has attracted funding from top-tier investors like DRIVE Catalyst, Innovation Endeavors, DCVC (Data Collective), and Universal Materials Incubator.

Priit Lepasepp’s story is one of navigating the currents of history and reshaping the future of energy. Born in 1986 in Soviet-occupied Estonia, Priit experienced a world that was vastly different from the one he would come to build. In this interview, Priit talks about overcoming hurdles and successfully scaling Sunly, which fundamentally transformed the energy landscape of Eastern Europe. Sunly has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Rivage Investment, Kommunal Landspensjonskasse (KLP), Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, and mBank.

Mark Slack is a pioneer in medical robotics and one of the key figures behind CMR Surgical, a company now valued at over $3B. His incredible journey and path to entrepreneurial success was shaped by early challenges, military service, and a deep-seated commitment to improving healthcare through innovation. CMR Surgical has attracted funding from top-tier investors like SoftBank Vision Fund 2, LGT, Escala Capital Investments, and Ally Bridge Group.

In a rapidly evolving world of fintech and entrepreneurship, few stories exemplify resilience, adaptation, and foresight quite like that of Malte Rau. In this interview, Malte talks about navigating his company, Pliant, through different countries and currencies. He also reveals fundraising insights, having raised over $70M in equity and more than $200M in debt from top-tier investors like SBI Investment, Alstin Capital, Motive Ventures, and Neosfer.

In the bustling world of biotechnology and venture capital, few stories are as captivating as that of Adam Mendelsohn, the CEO of Vivani Medical. Adam’s journey demonstrates an inspiring blend of vision, perseverance, and adaptability required to navigate the complex landscape of building and scaling a company–particularly one that transitioned from a private entity to a publicly traded powerhouse. Adam's company, Vivani Medical, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like the National Institutes of Health.

In the world of AI, few founders have navigated the intersection of coding, corporate experience, and entrepreneurial vision as effectively as Ulrik Stig Hansen. As the co-founder of Encord, Ulrik's path offers a fascinating roadmap for founders looking to build and scale in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. Encord has attracted funding from top-tier investors like N47, Y Combinator, CRV, and Crane Venture Partners.

In today’s ever-changing business landscape, few founders possess the experience of building multiple successful ventures across different industries. An Australian entrepreneur, Jason Wyatt, is an inspiring example of such a founder. Jason's platform, Marketplacer, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Salesforce Ventures, Ellerston Capital, Acorn Capital, and Soul Patts.

Elizabeth Rossiello, founder and CEO of AZA Finance, has been riding the wave of startup life since 2013. Over the past decade, she has steered her company through 16 "crypto winters" and raised over $80M. Elizabeth's journey is not just inspiring because of the impressive figures but also because of her resilience, adaptability, and vision in navigating the ever-evolving fintech landscape.

Shahar Alster's career is a testament to the power of resilience, innovation, and strategic thinking in the tech industry. As a multiple-time founder, Shahar has navigated the complex landscape of startups, scaled businesses, and led successful exits. Shahar's latest venture, Ourcart, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like New York Angels, Partam Hightech, Pereg Ventures, and Roni Michaely.

From a humble beginning in South Africa to becoming a serial entrepreneur in the United States, Wayne Slavin's story is one of perseverance, adaptability, and relentless pursuit of innovation. As a young immigrant in Southern California during the late 80s, Wayne experienced a world where possibilities seemed endless despite the initial challenges his family faced. Wayne's latest company is Sure that has attracted funding from top-tier investors like BluePointe Ventures, FTAC Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Cohen Circle.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, few journeys are as inspiring as that of Christian Talmage, the founder of Oliver Space and Chief Product Officer of Dispatch Goods. From the rural woods of Maine to his rapid ascent in the startup ecosystem, Christian's story is about the power of intuition and resilience. Christian's latest venture, Dispatch Goods, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Climate Tech Circle, Congruent Ventures, Active Impact Investments, and Andreessen Horowitz.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of fintech, few stories stand out as vividly as that of Colin Walsh, founder of Varo Bank. He has had remarkable accomplishments, including raising over $1B and running a company with a team dispersed worldwide. Varo Bank has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Warburg Pincus, TPG, HarbourVest Partners, Lone Pine Capital, and Gallatin Point Capital.

Rohit Choudhary's journey from a curious teenager in India to a seasoned entrepreneur and innovator demonstrates the transformative power of technology and entrepreneurial spirit. His latest venture, Acceldata, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Insight Partners, March Capital, Industry Ventures, Lightspeed, and Sorenson Ventures.

In the ever-evolving world of technology and startups, few stories are as inspiring as that of Ray Chohan, co-founder of Patsnap. This company has raised over $300M in funding and is now on a path to becoming a leader in AI-enabled intelligence platforms. Patsnap has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Vertex Ventures, CITIC Industrial Investment Group, Shunwei Capital, and SoftBank Vision Fund.

Carlos N. Escutia's entrepreneurial journey is an exciting story of experiences drawn from diverse roles across countries, industries, and business models. It is a fine example of adaptability, resilience, and strategic thinking. His latest venture, GroWrk, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like K20 Fund, Hustle Fund, Act One Ventures, and Allied Venture Partners.

Richard Schenkel’s story reflects the power of resilience, strong work ethics, and a boundless entrepreneurial spirit. He has been a founder and has now turned into an investor operator. In this exclusive interview, he talks in detail about building, scaling, and financing his companies. Richard's latest venture, Phoenix3 Holdings, has invested in top-tier companies like Infuse Hospitality in Chicago and Fairgrounds Coffee & Tea.

In a captivating conversation with John Clendening, we delve into his incredible journey from the beaches of Florida to leading multi-billion-dollar companies and venturing into the startup world. John shares his unique perspectives on leadership, the art of bringing differentiation in segments, and his experiences in corporate giants and agile startups. He also talks about raising $200M for his startup from top-tier investors like Juxtapose, Hudson Structured Capital Management, Summit Partners, and Silversmith Capital.

In the world of startups, where every decision can lead to success or failure, the stories of resilience, innovation, and purpose often stand out the most. Mark Swanson, an entrepreneur with a journey spanning several decades, exemplifies these qualities. Mark's latest venture, Vu Technologies, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Accenture (NYSE: ACN), Lane Five Ventures, Topmark Partners, Jacques Fu, and ADX Labs.

In the business world, some stories stand out not just for their success but for the bold decisions and risks that paved the way. Michael Marks, founding partner at Celesta Capital, is one such figure whose journey from Missouri to Silicon Valley is about the spirit of entrepreneurship and the transition from operator to investor. His career, marked by strategic moves and seizing opportunities, offers invaluable lessons for entrepreneurs at every stage. Celesta Capital has funded top-tier companies like Aurascape, Auradine, Recogni, and Agnikul.

Steve Magami was born in Tehran and raised in the sunny suburbs of Southern California. His journey is about determination, adaptability, and the spirit of innovation. In this exclusive interview, Steve talks about raising more than $500M and scaling a company in an industry where he was an outsider. He also talks about culture, team building, and moving to the other side of the table as an investor. Steve's company, Agrovision, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Avenue Capital Group, Steve Kaplan, Aliment Capital, and KuE Capital.

For Bhavin Shah, a serial entrepreneur with a remarkable career, the paradox of Silicon Valley was his playground. In this exclusive interview, he talks about his experiences meeting Steve Wozniak in sixth grade and going through the motions of starting, financing, scaling, and exiting companies. Bhavin's latest company, Moveworks, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Lightspeed, Bain Capital Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Iconic.

Rob Bearden's journey is one of innovation, leadership, and relentless pursuit of growth. From his early days at Oracle to his most recent venture, Sema4.ai, Rob has been at the forefront of technological transformation across multiple industries. In this exclusive interview, Rob dives into his experiences, the lessons he learned when building and scaling his companies, and the vision that drives his latest endeavor. Rob's company, Sema4.ai, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Benchmark (Business/Productivity Software), Mayfield Fund, Canvas Ventures, Harpoon VC, and Uncorrelated Ventures.

Arjun Pillai's journey from a small village in Kerala, India, to becoming a successful serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley is nothing short of remarkable. With a deep passion for problem-solving and an unyielding entrepreneurial spirit, Arjun has built and sold multiple companies, navigating the challenges of bootstrapping, fundraising, and acquisitions along the way. His latest company, Docketai, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Mayfield Fund and Foundation Capital.

Lawrence Lin Murata's journey from Brazil to Silicon Valley is nothing short of extraordinary. Born and raised in São Paulo, he ventured into the tech world without prior experience, eventually leading a successful startup. This blog post delves into his inspiring story, covering his multicultural upbringing, the challenges of breaking into tech, his experiences at Stanford, and the founding of his company, Slope. Slope has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Tech Square Ventures, Alerion Ventures, Charlotte Angel Fund, and Techstars.

Leadership in the fast-paced world of cybersecurity requires more than just technical expertise. It demands resilience, a strong vision, and the ability to inspire a team towards a common goal. Amitai Ratzon, the CEO of Pentera, embodies these qualities. His company, Pentera, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Awz Ventures, a Canadian-Israeli VC group, Felicitas Global Partners, Delta-v Capital, and Blackstone.

In the fast-paced world of startups, few founders successfully navigate the tumultuous transition from building a company to becoming a venture capitalist. Robert Grazioli is one such individual. Robert moved from founding and scaling Density—a company valued at $1.1B—to now investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs through his venture firm, Bread. His story is one of trial, error, and resilience, and provides valuable insights to founders and investors alike.

In the ever-evolving landscape of tech startups, few stories are as compelling as Rick Nucci's journey from founding Boomi to launching Guru. A serial entrepreneur with a track record of success, Rick’s career is a masterclass in leveraging market opportunities and navigating the complexities of scaling a business. Rick's company, Guru, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like FirstMark Capital, Emergence Capital, MSD Capital, Slack, and Thrive Capital.

In the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, few have experienced the full spectrum of highs and lows like Zvi Schreiber. His journey from software engineer to successful serial founder offers invaluable insights into the trials and triumphs of building and scaling companies. In this exclusive interview, Zvi talks about his experiences selling a company to IBM, taking another company public, and fundraising. He has had a series of successful acquisitions and fire sales. Zvi's latest company, Freightos, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like FedEx, SGX, OurCrowd, Aleph, and Annox Capital.

In the evolving world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as compelling as that of Stephen Bailey, a former lawyer who transitioned from the courtroom to the startup ecosystem. His journey is a testament to the power of leadership, reinvention, and adaptability. Stephen's company, ExecOnline, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Kaplan, ABS Capital Partners, NewSpring, and Osage Venture Partners.

In the dynamic world of tech entrepreneurship and venture capital, few stories capture the essence of resilience, innovation, and determination quite like that of Zal Bilimoria. From his humble beginnings in Indiana to his pivotal roles at tech giants and eventually carving his path as a solo venture capitalist, Zal's journey is as inspiring as it is instructive. Zal's VC firm, Refactor Capital, has funded projects like Astranis, Granza Bio, Bedrock Materials, and Rubedo Life Sciences.

Arturo Elizondo, a founder with a remarkable story, has built a transformative company that addresses a critical global issue. Growing up on the Texas-Mexico border, he witnessed stark income disparities and developed a deep awareness of the broader world. His venture, The EVERY Company, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Temasek, Wheatsheaf Group, SOSV, and TO Ventures.

Qin En Looi is an inspiring founder turned investor with a remarkable journey, full of unexpected turns, and packed with insights on transitioning from founding a successful startup to becoming a venture capitalist. Qin En co-leads the $150M AUM fund, Saison Capital, that has funded prestigious projects like Fego.ai, Redacted Coin, Jia, and Origins Analytics.

Caroline Winnett’s story is nothing short of extraordinary—a journey that weaves through disciplines as diverse as music and neuroscience, culminating in a successful career as a serial entrepreneur and now, a prominent figure in the venture capital community. Caroline's company SkyDeck Berkeley is the investment arm of UC Berkeley's flagship startup accelerator.

In the world of financial crime compliance, few names resonate as profoundly as Tom Scampion's. Born in Warwickshire, UK, Tom’s career journey has been anything but ordinary. From his early days in the corporate world to leading his own venture, Tom's story is a testament to the power of data, the importance of collaboration, and the relentless pursuit of innovation. Tom's company, Global Screening Services has attracted funding from top-tier investors like AlixPartners, The Cynosure Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and MUFG.

Daniel Nathrath has had an exciting entrepreneurship journey building and exiting companies. He went on to build Ada Health, a revolutionary clinically-driven AI application that provides patients with in-depth health information. Ada Health has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Red River West, Bertelsman Investments, Farallon Capital, and Schroders Capital.

In the bustling world of tech startups, stories of perseverance, innovation, and global impact abound. Today, we dive into the inspiring journey of Rob Gonzalez, co-founder of Salsify, a trailblazing enterprise software company revolutionizing product experience management. The company, Salsify, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Permira, Neuberger Berman, Venrock, and Cap Table Coalition.

In a recent podcast episode, we delved into the world of non-dilutive capital and entrepreneurial ventures with Keith Harrington, a seasoned investor and co-founder of Novel Capital. Keith’s journey from a suburban Kansas City upbringing to becoming a key player in the venture capital world is nothing short of inspiring. This blog post captures the highlights and lessons from his remarkable career. His company, Novel Capital, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Ignia Partners, MatterScale, Gaingels, and Ulu Ventures.

From humble beginnings in Sunnyvale to leading a groundbreaking AI company, Varun Mohan's journey is a testament to resilience, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of impactful solutions.

In this interview, Varun shares his story, insights on the evolution of technology, and the strategic pivots that led him from autonomous vehicles to the creation of Codeium, an AI code acceleration tool transforming the software development landscape.

Codeium has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, Greenoaks, and Founder's Fund.

Eric Chen, the visionary behind Injective, has a remarkable story that spans continents and industries. From his early years in China and Colorado to his ventures in the crypto world, Eric’s journey is a testament to resilience, innovation, and a forward-thinking mindset. His company, Injective, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Jump Crypto, BH Digital, Block Tower Capital, and Pnyx Ventures.

Imagine a startup that doesn’t fit the usual mold—one that manages over $100B in assets with a team of nearly 600 employees. This is the incredible story of Matthew Fleissig and Pathstone, a company that has experienced tremendous growth and continues to innovate in the world of finance.

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Dealmakers Show, where we delve into the stories of entrepreneurs shaping the future. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Matt Luongo, a visionary in the realm of Bitcoin and freedom technology.

Federico Malek, a seasoned entrepreneur from Buenos Aires, Argentina, has navigated the complex waters of startups and acquisitions, establishing himself as a prominent figure in the business world. His journey, marked by strategic decisions and keen insights into the dynamics of emerging markets, offers a wealth of knowledge for aspiring entrepreneurs.Federico's latest venture, Wonder Brands has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Alarko Ventures, Kube VC, Mountain Partners, and Spectra Investments.In this episode, you will learn: Building startups in emerging markets like Argentina requires strong unit economics and sustainability from day one due to macro and political fluctuations. Early exposure to successful entrepreneurs inspired Malek to pursue entrepreneurship in Argentina's burgeoning tech scene. The high-growth, high-burn model is less suitable for emerging markets, where stable capital markets are scarce. After selling his first company to Groupon, Malek shifted to developing sustainable, profitable business models. Wonder Brands focuses on creating consumer discretionary brands for Latin America's rising middle class, emphasizing sustainable and profitable growth. Raising capital in Latin America is more challenging and time-consuming compared to more mature markets like the US and Europe. Aspiring entrepreneurs should carefully choose their market, considering both potential and challenges, rather than being attached to their home country. SUBSCRIBE ON: iTunesGoogle PlayStitcherTuneInRSSSoundCloudSpotify For a winning deck, see the commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400M (see it here). FREE DOWNLOADThe Ultimate Guide To Pitch Decks .mailchimp-form { background: #ff931f; padding: 0; width: 100%; display: inline-block; margin-bottom: 30px;}.mailchimp-form .img-block { width: 50%; float: left;}.mailchimp-form .content-block { float: left; width: 50%; padding-left: 10px; margin-left: -60px; padding-top: 46px;}.mailchimp-form .content-block h3 { color: #fff; font-family: "Source Sans Pro", sans-serif; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-size: 42px; text-align: left; border-width: 0; border-color: #fff; border-style: solid; border-radius: 0; line-height: 1.8; box-shadow: transparent 0 0 0, transparent 0 0 0 inset; text-shadow: transparent 0 0 0; padding: 0; margin: 0; letter-spacing: normal;}.mailchimp-form .content-block h4 { color: #000; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); font-family: Montserrat, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; font-size: 42px; text-align: left; border-width: 0; border-color: #000; border-style: solid; border-radius: 0; line-height: 1.5; box-shadow: transparent 0 0 0, transparent 0 0 0 inset; text-shadow: transparent 0 0 0; padding: 0; margin: 0; letter-spacing: normal;}.mailchimp-form input.email { width: 100%; height: 50px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 1px solid #333; margin-bottom: 15px;}input#mc-embedded-subscribe { color: rgb(255, 255, 255) !important; background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; font-family: "Montserrat", sans-serif; font-weight: 700; font-style: normal; / font-size: 25px !important; / line-height: 1.5; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px; padding: 10px 0px; margin: 0px; display: block; width: 100%; height: 100%; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) 0px 0px 0px inset; cursor: pointer; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; text-transform: uppercase !important;}@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {.mailchimp-form .content-block {float: left;width: 50%;padding-left: 10px;margin-left: -18px;padding-top: 9px;padding-bottom: 38px;}.mailchimp-form .content-block h4 {font-size: 18px;}.mailchimp-form .content-block h3 {font-size: 20px;}}Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.Access The Pitch Deck TemplateUnlock the pitch deck template used by founders to raise millions. Just enter your email below. Your email address is 100% safe from spam!.email_catch input#mc-embedded-subscribe { box-shadow: 0 2px 5px rgba(0,0,0,.12), inset 0 1px 1px rgba(255,255,255,.9); background: #f9f9f9 ! IMPORTANT; font-weight: 700; border-radius: 3px; width: 100%; color: #363636 !important; text-shadow: 1px 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.6) !important; border: 1px solid #c9c9c9 !important; cursor: pointer; padding: 8px 15px; font-size: 20px ! IMPORTANT; text-transform: none ! IMPORTANT; text-decoration: none; position: relative; line-height: 150%; font-style: normal;}About Federico Malek:Federico Malek has over 12 years of experience in the business world. In 2020, they became Co-Founder of Wonder Brands and a Member of the Board Of Advisors at Salesforce.From 2017-2020, they were the CEO of iúnigo, an Insurtech carrier focused on customer experience. From 2014-2017, they were the Co-Founder and CEO of Avenida Inc., a pure-play e-commerce with end-to-end fulfillment.From 2010-2014, they were the Managing Director at the South Cone of Groupon, where they led the company from scratch to insane growth rates. In 2010, they were also Co-Founder of Walooz, which was later acquired by Groupon.Lastly, from 2008-2010, they were an M&A Analyst at IB Partners (currently Landmark Capital), where they worked on M&A projects in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia.Federico Malek obtained a BA in Economics from Universidad de 'San Andrés' in 2007. In 2009 and 2010, they attended Georgetown University McDonough School of Business to pursue a GCL 2010.Entrepreneurship, Leadership. In 2019 and 2020, they attended Stanford University Graduate School of Business to pursue an Executive Program in Leadership.Currently, they are pursuing a Master of Business Administration - MBA from Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA, which they are expected to complete in 2022. In April 2015, they obtained an Endeavor Entrepreneur certification from Endeavor.See How I Can Help You With Your Fundraising Or Acquisition EffortsFundraising or Acquisition Process: get guidance from A to Z. Materials: our team creates epic pitch decks and financial models. Investor and Buyer Access: connect with the right investors or buyers for your business and close them.Book a CallConnect with Federico Malek: LinkedIn Crunchbase TheOrg MarketScreenerRead the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: All righty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today. We have an amazing guest. You know I guess that has done it multiple times you know, um, he he has some exits too which is amazing and we're going to be talking about fundraising and emerging markets versus let's say what you could be experiencing fundraising. Let's say in the Us. In other places. Ah that are similar also thinking about regional operations going regional scaling teams and also scaling the operations in parallel as well as you know what happens you know when you go through that full cycle of building. You know, scaling financing.Federico Malek: Um, um I would say.Alejandro Cremades: And also reaching the finish line with a company that you founded from the groundup. So without far ado let's welcome our guest today Federico Malik welcome to the show.Federico Malek: Thank thank you! Thank you and it's a pleasure to be here.Alejandro Cremades: I so originally born and raised in Argentina because I walked through memory lane. How was life growing up. Okay.Federico Malek: It oh it was great. It was great Argentina it's I always say the same I think that I'm im in love with my my my hometown buenosidis I think it's one of the best cities in the world. Super eclecive. It's great to do you know the type of thingss that we do and and you know a lot of there are there are a lot of ah tech startups here. There's a lot of talent. So so one of item was great. I love soccer I love beef. So it's kind of like the perfect city for me. Yeah.Alejandro Cremades: So in your case How how did you get into the world of entrepreneurship and business I mean I know that you studied economics but they but this whole venture world. How did it come knocking to you.Federico Malek: Ah, so yes, um, I'm in my thirty s right now Mid thirty s so so when I was in in college um in in probably early two thousand here in in Argentina we had. This amazing success stories for kind of like the first wave of entrepreneurs of ah web and internet entrepreneurs with you know that they were making great companies like vericali they like deremate. You know all the first. Very successful. Let's say wave of companies and I was really inspired by them when when I was tatting in college when I was in school high school and I probably knew from the early beginnings that I just wanted to go there I just wanted it to be. You know this kind of. You know guys you know raising money ah from international and global investors. Um, you know, funding companies and doing companies that were really with very inspiring. Let's say purposes and missions that were really trying to. To change the way we do certain things in light am so I guess that up from the early beginnings I knew I just wanted to go there. It was just a matter of time. Um, so so when I had the chance you know after college I went to started doing investment banking m and a.Federico Malek: Probably 1 of the most typical let's say outcomes for for a photograph graduate and after that I just you know after two years two years and a half I just thought hey this is my time I need to try I need to to risk and and to take some risk and and and I just you know took the the shot right.Alejandro Cremades: So let's talk about that because I mean it was ah you know, kind of like a similar model to to group on and they were talking about. You know I mean the the company went public. You know a group on you know back then but but but I guess. Groupon ended up acquiring you guys and then you kind of like started developing or or doing the expansion you know across latin America so how is that journey like.Federico Malek: We it was an amazing journey. So the first company we were really lucky because ah so when we were like 24 years old we started we we started learning about this this when we started kind of like analyzing what type of companies we wanted to do we understood that ecommerce.Federico Malek: Was an amazing opportunity for latin America and we learn about this new you know project that was really um, doing very well in the us and back then um, rubon and we started analyzing and we thought you know we reached the conclusion that. For that time for for different reasons. Um, this model was going to be very successful and indeed after you know a couple of years after that the penetration that we had with Groupon in the region was higher that in certain time you know and you know, ah. European countries so we had like ah, an amazing success with the Groupon model and attempt. But you know back then we we knew it was going to be successful and we started ah a groupon clone you know a Groupon kind of model a heart discount. Company called Wallus that was offering hard discounts in different local services in in in bonoitis and um, you know 1 year after we started, we got approached by one of the ah by the roupon team. That they wanted to go international. So we we started talking and we ended up selling. You know our company. Our startup to to them. No.Alejandro Cremades: So what was it like to go through an acquisition process because this was you know the the first time around and and I'm sure he was frightening. It was exciting but but how was that like.Federico Malek: It it was it was um, it was very exciting because we knew that. Ah, um, this this was of course changing our let's say the dude was going. You know take us to a. Totally different level. You know and and six months after the acquisition we we went from a team of 16 people to almost 180 so we knew that um you know this was really going to change the the our company for the better.Federico Malek: Um, ah you know we were young. We were kind of like eager to to take the experience. Um, and we we didn't think you know we didn't thought about it like ah us like ah like ah um, like a frightening experience. We.Federico Malek: When when we had the chance to do it. Um, we just took it I mean it was like and it was obvious for us that we should you know, go over that. Let's say path and let's say the only problem that we had back then is like hey we are a startup we're doing Well. Um. Maybe this is like ah an early exit for us and maybe we shouldn't take it but the way that we structure it. You know with earn out made us possible to capture the future growth that that the company had So um. So It was overall I think it was a good deal. A very good deal for us and ah and and um, much better experience.Alejandro Cremades: So in the end, you know you guys send it up a starting an e-commerce company. You know, right? after the whole you know, seeing the company going public and you know all of that day. Good stuff. You ended up venturing you know and going at it again. So. Call us about tell us about what happened with Avanita how? How did you guys come up with a concept and and the idea of going at it with it.Federico Malek: Yeah, yeah, so after we saw the the kind of like the penetration that roon had in in in latin especially in countries like Argentina and Chile Colombia um, the you know the the model really. was' really successful in these countries and um, ah you know there was kind of like ah it was obvious for us that ah a more pure play ah player of ecommerce multicategory more alike more similar to Amazon. Was going to be really successful in in in Argentina as well. Um, so we started with that idea so in Argentina back then we had a groupon we had medical daily that back in in that moment in 2013 2014 it was a model that was very similar to to to ebay. Um, and we thought hey we there's there's a big room here to create an Amazon business model. Let's say a pure pure play commerce with own fulfillment doing marketplace for other players selling 1 party. Um. Stock and inventory as well with a great customer service with a great customer experience. So we started you know we started a company in 14 we raised you know $50000000 from 3 subsequent rounds from global vcs like tiger global by naspers.Federico Malek: And probably what we didn't realize back then is that ah you know doing doing business in emergent markets. So and raising money for emergent markets is a little bit difference than that in the us we. We you know. The the the business model of a pure play commerce. It's extremely Let's say relay relies you know a lot on on on capital and and the problem of emerging market says that especially in Argentina is that the macro and the political fluctuations are very extreme. Um, as you can see right now from what's going on right now. But um, so so um, so in you know in 1 of this downturns. It became really difficult to continue you know raising money for the original model and back then we realized that we had a you know, very good. Um.Federico Malek: Techg for for to sell it as software as a service. Um for other players because our platform was really good and um and and so we kind of like Pivoted. We sold the business we pivoted it to to more of ah, let's say software. As a service platform for non ecommerce players that wanted to to to to be um or become a marketplace like banks like other retailers and um, those type of players so that is what we realized back back back then you know.Federico Malek: If You are thinking about a business that relies on Capital to grow and you know you you really need to think about what's your Target market right? because emergent markets the problem that you have is that you know these fluctuations make it really difficult. Ah, to to kind of like continue this type of business for the long run. Yeah.Alejandro Cremades: So then so then obviously we have Anita you know there was quite a a bit of lessons learned I think I guess which one was the top one that you took away with you from the Avannia experience.Federico Malek: And it's it's what we said I mean top 1 is is um, you know if you are doing. Ah so so everyone is talking about probably kind of like ah you know ah becoming profitable right now and you know having profitable growth. And probably for a lot of companies on a lot of startups this highrow high burn model. It's it's not working anymore what we realized back then in 20152016 is that the highrow high burn model was not suitable for a lot time. Um. Because you you cannot rely on having let's say a very mature capital markets that could um and you know a lot of you don't have a lot of investors that are willing to invest like big amounts of money in laan to sustain a high-growth highburn model. You know. So um, so like ah so so so that's that's that's the main lesson that we learn if you want to do a startup in emerging markets. You better. You know you better figure out how to become sustainable from the early beginnings and have strong unit economics and. Ah, probably instead of ah starting a highburn high-growth business model. You should become really aware how to make a sustainable business from the early beginnings because probably and and this is everybody that is doing you know business in emerging markets face it in some way. Um.Federico Malek: The you know in 1 year you the the the markets where you are operating might you know be really hot for some investors and you know in in eighteen months the situation can change dramatically and you can find in yourself in a very tough situation to raise money. Although the company might be doing well and might be doing great. So so so that is very important. You know if you're starting a business here. Um, you know you need to figure out how to become sustainable from day one if you like to do like let's say a highrow highburn type of business.Federico Malek: You probably should go to a more mature market like Europe like some places in in Asia or in of course the us. Ah, but but not in but not in latintime not in in in kind of like mid emerging markets.Alejandro Cremades: So then it's quite a shift going from ecommerce to insure take so why different segments. So what? what? what trigger that.Federico Malek: Um, yeah.Federico Malek: I just wanted to I always felt um, very curious about doing stuff outside of ecommerce I wanted an experience there. Um, after Aveita I just wanted so so so you needo. Was the first insurete. Um, let's say end-to end insure tech of latin um, you know we had some let's say ah websites like comparisons. Um, you know, but we were an we we are on an authentic.Federico Malek: Ah, end-to-end insurance company and um, when I watch you know our you know main shareholder was one of the largest um insurance companies of of the region. So when I got approached by them. You know I guess I needed an experience where after Aviita I needed an experience of like Okay, let's let's let's let's try to do something different. Let's try to do something within like a large institution and um, you know, just ah.Federico Malek: Keep it. Let's say come for for a couple of years and and so I started this. You know it. It was a great experience. I really enjoyed um because it was really different. It was much more. Let's say tech than than than doing ecommerce. Um, because we had to ah. Software for underwriting for fraud prevention for issuing ah of you know policieses. We had to create an entire interface and digital interface to to interact with the you know with our digital customer that was acquiring. our our products um so it it it was it was a great experience after ah, you know some years I wanted to go back and you know be be. You know to you know start my own business again. Um. And that's what we did and and and and we wanted but you know with all the experience that we had um before with you know my you know my founding colleagues and you know my my partners we we we wanted to go back to ecommerce because the ecommerce opportunity is yeah. Huge in latan la time is is the fastest rowing e-commerce market in the world. Especially Mexico it has a lot of room to continue expanding but we wanted as I said before you know we had a lot of experience and we we started like kind of like um, creating some dogmas like.Federico Malek: So dogma number one is like we're not going to make a company that um, that loses money I mean we are going to start a company that is sustainable and profitable from from day one number 2 we we don't want a company that relies exclusively on customer acquisition. Customer aquisition is like insanely high for for for Latin America as it is in other countries and other parts of the world but we want to do ecommerce so we we decided that that ah the way to kind of like ah when you mix all this. You see we saw and an amazing opportunity on creating digital brands. You know for the digital buyer for the digital consumer. So that's what we're doing right now in wonder runs that we started in 2021.Alejandro Cremades: So let's talk about the business model there now of wonder brands. How do you guys make money.Federico Malek: So so we create ah we create consumer discretionary brands for the rising middle class of latin america so we are serving a huge market of 400000000 people. Um by serving them and providing them. Um, consumer brands in discretionary categories such as home garden and ah pets accessories, baby accessories, tools and all the you know do- yourself essentials mattresses and sleep products we have more than 16 brands over 3000 products that we sell. On online marketplaces on our own d two cs channels as well. We are right now one of the top 10 marketplace operators in Latin America and of course yeah, but.Alejandro Cremades: So so so how how is it going to the um, the whole approach for example of because I know that you guys have raised 35000000 here what has been the experience of raising that money and then also what is it like to raise money.Federico Malek: In it.Alejandro Cremades: You know in the us versus let's say raising money in a place like Latin AmericaFederico Malek: It's very different. So so yes, so um, we have a tech backbone that help us develop this brands. Um, and you know it's it's it's I mean probably the.Federico Malek: The success that we had because a lot of the brands that we have right now in our portfolio have become really champions on their categories. So for instance, we have the number 1 selling mattress brand of online channels in Mexico we're selling more mattresses than anyone else. Our. Ah, luggage brand that is called Rumbo it's ah you know it's the number 3 luggage brand from Amazon in Mexico as well. So we have a lot of success storieies we we were able to really penetrate in some categories with our brands and I think that the main reason is that ah because we are doing it very different. We are developing brands as you develop software with you know, starting with and Mvp and from an Mvp. We iterate the the products and we get to kind of like the winner product very fast. And once we get that we start investing heavily on on that product. But once we know that it's it's going to be a successful product so it's it's a very lean approach that we learn from you know, almost ten years doing software and we took it to the real world and that's kind of like our secret sauce. that's that's our main differentiator. Um.Federico Malek: And you know raising money for this model raise money in emergent markets raising money in Latin America it's very hard all right. It's it's very difficult we had I think we had like ah um, like a golden age from 2016 to 2020 1 2022 with all this money coming from softbunk and a lot of other you know funds that were really active in the region I think that some of them are still active. But the options that you have. To raise money and latin in America are are much more reduced than in the us and when in a moment of like low interest rates a lot of investors go to this type of um, emerging markets to seek you know for growth alternatives when you know. Interest rates go up. There's a fly to quality and this regions tend to try up so it becomes more challenging I think that great companies are always going to get funded somehow. Ah, regardless of the region. But it's it's it's the options that you have in a lot time are a little bit more reduced so you need probably so to ah have a lot of friends that are raising money and have raised money in the us and and we were kind of like aware of the process. There. So.Federico Malek: A typical process that in the us might take you know three weeks four weeks to get a termate and you know probably close a deal in like you know, like probably a month and a half two months it probably takes four months here in in la ham you need to see. It's a lot of other investors. Investors are a little bit more cautiousuchious about investing in laam. Um, they they probably start doing like a very tough due diligence. You need to be prepared for that. Um, and um, you know, just the.Federico Malek: You need to be aware that the process is here in in in that time are they they take more time they are more difficult they end up being like very different from the original plan that you designed so so you the the companies need to be prepared for that. Um, in in the Us I've seen companies you know, running out of cash doing it. You know, just knowing that they can raise money because the the market is the capital markets are much more Ma material. It doesn't happen here in that time so you need to be more careful when you when you plan ahead.Alejandro Cremades: So when when planning ahead you know I'm thinking about the vision here. Obviously that's what the investors reallyly betting on. So if you were to go to sleep tonight feday and you wake up in a world where the vision of wonder brands is fully realized what does that world look like.Federico Malek: It's so it's it's it's probably a very similar world than than than the one that we have right now I think that um latam has made a lot of progress and some of the latin american ecommerce markets are have become really big right. So we just need. We just need time to realize our mission. We are right now. Um on a $100000000 run rate in in in terms of net revenues and we know and we we still didn't launch Brazil and we with Brazil we can. Triple you know the size of our company on a very short term. Um and we know that it you know very in in a very short term. Let's say in less than three years we can be doing $500000000 in sales. So that's a big company even for the us right? so. So it's it's it's just a matter of time of continue deploying and continue taking our brands to the rest of the latin american countries. Um, so so so it's a matter of time I mean the the market is ready. There. It's already big. To create huge companies like the one that we are creating right now at wanderbras.Alejandro Cremades: So let's talk about the past here because now you know you've built several companies. So if I had to give you the opportunity where let's say you're coming out you know of now being a graduate you know they're at the university that day and on this and you are now thinking about the. You know, maybe like a world of your own a world where you know maybe you can bring a solution to a problem that you're encountering. Let's say you had the opportunity of having a chat with your younger self. You know, maybe maybe even that younger self that was coming out of of giving the notice at the investment bank where you were at you know, initially and. You were able to give 1 piece of advice to that younger self that younger feday before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.Federico Malek: Well probably you know one of the best advicees that um I would give to any entrepreneur coming out from argenino or any any other merchant market is that you you choose you choose you need to choose very wisely the country where you're going to to. To start your business because we tend to have let's say um, we tend to you know store our business in our hometowns and in our home countries and that's because we think that it's going to be easier to start there than in any other country or in any other market. Ah. In in the world you know and and yeah because I'm I'm from Bonociis or I'm from Spain or whatever probably it's easier for me to start my business there but you know, starting starting your own business. You know this I hand rate it's it takes a lot of effort and it's it's it's a pretty hard. It's it's a very hard business to start a company and um, you know, just don't be attached to to your home country. Don't be attached to a country where you were where you were kind of like born. Ah. Because that probably not be the best option for you. You know like ah so so so so probably I would have started. Ah, ah you know a startup or a company in in in other parts of the world when I was younger. Yeah I mean.Federico Malek: Younger people tend to be a little bit have a lot of more liberty to to travel around and you know move to another country is move to another regions. Um I would probably you know recommend that to to my younger self just you know if you want to start a business. Choose wisely where you want to to to to do it because it's going to be hard anyway, it's goingnna be hard here in the Us in Europe or in India or whatever. But if you choose your your market wisely. You might you know you, you won't have to to fight or let's say. You won't have the obstacle of ah of the ro market for your business. Do you know? what? what? I'm saying like it's the same I mean it's it's us hard. You know probably doing ah the business in India and ecommerce you know e business in India it's as hard as as probably doing it in Mexico. But India is 10 times biggerer you know? So so so that's that's it. So probably you know when you're in your thirty s in your 40 s you know, moving to India. It's a little bit more difficult but when you're starting out you know, like probably that's an adventure. You know.Alejandro Cremades: A hundred percent fed it for the people that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.Federico Malek: Ah, probably Linkedin Twitter ah, you can find me there and happy to answer any questions or you know engage into any conversation.Alejandro Cremades: Amazing well faith it. Thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.Federico Malek: Thank you very much alejandro and hope to see you soon.*If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

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Leor Catalan is an innovative founder whose story embodies curiosity, resilience, and relentless innovation. Join us as we delve into his remarkable trajectory, from his formative years in Tel Aviv to the helm of a global company with over 600 employees.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, the journey is often as captivating as the destination. Duncan Logan, a seasoned entrepreneur with a trail of ventures behind him, sat down for an exclusive interview on the Dealmakers Show, providing a captivating narrative of his entrepreneurial odyssey. Duncan's latest venture, 9Zero, is in the process of raising a friends and family round.

In the field of culinary innovation, few stories are as captivating as that of Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, the co-founder and CEO of Redefine Meat. His journey from a childhood in an Israeli kibbutz to spearheading one of the most groundbreaking companies in the meat industry is as inspiring as it is insightful.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, there are few stories as captivating as that of Andrew Blackmon, the co-founder and CEO of The Black Tux. From humble beginnings in LA to navigating the challenges of building a successful startup, Andrew's journey is one of resilience, innovation, and unwavering determination.

In the labyrinth of entrepreneurial ventures, where dreams take flight and innovation shapes destinies, few individuals stand as examples of relentless pursuit and unwavering commitment. Goutham (Gou) Rao is one such visionary whose journey from the bustling streets of Brooklyn to the innovation hub of Silicon Valley is a story of resilience, passion, and audacity.

In the world of scientific innovation and entrepreneurship, few names shine as brightly as David Schaffer's. With a track record of launching and nurturing successful companies in the biomedical field, David's journey is not just a story of academic achievement.

In the bustling landscape of entrepreneurship, where dreams collide with reality, and visionaries transform industries, few narratives resonate as profoundly as that of Armon Petrossian. From his humble beginnings in Portland, Oregon, to the pulsating heart of Silicon Valley, Armon's journey is not just a tale of success but a testament to the power of perseverance, innovation, and the pursuit of a bold vision.

Meet Luke Saunders, the founder of Farmer's Fridge, whose journey from humble beginnings to transforming the food industry is nothing short of inspiring. In this exclusive interview, Luke talks about scaling his company and the challenges he faced during the COVID to get the company back on track.

In the bustling landscape of entrepreneurship, where every success story seems like a triumph against all odds, Lieza Danan's journey stands out as a beacon of resilience, vision, and unwavering determination. From her humble beginnings in the Philippines to scaling the heights of the biotech industry in the United States, Lieza's story is a testament to the power of perseverance and the importance of staying true to one's vision.

Welcome to the captivating narrative of Jorge Myszne, an entrepreneur whose journey traverses continents, technological frontiers, and entrepreneurial landscapes. Buckle up as we embark on an exhilarating ride through the highs, lows, and pivotal moments that shaped his entrepreneurial voyage. Jorge's latest venture, Kameleon, attracted funding from top-tier investor, Xilinx.

In the bustling world of entrepreneurship, stories of resilience, determination, and innovation often emerge as guiding lights for aspiring founders. One such narrative is that of Ricardo Pero, a Brazilian-born entrepreneur who embarked on a transformative journey from the corporate world to building a multimillion-dollar empire in the heart of the United States.

In the realm of entrepreneurship, there are tales of resilience, innovation, and the relentless pursuit of turning dreams into reality. Jemuel Joseph's journey embodies all these elements and more, from his humble beginnings in Ethiopia to co-founding Cover, a revolutionary company reshaping the future of housing. In an exclusive interview, Jemuel shared insights into his upbringing, the challenges he faced, and the remarkable evolution of Cover. He also talks about the challenges he faced with acquiring funding for his company and the rejections he faced.

In the annals of entrepreneurship, few stories rival the extraordinary journey of Payam Zamani. Born into adversity in Iran, Payam's path to success was not paved with gold but with resilience, determination, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

In the world of business, there are individuals whose journeys exemplify resilience, innovation, and an unwavering commitment to turning ideas into reality. Simon Litsyn, a seasoned entrepreneur with a background rooted in academia, is one such individual whose story is as inspiring as it is insightful.

In the heart of every great entrepreneur lies a melody of resilience, innovation, and unwavering determination. Paul Wiltshire, a visionary hailing from the land down under, has orchestrated an awe-inspiring journey that harmonizes the fields of business and creativity.

Sebastian Kreis has an inspiring story about his experiences building an incredible platform. While many people are talking about using machine learning and AI, Sebastian was one of the trendsetters in the field.

In the realm of startups, few narratives are as compelling and instructive as Kris Bliesner's journey. With a career from early-stage ventures to navigating hypergrowth and transition periods, Kris offers a wealth of insights into the dynamics of building and scaling businesses.

In the pulsating world of entrepreneurship and innovation, every success story is woven with threads of resilience, creativity, and a relentless pursuit of one's dreams. Joe Bayen, the visionary behind Grow Credit, sits down to share his remarkable journey from the bustling streets of Cameroon to the epicenter of technological advancement in Silicon Valley.

Christian Haigh's journey from a disciplined choir school student in Oxford to a leader managing billions in assets is nothing short of inspiring. In a recent interview, Christian shared his insights on discipline, overcoming challenges, the importance of trust, and the vision behind his ventures, Legalist and Compound.

In the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, there exist stories that transcend the ordinary, tales of resilience, persistence, and the pursuit of dreams against all odds. Such is the narrative woven by Philip Inghelbrecht, a seasoned entrepreneur whose journey from Bruge, the Flemish side of Belgium to the bustling streets of Silicon Valley is nothing short of remarkable.

In the bustling streets of Bombay, amidst the vibrant tapestry of culture, finance, and ambition, a dream was born. This dream would eventually transcend borders, continents, and expectations, manifesting into a remarkable tale of entrepreneurship, resilience, and vision. At the heart of this narrative lies Dhimaan Shah, the founder of Isprava, whose journey from the corridors of investment banking in New York City to the serene landscapes of Goa depicts the essence of chasing one's dreams against all odds.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, the journey from inception to success is often marked by unexpected twists and turns. Such is the story of Steve Tuck, whose path from corporate stability to the tumultuous startup landscape is a testament to resilience, vision, and unwavering determination.

Few stories are as remarkable as those of individuals who've carved their path to success against all odds. Today, we have the privilege of unveiling the captivating journey of Rupesh Sanghavi, a bootstrapped founder who defied conventional norms to build a thriving empire from scratch. Rupesh talks in detail about his experiences building a company to over 400 employees on a $150M revenue. He also reveals how he maintained his focus on sustainability and culture when building, scaling, and financing his venture.

In the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, tales of triumph often emerge from the fusion of passion, resilience, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge. Joshua Wöhle, a visionary entrepreneur, epitomizes these traits in his remarkable journey from a gaming aficionado to the founder of thriving startups.

In the bustling landscape of entrepreneurship, tales of success often emerge from the crucible of determination, innovation, and unwavering belief in one's vision. Guy Kashtan's journey embodies this narrative, traversing the realms of coding, corporate life, and ultimately, co-founding Rewire, a fintech startup aimed at revolutionizing remittance services for immigrants. Guy reveals interesting details about his experiences with co-founding a company, navigating it through the challenges of COVID-19, and taking it through an acquisition.

Mohamad Khachab's journey is one of resilience, authenticity, and unwavering determination. In a recent interview, he shared insights into his entrepreneurial ventures, the challenges he faced, and his commitment to giving back to the community. From humble beginnings to a successful exit, Khachab's story is a testament to the power of authenticity in business.

In the vast expanse of entrepreneurial endeavors, stories of triumphs, trials, foresight, and fortitude abound. One such narrative encapsulates the essence of perseverance and innovation of Srinivas Balasubramanian, a visionary entrepreneur who defied conventional wisdom and carved his path to success.

In the world of entrepreneurship, there are tales of triumph, moments of despair, and lessons learned along the way. One such remarkable journey is that of Mike Hall, a visionary leader who transformed a garage start-up into an industry leader. In this blog post, we'll delve into Mike's inspiring story, from his humble beginnings to his groundbreaking achievements in the renewable energy sector. He talks at length about the fundraising challenges he faced in 2008, restructuring the business and the transaction with a private equity firm for over half a billion.

In the heart of every successful venture lies a narrative, a tale of trials, triumphs, and the indefatigable spirit of its creator. Ameesh Divatia, a luminary figure in the tech industry, embodies this spirit, having navigated the tumultuous seas of entrepreneurship, weathered storms of uncertainty, and emerged as a beacon of innovation in cybersecurity. In a candid interview, Ameesh unveiled the intricacies of his journey, offering insights, wisdom, and a glimpse into the ethos that propelled him forward.

Entrepreneurs like Oli Cavanagh seize opportunities to innovate and solve real-world problems in a world where technology constantly evolves. From his humble beginnings in Ireland, Oli's journey has been marked by a series of ventures, each offering valuable lessons and insights into the world of startups and business. In an exclusive interview, Oli Cavanagh shares the highlights of his entrepreneurial odyssey and his latest endeavor, Strikepay, which is poised to revolutionize the way we tip service providers.

In the bustling world of startups, success stories often revolve around rapid growth, agile decision-making, and the ability to adapt to evolving market needs. One such tale that embodies these elements is the journey of Roberto Cipriani, the co-founder of Paper, a pioneering edtech company aiming to bridge the gap between what schools provide and what students need to succeed.

In the realm of entrepreneurship, there exists a unique breed of individuals whose journey embodies the essence of resilience, adaptation, and unwavering determination. Vivek Sharma, the visionary behind Movable Ink, epitomizes this spirit of tenacity and innovation.

In the bustling world of technology and entrepreneurship, few stories resonate as deeply as those of RELEX Solutions. Founded by Johanna Småros and her co-founders, this Finnish company has not only revolutionized supply chain management but also embodies the power of resilience, innovation, and teamwork.

In the world of startups, every success story is often underlined by a journey filled with trials, learning curves, and pivotal moments. Ben Huffman, the founder of Contra, graciously shared his entrepreneurial story, from his upbringing in South Carolina to the founding and growth of his ventures.

In the bustling world of technology and entrepreneurship, few stories resonate as profoundly as that of Kyle Forster. From his roots in the heart of innovation in Silicon Valley to his ventures into groundbreaking startups, Kyle's journey is a testament to resilience, foresight, and the pursuit of excellence.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as compelling as that of Ryan Sitton, the visionary founder of Pinnacle. This company has become a game-changer in the reliability systems industry. In this exclusive interview, Ryan Sitton shares his remarkable journey, from the early days of bootstrapping to the revolutionary strides Pinnacle has taken in transforming industrial reliability.

In a recent interview, we had the privilege of delving into the fascinating career of Adam Felesky, a visionary entrepreneur who navigated from engineering to the heart of the financial services and fintech world. Adam’s journey is not just a testament to personal resilience but also a masterclass in spotting opportunities and scaling a business successfully.

Embarking on the entrepreneurial journey is like setting sail on an unpredictable sea, facing calm waters and tumultuous storms. In this exclusive interview with Brian Anderson, a seasoned founder with a track record of triumphs and lessons learned, we delve into the depths of his entrepreneurial ventures, from the quaint harbors of the Hamptons to the bustling tech scene of San Francisco.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, few stories captivate as much as that of Eugene Malobrodsky. Eugene's journey is a testament to resilience, determination, and the immigrant spirit, from his humble beginnings in Lithuania to co-founding AnchorFree, a groundbreaking tech company that later went public.

In the fast-evolving landscape of web3, where innovation meets the convergence of technology and user experiences, Aaron McDonald's journey stands out as a testament to resilience, curiosity, and a relentless pursuit of transformation.In this candid interview, we delve into the fascinating narrative of a founder who started in a small rural town in New Zealand and went on to shape the future of the internet. Aaron also talks about ICOs, roll-ups, and the newly co-founded Readyverse Studios and their partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery.

In the ever-evolving landscape of business and finance, there are tales that stand out as truly unique, and the story of Legalist and its co-founder and CEO, Eva Shang, is one such narrative. This entrepreneur had a unique approach, distinctly characterized by innovation and strategic thinking. With a focus on a robust team, Eva carved a path in financing litigation, raising a substantial billion-dollar investment. She talks about her intriguing journey leading an underdog team that initially diverged from the traditional asset management profile, embracing a tech-centric strategy.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, stories often unfold in unexpected ways. Dr. David Albert's journey from the son of a prominent politician during the Watergate era to a trailblazing entrepreneur in the medical technology sector is a captivating tale of resilience, innovation, and the pursuit of a passion that transcends traditional boundaries. His company, according to PitchBook, has already raised $50M+.

In the vast landscape of healthcare innovation, some stories stand out not only for their transformative impact but also for the unique journey and cultural shifts they bring about. One such narrative is the inspiring journey of Pristyn Care, a unicorn in the healthcare sector, founded by the dynamic trio of Dr. Garima Sawhney, Mr. Harsimarbir (Harsh) Singh, and Dr. Vaibhav Kapoor.

In a world marked by unexpected twists and turns, Jan Arendtsz's journey from the tranquility of a small island to the bustling realm of entrepreneurship is a captivating tale. This interview unveils Jan's fascinating life, tracing his path from Sri Lanka to the tech landscape of North America.

In the dynamic landscape of business, successful partnerships and strategic investments can play a pivotal role in transforming a company's trajectory. The joint interview with Randall Ward, co-founder and CEO of Appfire, and Sri Rao, partner at Silversmith Capital Partners, provides a fascinating insight into Appfire's unique journey.

In a world where success stories often seem reserved for the privileged few, the journey of Basem Hanna stands out as a beacon of inspiration. From humble beginnings as an immigrant from Egypt to becoming the CEO of a billion-dollar publicly traded company, Basem's trajectory is a testament to the power of hard work, resilience, and unwavering determination.

In the bustling world of Silicon Valley, where success stories and innovations are born, one individual stands out with a remarkable journey that spans continents, cultures, and challenges. Vlad Magdalin, the co-founder and CEO of Webflow, has not only carved a niche for himself in the tech industry but has also overcome incredible odds to get there.

In the realm of entrepreneurship, tales of success often overshadow the arduous journey of building a company from scratch. Hed Kovetz, the founder of Silverfort, a groundbreaking cybersecurity company, recently shared insights into his entrepreneurial journey in an exclusive interview.

Sandeep Johri's journey from his middle-class upbringing in Bombay, India, to becoming a successful entrepreneur and CEO in Silicon Valley is a compelling narrative of resilience, adaptation, and visionary leadership. In this exclusive interview, Sandeep shares the intricacies of his remarkable career, from his initial fascination with the United States to his pivotal role in founding and leading successful tech companies like Oblix, Tricentis, and Checkmarx.

Born in Beijing and shaped by diverse cultures in Hong Kong and London, Angie Ma embarked on a remarkable journey that eventually led her to the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) innovation. In an exclusive interview, Angie shared her experiences, challenges, and the transformative power of AI in today's dynamic world.

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurship, stories of success are often marked by determination, resilience, and a passion for making a positive impact. Karim Bernoussi's journey from being the fifth child in a Moroccan family to the founder of Intelcia Group, a global outsourcing powerhouse with 40,000 employees and almost €800M or $936M in revenue, is nothing short of inspiring.

In a recent joint interview, Danielle and Leah Cohen Shohet, the dynamic twin duo, shared their remarkable journey of building GlossGenius, a beauty payments software company. From their childhood in Florida to scaling their business with venture capital, the twins discussed the challenges, setbacks, and triumphs that shaped their entrepreneurial path.

Ronald Brus, a visionary entrepreneur hailing from the Netherlands, has carved an extraordinary path from a medicine student with a passion for soccer to becoming a prominent figure in the biotech industry. Ronald’s story is not just one of business success, but a testament to the power of curiosity, resilience, and the pursuit of innovative solutions to real-world problems.

Vijay Krishnan, a seasoned entrepreneur and AI expert, embarked on a remarkable journey from his roots in India to the heart of Silicon Valley. In this blog post, we delve into his experiences, academic background, early fascination with artificial intelligence, and the evolution of his entrepreneurial endeavors.

In the heart of Silicon Valley, amidst the tech boom of the '80s, Chris Cabrera's journey unfolded. Born in Boston to a first-generation Colombian father, Chris moved to California with his family, eventually finding his way into the vibrant entrepreneurial landscape.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, stories of resilience, adaptation, and growth often captivate our attention. Maxim Melamedov, co-founder and CEO of Zesty, shares his remarkable journey from being born in the Soviet Union to navigating the entrepreneurial landscape in Silicon Valley.

In the bustling world of technology and entrepreneurship, the path from a Boston suburb to Silicon Valley is both fascinating and inspiring. Jody Shapiro, a seasoned tech entrepreneur, shares his journey of falling in love with coding at the age of 9.

In the fast-paced world of fintech, few individuals boast a journey as diverse and impactful as Alex Twigg's. He shares his remarkable story, from his humble beginnings in the UK to his pivotal role in transforming the banking landscape. Join us as we explore his experiences, challenges, and triumphs, ultimately leading to the creation of innovative ventures like Judo Bank and his latest venture, Appeggio.

In a world buzzing with discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) and capital raising, Jeff Denworth, co-founder of VAST Data, sits down for an insightful interview. From his humble beginnings as a Jersey boy to helping spearhead a company with a staggering $9.1 billion valuation, Jeff shares his journey and insights into the dynamic realms of technology, business development, sales, and marketing.

In a world where travel experiences have become an integral part of our lives, few entrepreneurs have had the vision to redefine the industry. One such visionary is Tao Tao, the co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide. In this conversation, Tao takes us on a journey from his early days in Beijing to the challenges faced in Europe and ultimately to the thriving success of GetYourGuide.

In a recent interview, Gaurav Kapoor, the co-CEO and Co-Founder of MetricStream, shared his captivating journey from growing up in India to becoming a successful entrepreneur and leader in Silicon Valley. The conversation unveils the evolution of Gaurav's career, the birth of MetricStream, and the invaluable lessons learned along the way.

In the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, success stories often emerge from unexpected beginnings. One such compelling narrative is that of Ganesh Shankar, the visionary Co-Founder of Responsive, a cloud-based SaaS solution revolutionizing how organizations share and exchange information.

In the vibrant landscape of entrepreneurial journeys, few tales are as compelling as that of Srinivasan KA, an Indian-born entrepreneur whose trajectory spans continents, industries, and transformative experiences. From navigating the bustling streets of Chennai to founding and scaling tech companies in the United States, Srinivasan's story is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the pursuit of audacious dreams. He also talks about his global approach to building businesses.

In a captivating interview with Allen Lau, the co-founder and former CEO of Wattpad, we delve into the fascinating journey of an entrepreneur who started from humble beginnings in Hong Kong and went on to create one of the most successful storytelling platforms in the world.

Max Aniort's journey from the west of France to building a global luxury travel platform is nothing short of a captivating odyssey. Born in Brittany, Max's childhood unfolded in diverse locations – from Saudi Arabia to Greece, military school in Brittany, and a career spanning Hong Kong, London, New York, and back to Paris.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, stories of resilience, determination, and innovation shine bright. Jessica Rolph, a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years of experience in the early childhood space, has woven an extraordinary tale of building successful ventures from the ground up.

Ran Reske's journey from a childhood in Kenya to the world of venture capital and entrepreneurship is a captivating narrative of risk-taking, resilience, and the pursuit of a dream. Born in Israel and raised in Kenya, Ran's diverse background set the stage for a unique entrepreneurial adventure.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, success often comes hand in hand with overcoming challenges, building a resilient team, and staying true to a visionary goal. This insightful interview with Eddie Martucci delves into his journey – from growing up in Connecticut to founding Akili and taking it public.

Innovation often emerges from the intersection of diverse experiences and perspectives. Yonatan Adiri's journey, born in the heart of the startup nation, Israel, is a testament to this phenomenon. Yonatan is also a member of the founding team of getaround.com and the founder of Healthy.io. The conversation with him provided valuable insights into the entrepreneurial journey, lessons learned, and the vision behind transforming healthcare through innovation.

In a candid interview, Itamar Arel, a seasoned entrepreneur originally born and raised in Israel, shares his fascinating journey from being a computer nerd in his early days to navigating the worlds of academia, startups, and corporate acquisitions.

Dr. Shay David, a seasoned tech entrepreneur with multiple exits, has had a remarkable journey through varied technological landscapes, from navigation to video to HR. His story is a testament to his adaptability, strategic acumen, and commitment to leveraging technology for a positive impact on the world.

One man's journey stands out as a beacon of hope for millions in a world driven by financial complexities. Arunkumar Padmanabhan, a visionary entrepreneur originally from Chennai, South India, has carved a niche for himself in the financial services sector.Arun has also become a catalyst for positive change in the lives of thousands. In this captivating interview, he shares his remarkable journey from the traditional corridors of banking to the frontlines of social entrepreneurship, demonstrating that impactful business can be the bridge to a more inclusive society.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as captivating as Renaud Laplanche's journey. From the picturesque streets of Paris to navigating the entrepreneurial waters in the South of France, Renaud's experiences have shaped him into a serial entrepreneur with a remarkable track record.

In the world of entrepreneurship, success stories often emerge from unexpected beginnings, and Sebastian Karlsson's journey is no exception. Born and raised in the cold and dark winters of Sweden, his trajectory from a professional soccer player to a founder and CEO of a venture success is a tale of resilience, determination, and the power of surrounding oneself with the right people.

Embarking on the entrepreneurial journey is much like navigating uncharted waters. It's a thrilling yet challenging expedition that demands unique skills and insights. Conversation with seasoned entrepreneur Pablo Fernandez Alvarez gave us several invaluable lessons. Each of these lessons gives you insights into startup culture and business endeavors. From the critical importance of cultural fit in hiring to the wisdom of prioritizing profitability from day one, this interview delves into Pablo’s entrepreneurial acumen.

Adrian Aoun's story is a tapestry of entrepreneurship, innovation, and a profound commitment to addressing critical issues. As he navigates the intersection of technology and healthcare, his journey serves as an inspiration for those daring to dream beyond the confines of the present.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, few stories captivate the imagination, like that of Rob Imbeault, a seasoned founder who has successfully built and exited multiple ventures. In this exclusive interview, Rob shares insights into his remarkable journey, offering a glimpse into the highs, lows, and invaluable lessons learned along the way.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, success stories often unfold in unexpected ways. Dave Dickerson, the founder of Accurate Background, epitomizes the resilience and ingenuity that can turn a humble beginning into a thriving business empire.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, few stories capture the essence of determination, innovation, and mission-driven success quite like that of Brian Lee. Born in South Korea and raised in Orange County, California, Lee's journey is a testament to the power of hard work, resilience, and a deep passion for creating meaningful businesses.

In the world of entrepreneurship, success often comes to those who embrace challenges and chart their own unique path. Jannick Malling, a Danish-born entrepreneur, is a perfect embodiment of this spirit. From his early days tinkering with the internet in the suburbs of Copenhagen to co-founding and leading successful ventures in the financial technology space, Jannick's journey is both fascinating and inspiring.

In a candid interview, Luca Cartechini shares his remarkable journey from the finance world to becoming an entrepreneur in the thriving e-commerce industry. Born in Italy and educated in the UK, Luca's story is a testament to the changing landscape of venture capital, the challenges of entrepreneurship, and the strategic approach to fundraising and acquisitions.

In the dynamic world of technology and startups, Dmytro Voloshyn's journey from a small city in Ukraine to co-founding and scaling Preply into a global language-learning powerhouse is nothing short of inspiring. In this in-depth interview, we delve into Dmytro's early aspirations, the founding story of Preply, the challenges faced, and the strategic decisions that led to their remarkable success.

In the world of business, there are stories that transcend the ordinary, tales of resilience, innovation, and the audacity to challenge the status quo. Paul Prager and Nazar Khan have had an inspiring journey leading up to a highly lucrative partnership. This collaboration of two highly motivated and aspiring individuals resulted in the ideation of TeraWulf, a sustainable Bitcoin mining organization focused on developing extensive infrastructure. This company has the potential to transition to a zero-carbon future for the world.

In the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, success stories often carry the essence of grit, innovation, and a commitment to core values. Bruce Ballengee, the founder of Pariveda Solutions, has crafted a thriving company and cultivated a unique approach to business.

In the vibrant city of Paris, Jordane Giuly's journey began – a journey that traversed the gray weather of Paris to the innovation hub of Silicon Valley. In this narrative, we unravel the fascinating story of Jordane Giuly, a Parisian native, entrepreneur, and co-founder of successful ventures like Spendesk and Defacto.

In the bustling landscape of entrepreneurship, stories often emerge from diverse backgrounds, each narrating a unique journey. Ty Wang, the founder of Angle Health, shares his inspiring tale that begins with immigrant roots and leads to the establishment of a groundbreaking healthcare benefits solution.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as compelling as the journey of Zafrir Yoeli, the founder of Enlight Renewable Energy. This company went public on both the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, reaching a peak valuation of $2.5 billion. Today, Zafrir is venturing into the world of climate tech investments, leading the charge at Gravity Climate Fund.

In the heart of Philadelphia, where the spirit of innovation thrives, Rob Devlin embarked on a journey that started in his grandfather's basement and led to the creation of metalenz, a company poised to revolutionize the way we perceive and interact with the world.

In the world of entrepreneurship, success often involves navigating uncharted territories, facing challenges head-on, and making decisions that shape the trajectory of a business. Gonzalo Parejo Navajas, a seasoned entrepreneur, shares his compelling journey from Madrid to Brazil, highlighting the lessons learned, the pivotal moments, and the birth of his latest venture, Kamino.

In the world of business and entrepreneurship, diverse experiences often shape innovative minds. Josh Felser, born in Maine but raised in the vibrant water-based town of Miami, embarked on a journey that led him from the ocean to the world of politics, Japanese currency trading, media, and, ultimately, becoming a successful founder and investor.

In the heart of Essex, a young mind named Tom Carter was nurtured in a family where hard work and determination were not just values but a way of life. Born to a mother working in a school and a father who delved into the world of chemistry, Tom's upbringing laid the foundation for his future endeavors. We unravel the inspiring journey of Tom Carter, from a curious child fascinated by building things to the co-founder and CEO of Ultraleap, a company at the forefront of revolutionizing human-computer interaction in the extended reality (XR) space.

In the dynamic world where medicine and entrepreneurship converge, Dr. Rahul Kakkar stands as a beacon of inspiration. His journey, seamlessly blending the realms of healing and business, reflects a commitment to leaving a lasting impact on both individuals and the biopharmaceutical landscape.

In the bustling heart of Los Angeles, Salim Youssefzadeh's journey from an avid outdoor enthusiast and pilot to the visionary founder of WattEV has been nothing short of remarkable. In this exclusive interview, we delve into Salim's adventures, academic pursuits, and entrepreneurial drive that led him to shape the future of transportation through sustainability.

In the heart of Ori Levy's entrepreneurial journey lies Strikeco, a groundbreaking venture that transcends the boundaries of traditional tennis training and playing. The collaboration with tennis veteran Yoni Willand sparked a vision to transform how tennis enthusiasts practice, learn, and compete.

In the vast ocean of technological advancements, some individuals stand out as pioneers, charting new territories and building foundations for the future. Srini V. Srinivasan, the co-founder of Aerospike, is one such visionary whose journey unfolds like a captivating tale of perseverance, innovation, and adaptability.

In the field of innovation and technological advancement, few stories stand out as compelling narratives of perseverance, commitment, and unwavering belief in a mission. Robert Bagheri's journey, from his roots in Iran to becoming a key player in the technology industry, reflects a tale of challenges, triumphs, and a relentless pursuit of making a positive impact on the world.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, few stories are as captivating as that of Liam McIvor Martin. From a competitive figure skater to a seasoned founder, Liam's journey is a rollercoaster of experiences in academia, raising money, and navigating the challenges of remote work.

In the bustling landscape of entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, Michael Vega-Sanz's journey stands out as a testament to resilience, adaptability, and a relentless pursuit of solving real-world problems. With a relentless focus on solving customer problems and an unwavering commitment to innovation, Michael and his team are paving the way for a future where insurance is not just accessible but revolutionized by technology.

In a captivating interview, Mohamed A Aboulnaga shares his incredible journey from being born in Cairo, Egypt, to becoming a key player in the global tech and business landscape. From the bustling streets of Cairo to founding and steering successful ventures like Fawry and Careem, Mohamed's story is about resilience, innovation, and pursuing a dream.

In the bustling world of startups and technological innovation, few stories captivate and inspire as much as those of Dekel Skoop. From the serene landscapes of an Israeli kibbutz to the fast-paced world of hypergrowth startups, Dekel's journey is not just about building a successful business but about making the internet accessible to everyone.

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurship, Boris Manhart stands as a beacon of inspiration, his journey marked by a profound connection to his roots, a passion for psychology, and an innate entrepreneurial spirit. Boris has co-founded several companies, including Pulp, CodeCheck, Numbrs, and Growth Unltd. Growth Unltd. invests in startups, providing early-stage funding. It also has a social investment fund called the Growth Impact Fund.

Stephany Lapierre is the CEO and Cofounder of Tealbook which is a provider of supplier data and e-commerce procurement technology. The company has raised $72 million from top tier investors including RTP Global, BDC Venture Capital, or Workday Ventures to name a few.

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurial stories, Eoin Matthews' journey stands out as a compelling narrative of resilience, adaptation, and insightful problem-solving. From growing up on a dairy farm in rural Ireland to co-founding successful startups in Silicon Valley, Eoin shares the lessons he learned along the way. His venture, Point, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Redwood Trust, Ribbit Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, certain visionaries stand out for their ability to innovate and transform industries. Sanjit Biswas, a seasoned entrepreneur, has navigated the entrepreneurial terrain with remarkable success.

Tim Schigel's life and career have been shaped by his Cleveland roots, a large ethnic family, and a passion for music. In this interview transcript, Tim shares his journey from growing up in Cleveland to becoming a pioneering figure in the tech and venture capital space. His VC firm, Refinery Ventures, has invested in top-tier companies like bitewell, FRAYT, StoryFit, and Livegistics.

Gerhard Trautmann, the founder of Global Savings Group (GSG), is a bottle of untapped brilliance, a mind ready to unleash innovation. Born in Quito, Ecuador, Trautmann's journey has been a geographical tapestry, weaving through Venezuela, the U.S., Portugal, and finally settling in Germany. His early years in South America, fueled by his father's work for European companies, imbibed in him a love for diverse cultures that would later become a cornerstone of GSG's identity.

In a recent interview, Navin Chaddha, a seasoned entrepreneur and venture capitalist, shared his journey from the vibrant streets of Delhi to the heart of Silicon Valley. His story unfolds as a captivating narrative, weaving through the technological shifts and entrepreneurial challenges that defined his career.

In the world of entrepreneurship, few stories resonate as powerfully as that of Richard Ettl, a young global leader recognized by the World Economic Forum. Born in Austria, Richard's journey is a testament to the transformative power of vision, resilience, and a commitment to sustainability.

In the sphere of innovation, there are individuals whose journeys span continents, cultures, and industries, shaping their perspectives and approaches to problem-solving. Brian Meidell, a Danish entrepreneur with roots in Copenhagen, embarked on a remarkable journey that led him from a stable upbringing in Denmark to disrupting the gaming industry. His venture, FRVR, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Accel, Hiro Capital, Makers Fund, and David Helgason.

Dedi Gilad’s career as a startup founder was rooted in his upbringing in Tel Aviv, where there is an unwavering resilience, a creative spirit, and an innate drive for entrepreneurship. These qualities would become the cornerstone of his journey, propelling him forward in the world of innovation.

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, success often comes from a journey marked by trial and error, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to innovation. Sacha Lazimi's entrepreneurial voyage is a testament to these qualities, as he transitioned from studying mathematics in Paris to becoming the co-founder of Yubo, a leading platform in Social Discovery.

In the labyrinthine streets of Boston, a narrative unfolded, written by the tenacious spirit of a man named Brad McNamara. Born and bred in a city that embodies both history and innovation, Brad's journey transcended the ordinary. This interview delves deeper into the rich tapestry of Brad's life, tracing the journey through his entrepreneurial endeavors. It starts from the early days in Boston to his groundbreaking ventures with Freight Farms and Morrissey Market.

In the vast expanse of Idaho, where farm towns flourish, and the spirit of hard work prevails, Curtis Anderson's journey began. From the idyllic simplicity of a small farming community to the intricate world of entrepreneurship, Curtis shares his transformative experiences and the evolution of Nursa, a groundbreaking healthcare staffing solution.

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurship, some stories stand out like well-composed symphonies. Sam Hendel's journey, originating from the suburbs of New York City, resonates as a melody of innovation and passion. From navigating the worlds of finance to orchestrating deals in the music industry, Sam's life has been a crescendo of risk-taking, calculated decisions, and a profound love for the arts. In this insightful interview, he offers a unique perspective shaped by hands-on experience in both investing and deal-making within the business realm.

In the vast landscapes of Minnesota, where winters are cold, and summers are serene, Matt Martin found his roots. In a recent interview, he took us through the remarkable journey that led him from the world of politics to the heart of Silicon Valley, sharing insights and pivotal moments that shaped his career.

In the intricate tapestry of entrepreneurship, the journey often unfolds as a nuanced narrative of challenges, victories, and pivotal decisions. Assaf Resnick's story, an Israeli-born entrepreneur who transitioned from Silicon Valley to venture capital and ultimately founded BigPanda, provides a deeper exploration into the intricacies of his remarkable odyssey.

Nestled in the breathtaking landscapes of Switzerland, Christoph Jenny's journey from the mountainous terrains of his childhood to the forefront of sustainable innovation with Planted, Europe’s fastest growing FoodTech startup in the alternative protein space, is a testament to vision, resilience, and a profound connection to nature.

In a captivating interview with Scott Dunn, the visionary CEO of Noveon Magnetics, we unravel the compelling narrative that traces his remarkable journey from the quaint communities of Baltimore, Maryland to the forefront of manufacturing innovation in Texas. Scott’s story is infused with a deep-seated passion for creating and an early immersion in the complexities of production. His career trajectory led him to establish Noveon Magnetics—a company poised to redefine the landscape of rare earth magnet manufacturing.

In a recent interview, Doug Scott shared insights into his unique journey, blending diverse perspectives from his international upbringing and experiences, including in oil and gas investment banking, to building a sustainable investment platform. Today, we delve into the story of Doug Scott, tracing his path from unexpected beginnings to the founding of Ethic, a company pioneering sustainable investing.

The story of Graham Farrar and Glass House is more than a narrative of business success; it's a saga of passion, perseverance, and a profound belief in the positive impact of cannabis on individuals and society. As the cannabis industry continues to mature and break barriers, Graham Farrar stands as a trailblazer, leading the way toward a greener and more enlightened future.

In a recent insightful interview, George Goldsmith, the visionary entrepreneur and founder of Compass Pathways, shared the rich tapestry of his life and career. He has had a journey that unfolded in unexpected ways, defying conventional norms.

Shilo Ben Zeev's entrepreneurial journey is a multifaceted narrative of resilience, innovation, and a commitment to making a positive impact. From revolutionizing diabetes management with Dario to redefining motherhood through Emulait, Shilo's ventures reflect an unwavering determination to address pressing challenges and create meaningful change in the world.

In the world of technology and innovation, the story of Alf Inge Wang stands out as a testament to the power of passion, perseverance, and thinking outside the box. From a small town in Norway to the global stage, Alf's journey is marked by a deep connection to gaming, a commitment to education, and the creation of groundbreaking projects that have left an indelible mark on the tech industry. His latest venture, BitPet®, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Startup Lab.

Andrew Endicott's journey is a testament to the multifaceted nature of the fintech landscape. From the intricacies of deal-making to the art of balancing innovation and experience, his insights offer a roadmap for aspiring entrepreneurs navigating the complex terrain of finance and technology. His latest venture fund, Gilgamesh Ventures, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Clocktower Technology Ventures, Picus Capital, Blank Ventures, and Flyover Capital.

In the world of entrepreneurship, success stories often carry a unique blend of passion, resilience, and the ability to navigate uncertainty. Dror Liwer, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of two successful companies with valuations in billions, shares his inspiring journey from being a diplomat's child in Ethiopia to becoming a prominent figure in the cybersecurity industry.

In the sprawling landscape of entrepreneur stories, some stories stand out not just for their success, but for the journey they encapsulate. Mark Otero, a visionary game designer, takes us on an expedition from his humble upbringing in South Korea to the pinnacle of the gaming industry. This is a journey of overcoming challenges, chasing dreams, and reshaping the gaming landscape.

Life's journey is filled with unexpected twists and turns, molding us into the resilient individuals we are meant to become. In a recent interview with Lindsay Jurist-Rosner, the CEO and founder of Wellthy, we delved into the transformative experiences that shaped her path. Her venture, Wellthy, has attracted funding from top-tier investors including Citi Impact Fund, Cercano Management, Rethink Impact, and Stardust Equity.

In the vast landscape of entrepreneurship, stories of resilience, innovation, and the pursuit of dreams stand out as inspirations. Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, founder and CEO of Samooha, is one such trailblazer whose journey from the bustling streets of Mumbai to the forefront of data-driven technology is nothing short of remarkable. Samooha has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Snowflake Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, and Altimeter Capital.

Cam Doody's entrepreneurial journey isn't just a story of success; it's a blueprint for aspiring business leaders. During this Dealmaker’s Podcast episode, we talked about the ever-evolving legacy that started with the establishment of Bellhops and continues with Brickyard. Brickyard has raised funding from 11 top-tier investors like GoAhead Ventures, Revelry Venture Partners, and Front Porch Venture Partners. A venture capital firm, it backs early-stage startups and offers founder-friendly software to manage equity plans, fundraising efforts, and investor portfolios.

In a recent interview with Sharif Tabebordbar, co-founder of Kate Therapeutics, we delved into his personal journey, scientific endeavors, and the establishment of a groundbreaking company focused on developing gene therapies for genetic muscle diseases.

Born and raised in Germany, Mike Mahlkow's journey from a childhood devoted to Olympic handball to becoming an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley is a testament to the resilience required to navigate the unpredictable terrain of entrepreneurship. Mike’s story is about adaptability and the pursuit of new passions. As he continues to build and innovate in the tech industry, his experiences serve as a source of inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs worldwide.

Michael Hurup Andersen's journey from Northern Denmark to financial trailblazer is a testament to the power of resilience, conviction, and strategic decision-making. His story inspires entrepreneurs to forge their paths in the face of adversity. His venture, kompasbank, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like 2xN, Burgeon Invest and DFSA. Jeppe Brøndum is an angel investor who has also invested in kompasbank.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, tech visionary Doug Levin shared his remarkable journey from a New York City upbringing to becoming a global leader in the tech industry. From early challenges to founding the groundbreaking company Black Duck Software, Doug's story is one of resilience, determination, and a keen eye for disruptive technology.

In the heart of Silicon Valley, where innovation echoes through the streets, Junko Sheehan's journey unfolds like an engrossing novel – a tale of resilience, entrepreneurship, and a commitment to giving back regardless of borders. Her venture, UNAVETS, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Oaktree Capital, Ares Management, and Junko herself.

David Flynn's journey through the tech industry is nothing short of extraordinary. From his formative years in Alabama to his pivotal role in the creation of Fusion-io and Hammerspace, David's story is a testament to the transformative power of innovation and unwavering determination. His venture, Hammerspace, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like ARK Investment Management, Prosperity7 Ventures, and Samsung Electronics.

In a recent podcast episode, Tyler Duvall, a visionary leader in the transportation and technology sectors, shared insights from his journey and discussed his role in shaping the future of transportation infrastructure.

Jeff Chapin's remarkable journey from a childhood shaped by military life to co-founding groundbreaking clean energy startups exemplifies the power of adaptability, resilience, and a global perspective. His experiences have not only influenced his career decisions but have also driven him to address fundamental human needs on an international scale.

The world of sports is ever-evolving, with innovative concepts and technologies reshaping the way fans interact with their favorite games. One such innovation is Fan-Controlled Football (FCF), cofounded by Grant Cohen, a league that has defied convention and captured the imagination of sports enthusiasts worldwide. Fan Controlled Football has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Animoca Brands, 6th Man Ventures, Jump Crypto, and Delphi Digital.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Jake Schwartz, co-founder of General Assembly and CEO of Brave Health, shared his captivating entrepreneurial journey. From his formative years on a farm to spearheading successful startups, Jake's story is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and a profound understanding of the business world.

Embarking on the journey of entrepreneurship is similar to setting out into an uncharted desert. You forge ahead, fueled by ambition, without knowing exactly where the path will lead. Ross Cohen is our guest on the Dealmaker’s Podcast and talks about his experiences in the world of startups,

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Sandy Kemper, a seasoned entrepreneur and former CEO of a reputable bank, shared his remarkable journey from the traditional world of banking to the forefront of fintech and eCommerce. Sandy's story is not just a personal narrative but a testament to the transformative power of innovation in the financial sector.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Joseph Landes shared insights from his remarkable journey, transitioning from a 23-year tenure at Microsoft to co-founding the successful startup Nerdio.

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we delve into the inspiring journey of Mohsen Shahini, a visionary entrepreneur who overcame challenges and pivoted his way to success. From his early years in Iran to founding Top Hat, a groundbreaking education technology platform, Mohsen's story is about resilience, adaptability, a relentless pursuit of innovation, and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures.

Parker Treacy's entrepreneurial journey is a testament to the power of diverse experiences, calculated risks, and unwavering persistence. Born in Boston to parents from Canada and Hong Kong, Parker's upbringing in a culturally rich environment laid the foundation for his global perspective. In this blog, we delve deeper into key insights from Parker Treacy's podcast interview on the Dealmakers' Podcast.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Nick Damiano, a seasoned entrepreneur and visionary in the field of healthcare technology, shared his journey from being born into a medical family to becoming a founder of groundbreaking startups. His experiences, setbacks, and triumphs offer valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and healthcare innovators. His latest venture, Andromeda Surgical, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Y Combinator, BBQ Capital, Attack Capital, and Pioneer Fund.

In the latest episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Rod MacGregor, a visionary entrepreneur with a remarkable background, shares his journey from humble beginnings in council housing in Scotland to pioneering groundbreaking technologies in Silicon Valley. This blog post delves into Rod's inspiring narrative, highlighting key moments and insights that shaped his trajectory.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, entrepreneur David Rabie shared his inspiring journey from childhood dreams to building a groundbreaking company. David's story is a testament to the power of passion, resilience, and unwavering focus. Here, we delve into key takeaways from his interview, offering invaluable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Shivashish Chatterjee's story is a testament to the power of passion and purpose in driving entrepreneurial success. His journey from a traditional academic path to founding DMI Finance serves as an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs worldwide.

Today, we're interviewing Dov Moran, Managing Partner, Grove Ventures. Dov Moran's remarkable entrepreneurial journey is a testament to the transformative power of determination and innovation. Born in a vastly different Israel, Dov's story is one of resilience, adaptability, and the drive to learn continually. His funding agency, Grove Ventures, invested in notable startups like RapidAPI, TriEye, Wiliot, and Wing Cloud. Grove supports founders in Israel, the US, and other locations in verticals like enterprise applications and artificial intelligence, among others.

In a world driven by constant connectivity and instant gratification, the story of Adam Cheyer, a visionary innovator, stands out. Raised in a small town with limited screen time, Adam learned the power of imagination and creativity from an early age. His latest venture, Sentient, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Horizons Ventures, Tata Communications, Disruptel, and Access Industries.

In a recent interview, we had the privilege of delving into the remarkable journey of Daniel Macklin, an accomplished entrepreneur whose path led him from the world of banking to the forefront of fintech innovation. His latest, Venture, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Fenway Summer Ventures, Greycroft, QED Investors and General Catalyst.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Sanjay Swamy, a seasoned entrepreneur and venture capitalist, shared his remarkable journey from Bangalore to the bustling metropolis it is today. With over two decades of experience in technology and startups, his insights offer invaluable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. Here, we delve into the key takeaways from his podcast.

Robert Fallon's journey is a testament to the transformative power of education, international experience, and a willingness to embrace new challenges. From his formative years at Boston Latin School to his groundbreaking work in international banking and, later, involvement in cutting-edge scientific research, Fallon's story is one of resilience, adaptability, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge.

Jacqueline van den Ende's entrepreneurial journey is a testament to the power of adaptability, self-belief, and a global perspective. From her early days in private equity to her current role at Carbon Equity, she continues to push boundaries and create lasting impact. The venture invests in climate change-focused tech startups. Top-tier investors back the company, including BlackFin Capital Partners, Firstminute Capital, AENU, and 4impact.

In the heart of Silicon Valley, amid the Dotcom era's whirlwind, Andrew Luong's upbringing was anything but typical. Raised by immigrant parents in a middle-class household, Andrew's early experiences shaped his perspective on financial security and the value of passive income. His venture, Doorvest, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Unpopular Ventures, Visary Capital, Bragiel Brothers and Pollen Street Capital.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Sultan Murad Saidov, co-founder of Beamery, shared a powerful narrative of how his upbringing, experiences, and passion for fair opportunities led to creating a groundbreaking talent management platform. His venture, Beamery, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Teachers' Venture Growth, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, EQT Ventures, and Index Ventures.

In the latest episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Eylon Etshtein, a visionary entrepreneur, shares his remarkable journey from army service to founding successful tech companies. Eylon's story is a testament to the power of persistence, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of what truly interests you. His latest venture, Perfect, has raised funding worth $13M from top-tier investors like Provident Trust Group, Firestreak Ventures, Young Sohn, and Snap.

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we delve into the extraordinary life and entrepreneurial journey of Paris Wallace. From a humble upbringing in section 8 housing to graduating from Harvard Business School, Paris' story is one of determination, resilience, and a deep-rooted passion for making a positive impact on the world. His latest venture, National Cycling League, has attracted funding from top-tier investors Kevin Durant, ESPN football analyst Desmond Howard, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, and Rich Kleiman's Boardroom Sports Holdings.

Brad Pelo's entrepreneurial journey is a testament to the power of vision, adaptability, and humility. From his roots in Montana to the global impact of 'The Chosen', Brad's story offers valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs. He is now co-producing the very popular show The Chosen, which was initially crowdfunded but now has more than 16,000 investors, including Derral Eves, Dallas Jenkins, and Earl Seals.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we spoke with Pavle Jeremic, the visionary founder of Aether. Pavle shared his inspiring journey from a unique upbringing to the forefront of bioengineering, driven by a mission to revolutionize industrial productivity. His startup, Aether, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like BoxGroup, Gaingels, Jay Zaveri, and Dolby Family Ventures.

Tom Greenwood's journey from the picturesque beaches of Australia to the epicenter of London's fintech scene is a testament to the global nature of entrepreneurship. Raised in Wellington, New Zealand, Tom's roots in the financial world began at ANZ Bank in Melbourne. Tom's latest startup, Volt, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Augmentum Fintech, EQT Ventures, Titan Capital, and IVP.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Harpinder Singh shared his incredible entrepreneurial journey, spanning from his roots in India to co-founding two successful startups. His latest venture is Innovation Endeavors, a company that invests in upcoming entrepreneurs with funding and training. Harpinder focuses on visionary founders, transformational technology and disruptive ecosystems, and manages $1.5B.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Matthew Darrow, Co-founder of Vivun, shared his remarkable journey from being an engineer to founding a B2B enterprise software company. His experiences growing up in different parts of the world and his background in engineering laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial spirit. His venture, Vivun, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Salesforce Ventures, Accel, and Menlo Ventures.

Growing up in the bustling city of Kolkata, Sahill Poddar's journey has been one of determination, intellectual curiosity, and a passion for making an impact. From tinkering with his first computer to delving into the world of particle physics, Sahill's experiences have shaped him into the entrepreneur he is today.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Alejandro welcomes Dr. David Mou, a distinguished figure in the mental health and entrepreneurship space. The conversation delves into David's personal journey, insights into mental health for entrepreneurs, the intersection of academia and startups, and his vision for the future of mental healthcare. His company, Cerebral, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Access Industries, Prysm Capital, Artis Ventures, and WestCap.

In a recent episode of the Dealmaker’s Podcast, Alon Arvatz, co-founder of PointFive, shared his remarkable journey through the tech industry. From his early exposure to tech companies to founding successful ventures, Alon's story is a testament to determination, adaptability, and a commitment to making an impact. His latest venture, PointFive, has attracted funding from top-tier VC Index Ventures.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, John Milad shared insights from his remarkable journey - a trajectory that took him from a quaint small town to the bustling financial districts of major cities like Chicago, New York, and London. His venture, Quanta Dialysis, attracted funding from top-tier investors like BlackRock, Eldridge, Segulah Medical, and Monashee Investment Management LLC.

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we dive into the inspiring journey of a true visionary, Dan Shapiro. Raised by parents deeply rooted in academia, Dan's upbringing was steeped in the worlds of communications and computer science. His venture, Glowforge, has attracted funding top-tier investors like DFJ Growth, Foundry Group, Revolution Growth, and True Ventures.

In this exclusive podcast episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we sit down with Henry Kim, an accomplished entrepreneur with a diverse background in finance, investments, and startups. His startup, Swiftly, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like BRV Capital Management, JMI Equity, Total Energies, and Silicon Ventures.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Philipp Povel, a seasoned entrepreneur, shared his incredible journey from Brazil to Germany, and his evolution from investment banking to building successful businesses. His latest venture, Mondu, has attracted millions in funding from top-tier investors like Valar Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Peter Thiel, and FinTech Collective.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Sam Li, Co-Founder & CEO of Thoropass, shared his remarkable entrepreneurial journey, including his progress from his early days in Shanghai, China, to studying computer science and economics at the University of Virginia and, eventually, founding Thoropass (originally called Laika). Sam successfully raised funding for Thoropass from top-tier investors like Third Prime, Nyca Partners, Fin Capital, and Canapi Ventures.

Starting a business is a journey filled with twists and turns, challenges, and triumphs. In a recent podcast episode featuring Elizabeth Zalman, we delve into her fascinating journey, from her early years to her experiences as a founder and advisor.

In a recent episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Daniel Theobald, the visionary entrepreneur and founder of Vecna Robotics and Mekable, shared his remarkable journey from growing up in Silicon Valley to pioneering autonomous forklifts and revolutionizing the robotics industry.

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Carl Hartmann, an Australian entrepreneur who has taken his innovative ideas and turned them into two successful businesses. His latest venture, Lyre's Spirit Co has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Futurecraft Ventures, VRD Investment, Doehler Ventures, DLF Venture, and DLF Venture.

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Ramin Shirani, a seasoned entrepreneur with a remarkable journey, shares his inspiring story of going from a young immigrant delivering pizzas to becoming a successful technology innovator in Silicon Valley. Ramin's story is a testament to the American dream, resilience, and entrepreneurial spirit.

In this episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, Ramin Shirani, a seasoned entrepreneur with a remarkable journey, shares his inspiring story of going from a young immigrant delivering pizzas to becoming a successful technology innovator in Silicon Valley. Ramin's story is a testament to the American dream, resilience, and entrepreneurial spirit.

Nathan Harding's journey into the world of innovation began with a simple childhood curiosity. From his early years in Houston, he found himself captivated by the art of deconstructing and fixing things. Little did he know that this innate curiosity would pave the way for a groundbreaking career that would span the realms of mechanical engineering, robotics, and even the beauty industry. His startup, LUUM, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like SaxeCap, XSeed Capital, Foundation Capital, and Handshake Ventures.

Nathan Harding's journey into the world of innovation began with a simple childhood curiosity. From his early years in Houston, he found himself captivated by the art of deconstructing and fixing things. Little did he know that this innate curiosity would pave the way for a groundbreaking career that would span the realms of mechanical engineering, robotics, and even the beauty industry. His startup, LUUM, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like SaxeCap, XSeed Capital, Foundation Capital, and Handshake Ventures.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, where innovation and perseverance are the keys to success, few stories are as inspiring as that of Courtney Guertin. In a recent episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, Guertin shared his remarkable journey from a curious college student to a successful entrepreneur. His story embodies the spirit of determination, growth, and adaptation that characterizes the modern startup landscape. His startup, Ease, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Centana Growth Partners, AWS Impact Accelerator, Google for Startups, and Spectrum Equity.

In the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship, where innovation and perseverance are the keys to success, few stories are as inspiring as that of Courtney Guertin. In a recent episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, Guertin shared his remarkable journey from a curious college student to a successful entrepreneur. His story embodies the spirit of determination, growth, and adaptation that characterizes the modern startup landscape. His startup, Ease, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Centana Growth Partners, AWS Impact Accelerator, Google for Startups, and Spectrum Equity.

In a recent episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, we had the privilege of speaking with the visionary leader behind V8, a groundbreaking cybersecurity company that is transforming the landscape of digital protection. This conversation delved deep into V8's journey, from its inception to remarkable accomplishments. His venture, Resilience Insurance has attracted funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Corey Thomas, and Intact Ventures.

In the captivating episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, Amar Goel, a seasoned entrepreneur and visionary who currently serves as a co-founder and CEO of Bito, shares his inspiring journey through the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship. With roots deeply intertwined with Silicon Valley's tech culture, Amar's trajectory unveils a story of innovation, persistence, and the power of adaptability. His venture, Bito, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Reza Behforooz, Eniac Ventures, Cap Table Coalition, and Mohak Shroff.

In a recent episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, we had the pleasure of hosting Jonathan Winer, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor with a wealth of experience spanning across multiple industries. From his humble beginnings as a philosophy student to his pivotal roles in founding startups and shaping innovative infrastructure projects, Jonathan's journey is a testament to the power of unexpected opportunities and the impact of strategic decision-making.

In the latest episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we had the privilege of speaking with Janis Zech. As the founder and CEO of various successful startups, including Fyber and Weflow, Janis has demonstrated a remarkable ability to identify opportunities, solve complex problems, and create lasting value.

In the latest episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we had the privilege of speaking with Joydeep Sen Sarma, a trailblazing entrepreneur who has left an indelible mark on the tech landscape. He is the founder of both Qubole and ClearFeed. From his humble beginnings in Delhi to co-founding successful startups and driving innovation in the world of big data, Joydeep's journey is a testament to the power of passion, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit.

In a world where artistry, academia, and entrepreneurship intertwine, Zev Eigen, the visionary founder of Syndio, embarked on a journey that would redefine workplace equity. His venture has raised funding from top-tier investors like Voyager Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Penny Jar Capital, and Anita Lynch.

In a recent episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, Robert Krayn, the visionary founder behind Talkiatry, shared his inspiring journey from a middle-class upbringing in New Jersey to revolutionizing the world of behavioral healthcare.

Despite facing numerous challenges, Krayn's determination and innovative thinking led him to build a unique healthcare model that empowers both providers and patients. Talkiatry has raised funding from top-tier investors like Left Lane Capital, Sikwoo Capital Partners, Relevance Ventures, and Yousif Al-Dujaili.

In a recent episode of The Dealmakers' Podcast, Alexander Izydorczyk shared his remarkable journey from an academic upbringing in Winnipeg, Canada, to becoming a pioneering force in the data science field. His company, Cybersyn, has successfully created a data-rich ecosystem and raised $62.5M to empower governments, individuals, and businesses. The venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Sequoia Capital, Snowflake, and Coatue.

Embarking on an enchanting expedition through the corridors of business acumen, we unveil the extraordinary journey of Ben Boyer, a seasoned venture capitalist whose path took him from the sun-soaked streets of Los Angeles to the thriving heart of the tech realm. His latest venture, R-Zero, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, BMO Financial Group, Qualcomm Ventures, and DBL Partners.

The visionary story of dbt Labs, formerly known as Fishtown Analytics, is a tale of remarkable innovation, growth, and adaptability. Founded by Drew Banin with a passion for data and a desire to make data teams an essential part of every organization, dbt Labs has been leading the charge in data transformation. The venture hs attracted funding from top-tier investors like Amplify Partners, Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Tiger Global, and Andreessen Horowitz.

In this captivating episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we embark on an extraordinary voyage with Tony Pan, a visionary entrepreneur determined to combat climate change through groundbreaking technology. From his early days growing up as the son of a Taiwan Navy officer to founding Modern Hydrogen, Tony's journey has been nothing short of inspiring.

Henri Asseily, a tech entrepreneur, co-founder of Bizrate, which he sold for $525 million, and active investor, boasts an inspiring journey from his early years in Lebanon to leading innovative tech ventures. His passion for technology and unwavering determination make him a key figure in the global tech landscape. His venture capital firm, Leap Ventures, is investing in startups like Brigad, Instabug, Joust, Enterprise Applications, and Consumer.

In this enthralling episode of the Dealmakers' Podcast, we delve into the life and times of Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer, the ingenious force behind EGYM where he has raised close to $400 million from top tier investors.

Nelson Chu, the co-founder and CEO of Percent, is a testament to the power of resilience, determination, and visionary thinking. His journey from New Jersey to the helm of a multimillion-dollar fintech startup underscores his inherent entrepreneurial spirit and his ability to harness past experiences for future successes. Percent has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Forté Ventures, White Star Capital, B Capital, and Vectr.

Matias Serebrinsky, the co-founder of Cookunity and PsyMed Ventures, has had an intriguing journey from his birthplace in Argentina to leading two successful ventures in the United States. His experiences as a founder and venture capitalist, coupled with his passion for mental health, have shaped him into a dynamic and innovative leader. his venture, PsyMed Ventures, has funded companies like Freedom Biosciences, Journey Clinical, and Delix Therapeutics.

Gabe Dominocielo, the co-founder of Umbra, has charted an impressive course from his humble beginnings to spearheading a groundbreaking aerospace and defense technology venture which now has the largest constellation on American radar imaging satellites, including the highest resolution commercial satellites in history, raised over $100 million and built a company valued at nearly a billion dollars. Umbra has attracted funding from top-tier investors like DARPA, Nimble Partners, Star Castle Ventures, and 7BC Venture Capital.

Alex Furman, the co-founder and CEO of Performica and co-founder of Invitae, has had an intriguing journey from his birthplace in the Soviet Union to leading two successful tech-based ventures and a nonprofit supporting Ukrainian refugees. His startup, Invitae, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like SoftBank, Deerfield Management, Genesys Capital, and Decheng Capital.

Sir Martin Sorrell, is the mastermind behind the success of WPP and S4 Capital. He has charted an exceptional journey from his birthplace in London to establishing two thriving advertising and marketing services firms. His newest venture S4 Capital has invested in companies like MightyHive, Firewood Marketing, Circus Marketing, and Maverick Digital.

Ian Shepherd's journey from a car enthusiast growing up in the UK to the co-founder of Electrify, a company that invests in and scales established YouTube channels, is nothing short of remarkable.

His passion for media and the evolving creator economy has led him to venture into unique territories, creating opportunities for content creators and shaping the future of media consumption. His venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Wendell Davis, Interchain Ventures, Tribe, and Jun Hasegawa.

Nico Simko, is the co-founder and CEO of Clair, a fintech startup rewriting the rulebook on how paychecks are managed and accessed. His unique multicultural background and international education have lent an extraordinary perspective to his innovative approach in the finance industry. The venture, Clair, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Pathward, Upfront Ventures, Founder Collective, and Kairos HQ.

Thomaz Srougi, the founder and former CEO of Dr. Consulta, has an inspiring story that stretches from the swimming lanes of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to the boardrooms of one of Brazil's leading healthcare providers. His journey is an amalgamation of competitive sports, public policy education, successful entrepreneurship, and an unwavering desire to solve social problems. The startup, Dr. Consulta, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Madrone Capital Partners, Omidyar Network, KaszeK Ventures, and Kamaroopin.

Paul Johnson, a successful entrepreneur with a passion for transforming traditional industries with technology, shares his remarkable journey just crystallized on a $400 million acquisition in a recent interview for the DealMakers podcast. His venture, Lemonaid Health, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Sierra Ventures, Health Velocity Capital, Correlation Ventures, and Hikma Ventures.

The trajectory of Barrett Comiskey's career, from his early days at MIT to pioneering the world of electronic paper technology, is a beacon of innovation and entrepreneurship. His venture, E Ink, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and Special Situations Funds. Intel Capital, and FA Technology Ventures.

Ralf Wenzel, a serial entrepreneur and visionary investor, is a force to be reckoned with in the global tech industry. His latest venture, Jokr isthe third unicorn company under his accomplished leadership.

Vishal Sunak, CEO and co-founder of LinkSquares, has raised over $160 million for his thriving startup. His venture has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Catalyst Investors, G Squared, Jump Capital, and Sorenson Capital.

Ronni Zehavi's path to becoming a prominent tech entrepreneur is a testament to the power of passion, perseverance, and seizing opportunities. Starting his career in human resources, Zehavi took a leap of faith and ventured into the tech industry, ultimately co-founding successful companies and making significant contributions to the field. His latest venture, HiBob, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like General Atlantic, Battery Ventures, Eight Roads, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

While growing up in Boston and attending Stanford University, Anders Jones never imagined that his career path would veer away from traditional finance roles towards entrepreneurship. Jones, the cofounder and CEO of Facet Wealth, shared his journey on the DealMakers podcast recently. His venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like TeleSoft Partners, Durable Capital Partners, Green Cow Venture Capital, and Warburg Pincus.

Jonathan Matus, the founder and CEO of Fairmatic and co-founder of Zendrive, has had a fascinating journey from his birthplace in New York to leading two successful tech-based ventures. His time in the tech industry, studying at prestigious institutions, and serving in the Israeli military have instilled a unique blend of tenacity, vision, and innovative thinking in him. His venture, Fairmatic, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Foundation Capital, Battery Ventures, Bridge Bank, and Aquiline Technology Growth.

Christian Gaiser is the cofounder and CEO of NUMA Group which is a German technology provider for short and mid term rentals and travel accommodations. The company has raised so far over 60 million euros from top tier investors which include DN Capital, Cherry Ventures, or Kreos Capital to name a few. Prior to this, Christian Bonial which raised a strategic investment from Axel Springer.

Christopher Golec is a seasoned entrepreneur with a demonstrated record of fostering innovation and leading successful start-ups. Golec's journey spans from his early days as a chemical engineer to becoming a key figure in the world of fintech, with his co-founding of Demandbase, a pioneering B2B marketing platform, serving as a remarkable testament to his visionary leadership. His venture, Channel99, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like GTMfund, Norwest Venture Partners, Jackson Square Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta.

Todd McDonald is the cofounder of R3 which is financial innovation firm dedicated to the design and deployment of DLT to build the new operating system for financial services. The company has raised over $120 million from top tier investors including Intel Capital, Temasek Holdings, and 40 other top tier banks.

With his latest company valued at over $2.5 billion, Sweden's very own, Mattias Hjelmstedt, has an impressive record in the tech and gaming world. He's contributed significantly to the global e-sports industry, built a myriad of successful digital platforms, and made lasting impacts on the lives of millions of online users. His startup, Utopia Music, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like FiveT Fintech (formerly Avaloq Ventures) and CV VC.

Kevin Frechette brought his sales experience to the startup world, and has built a highly successful venture in a massive industry. The startup, FairMarkit, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Highland Capital Partners, OMERS Growth Equity, GGV Capital, Insight Partners and ServiceNow.

Diego Caicedo is now championing his third industry in Latin America. He not only took his latest startup through an acquisition, but also bought it back, and raised $100M in capital in the process. The venture, KLYM, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like JP Morgan Chase and International Finance Corporation.

Amar Sawhney has built up an impressive record of startup exits. He’s created billion-dollar companies, sold some, and has taken others public. Now he’s heading up three startups at once. His startup, Rejoni, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Catalyst Health Ventures, Ascension Ventures, Delos Capital, and Sparta Group.

Bob van Luijt has gone from building websites in middle school to raising tens of millions of dollars for his tech startup. The venture, Weaviate, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Index Ventures, Cortical Ventures, Zetta Venture Partners, and Battery Ventures.

BJ Johnson went from academia to launching a clean energy startup that has already raised $50M for its mission. The venture, ClearFlame Engine Technologies has acquir3ed funding from top-tier investors like Mercuria, Rio Tinto, WIND Ventures, and John Deere.

Jon Sabes is a serial entrepreneur who has built and scaled successful businesses by going public. Now he’s charting a new venture that could be much bigger. His startup, GWG Life, grew to a $500M valuation, with $3B in assets. Jon is now poised to start his next eagerly-awaited company, Longevity Partners.

Doug Brien has gone from success in the NFL to kicking his first business through a billion dollar IPO. Now he’s working on an even bigger vision to bring peace of mind to others, for which he’s already raised $200M. His startup, Mynd Management, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, Invesco Real Estate, and Jackson Square.

Alexander Asseily has gone from being born in a war zone to creating breakthrough technologies that we use every day. The companies he’s been involved in have raised over $1B in capital, and he’s not done yet. His startup, Lilium, has attracted funding from top-tier investors Aceville, LGT, Atomico, and Lightrock.

Chase Garbarino has built, sold, and invested in startups since he was in fifth grade. Now he’s taking on the world’s largest asset class. His latest venture, HqO, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like JLL Spark, DivcoWest, Allegion Ventures, and Pagliuca Family Office.

Amar Kendale has already raised $70M for his latest venture. A healthtech startup focusing on a sizable, yet underserved niche, with big potential for impact. His startup, Homeward, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Breyer Capital, Glen Tullman, Human Capital, and Blackstone Group.

Lluís Cañadell chose to look a crisis in the face and turn it into a huge opportunity to leap into business as an entrepreneur. His startup, Treinta, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Rhombuz VC, Goodwater Capital, Luxor Capital, and Sherwin Gandhi.

Now on his third startup, Yannis Niebelschuetz has already raised tens of millions of dollars to scale his global mission of making coaching more accessible for entrepreneurs and their employees. His venture, CoachHub, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Signals Venture Capital, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Partech, and Speedinvest.

Steven Wongsoredjo chose a path and market that everyone else has been overlooking. A $200B TAM that he has already been making great headway in. His app, Super, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like TNB AURA, DN Capital, Dorsal Capital, and Softbank Ventures Asia.

Marcelo Lebre has engineered his way from being turned down for a $20k investment from a startup accelerator to raising half a billion dollars for his growing remote work platform. The venture, Remote, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like 9Yards Capital, Accel, Sequoia, Index Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund.

Rishi Mandal knows how to take a startup all the way from being birthed in the garage to being acquired for billions of dollars. The venture, Future, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Fitt Insider, Optum Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, and Trustbridge Partners.

L.D. Salmanson is a repeat entrepreneur who has been through spinoffs, acquisitions, and is now building his biggest company yet. His new venture, Cherre, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Mark Schwartz, Glilot Capital Partners, Trustbridge Partners, and Navitas Capital.

Yanda Erlich has now cofounder four venture backed startups. He’s been an angel investor, and a partner at a venture capital firm. Now he’s going at it again with a company that provides the best development tools for creating the next generation of software. His startup, Weights & Biases, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like NVIDIA, Insight Partners, Felicis Ventures, and Coatue.

Matthew Roberts has brought about one of the biggest revolutions in the coffee and beverage space that we’ve seen since the birth of Starbucks and the frappuccino. His startup, Cometeer, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Greycroft, D1 Capital, Elephant, and Tao Capital Partners.

Tanis Jorge seems to have come up with a magical recipe for consistently starting and selling businesses rapidly. Her last company raised over half a billion dollars through a Series D round. Now, she’s going even bigger with her latest company that aims to give back to the founder community and equip others to scale successful businesses. The venture, Cofounders Hub, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Blumberg Capital.

Nick Tuzenko has now raised $170M for his startup which is acquiring ecommerce brands. His venture, Accel Club has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Flyer One Ventures, North Wall Capital, Flashpoint Venture Capital, and Redseed.

Vicente Zavarce has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his LA based startup that is expanding in Latin America, beyond the usual suspects of just Mexico and Brazil. The venture, Yummy, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Softbank Ventures Asia, Sovereign's Capital, and Ethos VC.

Svilen Rangelov and his brother have already raised tens of millions of dollars for their tech startup that has reinvented the supply chain. Their venture, Dronamics, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Speedinvest, European Union, Strategic Development Fund (SDF), and Founders Factory.

Gaurav Sharma has already started and sold multiple businesses. His latest venture is shaping up to be his largest venture so far. It has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Amit Agarwal, Allison Pickens, Sequoia Capital, and Base10 Partners.

Kishor Patil has dedicated his career to building a lasting company that has gone through an IPO, and is now worth over a billion dollars. His venture, KPIT, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like CX Partners, KPitalism, and Chrys Capital.

Luka Ivicevic is now on his third startup. After having his highly successful fintech company acquired, he’s now on a mission to help this generation to live to 150 years old. His latest startup, Index Health, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like LAUNCHub Ventures and Inovo VC.

Jonathan Steinberg has built one of the world’s largest financial services companies, which is also the fourth largest gold manager in the world. His venture, Wisdom Tree, invests in exchange-traded funds (EFTs) via the WisdomTree U.S. LargeCap Fund, WisdomTree U.S. Quality Dividend Growth Fund, and WisdomTree U.S. Multifactor Fund.

Elad Gil has now launched two startups of his own. He sold one to Twitter, and has raised almost half a billion dollars for a second. That’s along with investing in some of today’s most successful companies, like Stripe, Airbnb, and Coinbase. His latest startup, Color Genomics, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like T. Rowe Price, Kindred Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, and General Catalyst.

Michelle He has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars for her fintech startup that is increasing access to credit and affordable loans, beyond just relying on credit scores. Her venture, Abound, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like All Iron Ventures, D.E. Shaw group, Left Lane Capital, and PointState Capital.

Arik Shtilman is the cofounder and CEO of Rapyd which is a payments platform that inserts fintech services into any app and simplifies

JP Errico has developed an incredible amount of IP in the medical space. On the way he has built, financed, sold, and taken companies public. His venture, electroCore, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like American Investment Holdings, Easton Capital Investment Group, Tullis Health Investors, and Knoll Capital Management.

Aviv Leibovici took a different route than many of his peers. Yearning to have a real world impact with his work he dove into a big industry that has been begging for modernization. His venture, Buildots, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like TLV Partners, Future Energy Ventures, Maor Investments, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Troy Helming is a Unicorn Founder (with 6 company exits) and a modern-day industrialist. He’s an inventor (60+ patent claims), an elite athlete, an author (1 book + 100s of articles), and a clean energy executive. He’s founded companies that have generated more than $30 Billion of economic impact, and he serves on numerous boards. He's a longtime wellness practitioner & yogi.

Dee Choubey is the cofounder and CEO of MoneyLion which is a mobile banking platform for borrowing, saving, and investing. The company raised over $250 million prior to going public in 2021 from top tier investors which included Edison Partners, DHVC, or Capital One Ventures to name a few.

Jonathan Chen took his previous company FiscalNote public for $1.3 billion and now has raised $61 million for Nitra which is overhauling the healthcare industry with radically efficient and transparent solutions - starting with spend management. So far the company has raised financing from top tier investors such as New Enterprise Associates, Andreessen Horowitz, or Gaingels to name a few.

Now on his second startup, Aidan Rushby has raised over $100M to help transform the experience of financing your next car. His new venture, Carmoola, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like QED Investors, VentureFriends, InMotion Ventures, and NatWest.

Nick Cromydas is the cofounder and CEO of Hunt Club which is a talent company that leans on subject matter experts to help clients find their next hire.

Joey Levy is now on his third startup. A venture with Jake Paul that went right into raising a $50M Series A round to take over the sports betting space. His venture, SimpleBet, attracted funding from top-tier investors like GoodPaper Ventures, Sachse Family Fund, FJ Labs, and Grit Capital Partners.

Stuart Lombard has built and sold several companies, as well as having been a VC on the other side of the table. His latest venture, ecoBee, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Energy Impact Partners, Thomvest, Relay Ventures and Amazon's Alexa Fund.

Karl Jacob has now started and sold several companies. Including a $300M acquisition by AT&T. His latest venture has already raised $50M to disrupt and multiple trillion dollar market, thanks to the backing of investors like Richard Branson.

Keith Peiris became the CEO of his first company at a very young age. His latest venture has already raised $81M on its mission to help us communicate and understand each other better. The startup, Tome, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Audacious Ventures, Greylock, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Wing Venture Capital.

Adam Nathan went from working in the White House to launching a tech startup that has raised sizable seed and Series A funding rounds. The venture, Almanac has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Leore Avidar, General Catalyst, Indicator Ventures, and Floodgate.

Kurtis Lin has been involved with several successful startups that have had great exits. His latest venture aims to disrupt the way our credit and borrowing power is valued, by using more data. Pinwheel has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Indeed, Coatue, First Round Capital, Upfront Ventures, and Franklin Templeton Investments.

Even with dyslexia, Peter Majeranowski has invested in building companies all over the world, worked with the Pentagon, and has gone on to raise tens of millions of dollars for his clothing tech startup. The venture, Circ, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Card Sound Capital, 8090 Partners, Alante Capital, and Circulate Capital.

The Glezer brothers brought their take on fintech to support and fuel a massive market. Their startup, Agrolend, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Lightrock, Barn Investimentos, Provence Capital, and Verde Asset.

Jack Greco built one of the first unicorn startups in a tier two city. After taking that venture public he has gone on to become an angel investor and VC fund manager. His VC, Stealth Venture Fund, has invested in startups like Go Fish Capital, Bounce Imaging, ShearShare, and Patient Pattern.

Pushkar Mukewar is helping small and medium sized businesses on three continents survive and scale with his growing fintech platform. The startup, Drip Capital, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Raison Asset Management, Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, and TI Platform Management.

Greg Bailey has now been involved in an almost dizzying number of startups. Now with his latest venture he is aiming to help you live healthier, and for longer. The startup, Juvenescence, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Longevity Vision Fund, Foresite Capital, Fastforward Innovations, and Grok Ventures.

Federico Travella went from turning his childhood hobbies into businesses to launching a fintech start that has transacted well over a billion dollars. The company, Novicap, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Fasanara Capital, Techstars, Partech, and The Net Street.

Michael Bronfein got his start as a butcher in a family supermarket. Since then he has built a billion dollar business, run a multibillion dollar private equity fund, and is now operating a growing wellness company with an emerging portfolio of cannabis based products. The venture, Curio Wellness, will invest in over 50 startups backed by women, minorities and disabled veteran entrepreneurs.

Mikhail Kokorich has created some incredible companies, against great odds. From retail to space, to hydrogen fueled transportation, he has been breaking ground all over the earth, and beyond. His startup, Destinus, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Liquid 2 Ventures, Cornelius Boersch, Quiet Capital, and Cathexis Ventures.

Rajiv Khemani has now raised over $500M for his string of successful startups. Including building more than one billion dollar company, and achieving multiple exits. His latest venture, Auradine, has attracted funding from top-tier investors.

Trevor Best ditched the oil fields to take up his role in the fight for climate change. His startup has now raised over $100M on their journey, as they set a fast pace for fueling the transition to greener sources of energy. The venture, Syzygy Plasmonics, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, Equinor Ventures, Goose Capital, and The Engine.

Srikanth Velamakanni has raised over $685M for his AI startup. A company that has now been working in this space for over 20 years, and raised funding from top-tier investors like TPG Capital Asia, Khazanah Nasional, Apax Partners, and TA Associates.

Sundie Seefried saw the opportunity to step up and help the underserved cannabis industry with the financial solutions they needed. That has since turned into a public company operating in 40 plus states. The venture, Safe Harbor Financial, has attracted funding from top-tier investors and has recently acquired Abaca.

Nick Boyle has created one of the biggest renewable energy companies in the world. Helping us make the shift from old sources of energy to more sustainable ones. His startup, Lightsource BP, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Entergy Arkansas Llc and NatWest Group.

After successfully launching and exiting his own startup, Cem Sertoglu has gone on to manage a 200M Euro fund. From which he is looking to write other entrepreneurs their first $5M to $10M checks. The venture, Earlybird Venture Capital, has invested in startups such as TastyUrban, Nosh, and Ariceum Therapeutics.

Amit Haller has had startups acquired, taken them public, and is now onto his biggest venture so far. His new startup, Veev, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Khosla Ventures, Western Technology Investment, Bond Capital, and Eclipse.

Jamieson Christmas has been inspired to make holographic displays a reality since his youth. After starting out bootstrapping his first company, he has since raised over $100M to put his augmented reality technology into the next generation of vehicles. His venture, Envisics, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Arcadia Investment, Hyundai Mobis, GM Ventures, and Stellantis Ventures.

James Tan has gone from startup founder to operating an $80M venture capital fund to fuel the growth of other early-stage ventures today. Now on his third fund, he’s already helped create four unicorn companies. His investment company, Quest Ventures, has funded ION Mobility, Carousell, Carro, and Hepmil.

Muddu Sudhakar has already enjoyed several of his companies being acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars in value. His latest startup, Aisera, has already raised well over $100M and is on its way to disrupting yet another industry. Which may also be one of the few companies out there that are currently hiring, and in every department. The venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Webb Investment Network, World Innovation Lab (WiL), True Ventures, and Thoma Bravo.

Rob Biederman has gone from founding his own startup to leading a $100M plus venture capital firm that is eager to fund great entrepreneurs, even at the pre-seed stage. The firm, Catalant, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst, Morningside Venture Investments, 40 North Ventures, and Highland Capital.

Jacob Krogsgaard continues to lead the way in renewable energy through hydrogen. A journey that has seen him start companies, fund and scale them, and take them public. His latest startup, Everfuel, raised funding from top-tier investors like European Commission, Swedish Energy Agency, Force Technology, and Danish Energy.

With a presence on every continent, Jussi Salovaara’s firm already has $700M in assets under management, across 15 early-stage startup funds. His funding platform has attracted investors like Eduardo Saverin, Canica, Credit Saison, and Christen Sveaas.

Daniel Yu has been championing a huge problem in what may be one of the biggest markets in the world. His startup, Wasoko, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Avenir Growth Capital, Binny Bansal, Catalyst Fund, and Growth/Expansion.

David Waxman sold his first company to Microsoft, took his second public for $1B in just 12 months, and then launched an $18M fund to support other investors to capitalize on their startups. His venture capital firm, TenOneTen Ventures, has several co-investors like Act One Ventures, Amplify Private Equity, Correlation Ventures, and Greycroft.

Before others saw the need or believed it was possible, Ajay Kochhar was working on how to recycle EV batteries. He’s now turned that into a billion-dollar, global, and public company. The venture, Li-Cycle, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like US Department of Energy, Koch Strategic Platforms (“KSP”), and Glencore.

Ben Lamm has already started a handful of companies, with just as many exits. He is now onto his biggest adventure year. An effort to rewild the planet, which has already attracted $225M in capital and 50 advisors. The startup, Colossal Biosciences, acquired funding from top-tier investors like Thomas Tull, Breyer Capital, Draper Associates, and At One Ventures.

Gautam Gupta has gone from VC investor to startup founder and is now back to investing in other entrepreneurs. His $460M fund is open for business and may be one of the few actively looking to fund good startups right now. The fund, TCV, has invested in companies like ByteDance, Cognite, Celonis, and Klarna.

Don Muir made the leap from traditional investment banking and private equity, to disrupting the traditional financial services space for the tech ecosystem. His startup, Arc Technologies, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bain Capital Ventures, Torch Capital, Y Combinator, and Clocktower Technology Ventures.

Joe Spector has helped take his first startup from zero to being worth over a billion dollars. Then after taking that company public, he decided to apply his experience to helping pet owners and veterinarians too. His latest, startup, Dutch Pet Inc., has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Forerunner Ventures, Adapt Ventures, and Eclipse Ventures.

Nadayar Enegesi has gone from building companies out of Canada, back to the entrepreneurial hotbed of Nigeria for his biggest startup venture yet. His new company, Eden Life, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like EXPERT DOJO, Goodwater Capital, Village Global, and Google for Startups.

Ramji Srinivasan is now on his second big startup and is working to help people extend their lives. His latest venture, Teiko, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Altitude Lab, Tau Ventures, Founders Fund, and Pathfinder.

Joseph Riley has become a master of turning challenges into profitable opportunities. Including building a big real estate startup that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. The venture, Patriot Family Homes, acquired funding from top-tier investors like TRT Holdings and Miramar Holdings.

Davis Siksnans built his own unicorn startup before becoming an investor to help other entrepreneurs maximize the potential of their own ventures. His initial startup, Printful, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Bregal Sagemount, Latham & Watkins, and Goodwin Procter.

Andrew Lacy sold his first company to Disney. Now he’s working to transform the healthcare system with his newest venture, Prenuvo. The startup has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Anne Wojcicki, Tony Fadell, Cindy Crawford, and Steel Perlot.

Antonio Juliano has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his tech startup that is forging the future of finance. The venture, dYdX, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like beToken Capital, BR Capital, CMS Holdings, and CMT Digital.

Satyen Kothari has raised capital, sold companies, and now wants to help others to build their own wealth and enjoy more peace of mind. His latest venture, Cube Wealth, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Beenext, Asuka Holding, and 500 Startups.

Drew Oetting is one of the biggest forces providing the financial fuel this new generation of fast-growing, super-sized startups need to make it. His venture capital firm, 8VC, has invested in startups like Unlearn, Chaos, Tome, and Ushur.

After two previous successful exits, Mance Harmon is now on his third startup. One which has quickly grown to become a multi-billion dollar venture that aims to be the platform for tokenizing everything. The venture, Hedera Hashgraph, Has raised financing from top-tier investors like Boeing HorizonX Ventures, Vestinwolf Financial Holdings, Digital Currency Group, and Tata Communications.

Ravi Parikh is now on his second startup venture. After having built a very successful first company, he is now working to streamline development for other businesses, so they can move faster, and focus on what matters most. The company, Airplane, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Andrew Ofstad, Jaren Glover, Thrive Capital, and Guillermo Rauch.

Naveen Jain has created a whole string of successful startups. Now with his seventh venture, he is tackling a problem faced by eight billion people around the world. The startup, Viome, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Glico, Khosla Ventures, WestRiver Group, and Physician Partners.

After leading another great startup to scale and become profitable as their CRO, Alan Chang has raised tens of millions of dollars to take on what is perhaps the largest and most impactful industry on the planet. His startup, Tesseract, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Woorton, Accel, Balderton Capital, and LeadBlock Partners.

Having already started and sold two companies, Omer Davidi is now working on his biggest project yet. One that he believes will be responsible for most of the food production in the world. His startup, Bee Hero, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Firstime, Rabobank, Cibus Capital, and General Mills.

Andy Bromberg is now on his third startup. One which has already raised $100M from top investors, to make the financial services space simpler, and more accessible to everyone, everywhere. His latest venture, Eco, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, StartX, Formless Capital, and Blockchange Ventures.

Stephanie Tilenius successfully led her first startup through an IPO. Now she is taking on the healthcare space, which makes up 20% of GDP in the United States. Her latest venture, Vida Health, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Centene, Lumir Ventures, Hamilton Lane, and Canvas Ventures.

Jordan Noone was the youngest person in the world to get FAA clearance to fly a rocket into space. His venture capital firm, Embedded Ventures, has funded startups like Slingshot Aerospace (Series A Round), Chromatic, and KittyCAD.

Daniel Khachab built a billion Euro business in just three years. His startup, Choco, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Target Global, and G Squared.

Rob Frohwein has been starting businesses since he was in high school. Now he’s helping other business owners with their finances. His latest fintech startup, Keep Financial Technologies, has acquired funding from investors like Launchpad Capital, Cambrian Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Thomvest Ventures.

Now on his second startup, Santiago Molina’s latest venture has raised tens of millions of dollars, to facilitate the movement of $90B in merchandise. His latest venture, FinKargo, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Community Investment Management, ONEVC, Maya Capital, and Pear VC.

Brian Fenty has been on both sides of the table as an investor and entrepreneur. He has leveraged that experience, as well as his love for culture, to build an incredible business that delivers six-star experiences. His startup, TodayTix, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Great Hill Partners, Rubicon Venture Capital, TYLT Lab, and Riverside Company.

Philip Kelvin has gone from studying history to investment banking to launching his own startup that seems incredibly well-timed to help others through today’s financial turmoil. The venture, Tranch, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, Soma Capital, and Clear Haven Capital Management

James Lochrie achieved one of the biggest startup exits in Canada with his first company. Now he is investing in other founders to help them bring their world-changing ideas to life. The firm, Thin Air Labs, has invested in startups like Clinify, PayShepherd, Rehabtronics, PhenoTips.

Ron Gula built a multi-billion dollar business that went public. Now he is helping other founders make their startups succeed as an investor. His venture, Gula Tech Ventures, has invested in companies like Second Front Systems, North American Wave Engine Corporation, Cybrary, and ShardSecure.

Shensi Ding has already raised $75M for her tech startup. Even though they chose to get started in the middle of the COVID crisis. Her startup, Merge, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Alameda Research, Evening Fund, Addition, and New Enterprise Associates.

Uri Kolodny is now on his third startup. He’s now working on his biggest and boldest tech venture so far. His startup, Starkware, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Alameda Research, Coatue, Greenoaks, and Tiger Global Management.

Gene Hoffman has started and sold several startups. As well as becoming one of the youngest CEOs of a public company in the United States ever. His latest venture, Chia Network, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like True Ventures, Richmond Global Ventures, Breyer Capital, and Naval Ravikant.

Gregory Sewitz is now on his second food startup. Since selling his first company, he has raised $100M to make your breakfast both healthy and delicious. Gregory's latest startup, Magic Spoon has attracted funding from top-tier investors like HighPost Capital, Siddhi Capital, Coefficient Capital, and The Chainsmokers.

Dan Teran took the leap from legal to tech, sold his company for over $200M, and then leaped from entrepreneur to startup investor. His venture capital, Gutter Capital, supports early-stage and mission-driven startups preferring to invest in the education, health, economic mobility, and housing sectors.

Tom Ellis has gone from bootstrapping his business to finding alternative financing methods to grow and secure big private equity deals. His startup, ShiftKey, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Clearlake Capital Group, Health Velocity Capital, Lorient Capital, and Pantheon Ventures.

Michael Ronen has gone from investor to entrepreneur and back again. During which he helped the massive Vision Fund, and raised over $100M for his own venture. His startup, Branded, has attracted financing from top-tier investors like Kreos Capital, Lurra Capital, Target Global, and Declaration Partners.

Eliot Horowitz is now on his third startup. After building a billion-dollar company and taking it public, he is now creating the technology that is fueling a new generation of robotics startups. His latest venture, Viam, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Union Square Ventures, 12 West Capital, Tiger, and Union Square.

Rishi Bhargava exited his first company for $560M. Then raised a seed round for his latest venture, which is more than 20x the average size for a brand-new startup. The startup, Demisto, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Accel, ClearSky Security, Palo Alto Networks, and Greylock.

Waseem Daher sold his first startup to Oracle and the second to Dropbox. He’s now raised millions of dollars from some incredible investors to help other founders grow their companies by handling their backend office and accounting needs. His latest startup, Pilot, has attracted funding from top-tier financiers like Akkadian Ventures, Empede Capital, Whale Rock Capital, and Jeff Bezos.

Bibhrajit Halder has been a big part of the autonomous wave taking over the world. He’s already raised nearly $70M for his own AI software company that is helping to build the future. The startup has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Brick & Mortar Ventures, Newlab, Autotech Ventures, and Vimson Group.

Alexandra Zatarain is on a mission to help others optimize their sleep for their best lives using new software and hardware technology. His startup, Eight Sleep, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Jesse Robbins, Kris Bryant, Anthony Pompliano, and Sophia Amoruso.

Imran Khan went from becoming one of the youngest managing directors at JP Morgan to taking Snap through raising $4B, and becoming an entrepreneur himself. His venture, Verishop, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Lion Capital, Cassius Family Fund, Upfront Ventures, and DCM Ventures.

Ryan Morris has been on both sides of the table as an investor and an operator. His latest venture has already raised close to half a billion dollars to tackle a huge problem. The company, Turntide Technologies, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like JLL Spark, OGCI Climate Investments, FootPrint Coalition, and Keyframe Capital Partners.

Jai Shekhawat has built, funded, and sold companies. Now he’s investing in and advising other entrepreneurs on their own ventures. His startup, Fieldglass, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Madison Dearborn Partners, SAP, HLM Venture Partners, and Grotech Ventures.

Sasha Orloff built his first two companies at the same time. Now he’s helping other founders figure out the financial puzzle they face on the startup journey. His latest venture, Mission Lane, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Oaktree Capital Management, Gramercy Ventures, QED Investors, and Goldman Sachs.

Greg Marsh previously founded and sold for $250 million OneFineStay. He is now the cofounder and CEO of Nous which is a software company that deals with household utilities. The company has raised millions from investors such as Mosaic Ventures.

Bruce Smith has gone from competitive rowing and coaching to leading a connected fitness startup that has raised $300M and is better for you than a Peloton bike. His venture, Hydrow, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Constitution Capital Partners, Sandbridge Capital, Activant Capital, and Rx3 Growth Partners.

Caesar Sengupta left working at Google with seven other cofounders to create a digital family office and democratize financial services. His venture, Arta Finance, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Coatue, Betsy Cohen, Sequoia Capital India, and Ribbit Capital.

Dr. Eric Whitaker has gone from physician to private equity and is now a three-time startup founder. His latest venture, Zing Health, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Town Hall Ventures, Leavitt Equity Partners, Newlight Partners, and Health2047.

Keith Teare has been one of the most influential founders behind today’s technology and startup ecosystem. Now he’s changing things again with his new AI-powered fintech that is changing the DNA of the venture capital space. The company, SignalRank, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Candou Ventures, AltaIR Capital, Blake Grossman, and Charlie Jadallah.

Jim McKelvey has now started close to a dozen different for-profit and nonprofit ventures, including Square. Now he’s tackling the problems we face on the internet every day, with the backing of Peter Theil as an investor. His venture has also attracted funding from other financiers like GGV Capital, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard Group, and Omega Venture Partners.

Ty Harris and Matt Wielbut came together around a shared problem to launch their own insurtech startup that has already raised $200M. The venture, Openly, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like MTech Capital, Gradient Ventures, Obvious Ventures, and Clocktower Technology Ventures.

Christer Holloman has raised tens of millions of dollars for his fintech startup, including achieving 100% oversubscribed funding rounds. The venture, Divido, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Silicon Valley Bank UK, Dawn Capital, SBI Investment, and ING Ventures.

Ethan Agarwal sold his first company after raising $70M for it. He’s now championing the area of financial health for entrepreneurs and others who need a modern approach to investing that understands their needs and aspirations. His venture, Aaptiv, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Insight Partners, Warner Music Group, Bose Ventures, and Amazon Alexa Fund.

Howard Lerman has been building and selling companies since he was in college. After taking his last venture through an IPO, he has launched a new startup helping to solve the future of work dilemma that many are debating right now. His startup, Yext, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Insight Venture Partners, WGI Group, CrunchFund, and Grape Arbo VC.

Sacha Michaud has not only been involved in the birth of several startups but has ended up seeing them go public as well. His latest venture, Glovo, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like GR Capital, Lugard Road Capital, Drake Enterprises, and Delivery Hero.

Nikita Shamgunov built a $100M revenue company, before joining Khosla Ventures to invest in other startups. Now he is going at it again, with a new tech startup that has raised $54M in just 16 months. The company, SingleStore, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Prosperity7, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell Technologies Capital, and Insight Partners.

Elli Kaplan has already raised tens of millions of dollars to take on one of the biggest and fast-growing healthcare challenges we face today. Including investments from top investors like Peter Thiel. Her venture, Neurotrack, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like AME Cloud Partners, Rethink Impact, Sozo Ventures, and SOMPO Holdings.

Bharath Krishnamoorthy has gone from a young rebel to working for one of the world’s top M&A law firms, to a startup entrepreneur. His venture, Denim, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Crosslink Capital, REFASHIOND Ventures, Anthemis, and Trucks VC.

George Mancheril took the leap from working in traditional finance to launching a fintech startup that provides crucial funding for businesses in the cannabis space. His venture, Bespoke Financial, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Robert Stavis, Cosmic Venture Partners, Philip Barach, and Greenhouse Capital Partners.

Barrett Bilotta raised hundreds of millions in capital for his energy company in the past year alone. Today, they are enjoying hypergrowth as they expand from the northeast into other parts of the country. The venture, Agilitas Energy, has attracted financing from the top-tier investor, CarVal Investors, and has recently acquired New England Battery Storage.

Nicolaus Radford has now launched three startup ventures. Including a marine robotics company that has raised over $100M through its IPO. The startup, Nauticus Robotics, has attracted financing from top-tier investors like Schlumberger Limited, AeroVironment, Transocean, and Iain Cooper.

Illia Polosukhin has already raised over half a billion dollars for his startup that pivoted from AI to blockchain technology. His venture, NEAR Protocol, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Blockchange Ventures, ParaFi Capital, MetaWeb Ventures, and Republic Capital Group.

Chris Dean has taken several companies through successful exits. Now he’s working on his biggest project yet. One which has already attracted tens of millions of dollars in investment, and moves billions of dollars each month. The startup, Treasury Prime, has interested investors like The Banc Capital, Invicta Growth, Deciens Capital, and QED Investors.

Casper Rasmussen has gone from consultant to founder and raised tens of millions of dollars for his fast-growing business, which has already expanded into eight countries in just two and a half years. The startup, Monta, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Energize Ventures, Pale Blue Dot, Headline, and Creandum.

Oliver Kharraz’s health tech startup has not only attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investments but has become the largest provider of its kind. The venture, Zocdoc, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Khosla Ventures, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Karl Siebrecht not only helped take one company through a $6B acquisition to Microsoft, but has gone on to raise almost a quarter of a billion dollars for his latest tech startup. The venture, Flexe, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like BlackRock, Prologis Ventures, Madrona Ventures, and Activate Capital.

Scott Gravelle has now raised well over $200M to forge the future of manufacturing automation and the next generation of the supply chain. His venture, Attabotics, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Export Development Canada, Teachers’ Venture Growth, Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), and Honeywell.

Stephany Kirkpatrick has built a career out of fintech and transforming legacy businesses and infrastructure into modern platforms that can support a new generation of business and products. All while helping millions to enjoy instant payments. Her venture, Orum, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Inspired Capital Partners, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Homebrew, and Canapi Ventures.

Christina Cacioppo has gone from academia to a VC firm to becoming an operator. Leveraging that breadth of experience, she has not only raised $200M for her own venture, but is also helping other software startups launch and accelerate themselves. The startup, Vanta, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like CrowdStrike, Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, and Diogo Monica.

Austen Allred is on a mission to help people level up their skills and incomes, and his startup is helping thousands of them find new roles in tech fields, online. The venture, BloomTech, raised funding from Gigafund, a top-tier financier.

Mike Fey has gone from playing soccer to writing software to building really big businesses. His venture, Island, attracted funding from top-tier financiers like Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, Stripes, and Cisco Investments.

Pete Flint has taken two companies through IPOs, as well as taking one through a $3.5B merger. Now he is heading up his own venture capital fund to help empower the next generation of founders. The initiative, NFX, raised a total of $1.1B across 5 funds, their latest being NFX Capital Co-Investment SPV.

Since growing and selling a company for 10 figures, Brian Requarth has created a community and fund for other entrepreneurs aspiring to create highly successful startups of their own. His company, Latitud, attracted funding from top-tier investors like David Vélez, Carlos Garcia, Ann Williams, and Daniel Vogel.

Des Traynor is the cofounder of Intercom which creates modern Customer Service software that redefines how businesses support their customers. The company has raised over $241 million from top tier investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners, or Index Ventures to name a few.

Eytan Bensoussan has taken on the mission of reinventing financial services for small businesses, and dramatically increasing their survival rates. His startup, NorthOne, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Operator Stack, Drew Brees, and Battery Ventures.

Mike Evans raised $84M for his first startup, before taking it public. He’s now working on a new gender-inclusive venture that is creating jobs at a great scale. The company, Grubhub, gas acquired funding from top-tier investors like Amazon, Yum!, T. Rowe Price, and Mesirow Financial.

Shelby Clark raised over half a billion dollars for his first company. Now he has switched to the other side of the table to invest in new emerging medicines and as a startup investor. His startup, Turo, attracted funding from top-tier investors like Expansion Venture Capital, Webb Investment Network, Quiet Capital, and General Motors.

Gurjeet Singh funded, scaled, and sold his first startup. Now he has raised $37M to make IVF treatment more customer-focused, reliable, and attainable for those eager to have children. Oma Robotics has acquired Free Solo Ventures, Global Asset Capital, Jack Tai, and Jon Symonds.

Phil Libin has already launched and sold several startups. His latest venture aims to bring even more great products to life. The startup, All Turtles, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst and Bossanova Investimentos.

Court Lorenzini is a true serial entrepreneur. With several successful exits under his belt, including building one company with a market cap of over $60B, he has certainly created an impressive portfolio of startups. His latest venture, MetaBrite, has attracted financing from top-tier investors like Duke Angel Network, Camp One Ventures, and Acorn Ventures.

Chris Maurice has built a disruptive fintech serving the people of Africa. A startup that has already raised close to $60M as it strives to make peer-to-peer payments even more affordable for everyone. The venture, Yellow Card attracted funding from top-tier investors like Polychain, Valar Ventures, Pat Duffy, and Third Prime.

Eric Satz is a serial entrepreneur who sold one of his companies for $560M. His latest venture, which is empowering individuals to invest in more alternative assets with great tax advantages, has already rasied $70M through a Series B round. The venture, Alto, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Unusual Ventures, Alpha Edison, Foundation Capital, and Acrew Capital.

Omri Geller’s startup is helping fuel the growth of artificial intelligence, by equipping others to build better and faster. His venture, Run:AI, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Insight Partners, S Capital, and TLV Partners.

Phil Libin has already launched and sold several startups. His latest venture aims to bring even more great products to life. The startup, All Turtles, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst and Bossanova Investimentos.

Andrew Ponec sold his first startup after just four years. Now he has raised $80M to tackle climate change in a $100B a year industry in USA. His venture, Antora Energy, has attracted financing from top-tier investors like Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and Energy giant Shell’s venture arm.

In this episode, you will learn:

How Antora Energy is helping tackle climate change
Raising tens of millions of dollars, even as a pre-revenue company
Team building
Andrew Ponec’s top advice when launching a business

Alejandro Cremades · EP 534 Andrew Ponec On Raising $80 Million To Stop Climate Change For The Future Of HumanitySUBSCRIBE ON:

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Andrew Ponec:Andrew Ponec is a cofounder and CEO of Antora Energy. Antora is building an ultra-low-cost energy storage product to enable renewable, reliable, and affordable electricity for all. Antora Energy is supported by ARPA-E and the California Energy commission, among others, and Andrew and his cofounders Justin Briggs and David Bierman are proud to be Activate fellows. Prior to Antora, Andrew previously founded Dragonfly Systems, which developed power electronics products for the solar industry and was acquired by SunPower in 2014.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: All righty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today. We have a very exciting guest someone that has build scale. You know, exited companies in the past. So all that good stuff that we like to hear so I think that we’re gonna find you know this story very inspiring. You know. Also. Very timely with everything that we have going on around climate change. But I guess you know without further ado let’s not make anyone wait any longer. Let’s welcome. Our guest Andrew Ponack welcome to the show. Hello. So originally you were raised there in Oregon.

Andrew Ponec: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Alejandro Cremades: So ah, give us a little of a walkthrough memory lane. How was life growing up. So.

Andrew Ponec: I had a really nice childhood I really enjoyed growing up in Oregon it’s ah a beautiful place I’m actually back here at the moment for the holidays and enjoying the the snow and the mountains and the forest so it was a great time.

Alejandro Cremades: So so tell us how how did you get? you know into the whole thing around climate change and.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah I became very convinced that climate was the problem I wanted to work on back in middle school and early high school when I started reading about climate change about the way that the way we use energy is impacting climate and so that that was a big passion of mine I didn’t really know what I was going to do with that passion. Ah, you know I was interested in engineering and math and science when I was younger but still still didn’t really know how I was going to help solve this problem that I really cared about it was only later you know once I got into my undergrad that I I saw a bit more of a path for how I might help.

Alejandro Cremades: So how did the um excitement or the interest around climate Change Spark I mean what what was there for you that you were like oh my God This is super interesting.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, it was it was ah you know reading a number of articles from climate scientists that ah laid out a very compelling case for why this is something we needed to care about I think it was also something really exciting ah to me at that time because of the moral clarity of It. You know there are a lot of things that you can go and and and put your. Put your life toward. Ah you know some of them you have to kind of wonder am I doing the right thing or the wrong thing did I truly make a difference for the Better. Ah climate change is one of those sectors that I was able to to feel very confident early on if we could solve this problem that would be unambiguously good. And so it kind of removed all of those secondary questions from my mind so I could just put myself Toward. Ah you know the the technical and and market problems that I cared about.

Alejandro Cremades: So I know that they going to Stanford as well to study you know, definitely that they lighten you up. You know when he came to the venture world. So so how was that experience of going there. You know the Lando of innovation. You know, like all they. Big cofounders that we see on the media and all that stuff they went to Stanford and they’re like the dropouts of Stanford. So so how was that you know for you like being part of that the incredible innovation you know and that movement that they have going on there.

Andrew Ponec: I.

Andrew Ponec: Ah, it was absolutely overwhelming when I first got to Stanford it was incredible to see the the number of projects going on the the integration with the entrepreneurial ecosystem around Stanford. I you know was ah I was a kid in a candy shop for sure just trying to you know, take every class I could join every group I could that was related to energy. And yeah I got I got very deeply embedded in the Stanford energy community within the first couple years I was there.

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us about that moment where you know ideas start you know to come and then all of a sudden you know one of those you’re like you know what this one is interesting I think I’m gonna drop out.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, you know I had started working closely with a professor in the electrical engineering department Bill Daey who was an incredible mentor and and really taught me in a few other undergrads electrical engineering. Ah, both through his course but then afterward through a series of breakfasts where he would just ah, essentially give us private lessons in engineering and that was an incredible experience. We were working on a project to improve the performance of ah solar arrays solar panel arrays. And ah, you know it. It was an exciting project to me because I knew it had some practical application but I wasn’t sure for the first while that it was going to turn into anything. Um and I do remember the moment maybe a year into that when I was a sophomore that I sort of looked at it and and and realized ah. Wow! This could really be valuable in ah in a big way to the industry. It turns out I was totally wrong about that. but but I do remember the moment when I thought that you know exactly the idea we were pursuing at the time was going to be really valuable.

Alejandro Cremades: So in that case, the um obviously the project ended up being dragonf fly and so you know here you are you make it to one of the top universities in the world. So how is that you know chatd with your parents hey guys you know I think I’m gonna I’m gonna draw out and I’m going to go after this thing I.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, that that conversation didn’t go particularly well ah my parents were ah you know very happy to have me at at Stanford and you know I I made some promises to them that I would go back eventually and and finish my degree which I did um. But at the time it was there were definitely some tears and and you know it was ah it was a hard moment for them. But for me, it was actually not ah a hard decision and this is the advice that I you know people sometimes ask me who are undergrads and thinking about dropping out I often tell them if it’s a hard decision. You should probably just stay in in school. It’s only when you just feel so compelled there was just no way I I felt that I could stay at Stanford and not pursue this idea because the the idea the team I was pursuing it with it was all ah just too exciting to to let go.

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us about what happened next.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, so we so we me and ah, a couple of others dropped out of ah Stanford after ah at the end of that that year which was my sophomore year we hired ah 1 of my tas. Ah, for the electrical engineering class I’d been taking with this professor Bill Dley who is you know the best electrical engineer that we knew and and that’s probably still true to this day. He’s an incredible engineer and and actually works ah with me ah at the the current company that I have. Ah, but yeah, we we dropped out and and started started making prototypes of the the solar power conversion device that that we had and you know had a had a blast. You know we were really you know young learning a lot about business learning a lot about you know the the technology itself learning a lot about the industry. And actually what what was what was really challenging was it was only maybe three or four months in after we had dropped out. You know we’d been working on the project for more than a year before that. But after it was only three or four months after we dropped out that we realized that the the idea that we thought we had the the technology the patents all of this. Wasn’t solving as big a problem as we thought and so we we had this real crisis of confidence where we said man you know what? what is the company if what we thought was ah the core value that we were bringing is maybe not as big as we thought it was.

Alejandro Cremades: And what was how how was that product Market fit and and team you know side of it and I guess before even answering that you know for the people that are listening what ended up being the business model of dragonfly.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, so the the first thought that that we had for dragonfify.. The original idea was just to improve the efficiency of solar panel arrays by what’s called a maximum Powerpoint Tracker So something that will. Allow you to optimize each panel in an array individually and and you know therefore ah boost the output a little bit you know so it was it was going to be a play of hey can we make something that that improves a few percent the performance of all sorts of solar energy systems and you know the the key learning for me at that time is we had based our um. Estimates of how much value we would be bringing to customers based largely on our competitors. So. There were some other companies that were trying to do something similar you know and and we were looking at you know their white papers. We were looking at their you know press to to get an understanding and you know the the model in our mind at the point at that point was. Hey these people are solving this problem in this way we can do it better therefore therefore we will be successful. The the problem was our competitors also didn’t have good product Market fit and so we were saying we would be better at something that wasn’t actually that valuable. And the only way that we we found that out was by going to the end customers going to the larger solar companies and and pitching it and it was only then that that we started to to realize that what we had wasn’t as important as we thought and and one thing I’ll I’ll just mention along that those lines is we We were very young and people were very excited to.

Andrew Ponec: You know, give us positive feedback and so it took a while before we learned ah to to listen you know, read between the lines. You know people were always really positive I love what you’re doing It’s so important you know, but when it came to actually saying will you buy this? Will you put money on the line for this. All of a sudden people. You know I don’t know about that. Maybe we can wait a little bit see see how things develop so that was the the the key challenge for us in the first few months

Alejandro Cremades: So then in this case, you know like how how was that process of you guys really knowing that you had product Market fit at what point did that happen. So.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, so so we we we had to go through this this you know, kind of purgatory when when our first product and technology didn’t have product market fit and there was actually a moment where we considered just dissolving the company. We thought oh you know everything that that we have isn’t what we thought? um. You know of course my parents were really excited to hear that we might be stopping because then of course we just go back to go back to school. Um, but you know there was a moment where we just made the decision. You know we have an amazing team. We love working with each other. We’re learning a lot and now we do understand the market. We think we do understand the customers and what they need. And and so kind of a ah light switch flipped that was hey we still have value even if our technology didn’t have value the the team and the mission that we have still has that value so we went back to the drawing board. We scrapped the first product that we were making completely. You know, based on the understanding that we then had of the industry made a new product and that was one that was focused. Not so much on increasing efficiency but reducing capital costs and all of a sudden you could see overnight a lot more uptake from larger customers. So. The the big solar companies were were taking our meetings were starting to get into commercial ah discussions and it was only maybe six or nine months after that that we started hearing the word acquisition get thrown about with ah one of our our largest potential customers at the time which was sun power 1 of the largest.

Andrew Ponec: Vertically integrated solar companies. So um, it it was a great lesson in you know how how how much you have to really go to the end customers and and be persistent in trying to figure out what what they really want and what they don’t want to get to that product Market fit.

Alejandro Cremades: So then how did you guys go about capitalizing the business.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, we were. We were pretty lean so we didn’t need much we we managed to fund everything up until the acquisition with ah you know angel investments so it was largely through the Stanford network that we found various angel investors. Ah, you know people putting in $50000 hundred Thousand dollar checks um and that was able to get us there we we actually raised less than $1,000,000 in total before acquisition.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow! So then tell us about the acquisition. How did that come about and and and tell us all that process. How was that journey like.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, it was. It was ah a really great learning experience. You know Sun Power was ah a friendly acquiir they ah you know were a potential customer of ours and what we were realizing. You know we didn’t have a real concept for Ah, things like supply chain at the time and the idea that you know Sun power was going to come to this you know group of undergrads with no you know product or or technology experience and and and base a a critical part of their product on our product was just not realistic. So it became clear that we were. Ah, likely to have to go in in some way either to partner with a larger company to produce our stuff do some sort of licensing model or ah, you know, just be acquired straight up and you know at the time we had started that company not because we wanted to be entrepreneurs not because we wanted to to have some huge company. Really started because we we just cared about making some improvement in the solar industry because we cared about ah about climate change and and we saw I think correctly, ah that if we were acquired by Sun Power we would have access to significantly more resources to put this product into the field. Um, and so that was how we made the decision when those different options were on the table to to pursue the acquisition path. Um, and and I think it it worked out well in in that we did manage to get to scale and get into manufacturing and deploy megawatts of of these units in the field.

Alejandro Cremades: So how was how was that the you know and finally the the acquisition you know ends up crystallizing I mean it’s like the full cycle. What kind of disability did that give you on the whole journey. You know from building to scaling to really getting it all the way to the finish line.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, yeah, I got to see sort of yeah exactly like you said the full cycle from sort of idea creation to prototyping to you know, kind of early deployments and then and then manufacturing all within you know about a 4 year period you know, but you know including the the time immediately after the acquisition. And that that was just invaluable learning because you you start to see the things in the later stages where where where you where you regret making some decision in the earlier stages. Um, you know? So Oh you know we made this decision early on thinking that it wasn’t going to be a big deal or or something like that and then you’d see how that played Out. Um And. Ah, you know you’re you’re able to to to kind of connect the dots on that learning in a way that I think if we had only you know stopped partway through that Journey. We wouldn’t have gone that learning.

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us about the because after you did the integration. Finally, you went back to school and you fulfill on your promise. So how was that you know now going back to school I mean you probably knew more than your teachers. So how was that they like.

Andrew Ponec: Um, yeah.

Andrew Ponec: I I might have known more in some very narrow areas than than the the teachers but than the professors but certainly I just loved being back in that learning environment. Um, you know was ah yeah, it was a great a great time to to be creative to have a. You know fewer of the demands of the professional world ah put on you and and just kind of explore wherever wherever the mind wanted to go and it was really during that time the the most important thing that happened during that time was meeting one of my 2 co-founders of my current company on torah energy and that that was Justin Briggs and ah we were able to to get started thinking about you know what we wanted to do next in our lives you know I had come from this, you know you know, short entrepreneurial background. Um and he was finishing up his ph d at Stanford and ah, you know we we started looking out into the world for how we could make the most difference on climate change and. You know we we really had quite a wide range of discussions on things we could do which was yeah one ah, one of the most fun periods that that we’ve had and then came to ah to believe what we believe now which was ah better energy storage. Ah, is one of the most impactful things that could improve our our climate energy picture.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about on Torah your next baby. So at what point that’s the idea you know come to to to you guys and and at what point are you guys like okay you know, let’s let’s roll.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah I think there are a couple things that went into the the idea if we want to call it that a a vantora um, you know the first thing was for me personally being at sunpower I was absolutely convinced that solar and wind were going to continue to get cheaper. And and so that was kind of a ah fundamental hypothesis of of mine and and and became ours that these were going to be powerful tools to decarbonize the economy. Um, another thing that I I had started to see at Sun power though was ah. The overproduction of solar in the middle of the day already in California in the middle of the last decade you were starting to see curtailment. You know where there was so much solar power that you were having to sort of spill it or waste it because there was nowhere to put it and you know you could do some pretty quick napkin math and see if we really wanted to decarbonize. Ah the economy. There were going to be times when we had massive massive amounts of renewable energy wind and solar that we wouldn’t have something to do with and so that that was a little bit of the the backdrop. Um, you know the other thing that that just and I were looking at was essentially where the emissions were we we knew that we wanted to work on something that was going to have a big impact. And so we just went back to the to the pie of of where emissions come from and 1 of the things that was pretty clear was that industry is ah you know one of the largest if not the largest sector for emissions about 30% of global emissions. Ah come from industry and so we we had this, you know potentially huge decarbonization problem of how do you make industry cleaner.

Andrew Ponec: And this huge decarbonization solution which is cheap wind and solar some of which are going to be spilled at certain times and for us it was you know how do we put those 2 things together and and the answer and and sort of the the founding of of antora at least for us was energy storage. You know. Renewables have so much going for it because they’re they’re clean and they’re cheap. They’re now the cheapest source of energy on the planet. Um, but the 1 thing that they didn’t have with was consistency. You know the wind stops blowing the the sun stops shining sometimes so you have to have something that can smooth that out and. Ah, so that was what antora was meant to be how do you How do you couple an intermittent but cheap and clean resource to an industrial decarbonization problem like heavy industry.

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us about Antora Then what’s the business model. How do you guys make money.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, well ah before I get ahead of myself. We don’t make money yet, we are still a pre-renu company but ill I’ll describe exactly exactly so’re. Um, you know what? what we do is we deliver 0 carbon heatating power to industrial customers.

Alejandro Cremades: In development go ahead. Okay.

Andrew Ponec: And there’s there’s really 2 different models 1 is where we go and we put our energy storage system at 1 of these sites we own it. We operate it and we’re just selling energy to the customer. So we’re replacing the natural gas for instance that maybe they were burning instead. The other way is where we’re actually selling our system. To the customer and then they they own it rather than than we own it. So it could be an equipment sales model or it could be an energy sales model. Um, you know that’s something that we’ve gone back and forth on which is better and and I think the answer so far has been There’s not one that’s universally better than the other. So. Ah, you know some customers in some markets. It may make sense to do one and and some the other but but the core of it in either case is you know we’re taking cheap solar and wind electricity. You know, procuring that one way or another and then selling. You know, consistent heat and power to an industrial customer with our technology. Being the thing sitting in between that that makes that possible.

Alejandro Cremades: So and for the company Andrew how much capital have you guys raised to date.

Andrew Ponec: Um, we have raised ah probably closer to $80,000,000 including private ah money and public money. Ah, we’ve been fortunate to receive a number of grants from the department of energy the California energy commission and then you know pretty pretty substantial private investment. You know through seed rounds and the series a that we did about a year ago so um

Alejandro Cremades: I mean the the 1 thing that I wanted to ask you there. Andrew is that the series a was a a pretty big one I mean we’re talking about fifty fifty million plus so you know typically when when you would get to a series a you know like the the investors they’re expecting you know some type of. Of traction or validation or you know perhaps like some type of revenues in your case, what made it an exception for you guys to be able to raise so much money when the monetization is still not there yet. Okay.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah, yeah, it’s a great question. Um, it really comes down to to 2 things. 1 is the the technology validation that we had done up to that point you know and that and I would include both the you know prototypes of our system that we had demonstrated and the performance coming off of those. But also the technoeconomic models that that kind kind of go along with that. So so that’s 1 aspect of it and then the other is just the the product market fit and the size and and growth of the market that we’re going into. You know there’s you know, $100,000,000,000 spent on industrial energy every year in this in this country alone. So. Ah, you know if we are successful. We have ah an enormous market ah to to make a splash and so I think you know it was the validation up to that point and the size and growth of the market that we were targeting that got the investors excited enough to to do this very large investment early in the company’s history.

Alejandro Cremades: How big of a market are we are we talking about? yeah.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah I mean it’s it’s you know one of the largest sectors in the us and and 1 of the largest in the world. So you know globally hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the the types of products we’d be selling.

Alejandro Cremades: I Mean if they say being at the right time in history and having the wind you know behind your back is is definitely Borton It sounds like you guys are riding that wave with all the consciousness around climate change right now. Yeah.

Andrew Ponec: People.

Andrew Ponec: Absolutely Ah, you know and I think you know we we are very Lucky. We feel very lucky about ah the the timing of Antora you know when we’re going to be coming to market with this solution. The amount of ah you know focus. Ah you know, globally that’s on climate right Now. You know my my previous company was also ah a climate company. You know, but you know started in the 201314 time frame and let me tell you there was a lot less excitement. You know at that time it was much harder to raise money and and many fewer people were were focused on that. So. Um, yeah, it’s a great thing for antorin. A great thing for the world that there’s so much focus right now on this sector.

Alejandro Cremades: So now tell us about and Tora I mean imagine you know you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of antora is fully realized what does that world look like.

Andrew Ponec: Oh great. Um I hope that happens because there’s going to be a lot of work between now and then and I’m sure it’d be fun to just ah Zoom right? to the end but no it. It’s ah you know the the core of that vision is that we’re replacing fossil fuels in industrial applications. So. You know, right now. All of the places where you’re burning coal oil natural gas to provide heat and power in an industrial setting. You know every one of those industrial plants instead you have an antura box. You know, an antoro thermal energy storage system that is converting. You know cheap wind and solar power when it’s available. Into that consistent heat and power for industry and displacing that fossil fuel. So I’d love in that vision that whether you’re in the us or or around the world when you go to a big industrial facility. Ah you you know that the the core source of energy for that facility. Is wind and solar through an antoro system rather than a fossil fuel combustion.

Alejandro Cremades: And in terms of the of the team now Andrea I mean how are you guys going about building the team and and because obviously team is everything so so how are you guys thinking about structuring and building the team now that you’ve raised such a big series. A.

Andrew Ponec: Yes.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah I love the way you put that team team is everything and actually our our first core company value is is team and mission first and and again that was some of some of the learning that I had from dragonfly that’s really where the core of the value of a company is is is the team. Um, but but not just a team in isolation but a team that is motivated by a shared ah shared sense of mission and what they want to do in the world. Um, yeah, it’s been It’s been a wonderful journey building up the team. You know we we built slowly over the first few years and then we’ve been growing very rapidly over the ah the time since the series a. Um, I think you know in addition to this overall consciousness that that you were mentioning around climate that that’s happened in you know in business and governments. The same thing is happening across the board and in individuals in the in the talent market. You know when people are looking for what they want to do with their lives and so it’s been really gratifying to see the number of people. That are flowing from other areas of tech other areas of entrepreneurship and and who want to get involved in climate and so you know we we feel very fortunate that we’ve been able to build a team quickly. That’s full of incredibly high quality individuals that are really there to solve climate change. Not just because they think you know antor is the hottest new thing and they want a bunch of stock options and you know of course we do all of that. But but we really wanted to make sure that we were building a team of committed individuals. Not mercenaries. So ah, you know the the way we’re doing that right now. Um, you know we we actually just brought on a head of people recently.

Andrew Ponec: Um, who is ah doing an incredible work. Ah, kind of laying the laying the groundwork for this period of Rapid growth. So that means everything from making sure we have the recruitment process in place to you know a really smooth onboarding process and then also making sure that the internal company culture. Ah, remains. Ah, you know the good culture that we feel like we’ve had up to this point now that was another learning for me at a Dragonfly You know we had an incredible culture at at the time and it was sort of Accidental. It was not um, it was not part of a really conscious effort on on my or or my cofounders parts. Um, and so with this company. You know from the start. It’s been a very high priority for us to to get our our mission right to get our values right? and then keep building the team in a way that’s aligned with that that mission and those values.

Alejandro Cremades: So they say say Andrew you’re second go at it now with with building a company I mean if you had the opportunity of going back in time and you were able to sit down that younger Andrew. That younger graduate that is in Stanford you know I just arrived to Stanford that is now getting immersed in in this incredible you know innovation that is going on everywhere and you were able to to go back in time and have a chat with that younger self and. And give that younger Andrew one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Andrew Ponec: Yeah I think the advice I would give would be about about the team and the culture. You know it’s it’s so easy to just get started to have an idea that is really exciting. Um. And and and sort of run before you walk. But I think it’s so important at the earliest stages of the company to really define. You know what? you’re doing why you’re doing it who you want to do it with and and and how the company should go about executing that mission. And you know that was something that really wasn’t on my mind when I was ah starting the first time around I think things went well anyway, but I think that um you know if we had rather than be be acquired if we’d wanted to grow into ah a very large independent company. It would have been so important to have that sort of foundation from the earliest days. So I think that’s that’s the advice that I would give you know the the young Andrew.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it so Andrew for the people that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Andrew Ponec: Oh wonderful ah would would love to hear from anybody who’s excited to get involved in in climate. Whether that’s through antura or anything else. 1 thing that you should know about me is that I love all aspects of of climate and energy. Not just what what Antora is doing so. Always excited to have those conversations. Um, definitely I would invite people to come to our website. Ah and ah also to just send me an email directly my emails Andrew at antora energy. Is pretty ah, pretty easy to to to remember and pretty easy to guess so I get a lot of a lot of inbound.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well hey Andrew thank you so much for being on the deal make maker show. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Andrew Ponec: Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me and and thanks for all the questions it was ah it was a pleasure.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

Rafael Stark is now on his second tech startup. This time around, he has already raised tens of millions of dollars from the likes of Jeff Bezos, and business leaders from Slack and Coinbase. His venture, Hummingbird, has attracted investment from top-tier financiers like Rahul Mehta, Ribbit Capital, Bezos Expeditions, and Lachy Groom.

In this episode, you will learn:

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Rafael Stark:Rafael Stark is an engineer with problem-solving in his blood. He started his own Product Studio called Hummingbird and came across a client wanting to automate refunds, and that’s when he realized there was a market-wide opportunity to simplify several payment processes at scale.

Stark Bank was born to modernize the financial infrastructure in Brazil through the power of integration. They were a part of YC’s 2020 batch, and are now helping companies such as Loft, Quinto Andar, and Buser make operations smoother than ever.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: All righty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today we have a very exciting founder. You know, joining you know a founder that is making it happen. You know in Latin America and Brazil so um.

Rafael Stark: I.

Alejandro Cremades: You know, honestly you know we’re gonna be talking about all the good stuff today. We’re gonna be talking about building scaling financing. You know all the good stuff that we like to hear and I find that the story of our guest today you’re goingnna find it, you know, really incredible so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today Rahael Stark

Rafael Stark: Thank you for having me.

Alejandro Cremades: Welcome to the show. So originally born in Brazil Rafael so why give us a little of a walkth through memory lane. How was life growing up.

Rafael Stark: Oh and grew up in a country in the middle of brazilo for farming and cows and I myself I’m self-taugh. So I Always like it to study learn stuff by myself. I got accepted I start to work early when I was like 16 after I lost my father because I’m the oldest brother so I have to help my mom and my family ah I have more 2 brothers.

Alejandro Cremades: How many, but how many siblings a Rafael 2 brothers and I’m wondering. Obviously you know as an entrepreneur entrepreneur you know, dealing with uncertainty I’m sure that those were really uncertain and and difficult times for the family. So What do you think you. You learned you know as a human being you know from going through something so so difficult so tough like losing your father so early.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, yeah, it’s It’s super painful to to loss of father especially because he he was. He was the provider of the house so was super hard for my familymin that period. Um, but I E a.

Rafael Stark: I don’t know if this helped me me or it’s just me that to work harder. You know I try to learn stuff and make money and get a job you know and since since like 16 I I always tried to be like financial independent for my family. Ah, so when I was like 20 I got accepted and the best engineers school in Brazil is it is like kind of brazilia mit equivalent to you know Ah and I I moved you to Sao Paulo the the the most expensive stating in Brazil is like they teach like math chemistry physics the artist to make some money I did like summer jobs by starting coding and. Selling software I did like research in in schools like in physics to make some money so I tried different stuff hard time like to to provide myself and then sometimes money to my family to to support them. No. So I think the bad stuff. That’s have happen in your life sometimes push you to do more than other folks at studs and work together with you.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, hundred percent now for you. Obviously you know you you were you were alluding to it. You studied you studied engineering but I know that 1 thing that was pretty pretty incredible for you as an experience was to be able to go abroad. And come to the United States you know you had the exposure to you know places like Stanford and and things like that. So you know what? what opened up for you. Okay.

Rafael Stark: I think first I improved my english I’m still working on that but the pure time my english was like awful. So 1 of the first classes that I took at west was publicly speakinging public speaking sorry. Ah, and was I was terrible. I was terrible on that but but helps helps a lot on improve my my name so is the first thing I drove my english so second things is some cultural difference. So brazilians act in a way. Us citizens act in another race so clear different some some some events that people behave differently. So I think it was a shock and opened. Um my mind a little bit. And the third thing I think ah the the schools the colleges are mean us. Um, and the the d is different approach than Brazil because it persists super technical I just took like engineering super engineering classes versus in o you took like few. Some major engineering class but you can like take some some class in other areas that’s not in engineering. So I think this is super nice and complements your interest about learning different matters.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in your case in your case. Also I mean while while you were literally doing your studies I mean you were alluding to earlier that that going through the experience. You know the the family tragedy that yeah that happened and and obviously the challenge is you know that you learn you know the importance of making money. And one of the things that you did while being in University That’s when you started you know to develop apps and to really you know start taking a look at what on entrepreneurship look like is that right.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, well 1 super interestingy story that came in my mind right now is when I was at Stanford I took like I said at one quarter at Stanford so I took a few classes. 1 of them was technology entrepreneurship. So during the the classes we were. We have to um, developing an idea of a startup and try to pursue to pitch that know and think about business and create a business but when I was at at Stanford. Um I did to make money you know.

Rafael Stark: So I I did have a party in my apartment and I ra it like 200 people you know in my apartment was ah a specific part in Brazil called feestag jeanina so it’s a junior a June party so super traditional in Brazil so invited all the internationals. And 200 people arerriving in my place you know and I was thinking hey if I make $5 enough for each people here in an open bar party in Brazil super commonma we call open bar party that basically buy a lot of drinks and people came to your house and they pay like. Ah, five five dollars five you know bucks ten bucks you know in you to of the party to help with the costs you know and I I did ah a party that I charged like five bucks and buy a lot of ah like alcohols and musicji stuff like that. I didn’t have money like I borrow $500 with my friend and go to Walmart like buy a lot of drinks. Ah and that day I did like $2000 in a a single part in my life. That period of my life was too much money. You know in a single night.

Alejandro Cremades: No kidding now now now for you now. Obviously you know you got a good glimpse there of of what it looked like to to really you know come up with an idea and and and provide value and extract value. So at what point do you you know start to. Ah, really incubate the idea of what would be your first company hummingbird.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, so basically in that periods was my last year of college I start learn how to develop ios in android apps and and I launched 2 mobile apps in in 2013 so went it back to Brazil I graduated so I I need to start to make money. So I start pitching hey I know how to create apps. So I launch 2 mobile apps in these stores. So if you good if anyone have projects just hire me and then a company hire me. So but but I need to you already to receive money I need to open a company a tax id because um to order to receive you know so I opened. My first company is hummingbird so I started myself with my computer creating some apps for companies.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, so this is how I basically start I remember that’s a software house or a product and studio to develop ios Android apps websites apis for companies in Brazil.

Alejandro Cremades: So you actually grew that to you know, make some good money. You know you were making you know a few million. Let’s say a year and and and basically you know something happened because you know the idea obviously of Stark which is what you’re doing now you know really came about but I mean here you are. You know you’re operating a company that is generating good money and you’re making a good living. So how did the idea come about and at what point you’re like hey I think that I got to you know, close down. You know my current shop and and go all in on this one. So.

Rafael Stark: And.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, is is a super tough decision. You know so basically in 2013 I launched this show mobile webs but they they wasn’t at success you know and was just me. You know I wasn’t like a kind of startup world but I like it. Feeling of create product launch a product and with my hummingbird in order to scale I need to sell more projects and yeah, ah, you already to delete these those projects I need to hire more developers and so I have to scale with people in super expensive scale. Versus I launch a product and scale with like users that scale with like servers you know so I I and and when I create a soft apps for other people product for other people I sometimes I you know I want to create something that people want. I I do other things and I want you sell you know so I create whatever the but whatever the the person wants but I myself I’m a product guy so I love to talk to customers understand what exactly they would use and Z and and and launch you know so I work i. Always once you create ah a scale of product versus scalelight my consulting company humingbart as in the and I a participate I participated in like the 10 different projects.

Rafael Stark: And I always want this to to launch my own project my own product and start make the idea came super um, early in 2000 in the bith of 2018 colgate approaches. They they need to.

Rafael Stark: They want basically and this products you send money back to their customers and okay understand that refund system them We we need to create um Approval flow and then connect to a wire transfer api so you can do all the cash outs.

Rafael Stark: And Kogate say okay, it’s amazing. Private. But how we’re going to settle on those transactions and as myself as a developer I got to use it. You can actually a lot of apis from uber not in that period uber but google stripe ah to you know, a lot of good players and i. Start searching for an api for some wires or transfers in Brazil and talk to banks to fin tax to permit gateways and no one habits then I said you make it know and but in the beginning try to keep hummingbird and. Starting Prototype Star Bank ah but was a mess in that period so because it’s hard to find that good. So you know someone that could lead humingbird and make it being profitable and keep increasing revenue and I was. Creating starting. so so I found I found a period of my time that I have to take a decision or or I focus on Humberd or I focus on starback I could not do it both in parallel you know? and um I don’t know my heart.

Rafael Stark: And my I always want you to to to create up products and I think hey this could be super super big versus this the software house that was provide me good money. You know? Ah, but I knew that. Good should be harder to scale because they need to scale with people versus startbank that they could scale servers and scale like transactions and new users stuff like that. So I could do this with my small team. So I decide to stop Hamburg and focus entirely on star bankck.

Alejandro Cremades: Was it like an overnight thing or did you keep both in parallel in order to finance a little bit the operation of stark.

Rafael Stark: I could go both in parallel like for like foremouse maybe and I was cashing burning in hummingbird that was cashing burn start bank and I had like my. Umund capital the money that I make entirely my life during the humburg period. So it’s statue pop humberd and discontinuo other activities and puts every single penny in star bank you know so I have to fire like. Um, 70% of the helmingbird and picked the 30% in and put the focus one hunt. Ah 100 % of the time start make and in in the beginning start pick was a api for firsthand wires I didn’t think hey I going’ to create a bank. It was too ambitious.

Alejandro Cremades: So then.

Rafael Stark: For being that period of time though.

Alejandro Cremades: And and and what ended up being the business model of Stark How do you guys make money for the people that are listening to get it. Okay.

Rafael Stark: Today is different. You know us. So basically today we we make money a rate possible way. Um, so if our customers we we basically today start min help companies should receive money send money. So do their cash management. So. Inversive money received from our customers in pay money pay payroll pay all the providers ah taxes utilities. So we basically help companies to receive in ah millions of payments or pay millions of people in a scalaboy. And makes reconciliation the destin. What everything? What? what’s going on so we we make super easy for for accomplish to do it. Ah so we charge flat fees or operation in those cash management products. Ah like ¢50 example, you know, fifty fifty cents per transaction. In corporate cards is everything’s free so we give cards to to call past pen controls. We helped them to management their expenses. Super easy. We receive an interchange from from Mastercards we of course make money we floating because we receive depositss. We are on the way to launch fixing income investment. So basically bonds that yields interests. So we’re gonna to receive a ticketck rate over over that to help our customers for x we receive an inter change over for x transactions. Yeah so different sources today.

Alejandro Cremades: And and why in your mind because we say you you have the engineering angle and and and and you’re very much product driven. But why in your mind you know the best products always win against you know, maybe crappy products with great marketing.

Rafael Stark: Well I think if you’re starting I start to that you’re the first one to launch it well of the kind you know, maybe oberg can be example of that maybe are b b you know you can’t be launch fast. You know and and don’t worry too much about quality of the product you know because you have to be fast and watch fast and scale fast before people start to copy you. But when you launch in a market that is read already. There’s a lot of competitors. You cannot be. Just a little bit better. You know because if if you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer if you have ah you know the biggest private bank in Brazil versus start making I not that ah bank that people don’t know you know and if you create just just think just a little bit better. People would prefer the. The big ba the big bank the big brand you know because it’s Mark Trustcoll ah but once you create a product that has a much higher quality. There’s a huge difference and people can see it. They are willing to take the the try and on. Give you a try. So and then they follow if your product delivers what it should be delivered as a good product. Good quality. People will love your product and if your company. Yeah, if your customers love your product. They willing that you have success.

Rafael Stark: Is much higher versus you create a super basic product or you know so I I leave this myself because we start starting with super a little money you know before like 2000 the end of 2021 we leave it with $2000000 like 2019 to 18 and into when we lived 3 years with $2,000,000 oh super little money so we always invest in product and technology. We didn’t invest in marketing in other areas much no um, and and this helps. Like keep investing the products and making it better every single month you know every single quarter every single year helps. Ah, we scale a lot and and today we less quarter. We did $3000000000 in tippv in one single quarter.

Alejandro Cremades: And now in terms of the um capital racing Efforts I know that you guys have raised quite a bit of money. How much capital have you guys raised to data and what has been the experience of raising that money.

Rafael Stark: Building.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, as a mentioned like in the past three years we raised like $2000000 and in the end of 2021 december we raise our series $13000000 and 3 tri offs later. We resources be ah, three four months later we resources be that we raise $45000000 so total historically like $61,000,000.

Alejandro Cremades: But that’s interesting because typically you would leave at least 18 to twenty four months in between 1 financing cycle and the next. So why in this case just three months after you guys raised the series b.

Rafael Stark: Basically I think our heres a was too Late. You know we we were numbers revenue Tippv way bigger that normally us use a compass that raise a series usually because I have a super hard time raising money. Ah, and because I was talking to the the Covid Ne list are Sir B Ribi They are amazing investors and we were talking for more than one a year and we keep growing every single month. So Once we receive the term sheet for this resume.

Rafael Stark: We three months later we triple our numbers in tri mos. We triple our numbers in trimos and they say hey she’re skiing a lot. You know we’re talking for our 1 year already and you you receive your term sheet and trimos you triple the numbers. You know we I don’t know exactly what they think but I think they. Probably think hey we are thinking too much over think about you guys you know and they and and they put a termshut on our Cb so we basically we received the term shit off our seriesb in the day that I I was signing the the a equity round of the series. A. The same day so because I the term sheet so the process do did just everything closing was like tree tree farmout and then way I went. Okay today were going to sign the documents of the Thursday closing I received the term sheet of series in the same day so was super amazing.

Alejandro Cremades: Wow. And and how is it to raise money from people like Jeb Besos

Rafael Stark: We raised from business expedition is his funds because as as I I had a hard time to raise from like ah our series, especially with the brazilian best funds they didt listen our thees. So I started raising from angels and started bringing some super amazing founders as angels so during the I bring like the bri armstro the show of coinbase I slag the founder of so. Ah, slack soar stewars the founder of slack Sergio Ceo of the local um dealing from figma Ryan from flexport. Ah. Resetly joy from arabbn b this show for bi b there’s a lot of names. Probably forget some of them.

Alejandro Cremades: And how how do you do it? How do you do that? I mean this sounds like the oscars of the venture world I mean how how we were you able to get old I mean those those those investors too I mean those are the best ones because they have that background operational Expertise they’ve been there. They know exactly the journey. I Always say that the best investors are the ones that have been founders in the past or that are founders themselves. So what? how were you able to really get those big names.

Rafael Stark: Yeah, yeah, basically first start bank has like super growth you know so we have numbers. We’re scalating. We were were doing something that um, we’re skinny so have numbers helps a lot. You know. And second thing. Yeah I’m always the founder that I asked I love trust advice I I was to have to like to have mentors and learn. You know so I just tried to hey to talk to other fathers and hey this is what I’m doing what you think about that. Could could you give me some advice and the founders kind of like me and okay, this guy is is kind of nice and he’s doing something grodes his his skin a lot and then I asked them to to introduce introduce me Chuck and other follows. No and so and and and. Some of those founders think hey Stark is interesting and and their valueation is low. So why not investing you know? Ah, but if he ah laki he he leads our series a he helps a lot to bring some of those founders. He has super good connections. And we did that Yc so I think a little bit helps. What did ycycombinator and lockki special lockie brings like half of the founders because I mentioned hey I want to bring founders I love to have founders.

Rafael Stark: As investor because I can’t call them the a ask advice and after praise r b um I I wanted to bring business because I knew that he invests so I try once a fail I tried twice fail third time fail and if in the r b I try again and this time I got. To his family off the be expedition and they review our numbers and the and and they create the memor on of for business and he likes and side to us and I’m pretty excited to have you know a guy that born in.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing.

Rafael Stark: Koa is a middle of nowhere in Brazil like has all of these founders and music founders as as as investors you know as partners I would never imagine this reality you know.

Alejandro Cremades: And no kidding No kidding now now I know that you’ve talked in places like Wip summit and you’ve talked about the importance tool of profitability. So tell us what are your thoughts you know around profitability when it comes to hyperg growth.

Rafael Stark: Totally I think usually the mounttra Finte like startups in geralo actually is scale increase revenue so usually startups burn no Matter. Um. Raise a lot and burn a lot to like scale that revenue. Ah, but I think they forgot something about think about operational efficiency you know because it’s super important to okay, it’s good to raise Respond. It’s good to burn and invest online operations should grow. But it’s good to spend those money. Super nice. Smart way you know just is not spent to spend So as we start with super little money. Ah, we have to invest a lot in your personal efficiency like automation. Because we did not have money to hire a lot of engineers and a lot of folks so we invest a lot um automation to to reduce costs because before raise a lot of money we have to Zap balance between create features investor of product to increase revenue and invest. Time to reduce costs and out Automation. So What’s balancing increase revenue reduce costs you know so we are always investing this this this balance and I think this helps a lot to and and.

Rafael Stark: Myself I I always thinking have a small quantity of people but remarkable people. Good people versus hire a lot of people. So I think is the first mistake of startups is to okay, raise a lot of money and start hiring a lot. You know? ah. Probably companies in ours. Our size are would have like 300 people fact one hundred people one thousand people you know we are sixty and we were starting to process a billion a month with like 20 people. You know.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, and that that’s so true though. Raha I think that you’re absolutely right on because you know when it comes to success. You know people are talking about and I think that you nailed that they’re talking about money raise they’re talking about the amount of employees that they have.

Rafael Stark: So we because.

Alejandro Cremades: I Honestly think that the real metric for success is revenue per employee.

Rafael Stark: Total Ah actually actually know right right? per play will would give you like the efficiency of the company currently right? because I agree with you that companies think that metrics of success is their amount of employees.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, yeah.

Rafael Stark: You know they have it are how much they raise it I think it’stic associate ah success because if you raise a lot of money and you don’t have used it for that to just you you you have a high dilution. It’s not good for you having a high dilution. You know I’m today super sensitive about dilution.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, so.

Rafael Stark: Ah, think you have to raise enough money the minimum money that you need you know because you can raise later in a better valuation and you can control better the dilution and employees. Ah people are Amazing. You know and and so. Yeah, business is about to group up people together to solve a problem but have a lot of people can brings a lot of troubles you know, ah and their noise. There’s alignment problems. People’s problems usually ego.

Alejandro Cremades: No yeah, so.

Rafael Stark: You know is this is one of the bad parts. Ah and and a fit by having a a small group that people can focus So a metric of success in the end of the Way. Success is create a huge business that serves society and create a huge value for for society for your customers now I think this is success. And you can metric that by like revenue profit profitability some metrics that you can measure like the the impact or the value generate by but by Company. No.

Alejandro Cremades: I.

Alejandro Cremades: So now let’s go. Let’s go here back to stark. So imagine you go to sleep tonight Rafael and you wake up in a world where the vision of stark is fully realized what does that world look like.

Rafael Stark: We just acquire Gp Morgan Kidding kidding Any kidding guys are not whos ah.

Alejandro Cremades: I I love it I Love it. So that’s how amazing yeah, all right? So so so why do you expand you know what? what else would it look like.

Rafael Stark: No I think like at weistic I think um, the the idea behind this the Chikrita One of the biggest and good banks in in the world. You know should be a reference in the world for like picture be banking I think. Pretty nice and and solid plan to achieve.

Alejandro Cremades: And you’ve also now been branching into different directions also with Stark Infra so you have stark bank and now Stark Infra so tell us about this too. Okay.

Rafael Stark: So star inference dark bank is a store similar to Amazon and Aws. So basically you already need to keep growing Amazon needs a cloud and and computer processing capatability. So they create another company. Ews to serve that because they need it. Ah and if you look stark made we are a finishish solution Brazil and we need connection to the central bank to process all the payments and receivables that we’re doing. We need to connection to Mastercard to issue our cards. So and and of course when when you started I finishes to you can out hey central bank give me a license. No you you you have to start parking with banks other banks other finished institution and they’re pretty badned. You know. So all the operation problems historically that we had was with partner banks because they have failure a lot of failures you know and so you are to to give to our customers. The excellence that we want. With say to once we got our license with the central bank in October Two Thousand and twenty to create ah starking from so create the api you connect to the central bank create api you can match your Mastercard but in a way that we can open later for for other companies that we open this ear sure that another help us use it.

Rafael Stark: And start make use this those disservice in the same way that any company can could use it. You know so we can feel the pain choose our our ownproduct so we have this culture in start make where we force it our team our developers, everything to to use start paint products. Should feel the pain to use these those products because this helps us improve the products to our customers have a way better experience using them.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it now. Imagine you know you had the opportunity of having a chat with your younger self you know grabbing that younger rough file that you know perhaps is still you know in college you know, wondering about how to create you know? ah. Solutions. You know that will cover certain parol that you’re encountering you know and and and put ah put up. You know, covering that gap into the future that you’re living into and and let’s say you had the opportunity of having a chat with that younger rapfael and and and giving that younger Rafael. 1 piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Rafael Stark: It’s a complex question and because like ah usually I think people would try to give advice you avoid mistakes. But I think mistakes are super important because because of those mistakes you become the person that you you are right now you know. Um, so I could back to to reference say hey start stock make in 2013. You know, no bank start in this year and but rapel but was not very ready for that I think I I would problem say jurafa hey. Think it’s important to have a mentor because you’re going to che upgrade faster your knowledge your your skills versus because rough figure I figure out a lot of things by myself along you know, but it just takes more time versus have like. Founders mentors that good advice and you learn faster I think I would probably beg your fancy that have fine try to find a good mentor.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it So rafale for the people that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi. That’s right to you or to the company. What? yeah.

Rafael Stark: To me I’m super Yeah I’m super open by you guys can message me on linkeding you guys can email me my my may is super like rafaa at starping dot Com rafa with f not Ph with have so. Just maybe your some mesh alone on linking.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well hey rahael thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an on earth to have you with us.

Rafael Stark: Thank you for the invite is an honor to be here and thank you for having me.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

Ryan Begin recently exited his startup to a private equity firm for $200M. A venture that’s all about diverting what would be wasted food. The company, Divert, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Ara Partners, GIC, and Ontario Power Generation. Eventually, it was acquired by Ara Partners.

In this episode, you will learn:

Tackling the huge wasted food problem
Why it can take four acquisition attempts to finally sell your business
Finding product market fit and scalability

Alejandro Cremades · EP 532 Ryan Begin On Selling A Startup That Protects The Value Of Food For $200 MillionSUBSCRIBE ON:

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Ryan Begin:Ryan Begin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Divert, Inc. Bringing deep interest and expertise in solutions-oriented technology, he co-founded the company in 2007 to drive social and environmental impact through advanced technology and sustainable infrastructure.

Over the last 15 years, Ryan has led the development of Divert, its technologies, and its vision. As CEO, he is helping bring to life Divert’s mission to solve the wasted food crisis by establishing the company’s data-centric impact platform.

Before Divert, Ryan was a Senior Systems Engineer and Laboratory Manager at Raytheon. Prior to Raytheon, he was a lead engineer at Proton Energy Systems (now Nel Hydrogen), where he delivered the first zero-carbon PEM Electrolyzer to fuel a fuel cell bus in Barth, Germany, and on-site hydrogen systems in Nikopol, Ukraine.

His experience exposed him to a rapidly scaling decarbonization technology, with the disciplined approach to product delivery from Raytheon. These experiences set the early technical foundation at Divert.

Ryan holds a Bachelor’s and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: All righty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today. We have a really incredible founder. You know we’re going to be talking about building scaling you know also a very interesting transaction that you know he’s done as well with a private equity firm and how you know they actually you know they structure that. Ah, but but nevertheless I think that you’re all going to find this very inspiring so without further ado. Let’s let’s welcome our guest today Ryan begging welcome to the show.

Ryan Begin: Thank you I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity. Ajandra.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s do a little of a walkthrough memory lane ryan. So originally you know out of Maine so how was life growing up. So.

Ryan Begin: Ah, slow remote somewhat isolated as you could Imagine. Um, but you know foundational I think the growing up the opportunity to explore work with you know, machinery and and tools and sort of explore different. Systems and electronics mechanical it was it was It was really Unique. So.

Alejandro Cremades: Now also very unique. You know the fact that you were very much into problems into engineering you know so to speak and and and you were also the very first person in your family to go to college. So how did you get into the whole problem solving. You know, engineering thing and and and also becoming the first family member to to go to college.

Ryan Begin: You know I think it’s funny. It’s I I look back now and I look at my family I look at my son and I can sort of see the same curiosity wanting to take things apart and rebuild them in your own way and I think a lot of people have these experiences. Ah, we had I had the unique opportunity you know had a machine shop with my uncle and very large garages and tools to do some some interesting interesting things and a lot of family support. You know my my father would bought me my first 5 boxes of used electronics and an old an oscilloscope and just playing with this equipment. It it then translate translated into electronics in high school to so going into vocational which I think is a little taboo sometimes when you think about like going into vogue is is like to that trade element. Um, but as I thought about going into university and electrical engineering. It I had a completely different foundational skill set than anybody else that I interacted with at school.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then let’s talk about life after school so getting into you know the whole thing you know around around solid. You know way cars and and and really good stuff. You know like how did you venture into into all of that.

Ryan Begin: And why? so I think building things and playing with things when I was ah when I was you know home high school and and trying to invent and now here’s this team university supported we were raising money with general electric and gm and um. So it was ah it was a completely different experience at a much higher more professional scale actually ah the the leader of our Solarcar team has gone on to create a riddle wind company that has gone public which is really exciting to see that journey for him. But it’s only the same principles. It’s it’s understanding the design. And my hands-on experience growing up I think lended itself to the team in a really unique way that I knew how to solder you know, really fundamental things I knew how to route wires and and do other things. Made me more valuable and I got more responsibility and and more exposure so you know when we were raising money for solar car and we were going to corning. Um, you know that was a really unique opportunity. It definitely translates into entrepreneurship when we think about it’s not just building the product you have to have money to build the product. So.

Alejandro Cremades: And and obviously you know here you you had it in you right? but you know based on the problem solving approach that you’ve had and you know how you went to school and everything. Why do you think it. It took you you know a few jobs to really you know venture out on your own and. And start a company.

Ryan Begin: I think it is a I think it’s opening up the aperture of what is the world. How does the world actually function. Um, you know, growing up holding a job for 3045 years was was applauded that was what you do. You go to general electric and you’re there for life. You get your pension and um the idea of venturing off on your own to do something it. You know, frankly it freaked my parents out when I said I was quitting my job at Raytheon. And we’re going to venture and do our own thing and play with food waste and you know the idea of working with food waste and making money from from food waste was was very different so when I go back to leaving university going into proton energy systems which is now nell hydrogen we I was. I hired it around employee number 26 had hundreds of million dollars of dollars in the bank and I was hired into a team to to build an explore product and I think this idea of exploring product brought me back to that solar car experience I was I was pretty good at it at Nell and. That curiosity just kind of continuing and and drive to wanting to build things I think is very unique and that’s important to me.

Alejandro Cremades: And and talking about you know they say this first stint you know that you did I mean at that point is when you started to think that it will make sense to apply to business schools. But you know it doesn’t sound like they were very welcoming. So. So how do you take that on and and and and why did you think at this point that a master’s degree was you know the next day you know a critical point in your in your journey.

Ryan Begin: So I Saw when I was at Proton the pushing into a new frontier and trying to create an industry that didn’t exist I don’t think that I didn’t have the requisite skill set to. To really recognize? how do you make this product work in and create Cash Flow. It’s a really different experience growing up and learning how to you know, lay out off amps. But now you’re trying to create you know balance sheets so going into business trying to get into business school I Thought that was my path. Ah, clearly it wasn’t after being rejected by every school and I knew that I wanted an opportunity to maybe take a step back and add to my toolbox so controls and you know really going deeper into electrical engineering. Um, at that point in time. The idea of neural nets. This is Circa 2001 2002 you know we were programming fuzzy logic controllers at that point this was sort of like Brand new cutting edge type things. So I think you know opening up going back and sort of resetting within University created that opportunity to go then. Back into the the working world.

Alejandro Cremades: So then at raeum I mean it sounds like that’s just like the sick way for you know, getting into entrepreneurship. So what do you think happened there for you to say hey I think I want to I want to take this one on I think I want to go on my own.

Ryan Begin: Ah.

Ryan Begin: So I got in trouble a lot at Raytheon. Um I brought my proton energy ingenuity entrepreneurial hat with me into Raytheon and it really wasn’t welcomed. I had a boss I remember I I took an initiative to to do a project I found you know, ah a rather important issue but I but I sort of broke chain of command and he was screaming at me in his office I think that was the point I realized this is not the right environment for me I want to solve problems. Want to make an impact and so I started you know talking with folks and trying to understand what other opportunities I knew I wanted to get back to renewable energy between solar car and green hydrogen and seeing what was happening if if you look at like the clean tech revolution. It was clean tech 1.0 in the 2000 2010 there was a reawakening so around 2007 getting in early into that to that timeframe. Um, that’s where I decided to take the leap of faith and hook up with with other entrepreneurs to to create something from scratch is hard.

Alejandro Cremades: So then what happened next.

Ryan Begin: Ah mistakes Um, movement I mean we we We really try to create very similar to my experience as a proton trying to create an industry that doesn’t exist and how do you make money doing that. How do you protect your intellectual property. How do you fundraise when Investors don’t quite understand what it is. You’re doing and and why you’re doing it. Do They really understand the problem. Do you have the right solution as a scalable so it was a journey after that. So.

Alejandro Cremades: And for the people that are that are listening to to get it. What ended up being the business model of diver. How do you guys make money.

Ryan Begin: So we started with this concept of behind the grocery store taking their wasted food and turning it into renewable energy. So this is a a biological process called anaerobic digestion. And what happens is you’re effectively taking the carbon that’s locked up in food. You have bacteria methanogens that are consuming that food and turning it into biogass biogass is about 60% methane. So it’s very similar and molecular structure to natural gas. So it’s ah it’s a renewable fuel. It comes from waste. it’s it’s stable it’s somewhat mature technology happens naturally and we were doing this behind the grocery store and like what a stupid idea because when you think about the problem we were solving and you think about wasted food across the United States 63 xty three million tons and here we are with a a really focused product that our customer was excited so we did have validation on the customer side. We built our first system it kind of worked and we realized that it just wasn’t a scalable solution. We we then sort of went back we and we pulled ourselves to understand what is working really well. What’s novel about what we’re doing and and what’s not working these same principles of pulling back and really self-evaluating is this the right solution for the market. We’re still doing is today.

Ryan Begin: As we introduce new products and new solutions to solve the wasted food crisis.

Alejandro Cremades: So It sounds like the um so obviously on the business Model. You guys had to tweak it you know quite a bit and when it comes to um to also combining that with with a canass and and and and and really having you know like entrepreneurs. Do they have their own. You know canvas in their own head and it’s all about being able to translate what you’re thinking and what you’re dreaming into a picture that you can really translate to others that can help you in the right direction in the same direction that you’re hoping with the same you know, kind of like move and you know all of that I mean how did you go about combining those 2 Ah, in order to really you know hit that product Market fit.

Ryan Begin: I think you have to have conviction and humility and they have to coexist and they really do not want to coexist those are competing for your attention I think for your for your own. Value as you as you sort of see yourself and how am I spending my time am I solving the right problem. It’s a really hard thing to do to take a look at something that you spent years working on and saying maybe this isn’t the right solution even with a little bit of validation. So when we did that what we ended up with is. Putting ourselves on a path to really solving the right problem doing it at scale. So now we still work with grocery stores. They’re they’re our biggest customer base we’re still using aerobic digestion. We’re producing renewable energy. But we found some really creative ways to solve problems but we can’t solve those problems if we don’t identify what those problems are or our shortcomings are and doing that earlier into the process something else. That’s incredibly unique about us as a business we raised five point four million dollars over the first. 15 years of our existence and we did that building infrastructure. So we’re now we’re really having to commit capital to to buying pumps and screw presses and other things. So how do you do that? you you have to be creative in the approach.

Ryan Begin: A lot of businesses that were kind of doing similar things never made it because they took on too much too fast and we never we Never We never went down that path because we were always pushing ourselves. Do We have the right business model. But at the same time you’re out in the Market. You’re pushing and testing. Concepts and thoughts so you have to be able to pull back and and self-evaluate.

Alejandro Cremades: So watch that perhaps what they drove avoiding capital.

Ryan Begin: Um I think avoiding capital came down to not wanting to lose control. We just had you know a phenomenal exit this about a year ago with an incredible parker. We would have never gotten there if we had given up control eight years prior and the reason is when you move into accepting other cash they need to put that cash to work and I think we we looked around. There was a a competitor of ours harvest power they raised $400000000 from kleiner perkins. When they did that we said oh no, we are we are dead. They’re just going to eat our lunch and put us out of business and take all of our customers but they didn’t because what happened they had a business model that wasn’t really fully defined in our opinion. My opinion wasn’t fully defined. And they then took all that rocket fuel and they just launched that thing into the wrong direction. Meanwhile we were sort of the tortoise we were moving through and thinking and working and trying to solve problems to put together the right business model that just recently we felt that the market was ready. Our customers were ready. We were ready. The model was ready. We knew how to make money now. It’s time to push and I think we’re being rewarded for that patience now. So.

Alejandro Cremades: And and at what point do you realize hey I think that we are now ready to scale this thing like we’re now I think we have it right? I think that we have this thing ready to go.

Ryan Begin: That’s a great question I I think there is a certain amount of customer adoption that’s required to validate how we’re thinking about this, you can look at the growth prospects and on unit economic basis to say this is this is working. Um. And it’s not just working in 1 specific market under 1 set specific set of conditions. This is something that scales into you know from from Los Angeles into the southeast and that really is taking an effective look at how well can you capture your tam. Easy to say that there’s 63 million tons of wasted food in the us that’s a four hundred and eight billion dollars problem is your model ready to tackle that problem. So I think that’s part of it I think really understanding the problem that we’re trying to solve. Food waste is wasted. Food is ah is an incredibly complex issue for a whole variety of issues and do we have the right solution so you’re also looking at the the changes in regulations consumer behaviors our customers behavior and what we see and within the wasted food space. We have always been. We had started off as reducing wasted food stopping that from getting into landfills and the model was awesome create renewable energy save the fertilizer. This is incredibly important. It’s going to stop methane emissions. But when you start to realize and this was part of our journey when you’re getting wasted food.

Ryan Begin: Out of the landfill you look at it differently and you say well wait a second. Why are we throwing all of this away so we would spend time in Europe because you can kind of look at a 10 year look ahead if you go to Europe and see what they’re doing within their food system and you come back and you say that’s what we’re going to look like there are models that worked and failed so we came back and we said. Why aren’t we reducing wasted food. The value proposition is so much better. That is our actual customer’s problem. They don’t have an anaerobic digestion problem. Our customers. Don’t want to throw good food away. So that’s the evolution of the business model when you see these things start to click and you have these big aha moments and you start to. Unlock real value that’s competitive and protectable. That’s when you know in my opinion and art my experience when you’re ready.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about that. You know let’s double click on the on the transactional side I know that you guys very recently you know did um, a transaction with a private equity firm So walk us through how that came about and then you know like the ins and outs of that I mean.

Ryan Begin: 6

Alejandro Cremades: What was what what was the outcome of that and and yeah, so I think that for the people that are listening. You know, probably they’re more used to the venture. You know capital thing and then you know perhaps getting ah an acquisition from like a big corporation. Obviously in this case, you know it was a private equity Firm. You know it was. It was a combination of. Different things that came to light but they nevertheless you know, super interesting Stuff. You know and very super unique for the people that are listening to so tell us about that.

Ryan Begin: So it was not it was it was probably our third or fourth foray into exploring an acquisition and you know I think the first time you go down that path you get excited. Think this is going to happen. You start calculating? What’s my equity worth and all of these things and and you’re so naive. We were so naive you can’t read the situation. You can’t really read. You don’t understand exactly how the deal is going to be negotiated and how it’s going to be structured. What do you really want to be successful in the back end. You know four letter word earnout. Are you going down that path. Why um, we engage, you know after our first you know our second and you kind of go through these conversations you get smarter every time. We started to engage bankers. We really wanted to understand what is the value. What’s the market think of our business and what we’ve created and and where we can go that I think that experience brings out more um more self-t truth understanding what’s working what’s not and and. And maybe you said it before you have something in your head you have to be able to communicate that out. But what’s coming back when you go through that process you see what the market’s putting back at you here’s how you’re being perceived here’s what we believe about what you’re saying we don’t think you can do x we think you can do y and that’s where we see value.

Ryan Begin: So that process for us was probably over a period of maybe like 4 years and so what happens it’s sort of maybe like finding the love of your life when you find the right one you know, um, our partners we knew we were looking for somebody that was. Working to solve impact we we really wanted to be aligned on mission. We we needed somebody who appreciated the value of infrastructure wasted food is is incredibly complex. You have to touch it. You have to build things typically vcs are not. You know it’s the asset light noke. Nothing in the ground we want software certainly over the prior 10 years so finding somebody who valued that part of us as well knew where we were in our journey and where we were in our growth stage knowing that we needed more capital that we had only raised this a very small amount I only think would qualify as a a seed round now. Willing to put more capital to work so the deal structure becomes more complex. But for all the right reasons and we understand those reasons things that we wouldn’t have understood 4 years prior and so when you go back into this deal structure and you think about what are the next five ten years going to look like. Um, you know you really have that pre-ordained and ah scripted now I don’t know everything works out exactly as we expect. But at least we’re we’re we’re heading in the right direction and that’s what we found in our in our private equity partner.

Alejandro Cremades: So what? what? what were the? um, the terms. You know there’s deal if you can share anything.

Ryan Begin: So in total that was a $200,000,000 transaction. Um, it was it was 100000000 going onto our balance sheet that was that was required as part of the deal and that’s why we did the deal. We knew that we needed to. Um, we needed to reapproach the the governance of the of the business. How do we think about the business where are we going in this new frontier. It’s it’s sort of that next evolution of the business so we needed to we needed to bring in some new some new thoughts ideas board if you will. Ownership structure and that’s what we were able to do with with oura.

Alejandro Cremades: And and and and obviously you know talking about where you’re heading I Want to ask you something here I mean if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of the company is fully realized what does that look like.

Ryan Begin: So for us that would mean that instead of 63 million tons of wasted food being generated across the us we’ve cut that in half we have done that with with Ros responsible infrastructure. So responsible infrastructure for us is technology enabled we understand where wasted food is being generated. We’re using that infrastructure to drive that data that intelligence back into the food supply chain and we’ve connected the systems in a way that we are we are reducing food from coming into our facilities but we’re we’re really being paid for that and we’re incentivized on that with nationwide scale. So.

Alejandro Cremades: And it sounds like obviously food waste I mean you you were quite ahead of the curve here because I I find that now there’s like much more consciousness around this so you guys is is nothing like being at the right time in history right? When you’re an entrepreneur. And it sounds like you guys have been able to ride the wave. What do you think is driving that shift that consciousness now around foot waste.

Ryan Begin: So I really do believe it starts with the same experience that we’ve gone through which is when you pull this wasted food out of the landfill stream and you look at it. You just say yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, ah, all on on second Ryan I think that we have um, an an issue here with the with the tech site for some reason it saying offline. So what I’m gonna do is the following I’m going to stop this recording and so that we don’t lose anything.

Ryan Begin: Good so driving the I think what’s happening right now in wasted food and that is a conscious food waste versus wasted food when you walk into one of our facilities and you see. What is going to waste. It. The question is always why why is this being thrown away. Why is the bruised Apple and if you think about everything that’s happened to that Apple from the seed going into the ground the watering the fertilizer the transportation for the harvest the cooling. Merchandising all of this accreedive value and carbon that’s put into that Apple to go all the way through that journey to get to the end and it’s got a bruise nobody wants it and then it’s going into the recycling bin. So even if it’s not going into the trash which is fantastic and really important that awareness. Is really changing things. So California had food waste recycling laws and Europe food waste recycling laws could put it into the landfill for obvious reasons. But France in 2016 California followed nine months after banning. Edible food in France from going into the trash and then California has said with sb 1383 we need to reduce all of your food that’s going to waste by 20 what a radical idea right? We just had food waste bands being passed across the country and currently happening.

Ryan Begin: But California has gone further Washington State has followed so all of that is being driven by the idea of looking into what is going to waste and I think giving a greater appreciation to our resources the time the effort that goes into food we are we I believe are ahead on this journey. Thinking about how do we use our position at the end of the supply chain to better inform solutions. How do we help drive food donation and we’re doing that today. How do you integrate technologies to drive source reductions. So don’t bring that food into the grocery store if it’s not going to get sold make sure your refrigeration systems are working appropriately. Why are we not marking food down for it with a coupon to move it out the front door really important to grocery stores as well because they need to stay in business really thin at profit margins. So it’s that entire food system coming together.

Alejandro Cremades: : Now obviously you know you’ve been at it for a while you know I mean we’re talking about over like 15 years you know it’s like in the startup world I mean dog years I mean that’s like a lifetime right of of being like in a general electric of the world that you were alluding to earlier. so so I guess imagine if you had the opportunity of.

Ryan Begin: I.

Alejandro Cremades: You know going back in time and perhaps you know you are able to sit down that younger self that younger self that is still corporate and and you know like thinking through you know what will be a world. You know where where you could bring you know a solution to a problem and they. If you were able to have a sit down with your younger self and giving that younger self that younger Ryan one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Ryan Begin: That’s interesting because I will frequently go back to what younger Ryan did to make sure he does not do the same things again as we as we kind of push forward here if we were to go back in course correct certain periods of time. I think the business probably looks a lot like what it does today. Um, we had we taken on more Vc type capital early into the business I don’t think we would have made it I think we would have been pushed to scale faster. And it would have been the failure of the business because the market wasn’t ready so it’s hard to go back and say what would be the things that we would do differently because I don’t think the market was ready for our solutions. I. To your point we probably could have went and founded another business and then come into the business in two thousand and fourteen seven years right and and probably had a good position if if we knew everything that we knew today but I do think our position today within wasted food is is coveted. Is highly respected. We have some of the largest customers in the country that we are scaling with um I don’t think I don’t think we have any regrets I think that there are some things that we might do differently on the capital raising side the structure of the business how we approach solutions maybe getting technology integrated sooner.

Ryan Begin: Getting the idea of wasted food into our vocabulary instead of food waste. Um, it’s a complex. It’s complex. So.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it I love it and now 1 thing that you mentioned there market ready versus you know, not market ready. You know what’s what’s the difference between one another.

Ryan Begin: So can you get paid. We.

Alejandro Cremades: I think that’s ah, that’s a good way to put it Ryan so I for the for the folks that are listening to you know that that are listening now and and that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Ryan Begin: So Linkedin I am that’s the only social media I have time for and I’m on.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well hey Ryan thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been on honor to have you with us.

Ryan Begin: I really appreciate it. Likewise great opportunity. Thank you so much Ali andro.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

Luca Ferrari is the CEO and co-founder of Bending Spoons—a technology platform that specializes in giving birth to and scaling digital products and AI startups. He has raised $500 million between secondary sales and debt. The venture has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Intesa Sanpaolo, Banco BPM, Keisuke Honda, and Maximum Effort.

In this episode, you will learn:

Three ways to fund your growth
The benefits of cofounders for getting through the failures
Luca Ferrari’s top advice when launching a business

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Luca Ferrari:Luca Ferrari is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bending Spoons. He previously worked at Evertale as a Co-Founder and COO. Luca Ferrari attended the Technical University of Denmark and Università degli Studi di Padova.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: Hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today. We have a very exciting founder. You know a founder that you know has a you know experience being on the good side of entrepreneurship also before you know, not so much but they obviously he learned a lot and we’re going to be talking about that quite a bit. Is as they say you either succeed or you learn, but he learned quite a bit because he’s on a rocket ship right now. So again, building scaling financing all the good stuff that we like to hear so let’s not wait any longer. Let’s welcome our guest today Luca welcome to the show.

Luca Ferrari: Thank you, Thank you for having me a pleasure.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in italy a Luca you were there born in a small town with just 900 people so give us a little of a walkthrough memory lane. How was life growing up. Yeah.

Luca Ferrari: Right? A very simple life. Um, small town mostly farmers Simple jobs, nothing fancy um crop with a lot of dreams but not a lot of the let’s say exposure to. Big dreams having been realized so as small world but loving parents kept questioning why I existed but the meaning of life was out of strong urge to try to build something. But definitely I realized at that stage.

Alejandro Cremades: And what what got you into engineering out of all things Luka.

Luca Ferrari: I’m um, I’m very curious Interestingly I’m not a technical person like I don’t necessarily like to um how to say team cur I’m more of an abstract Thinker I Love to think about Concepts and model. World in my mind and on paper and so when when the time came to decide. Um, what to.

Luca Ferrari: And.

Luca Ferrari: All right? all right? Um, so um, when when it you know the time came to decide what to study at University I Um I’m a very curious person. Not a.

Luca Ferrari: No I.

Luca Ferrari: When when the time came to to go to University I am a curious person. Not a team card though. Love to learn about everything and anything I was okay, let me let me just put them in that room I see ah no other and other solution.

Alejandro Cremades: Look look I sorry sorry about the toy. Yeah I can completely hear the toy. So all right? all right? All right.

Luca Ferrari: I Repeat that.

Luca Ferrari: At this second question.

Luca Ferrari: Um, okay, let’s say now that question is whether.

Luca Ferrari: So I’ve always been a curious person loved to learn when I was ah five or six years old I still remember telling my mom that my greatest dream was to but to know everything? Um, which is obviously impossible. Um. So when time came to the sidewa to study university I was preopenminded. We considered literature medicine engineering math physics. Ultimately I think I had to take a leap of faith and I picked engineering because I thought it would be challenging from the point of view of you know logic. Ah, but also somewhat practical and just a better way of making a difference in the world but I wasn’t really looking to necessarily be. You know the stereotypical engineer ah building things on piece at the time I’ve always liked to think abstractly and model the wall in my head.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then I know that for you, you know something really opened up when you went to denmark to study abroad I think that that perhaps opened up the worldview and I made the way that you were thinking about things. So what do you think opened up for you. You know during during that day.

Luca Ferrari: Um.

Alejandro Cremades: That experience.

Luca Ferrari: I think the I feel pretty fortunate for my upbringing loving parents in our peaceful life. Ah, the the part that I certainly lacked was an exposure to to great achievements. How things. Done at scale ambition and so I think ah hide strongly me I can tell in in hindsight. But sometimes you need a trigger you know to understand how to go from a an impulse of feeling a strength to an actual execution toward a goal. And and going to denmark ah put me in a more international environment I met people who you know started introducing me to interesting online publications were ah the topics for entrepreneurship or technology and I just immediately. Dawned on me that that was what I wanted to do probably the rest of my life. It was like a vocation I always had that I mean that clicked like this is what I felt as a ten year old this urge to build something to imagine a future that doesn’t exist and try to achieve it with others. Theme part is very important to me. Um, it just dawned on me. This is it. This is what I’m going to do it was obvious when I saw it but before I didn’t even know what had you asked me at age 18 what entrepreneur entrepreneurship is I wouldn’t have been able to even tell you what the word meant. Never.

Luca Ferrari: Met Anybody would met an entrepreneur ever. So.

Alejandro Cremades: But yeah, because obviously you know italy you know, like anywhere in Europe now startups. You know they’ve you know taken a really popular role but then back then it was either. You will become a a doctor or a lawyer or a banker. So um, so so I totally can understand that now for you. Being in university I mean that was no barrier for you to to really go at it as an entrepreneur and that’s when you started your first company. So so what was that how how did you guys you know, really come together and what was that process of hey you know I think that maybe this is something interesting. Let’s go at it with it.

Luca Ferrari: Ah, so that’s ah, there’s it. It all starts with that. It’s sliding doors right? So first I end up in this double degree program with another another guy. Um, we both end up being selected. Ah, 5 out of I think over a hundred people applied and then we end up in the same country and in Denmark and study together become fast friends. Um, and I think we both had an act for entrepreneurship and interest in it then I got. Ah, pneumonia early on in my stay in Denmark and after three weeks that I’m sick and this friend of mine is just staying at home with me. Ah, he tells me hey I think it was a Saturday night he tells me I’m sick and tired of being at home with you I just want to go downtown and.

Luca Ferrari: And and have some fun and so he does and he meets you know another guy who ends up being our our co-founder. So um, you know we we spend time together. We we like one another and. Ah, we start thinking particularly during us a certain trip abroad. We start dreaming of building a company and and and we have an idea at the time the idea was to build the first self and still it would be. You know the only nobody has done it yet. The first self-writing diary of a user’s life. Very difficult technical problem and we decided to try to to crack it so that was late in our university years and this third guy was having um it was starting for a ph d whereas myself and the other. Person we we were about to graduate from our master of science and but we had no money so we you know we chose to that one of us would get a job and then share their salary to pay for rent and living expenses I got the best offer which was from mckinsey. Ah, to be a strategy consultant. So I went there I remember telling my boss at the time that I had this startup and that I intended to quit at some point once we would get funding and if it was okay and it was very gracious I might say said okay, we want to have you anyway at at Mckinsey and so the ph d guy dropped out.

Luca Ferrari: And so like he and the other one were working full time on a prototype for this idea whereas I was working at Mckinsey and then in the night and in the weekends helping with the started and about I think a year later we got funding half a million euros which at the time felt like. And incredible amount of money and so I resigned and three months later I joined full time and then I like to joke that I e was able to significantly speed up the failure process because about a year later we had to to shut it down. Um, but yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah now now there? What? what? Why do you think he was so difficult racing money. What what were some of the hurdles that you guys were experiencing.

Luca Ferrari: It was um, it was a good ride.

Luca Ferrari: Well I mean first of all europe at the time we’re talking 2010 was certainly not like a Vc hub. Ah the nordics much better than italy thankfully we were in denmark at the time because we had just graduated but. Was just not a lot of capital things have improved incredibly over the subsequent 10 years or so but at the time very difficult. Also we had no clue what we were doing I mean never written a business plan never pitched anything so just incompetence on our end but we got some help. Met with a lot of investors. Ultimately someone building us.

Alejandro Cremades: Nice now for you guys their road. You know what’s a little bit bumpy with ever tail. So at what point do you realize? hey guys you know I think that this is not going to work I think that maybe we should pull the plug.

Luca Ferrari: Are.

Luca Ferrari: Well, it never looked after the initial honeymoon period it never looked like it was going to work but it didn’t look like it was a for sure a failure either until a couple of years into the project when we were already running out of money and. Expecting a tax refund from the danish government and then the government delayed the refund for whatever reason I don’t remember now what the law said at the time it’s been ages but that basically put us out of business right away so we had to shut down the company. We had a team of 12 believe um, and so we we asked the 2 people we deemed most essential to try and again to build a company to stay on board and cofound a new company and then we were quite fortunate because we had about forty Thousand Euros left in the bank. And and that was I I think it was our rvcs because of some liquidation preference but nobody wanted to I mean on their end and nobody wanted to take the the pains of going through a liquidation process which would imply bigger. Legal expenses then the money they were going to take out and so they basically told us you can keep the money and um, whatever so we we shut down the company. We found ourselves with a little bit less than forty Thousand Euros and that was the seed capital for being spons and we’re talking probably about the summer of 2013

Luca Ferrari: So a bit a bit over nine years ago

Alejandro Cremades: Now How was that transition like because obviously at this point you you guys are probably you know, not feeling too. Great. You know after you know having had those conversations you know, perhaps the disappointment. Um, how was that transition to hey you know why don’t We just do something else and and and and then. And then what was what was what was that process like until you guys were like okay I think that we got this next idea which ended up becoming bending spoons.

Luca Ferrari: So interestingly emotion was speaking. It was much easier to fail than to be failing. Ah the way I felt as it became obvious that we had to put an end to it was actually a lot of relief. I felt we’ve made so many mistakes and I was so eager to try again and it felt like being able to go from a blank slate was going to be liberating as opposed to trying to fix something that’s broken so actually a lot of relief and energy in trying again then I think it got quite hard. So never a doubt that we wanted to to give it a second shot I I think the peak of the like the hardest moment 1 of the hardest moments for me of my whole professional career was soon after we started bending bones when things were not necessarily going very well. I had these I think you can call it fear that we were going to fail once again and I’ve always hated failing. Um I think many people do um and and so I was looking at how things were going and I’m and I’m like you know, maybe we. But but we fail again and that would be such an indictment of incompetence or lack of talent so that was difficult I remember crying a couple of times at that stage I don’t think I’ve ever cried again.

Alejandro Cremades: And and what about what about what about failure didn’t you like because I know obviously in in Europe failure is looked at a little bit different. You know in the us they clap and they encourage you to get back up. You know, unfortunately in Europe they point at you when you fail. So.

Luca Ferrari: And.

Alejandro Cremades: What piece about failure didn’t you like.

Luca Ferrari: You know these these things are very they have deep psychological roots. It’s not that you rationalize them all that much I think deep down I’m probably insecure and I’ve always measured myself because done. The impact I have whether I achieve difficult goals. Ah, whether othersters I admire and who know me think I’m great at what I do and and naturally I mean. When there is a pattern pattern of failing. It’s hard to keep your confidence high if that’s your your Yardstick you know now.

Alejandro Cremades: So what did you do to quiet that voice you know because obviously it’s kind of like a voice right? So so what did you do to quiet that and to keep pushing.

Luca Ferrari: So I think part of that is you’re just to nash is I think for an entrepreneur do you have to have that or if you don’t have it. You have to find a way to to to produce it in you because you’re gone. Have different levels of failure pretty much every week you ought to keep going people will come to you for support. So I guess I was fortunate enough to have some of that in me for whatever reason I don’t know we can try to psychoanalyze my history but I had that. I was pretty fortunate to be working with people who had that too and the good thing about being part of of a team is that you are unlikely to be down or as down the same day. So one day I’m more depressed and the other guy helps me, he lifts me up a little bit and then I do the same for him next week. You know so. That helped and then the third part to me was just the bond the loyalty to the common project with these other people I already at that point called very good friends. Um I just felt that.

Luca Ferrari: Failing with someone you you love working with your respect you. You’re basically deciding you want to spend your life with in a way. Professionally um, might be even better than than succeeding alone in some way so that gave me. I Think emotional strength to just look past that and appreciate the value of the moment.

Alejandro Cremades: So at what point they look at the you realize hey I think that we’re turning a corner here I think that we’re into something.

Luca Ferrari: Ben this bo was never an overnight success. It’s not that it has been a a rock ah Hawk is tea. We’ve had many many wins many losses just the wins of overall outweighed the losses. So you know.

Luca Ferrari: Some apps early on that had some success but something that by today’s standard would look ridiculous but then on top of that success you rain best you build more competence you build better technologies you try harder and then there is a bigger success to be honest I I don’t think there’s ever been. You know one moment where we clearly felt okay. You know this is happening. It was truly truly incremental. A lot of small steps and hard work all the way to where we are now.

Alejandro Cremades: And for the people that are listening what ended up being the business model of pending spoons.

Luca Ferrari: Right? So interestingly our so our dream our mission so to say from the beginning was to build or or strive to build one of the best companies of all time an institution, a true inspiration for other entrepreneurs for people a company that. You know brings to the market incredible products. Very successful products high value products and creates a ton of incredible jobs. So we were never primarily motivated by solv a particular problem or building a particular product and so our strategy in line with that broader. Vision and mission was to build a platform a platform optimized for launching or acquiring and then further building and scaling a variety of digital products so you can you can you could say metaphorically that we focus on building the machine. Ah that builds products. Or that builds machines as opposed to building the product directly so we focused on developing tech that helps build and scale product. We focused on building know-how for building and scaling product. We focused on building an employ brand that would enable us to attract incredible talent. To build building scale products on and forth. That’s our platform a pretty unusual approach I like to um, describe bening spons as Google makes a baby with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway where Google you have the love of technology Amazon the love of efficiency and berkshire hathaway the love of.

Luca Ferrari: Ah, efficient capital allocation including acquisition. So that’s a little bit. Our Dna always has been a little bit weird but we love it. So today we have built a portfolio of of digital product from early mobile apps over half a billion people have used them at some point and now we have over 100000000 people using them each month. Um, the the most successful apps we have I would say there’s a splice which is the number 1 mobile video editor in the world by by revenues. We have revenuemi number one aidriven photo enhancer in the world over 40000000 objectiveive users several otherss we have probably about 8 to 10 relevant products and we are.

Alejandro Cremades: And how has it been the journey to you know as you’re thinking about you know this intersection of um you know products Efficient Capital Um, you know Also the the efficient the a of of of the way that you guys have a structure your team which is you know, mainly engineers.

Luca Ferrari: 7

Alejandro Cremades: How do you? How do? how did you guys go about racing capital for bending spoons because obviously you had the experience from what you went through with every tail. So how was it the experience How much capital have you guys raised to date for the company and then how has it been going from one cycle to the next.

Luca Ferrari: Memory.

Luca Ferrari: So I would say in terms of equity. The company is bootstrapped. Ah we actually never raised substantial equity. It’s still all that forty Thousand Euro seed and then reinvesting earnings. Ah, what? what 1 reads in the news as being by and large secondary round so existing shareholders selling a little bit of shares but it was not a Capitan increase. However, for financing we have used a lot of debt over the years from banks just ah, straight that. That has been possible because we’ve been able to be profitable every single year so we have because you know obviously if you’re not profitable. You cannot pay pay down that that a bank gives you so.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it and on the di side I mean have you guys say made any of that a public I.

Luca Ferrari: Yeah, we we have I think we have raised the probably between equity in that different times probably over $400,000,000 I would say probably a bit more than that closer to half a billion I presume

Alejandro Cremades: Got it and just for the people that are listening. What are those secondaries How do secondaries really work.

Luca Ferrari: Yeah, so there are 2 2 types of equity transactions. You have a primary which means the company creates. Let’s say an additional share so it adds 1 slice to the cake and someone buys the share and the the company gets cash typically cash. Let’s say I mean it doesn’t have to be a generally cash. In in in exchange for that additional share and you know cash is naturally small owned then proportionally by each shareholder and hopefully it gets put to good use so that it will create more value than adding the slice of the cake as reduced for existing shareholders. A secondary transaction is when. And existing shareholder sells. You know one or more of their shares to someone else. So at a company level. There is no change in either number of shares or capital available simply a change of ownership. Let’s say of of some of the equity. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: And in terms of scale I mean you guys have have done. You know, like really crazy stuff I mean even a few weeks ago you guys were scaling like crazy from like 1000 gpus to like over 50000. So can you explain? What are those Gpus and and also like why we’re so challenging that type of scale.

Luca Ferrari: Right? So we we specialize in artificial intelligence. It’s one of the key legs of our table so to say and about a week ago 1 of our apps. Ah really took off It’s called Don Ai it’s for it’s an app for generative ai it creates images from textual prompts or sketch prompts or even your own photos. It’s quite magical. It uses. It’s based on some open source neural networks and and then a lot of proprietary. Stuff on top and and so the app started growing really rapidly to the point that now after a few days. It’s the most downloaded app as we speak in the western hemisphere um getting over a million new users today.

Luca Ferrari: And the challenge there is that to serve users every user to do that image generation through Ai you have a massive amount of computation to do and an efficient way of doing computation with with the neural networks is to use ah gpu that. In principle the same hardware. You used to play video games when you want to have really good graphics. People may remember buying Nvidia Gpus to play some games they love at you know, really high resolution or whatnot but these are specific gpu it means graphic processor unit. Built to maximize the computational efficiency for for training and and and and running these and neural networks. So to to scale to from a few thousand users to millions of users. We had to scale from about 1000 of these gpus to 50000 and we did that in about two days which is. A feat of rare difficulty. We worked on it with with Google particularly um, and and it was ah it was massively difficult I mean both both on our end and on the on Google with Google cloud we worked. Literally day and night for days nobody was sleeping but it was fun I mean that’s what you live for as a technologist and entrepreneur you want to have that sort of success with with your apps.

Alejandro Cremades: You know, kidding no kidding now now for you guys I mean imagine you were to go to sleep tonight look on and you wake up in a world where the vision of bending spoons is fully realized what does that world look like.

Luca Ferrari: Well like I said before benice spruce is a company that has raised the bar. Ah for what a company can be It has helped ideally millions of of people. Work there achieving heights they didn’t think were possible for them whether it’s but in terms of competencies or even dearer to me in terms of their human values. You know, really grow as a human being become a better collaborator a more altruistic person. It’s a company that has brought to the market. Truly transformational products. We have not so far I’m very proud of the products we have. They are commercially very successful and very useful to as I said over 100000000 recurring users still you know I’d love for us one day to have built something of the caliber of what Tesla has done right? Those things that really. Change the world in a way so that we have not accomplished at all and we really hope we be smart enough hardworking enough and lucky enough to get there at some point so in the you know that in the dream realized that’s certainly something that we have done and then yeah, we just ah were old and but proud of. Our contribution again. We we’re not proud yet but we work toward that.

Alejandro Cremades: And obviously you know now with bending sponce I mean this is your second rodeo. You’ve been at it for 9 years you had your previous experience with Evertail mom. So if you had the opportunity Luka of going back in time.

Luca Ferrari: Sorry.

Alejandro Cremades: And having a chat with your younger self perhaps that younger Luca that we’re stilling university and you know now you know had this say 2 bodies that they you know we’re thinking about like maybe like covering that gap that you were seeing in the future if you had that chance of sitting down with that younger Luka and.

Luca Ferrari: Now.

Luca Ferrari: See what.

Alejandro Cremades: Giving that younger lookout 1 piece of advice before launching a company. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Luca Ferrari: Oh There’s a lot of that one would be start earlier I think I may I might have studied less and gotten to get my hands dirty a bit earlier than I did and I one would be to. Think harder and longer before we jump into the Fray I think there is a a myth when it comes to entrepreneurship where they tell you you have to be go with your gut. You know, get into it. Ah actually the more I get experienced the more I think that it’s better to think. Your plan through before executing. It’s way cheaper to improve your vision strategy plan than it is to execute a suboptimal plan fail and adjust generally you invest 1% of the time planning and 99% executing So I would say 10 X the time you invest in thinking things through before you do them Arguably. We could have avoided a lot of mistakes should ever tell how we thought about it harder but we were so Enthusiastic. We just got to work.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it.

Alejandro Cremades: Hey well that happens all the time but look at you now look Ah what an incredible story. So for the people that are that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

Luca Ferrari: Oh I can send an email I guess my my email is my initials l f at vaningspoon.com I try to reply to all emails or at least as many as I can but generally all of them. So.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well hey look at thank you. So so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Luca Ferrari: Likewise Thank you for having me.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

After selling his first startup, John Tomich has already raised $130M in financing for his latest venture. The company, Credit Key, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Bonfire Ventures, Greycroft, RedBird Capital Partners, and Fortress Investment Group.

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About John Tomich:John Tomich has extensive operating experience helping organizations employ best practice strategies and cutting-edge digital technologies to grow their business.

John co-founded Onestop Internet in 2004 and served as the company’s CEO until July 2015. Prior to Onestop, John was a Senior Associate at Shelter Capital Partners, a Los Angeles-based $200M venture capital fund, focused on early-stage investments in technology and technology-enabled companies in the Southern California area, principally in the media, wireless/communication, enterprise software, and semiconductor industries.

Prior to joining Shelter, John worked as Vice President, Client Services for iXL, a leading Internet services company that provided Internet strategy consulting and comprehensive Internet-based solutions to Fortune 500 companies and other corporate users of information technology. After a series of acquisitions, it is now part of the Razorfish agency, owned by Publicis Groupe.

John is a frequent guest speaker, expert panelist and media consultant on all things digital, with a particular focus on e-commerce.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today. We have a very exciting founder that has built and scaled I also exited you know, um, a few companies now he’s on he is a recent one and we’re going to be talking about this recent one in detail. But I think that you’re all going to find his journey quite a inspiring so I guess without Furtherdo John Tomm welcome to the show.

John Tomich: Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me good to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised there in California in Los Angeles so give us a little of a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up.

John Tomich: Life was great. Grown up, no complaints. Ah Los Angeles is a beautiful city. Um, lot of sunshine. Um, and it’s rare I was actually I was actually born raised here and and and also went to university in l a as well. So um, yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: And and I was just going to ask you here I mean it’s It’s very interesting. The um, the choice that you took when he came to studies like what was the ah minor in Russian because you combined that with international finance. But but why russian.

John Tomich: You.

John Tomich: Um, you know Russian was I needed I needed a ah a language requirement. It was ah in in and I wanted to do something I wanted to do something different and I had taken spanish in in in sort of you know grammar school and middle school and and.

John Tomich: Offered russian and I needed a lower division language requirement frankly speaking and and and and this was this is in the sort of late 90 s era if you if you recall and like that you know there was a lot of geopolitical change happening in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and so forth and so there was a lot of. Potential economic opportunity in these areas and I thought you know I wanted to finance an international finance specifically was something that I wanted to focus in on and and I thought Russia and I like the language and it just kind of all fit together with the theme of potentially going over to that area of the world and and postgraduate. And and doing some work over there.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about graduating and now venturing to the digital world because that was with constance. So so tell us about this experience and obviously this was your you know, kind of like your secway.

John Tomich: Um.

Alejandro Cremades: To becoming a founder as well. So how was the experience of venturing into the digital world.

John Tomich: It was I started working for a company I when I graduated from college I put together a list of companies that were doing business in the former Soviet Union and the list was very small in Los Angeles and I came across it and a family friend actually put me in touch with. A ah a guy that had started E Entertainment Television he was a very successful media entrepreneur and he had he had basically built a business exporting old soap operas to the former Soviet Union and made way made a killing doing this and he would. Um, give ah give the programs away for free to the russian television stations and keep the advertising the rights and the advertising revenue and so I started actually working for him under the auspices of hey I wanted to get involved in Russia and our but you know international finance degree in a russian language minor and. What happened soon after that is Microsoft he had this this business this consulting business and because of what he had done building a television ah cable television network we got approached by Microsoft to build and to do ah the business plan and some consulting work on an interactive Tv station. Right? This is back when interactive tv was was ah in vogue and that’s kind of how I got involved in digital and I was the young guy in the in the firm and and the analyst and I started writing this business plan for interactive television and and and the next thing you know we got acquired this is in the in the late 90 s as well.

John Tomich: During the dot com kind of the the peak of the.com days and we we got rolled up into a company called Il enterprises which ended up going public at the height of the dot Com bubble and so it was a real seminal experience for me in my career. Not only that I experience. You know, sort of the the nascent kind of growth of the internet digital technology. But then subsequently the whole thing exploded right? So You saw the casualties of kind of Hubris and exuberance in the digital Tech World. So There was a lot of learning lessons that happened early On. But. I I cut my teeth in e-commerce at that company that that company Il Um, and and and subsequently led me to my first real successful entrepreneurial. Um.

John Tomich: Enterprise which was a company called onestop internet that we built around the idea that that this is in the mid two thousand s post dot Com bust that businesses were going to outsource a lot of their kind of core e-commerce operations right? and. Fulfillment. Yeah know there’s a bunch of areas to run the ecommerce site that you need real expertise in fulfillment is 1 of a warehouse space pick packet ship, returns, processing etc. Customer care. You need people to answer the phones live chat email. You need a technology platform to run everything. You need to do the the sort of creative kind of design and and content that like the ornaments around the tree that skins that ecommerce platform obviously product photography. There’s ongoing operational maintenance. Um, marketing and analytics you have to drive customers to the website and then communicate to those customers on an ongoing basis to bring them back, Etc, etc, etc. All of these complicated operational processes for a company like let’s say in the apparel space that’s focused on you know making blue jeans or making you know. Women’s dresses is a lot of times outside their their area of expertise and so we we built this business around going to these brands and essentially they outsource their entire ecommerce sort of operational infrastructure to us on a revenue share basis.

Alejandro Cremades: And what was the um for the people listening to really get it. What ended up being the business model there. How were you guys making money.

John Tomich: Um, we would do all of the stuff that I mentioned to you earlier right? So there’s those all those categories of service. Believe it or not and um, we would sign multiyear contracts with these brands like Lulu Lemon was a client for example and we would sign a multi. We signed a multi-year contract. And we would we would perform all these services and act on their behalf so we would build we built their website ran their website ship. The product that was ordered from their website answer the phone lululemon.com how can I help you, etc, etc and we would get a for all of that all services. Ah, we would get a percentage of the sales generated on the website and they would provide us with the merchandise on consignment that would sit in our warehouse so we didn’t take any inventory risk so we were essentially acting as their virtual outsourced ecommerce.

John Tomich: Operations division and we would get compensated on a revenue share basis.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in this case for you guys I know as well that your first day client was von dutch. So how was landing you know such a client like that early go ahead.

John Tomich: Um, yeah, you remember that we that was ah that was just a personal connection that we happen to have with the business that a woman that I used to work with was the. Happened to be the Vp Of Marketing at fond Dutch and approached me and said can you help run our e-commerce or because I worked at that previous company and frankly, the ah the idea around the revenue share model kind of came from them not having a lot of money so this was. Early von dutch and then if you don’t remember this brand. It was. It was a real pop culture phenomenon in in the mid 2000 and and you know so I think Paris Hilton started wearing it on her reality Tv show and Ashton Kucher was on this this remember the game show Punked. And he was wearing it was the trucker cat phase and they just they they it really exploded and and but in in any case, we we built their yeah their ecommerce kind of infrastructure and I hired a skeletal crew at that point. And then they didn’t have any money so the way that that we were going to get compensated with the revenue share model that turned out to be a fantastic business model. Um vo duch was very successful and we used the cash flow from vo dutch to reinvest in the business and then get.

John Tomich: Portfolio theory right? So we we we knew that vo dutch as a pop culture phenomenon it was not going to last right? The stars that burn the brightest burn the fastest as they say. But if you applied a portfolio theory to the business model and we got other apparel brands in this category. We could leverage our operating sort of cost structure across multiple clients and and and really build a successful business around this so that that was kind of how it all how it all evolved from Van Dutch and at one point we had one stop. We had a hundred apparel brands. That we were managing and it was the who’s who of sort of contemporary fashion brands all under one sort of roof.

Alejandro Cremades: So Let’s talk about Let’s let’s talk about it as well onboarding customers in in creative ways I know that gifting you know also has been something that you’ve used too. So. So Why gifting and give us you know like some of those real live examples that you used.

John Tomich: Um, you know I it’s a it’s it’s a’s a it’s a great it’s a great question it’s a great topic and it’s and and in in both companies one stop and then might the the current business I’m involved that I’m running credit key. We’ve we’ve used gifting. Campaigns um, focused gifting gifting initiatives to get to get our our first clients essentially our so our second client in the case of onestop. But um I always say sales and and and particularly enterprise sales in my opinion is 50% sourcing and and and 50% you know closing the deal once you’re in the door right? but but getting getting in the door. Um, as as as simple as it may sound from the outside looking at is extraordinarily difficult for these large organizations and they are. There. There are like in the e-commerce space. For example I used to use the analogy of like if you go to one of these ecommerce trade shows like shop dot org or internet retail they have these shows every year there are yeah 800 exhibitors and they’re all selling something these exhibitors right? and they’re all selling something that you plug into your ecommerce shopping cart funnel to optimize something. It’s some sort of marketing optimization tool or it’s a payment method or whatever it is. They’re all trying to get to the same director of the Vp of ecommerce at thegap.com.

John Tomich: And so those folks they can’t even answer their phones so they’re such an they’re such they’re so inundated with sales calls and so getting getting the door opened is like I said extraordinarily difficult and so one of the one of the techniques that I’ve utilized. is is I sent and I I’ll give you an analogy an anecdote at one stop. We were trying to get our second our second big client at the time was a really big denim company called true religion brand genes right? and the Ceo wouldn’t the Ceo wouldn’t take my calls and so i. Um, made this huge custom check like the type you see on like the prices right of the game shows and I wrote you know pay to the order of true religion brand genes and I made it sort of um, representative of of what would happen to them if they signed a deal with one stop. And then I had sent 100 flowers roses to the office and so the check arrived and the roses arrived and it was unique enough and it really grabbed the the Ceo’s attention and I got a call and he said come on in like you, you’ve you’ve. You’ve gotten my attention. Nobody’s ever done something like this before and we ended we ended up closing that deal and it became one of our sort of like flagship clients. But I did the same thing I just want to want to share 1 more thing I did the same thing at at at.

John Tomich: At credit key I was in the Apple store one day with my head of sales and they had these these these these mavic drones there and these really sleek white boxes and that’s a nice gift I mean it’s a $500 drone right? and I thought wow this is really what a great gift. Occurred to me the light bulb went off and at the same time we were talking about going to a trade show. It’s early days of credit key and we’re looking at the budget for the trade show and it was going to cost us like $10000 to send you know 3 sales reps to the trade show. We have to fly into chicago and the hotels. Passes for the for the conference and everything else and I said you know instead of spending the $10000 on trade shows. We should do this I want to do something that worked for me at one stop. We should get a list of 20 ceos and we’re going to send them I’m going to buy 20 of these drones. It’s going to cost us $10000 right? And I’m going to send a drone and we got these custom cards made up that said, um, you know raise raise your revenue and it was a picture of a drone like pulling up a dollar sign said raise your revenue through credit key and I signed it with my my like a real wet ink signature and I sent it out and I must have gotten 10 calls on my cell phone directly. And people are just like the drone landed on their desk so look It’s a great It’s not foolproof and it’s hard to you know there’s challenges in scaling it right? You can’t do this for a thousand you know people but on a select basis. It’s been a real tool for us to use to get to get to get our foot in the door.

Alejandro Cremades: Now with a one topic. Also you guys raised some money. How did you guys capitalize the business.

John Tomich: Ah, one stop was was it was ah was a great economic model and I mentioned to you as I mentioned to you. It was a revenue share right? So we had our first successful client with bondage that started really generating a lot of cash. So it was. It’s it’s it was a unique startup experience right? And so we we also were the custodians of the of the cash that would run through our processing accounts remember we ran these e-commerce sites so we would sign these brands out these these these retailers and then we would essentially settle. next month not to get too into the accounting details here but we would settle the next month for the previous thirty days and we had so many of these brands that we started to build up this. It was like a negative working capital kind of situation to our benefit and it really it really financed the business right? Um, and but we had that first successful.

John Tomich: For successful client so we were profitable early on in in that particular business idea and we actually were fortunate I guess or depending how you want to look at it but we had ah we had financial institutions approaching us. Because they heard they’d heard about us as a company they knew we were a pioneer in this nascent growing ecommerce services space and so we had Vc firms reaching out to us. Um, and we ended up selling pieces of the business off to. Ah, these investors we did a series a and in 4009 which was a really interesting time to do do a financing 12009 if you remember the the market was crashing. Um, and then we did another deal in 2011 in this particular company and both were.

Alejandro Cremades: Now.

John Tomich: Ah, we sold pieces of the company to outside investors. So it wasn’t cash on the bounds sheet it was that we were selling pieces of our business to these investors.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, got it now now in this case I mean you guys you know were at it for 14 years so that’s quite a quite the journey. So I guess a yeah, absolutely so I guess after you know like being for for so long you know with with a company.

John Tomich: It was a great run. It was.

Alejandro Cremades: Tell us about how you know the the next you know your next baby I mean as they say once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur you know how they’d credit. Keep you know come to life because I know that there was a patent there and 1 of your buddies from New York you know how did that all come about.

John Tomich: Yeah I mean I I ended up still transitioning away from ones stop as a business and took a board. It was a chairman of the board and um around two thousand ah two thousand and fifteen I got approached. And I was looking and and I think I was such an entrepreneur for so for so long or I was an entrepreneur for so long. This is just what I do it’s in my blood at this point right? So I knew I was going to do something else and I was I was looking for. You know what? that opportunity was and my my my sense was it was something in e-commerce and. Um, serendipity was I got approached by a guy that I know a very successful New York -based entrepreneur who came to me and said I have a patent on financing credit card declines and believe it or not i. But shocked that that you could even patent something like that. But the idea was at point of sale if you’re using a credit card to transact and it gets declined the ability to finance that transaction we still own that ip by the way but he came to me and said do you think there’s a business around There’s all these alternative. Payment companies out. Um online right? like a firm and paypal credit and klarna and and so forth. Do you think there’s a business to be built around the credit card declines like the folks that just go there and get declined and never come back and if you if you went out to those if you went out and and and and retargeted those.

John Tomich: Customers those lost customers is their business to be built around that and this cost per acquisition model is known in the industry where you get a percentage of the sale generated from you know, bringing that customer back right? Retargeting you’ve seen this as a customer right? where someone will retarget to you. And so I thought you know this is this is interesting and I went to onestops data and we had probably a hundred brands at that time doing a billion dollars in transaction volume across all these brands and I found out that 15% I did some digging into this because I hadn’t thought about it. 15 % of alltra credit card transactions get declined one 5 um, and I thought wow that’s a big number. You know if you’re if you’re ah if you’re a you know gap and you’re doing a billion dollars and in in in gross merchandise volume on your website a 50000000 falls out. Ah, hundred and fifty million dollars falls out and you don’t know what happens to that right? and and so I did what I discovered is half of it. 50% is credit 50% is credit related. So the the issuing bank on the card is basically making a decision that you know what we’re we’re gonna decline this transaction that could be your a day late on your payment or your dollar over your limit or whatever it is but they’re making a credit decision on you and they’re not in the business of re evaluating your credit real time so they just decline you move on 50% of it is.

John Tomich: Some sort of fat fingering the cvb number or there’s a fraud screening algorithm that you know Alejandro suddenly starts shopping for his holiday gifts on a plane going going to europe and he’s fifty miles from his billing zip and there’s a velocity trigger that happens because you’re trying to order a lot. You get? you know that kind of stuff but it was a big enough number that we ended up going. There’s there’s something here. Let’s build a business around recapturing these lost sales and so we myself and this gentleman invested our own capital and started building I hired some developers and started building. A product around this and so we built we built we built the mv like what they call the Mvp minimum viable product in the industry we built the Mvp and then I I said I have contacts for my e-commerce days. In the industry I’m going to get some people I know in the industry to pilot this product this decline financing product and so I started calling calling around and and I got some people signed up. Um and this is the interesting part. And this is the I use the you know the old Reese’s peanut butter commercials where they have the chocolate and the peanut butter and they kind of they fall together and they create this really innovative product I went to a b to b one of the folks that I called was a b to b business to business ecommerce merchant now I had spent all my days.

John Tomich: My time and b to c right? So so you know groceries sneakers that kind of thing I hadn’t really spent a lot of time in the b two b space and and frankly didn’t appreciate how large it’s grown in in recent years and so I went to this one particular merchant and he said to me look. I I sell only to businesses and I’ll pilot. This is a really interesting product idea I will pilot it on my website. But only if you allow me to have another version of it higher up the purchase funnel before they’ve been declined because. There’s not an alternative financing product at point of sale for businesses checking out. Um, and I thought wow that’s that’s amazing that the innovation that I had seen happen in b to c that we had all seen happen with alternative financing and alternative payments. Likelarna and afterpay firm pay Bill me later which became paypal credit in 2009 hasn’t reached b two b and so I went back to my product team and I said um, can we. Can we underwrite these businesses in real time. Can we modify can we build a product went back to the lab. Can we build a product that that that scores underwrites identifies these businesses in real time just like a firm does at um I’ve got one.

John Tomich: I’ve got one just that age 7 6 Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, she’s 6 Yeah well we’ll we’ll edit this piece I mean she she just came you know like a ah you know and she surprised me with that so she prepare a smoothie for me. So yeah, no so I have ah.

John Tomich: I love it. That’s great I have a seven year old I have a 7 year old a 2 year old and a nine year old so um I’ve got my 9 year old a boy and there the other two are girls. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Boys boys or girls. All night I have three girls so I have a a six year old and then I have the 5 year old twin girls. So so good stuff. Yeah, good stuff. But but please please continue John thank you so much and.

John Tomich: Good for you And yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, so so um, this business to this B Two B Ecommerce Merchant said to me ah will use it I Love it I Love the product. It’s It’s really fascinating. Fantastic.

John Tomich: Ah, pilot it but can I also use this higher up the purchase funnel on the payments page when they’re checking out and they’re picking a payment method nobody is offering on the market anything for businesses all of the alternative financing options are all consumer related. And I thought wow this is amazing I went back to our team at our engineering team and said can we build this product and adapt it for businesses I know that you can make credit decisions and scoring decisions on ah consumers right? Every consumer has a Fico Score that’s essentially consumer underwriting. Ah, for all in intentsive purposes right? So if you go to adidas.com and use Klarna to buy a pair of sneakers or you go to peloton.com and you use a firm to buy a peloton bike they’re using your fico score and making a credit decision based on that. So is it. What’s the equivalent and this is and and the answer is. We came up with a product. Well what happened was we we built a product around this. Um, ah that that underwrites and scores these these they call them s and bs these small and mid-sized businesses in real time. So we score this s and b at the website as they’re checking out. We already. We pre-populate this product that we build pre-populates the application process because we already know the name of the business. We know the email phone number. There’s all this data that’s getting inputted in by the user address et ceterat cetera and so we’re we’re we’re.

John Tomich: Scoring off of that data in the background and then we pre-populate the application process we ask a series of additional information. Obviously we need the ein which is the tax Id number and we have a pretty sophisticated underwriting waterfall that makes a credit decision on that business in real time and seconds and then.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, and how do you guys? How do you guys monetize them.

John Tomich: We um, it’s it’s a typical ah the unit economics look very similar to a typical lending business right? So ah, the first thing we do is we charge a processing fee of the merchant. So our our go-to markete strategy. Credit key is that we get distribution through what we call merchants or these are ecommerce websites right? So this is the website that’s selling restaurant equipment and supplies. So the the restaurant a lot of those processes are getting digitized nowadays so that restaurant used to. Fifteen years ago flip through a catalog. Ah for ah for a pizza oven and call the local sales rep that they had and that was an analog process that is now mostly digital or getting or getting digitized at a rapid clip. So not surprisingly that catalog has now been uploaded onto a website. And so those customers go through a purchase funnel looks a lot like amazon.com to make those to make those purchases so we go to the merchant that sells these products and dozens and dozens of different vertical segments from nail salons to coffee houses to dental offices to restaurants, etc etc and we get ah distribution through integrating in their on their payment page as they’re as they’re checking out. Okay, and for that we charge a processing fee to the merchant that is similar to a credit card processing fee. So that’s that’s part of the revenue that we get.

John Tomich: The value proposition for the merchants really is really strong and it’s it’s very similar to what you’ll hear from a firm in Florida and and after paying the rest of and and some of these some of the alternative payment folks that they’re on the b to c space who by the way actually charge a higher than interchange higher within credit card process to fee. That’s where they make their money because they don’t. You’re paying for models a lot of them but we but we ah the value proposition is is is is the the first one the main one the most important one is you’re going to drive incremental lift and sales from adding alternative payments as an option. Ah, ah in the checkout flow. So. We empower the s and b customer with more options more credit they’re going to spend more money and and oftentimes it’ll manifest itself in a larger ao or a order value. So and this is easy to test you’ll see hey we launch credit key with a merchant. And they spend 50% more because the a over the average order value of of people that check out with credit key is 50% greater than the average order value of people that just use visa mastercard american express right. So the the that’s the number one value proposition is you’re going to we drive drive additional sales you drive incremental sales another one is we settle with the merchant just like a credit card company processor does so look did they get their money and.

John Tomich: 2 business days like a credit card company will do instead of oftentimes with a trade credit product. They have to wait thirty forty five days. Whatever their their dso is to get paid and then oftentimes that. Customer will then use a credit card at that point anyway, right? So instead of waiting thirty forty five plus days they get paid in the trade credit trade credit example. Um we give them their money in two business days like a credit card supplement so they get that that factoring cash flow benefit which is a big value proposition right? um.

Alejandro Cremades: In and and what 1 thing that I wanted to ask you here too is that this is your second go audit it as an entrepreneur and you know you see with now with critic key. You’ve been you know for about 7 years I guess

John Tomich: Additionally, there’s there’s this, there’s several others but go ahead.

Alejandro Cremades: You know this second time at it. You know when you had that experience with the ah with onestop like dealing with with venture capital firms too I mean how have you gone about you know capitalizing the business and and how much capital have you guys raised to late.

John Tomich: This this was a different this is complete. This is markedly different than than than one stop one stop. We were cash flow positive very early on. We had a successful client. The model was not. It wasn’t it wasn’t ah so intensive software building exercise like credit key is credit key requires a lot of upfront technology development like a lot of software companies. Do right. And we’re a fintech business so there’s a regulatory compliance infrastructure and needs to be put in place. So this is a capital intensive exercise I’ve been fortunate enough as an entrepreneur to have been successful with my first company. So the early seed capital. Ah, we financed ourselves sort of in the in the in the six figure range right? and that allowed us to not pay ourselves a seller but that allowed us to hire developers essentially but to start building out that and Mvp product I mentioned that we brought to that b two b merchant early on. And some of the iterations on the product that that’s that’s the early early part of it. Um, you know I I talk about there’s 2 types two ways to build a company one is um.

John Tomich: You build a product and then you take it the market and hopefully it it works right? Hopefully people pay money for it that and then the other is you have a company that comes to you and says hey I want this product and then you build it for them specifically I build it kind of the the 2 ways like um and ah. I’m not saying which one’s right or which was wrong, but the ah the the second one we we actually had a client that said hey I like this product and I’ll pay you for it and so it was kind of a hybrid of the 2 different models with with credit key. But um, we ended up you. Our series a we ended up going the traditional venture capital route. You know I’m like I said I’m one of the benefits of of having us been successful as an entrepreneur is you you start to get a network of folks that that will will introduce you to to venture capital. Ah, players or you know those people from your from your own personal relationships and so I had contacts and in in the space and so it was it was pretty straightforward I mean most venture firms you can get in the door with the venture firms right? Um, it’s it’s It’s not exceptionally hard to get a meeting There’s a lot of venture capital firms and and to to get in there if you have a compelling idea. You’ll get ah you’ll get a listen to from somebody. It’s hard to actually convince and it’s challenging to get to get funded.

John Tomich: At at at at a decent you know a to get funded and B to get funded at at ah at a decent price but getting getting in the door we we were able to do and and I think my back our background in in ecommerce mine specifically in the management initial management team that we put together. Plus. The market opportunity that we’re going after is very is enormous. It’s it’s B Two B E Commerce Essentially um and so the investment thesis around building products and technologies for Business-to-bus e-commerce. The evolution of business payments in this digital in this new digital real Estate. It’s It’s really,. It’s really easy to get your head around and and and to understand and see and so um I think it was a combination of just the the sheer Market size. Plus my personal experience and success in the e-commerce space that that allowed us to get that that that initial round of funding.

Alejandro Cremades: So got it. So I guess say in total at too late. How much have you guys raised whether it’s equity or debt or yeah.

John Tomich: Um, we raised ah $30000000 around $30,000,000 in equity capital to date the companies we we issued our first loan in 2019 essentially

Alejandro Cremades: Got it up.

Alejandro Cremades: And what about on the deb side have you guys say needed to raise to on the deb side to to get the operation going.

John Tomich: Ah, well the debt side the debt side. We just put a large facility in place with there’s a press release out there on on the internet but we raised ah $100,000,000 ah debt facility a k warehouse facility with a.

Alejandro Cremades: Okay, so.

John Tomich: With an investment group called called fortress and that is our money that we use to finance these these these payments right? That’s our cost of goods sold if you will So it’s challenging for as a fintech copy. Let me just.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it. So so.

John Tomich: Point 1 thing out the the hard part about raising capital is we have to raise 2 kinds of capital as you mentioned like we have to raise equity capital which funds all the salaries of the developers and our sales folks and the compliance and g and a and and just this the staff the typical sort of folk people that work at the company. And then there’s the debt piece which which is ah a totally different group of investors by the way that will give you what they call a warehouse facility that allows you to to lend and you can’t that’s a chicken or the egg because you can’t get these death facilities in place. At that size until you have what they call sort of like loan tape which is ah which is um, proof of your ability to lend money and do it effectively right? And so you know historic trend you know data on your your credit performance. And so but how do you get that without a facility in place right? So it’s this sort of catch. It’s this catch 22 and so what we had to do in the beginning you have to get very creative. Your first facility is really hard to get not the equity piece but the piece that you’re going to use to lend money out so we had to get 1 of our investors. Very wealthy individual who has you know what’s called a family office and we had his family office set up a separate debt facility very small that allowed us to to do some initial initial lending out of that get some results back and then we refinance that and then we refinance it again and then we.

John Tomich: We recently refinanced it so to speak with with fortress.

Alejandro Cremades: So so let me ask you this John if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of credit key is fully realized what does that world look like.

John Tomich: Um.

John Tomich: It’s a great question I would say we are as we are as ubiquitous in where the vent with a venmo or paypal for for business to business transactions that that that’s how you from a brand equity standpoint when you think a credit key you think of venmo for business or it’s as it’s as widely. Ubiquitous from a brand standpoint as one of those brands in the b two b payment space. Um, and we’re doing billions of dollars a year in transaction volume 10000000000 plus um, and 25% of that is outside the United States that’s my 5 year vision for the company 10000000000 in transaction volume and 25% outside the us a brand and and in a brand equity position as the market leader. As I mentioned you but you ubiquitous penetration among the who’s who of business to business e-commerce sites.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it now. Imagine if I gave you the opportunity John of going back in time because obviously you know now to companies that you’ve built. You know you’ve been at it now for over you know, 20 years Hasan as an entrepreneur. If. You had the opportunity of going back in time and and having a chat with your younger self perhaps that younger self that you know is now in the digital media you know world and and thinking about launching something of your own and and you were able to give that younger John one piece of advice. Before launching a business given what you know now what would that be and why.

John Tomich: Um, that’s a really interesting question. Um a lot comes to mind I think that um look I’m in that we’re in the I’m in the technology business. Um, fundamentally. And we have ah and successful technology companies I think if we were to go through the list of you know the fan companies for example, right? Um, they all have 1 thing in common that they have very. Successful technology and engineering going to development organizations. Um, and you mean you know Mark Mark Zuckerberg before he was the Ceo of Facebook was I mean ah a brilliant programmer I mean he’s a savant when it comes to writing code. We I mean when we can have opinions about what he is as a Ceo or what have you for the strategic vision of the business of meta but he is undoubtedly ah you know that was the superpower for Facebook was was was tech was tech right? and that’s kind of where I would think I would give myself the advice of. Don’t make sure you I think you need to bring a co-founder on or if you don’t have that experience. You need to understand at least how to navigate through that world of technology and you need to have and oftentimes the the founders might not have it themselves but you need to bring in a co-founder who who.

John Tomich: Um, that’s that’s just an important area to focus on I would I would over index the need to um, put those those the correct technology pieces in place and by the way making a bad decision on technology can kill the company and so. It’s the the the difference between um, being really successful and being an absolute liability or like like this and so I think that’s an important area that I would that I would that I would and that I would overindex. And all also and then the second one would be would be would be sales and marketing sales and marketing sales and marketing right? So those those 2 areas? Yeah um.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, no kidding got it? Well, that’s amazing John so so for the people that are listening that will love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to to do so.

John Tomich: You could reach me at John at creditkey.com actually if you if you if you want um, ah J Hn at credit key dot com.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well hey John thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today has been an honor to have you with us.

John Tomich: Thank you all Andro Thank you sir.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

Gary LaFever has been involved in the launch and exit of several startups already. Now he is tackling an even bolder venture with a big data startup that has already attracted tens of millions of dollars in investment. His latest venture, Anonos, has acquired funding from top-tier financiers, Aon plc, Ghost Tree Partners, and Edison Partners.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So I am very excited about the entrepreneur that we have today because he it say is someone that has been a lawyer just like me so he knows what it feels like to transition. Ah, but they but more importantly, he’s been there. He’s done it multiple times with successes with lessons learn everything that you can think of and he’s also going to tell us what he’s up to with his latest journey so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today Gary. La Faber laugh lafa welcome to the show.

Gary LaFever: Thank you Alojandro Ah, very much appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s do a little of a walkthrough memory lane gary. So tell us how was live growing up in Virginia.

Gary LaFever: All right I was great. I was the youngest of four kids. The only son had a mother who was now 92 So at the time she was a real pioneer in executive banking. And she’s to tell me you can accomplish anything you want to my father who ultimately was the senior civil engineer at a major municipality didn’t even have a college degree and he would tell me the same thing So I had the support of ah of a tight family and leadership and mentors. Who said you can accomplish anything you want to and so. I have and I will.

Alejandro Cremades: I love that now 1 thing that is very interesting in your background is that you studied a little bit of business. But then you went into low. So what happened what took you into the legal world.

Gary LaFever: Ah, but I came to my senses just as you did right? So I am a recovering attorney. But but what what happened what happened is I studied computer science computers and then was with Accenture for a couple of years

Alejandro Cremades: Ah I hear you.

Gary LaFever: But what excited me was not the bits and bytes and how you program the code it was what technology and particularly data could mean for society and I started to see that that could have a lot of impact at the at the business level. The concept level systems level even political and so I thought. But the heck why not get a law degree and and I did that and I’m old enough that at the time it was called computer law right? Everyone was fixated on the hardware didn’t take long for people to realize it was the applications in the data. But so that’s why I went to law school actually was to study What was then called computer law.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about you know going into the legal route then because I mean you you became a partner in Hogan levels. A really great firm as well and you were there. You know for 10 years so obviously you know like you saw a lot of stuff. You know there. I’m sure that you engage with clients you were able to see you know some of the problems and and what happened for you to come to your senses and to say hey you know what pushing paper is not my thing I’m more you know into business and problem solving.

Gary LaFever: So so what was great for me is because I had the technology degree and it was the early days. Um I got to work on amazing matters that many of the other lawyers didn’t even understand so I was working with you know companies like compserve and prodigy. And and and and and Aol in the very early days and then as the internet started to evolve. It became very clear how transformative all this was and so I loved the intellectual challenge of practicing law. Um, but after I became partner as you’re billing. Your billing rate increases. It’s harder and harder to touch and be part of the day-to-day operations of clients and that’s what I really love right? is helping clients to be successful and so at some point I realized I’d be better served on the other side of the fence right? Um, instead of the dark side. The the light side as it were and so that’s that’s why I left Hogan but. Fantastic experience, great colleagues and I’m I’m glad I did what I did.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then tell us about you know that moment where you realize it’s time to switch careers.

Gary LaFever: It was almost in fact, very very much similar to my realization that computers for computer’s sake were not as significant as what they they in the applications and the content could mean for society and for companies and for businesses for peoples right? Um. A similar realization was with a legal mindset and a knowledge and and actually a thirst for how technology and data could help shape what people could and couldn’t do that that would have a much much bigger platform for me to have a play and so that’s what I went and did. And have never looked back with any misgivings or or you know thoughts that it was the wrong direction.

Alejandro Cremades: And obviously you know like you’ve definitely used the Legal Background. You know you’ve been general counsel to for this company that you have been involved in so you did switch careers but you did not leave Behind. You know the yeah the legal knowledge So in your case you know with the first company. You know with women connect Ah what?? what?? what? How did that come about what how do you guys? go from ideation to launch. What were you guys doing and most importantly, what was the biggest lesson learned.

Gary LaFever: Yeah, so the founder ah of of womenconnect.com was a woman named Susan Defife who was very active both in politics as well as women’s organizations and she had a theory which is very true that women do business differently than men. And that by having a company that took advantage of and allowed women to network and to provide the types of support that they provide to each other while enabling them with business concepts and and opportunities you would strike a chord that was missing in in in the market and she was absolutely correct. And so it was a great opportunity. Ah for me because even though I was the only son and 3 sisters I’m still a man right to learn a lot of these things and and what I really learned to realize is it’s not the exclusive province of either gender but that women tend to be more cooperative. They tend to look for the win-win win as opposed to just being aggressive and so the the dual win at women connects with both being a partner with with with Susan Defife to take that company where it went I left when it was being sold to a bank. Um, and also to learn some more of those. Cooperative type business skills that I think particularly if you do business internationally you realize it’s just not a matter of gender. It’s also a matter of different societies jurisdictions backgrounds and being able to be open to those and to not only.

Gary LaFever: Respect those but embrace those and make the use and benefit of the differences between people was a fantastic learning experience.

Gary LaFever: So the outcome of womenconnect.com is I learned a lot about dealing with people who have different business perspectives and objectives there. 1 of the primary differences obviously was gender but in doing that I also learned that when you’d walk work with people from different backgrounds societal positions. Ah, geographies around the globe that looking and embracing those differences actually makes you a lot more intuitive and responsive and anticipatory of what can happen and that’s really an asset when you’re doing business globally. So while womenconnect com. Exposed me to a lot of the unique aspects of women, business owners and professionals in doing so it also helped I think expand my view of what you should look for when working with people hopefully quite different from yourself.

Alejandro Cremades: So then tell us about internet to anywhere because that was your next day your next business So tell us about what was the business model there and what was the lesson learned.

Gary LaFever: So it was a fascinating experience. A founder of an israeli tech company whose name was almost my name put in israeli Gideon Lefebre um amazing person at 1 point he was the head of the northern artillery command for Israel but he had this vision. And again, this is a while ago. He had this vision that the internet should connect anywhere so this is before tg to 2 2 g second generation telephony and so he actually developed and patented technology that would enable you to signal a device any device and wake it up. And wake up a particular application now that may seem just second to all of us now secondary and assumed but this is before any of that and so he actually was very early on the closest you had to that kind of technology was im messages in the very early days. And so I joined there as as the new Ceo us based Ceo and worked closely with gide and his team and it was all about literally extending the internet to anywhere and it was a fantastic experience but technology overcame us because as two g networks and other capabilities came about. They actually were designed to accomplish exactly what we were trying to do by overcoming some of the shortcomings of the prior infrastructure and so what I learned there is you have to have vision but you also have to have timing and the best vision in the world can be overcome with the timing of technological advances as as what’s happened that.

Gary LaFever: Internet to anywhere.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in this case, you know like for you. Um, you know this was a nice se way for if 10 so obviously the um, the um the f ten you know like was a pretty successful outcome. You know? So so so probablyly the the one of the biggest that you’ve had to date. But if 10 you know, tell us what was the business model if then and then what was that the outcome or was that exit that you guys did.

Gary LaFever: Absolutely and you’ll start to see a pattern here. It’s always looking for things that other people haven’t seen yet right? So with Gideon and internet to anywhere. It was all about actually expanding the internet everywhere people hadn’t seen it yet but they caught up at ften it was quite different. It was anticipating in the financial services financial technology market the shift from financial trading where you would pick up the phone and talk to your broker and you would could actually do it online and this is not mom and pop trading. We’re talking about proprietary trading groups hedge funds et cetera. And the next step after being able to interact directly with the market was automating the trading right? So black box. Okay algorithmic trading now, you’re putting your expertise into a system artificial intelligence machine learning. That’s directly interacting with the system. All sounds great. Here’s what people didn’t identify. Which we did the risk management in each of those systems only applies within the system. It’s a siloed approach to risk management whether it’s don’t trade in certain stocks don’t trade more than the certain amount of money. Whatever the rules may be that you’re trying to manage your risk. They’re confined within that one silo and the reality is you walk by a trading room and you’ll see people with 6 sometimes 10 or more screens on their their desk. They’re each silos so not only do they not have cross siloed risk management.

Gary LaFever: They also can’t take advantage of cross-s siloed opportunities so we developed patented and deployed the first technology that actually enables you to cross those silos and see in real time within milliseconds what your trades were going to do vis-a-vis each other so it’s not that you could see everyone else’s trades. But could you actually see yours and since in the in the trading industry different people have financial responsibility with your permission. You could also allow them to see it so what did this mean for the first time ever. It was truly real time transparency and when you have real time transparency. You can now exert. Real time control and what that meant surprisingly perhaps was that these hedge funds these proprietary trading groups could sometimes get 10 times as much money to trade because the bank who was backing them knew they couldn’t put a hole through the floor right? And so again for the first time ever. Different slices of data for different people for different purposes where you’re maximizing revenue and upside by minimizing fat finger mistakes bad trading. It can’t make a good trader out of you but could it could stop really bad things happen that you didn’t intend and so when the flash crash happened. Trillions of dollars were sucked out of the us market in minutes because of black boxes fighting with each other nasdaq omx who in the us has several exchanges but globally powers more than a hundred exchanges.

Gary LaFever: They swooped us up for 9 figures and said we need to put your technology everywhere around the globe and so what we learned there is that you can actually maximize data value by minimizing misuse of data and it’s not so much a risk management play as it is a data value maximization play. On the shoulders of risk management.

Alejandro Cremades: So what about the level of um thisibility that this gave you into exits you know because obviously you know nice outcome. You know? So so now you get to see the full cycle in a really positive light. So what? what did you get from that.

Gary LaFever: Yeah, learned a lot. Um and and really what it is is if you’re looking to sell your company. You are not going to be successful if you’re looking to change the world and you find someone who’s aligned in your vision of what the world should be. You have got an exit and you’ve got a fantastic opportunity to work with them for at least several years as you help them to get going and so in that instance, you had and and I’d have to say one of the most transformative things I learned both prior to the sale to nasek umx and afterwards is that most people viewed. Risk management as reducing bad things and that’s a very important part of what risk management is but when you look at risk management as a doorway to actually maximizing good things all kinds of crazy positive things happen and that’s a lot of what I learned there and that actually. The next company I was with was actually within Nasdaq and that was an example of that right? So we had an idea there was a contest within Nasdaq they call it the beehag contest who could come up with the biggest hairies audacious goal right? And then you’d have contests and see who could get funded. And the the beehag that myself my business partner at the time and still Ted Meyerson came up with was what if we put financial trading data in the cloud the commercial cloud and that actually had not been done for many reasons but 1 of them was broker dealers have to keep their data for 7 years for many different transactions.

Gary LaFever: And they have to keep it in write once read mini format worm preventing erasure or deletion had never been done in the cloud and so we actually had the audacity right? Big harry audacious goal to go to Seattle and meet with Andy Jassie who now runs all of Amazon but at the time he was running Aws and we said look we got to. Fantastic idea for you. What’s that put this financial data in the cloud can’t why not because there’s always a key There’s always a key that allows changes or deletion and you can’t have that. So with my legal background. Literally myself another colleague from Nasdaq and 2 a ws engineers locked ourselves in a room and said how do we overcome? What seems to be an insurmountable you know limitation on this business opportunity. Very simple and as ah as a recovering turner. You’ll appreciate this It’s called escrow put that key in a box figuratively right. And make it that it exists but in order to access that you have to have at least 2 parties agree. We got the scc the securities exchange commission in thinner to agree to that and over time the technological implementation of the concept has gotten much more advanced. But the fact that you could actually now have financial transaction data in the cloud and guarantee that it would not be modified or deleted without participation by number of parties therefore giving you that backstop was huge and has opened up I don’t mean want to guess the billions of dollars of transactions that now occur in the cloud but it’s something people said couldn’t be done.

Gary LaFever: And you just had to approach the problem from a different direction and perspective and yes, a solution existed.

Alejandro Cremades: So I mean in in in your case, this was the perfect se way into your baby now and on us. so so yeah so tell us about tell us about the sequence of events that needed to happen because I you see in Nasdaq you know now you were also part of doing that team that day transition that they.

Gary LaFever: Oh absolutely. Absolutely.

Alejandro Cremades: Part of doing a deal. You know doing an exit. But now you know all of us sudden Perhaps the time has come to really start your next company because once a founder always a founder. So so tell us about those different events that needed to happen in order for you to bring an honors to life.

Gary LaFever: Yeah, and and I don’t think it would have been possible but for what happened prior to that time. The first thing that we realized is again if if you always have vision if you’re always trying to see things that other people haven’t even started looking for yet it it makes every day exciting and what we realize is even with the success. Of the sale of f 10 to nasdaq ums ome and having the technology literally rolled around the globe. We only wanted it to be the beginning then we had the idea that turned into fincloud which was the joint venture with Aws but then we realized we’re just dealing with a very small part of the market. Financial transactions look how much data pervades the all of society and then we had another revelation what we had invented at ften was a real time reidentification engine a relinking engine that took data that appeared unrelated. And allowed for its immediate I mean literally in millisecond relinking and in doing so identification of potential issues therefore allowing for the risk mitigation but the real win is therefore allowing for greater use of that data greater value greater monetization. We realized if we could do that in the financial technology space. Maybe maybe we could do it for data around the globe. So after 2 years we left. We did pretty good with that sale and so we funded it ourselves and we had talk about a big hairy audacious goal. We thought. Well if you can reidentify data that doesn’t appear identified or related.

Gary LaFever: Okay, and show this interationships and correlations in real time and have this positive impact on the financial sector. What if you could do the opposite What if you could in real time deidentify unlinked data that other people have.

Alejandro Cremades: So gary for the for the people that are listening gary. What ended up being the business model of Anonos. How do you guys say make money.

Gary LaFever: Yeah, so the reality is if you look at what we did with f ten we exploded the expanse of what it covered and we also reversed its approach what the heck does all that mean well ften was all about relinking data that appeared unlinked and uncorrelated in the financial markets. And the epiphany we had is that there’s much more data than financial data. So what if we could address the entire market of data across all different vertical industries on a global basis and the idea there was by inserting structured chaos into data streams. Something people thought we were absolutely crazy to even think of because you didn’t have to do it. You actually could then reverse that process so you could selectively reveal data so much as we learned at f ten risk management for risk management’s sake is only reducing liability. But when you can effectively risk manage you can have greater data use and value. So what we set out to do and it took a couple of years to even determine if it was possible. We were funding this ourselves the proceeds from F10 is could you obscure data that otherwise was clearly visible. When I say visible I don’t just mean visually in fact, more. So it’s the relationships. You know you are who you are you live where you live you worked where you work you did all those inner what if you could obscure all those linkages and then selectively reveal bits or parts of them.

Gary LaFever: And so doing when you provide selective access to an asset people will pay more over time because they want different flavors of that asset if I want a piece of pepperoni and I have to buy the entire pepperoni pie when I want the second piece of pepperoni. The second slice. How? um, how much am I going to pay you for that. Already have it whereas if I can just selectively give you different elements of data at different levels of identifiability you would maximize the value in utility so happens when you do that? You’re also maximizing privacy and security and so by setting out to maximize the global value of data. By selectively controlling who could see and use what data when where why for what purpose for how long you actually protect it and secure it and now fast forward ten years later the entire world is begging for this because data is plentiful. Data is valuable. But it’s also risky and how do you make use of it without getting yourself and your customers and your partners in trouble.

Alejandro Cremades: And in terms of capitalizing the company gary. How much a capital have you guys raised to date.

Gary LaFever: Ah, we just closed a $50000000 financing so the total financing today has been $70,000,000

Alejandro Cremades: And what has been the experience or the journey of going through the different financings and also how have you been able to balance as well. The expectations from investors from one cycle to the next.

Gary LaFever: Yeah, but the the most challenging thing with anonos is the fact that we were going contrarian to everybody right? everybody was hey make maximum use of data relink. It do all these connections and you can make a lot of money that way we were shooting for at some point in time the ease of those relinkings and connections. Are going to come back and bite you so early on we we financed itself. It was friends and family. It was people who knew what we had accomplished at f ten and therefore they wanted a piece of the action. As I said my business partner Ted Ted Myerson it was like the the Ted and garry show. We want to be on the Ted and Garry show. They didn’t understand exactly what we’re doing but we’d pulled it off before. As time has gone on there’s less and less of that in the most recent financing $50000000 financing that was actually a consortium of insurance companies who looked at what the technology enables and said this is something that the industry needs. The entire industry not just the insurance company and so as time has gone on. There’s been more and more of a recognition of what our technology can enable in the market but the early years it was just believers right? Who didn’t quite understand what we were doing but believed that we could bring something about that would be needed in the future.

Alejandro Cremades: So then let me ask you this a if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of Anonos is fully realized what does that world look like.

Gary LaFever: That world is actually 1 where companies can control how much of their data is provided to their partners. Okay to the government to each other and to their customers in a way that is only the level that they want. And just as importantly, the consumers, the customers have that same control as well. So It’s selectivity. Everyone can share that level of data that is needed and necessary and agreed upon but no more because that information surplus when you give people more than they actually need or ask for is not an asset.. It’s a liability. And it also reduces the value of the asset that you want to share So That’s the future where people can feel comfortable. They can mathematically and auditibly prove that the data that they’re sharing is no greater than needed and what they approved that actually maximizes value for everybody and minimizes risk to everybody as well.

Alejandro Cremades: And also in terms of scope and size of the business I mean how how big is the is is the company. How big is anon today anything that you can share in terms of maybe number of employees or anything like that. Go ahead.

Gary LaFever: Yeah, we have 65 yeah, we have 65 employees ah and and more than half well about half of those actually a little less than half just joined us through an acquisition of a german company called status gmbh and we have three quarters of our employees in Europe. And so it’s a combination of data scientists ah engineers computer professionals as well as some biz dev and and and salespeople but it’s all about how you actually make use of data in a way that’s protected and expansive. And so it’s very much a global orientation footprint with more people as I said outside of the us than in the Us.

Alejandro Cremades: Gary so you’ve been doing this for quite a while Gary. So if I was to ask you? You know if you had a conversation with your younger self that younger partner at Hogan Loville’s and given that younger gary before going into the business world. Ah, a piece of advice for launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now after all these companies that you’ve been you know leading.

Gary LaFever: Um, I’d actually remind that younger version of myself of what my parents. Both taught me you can accomplish anything you want if you’re willing to work at it long enough. So anonys has been around 10 years it’s going to be 1 of those 10 year overnight sensations right? successes. If you have the vision and the drive and the desire and you truly believe in something and you’re willing to be wrong I always say I learn more when I’m wrong than when I’m right because when I’m right I already knew it if you’re willing to surround yourself with capable people who challenge your every assumption. And you grow together as a team through iteration and challenging one another and looking for new opportunities and ways to do things anything is possible and I think that’s exactly what we’re showing with Anonos today.

Alejandro Cremades: You know I love it So gary. So for the people that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi know.

Gary LaFever: Well probably Linkedin it’s gary le fever l a f e v e r or you could email me. It’s gary g r y dot la fever l a f e v e r at anonoss a N O N O S Dot Com love to hear from you.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing well gary. It has been an honor to have you with us. Thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today.

Gary LaFever: Thank you all right? take care. Thank you for your time.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

Thomas Puskas is now on his third startup. A clean energy company that is using tokenization to ensure we have plenty of fresh air to breathe. His venture, Ecowatt Energy, has acquired funding from the top-tier investor, The Global Emerging Markets Group.

In this episode, you will learn:

Thomas Puskas top piece of advice for launching a business
How to get in touch with Ecowatt Energy
How tokenization and using ICOs to fund your business works

Alejandro Cremades · EP 528 Thomas Puskas On Raising $110 Million To Make Crypto GreenSUBSCRIBE ON:

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Thomas Puskas:Thomas Puskas is a serial entrepreneur with 25 years of experience delivering infrastructure projects valued at 1.2B. He uses this experience to manage the business administration of Ecowatt and oversee asset procurement and development.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: All righty so hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today we have a serial founder. You know we’re going to be talking a lot about building scaling financing I mean in this case, you know a very interesting initial coin offering tool that he did so.

Thomas Puskas: Are.

Thomas Puskas: Or it will.

Alejandro Cremades: I think without farther ado let’s welcome our guests today Thomas Pushka welcome to the show. So originally you were born in the aus ausrian you know hungryary you know type of environment so give us how a little of I walk through memory lane. How is life growing up.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, highlights happening come.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, so I was born in Vienna but because my parents are Hungarian I grew up actually partially North Korea partially in Hungary but went to school and to university in in Vienna. But after university I went back to to to Hungary beginning late 80 s beginning 90 s it was just the time when all the big changes started so I got very soon involved in and the first provatizations was working with the hungarian. Privatization agency and 1 of the first real estate privattiizations and venilator the privattisization of the hungarian agriculture and food sector. What.

Alejandro Cremades: And what was what why were these privatizations happening I mean what was what was moving that just so that the listeners are able to really you know, get what was going on.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, so until the end of the 80 s beginning 90 s in eastern europe everything was state owned and with the so-called perstoric urban beginning 90 s when all the eastern european countries started to. To to sell state owned companies state owned. Everything was basically everything was actually owned by the state. So we just started to step by step to to sell everything to foreign investors.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in your case I mean this led you to founding your first company and that was you know in this case premium food. So what were you guys doing there. So.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, so while I was working in in these privatizations we were privatizing mostly food factories all the large international camp companies for example, hi so everybody was coming in everybody picked of course the the best of the Best. Ah. Ah, to say plants and food processing facilities. But a lot was more or less left which was not of interest for the large companies. So I decided to step by step to pick up these smaller units and unite them to. To to a larger protection company and out of this preming food started. But.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for premium. So food I mean you that was your first you know exposure to building a business I mean in this case, what was the journey like you know with premium food and what was the outcome and more importantly, what was the lesson that you learned from building this company. Okay.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, premium food at the time in the 90 s it was quite exciting because it allowed me to see in detail and also learn how how food protection is working and how they hold. Ecosystem around food production is working. It’s not enough just to have to have the food products but you need energy most importantly and you have to deal with waste which is quite a large portion of food production and basically out of this I started looking more and more. What can you? What can you do with waste and vetla me to build 1 of the first biocase plants in in Hungary and from from resident step by step I moved more and more into renewable energy.

Alejandro Cremades: So in this case with Premium you know food? What what you were able to do too is you were able to do on exit you were able to sell the business. So what kind of visibility did it give you to be able to do the full cycle from beginning all the way to finish line.

Thomas Puskas: Um, that the full full cycle of Web story.

Alejandro Cremades: So the cycle of really being able to see the whole business. You know, ah coming around together from the moment that you started the company to the moment that where you actually sold the company I mean that perhaps give you the thirty Thousand foot below on how it’s done and the life cycles that a company goes through.

Thomas Puskas: The appropriate means Of. He wasn’t a.

Thomas Puskas: Um, ah yes, of course now basically it it let me on all the the different bits and parts of of how to run a business how to develop business how to fund business.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, one. Yes, so what level of visibility did that give you.

Thomas Puskas: How to look for for partners How to do set up distribution. So Food production is such a complex basically business which involves almost everything. If you if you’re looking for a new production site you you have to look for the right real Estate. You have to have derived right? infrastructure you have to all the utilities available. So It allows you to to get as as far as I say that. The best overview of almost everything what is required to run and to develop a business.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for you I mean the career shift or like the you know tackling a different segment is something really interesting. You know because ah you know they talk about this especially with for example, what what Elam Musk has done. You know with a knowledge transfer which is where.

Thomas Puskas: But was approve what and.

Alejandro Cremades: You’re able to come from a different segment into a new segment and really be able to apply the the learnings that to certain degree gives you an advantage. So how did that you know segment shift come about for you and how do you think that bringing knowledge from a different segment has helped you and has given you an edge to to execute.

Thomas Puskas: Um, this. Ah.

Thomas Puskas: No First of all with food production I Think that’s one of the few businesses where you have the more also most of the problems connected with it and when when you when you just. Working with business when you learn how to how to source problems and vets is later on or actually it was later on a tremendous help to to develop then also other businesses.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, because the next business was a miss miss prompt orc and this this actually you did in Ukraine and this was more in so developing a solar power plant. So I guess in that case, you know.

Thomas Puskas: Is yeah oh.

Alejandro Cremades: What what was the what was the experience or what was the lesson that you took out you know from those 7 years of operations right.

Thomas Puskas: Um, know as ah as I mentioned that for the full food production. 1 of the day. The major how to say supplies is Energy. So how to get energy how to how to to deal with utility companies that was and this very important when you when especially when you develop solar power plants because yeah, you can. We can build almost wherever you want a solar power plant that if you don’t know. How to deal with utility companies. How to to get connected when your solar power plant will not produce much revenues for you.

Alejandro Cremades: And and for you right? after this one you know, which which you sold I mean you you went into Microdynam Technologies which was a nice segue to what you’re doing now with echoat because especially you use a bunch of the technology and ip that you were using you know with microtechno for echoot. But how was that. Venturing into you know a completely you know new segment which was renewable energy. What really got you into it. What were some of those reasons.

Thomas Puskas: Know that one of the reasons why I got into our renewable energy was with especially with our food factories. We saw the tremendous amount of of waste which basically got wasted and. From economical point of view. It was basically not if we had to find something how ah to how to how to use this in a better way and when just throwing it away. So so that’s how we started first with biocas.

Thomas Puskas: And a lot of other factories when at the time came to us asking how we can help venovve with energy questions. Also we’ve wasted and this led steps step by step with was more more looking how to solve the the the energy problem for. Not only for the for the factories but in in general of renewable energy to how to develop and how to use more and more renewable energy and beginning two thousand the subsidy systems. The defeating terror started in Europe so it became easier to to finance already.

Alejandro Cremades: Okay, now now for you guys you know Microdynam Technologies you know came to an end after 7 years and what you did is you use part of that ip and and technologies to really get going with ecowa. So what was that transition like.

Thomas Puskas: Solar power stations are partner and.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, but with Microynamic Technologies we were looking mainly for to to use ah patterns and technologies which which have been developed in the eighty s ninety s in Eastern Europe by different. Technologically institute universities but which were basically stopped in the 90 s because lack of government funding and this set us to to develop new processing technologies for example for for Biodiesel and different hour of. A renewable power ah production of doing gaification for example and on the other hand we was looking in in new technologies on like Blockchain and we were experimenting and had server pilot projects. How blockchain can be used. In in special space especially in and late electricity rating and out of this when in 2018 2019 are covered developed. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: Now with ecowat you know it’s obviously a little bit different than the traditional stuff that you would typically see because of the new technologies that you guys are using like Blockchain and tokenization. So. What is ultimately the business model of ecowa for the people that are listening to really understand what you guys are doing.

Thomas Puskas: Echoat is on the 1 hand traditional renewable energy company which uses when new technologies like Blockchain and tokenization to to get the the let’s say so the worldwide community to get them involved in the development. Of more renewable power projects but not only renewable power projects but also climate impact projects like reforestation. So e what the the main goal of eot is just ah to do everything what is possible. In in order to increase the usage of renewable energy but also on the other hand to do as much as possible climate impact projects which will help to decarbonize and to get to net 0 by 2030 or even with 2015.

Alejandro Cremades: Um, so how do you guys? monetize? How do you guys make money.

Thomas Puskas: Um, yeah, we have a ah fixed amount of of tokens which have been issued the the echobat token and on the other hand we are building more and more.

Thomas Puskas: Solar power wind power and our renewable power projects. So for example, ah the the ecova token itself is backed by one watt of renewable energy capacity. The more power plants we are building the ratio will increase so it will be.

Thomas Puskas: In 2 3 years it will be not 1 what 1 token one what it will be 1 token free what or 4 what 5 wordss or even more and we that automatically the the value the of the token will increase. In addition, we use all the fundinging from the token sales. And now we are also process of fishing green bonds we are using all this also for reforestation and other climate impact projects which generate carbon credits and these tips. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: And and and ah I’m sure that there’s a lot of people that are listening to here Thomas that are wondering how do you tokenize an asset. You know how do you tokenize something that is tangible because I mean obviously you know by.

Thomas Puskas: Um.

Thomas Puskas: Me of the.

Alejandro Cremades: You have been in this for a while you know I’m I’m very familiar with blockchain too. But but how and also tokeins. But how do you go about tokenizing something I mean I mean in this case, you guys are talkingizing you know all these different assets. So so how do you go about that.

Thomas Puskas: I Hope of irish.

Thomas Puskas: Um, yeah, basically you you set up destruction of of let’s let’s say for web overpower plant so they are the basic structure of e co is that we we have a fixed supply of tokens which are 1000000000 tokens and we have the basic.

Thomas Puskas: Pipeline of renewerable power projects which is one kigabat one kigabat is 1 p n watts so wherefore one token is equal to one wat i.

Alejandro Cremades: Okay, got it and in this case, you know like how how have you guys gone about capitalizing the business. How much capital have you guys raised too late.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, we we started in 23020. We started with the first private sales. We had 2 rounds which were quite successful. In 2021 we started to to list on on exchanges at the moment we are on free exchanges and so far we have raised around a little bit about about more more than four million Euros and in addition, we signed a few months ago toen sea like agreement with the us crypto investment fund for $10,000,000.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it? Yeah, so that was the ah the initial coin offering that you guys recently did so for the people that are listening to to really get it. What is the difference of the traditional equity race that you would see like the 4000000 that you were alluding to versus an initial coin offering also known as ico. Ah, where for example, you guys brought these say 100000000 plus in.

Thomas Puskas: No, the the I see is actually the the first phase when we not the first time start selling tokens on an exchange.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, but you mentioned that there with a with a global emerging markets group. You know there you guys brought one ah 10000000 so I guess the question here is how do you go? Well, what’s the difference between the traditional route.

Thomas Puskas: The are are basic. Um, now once you have let’s say a successful iso when when of course you can start approaching. Let’s say so traditional investment companies.

Alejandro Cremades: You know versus let’s say like an ico.

Thomas Puskas: Who are looking to invest in into crypto assets and when when you can start or selling crypos directly to to crypto investment companies who are then holding it usually for a few years and wait until the the value of the token increases and when they sell it over the exchanges. Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: So what? what is that process looking like I mean first you go to the exchange and then you know the the action happens or can you walk the listeners through how that process actually works. Okay.

Thomas Puskas: No for for the beginning you have to start for just to see how how much your business is accepted by let’s say so the community you have to do do at least some some private things where you test the market where you’ll test your your project. The the destruction of your business and if you have at least one two successful private sales when you can approach exchanges with with a listing and ask when if ah we are ready to to list your token on exchange. Ah.

Alejandro Cremades: And typically for the for the traditional types of races. You know you would need you know with investors you know the pitch stick and the financial model and perhaps other collateral. But but in this in this case I mean what is the.

Thomas Puskas: Um, yeah, definite ideas.

Alejandro Cremades: Type of information that typically people you know request or that or that you need to have in place so that you can be successful at it.

Thomas Puskas: No, of course you you still need. Let’s say so all the traditional paperwork you need to have a a good presentation pitch deck in in addition of all the crypto projects. Should have a a good white paper which explains and in detail the the tonomics and the structure of your of your crypto project and with this documents you will start when the private sector.

Alejandro Cremades: And typically on the let’s say you know if if you go on one of those exchanges How does the marketing or the awareness work I mean is that something that the exchange would take on or is that like a team collaboration where you guys are also involved. So.

Thomas Puskas: This. Ah.

Thomas Puskas: Um, let’s say so still you you still would have to make around 90% of your own marketing. The exchanges are offering some support mainly to the already registered users of the exchanges. Ah, but this of this is still just a small part of Marketing. You shouldn’t rely only on the marketing of the exchanges. So So you still have to do your homework. You still have to do your own marketing. Best of course getting. Not only in social media but in getting mentioned in in newspapers or Journals depending what your business is so that people can see that it’s It’s a real business. But.

Alejandro Cremades: And what out of your experience with you know, obviously this is this is completely different to the you know the what the stuff that you were doing before. Obviously this is also completely different to this stuff that typically our listeners you know, listen to which is like the traditional Vc type of route of.

Thomas Puskas: All are whatever.

Alejandro Cremades: Seat round series a series b so let’s say you know in in in in doing an ico I mean what are like the 3 main things that you’ve learned that you really need to be truly successful at it.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, the most important is actually the details you have to look at the the details and get everything you you have to be able to explain everything. Until the last small or small details.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it and then what what? what would be the other two things that you’ve learned you know that there someone needs to be successful in an I seo.

Thomas Puskas: Um, yeah, the other thing is and marketing so you have to to I have to say.

Thomas Puskas: The 1 ne-end social Mark socalled social marketing which is now nowadays most important all to some extentors or or advertising so just word of mouth. That’s that’s that’s important toa.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it and then lastly anything like the bonus what will be the third thing and lesson learnedarned that you can share with the listeners.

Thomas Puskas: Are.

Thomas Puskas: Um, ah.

Thomas Puskas: Like lessons learn This is actually what I say and anyway all the time is um to try always to do more. Don’t don’t think that of with.

Thomas Puskas: But what has been done is enough. You should always try to to do more because it’s always better to be prepared and to to do hundred ten percent when just 90% or hundred percent

Alejandro Cremades: Now in terms of the you know what’s what’s coming and and how things are unfolding. How do you see those technologies you know, unfolding and and evolving over time.

Thomas Puskas: A power post.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, definitely blockchain toization in crypto which the which’s the Future. Of course we are at the moment just at the beginning So like any new technology has its problems at the beginning which um. Structural Problems legal problems but but step by step crypto Blockchain tokenization will be the the new way of doing business. A.

Alejandro Cremades: And how like for the people that are listening to get an understanding of the scope and size of echo what today I mean anything that you can share in terms of maybe like number of employees or anything else that you feel comfortable sharing.

Thomas Puskas: Well.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, we have our headqua time in in Dublin but we have today already offices starting from from Hungary Romania turkey in in the in in duba in the Us. Have roughly around forty forty colleagues working now at ecowa but now hiring we most on on a weekly basis so were developing and growing quite fast. We.

Alejandro Cremades: And now in terms of let’s say you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world. Let’s say you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of ecowa is fully realized what does that world look like.

Thomas Puskas: Um, sorry but.

Thomas Puskas: Um, oh it will be a very clean world if clean air fresh air. Ah um e.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess how do you think that the that you know the times that we’re living in you know where there is like more consciousness around what’s going on with global warming and you know with Fossil fuels and and and things like that you know I’d say.

Thomas Puskas: Um, the.

Alejandro Cremades: As they say you know to build something truly meaningful. You need to be at the right time in history and that blow is and that wind is blowing you know on your back. How do you think that timing wise you know things have helped you to really execute on this. Okay.

Thomas Puskas: Um, yeah, actually today’s really the the best time of getting started in renewable energy. But of course it it helps me and it helps echovat a lot that we not only today started that we are doing this. Already almost food for the last twenty years and but because of it not only myself but all our colleagues have have tremendous background and experience and this helps us to to grow faster and faster and develop faster.

Alejandro Cremades: You were talking about all these different offices and colleagues that you have and and obviously you know like this is so advanced what you guys are doing that you need to have like unbelievable talent. So as you’re thinking about building the team and really building the culture around that you know like how. How do you think about that you know because I’m sure that that that keeps you up at night on how you build a team and and what kind of culture you want to have right.

Thomas Puskas: And. Now The the the let’s say so the Echobot ideology is that we want to to have a clean world. We We want to have more and more renewable Energy. We need to do something against climate change and thats. So some extent automatically pulls people who have the same lands the same ideas and the same same wishes for the future.

Alejandro Cremades: Now if I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time you know maybe to that time where you know we can. We could just say that you were still in university in Vienna right? you were doing economics and business and you were able to sit down. You know that younger self that younger Thomas.

Thomas Puskas: Where.

Thomas Puskas: Plus.

Alejandro Cremades: And you were able to give that younger Thomas one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Thomas Puskas: Um, yeah, ah I would say if you have ah a dream if you have a plan for the future then never give never give up keep walking.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it so too much for the people that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

Thomas Puskas: Yeah, we are We have several channels um in social media they can get in touch over with our social medias or all through our website.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing I will definitely have those in the show notes where Thomas thank you so much for being on the dealmakerr show today. It has been an on earth to have you with us.

Thomas Puskas: Um, thank you, Thank you very much.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

Vijay Kedar has gone from being an investor to the founder of his own health tech startup. His venture has attracted the backing of some of the most respected investors while raising $100M over the past five years. Tomorrow Health has acquired funding from top-tier financiers like Obvious Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Sound Ventures, and Bond.

In this episode, you will learn:

Fundraising by each round
How healthcare is changing
The difference between good and great companies
Vijay’s top advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs

Alejandro Cremades · EP 527 Vijay Kedar On Raising $100 Million To Bring Healthcare HomeSUBSCRIBE ON:

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Vijay Kedar:Vijay Kedar, the CEO, and founder of Tomorrow Health, began his career on the investing side with Goldman Sachs but left to join Josh Kushner and Mario Schlosser as an early employee of Oscar Health. At Oscar, Vijay spent time around case management for the most challenged patients within their network and learned first-hand about the transition of care to the home.

From an investor and builder perspective, Vijay recognized the supply and reimbursement challenges of providing durable medical equipment (DME) – respirators, mobility devices, etc. – to patients in need. A family health experience, however, inspired Vijay to leave Oscar to launch Tomorrow Health to serve millions of Americans in need of healthcare at home. Vijay is educated at Harvard Business School.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today. We have a very exciting founder. You know a founder that is going to walk us you know through the journey you know through the incredible journey and and through what he’s building building financing scaling I mean you name it. And I think we’re gonna really find this story very inspiring so without further. Do let’s welcome our guest today vj kidar welcome to the show.

Vijay Kedar: Um, thank you all Ajandro It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania so give us a letter of a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, you know Pittsburgh is an amazing place to grow up. So I I was born and raised there. My parents originally emigrated from South India from a town called Chennai and.

Vijay Kedar: I come from a big family of physicians. So my my father was a cardiologist and after doing his residency in Chicago moved to Pittsburgh to start ah to start ah a practice there and you know I’ve always found Pittsburgh to be ah the perfect balance between. A big city in a small town. It has you know everything? you’d want ah ah gray restaurants. Great sports teams fun neighborhoods but always has that small town pride and it’s ah it’s certainly a city that that bleeds black and gold when it comes to the Pittsburgh steelers. So. Overall, a great a great place to grow up.

Alejandro Cremades: How do you think that obviously you know your parents coming from India where education is so important where you need to be a doctor or you need to be. You know an engineer you know like. Education is everything. How do you think that that has also influenced your path because you know certainly you went to the best schools.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, you know I appreciate that and I think there’s there’s no question my parents and and my family’s focus on education early on has ah certainly had a tremendous impact on on my life And. Ah, my my father is ah is a doctor and my mother actually is a computer engineer so we have all the bases covered and ah you know, growing up more than anything. They just pushed my brother and I yeah to be deeply deeply intellectually curious. And to just have a passion and a love for learning. Whatever whatever the subject was whether it was history or literature or science. Um, and I think more than anything when I think about some of the foundations. To Entrepreneurship. It’s It’s really that it’s a thirst for Knowledge. It’s a deep intellectual curiosity to understand a space customers. Ah a new vertical. Um, and so that that certainly was a big part of of my foundation and ah. You know more broadly growing up. They were always encouraging ah more than anything of us finding that which we were most passionate about and and early on for me. Um it was. It was the medical field and I was certainly on that path to become a clinician.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, but over time realized that while I loved that direct impact that Medicine Medicine could have ah you know I wondered if there were were better ways to scale that impact at the end of the day. My father as a clinician could only impact as many patients as he had hours in a day. And so I began to shift my focus to to other ways to address that but certainly that focus on on education and that thirst for learning has remained since then.

Alejandro Cremades: So then tell us about you know going, you know because obviously you did a little bit of um of you know when it comes to the um to the studies you know I mean you did hbas you know you also did you know like the um, you also did the University Of Ghana what was that.

Vijay Kedar: You know that that was ah my my junior year of college. Um I had been fortunate. You know, growing up um to do quite a lot of traveling with my family. My my grandfather who was also a clinician um. Practiced until ah, his his mid 80 s when he retired had this vision of stepping on all 7 continents with all of his grandkids and so since I was very young. You know we were taking. Trips around the world. Um from Asia to Latin America and and beyond and it it instilled in me just ah, an absolute love of um, experiencing new cultures learning new languages new cuisines new ways of thinking and and so when I was in college I I wanted to take that opportunity to study elsewhere and ah to study in a place that I felt was you know, fundamentally different from from where I had grown up and um. Had the opportunity to study at the University Of Ghana um just outside of the capital city of akra and it was an incredible experience for me. It was everything from studying international politics.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, working at an ngo in ah a town called abablosi which was Ghana’s largest slum and and then um, taking motorcycle trips around the country to to explore new areas and. Ah, made some amazing friends. There certainly opened my eyes to um, really the the richness of of cultures throughout West Africa and overall was was a tremendous amount of fun.

Alejandro Cremades: And I mean obviously see there. You have an itch because you know your parents from India you know you’ve traveled around the world. You’ve experienced different cultures. You were raised here in the us what kind of advantage. Do you think that gives you when it comes to tackling problems.

Vijay Kedar: Um I think it’s incumbentent upon all of us in many ways to expand our worldviews and our purviews as much as we can right at the end of the day. It just enables us to understand. Problems to understand markets to understand people in just so much of a more diverse way. Um, and you know I think whether it is ah traveling to a new country or having a new experience more than I think it just. It broadens your your worldview it broadens your scope of thinking and takes you out of what can otherwise be a naturally narrow and and myopic way of thinking and you know I think when it comes to starting a business and and really attacking a problem at the end of the day you’re trying to change the status Quo. You’re trying to change an ecosystem or a market that has been operating a certain way for a very long time and the only way to do that is with fresh perspectives and always by recognizing that there is always a different approach that can be taken and So. Ah, when you approach a problem or along the way is you start to hit roadblocks along the way to recognize that there’s a wider vantage point that can be taken um and and certainly ah building that resilience in many ways to to do that I you know I will say.

Vijay Kedar: Just on the note of my upbringing I mean there’s no question growing up in an immigrant household ah in many ways that that immigrant hustle was was born into to my brother and I very early on and my father.

Vijay Kedar: Come to this country really without any relatives with not very much money and was nineteen years old at graduated medical school was coming to build a life and um I think there was just so many principles that that he learned through that process of certainly never taking anything for granted. Ah, the critical importance of of hard work and focus and dedication. Ah that have really become pillars of of how my brother and I have have always operated and certainly have been a big part of of my journey throughout my career and and starting tomorrow health.

Alejandro Cremades: Now obviously now you are on the on the founder side of the table but you’ve also been on the investor side of the table I mean after your studies you you went to Goldman Sachs and you were doing private equity there for a few years so what did you learn there about pattern recognition perhaps about. Companies that you know were working better than others and what were some of those trades that they you know trigger that or or or made that happen.

Vijay Kedar: You know, learned a tremendous amount during my years as an investor and ah you know I think what one of the benefits of that vantage point is really back to some of my earlier comments just the the the breath of purview that you get right? seeing? Ah, ah. 1 the opportunity to work across a number of different industries but but seeing from a bird’s eye view. You know, different business models across verticals and and how they are resilient or not towards market changes and and and dynamics and yeah I think. With the the lens of of private equity was fortunate to have the opportunity to work closely with a number of really fantastic management teams um to understand how they translated strategy to execution how they ah Tackled. Market opportunities and really brought them to life. Um, and in many ways while I certainly had the the analytical perspective of an investor at that point it also kindled my passion and my interest to get closer to operations to get closer to building. The other thing that happened during my years at Goldman was some fundamental shifts in the health care market. Um, while I was there Obama had just been reelected. It was the tying of the bow that obamacare was going to be taking effect and.

Vijay Kedar: I was staffed on ah on a pretty small cross-functional team across the firm to really? ah 1 understand the tenets of the legislation um chronicle how it was going to impact different subsectors and health care and then you know what were the opportunities for us. Ah, to effectively position ourselves from an investment standpoint. Ah, and so during that time you know sat down and read the law end to end ah and it was just incredibly eye-opening as to the breath of change that was going to be taking place in every subsector. Within a healthcare and they’re taking and an innovator’s lens to it. You could think of you know, multiple companies to be created with every chapter of of that law and so it really sparked my interest in in getting a deeper understanding of. The companies and the founders that were out there really trying to drive that change and to bring that innovation to life.

Alejandro Cremades: And now in your case I mean you went from Goldman Sachs to Oscar Health obviously you know like in in Goldman Sachs there I mean you were quite busy. You evaluated about a billion across you know what you were saying healthcare technology energy. Ah, definitely healthcare seemed to be the um, the segment that really caught your attention to really go into the operation on the ah on the on the ah kind of like operations and and and business side of things. So how was that change. How did that change come about to say hey you know what I’m going to go. More on the operator ah type of approach here.

Vijay Kedar: Um, you know what? Well I Well I loved ah the analytical perspective investor found it incredibly intellectually stimulating extremely learned a tremendous amount what was increasingly exciting to me was was was really how operators and executives. Um, we’re building and scaling their businesses and and and that’s where I felt I had the greatest opportunity to learn was was working with many of the management teams we supported towards doing that. Um, and in particular having seen just the precipice of change in the Healthcare ecosystem. Um I was just really eager to to to be a part of that change to be a part of the action and and so as part of that um was pretty deliberate in ah building. Ah ah, a list of of companies that I thought were doing. Just incredibly innovative things in the space talking to friends in the industry talking to um other investors bankers etc and really developing a perspective on on those businesses that I thought I thought were were best points to drive real change in Healthcare And. Um, networked my way in to a bunch of different founders. Um and cold emailed a number of of folks. Um and just had a really fascinating wrath of conversations on on you know how different founders were approaching the space and.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, you know, looking back on this over a decade later It’s really fascinating because you know many of these folks have since built amazing businesses and have become good friends. You know Sean Duffy at Omata was one of the folks I reached out to when Omada was a 10 person company I know he’s been here on the on the podcast as well. Ah, Zach ah and nat from flat iron health who are now angel investors and and partners of ours were were just getting things going. Ah and so was incredible to see kind of how that health tech ecosystem was really getting off the ground and how it’s flourished since then. Um, but it was also during that process I got connected to Josh Kushner and Marius losser at at Oscar and from my earliest conversations was just blown away by the scale of the vision that they had outlined and really believed in the opportunity for. Um, a technology for much more consumer focused insurer to play a much larger role in the ecosystem than health insurers had previously played and in much more effectively constructing. Ah, optimized networks for care and from engaging and guiding members through their healthcare journeys and so um, as soon as I got connected with them ah was was really excited about the opportunity to build and.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, was able to join that team in the first few dozen folks.

Alejandro Cremades: So then so then tell us because obviously Oscar Health was a pivotal moment for you. You know? now you’re on the operator side. You’re able to really see what’s going on. So I guess you know question is at what point in the mix. That’s the idea of maybe venturing on your own and. And starting you know tomorrow health at what point does that come does that idea come knocking and at what point do you realize hey I think I’m ready I’m ready for this and and I’m ready to go at it on my own.

Vijay Kedar: Um, you know I I had always had a bit of an entrepreneurial bug when I was in college had worked to start a few ventures with with friends and in different areas. Ah but to me it was It was really always about. Ah.

Vijay Kedar: Identifying a problem which I really really cared about enough to to to focus really all of my attention and my energy on on solving and ah you know the time at Oscar was certainly pivotal in a number of different ways. You know one was. Really kind of learning the brass tacks of what it took to drive change in the healthcare ecosystem right? and ah it was 1 thing for us to look at at those kind of high-level overarching trends and macro dynamics. Around the investment committee table. Ah as an investor. Ah and I found that it was very different to actually be on the ground right? I mean we could wax and weigh in all, we wanted about you know value based care and and and how its advent in health care was going to. Ah, drive certain macro trends. It was very different when I found myself you know boots on the ground negotiating with ah a large you know hospital system Cfo ah to try to get them to accept a value-based arrangement and to take a downside risk on their contracts and. Um, you know, just getting into the weeds of the health care ecosystem really opened my eyes to um, what was actually needed to to drive change and certainly just a tremendous amount of learnings there both from.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, things we did right? as as well as from mistakes that I made along the way. Yeah, that that I’ve certainly learned from it. Those are always the ones that are you know, seared into your into your memory and kind of help to inform you know how you can how you can approach a problem different in the future. Ah, so so so you know to getting those operational wraps and and really digging deeper into what it took to drive change in the industry um was a huge piece of it and really understanding the confluence of the regulatory strategic. And financial dynamics at play between insurers um hospital systems providers and and and patients um and and then you know unexpectedly in in many ways it was during that time that. I really became exposed to many of the problems in home based health care and ah that was due to a more personal note about a week after I started at Oscar my mother was unfortunately diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer and fortunately is doing well now and in remission. Ah, but had a a really tough journey through it ended up spending a couple of months inpatient in the icu battling a lung disease stemming from her chemotherapy and three months on a ventilator ah and stemming from that needed a year of very intensive.

Vijay Kedar: Home-based health care everything from 14 literres of oxygen to osamy and wound care supplies and mobility and respiratory equipment and you know candidly we just could not have imagined how challenging it would be to manage that as ah as a patient or a family member despite being. And healthcare care myself despite coming from a family of doctors. Um, you know all lin it took us about six weeks to get everything that she needed and we ended up having to readmit her back to the hospital twice in in that first month ah which was just incredibly eyeopening. Incredibly. Ah, demoralizing to my mother after working so hard to leave the hospital incredibly disruptive to her care. Um, and that was a problem having experienced that. So personally that just really sat with me and from there when I when I went back to my role at Oscar i. Saw the same challenges but from the health plans vantage point as you know as we were certainly a healthur at Oscar um, that every market that I launched we had to contract with you know, hundreds or thousands of different home based care providers to take to to get to adequacy to serve our our members. Driving our care management efforts I’d find myself you know, borrowing the phone from a nurse case manager and literally you know negotiating with some of these home-based care companies to get our patients an oxygen tank or an orhotic brace so we could discharge them out of the hospital and it just became so clear that from every vantage point all of us believed in.

Vijay Kedar: Shift of Healthcare to the home but the technology and operations infrastructure to enable home based care reliably and at scale was simply lacking and that’s ultimately what inspired me to ultimately make the transition to starting to tomorrow health.

Alejandro Cremades: So then tell us about the for the people that are listening. You know what were the next steps you know you were like okay, let’s go.

Vijay Kedar: You know what? I I formally left Oscar spent the first year really just doing deep market research um to really really understand the problem and understand what was broken in the ecosystem and. You know as part of that process ah spoke directly with thousands of ah patients and families on the experiences that they’ve had sat with dozens of hospital discharge managers clicking through their electronic medical records to order. Ah, home medical equipment and supplies for for their patients spoke with ah medical equipment companies distributors health insurers regulators to really understand the different sides of of the ecosystem and and honestly the. The deeper I dug it was clear that the problem was even bigger than than I had experienced either personally with my mother or or from the health cleanse vantage point at Oscar ah that it was something that really touched and impacted the care of hundreds of millions of americans and ah. Was was levying an experience and a status quo that was just really so challenged and so broken. Ah, but the solution was also a complex one. Um, you know I recognized that. Ah, this was an ecosystem that wasn’t working for anyone involved.

Vijay Kedar: Ah, and that what was needed was really a rewiring of the processes the workflows in many cases, the incentives within this ecosystem in order to deliver much more streamlined much more efficient and ultimately higher quality healthcare to patients. Um. And so from there began ah to really ah identify what that solution could look like and what that early product could look like and as part of that began to build our early team. Ah, and then ultimately raised our our first round of funding to get things off the ground.

Alejandro Cremades: And and before going and and and digging into the funding I mean for the people that are listening to get it. What ended up being the business model of tomorrow health. How do you guys make money.

Vijay Kedar: Um, yeah, so you know I mentioned that that this is an ecosystem in home-based Healthcare. That’s not really working for for anyone and specifically that’s you know for health insurers for physicians and hospitals for home-based care suppliers and then most notably for patients. Um. And so what we do towards our vision of of helping to restore the home as a patient’s primary place of care is ah we serve as a technology platform to really coordinate and manage the breadth of of home-based health care needs that patients have and so we partner. With health plans and provider organizations so physicians and hospitals to coordinate the health care that their members receive we streamline the way that home based care is ordered ah delivered and and ultimately paid for and by really. Providing technology to streamline each part of that and each workflow that with it. That’s within that. Ah, we drive a lot greater efficiency. We Also Realign incentives. Ah, towards better quality and better efficiency which is something that that doesn’t really exist in the status quo of of the Market. Um, and so we are ultimately compensated by the health plans and the providers that we work with to coordinate care for their members. Um, and we.

Vijay Kedar: The the outcomes that we drive are ultimately around the quality and efficiency of that care. So 97% on time starts of care for patients who need care at home and that’s relative to what is a ah network average of between 50 to 60% an over 95 Nps Score across the rat the patients we’ve served really transforming that experience which is unfortunately ranges between 10 and negative 10 in in this side of the industry. Um, and then ultimately just driving much greater efficiency and value to each of the stakeholders involved. So ah so that’s that’s ultimately our model at tomorrow health and by leveraging that end-ten technology platform. We’re ultimately able to provide patients with. The home-based care that they need faster more reliably and more affordably.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in this case I mean you were alluding to fundraising how much capital have you guys raised to date.

Vijay Kedar: Um, we’ve raised a little under 100000000 all in through our ah recent series b round.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously a company like this is is capital intensive I mean you were alluding to that you guys had to raise some money to get going. So what has been the journey or the experience and also the expectations from going from 1 financing cycle to the next.

Vijay Kedar: Um, yeah, you know I’d say um, first for our overarching business because it is you know, ultimately a technology forward model. Ah the core model ah scales in a in a fairly capital light way. Ah, is we’ve thought about financing. It’s really been About. You know what’s the combination of the capital and and critically for us the partners that can help us accelerate our our journey and can enable us to invest ahead. In the right team and resources whether that’s on product and engineering whether that’s on business development and growth whether it’s on core operations to really help us continue to bring this platform to life and and Deliver. You know, incredibly strong value to our core customers. Um.

Vijay Kedar: You know our our first round of funding was seven and a half million that was led by the team at Andreessen Horowitz um and supported by um box group sound ventures and the range of health care and tech angels at. Ceos and founders from ah paypal door dash oscar health flatir and health quartet pullpack and and others all of which who’ve been incredibly helpful in our journey. Um, but you know at the outset the initial ah capital was ah to really. Get things off the ground and and and to to prove out our holistic vision. You know one of the things that is a bit different in healthcare is if you’re serving enterprise customers. You got to get it right out of the gate right? that you don’t quite have that capability to um to to. To to test and iterate. Ah when you know ultimately there is patient care on the line and you’re working with at you know, really meaningful at scale healthcare organizations and so for us it was really about ensuring that. Ah, the platform that we had the product that we were delivering and ultimately the outcomes that we could drive from a service quality standpoint were going to be incredibly strong for our early enterprise customers right? and so that was really the if.

Vijay Kedar: If I was to describe the most important milestone it was to really have a set of of a very happy enterprise customers and and and demonstrate that model. Um, you know our our series a was raised in. Um, in 2020 ah like late 2020 and that was 25000000 led well also by Andrees Horowitz and supported by obvious ventures and a handful of other folks. Um, and. You know that was really about in many cases kind of broadening the scope of our model and you know early on. We saw the capability to operate in a defined way to um, ultimately. Take accountability for the medical equipment and supplies that patients were receiving and and kind of building that core infrastructure as we scaled up. It was really about broadening the model to that expansive platform vision that I described so so series a was really about platformizing the overarching model. Ah, and then our series b which is 60000000 ah led by bond capital and Recentesen Horowitz growth sound ventures obvious ventures and a range of others ah was really about about taking that model to scale new partnerships at new markets and doubling down on.

Vijay Kedar: Our core technology platform to really bring our vision of of more effective and more efficient home-based Healthcare to more of the country.

Alejandro Cremades: So talking about vision there. Let’s double click on that imagine you go to bed tonight and you wake up in a world. You know a few years later where the vision of tomorrow Health is fully realized what does that world look like.

Vijay Kedar: Um, you know, ultimately, um, we think about it as a world in which um, patients turn to tomorrow health for the full breath of their healthcare needs at home and so. Today in the same way that ah you know we walk outside of our homes and we need to get from point a to point b and we pull out the uber app and it’s given us all these modes of transportation that.

Vijay Kedar: We know we can trust ah to to reliably and transparently get us from point a to point b the same way that we you know, ah, any time we want anything ordered to our doorsteps pull out our Amazon app and. You know, push a couple of buttons and and know with visibility that products are going to arrive on our doorstep with defined prices with a high level of quality. Um, we want folks to turn to tomorrow health when they think about healthcare at home and that can be whether they or family members are recovering from. Ah, acute health episodes coming out of surgery managing diseases like covid and others or managing ongoing chronic conditions like diabetes or cancer cardiovascular disease and coordinating the breath of the equipment supplies and services that they need um and ultimately that vision is is. That a patient like my mother with the wide breadth of of home-based care needs that she has um the fourteen liters of oxygen you know the ostomy and wound care supplies. The respiratory therapist coming to her home to adjust her ventilator settings the pulse oximmetry. Remote monitoring device measuring her oxygen saturation levels does not have to work with a dozen different vendors and and home-based care companies as we did but can work with 1 seamless platform and tomorrow health that is coordinating the breath of of home-based healthcare needs that she has reliably.

Vijay Kedar: With efficiency and critically that it’s all embedded within her insurance benefits ah to be reimbursed affordable and to keep her healthy and safe at home.

Alejandro Cremades: So now vja you been for about 5 years you know with tomorrow health you know, pushing things. You know if you had obviously a ton of lessons learned you know along the way. So if you had the opportunity of going back in time and. And having a chat with your younger self. You know, maybe that day vj that is still at Goldman Sachs and you know looking at those companies doing great things in healthcare and you know the other industries that you were involved in and if you were able to have a sit down right now with that younger vj and and giving that. Younger vj 1 piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Vijay Kedar: Um, you know I I think it would be um, one to to have the conviction and the resilience that you know whatever the problems that came our way to just really really. Remain laser focused on that end State Vision. Ah and to recognize when it makes sense to keep you know barreling against that wall to try to break it down and when it makes sense to start thinking about you know how you climb. That wall or how you scale under it. Ah because you know at at every journey along the way of building a business. Um, you know there. There are always roadblocks. There are always punches in the face as as we like to say there’s always unexpected things. Um. And so much of ah what makes in my opinion. Ah a business, an organization a culture one that can deliver true impact at scale is that grit is that resilience ah to constantly work through those obstacles to constantly. Ah, be iterating the approach and the focus um to always get to to that end state. Um, there is always a path forward and ultimately um, iterating on the approach to Identify. You know what it is that makes the most sense.

Vijay Kedar: What it is that will get you to the other side in my opinion is is what separates great companies from from good ones and is an important lesson and Tenet certainly for me and and us to think about consistently.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it vj So for the folks that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

Vijay Kedar: Yeah, they can reach out to me directly. My email is vijay@tomorrowhealth.com I’m also on Twitter at at the jkeda r ah, and love to love to hear from folks. So I would encourage them to get in touch.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well video. Thank you so much for being on the deal maker show. It has been an honor to have you with us and amazing. Thank you so much with j.

Vijay Kedar: Um, really enjoyed it all Andra thanks for having me on.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

After leading several businesses through to successful exits, Gaston Irigoyen has already raised $60M for a new company, in less than two years. His latest venture, Pomelo has acquired financing from top-tier investors like Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Tiger Global Management.

In this episode, you will learn:

The process of selling your startup
The vision of Pomelo
Gaston’s top advice when starting a business

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About Gaston Irigoyen:Gaston Irigoyen is the CEO & Co-Founder of Pomelo. He was Google’s 5th employee in Spanish Speaking Latin America. Gaston launched and was the former CEO of Argentine Neobank Naranja X. He then created two companies, one of which was sold to the TripAdvisor portal.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So super excited today. We have ah a founder from latin America obviously there’s a lot going on there and I think that we’re gonna be. We’re gonna be learning and we’re gonna be enjoying this because he’s traveled the world. He’s done many different companies done the full cycle. So I don’t want to um, wait make you all wait any longer so without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today Gaston Irigoyen welcome to the show.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, hey and andro great to be here. Thank you very much for having me.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Argentina but you did trouble quite a bit growing up so give us how like walk through memory lane. How was life growing up.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, yeah, ah life was good, but as you said I had the opportunity to live in several countries so I was born in Argentina but you know soon after we moved first to Switzerland and then to Purdue because of my dad’s job. Ah, so we spent roughly 5 years living abroad before coming back and then all the way from like primary school till the end of ah uni I was here in Argentina ah so sort of you know, ah raised here. Educated here. And yeah, soon after I started working at Google and then Google brought me to Europe to doublin more specifically and then with time as I became an entrepreneur I did move to the us and then finally back to Argentina about six years ago so a long story short lived in 5 Mark in 5 different countries including Argentina and covered. You know, kind of a little bit of the western world.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s say double click on that and expand a little bit on it. I know that when you were younger, you know you you were mentioning that your your dad traveled quite a bit for work. So I guess question there is what happened in Peru. Because when you guys were in Peru you know you were ah living there quite in an uncertain environment and I’m sure that that gave you a lot of perspective in life.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, yeah, a hundred percent so as I said soon. Ah, soon after I was born. We moved to Switzerland first and you know asever Switzerland has been one of the most stable countries. Around the world and you know it works very well and so on and so forth. But then you know, um the the company that my dad was working for a pharmaceutical company appointed him to sort of lead the latin american operation out of Peru and ah you know back in the 80 S Peru was going through some rough times. And what there was a government um sort of a democratic government. Um, there was also this movement called the shining path in english or Sandro Luminosa in spanish which was essentially like a communist guerrilla movement and yeah, they were pretty rough. And there’s all sorts of stories. You know where they kidnapped executives from different companies that were sort of bringing work and income and sort of joy if you want to people which was on the opposite front of what they thought was the right way. Forward. Ah, so that meant that we had to live in a native community. But furthermore we had to have like an armed person in the front door of our own house There were many days where there was no electricity I still remember those days and you know there was an alternative to electricity which was.

Gaston Irigoyen: But not technically gas but similar to gas and so my my family would have to cook ah the meals with with you know that sort of gas and I still remember the flavor and how different the the food sort of tasted and I remember not liking it at all. And yeah, overall it was like a difficult experience. We spent 4 years there for my mom I think it was very very hard for my dad. It was very good professionally but of course a lot of sort of you know tension and and stress. Um, ah, yeah, you know I sort of grew up in in that context and. Even though it’s hard to tell because I was very young I think a lot of the sort of resilience and and the motivation to start a company and to do something for Latin America is almost like the opposite of of what I lived in in that experience.

Alejandro Cremades: So in your case I mean going I mean you went to university there in in Argentina and and you did international relations of course out of all things. No I mean you were quite a citizen of the world already. But but in your case I mean you decided to go to Google I mean you were. 1 of the first employees there really in Latin America I mean we’re talking about 2006 and I mean that that’s quite the you know entrepreneurial doom because I mean I know I’m I’m originally from Spain you know I say our our audience our audience knows and team.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, is it.

Alejandro Cremades: And I know for a fact that in those Spanish speaking countries especially back then you know it’s quite risky to go to such a new company I mean it’s either. You go to a bank or you’re a lawyer or a doctor. So I’m sure that for you. It’s quite a risky bet too. No.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, yeah I think I think it was it ended up being kind of the pretty much the only alternative that I had which of course I’m very grateful for but essentially what happened as you said like I graduated from international relations back in 2006 and you know it was still like a ah ah very different world even though some tech companies had emerged. Ah you know the the most popular and sexy companies to work for were kind of cpg companies or or the big consultancy companies and I remember going through all those interview processes and back in the day they would sort of you know. Start with like 300 kids and and then sort of narrow narrow them down to like 5 or 6 that actually got the job offers. Um and I remember like always making it to the final stages but that for some reason I never sort of got the offers and I always thought that it was related to the fact that I studied international relations. I went to a very good university and had a very good sort of Gpa or or um, you know score. Overall if you want um but I always thought that I was sort of losing those jobs against the people who studied you know, business or economics or sort of more traditional careers. And at some point in time you know Google showed up and they were setting shop and and their first office in Latin America and it was almost by coincidence that I ended up there and in tech sort of in a nutshell Google appreciated and valued all the things that all the other companies did not value I mean they valued.

Gaston Irigoyen: I had studied international gradations. They valued that I had lived abroad. They valued that I had you know, been like a a pretty heavy skier and had worked worked abroad. Um when I was younger so they essentially you know liked and appreciated from my sort of story. All the things that all the other companies were not sort of appreciating and yeah, they made me an offer and um Google was a you know pre-known company and ah the day at the time it was kind of a sort of post Ipo company already like a year and a half or so after the ipo and we were all using Google. Um, and some some other products you know like Gmail and things like that. So I was actually very very excited and you know now that I look back um almost sixteen years later um I’m super super grateful. Library mean my entire career has been in tech thanks to that and you know I would choose it. Ah. You know again, all all the way.

Alejandro Cremades: Now, let’s talk about branching out you know and they’re now going at it on your own. Let’s talk about guide central. So how did the idea you know come to you and how did you go about executing because you did you know jump quite a bit. You know you went then from dobleen to um to New York so so how did you go from. Ideation to incubation and to launch of the of the company.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah, so I worked 6 years at Google the first three in Latin America building an operation for 70 spanish speakinging markets and then I moved to doblin into Youtube Ireland ah to work with the Youtube Partnerships team and we were essentially trying to monetize Youtube for the first time my job was. Actually to go around europe and spot the first youtubers and make them sort of rich and famous. Um, you know all these guys that are and and gals that are very successful on Youtube and Tiktok and um, you know all these all these platforms. So it was a great experience and at some point um you know I made. Very good friends with with ah you know this guy from from Spain as well same as you. He’s now Ceo O For Salesforce in in Europe ah you know we still we’re still very very close friends and this was back in 2010 and we were actually you know, kind of in the middle of the or actually a few months before the workup same as now. Ah, but the South Africa soccer workup and we heard from a lot of executives. You know in California that were saying that the future was going to be mobile and that Google’s business was going to be mobile. But at at that point in time only the app store. Ah, was there. It had been around for about six to nine months I think maybe 1 year and Google Play didn’t even exist so ah, Marco and I started to sort of you know play with ah with the idea of building a mobile lab for the workup.

Gaston Irigoyen: Just to you know, learn about mobile and to get sort ofqua with what in theory was going to become you know, sort of an everyday thing and um, yeah, we we built a small team well working at Google we worked you know during the weekends and ah, ah, ah during the night ah to get this sort of mobile app up and running and and so we did and about a month before the workup was born sort of started and and kicked off when people are essentially browsing apps to to follow the workup or our app was there and it it was you know, very very successful it then up being like the fifth top. Top 5 sort of um app in in the app store and so that was like ah an amazing experience for us. We ended up selling that sort of application. It wasn’t even a company to Kia Modes which was the worst official sponsors of the workup. And so that gave us a lot of confidence around. You know, building mobile apps and and continuing to build that ah team that we have built and so the following year with that sort of momentum plus some insights that I had discovered while working at Youtube I decided to start this company called guide central which in today’s terms is kind of a combination of Pinterest and Youtube. Allowing tier 2 content creators to monetize their content through mobile.

Alejandro Cremades: So so tell us then expand a little bit more on that business model. You know what were you guys you know at guide Central doing and how were you guys making money.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah, so what? I I noticed at Youtube is that there were like this. Let’s say tier one sort of segment of youtubers that were very very successful which continues to be true today and they were making like millions of dollars a year but then there was like a sort of a tier 2 or second segment of content creators that had a lot of skill they were spending a lot of time trying hard to produce content but they were not being very successful. Um, so I thought it was a good idea to create a mobile first and mobile lonely actually. Um, global sort of application for them. Um, as an alternative to Youtube and a place where they could create content and be more successful or even complement what they were doing on on Youtube the format was obviously different. It was 100% mobile. It was not limited to video. And so the business model was essentially to to do some sort of rev share similar to what Youtube did with their content. We didn’t show ads but we had like um you know product placements so that was slightly different. Um, but yeah that that was it. It was like a twist. Ah, to to how Youtube operates and I mentioned pinterest because it was a very sort of ah female-driven community 90% of our users were women and they would operate and create content in like the top 5 or 6 vertical that you would see on on Pinterest so home. The core.

Gaston Irigoyen: Ah, Crafts fashion and Beauty foot and drinks and and those kind of things.

Alejandro Cremades: And how did you guys go about capitalizing the business.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah I mean back in 20112012 it was hard to raise money. The rounds were way way smaller than now I mean we did raise 2 rounds but you know in today’s terms were you know, very small rounds I think. Only know we probably raised about $2,000,000 it was I think 500 k seat round and then ah or prese round and then one point five million so we were never like a super capitalized business. Um, it was hard to do it from Europe. And then when we moved to the Us. Yeah, it wasn’t like it wasn’t super easy either. So you know it was it was ah it was sort of a fine business. It was growing well, it wasn’t monetizing all that you know greatly. Um, so at some point we you know we realized that ah the roof wasn’t too far away. Um, so we continued to grow the business but but it was clear that it was not going to be like a rocket ship.

Alejandro Cremades: Now for you guys. You know it ended up being a successful outcome. You know you guys say had an exit. You know an exit is always an exit now. 1 thing that is interesting here is that you guys also had a few failed attempts at the exit. So tell us about what happened.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, yep.

Alejandro Cremades: During those failed attempts because many many times you know I’ve seen that an attempt at you know, engaging in an acquisition and then all of a sudden things falling Apart. You know can be lethal to the business I mean many companies die you know in in that process of trying to turn things around because of the resources and the time that they spent and the lack of runway. Whatever that is. But in your guys’ case you know you were able to get it to the finish line with a successful acquisition. Um a process. So What happened during the failed attends and why you know the last time at it. You know it. It worked out.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah, um, we actually went through like 3 processes and only the fourth time it was sort of completed. Um, and yeah, you have some kind of you know now I laugh at those stories but they were really really hard and tough at the time. So the first time. Remember doing like a 2 to three week ah trip to to Silicon Valley it was a very good trip and I met the founder and Ceo of a company in the space and so he invited me to the office and after about an hour an hour’s chat. He said hey you know I like to like to explore the the opportunity to acquire your business because I think it would be sort of complimentary to what we do and I was like hey sure you know let’s explore it and we’ll see what happens and then about a month later um you know he asks me to come to New York I was living in doblin at the time. So yeah, sort of I did the trip. And I landed a gfk and then went straight to the hotel to meet with him in what you know was supposed to be like the sort of negotiating the terms kind of meeting and I arrived there and he says. You know, unfortunately like I’m stepping down a Ceo someone else is coming the board has appointed someone else so we’ll have to pass this conversation for now and I was like okay you know I sort of understand by why would you ask me to come all the way to New York to give me just this piece of news. You know.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, so it was hard. You know I was left alone there in New York kind of looking around and saying like you know what’s you know What’s what’s a deal here and and and it was it was sort of you know hard because I was sort of excited with the opportunity but I was also kind of frustrated because as you said like even though it’s only like a trip or so. Ah, plus my time I thought it was I don’t know I just didn’t like the idea that he would ask me over to New York just to say no you know he could have sent an email or speak on the phone or something that that so I remember that was like a very hard week for me. Um, second time around.

Gaston Irigoyen: I was sort of negotiating with a company based in Los Angeles they were used to call maker media I’m not sure if they’re still around. Ah they they they were a publicly listed company and they then afterwards they were acquired by ah by a private private equity firm. So I don’t know how they’re called now. Ah, but anyways, they were another big big player in the space and and um, you know we were sort of going far along the process and at some point they asked me to come to la and so I did again all the way from from from doblin and I remember like doing the trip and then the previous night you know working very hard on on the last slides of the presentation. And I was meeting their entire entire set of leadershipship team and board members and before going to bed just out of curiosity I open I think Yahoo finance to look at their how the stock was doing and they had announced results that very same afternoon. And the stock was down like 30% based on you know, very poor results and so the following morning our meeting was at 9 am in the morning and so as you can imagine like their faces were terrible and they were all in a very very broad mood because obviously the company wasn’t doing any well. And yeah, that was kind of the second frustrated attempt you know there was even though like they didn’t know that that was going to happen like I had like horrible horrible timing. And yeah, that second attempt was gone third time around the the new Ceo from the first company that I mentioned.

Gaston Irigoyen: Also engages in a conversation and we start doing sort of all the duties process and then at some point we had a meeting with our cto and some sort of technical advisor that they had and. And the technical advisor on the other side he was like very very rude with my cto who didn’t speak spanish very sorry speak english very very fluently. Um, he was relatively young and you know he could not manage and handle that meeting. And most importantly, he became a little bit emotional because the person on the other side was being very very harsh obviously on purpose as part of you know, ah the process and I think he kind of lost a little bit of composure and and that was it so that was kind of the third attempt. And then finally the fourth time around with ah another company called wikiha out of Palo alto ah then it did happen so long story short you know some scars there in those in those processes and and those experiences. Ah, now nowadays I look at but look back at them I kind of laugh and you know I think they were very very good learning experiences. And yeah, as you said you know it was it was good outcome in the end. Um sort of the whole process started organically because at first we were not thinking about selling the business but then at some point.

Gaston Irigoyen: But so many. Ah so sort of attempts and and and and failed attempts. You kind of change your mind a little bit and you can kind of you know, put yourself in the mood of selling and so finally it did happen.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess from all these different attempts. What was your biggest lesson on acquisitions.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah I think the biggest lesson is you need to be very focused on building the best possible business and and never sort of optimizing for you know, an exit because at some point with so many attempts you know you start sort of ah doing some or at least I did back in the day. Some. Some sort of concessions or you try to gear the the business a little bit. Ah you know to better fit one company or the other company and I think that was kind of the biggest mistake and the biggest learning I mean you do have you have to do what you have to do and then if there’s a buyer and the buyer is interested then they will acquire you in the terms or. They will acquire the business that you have built because it’s the best possible business. So um, yeah I think that’s that’s one of the many learnings um, alongside. Of course you know having a you know Ah, ah, very a very solid executive team that can handle any sort of conversation in. In at least the the main languages which seems basic but there’s a lot of very good companies that don’t necessarily have that capability and so if you’re going through a Techica due diligence process and your cto is absolutely great, but he doesn’t speak english then you know that becomes a very big liability. So those kind of things you know.

Alejandro Cremades: And obviously as they say once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur you know in your case after this transaction it took you quite a while you know to go at it again and we’re going to talk about it. You know like in just a bid with a palmmeo but you know you had ah a few you know initiatives that you were part of 1

Gaston Irigoyen: Are.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah, so Cmo you know of ah of this company called Restorando and then the next one you know was with aneoank called Naranha x so why did you go at it with those initiatives instead of you know, just going you know through the nature path and natural path which is just starting another company.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um.

Gaston Irigoyen: Listen like I always thought I was continuing to um to be an entrepreneur in many ways. Yes I was technically not the founder in those 2 experiences but I felt like I was an entrepreneur and that to me was the most important thing. Um. But but just to sort of answer your question in more detail after selling guide central and taking a little bit of time off we moved back from New York to Argentina and the reality is that we had been leaving abroad for 7 years and I didn’t really have much context about what was going on in latime I didn’t have a team. In latimea I didn’t have an idea for latime. So um I thought it was like probably the um it wasn’t the right call to start something if I didn’t have a team or an idea or a context and so. I thought okay possibly the like the best alternative is to continue to feel that I’m starting something or doing something or just like you know feeling like I’m an entrepreneur. Um, but in in sort of a different context and that’s why. Know I joined Ratarrano Rerano was maybe like three or four years old it was like a post seriesb company I joined us Cmo and then also took on the on the sales and partnerships road so I was effectively leading the entire marketplace um innate markets I was part of the leadership team.

Gaston Irigoyen: And you know our overall feeling was that my overall feeling was that I was almost like ah like a founder and I was at the end of a day building something medium food. Um, so it felt to me like you know, pretty similar to be honest and that was a great experience. I mean we. Ah, continued to build that company at some point we reached brake and then we sold to Tripadvisor so for us out of latime having having sold that company to a publicly listed company and and you know a big name such as stripvisor and going through all the dd process and showing that. You know we can build like a company with global standards out of laam was an amazing experience and yeah, that was it and then with Nara Hayeks ah essentially you know I was Ceo from the first day narah x he’s a spinoff of the largest financial institution in Russia in Argentina also a listed company. And they were ah they they wanted to build a neobank. They already had a bank and they had an insurance company and they had a credit card company and they had ah an investment company and they wanted to build an eobank and they sort of hired me or invited me to come and build it. And so yeah, it was not founder from the first from the first day or technically not founder as you know the the group was kind of the main shareholder but I did have my shares and most importantly I was kind of Ceo from the first day and so I felt like I found and yeah in 2 years we you know we built that neobank.

Gaston Irigoyen: Ah, we launched a wallet a mobile pos business. We invested $50000000 we built a team of 280 people. We were granted a banking license and that company now has sort of merged with another sister company and it has like 5000000 customers and 2500 people. So ah, super proud of that experience and in fact, that experience was my first experience in fintech and nanahys in many ways were actually in all ways led to the creation of palmelo because Palmelo is is an answer to our biggest sort of friction and and pain point while building.

Alejandro Cremades: So and let’s talk about a pomeo. How does the idea of palmilo come to you and why you know after all these years you know you think it’s time to do it again.

Gaston Irigoyen: And um x.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah, so as I said the idea came out of our own frustration when I look back and reflect on those 2 years building the neobank eighty percent of our investment 80% of our team 80% of our headaches are of our time. Was sort of related to infrastructure and having to deal with the local incumbent infrastructure in Argentina which is also true for the rest of Latin America um because if you look at one of my cofounders experience. He not only worked with me building the neobank but before that he was at ah at a very successful company called. Um, aholire he he was one of the first um you know employees for Marcalo Pago which is their fintech sort of offering um and he spendts 12 years there doing pretty much the same that we did at naankhaeks. But for many many countries throughout Latin America so he had to go through the process of scaling. Ah, very successful latin american fintech and effectively it took them about a year and a half or 2 to launch in any other given market. So all you know you look at that company now and they are present in I don’t know 6 7 8 markets and it took them about 10 years to do so. And so he went through the same pain but at scale so it was very very clear to us that we had to um, we had a big opportunity at building a new infrastructure for Latin America 1 that is good for the twenty first century one that is good for.

Gaston Irigoyen: All the very very successful and very powerful fintech and crypto companies and even embedded finance players that are being created and are growing throughout the region. Um, which in reality had to build whatever they built on top of ah incumbent infrastructure in the different markets. Um, so yeah I mean we believe this is part of like a second wave of sort of fintech in in Latin America the first one being b two c and this one be in b two b and yeah, the opportunity is massive and and we’re all motivated about doing something for our continent and for the you know the places that we’re from. Um, as you know financial services are structural to the development of any country any society ah same as education same as ah healthcare and in that regard latin america is way behind you know europe or the us or even some some parts of asia like you know china or japan and so we believe that. Ah, by fixing that and by improving that there will be like much better. Ah financial services for the people and we should not forget that latin america is a region with 650000000 people with 2 times the gdp of india but where still 300000000 people have no access to digital financial services and we are living. In markets with massive inflation. We’re not talking about like 10% as in the us or the uk we’re talking about like 50 60 70% which means that people lose money every single day. So it’s hard to get a job and it’s even harder to actually have some sort of disposable income after the the full month. Ah you know goes goes by. So.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, yeah, that really motivates us and and you know we thought that was sort of a big enough sort of opportunity to dedicate our time to to that.

Alejandro Cremades: So so why didn’t up being then the business model of pomelo.

Gaston Irigoyen: So as an infrastructure company. We monetize. It’s kind of a hybrid model between saas and transactional. So just to be clear. We started this sort of infrastructure play. With card issueing processing so essentially allowing companies of all sorts. Not only fintech but also crypto companies and and embedded finance companies launch cards. So we do visa and Mastercard we do physical and virtual cards. Um, we allow them to to issue debit credit prepaid corporate cards, crypto cards. Ah so cards have been sort of the wedge in for us and and the reason for that is that? um. Carts are sort of the number 1 instrument that fintex are using to bring more and better financial services to people in Latin America we have around a billion carts and $1,000,000,000,000 been transacted through carts in latime. So ah, we thought that was like a very very clear path because. Ah, it’s hard to launch a card in any given market. It took us about fifteen months at naraha x to do so ah, but it’s even harder if you want to scale that card to other markets because of local regulation local luances in the product structure. Ah or even what the market and the users need so we started with that.

Gaston Irigoyen: And so our model is that essentially we charge like a minimum monthly fee or a yearly contract broken down into into monthly sort of ah bills or invoices. Ah so that’s sort of the Sas piece and then when companies gain volume and go past beyond that sort of threshold they pay. As as they grow they pay as they consume so that’s more of a transactional model. So um, that’s that’s a model. It’s a very noble model because it’s very aligned with the p ands of our customers. We allow our customers to not only improve their value prop but also make money and generate revenue through. Ah the q-ish ones. And then we take a percentage or a cut or a take rate on whatever they make so they they always earn more revenue than what we earn and at the same time they have full visibility and they can sort of predict very well. What their cost will be um so we’re very very well aligned which is not. Ah, how the industry has historically worked here in that number.

Alejandro Cremades: Now you guys have raised quite a bit of money. How much capital have you guys raised to date.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah, we have raised $60,000,000 in less than twenty months we’re twenty months old so we raised a seat round when we had absolutely nothing. We were just like 3 founders on our deck. Well I guess we had our experience and then a very clear thethes thesis. But yeah, we we hadn’t written a single line of code so we raised 10,000,000 as a seed round which yeah was almost like a preeed but let’s call it a seed and then ah. Four or five months later we raised our c we say and interestingly we were still pre preproduct and pre-revee. Of course we were very lucky timing wise because this we say was you october last year at the peak of the bull market but we managed to raise our valuation like by 7 times and raised another 30 ah, 6000000 and then about three or four months ago we raised another 15000000 so it was like a seriesa extension with sort of which sort of packaged our series we say at 50000000 but interestingly we we were also able to bump the valuation by 50% so um, yeah, it’s been sort of an awwards trajectory. And yeah, the company is very very well-capitalized. Of course we benefited from our own experience and from very good market conditions. But even when the market conditions got significantly worse. We continue to see all the support from our great investors plus interest from outsiders.

Gaston Irigoyen: And so that means that we you know we we’ve been able to to to you know Ah yeah, build a war chest for for the years to come and so we have very good runway and and a very clear path to profitability and the business is growing very nicely. So. Ah, yeah, pretty proud of our sort of fund racing history.

Alejandro Cremades: And and why racing in such a small timeframes in between you know, one round and the other because typically. You know companies would leave 18 to twenty four months in between financing cycles. So why do you guys reduce it to twenty months to to really raise all that money.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah I think um I think that was that was something that we did well we we were able to sort of to read what was going on um with a lot of clarity and we also have great. Um, great investors that advised us very very well. So. If I think of you know going from the seed round to the seriesa the series we say being like as I said I think five months or so after the seed round it was was really preempted so you know ah Tiger came along and they wanted to lead our c we say and so um, you know, um, as. As I said before when we looked at it we were still kind of the same company. We were still um you know pre-product and pre-revenu the team had grown and we had incorporated some amazing talent which I think is something that the market has always recognized us. Um. But the vaitionion was going up and and the brand was there and we sort of understood that it was you know a very very good and bullish sort of time and we decided to take it. It. It was you know honesty against sort of our um, you know projections because as ah as as you said we were. Ah, you know we were expecting to raise our our see we say at least a year later but it simply sort of happened and I think we had the ability to read the situation very well and and take advantage of the opportunity.

Gaston Irigoyen: And then if I think of our extension which was ah 3 to four months ago so yet again maybe like nine months after the c we say I think was a completely different reason. The market has changed ah had changed dramatically and it was very clear that it was going to and it’s still very clear that it’s going to be very hard to race. Ah, in the in the years two comments and even more so as a latin american company because as funds sort of reverse um to the mean and you know sort of go back to their core markets. There’s going to be less capital available arguably. You know more capital a beta was for the great companies but less capital available. Overall we thought that by securing the additional 15000000 then you know that would put us in a very very good position because we had we would have more runway and and you know could continue to execute. Um, with peace of mind and that’s exactly what we’re doing and yet again I think that was the right call. So um, yeah, it was a combination of you know things that happened externally and and also our ability to not not only race but also to kind of read. In between lines and better understand what the conditions were and and also follow the advice of some of the great investors that we have.

Alejandro Cremades: Now if you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of palmelo is fully realized what does that world look like.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah that’s great question I think you know a company of this nature will take you know 2 to 3 decades to to mature. Um, if if we think about it like you know the current financial infrastructure in financial services infrastructure in Latin America was built you know 3 to 4 decades ago. And ah and um, you know it’s definitely not prepared for today’s world with the difference that that today’s word sort of accelerates and changes at a much much you know higher pace than than it did in the past and we live in a continent that not only has many many different countries but has. Ah, you know, ah different regulation on different market meets and different products and there’s a lot more complexities now because on top of the sort of the the card brails that we are used to. We now have sort of bank ah bank drivenven or bank-owned. Um you know, um.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, technologies like pigs in Brazil that it’s sort of being exported to many other countries or you know, um, transfers 3.0 as they’re called in Argentina which operate with qr codes so that’s like a very clear emerging second rail. Ah, driven by the central banks and their own technology and then there’s of course crypto and then there’s of course cash which believe it or not remains like a very very significant rail. Ah, even though not electronic rail of course, but but it’s still a rail and and so. All these complexities also also mean that whoever you know is going to build like a truly regional and new generation infrastructure has to serve multiple use cases not only sort of on the isuing side but also on the acquiring side. Not only for users but also for merchants and yeah, that will take a long time. Um, so I think to answer your question I think ah you know I mean hopefully we never get to the stage where we feel you know, comfortable enough with what has been done because it’s ever changing but ah to the extent that we can look at this and say hey. You know all these legacy systems that were built in the twenty first century yeah Twentieth century sorry do not exist anymore and even the banks are using like a new generation infrastructure then that would have that would mean that we had really you know.

Gaston Irigoyen: Made a step change for for the region and and sort of that step changes and becoming the new normal and the new default I think that would that would in many ways mean success.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in your case I mean you now you’ve you’ve been at it for a while. So if you had the opportunity of going back in time and maybe having a chat with that younger Gaston that younger Gaston that was you know, perhaps an employee at Google and thinking about like what will be.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um.

Alejandro Cremades: A world a future where you know you would bring your own solution to live I mean if you were able to have a chat with your younger self on giving that younger self one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why given what you know now.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, yeah I mean I would give the younger Gueston the the very same piece of advice that I gave the older guest on because ah, all the learnings that that I had sort of incorporated throughout the years are the ones that I tried to use. Ah, before starting the but this business. But if I have to put it down like in 1 specific sample I think the first time when when I when I left Google um, to start my first business guide central um. You know I was very impulsive right? like I had this good experience doing the world cup application and I had a little bit of a team and then I had some insights from Youtube um, and I thought you know all those pieces independently were sort of good enough to articulate something and and go for it and I pretty much you know resigned one Friday and then. Ah, went to Ikea ah during the weekend bought a desk and then on Monday started. Um and that’s when I had to start effectively doing a lot of the either research or you know structuring the idea in better ways and looking for people and so on and so forth and. You know in retrospect that was a mistake and they should have you know, waited a lot more packaged that or bundled that or they risk the idea a lot more before even started which is exactly what we did this time around after leaving naankhaeks. Ah you know in the summer ah going from 29 sorry 2020 to 2021.

Gaston Irigoyen: Ah, summer here in in Latin America in the southern hemisphere you know I took some time out but I then I also took those two to three months to really articulate the idea so I sat down with my cofounders we discussed whether we were the right cofounders or not what our responsibilities would be what our roads would be. Um, we we actually discussed like 3 different ideas then we decided that this one was the the best 1 at least in our minds and then we started sort of a dear risking process on the 1 hand but also like a validation validation process on the other hand and that took as I said between two or three months before we had like the confidence level that we were the right team with it. The right idea at the right time to go for it and you know that proved to be right? So you could you know while the younger guest would have saw would have thought hey hey man you’re losing time because you’re losing 2 or 3 very vol months. The older Guesttan said. Hey. No I mean that’s actually ah, that’s actually a big asset and that’s actually a big dear riskker and that proved to be right because ah, many of the good things that happened to us during this year and a half or so are a product or a byproduct of. All that process and making sure that we started on the right on the right direction.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it So got stunt for the people that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

Gaston Irigoyen: Yeah Linkedin I’d say I’m a little bit active on Linkedin this day. So just my name and last name Gaston Irigoyen: and then my last name is iri g o y n um. Yeah I’m that’s the number 1 place where where people can find me and yeah, it’d be great to connect with your audience I’m sure there’s a lot of very interesting people out there.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing! Well Iton thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Gaston Irigoyen: Um, of course. Thanks Aleandra was great, fun and um, okay see you next time.

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John Bissell is going even further than carbon neutral, by pioneering carbon-negative materials to help combat climate change on a large scale. His company, Origin Materials, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Danone, AECI, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada, and Nestlé.

In this episode, you will learn:

Recruiting and credibility
Startup fundraising
How to get hired at Origin Materials
John’s top advice when starting a business

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Your email address is 100% safe from spam!About John Bissell:John Bissell co-founded Origin Materials in November 2008 and has served as its Chief Executive Officer and a member of its board of directors since its inception. Mr. Bissell has extensive experience in R&D, engineering, and business development in the chemical industry. In 2008, Mr. Bissell received the People, Prosperity, and the Planet Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and in 2014, he was on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Energy & Industry category. Mr. Bissell holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Davis.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So super excited about the guest that we have today man he’s been working on this company for quite a while and we’re goingnna be learning everything about building scaling financing. You know he’s taking his company public too. So we’re gonna be talking about that process as well. But without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today John Biso welcome to the show. So originally born in Sacramento and you know you’ve been there and you’re still there which is unbollliable so give us a little of a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up.

John Bissell: Hey thanks for having me really appreciate it.

John Bissell: Yeah, you know I think ah I grew up. Yeah in Sacramento and Sacramento was not that it’s sort of like a world class metropolis at this point but it’s ah it was even less of a world class metropolis back when I was growing up here. It was pretty. You know some sometimes people call it the yeah the where the midwest meets California um, and that’s you know. Pretty true. Ah so started in California grew up. You know, relatively Um benign ah kind of upper middle class. Um life in the suburbs um ended up going to Ucdavis For Chemical Engineering and then started this company. Origin. Pretty close to straight out of school and Davis is close to Sacramento um, wanted to be close to some of the technical capabilities that you see Davis but Davis is a bit more expensive so ended up back in Sacramento. Um, and now you know. Once you start something it. It could be a little bit challenging to move it and so we’re still here.

Alejandro Cremades: Now Now out of all things chemical engineering white chemical engineering.

John Bissell: Yeah, so chemical engineering. It’s It’s interesting if you ask people how they end up in chemical engineering. You get a very similar story from the vast majority of people which is they have no idea or had no idea what chemical Engineers Engineers did before they started as a chemical engineer. And they all enter the discipline because they like you know physics chemistry and math typically biology and and are you know particularly had a good experience with Calculus in high school something along those lines and everybody says Yeah, you all you? Maybe you think about being a chemical engineer So It’s it’s sort of a. Qualification set that determines whether people end up as chemical engineers not because they realize what a chemical engineer does and I was the same way.

Alejandro Cremades: Nice now in your case you know right? after graduation you know 2008 you thought that the best thing was starting a business. You know, probably you know in the middle of the meltdown of the economy. What were you thinking? John.

John Bissell: Yeah, right? Well so that’s exactly right? it was I was working at um, a spin out of a company called aerojat which was sort of like the original rocket company. Um, they made Minuteman Missiles and all this kind of stuff and ah and I remember. Doing this sort of nights and weekends and trying to get it started and um and I realized that we were going to sort of really we were going to jump ship from our our day job and go full time. My cofounder and I Ryan Smith and we sort of made that commitment to each other. Right around when I guess it would have been a little after Lehman collapsed. So literally I mean that was my my timeline anchor point was the the global financial crisis was in process very much so as we were quitting our jobs and going to start this and and. You know, part of the thought was and that we thought we could do something better right? That was why we started a company instead of just going to work for 1 of the the legacy organizations was you know we thought they weren’t tackling the modern problems. Um, in the way that they needed to. In part because back then people didn’t frankly, didn’t believe right? They thought climate change wasn’t a thing um and then in part because they’re not incentivized to right? They have big existing legacy businesses. They don’t need to go change a bunch of stuff to keep making money right? And that’s a really hard place to be if you want to go? um.

John Bissell: Digest your existing business in order to do something differently. That’s a little better. Maybe a lot better. So We we thought we would start a company um and and I think the other part was we were sort of infected by the tech bug. Um, that started you know Web 2.0 was um. Was thoroughly in swing in 2007 2008 and so we kind of generalized that idea Beyond software which was in retrospect you know boy are there a lot of differences between what people now call deep tech and chemicals and software or or the web. But um. But that was the thought right was well if they can start companies that are huge companies from nothing. Um and frankly that that the common knowledge was that that’s actually the best way to do. It is not to try to change an existing company but to start a new one then we should do that too And um I don’t know that there was a lot more thought about it than that.

Alejandro Cremades: Now How were the um I mean and and I guess just for the people that are listening to get it. What ended up being the business model of origin. How do you guys make money. Yeah.

John Bissell: Yeah, well so we’re a chemical technology company and and 1 of the things about chemistry and and materials more broadly is that basically the chemical and materials industry produces. All of the physical stuff that you use in your entire life right? People think about. Chemicals as something esoteric that they don’t interact with very often. You know the closest people get sometimes is like pool chemicals or something like that. That’s what they think of as chemicals. The reality is literally every single physical good that you use is an output at some point of the chemical industry. So everything from chemicals and materials. Everything from metals glass. Um, your desk your construction materials. The road base. Um, you know asphalt the stuff you’re wearing right? All of it is a material that came out of the chemical industry so that’s really the industry that we’re we’re involved in um and so what we do is we make what we call intermediates and I call them sometimes lego bricks that you can use to make materials out of and we make those lego bricks that are in a way that makes them carbon negative which means there’s less carbon in the atmosphere after we’re done making them than there was when we started. That’s. That’s carbon negative and um, we make these new lego bricks that are carbon negative. People can use those in existing materials and dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of the materials that they’re using or you can make new materials out of them stuff that nobody’s been able to really make at scale before so that’s what we do we develop that technology the way we make money is we go build plants.

John Bissell: Make those Intermediates um and we sell those Intermediates ah or we you know can set up other deals where we’re providing technology and somebody else goes and builds the plant makes it and we you know we get some cut of that deal. So Those are the 2 ways that ah that our business operates and those are pretty traditional ways for the chemical industry. That’s the way when you have new technology. That’s what you do.

Alejandro Cremades: Now One of the things that that is key when when starting a company is being at the right time in history and I’m sure that when you guys got started it Back. You know way you know nobody really was talking about climate change you know or or anything you know like this. But now you know it’s incredible. This is like top of mind you know every day all day. So How do you think that timing you know like has played a role in in your guys’ story. Yeah.

John Bissell: Yeah, Well So what’s interesting is if you go back to the global financial crisis there actually was at well pre Gfc. There was a niis of a climate movement that had started. Um. And there were some large investors in that area too that were really putting up their own money to try to get technology rolling and so we were sort of the tail end of that wave now that wave was very small. It was a little ripple relative to what we’re seeing right now but it was it was enough that um it. Put it on our Radar. We felt like there was a community right? that there was you know there was stuff happening and and of course that all went away as part of a global financial crisis so we sort of got involved thinking boy there’s you know a couple of companies that are doing some really interesting things Here. We’re going to get involved and then sort of it all evaporated right? and we were left and we had to figure out our own Way. What felt like pretty alone right now it didn’t feel like there were a lot lot of other companies that were trying to do what we were doing um and so I think from a timing perspective. We sort of tried to get the timing right in the beginning and of course got it debt wrong Wow From some perspectives.

John Bissell: And then our view was well look the world needs this we think we can add a lot of value and so whether we’ve got the timing right? or not let’s go develop this technology make it happen because we think the world needs the technology and then of course yeah so we did that for you know 10 years and um kept moving along. And you know, gradually increasing customer demand gradually increasing the improving the technology making our way through and then of course as you said now there’s this really with covid is where we saw it this enormous rise in interest and commitment to ah. Making a difference with climate and changing people’s supply chains and their products and their designs their market. All this kind of stuff to make it happen and so um, so in that sense I guess you know from a timing perspective. We just had enough foresight to develop the technology 10 years before we needed it.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s incredible. That’s incredible now Now let’s talk about the early days tell us about recruiting chemists. Especially one of them. You know there’s a fun story there you know, tell us about it. So.

John Bissell: Yeah, Sure. So um, so early days you know one of the things that I say about about well all companies but particularly in our space is that credibility is one of the things that you’re fighting for um, early early on that’s you Know. You have no credibility relative to a dow chemical or ah, you know an oil major or somebody like that right? Um, as a little startup with 3 or 4 people and so you’re you’re just constantly fighting to demonstrate that what you’re doing is worthwhile and that it’s going to deliver and that includes for recruiting and so now.

John Bissell: Just to provide some contrast now we you know we get some of the best people in the entire world and everybody knows they’re the best in the world right? and they come to join origin um, that wasn’t how it used to be right. It used to be. You know you need to get really great folks, but ah. You know if I go up to the the most senior technology person at um at an oil major when I when we were a 4 person company. They don’t even respond to your email right? Let alone come work for you in Sacramento. Um, so we had to get really good at spotting talent that nobody else was spotting. But that was still world class. So um, and I hadn’t sort of figured this out yet. But ah, but our first technical hire outside of the founding team really um was a guy named. Um, he’s now our chief scientist. Um Michaeluno and he he i. He was referred to me by a couple other folks at you Davis. So I asked some of the professors and grad students. You know who was the best grad student in in recent memory that got their ph d that experimentally and um, what we say on the whiteboard which means theoretically so experimentally the best who is that who and then who is the best. Um. Ah, theoretically and I figured I’d hired both of them right? that was going to be my approach and they said oh that’s easy. It’s actually 1 guy who is the best of both. Um, this guy Maco Mosuno so you got ah you know here’s and the person who happened to be um, making introduction was ah could be a little flaky and so um.

John Bissell: He he said I’ll give you his number but I don’t know you know you don’t want me to make the introduction because I didn’t show up to a game of golf recently and now I don’t think he wants to call me back. You know so okay so I get his number and I call him up. It turns out our chief scientist is um, he’s a pretty conservative guy just sort of bite by nature. So I call him up and then. He’s he’s sort of gotten a little bit of a briefing of who I am and what I’m going to ask and ah and he says look I yeah I sat down before I got on the call and I figured out how I was going to tell you no because when I commit to something I commit so wholeheartedly that um I sort of don’t leave anything in the tank. He said and I just don’t know if I’m in that spot right now I said okay, well, how about this, you don’t have to commit. Let me just take you to lunch and we can talk about it for a little while so he goes okay, he’s a food guy so he goes I gave him a really good lunch spot. We went um and he shows up and he shows up with a stack of. Ah, academic literature six inches thick that he had gone through paper by paper and highlighted all of the stuff and it was all the relevant literature that he could find this is an enormous I mean this is this is dozens if not hundreds of hours worth of work that he had done before coming to lunch to tell me? no right. And he gives me this Manila folder with all of these stacks paper in it. He says by the way I just can’t do it? Um, but here I did all this research for you and I was like god I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person who is more bored in what they’re doing than this guy he obviously I mean he’s like desperate to do great science.

John Bissell: And and so I said look well, you don’t have to make a commitment but why don’t you just come over and see our labs and he spent about 6 hours in our labs that afternoon and he’s been working for us since when you know he basically never laughed. Um, so it’s just amazing though. The the idea that somebody who’s so good and by the way I get to see him. Um, you know do science right? and technology development with with now some of the best people in the whole world and he absolutely he’s he’s as good. He’s he’s even better than I hoped he would be then right ten years later um but it was crazy to me that. Somebody who is that good could sort of ah not get sucked up into the larger chemical industry. You know how are they missing people that were so spectacular and um and that’s been sort of a question for me for the last ten years frankly is is where are these folks but that was that. Frankly I think if we hadn’t made that hire. Um, when we did I don’t think we would have made it. You know it was an incredible incredible moment.

Alejandro Cremades: Mile now. Let’s talk about capitalizing the business. So obviously you guys got started no way how how has it been the process of of capitalizing the business all the way up to the ipo that you guys did.

John Bissell: Yeah, so it was it was almost entirely what we would usually say venture capital based but it wasn’t still It wasn’t sort of standard sandhill road style venture capital that we we pitched all the Sand Hill guys but um ah but you know I understandable I mean I was I was young particularly young men. But um so I didn’t fully appreciate it. But but I understand why you know this is a business where you get to spend a bunch of money to develop technology so that you have the opportunity to spend a bunch of you. You spend even more money to s sink seal on the ground right? Um, you need a lot of. Hash to go into a business like this before you get to really? um, generate high school operating returns now the flip side of that is so does anybody else who wants to compete with you right? So you end up with a gigantic moat. Um, that’s at not just money-based and resource based but also time-based right? It takes. 10 to 15 years to develop this kind of technology even if you’re a big chemical company so you end up in a great spot on the other side but I see why you know the sandhoe guys would look at that and say you know Jesus you’re talking about basically a decade or more of. Of continued investment into this company I you know I can just go fund this software company for far less so we didn’t get the traditional sand hill guys. But what we did get were venture capitalists often working out of sort of their personal account effectively? um, investing in us and particularly the ones who were technical.

John Bissell: And had a deep understanding of the market and the industry and so we had a handful of of folks who really were committed and saw the vision. Um all the way through who who supported us until we took the company public.

Alejandro Cremades: So how was the um, how much capital that you guys raised prior to taking the company public because you took the company public in in 2021 so you know that was quite a ah bit of time there from all 8 all the way to 2021 so

John Bissell: Right.

Alejandro Cremades: How much capital Do you guys raise for.

John Bissell: Yeah, sure a 100,000,000 I actually don’t you think that after all that I would know the number down to that down to the penny. But I don’t and but I think it’s a little north of a 100000000 all told and now to today we’ve raised. Um.

Alejandro Cremades: Yeah, got it because up and up until today. How much capital have you guys raised in total for the business.

John Bissell: Um, you know circa 650,000,000 something along this range that range. So.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it and what is it? What is it like I mean there’s probably like a lot of folks that are listening a lot of entrepreneurs that are you know, very very familiar with you know the venture route and racing different rounds and things like that. So So your case I mean how was it you know. Taking the company public I mean how do you come to? the conclusion hey you know let’s let’s take this company. You know to the public markets and then how do you navigate that because you know the private. You know it’s a little bit Easier. You know the public here more in the public Eye. So How has it been. You know the journey the experience and then also how was. Taking the company public.

John Bissell: Yeah, well I think it was it was from a decision perspective. It was relatively straightforward for us. We had a quite sizable private um round that we had lined up um, sort of towards the end of Twenty Twenty and we were looking at that and and it became clear that there was a window for us to take the company public as well. So you know you just for for a really capital intensive business like us that’s ah, that’s a dominant part of the the sort of strategic concern is what is my cost of capital because I need a lot of it and so. Looking at the effective cost of capital in the private market versus the public market at that point in time it was very clear that the the public markets had lower cost of of equity capital for a company like us. Um, and so that was the direction now when we saw that window open. Again, we were sort of lined up for this private round and we said geez I think I think we need to take a run at the public um market and putting that together in a relatively short period of time. During covid right? I mean we were all working remotely. We were living our life on Zoom plus there were all the supply chain challenges. Plus yeah I mean at at the time you know this is still true. Even even service industries were getting drawn down so aggressively. There’s hard to get. You know it’s hard to get all the service that you needed from.

John Bissell: You know financiers and and lawyers and accountants and all those kinds of things because everybody was just um, crushed with demand and so putting that together in the space of a relatively short period of time. Um, now that that was interesting that was challenging and.

John Bissell: And I think you know I particularly remember the sort of point of no return where we said well we’re good. You didn’t get to really line it up partly just because of a resource perspective on our side. You couldn’t really quite line it up where it was you you have the private round and you get to see if you’re going to land the public. Ah, the go public process. Um, before you let the private round go. You know you had to bet on one before you landed it and um, so that point of no return was ah that was an interesting one. You know I think I don’t think we’d ever really committed. Ten years ago to the idea that we would take the company public. We always thought you know maybe there’s a chance we’ll stay private forever. Maybe we’ll go public. We don’t know so but it’s ah obviously it’s a notable moment right to take a company into the public capital markets.

Alejandro Cremades: And people talk about taking companies public and then having access to those large pools of capital. What do they mean with that. Yeah.

John Bissell: Right? Well I mean there’s a lot more money in the public markets than there’s the private markets. Um, it’s different kind of money right in in some ways I think ah you know there’s certainly just like anything else that are pros and cons you know I think you get um.

John Bissell: In some ways you end up with a little bit more healthy kind of communication relationship I think or maybe maybe the the standard investor management relationship is a healthier relationship in the public markets than than the standard one is in the private markets. Um. But that’s largely maybe just because you have less variability right in the private markets your investor management relationship can be all over the place right? You can have all kinds of different relationships there whereas in the public markets I think there’s a standard right? You you go in. You say this is how this sort of how it works this how you communicate?? Um, and so I think that’s been Interesting. Ah. I Think in terms of pools of Capital. You know? what’s interesting is I think the size of ah of a given pool of capital and the decision maker on it is actually somewhat similar to the size in the private Markets. You know you’re talking about often a portfolio manager has a billion dollars right? that they plus minus that they can make decisions allocating and um. That’s not. It’s bigger, but it’s not terribly different from a typical private equity sort of decision making threshold in pool of Capital. So I think that part’s actually interestingly more similar than I would have guessed I wouldn’t have known that ahead of time but in a lot of ways it um you know. The investor relations are not so different. You know.

Alejandro Cremades: I Hear you now imagine you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world where the vision of origin is fully realized what does that world look like.

John Bissell: Yeah, it’s an interesting world. Um I mean look the the objective for origin is to is to create um the materials technology that’s required for the human species to be successful in the next millennium right? Um, and. And I think as you look at that the way we’re approaching is is changing the foundations of materials. So we we don’t want people to take oil out of the ground and turn that into products we want people to um to use carbon negative materials right? and that means using biological waste materials. So the leftovers from from harvesting wood for um. Ah, dimensional number and the leftovers from food production. Um all sorts of stuff like that maybe purpose grown things as well. And so I think what that said what that that world looks like a couple things 1 um, origin type technology is the dominant technology to supply materials. Um, into the industry to um, you actually I I think the world will be better off and it will be helped by this with origin technology to have fewer materials. So I think we have too many different materials that are all mixed together all the time some people call this that sort of monomaterials.

John Bissell: And the reason that that’s important is because um, one of course you can You can spend more time optimizing the production of materials if you only have a few of them. But the the more important version is you can recycle things more easily when there are fewer materials in them. One of the major hurdles to recycling things you know people talk about how recycling is Broken. What’s broken about recycling for the most part is that stuff is made of multiple materials and as a consequence you can’t It’s It’s pretty infeasible to take a product that has multiple different materials in it and recycle each of those Materials. You basically just have to throw it away. And so I think having fewer materials um, will really drive value in that sense So you’ve got origin making the materials from carbon negative sources and then you have fewer materials that enables recycling and closing the loop on the other side. Um that I think is a lot of what the world looks Like. Um, and I think it’s one that you know how you use those materials a different question right? and people are going to develop all sorts of products there I’m sure that’ll make the world look different but the key in my mind is that you’re making all of those things differently and that’s the big difference.

Alejandro Cremades: Now imagine if I was to put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time. Maybe back to a wait where you were thinking about starting a business of your own and you were able to you know, have a sit down with that younger John and and giving that younger John A. piece of advice for launching a business. What would that be and why give me what you know now.

John Bissell: Yeah, that’s good question too. Um I I think that we were right very early on about our our sort of theory of value for the technology.

John Bissell: And um I think most of the I’ll say errors or inefficiencies that we um, committed over that the lifetime of the company were the result of.

John Bissell: Not trusting ourselves enough early on I think that we were basically what we laid down in the very beginning as the core tenets that were required for us to be successful and the things that we needed to work On. Um and you know the corollary there is. What are the things that we don’t need to work on because once you’re ready, they’ll just Work. We were pretty right about all of that We weren’t always um, sufficiently convicted about that and so sometimes we would go Explore. We would feel like ah gosh I’ve got to go figure out how to do this other thing. Yeah I’ve got to develop my project execution capability early because I’m not sure if I maybe I need it right now we almost never did right? we were we we we could have been a bit faster but probably more efficient and I’ll say certainly. Ah. Lower stress. Um, if we had been committed to our early theory of value because I think that’s where we are right now right? We actually fully agree with where we started but you know took a little bit of journey to get there.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it now for the people that are listening to get an idea on the scope and size of origin today I mean anything that you can share in terms of number of employees or anything else that you feel comfortable sharing. So.

John Bissell: Yeah, sure I don’t know exactly what the last sort of disclosed number was but call it sort of north of 150 employees um lots of scientists and engineers. So we’re totally world class scientists and engineers. Um.

John Bissell: And by lots I mean significantly north of half are are are very high quality scientist nun engineers and of course then you need other functions as well. But um, ah in terms of scale we’re we’re ah building our first plant origin one. Ah, cruche plant origin one in Canada and that’s that’s ah you know we often think of it as a small plant for us. But it’s a big plant in the grand scheme of things. It’s over $100,000,000 in total capex you know it’s seven stories high. Um, it’s multiple acres in footprint. Um, it’s ah it’s a big asset. Um, and then origin 2 which we’re in ah, what’s called frontend loading or engineering for right now is um and that’ll be down in geisburg Louisiana that is a really big plant. You know that’s one hundred and fifty acre footprint give or take um it’s ah it’s a billion dollars in capex it’ll employ. You know, many hundreds of people just to operate that plant right? So so the scale that we’re dealing with is large on that sense. Um, and then on the on the market side I think it’s interesting to think about too. You know the materials markets are a couple trillion dollars basically and. You can slice it a bunch different ways but call it a future trillion Dollar market and it’s a significant proportion of the human economy and it’s it’s much more concentrated than people realize you know there aren’t 10000 materials companies that matter there are about 20 something like that. Um, and.

John Bissell: And so what we’re doing is we’re starting in some of the larger components of that market. You know a larger component is $100000000000 market out of that couple trillion of total materials. So pet is where we’re starting amongst and carbon black a couple others. Um and what I think is interesting. Is you know. You can sort of get a sense of how big a market you have based on how fast you’re growing right? You’re growing your backlog or your demand or whatever it is and we are growing with a a very small sort of ah salesforce. So ah, a group of folks that’s um. You know, 5 or fewer depending on how you count them and we’re growing at about $1,000,000,000 a quarter. Um, which really again gives you a sense of the scale right? It’s it’s it’s sort of shocking. Um, how much demand there is for decarbonized versions of these materials. Even at premiums right? I mean look there’s if there’s that much demand that means there’s scarcity and that means you’re going to charge more so and and it doesn’t it. It doesn’t slow down at all I mean it’s it’s incredible to be growing at that rate I mean you could think of that as from a demand perspective at a significant premium. We’re growing at. Circa a hundred percent year on year right? more. It’s pretty wild.

Alejandro Cremades: Mo Well I right time right time in history John. So for the folks that are listening. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

John Bissell: Ah, depends on who you are. But um, if ah if you work for us. Then if you’re a scientist or an engineer that would like to work for us. Um, then you should go to our careers page that’d be great if you are um if you want to be a customer then you can pretty much reach out to anybody in the entire company and they’ll funnel you to the right spot.

Alejandro Cremades: Ah.

John Bissell: Um, if you’re a partner then you can you can probably do the same as a customer but generally speaking our our websites originmaterials.com and so you can find everything you you want there or Linkedin something like that.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well hey John thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today. It has been and on earth to have you with us.

John Bissell: Thanks for having me really appreciate it.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com

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Arthur Waller is now on his second company. Having successfully exited his first startup, he has already raised a substantial amount of capital for his new fintech adventure. The company, PennyLane has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Partech, Sequoia Capital, Global Founders Capital, and Kima Ventures.

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Ryan Williams’ startup has not only raised substantial equity for his tech startup but has seen it invest in over $1B in assets. The venture, Cadre has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Harold Callais, Breyer Capital, Goldman Sachs Investment Partner, and Class 5 Global.

Sokratis Papafloratos is a serial entrepreneur who has started, built, and exited. His newest venture into digital health is his biggest and boldest yet. The venture, Numan has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Kreos Capital, Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Paul Heydon, and VNV Global.

Arvind Jain knows the value of hard work and conviction. His passion for creating a system that solves problems has led to him being the founder and mastermind behind brilliant applications such as Glean and Rubrik. Arvind took his passion for solving problems and thought about ways that he could help everyday people to improve their lives in different ways.

Arvind learned early on that innovation must be coupled with determination and effort to create a successful business. So he started by pursuing his passions and interests in school and later took the tech world by storm when he decided to launch his own business. His venture Glean has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Slack Fund, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Christine de Wendel kickstarted her fintech startup with a massive $24M Seed round. Followed by an even larger Series A fundraising round, just four months later. Her venture, Sundayapp has attracted the interest of top-tier investors like DST Global, Coatue, New Wave, and French Partners.

After years of growing some of the most well-known financial and technology brands, John Macllwaine decided to take the reins of the future with his own fintech startup. His company, Highnote has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Westcap, SVB Capital, Renaud Laplanche, and Costanoa Ventures.

Stefan Ytterborn started building companies when he was just 19 years old. He has now been at it for 30 years. He has launched, grown, funded, and exited. His first venture POC was acquired by Investcorp and his second startup, Cake Bikes, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like AMF, Creandum, and Headline.

Angus McDonald has gone from growing up on a rural farm, to operating a fast-growing global tech startup that has raised tens of millions of dollars in capital. The venture, Cover Genius has raised funding from top-tier investors like G Squared, Sompo Holdings, King River Capital, and Leap Capital.

Wei Gan has brought together hundreds of millions of dollars in both equity and credit facilities to scale his startup in an incredibly fast-growing market. The venture, Ribbon Home has raised funding from top-tier investors like Thomvest Ventures, NFX, Guy Gal, and Nyca Partners.

Serial entrepreneur Dheeraj Pandey has raised tens of millions of dollars for his latest tech startup. He took his first venture, Nutanix public, and has now moved on to DevRev. Top-tier investors like Mayfield Fund, Firebolt Ventures, Bradley Horowitz, and Khosla Ventures have funded the startup.

Kirat Singh’s startup is empowering the future of financial markets. They just put tens of millions of additional capital in the bank to fuel their growth too. His venture, Beacon has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Pimco and Blackstone.

David McFarland has raised tens of millions of dollars to improve the insurance industry, and in turn, empower brokers and their small business customers to survive and thrive. His venture, Coterie Insurance has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Weatherford Capital, Alpha Edison, Group 1001, and RPM Ventures.

Sam Hodges took his first startup all the way to IPO, after raising $370M in funding for it. His latest venture has already raised $160M to help other founders reduce risk. The venture, Funding Circle has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Waterfall Asset Management, DST Global, Rocket Internet, and Union Square Ventures.

Ali Albazaz has now raised nearly $100M for his new method of publishing that is rivaling the kindle. His venture Inkitt has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Redalpine, New Enterprise Associates, and Speedinvest.

Reed McGinley-Stempel is the cofounder and CEO of Stytch which improves security and user experience with passwordless authentication. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors such as Index Ventures, Benchmark, Coatue, Thrive Capital, and Contrary to name a few.

Ankur Rungta has started not one, but two companies. His venture into cannabis alone has raised over $100M. The venture C3 Industries has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Navy Capital, Madison Square Park Capital, and WelCan Capital.

Troy Pospisil is the cofounder and CEO of Ontra which is a provider of technology and services for contract automation and intelligence. The company has raised $250 million from investors like Battery Ventures and Blackstone Group.

Alasdair McLean-Foreman came to America with virtually nothing and has already started and sold two startups. He is now on his third. Alasdair's venture, Teikametrics has raised funding from top-tier investors like Granite Point Capital, Jump Capital, Centana Growth Partners, and Lydia Jett.

Eben Bayer appears to have struck on a truly remarkable solution for more environmentally friendly materials, with massive potential. His startup has already raised over $150M in capital from top-tier investors like Siam Capital, Viking Global Investors, Senator Investment Group, and Alpha Impact Investment Management Partners.

Sunil Paul is the cofounder and CEO of Spring Free EV which is a financial technology company built to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles through innovative fintech products. Prior to this he cofounded Brightmail Inc. which he sold for $370 million as well as Freeloader which he sold for $38 million five months after launching the business.

Cesar Jimenez raised a $60M pre-seed funding round for one of his startups. After the financial crisis of 2008, this entrepreneur vowed to keep on going, and currently operates two successful ventures.

Clayton Gardner has raised $75M in capital to modernize investing. His startup is already helping tens of thousands of individual investors diversify into new asset classes with ease. The venture, Titan has raised funding from top-tier investors like Will Smith, Jared Leto, Andreessen Horowitz, and Kevin Durant.

Duncan McIntyre is the founder and CEO of Highland Electric Transportation which is a comprehensive turnkey solutions provider that delivers electric school buses. The company has raised $250 million from investors like Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, Fontinalis Partners, and Vision Ridge Capital Partners to name a few.

Mike Cataldo is now on his second healthcare startup. After a successful exit on his first venture, his new company is rolling out a whole line of new innovative products in the dental space. Convergent Dental raised funding from top-tier investors like George Gund Foundation, Arboretum Ventures, and LRV Health.

Raymond Nobu-Chang has had a series of highly successful startup launches and exits. That includes taking his first company public when he was just 29. The venture, LuckyPai has raised financing from top-tier investors like Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Tenaya Capital, DT Capital Partners, and Intel Capital. Raymond's next company, Agrify is also making waves having acquired three organizations like Precision Extraction Solutions, TriGrow, and Cascade Sciences.

Jim Cacioppo has experienced being on all sides of the table. Including investing in companies, starting and growing them, and acquiring them. His current venture has gone from launch to hundreds of millions in revenue and is becoming a public company in just a few years. Jushi Holdings has raised financing from top-tier investors like Graticule Asset Management Asia and Rockshield Capital.

Mark Hookey bootstrapped and took one startup through to an exit before raising tens of millions of dollars for his most recent company. A venture which is working to empower businesses to get better data, and be able to use it more efficiently and effectively. DeMyst Data has raised funding from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, Singtel Innov8, MissionOG, and SCB 10X.

Cosmo Feilding Mellen has been making huge strides in fueling the second psychedelic renaissance. This time with a professional pharmaceutical theme. His venture, Beckley Psytech has raised funding from top-tier investors like Leafy Tunnel, Palo Santo Fund, Delphi VC, and What If Ventures.

Marci Zaroff has had a string of startup successes. She has raised, launched, grown, and sold a variety of brands that enable us to live the change, eat the change, drink the change, be the change, and wear the change that we all wish to see in the world. Her venture Good Catch raised funding from top-tier investors like Big Idea Ventures, Clear Current Capital, Louis Dreyfus Company, and Unovis Asset Management. Marci has now moved on to her next startup, Eco Fashion Corp.

Allon Bloch is a repeat founder who has been with at least two ventures through going public so far. His newest venture has raised nearly $400M to disrupt and transform the third industry. K Health has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Kaiser Permanente, Counterpart Advisors, BoxGroup, and Valor Equity Partners.

Allon Bloch is a repeat founder who has been with at least two ventures through going public so far. His newest venture has raised nearly $400M to disrupt and transform the third industry. K Health has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Kaiser Permanente, Counterpart Advisors, BoxGroup, and Valor Equity Partners.

In this episode you will learn:

How K Health is transforming healthcare for patients
Allon’s top advice when starting a business
What he says you need to create a successful startup

Alejandro Cremades · EP 415 Allon Bloch On Taking Two Startups To IPO And Raising $375M To Do Healthcare Differently SUBSCRIBE ON:

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About Allon Bloch: Allon Bloch is the CEO and Co-founder of K Health. Previously he served as the CEO of Vroom, the largest online car retailer in the U.S, Co-CEO of Wix, the world’s leading website publishing platform, and CEO of mySupermarket, a digital platform that empowers consumers to find the best prices for their groceries. Allon is also a former venture

capitalist, serving as a Venture Partner with Greylock’s Europe/Israel fund and a General Partner at JVP. He holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and is based in New York.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: 00:00.00

Alejandro:

Um, alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So we have today another founder from startup nation I mean it’s amazing. The founders coming out of Israel. But I think that we’re gonna be learning quite a bit because this founder you know has seen it all. Seen you know the goods and the bads also on the market. So I think that we’re gonna be learning quite a bit from that a lot of adrenaline field stories which I know that you all like so I guess without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today alone block welcome to the show. So originally born in in Israel.

00:29.29

Allon Bloch:

Hey ala Handra good to see you.

00:35.91

Alejandro:

So you know give us a little bit of a walkthrough memory lane. How were your upbringings you know, growing up there. Yeah.

00:40.19

Allon Bloch:

Well Israel was a I grew up in the 70 s so Israel was a very different place. It was a mission driven place there were wars there was by the way hyperinflation I remember as a kid there were 2 currency changes economy was always from 1 recession to to another. Israel wasn’t poor but wasn’t wealthy like it is today. Um, and people were very mission driven. They cared about the country they cared about the society they were trying to it was it was truly a startup country Israel was created 1948.

01:13.42

Alejandro:

So so in your case, why because obviously you did your military they combat the and division there and then you did your undergrad. But then you you lander in the us. So why coming here to the us for the Nba what triggered that.

01:26.70

Allon Bloch:

I didn’t ready have a plan I studied biology ready biochemistry and gene genetictics and um I decided I didn’t want to be a researcher and work in the lab I felt like I wanted to see the world. Um. And I was curious about business I didn’t know what it really meant but you know coming from a small country in the 90 s coming to the us to New York was it was ah was kind of a big change I didn’t have a plan I just knew what I was interested in and what I liked and I hoped. Somehow these things would would you know fit in together so came in Brett Johnson ended up spending probably 18 out of the last twenty five years here but I also went back twice to Israel. I lived in London for 3 years so I’m moving around.

02:21.42

Alejandro:

Moving around and then also you know different things that you’ve done. You know everything started for you in the consulting you know side of things. So I guess you know one of the one of the one of the things that I typically see on on really successful entrepreneurs entrepreneurs that you know have done the full cycle you know and have done it. Well. Is that they have the consulting background. You know, many of them have been in Bcd Mckinsey so what what? would you say that that gave you you know that Mckinsey gave you to really you know think and approach problems.

02:53.39

Allon Bloch:

Look I think it’s a continuum because I don’t know if I’ll do an Mba today. Um, it just to be clear but I did come from a small place and didn’t have a lot of business experience in Columbia gave me the opportunity and from there I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Didn’t want to go to a particular industry and I went to mckinsey at the time in the 90 s um, it was a very thought off to place and so a lot of people wanted to go there. Um I think it was just 2 things 1 is being surrounded by smart ambitious people and the other thing is. Just the ability as a as a young guy I was in my twenty s to see to see how ceos and executives think in you know fortune 500 company so it was interesting for me to see but I also knew fairly quickly that that was not wanted to die what I wanted to do I wanted to I wanted to be able to control my deaths. Control my destiny to be a principal owner of things. So but you know clearly it helps you get exposure to decision making and judgment understand how to communicate. Um, you know. You know those kind of things. So I think it was good for me to do for a couple of years and that was the right amount for me as well.

04:06.84

Alejandro:

So not only on the consulting side. You know you were able to really think about problem solving but then also you were able to look at it too from the investor side right? because I mean you you were on the other side of the table for about 6 years on jvp where you had the. You guys had this $400000000 fund to invest in early stage companies. You know I’m sure that that gave you access to really see what separated the good performers from the bad performers on the fund and perhaps pattern recognition. So. What were you able to identify there from the things that work from the things that did not work in our entrepreneurship.

04:42.35

Allon Bloch:

So first of all I think um, the cycle ready matters and when you’re a young guy you haven’t seen cycles or maybe you don’t realize what his cycle is and I told you kind of growing up in Israel recessions wars new currencies inflation you know. Those are things that you you kind of learn the hardware that you know the economy is not necessarily stable when I joined jvp I joined in April Two Thousand and for those who know you know the stock market peaked I think in March 2000 Nasdaq and and and and the and the craziness around it. Um, and then um, started um, going down gradually and then much foster into late 2000 and into 2001 and I think um. That was a very humbling experience because doesn’t matter what you did things moved from amazing to whatever you did wasn’t get enough so a month after I joined my venture firm ah was a major shareholder in a company called chromatis that was sold to loosen for $5000000 um, that was about 2% of of loosened shares. Um and I you know all of a sudden I have carrie in this in this company that I wasn’t part of putting together the deal I’m this junior guy. Um, you know I’m going to be super successful here. And all of a sudden the world changes dramatically all of a sudden you know the price of the stock of lucent went down 75% but also all these different assets and said we were lucky to raise a fund I think it was four hundred and fifty million dollars um and start investing. And so it interesting on the one hand doesn’t matter what you did nothing kind of worked. There were no ipos There were very few m and as and the prices of deals were much lowerer so 9003. Everybody was still shell shocked if you remember b two b was back to business. Um, yeah, sorry. Ah, back to banking and b two c back to consulting like there was a huge migration out of tech and even 2004 or 11 the markets were very subdued for for technology. There wasn’t a lot of investment certainly not in consumer stuff. It was kind of more more on the b two b side. Um. Doesn’t matter what you did you felt like you were peddling as fast as you could you? You know you you weren’t getting above water but on the other hand um you could take more time you could um think about things you could um you weren’t rushing to invest.

07:27.15

Allon Bloch:

In fact, people wouldn’t wouldn’t touch most companies even if they knew were good I mean I let a deal in a company called cyber arc in April Two Thousand and two in the height of the of the of the of the huge tech you know meltdown um, we raised a $12000000 free um, and you know we invested $6000000 there weren’t a lot of people wanted to invest and so that was an example of a company that twelve years later went public and you know we had a major position in it in part because nobody wanted to you know you know, Coinvest. Um. And so you need to venture in general is always super successful and a lot of failures when you’re in a tough market time. You know you you need to really really double down on. What’s going to work and explain to you. What’s going to work because luck’s not going to work or floating was just buying into a company and it floats more and more successfully is not going to work. Um, and so that dramatically from my perspective um, enabled me to understand early. Stage investing I by the way I loved it. Alejandro I loved it. It’s a lot of fun. You meet smart entrepreneurs. But then again I felt like I want to ah be a principal invest principal owner of the business I don’t want to just invest I want to own. Um. And I remember having a dream that I could do it I haven’t coded since you know middle school so I wasn’t you know an engineer but I felt like I could do it so I wanted to take a concentrated bed of my on myself so that was ah. There but it was so interesting to see all these different entrepreneurs. Super smart people very ambitious different approaches to market different approaches to technology um and early stage investing is always tough because you know it’s it’s mostly still just a dream.

09:32.73

Alejandro:

Yeah, so then so then in your case, what course the what was the trigger for you to go from the investment side to the operating site because you landed on Wix and and what a rocket ship wix. Yeah yeah.

09:43.93

Allon Bloch:

Well in hindsight you know there’s a long of stuff. um know where I didn’t know anything I just you know um I knew um avi shay and Hiss Brother Nadav and the third co-founder gig. Avi Shai was a co-founder of a major tech company called fara that my venture firm backed and wasn’t the company wasn’t successful but I knew Avi shy I knew he was a genius and I knew he is very creative thinker um, and he was working on something that just i. Really really really powerful which is a way to enable people to express themselves online. When fact, wix was called in the beginning wixpress because the whole idea was to okay, how do we enable people to express themselves online as if they’re drawing on a piece of paper as as if they’re. You know, designing something online was out the need to code and all that complexity around that. Um, so how do you build that abstraction layer that editor and so I was drawn to that and we had a lot of different approaches. We didn’t know you know what we ended up doing um. But I joined at the early days there were 10 or 12 people. The product wasn’t stable. We certainly didn’t have a go to market but we had a tremendous vision fonders certainly had um and it felt like the right thing to do because at the time. There was just very little ah very little in the way of enabling small businesses to operate online. It was just so expensive if you go to Godaddy you hire a team you pay them a lot of money. It’s many weeks of building your website now you can never change it. And now you want to add functionality like marketing or crm um or or supply chain or booking. Everything was just very was tilted against small businesses and so you know we strongly felt that debt is just a major avenue to us and there were 50 companies that had side builders at the time. Alejandro and um, you know that was another lesson to me most of your competition is not your direct competitors. In fact, they often help you? Um, you know squares squarespace is public. Um, ah you know that now. Um. And and you had other companies like wordpress etc. But at the time we weren’t first to market but we built a product that was excellent and we focus on making it better and better over time both from a product perspective. We focus on better marketing and now you’re in a very different setting.

12:24.41

Allon Bloch:

And if you think about it still most websites of small businesses a lesson great. They’re much better the last five years because because of wix and because of because of other companies. But now you can just build into this growing market and so what I learned from that is these markets would. You know are just massive if you get it right? a market like building ah online but business capabilities for small businesses for micro entrepreneurs and small businesses is just just massive. Um, and these things just. Gone for decades because there’s always more and more things that people need. Um.

13:01.40

Alejandro:

Yeah, now. What? what about being the core Ceo of um of our startup that was just you know, literally coming out in the midst of the whole economic you know crisis at that point you know around 2008 I mean what were what were some of the um. I mean I’m sure that there were like a lot of those moments where you guys thought there was gonna be a no tomorrow. No.

13:24.67

Allon Bloch:

Oh absolutely I think to me the most just if you think about the timeline um Lehman collapsed in September Two Thousand and eight if you remember and we had a free offering until Len because we’re still testing out the product and the product only launched in October. 2008 but in between we need to raise money like three million dollars by today’s money it’s a seat round but then that was the series b so bessemer backed us previously and mangrove also also joined that round and after Lehman collapsed and. Mangrove um Mark to lose was wanted to. He was a big believer in the company and any double down on the company and so he became the largest shareholder. Um, and I reminded it to him in the ipo I said Mark you. You know at the height of the of the mark of the market crash when everybody was uncertain, you still weren’t you didn’t waiver you continued to back by the way he didn’t try and get another dollar and lower the price somehow you know for the deal but it was successful for him and for the um entrepreneurs. And so that’s why you know? Yeah I’ve I’ve worked with with Mark and mangrove again, but it just shows you you you need to have character a lot of fundamentally. It’s easy to make money and the markets are going well but when the markets are tough like now or you know every 2 to 3 years a markets are tough. You need to have character. You need to have leadership because otherwise you’re going to listen to everybody and you know a lot of people become greedy or a lot of people are just focus on all the wrong stuff. They just flee their companies, etc. People need to have conviction either as entrepreneurs or investors in the company. Um, and and people forget it. Because right now there’s a ton of venture firms. But you know are they all going to stick around in a year or 2 if the markets change you know I don’t know.

15:25.73

Alejandro:

Yeah, so I mean obviously in weeks. Incredible journey you know now Wix is a company with over six thousand employees so I mean I’m sure that you know that was out of out of this world as an experience but another company very similar to this one that you were involved with you know in terms similar in terms of growth. And number of employees this room. You know now it has probably over a thousand employees. But what was that experience and what were some of the learns and what were you doing there as a co-founder and Ceo of of room.

15:56.70

Allon Bloch:

So I had a little bit more experience. You know coming into from and room was um, essentially a twofold bet 1 is around our desire never to see a use car salesman. I hated that experience everything about that. It was wrong and more and more over over time of life I wanted to focus on things where people should have power technologically you can’t create the power but because of the way an industry is built. They don’t have power so every industry. Calcifi right? You have some very successful players. They built a product for different error for different need decades go by society changes technology changes but things still work the old way why because that’s what people used and so I never understood why. I want to buy an expensive vehicle I have a little bit of information. The car dealer has a lot of information I’m going in there and they’re doing all these tricks and negotiating they go into the back room pretending to negotiate coming back. It’s a whole big you know turkish bazaar but it’s not There’s no fun. There. Um, and so I never understood. It felt very wasteful and very disrespectful for the customers like why should I get a better price just because I’m groundstanding right? Um, and b if you’ve ever looked at the stack of papers you get from the dealer. They they try and get you to do all kinds of things that you go want to do they try and sell you all kinds of stuff you don’t do everything about that I didn’t like um and so and the other thing is you have a lot of auction data auctions are like stock market. There’s a massive auction in Manheim Philadelphia just outside of Philadelphia. Um. Where all these cars are bought and sold. So why not take advantage of it. Why not have all this information and enable people to buy and sell cars and why not do it remotely because fundamentally people spent a lot of time researching car. Um, and so what we did was. Actually the first thing that we were really successful about is enabling consumers to sell us their cars. So we built a software that allowed us to focus on the ability to give you a cash price for your car sight on seat. There are only a handful of pictures. We want you to do. And there’s only a handful of information that mattered to us based on today’s auction data and we started buying cars from consumers. But guess what when you treat people fairly, you give them a fixed price. There was no haggle but you couldn’t haggle was this now we started buying one hundred two hundred cars a day from consumers site on scene.

18:35.25

Allon Bloch:

And yes, sometimes people would try and trick you but most of the time people were being really honest and out a hundred what I learned from that is if you actually treat people fairly and you let them um and you let them to um, you give them a fair price for a car. They will actually want to do more business with you because people who sell their sick car were also in the market to buy cars from us. So we’re able to build that capability to sell people to buy cars from people and to sell it but think about it we were able to build a profitable business by paying customers for their. Precious assets treating them fairly and we still were able to make a profit um and of course you need to scale it and build operations and build systems and you know and and that’s ah, that’s always very tough but it’s quite a reverse way to do to do stuff. Um. And the other thing is in America there’s about 50000 card hiters just think about it for a sick most of them 49000 of them are pretty basic local card hiters there’s a few hundred bigger regional ones and some really bigger ones like carmax or automatnation pet. I was always surprised like how they willing to accept the status quo. They know it’s going to go away. It makes no sense. Why not put it online. Why not let people try to car for a week and see if they like it you know cars actually nobody looked at the economics of shipping cars. Which is a small fraction of the value of the car. So nobody nobody reallyied you know, looked at that kind of stuff and for me I was always surprised that the big card dealrs which now have all this strategy online I was surprised why they didn’t have it because you know 20 years after at that time this was twenty Fourteen 2015 20 years after Amazon was created everybody heard about Amazon nobody wanted to be Amazon and yet a couple of people are coming into the market and everybody again thought they were stupid and crazy and you know going to lose their money. I mean literally car dealers thought we were off our rockers. How would we buy car sightncing from consumers those so used to somebody coming in and trying to haggle with them that they forgot to focus on on building relationships with people and they also didn’t build a big enough inventory because most of them were local. So all these things will surprised me but I was surprised how the bigger companies. Um, you know that the leading car deals are growing five or ten percent a year that they were a tiny part of the market. You know, even today Karmax is the most successful use car dealer. It’s still low single digit.

21:13.80

Alejandro:

Now.

21:21.56

Allon Bloch:

Percent of the market and so look what happened when Karvana Androom came in you know they they started taking market share. This is a 110700000000000 ah market and if I was sitting there in one of the top dealers I’d say how come we not growing 100% a year like why? Why should we grow 10 percent a year but that never it was there was never something they thought about because it was successful. They were profitable and and even when at Karvana and room started Karna I think started about a year before us and did a fantastic job. Um, nobody. The the the insiders you know, never you know, never moved and again the big issue Alejandro is the inertia. Oh I hate the car dealer experience but I’m still gonna go there because I want to touch and feel the car. But I’m gonna send you the car for for week to your house. Oh but I don’t know how maybe you’ll trick me. You know? So. It’s always a matter of building trust with people you know and how this works and this is where um I always think about a mindset of somebody who’s looking at the at from the outside and saying why are we doing it and somebody. And the inside saying why should we change the insiders always want to perfect the hos we can do 10% better. So if you and I went back to 1870 and we were in madrid and somebody had a horse and carriage and they wanted to go somewhere an hour out of madrid to the mountains or to a lake or something. And you caught them in 1870 and you said um, you know what? yeah I don’t know how to say it in spanish I’m just going to say it in english but you caught them and said to them. Okay, um. What would you want your your horse to do I want my horse to run 20% faster I want my horse not to stop for drinking I want my carriage to be a little bit more comfortable. They wouldn’t say I want a tesla I want a train I want a rocket ship I want to be able to fly to the beach because it’s difficult to imagine these things.

23:17.51

Alejandro:

There.

23:21.75

Allon Bloch:

So insiders always want to make things 5 to 10 percent better whereas outsiders say why the hell are we doing it this way. Why work this way. Why not work in a completely different way now you still need to be right? It’s not enough to usie’s questions but oftentimes again systems get calcified. Because the bureaucracy sets and then there’s a way to do stuff and people are accustomed to do it and then twenty thirty forty years go by and you look at and say why is it working lifeway this doesn’t you know it doesn’t make any sense and to me that’s very interesting because insiders are usually the lost people the lost people to figure the out. Early adopted customers will figure it out. Entrepreneurs will figure out. Venture investors will figure out because they all gonna be talking to each other and looking at it and that’s where you need to think about how to build the systems because the insiders will always kick the candle take another 1020 years and just you know let’s let’s just drag this out a little bit.

24:15.68

Alejandro:

I mean ah quite a journey as outsiders though because as outsiders I mean you guys go in with room and I mean you you literally the company went public. So I mean what? Ah what? an amazing journey and and I’m wondering you know too.

24:17.46

Allon Bloch:

But even so many years.

24:32.50

Alejandro:

You know what was the trigger for you to you know because that was a rocket ship. You know for you to say you know what? it’s time for me to go and start my next baby you know k health so what triggered that Alan yeah.

24:45.11

Allon Bloch:

Um, there were several things that triggered that but you know not all of them were were in my control. Um but look it it at the end I was looking to do also really big ambitious things around. Societal changes stuff that will make a big difference to a lot of people. Um, and I think I never had a career plan and in retrospect, um, it always looks like a neat way to do a career plan but it was always around. Um. Obsession and tenacity around certain things about why they work and how to change them immense curiosity and a desire to change things. Um, and I was always interested in how medicine works and our healthcare works because I was always. Surprised by the way it works Stephen Brill wrote a really interesting expose around the american health care system and around how it’s really deeply unfair and if you live life long enough you see experiences that you have or your family your your aging parents. Have around health and you go to the doctor and you look at it and looks like it’s 1962 you, you’re having conversation and everything looks like you you were brought back fifty seventy years ago and I’m saying this because. If you look at medicine and you look at healthcare in many respects. It hasn’t changed since the 1950 s so I was curious about that. This is such an important profession I revere doctors just like most people do I certainly do and I employ many of them. So I’ve got a lot of respect for them. But I was always curious as to why things work that way in medicine and health can and who set it up and you know the way it works and this is where I can give you a little bit of of my view of things but this is this is something quite foundational. Not only. Decay but also to medicine and the business of medicine. It’s called healthcare and to societies because this could have big impact.

27:02.15

Alejandro:

So so for the people that are listening to really get it. What is the business model of khe.

27:08.96

Allon Bloch:

Well k does 3 things. It gives you information. Um that is based on a real data set of people and allows k to engage with you our machine our Ai can engage with you. And have a conversation with you around your health and acute issues and chronic issues for free and so people can use us. But there’s not some kind of doctor google let me guess what you have your stomach hurts. So maybe it’s pregnancy. Maybe it’s fruit poisoning. Maybe it’s something else. Horrible. You know. How do you have an intelligent conversation. How do you mimic the best doctor in the world and we built a system where it compares you to what we call people like people like me a dynamic class of people that’s 1 thing but that gives people a lot of information around their health. Oh I’ve got this. Weird aop painne or I’m concerned about covid or something else. But now I can go and answer a series of questions that are highly personalized to understand what I have the second thing we do is we enable people not only to understand if their headache is signositis or migraine or you know covid or lyme disease or something. But they can also press a a button in twenty four seven talk to a doctor and resolve the problem. Maybe they don’t need to do anything. Maybe they need a prescription. Maybe they need to be sent to do a lab or test. Maybe they need to go the r usually not but it gives people the ability to do it. So first of all, just from the most basic level your doctor’s not available 20 so. 7 and certainly your doctor’s not available right now. Try it I promise you you need to book an appointment. It’s often days so that’s a little bit weird because nobody has the worst headache in a world a weird pain or real concern and it’s ten p m and they say well let me just go to sleep. I’ll deal with it tomorrow morning I’m ready tired. No, you’re not you’re not gonna sleep right? Um, so it’s a little bit weird that we enabled medical clinics to work 9 to 5 and to for you to book appointments takes weeks and days weeks at to see a doctor. Why not? why? not right now. If you can trade cryptocurrency Twenty four seven I I’m going to say it’s more important you take take care of your health twenty four seven your buddy doesn’t shut down after 5 fan and who wants to go to the R and wait hours and you know how that goingnna work the you know the the other thing is um, ah. There medicine is based on a lot of data. The Johns Hopkins system in America which in turn is based on a lot of european breakthroughs especially german breakthroughs around moving away from bloodletting to labs right? Hotflighting is.

29:54.20

Allon Bloch:

Quickest way to kill people. But in the 1870 s 1890 S The Johns Hopkins at school created this whole system of westernson medicine which was groundbreaking um in so many in so many levels and started creating evidence based medicine and. You know it became a very practical profession and it became a profession that wanted to learn from from real data and there was a lot of building and stuff that added and then it started calcifying as well and we always confuse you know you saw the pig heart into a human heart. You saw um you saw modernina vaccines you’ seeing biomedical devices you seen continued glucose monitor devices. All these things are amazing using immunotherap and oncology energy blockers on oncology especially in oncology there so many changes but that is that is not day- to day medicine. People confused between the two and day to day medicine hasn’t changed from the fifty s I’m talking about acute care I’ve got a problem, something’s bothering me I’m talking about chronic care managing diabetes and hypertension and thyroid and asthma and heart conditions I’m talking about preventative stuff. This is where. The care delivery itself. What 99.5 percent of what people need right now hasn’t changed from the 50 s why.

31:16.36

Alejandro:

And you guys you guys obviously have raised quite a bit of money to really push this because as you say as an outsider you got to think about you know, doing things differently and for that especially in health care. You know it requires some capital so how much money have you guys raised today for this alone.

31:31.66

Allon Bloch:

Raise about I never remember the exact numbers because we had a lot of rounds but about two hundred and seventy million dollars to ky and over a hundred million dollars to hydrogen which is a joint venture between anthem and blackstone and k to leverage the Kkk. Capabilities into the employer market bear in mind again, people need to very simply we think we can give you access we can be your doctor. We can give you information and we can allow you to manage your health most of the time online sometimes you need to go in. And that’s often where it’s very expensive and very scary and very confusing. Even if you have an insurance and that’s why America is quite specific and anthem and blackstone understood this and we built this capability that leverages what we do is k which allows you to get information and get doctors in order. Also get other things people need labs and they need tests they need surgeries. They need insurance. So how do you build all those components. Um you know together. So we’re in the process of building. You know all these different kind of capabilities and partnering the right people I mean you know you know. $400000000 is a lot of money but there is three and a half trillion dollars in The American Healthcare Care system right now and you will see it will grow above inflation inflation’s giving it a run for the money right now but you’ll see it’ll grow above because medications getting more expensive and there’s new medications.

32:57.46

Alejandro:

Yeah, yeah.

33:06.72

Allon Bloch:

People are getting older in America in general so that there’s more more issues as you get older and um, people have more chronic conditions. Um, so you’re fighting demographics that are making it more expensive. Um, but. But here’s the thing alejandro that people don’t fully realize as much as medicine is based on a scientific underpinning. It does not use data every day to get better if somebody goes a doctor complains about a headache and gets diagnosed with a sinusitis. And has some kind of complication and it’s not sinusides and that person goes to the rthe doctor who diagnosed and treated them and gave them a prescription and everything else does not learn from that. There’s no learning here from the data. The doctor is none the wiser if that. Identical patient came back the next day. The doctor would make the same mistake again. Why because a doctor doesn’t get an update about this. It takes 1020 years and even that I’m not even sure it always gets look how many times in the you live in Connecticut how many times lyme disease gets up.

34:17.15

Alejandro:

And all the time all the time.

34:18.00

Allon Bloch:

Misags in America why you know and so I’m I’m just pointing out that um these things are um, ah there is a gap between people’s perception of doctors as heroic and super experience we say are um, versus. Their ability to have information in the fingertips so building a system that can learn. So I said to you about k about an information system came d about our services and the ability to resolve your problem right now. 24 7 or refer you if we need to um the ability to provide you the connection to offline which is stuff we’re building. And then the ability to learn from the data and to build something that’s slightly more personalized for Alejandro or anybody else.

35:01.25

Alejandro:

Okay, so let me ask you this if I put you to and into a time machine and I bring you back in time you know just to finish it off you know with this last question that I typically ask the guest that come on the show and I put you you know back in time where you were you know let’s say involved in your first rodeo. Know I’d say with Wix you know and and you had the opportunity of giving yourself one piece of advice before you know, embarking on that on that business. What would that piece about what would what would that you know piece of advice that you would give. You know to your younger self and why given the wealth of knowledge that you have now after everything that you go through what would that be.

35:40.54

Allon Bloch:

That’s an interesting question. Um.

35:48.70

Allon Bloch:

It’s all around. It’s all about the people truly so and it’s all about a handful of people who will be there when the shit hits a fan whether it’s investors or partners or your key employees this matter if they’re super senior or not. Those are the people are going to matter. Um, you know that’s one thing I would do and 1 thing I would say and the other thing is you need to trust your instincts There’s no playbook for everything you can’t call up bill gates and say hey Bill. What would I what would you do it doesn’t work that way. Everybody needs to figure out their own industry and you know the the other thing I’d say if you look at the stuff I’m tackling these are massive industries enabling you know hundreds of millions of small businesses to operate efficiently online enable um, you know people to to buy these massive. Expensive assets called cars enabling people to deal with say health care and medicine. Um, if these things work out. They will be way bigger than what my excel plan for 2 years from now will be It’ll be way bigger. Not it will be decades I think these things take long time. These are hard things to do. You need to get the services right? The software right? The data right? The marketing right? You know the the engagement was health care but in order to do all these things if it works out these things will be massive and that you’re starting to see this in certain companies. Um, but I think this is where. You know it’s never uber never replaced just taxis right? That’s the wrong way to look at it is you need to find people that will have the right way to look at it in the and the right kind of horizon to to to enable that um and you know yeah luck plays an important part of this, you need to be lucky. Market timing. You know, etc. The 1 thing I’d say that people overstate his competition unless somebody comes with a cracker jack product that works amazingly well and sucks out all the oxygen in the room Google into search for example, then you really need to worry about Google. Most of the time you need to worry about market inertia people are not going to trust you, they’re not going to believe you they’re not going to hear about you if they’re going to be here about you. They’re not goingnna try it. You know that is this thing that you need to break through even with the great product. You know. So hopefully that gives you a sense of of the things i.

38:08.98

Alejandro:

Absolutely that was fantastic. So so for the people that are listening alone. What is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

38:18.72

Allon Bloch:

Um, Linkedin Twitter um, I don’t post a lot but you know people send me a lot of stuff so you know, um, you know at alon block and and and and my Linkedin um, you know and you know I do I do. Look at a lot of stuff I don’t always respond don’t always get to everything but you know I do respond to a lot of cold stuff that people send me. So um, you know and it’s if people take take the time and and think of something to say and and why it’s relevant for me I will respond you know? um. I’ve hired a lot of people that way and I’ve met a lot of people that way so you know I like the serendipity.

38:57.80

Alejandro:

Amazing! Amazing I love that well alone. Thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today.

39:04.17

Allon Bloch:

Thank you all a hunt for having me and thanks for your time.

Allison Barr Allen is the cofounder and COO of Fast which provides an online login and checkout solutions designed to provide users with a secure shopping experience. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, or Global Founders Capital to name a few.

In this episode you will learn:

Company culture and team building
Growing your company in a post-COVID world
The future of payments and checkout
Allison’s top advice before moving forward with a business idea

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About Allison Barr Allen: Allison Barr Allen is the co-founder and COO of Fast, the world’s fastest online login and checkout platform. Previously, Allison was the head of global product operations for the Money Team at Uber, where she helped scale Uber from 2,000 employees to more than 26,000 worldwide. Allison’s team launched and scaled Uber’s payments, risk, and

compliance products globally, including on-demand payments, cash products, debit cards and credit cards.

Prior to Uber, Allison served as a healthcare strategy consultant at PwC. In addition to her role at Fast, Allison is a limited partner at Operator Collective, a venture capital firm that brings together leaders from diverse backgrounds to invest in the next generation of enterprise technology. Allison is also deeply committed to supporting entrepreneurs through Trail Run Capital, her angel investment fund.

Allison graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: 00:01.92

Alejandro

Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So I’m very very excited about the guests that we have today. We’re gonna be learning quite a bit and they you know going from consulting to hypergrowth more on the growth site to then you know lounging so you name it. So I guess without further ado. Let’s welcome our guest today Allison Bar Allen welcome to the show. So originally born in collumbus ohio you know to a mom that was a nurse and then also a father that had a restaurant a business. So how was how was life growing up.

00:22.40

Allison Barr Allen

Thanks so much for having me.

00:36.29

Alejandro

Tell us about your upbringings right.

00:37.63

Allison Barr Allen

For sure it was um, awesome I grew up. Um, right outside Columbus Ohio in a town called Bexley um I went to public school all the way through. Um I I think through my parents and growing up I really learned a lot about hard work. My dad had a. Restaurant that I spent a lot of time and hours at working and he also was a runner a distance runner. so I so I run quite a bit today but then he was both managing this business and then he would run a lot of half marathons and marathons so he was sort of. Was on his feet doing something and I really learned um, sort of the value of of really really hard work so it was great.

01:20.78

Alejandro

I mean I’m sure because in hospitality I mean that’s crazy hours. So.

01:25.95

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, it was crazy. It would start like especiallyally in the summery would go with him. He would go to Sam’s Club or Costco that equivalent and get all the food for the restaurant and we’d ride around on the card and then he’d go to the restaurants and do a big lunch service and then he wouldn’t really come home until. Ten o’clock after he shut it all down. So um, yeah, it was. It’s sort of a ah, always on thing and you’re you’re always on your feet doing something.

01:53.97

Alejandro

So after seeing your dad I mean did you know or did you have an idea that maybe you know you may want to follow his footsteps on having your own company in the future now.

02:05.64

Allison Barr Allen

It was never really my dream to have a company I joke that I was in an accidental founder because originally I well when I was at uber I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I grew up and I discovered venture capital and I loved investing I um. Taught myself how to invest in the stock market and really just loved following companies and investing and I bought Tesla stock like a long time ago and just had loved following the company and sort of um ah loved reading about different products and sort of mapping out with that. Means over time on on the stock market and then I discovered venture capital and it was sort of I was able to apply what I learned in investing with what I learned while I was at uber building uber so I loved investing in early stage companies and trying to think through. If you see a couple founders in a pitch deck like how do you extrapolate and what are the patterns that it that you see when you create really really large companies so that thought exercise was really fun for me. But um. Yeah I ended up meeting Dom as a potential angel investor in his company and it just so happened that I had built very similar products at uber around what he wanted to build so and we just got along really well and sort of aligned on what the future of the world could look like in ah in a new world with better.

03:25.70

Alejandro

Got it.

03:35.53

Allison Barr Allen

And identity and checkout and e-commerce technology and um, yeah, that was sort of it and I was able to apply a lot of what I had learned at Uber so it was sort of a match rate in heaven.

03:45.18

Alejandro

And we’ll talk about that in in just a little bit but I guess in your case like rewinding a little bit back to to kind of like your your walk through the the walk here through memory lane in your case you want at first to become a doctor. Why.

04:03.90

Allison Barr Allen

Um, I think so school was always pretty easy for me. Um, and it was something I excelled at and was pretty good at and sort of at the time I was um, math and science were definitely my favorite things. Um, especially math. But I sort of liked the science as part of it as opposed to the more writing or creative side and that’s sort of what you did when I was growing up. It’s like you’d get really good grades and then you’d go to school and like the highest performing academic people would um. Go into medicine and I Also I did a lot of music growing club classical music and I was really interested in ah initially I wanted to be an ear nose throat a doctor. It’s sort of a type of sergeant. But yeah I Just I thought it was really interesting but I got burnt out by. School and study and so I was able to discover other things that I was really passionate about.

05:03.13

Alejandro

I Mean you did you did to certain degree I mean you continued on the on the Healthcare path because you went then into consulting and you were consulting with the bigger corporations and I’m sure that that was very helpful for you because I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that that have had that consulting experience where. You really get to understand how you let’s say grab big problems break them into small problems and then you tackle one after the other. So I Guess how would you say you know like the the consulting experience shaped your ah way of thinking towards a challenges in front of you.

05:39.71

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, great question I think through my career I’ve been able to work at companies of different sizes and I think that’s been able to equip me with the right tools and ah tools and Frameworks and way of thinking about organizations as I’m building Fast. So um. When I was working in consulting I helped work at like really big Health insurance companies and you sort of learn what those operate like internally and how they’re structured and what systems they have and sort of their ways of working and then after that I went to high growth tech which was uber and it was still a pretty big company. It was. Over 2000 people when I joined and much bigger than that when I left so it was much larger and then from there I was able to sort of um, go smaller but without sort of the Frameworks and understanding how bigger companies operate I think it’d be more difficult for me to think through. How fast should be structured in the shorter term and longer term because I’ve seen it done different ways and can sort of take best practices that I’ve seen throughout my career and things that I like and didn’t like and um, use that to try to create the best culture that we can.

06:47.75

Alejandro

So in your case and and in this journey that that we’re discussing I mean going from consulting and being with big corporations and traveling a lot to Connecticut. Ah I mean. It’s a big switch going from that to all of a sudden you know finding yourself in silicon valley I mean that’s quite a jump. Can you tell us you know how that transition came about and.

07:10.60

Allison Barr Allen

Yes, so when I was in consulting I was in Chicago um, and I worked at pwc or Presswaterhouse Coopers for 4 years Um and was sort of traveling all over to these consulting projects. Um, and it was. A bit old school and that you still showed up to the office on Fridays I traveled Monday through Thursday and often leave on Sundays we’d wear business casual every day and sort of go out all the time for these like different work dinners but it was sort of ah um, yeah, a bit more old school and. Think finally after who knows how many years maybe 10 years I got rid of my all my business casual stuff I used to wear but um, it just like wasn’t fun and I so my brother was two years younger and he was a self-ot frontend developer and he got a job after college in. Ah, startup so he was working with like a few people in Boston on these like cool ideas and I’m just like that sounds way more fun and entertaining than what I’m doing. Um so I was like I’m going to work at a startup. Um the problem I realized when I I would research all these companies and apply for them is I was a consultant and there’s It’s kind of hard to get a job at startups when you’re a consultant and you don’t have technical experience so I did more strategy and operation stuff. But I wasn’t a coder I didn’t have these like super technical skills so it was sort of hard to find. Right? fit? Um, but it just so happened at the time that uber was growing really rapidly and they were hiring a lot of smart generalists to build up their operations team so they would hire people from sort of all types of different backgrounds. But um, embed them in sort of a new environment and for me it was. Like really fun because it was very hands-on and scrappy in a way that consulting wasn’t and it was like very tangible so when I started at uber we had about 100 employees in the Chicago office. My team helped manage operations for the entire midwest region. Um. But when I first started I was in we had these there was the uber office with employees and then we had these driver support centers and you would have like thousands of drivers come in every single day to get help uploading their documents and answer questions about how much they got paid and. Um, at the time when I first joined uber we didn’t even have an Android app so they all the drivers would come and print these phones from uber so they was like this intense ah like it was like a Dmv but it was really intense operations and when I first started I was there I think two days a week from ten a m to 6 p m

09:51.35

Allison Barr Allen

Um, helping drivers. They would sit across the table from you and you’d help them nonstop the entire time and it was like so exhausting and um, but it was also like very tangible you like were helping these people. Um, earn money because a lot of them had a difficult time getting a job or didn’t have a lot of other options. So that’s why they were there was to make money. So um, like it was like fun to go to that environment where it was like you really felt like you were making difference and like that you were really impacting. People’s lives and um. Sometimes I don’t know if that part of uber story got out as much. But um, we were really helping a lot of people and um, yeah, then you just I learned so many things about um how you can make it was like very intense operations behind the scenes and um for the consumer. It’s It’s all about making it seem simple for the consumer but there’s like there’s a lot of things that have to go right for that like magical experience to happen. So yeah, it was incredible operations training and just sort of how to to make any magical thing happened and it was just so fun. We did all these like on-demand campaigns. Um, we did uber for kittens and so we would like go around and like people could request kittens on demand in the uber app and like we did all these things that were just like so fun. Um, but through that I realized um. Mostly from my experience working directly with drivers and talking to thousands of them that payments was the most important part of this entire thing for them because if they didn’t understand how much they got paid or if their payment was late. It was a really big deal and a lot of them were living paycheck to paycheck and. Using it to support their family. So I just like saw how crucial that part of it was um so I ended up moving to San Francisco to work for uber’s global team working on payments and payment technology. Um so it was there that I really sort of went really deep on fintech and payments and um. How all of this backend payment infrastructure works all around the world to to make these incredible experiences.

12:05.17

Alejandro

And I’m sure that you also learn how to deal with putting out fires because I mean when the app a you know instant pay you know was going down then you know people were not happy about it.

12:16.35

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah I had lots of fires and and fire drills. Um uber had him has and had a really large payment operation business internally. Um, we were paying out drivers in 70 plus countries and. Lot of these countries too weren’t really their banks weren’t structured to support this velocity of payments. There were multiple cases where we would pay to certain countries that are used to paying monthly and then you’d suddenly send all these wired transactions or bank transfers that you wanted to pay weekly and they just. Didn’t have the infrastructure to support it. So sometimes payments relate. But yeah I managed some outages where um so the main product I worked almost called instant pay where drivers can press a button and pay themselves twenty four seven anytime after they’ve completed a trip. Um, so it’s ah. Sort of is a hightenity high intensity thing because before that we just paid drivers once per week. So it was a really big change and it was a very popular product and most drivers used it. But yeah on on occasion either something would happen with our bank or. Order processing platform for uber and there may be some delays and when the drivers could get their money and they were never very happy about that and I think there were at least a couple outages that lasted more than a day where they would call up the newspapers and tell them that uber wasn’t paying them which. Wasn’t true. But I think it sort of shows you how important these these products are to people and are like huge responsibility to make sure that they’re they’re working and available.

13:53.75

Alejandro

So you were mentionuring earlier that you met Dom as a result of your angel investments. So after uber when you gave your notice to uber I mean you were really excited about the opportunity of maybe becoming a part of a venture firm but that ended up not panning out. Um, so you decided to do it yourself and you created your own angel investment operation and that’s how you actually came across a dumb but before we actually go into talking about that moment where the 2 of you connected. What can you tell us about what you’ve learned about you know. Perhaps you know pattern recognition on the founders that you failed at the most potential and that have gone out to perhaps do big companies from maybe the ones that you know didn’t have what it required to build something you know, meaningful. Yeah.

14:46.13

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, great question I think um, hindsight’s always 2020, but for me, it’s it’s all about the people. So I think um, both like starting a company and investing. It’s. 1 you have to have a really big idea so at least especially now a lot of times I’ll talk to founders and sort of level set I’m like investors are out there trying to find the next ten billion dollars companies so you better be able to pitch a vision that you think is going to be really big and. Convince them that you are the person who can run this massive company or be part of this massive company because that’s sort of like the goal of venture capital and I think sometimes people lose sight of that when they’re first starting out that’s like oh I just want to raise this money and like play around with this idea which. Okay, but it’s like that’s what that’s the lens that investors need to look at these ideas for and I think sometimes that can be lost ah a little bit and um, sort of how we’re thinking about early stage capital. But so that’s one like have a really big idea and is this something that you think can be. Worth $10000000000 or more and if so how will you get there both in like the shorter term and the longer term um and the second is all about people so being a founder is a lot of times a sales job and you have to convince employees to join you to build the company you have to convince investors to give you money you have to convince. Customers to partner with you. So it’s talking so much about the why all the time so you have to be really passionate about what you’re building and because you will talk about it a lot. So if you’re not passionate. It’s not going to be very fun for you. Um, and going back to I think what you look for in founders. It’s like. You need to find someone who’s like really passionate about what they’re building and is in it for the long run like and not just like a year. This is like a multi-year thing and as I said you like live and breathe this thing it’s it’s like a part of you. So. You need to find people who are just like so passionate about their idea that they can’t do something else because if they’re not that passionate. They’re going to get bored and sort of give up and do something else. So it’s like you can sort of like feel that passion or feel that energy a lot of times when you’re talking to people and I think. There’s like some cases where people say oh I want to build a business and then sort of academically figure out what to focus on and then build it and like there’s examples of that happening and but I think um I think a lot of times the the other cases. Um, it’s.

17:28.81

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, it’s ah it’s about telling the story and that’s sort of what I look for as well. It’s like why this person and why this idea and can this person like really build something meaningful that that can see on the test of time. Yeah.

17:39.92

Alejandro

Yeah, so talking about the story Allison what was the story of do and you you know coming together. How did that happen.

17:48.50

Allison Barr Allen

Um, yeah, so I met Dom about two and a half years ago um I was still at uber at the time and I had started angel investing and networking with a lot of investors and. Um, I really thought that my path would go into venture capital and do this really early stage investing that I just talked about um I really loved meeting potential founders with like this huge idea and like just a pitch deck and um. People that wanted to take on the world and um, it was so fun to hear all these different ideas that people have but um, so yeah I invested in um, in several companies over the first six months actually I just had my first company that went from seed stage to unicorn this week called azizu which is. Pretty fun. Um black owned as well which there’s like there’s not enough black owned unicorns. But I’m glad to be a backer of one of them. Um, but yeah, so I started angel investing and I met Dom um, he had come from Australia and he had a.

18:40.60

Alejandro

Yeah.

18:53.68

Allison Barr Allen

Prototype for a password list login company and he wanted to build checkout and it was called fast and I had actually when I was looking to get in a venture capital I wrote an investment thesis called frictionless finance which is based on my experience at uber but it was all the different ways I thought you can remove friction in payment flows to. Um, add business value and this was ah I think 2017 this was in crypto had first gone bitcoin had gone up to 20 grand and then had sort of gone back down and um, when no one was really talking about fintech which is like really funny now because like. Half of investment is in fintech or something but at the time everyone was focused on other things and saas and all these other things. Um, and I said I wanted to invest in fintech which most people like didn’t even consider much of a category then but anyway so I had this in 3 hree -page investment thesis and the first part was about.

19:30.60

Alejandro

Now.

19:49.62

Allison Barr Allen

Reducing friction at checkout and I had different ideas or I looked up different companies and um I had some other ideas too around like identity. But yeah I had ah data around why checkout was such huge opportunity and the opportunity you can have in the space and. I met Dom when he was basically building my investment thesis in real life so he wanted to build sort of exactly what I had thought and researched about so um, yeah I entro him to index ventures who ended up leading the the seed round and then Dom came back and convinced me to join and. Um, I did because we just like got along really well and sort of saw a very similar vision of the world and how big this opportunity could be and we had very complimentary backgrounds. He was more of a kid. Um. Was technical but he’d also worked in like sales and more go-to-market stuff in in Australia at other companies and I had a more like fintech or payments focused background in network in the Bay Area so um and it had built similar products at uber or so yeah.

20:58.15

Alejandro

So in terms of the business model for fast for the people that are not right now like following you know the conversation. How does how do you guys make money. What’s what’s the business model.

21:08.58

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, so fast is a 1 click checkout company and we’re really here to reduce friction and make it easier for people to buy things online. Um, and with that on product pages that you see or on the cart page. There’s a fast checkout button. It’s a black button and you click on it and it’s. First time you use it. It’s an optimized checkout form where you enter your information then you’re sort in our network. Um, and then if you use fast again. It’s really one click so you can go to um products or on the cart page where you see fast again and we remember who you are you don’t have to create an account. You don’t have to. Login and reenter your information over and over again. So it’s a really seamless user experience and what that does for businesses is it helps. It’s a growth mechanism and it helps increase their sales. So it increases conversion and their people’s likelihood to buy things. Um.

22:03.45

Alejandro

And in that case I mean you guys have also raised them. You know, um a good amount of money I mean how much money have you guys raised today.

22:05.14

Allison Barr Allen

So yeah.

22:11.91

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, we’ve raised about um a hundred and twenty five million dollars over three different rounds. So our last was a hundred million dollars series b

22:21.30

Alejandro

And obviously great people indexliner I mean great. Great investors How how was the process of ah of raising the money from going to see to perhaps the series B that is the last financing cycle that you guys did so.

22:38.20

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah I think it’s it’s all about um I mean raising capital is a big responsibility and with that it’s really about executing on the vision that you set out when you raise the money. So yeah for us it was like. You you raise the first round on vision and then you really we really assembled the team over the next year to to build the infrastructure of the product and um fast isn’t just payments but payments is part of it. It’s very much we’re really at the intersection of ecommerce and payments and um. Identity and different things so compared to companies like Addin or brainreeer or others that are just payment processors. We. We also manage the consumer component of it. So there’s a lot of parts that need to fit together. Um to make this frictionless experience. So. Um, yeah, the first year was about building the team and launching our initial version of the product and then once we got the initial product live and and working then we use that traction and execution to to raise our next round.

23:43.60

Alejandro

And I mean it’s it’s humble boligo because you are originally from collubus oh high. Your domi is from Australia. How did you both go about building their relationship with those investors because there’s a lot of people broadly that are right now listening or watching and. And they’re like oh my god I’m outside of the us and I’m planning to go to the us and I’m wondering how aliceson and Don did it.

24:06.27

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, it was a lot of hustle. Um, well when I was still at uber I would be with a lot of investors because I wanted to work at a venture fund. So I would reach out to them I was active on Twitter at the time. Um. And sort of meet them that way and I also like followed a lot of people because I was like trying to learn a lot about venture capital. So I would follow investors to to learn how they think and I would ask them to get coffee and a lot of investors would say yes because I had an interesting background at uber that they were like curious about. But. Um, it was also this magical time in silicon valley that I don’t maybe it’s happening in Miami again or it will come back but like you would just meet up with people all the time to get coffee and then get to know them and it was sort of really fun to build a network that way and just have like. Super interesting conversations with all sorts of interesting people and then like later on I’d go to dinners and just like network with a lot of people and it didn’t like feel like networking because it was always about talking about interesting things and like especially founders. It’s like everyone has an interesting story and it’s like. Never bored because it’s someone’s building something impactful and and meaningful so it was it was really fun. Um, so yeah, it’s like I feel like so much of not all the fundraising today but Zoom can be a bit more transactional I think and that organic part of.

25:35.92

Alejandro

Now.

25:37.91

Allison Barr Allen

Stanford like at the time that that was like this organic magical thing and you just like run into people all the time and it was really fun. So um, hopefully that that comes back eventually or that magic. But um, yeah, it was a special time in the bay area and um. Met a lot of interesting people. So yeah, when I joined fast I was able to reach out to a lot of those people and connect with them again because they already knew me and I’d already been talking about payments in fintech for who knows how long so it’s I was so ah, always focused on sort of the same areas. Um.

26:05.11

Alejandro

Nice. Yeah, relationship building that’s for Sure. So I Guess same let me ask you this? Um, for the people that are listening to get a sense of the maybe the size of fast to them and anything that you can share maybe like number of employees or anything that you feel comfortable sharing.

26:12.43

Allison Barr Allen

So yeah, yeah.

26:25.79

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, we’re about 400 people now. So yeah, pretty large.

26:31.42

Alejandro

Wow. So what about the culture. How do you guys go about culture so that you know you’re able to grow so fast and you’re not breaking things when it comes to culture.

26:41.30

Allison Barr Allen

Yeah, great question. Um, very deliberately I think um, we were sort of at a turning point when covid hit right? when we were starting to hire and build out our team so we have a great office in San Francisco that um still haven’t and people go to but it’s much more of sort of a co-working space now and we don’t force people to go into the office. But um, yeah, when we shift to global or when covid hit. We just sort of immediately started hiring other places as well and. Just had to be a lot more intentional about how we were building the company culture I think um, part of that is through recruiting and making sure that people you hire are like a good fit for the company. Um, what was interesting to me as covid sort of like kept going on and on. Not ending was people would meet up um in cities all over the us or even globally, um, just because they enjoyed hanging out with each other and meeting other people from fast. So I think that was a good indication for me that we were hiring great people that they just like wanted to hang out because they had similarities and enjoyed talking to each other. Um, I do a weekly all hands with the whole company. Um that I help plan and structure and I think that’s like the 1 hour of the week that we’re sort of all in the same place even though it’s virtual and I think that’s a really good time to sort of. Iterate what’s important to the company and really celebrate what we’ve been able to build and also sort of look forward um to things things ahead and make sure everyone’s aligned and sort of like moving in the right direction. So um, those are a few things.

28:20.54

Alejandro

Nice. So imagine Allison that you go to you got to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world Five years later where let’s say the vision of fast is fully realized what does that world look like.

28:33.88

Allison Barr Allen

Ah, great question I think if I’d love for fast to be the default way that you pay for things online where it’s like you don’t really think about it but everything is just done through fast and it’s like so simple and seamless that you don’t really have to think about it. Um, and then we also have a consumer dashboard as well. That’s sort of basic at the time but over time we can add additional features but we think of it as like in some way fast is like the buy now button on Amazon where there’s like the buy now button and then there’s add to card and it’s really like the friction list checkout and then. Um, on Amazon you can also see all of your purchases and orders and things like that and um, we also think about post-purchase experience a lot and how can we make it as easy for you to um, one do business with sellers. So how can you? How can. How can we make it really easy for you to buy things. But then. Postpurchae how can you have an amazing experience. Um with the company if you have an issue or a problem or return or you want to save something to a wish list or there’s sort of a lot of different ways. It could go. But um, we think we have a buyer dashboard now that’s similar to to Amazon as well where you could. Track your deliveries right now and over time we we can think of other features that you can add on top of that. Um, so yeah, it’s it’s all about um, reducing friction and making it as easy as possible to buy things. We’ve also done a lot of really cool. Um, omni channel experiences especially in sports where. You can go to a sports game and scan a code and purchase like a special item of the game. That’s just there and then it’ll be delivered to your house after and you don’t have to you don’t have to wait in some long line to to pick it up. So I think it’s it’s all about how can you create better um better experiences um and that new sort of age of tech or age of commerce. That’s really omni channel.

30:31.00

Alejandro

Yeah, absolutely now imagine I mean there’s a question that I typically ask the guests that come on the show and that is imagine I put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time you know and we’re talking about now. Let’s say you know that moment where you guys were sitting down. And thinking about the future. You know that was back in. Let’s say November Two thousand and nineteen where you and do were like thinking about like what what was possible? No, it’s fast. Imagine you had the opportunity of going back to that moment maybe to one of those discussions where you had the 2 of you the 2 younger selves. You know of you and and dumb right there you know in front of you and you were able to give them 1 piece of business advice before moving forward with the company. What would that be and why given what you know now.

31:21.39

Allison Barr Allen

Great question I think um I tell people this a lot and I don’t think it really would have changed how we were thinking about buildinging the company but to me it’s all about relationships and all about people so like. You really can’t forget that no matter what stage of the company or trajectory you’re in because it’s I think great people build great products and they also build great companies. So it’s like no matter what stage you’re at like thinking very carefully and putting so much emphasis on the people that you really have. Um, with you and around you and I think um, yeah I don’t really think we would have done anything differently as we were building the company. It’s like some things you can a lot of it’s just like steps you go through and um it I’m all about like It’s all about just getting a little bit better every day and like continuing to make progress towards that bigger vision and like making sure that you um understand what that longer term vision is and aligning people around that. But yeah, it’s it’s not like 1 thing I would do differently but.

32:33.70

Alejandro

Amazing. So for the people that are listening I Listen what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi.

32:40.37

Allison Barr Allen

Ah, you can follow me on Twitter at a bar Allen that’s probably my most active social channel.

32:49.47

Alejandro

Amazing! Well aison thank you so much for being on the deal maker show today.

32:54.32

Allison Barr Allen

Great. Thank you.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Allison Barr Allen is the cofounder and COO of Fast which provides an online login and checkout solutions designed to provide users with a secure shopping experience. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, or Global Founders Capital to name a few.

Kevin Bennett has been on a mission to transform consumers’ financial relationships with their cars. His startup has already raised tens of millions of dollars from notable investors and is growing rapidly. The venture, Caribou has acquired financing from Moderne Ventures, Goldman Sachs, CMFG Ventures, and Link Ventures.

Kevin Bennett has been on a mission to transform consumers’ financial relationships with their cars. His startup has already raised tens of millions of dollars from notable investors and is growing rapidly. The venture, Caribou has acquired financing from Moderne Ventures, Goldman Sachs, CMFG Ventures, and Link Ventures.

In this episode you will learn:

Company culture as your sustainable competitive advantage
The invaluable asset of coaches and advisors
Kevin Bennett’s top advice before launching a business
Why you should only focus on 1-3 metrics
Getting through the tough times of entrepreneurship

Alejandro Cremades · EP 413 Kevin Bennett On Raising $75 Million To Save You Money On Auto Loans SUBSCRIBE ON:

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Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

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About Kevin Bennett: As Co-founder & CEO of HomeZen, Kevin developed the concept for, launched, and leads a venture-backed consumer transaction platform for residential real estate.

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Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. I’m super excited with our guest today. He’s a guest that has been there, has done it, has done the full cycle in this journey of building, scaling, financing, exiting, and you name it. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Kevin Bennett, welcome to the show.

Kevin Bennett: Alejandro, thanks so much. It’s great to be here.

Alejandro: So originally from Washington, D.C. How was life growing up there?

Kevin Bennett: Life was great. I’m super fortunate. I grew up with a great family, and I was the oldest of three boys. I have two younger brothers. It was pretty idyllic, honestly. It’s funny; I think I came by the entrepreneurship bug, honestly. My parents were entrepreneurs, not in the technology field, but my dad graduated from law school and hung up his own shingle and got into a number of different careers, including real estate and representing professional athletes and trading currencies and commodities and all kinds of stuff. That was my model growing up, which was if you were fortunate, you could go into business, and if you had ideas and had different models of ways that you wanted to do things, you could start your own business. That was really informative. My brothers and I are all entrepreneurs in our own ways. Two of us are in technology and one on the investment side.

Alejandro: Do you think that the whole entrepreneurial thing was the inspiration that you got from your parents?

Kevin Bennett: I think, in some ways, it was subliminal. I just grew up knowing that was a thing you could do. Some folks were doctors; some folks were lawyers; some folks worked in different industries, but some folks were entrepreneurs and just started their own businesses. You could work for yourself and get started that way. That piece, in hindsight, was incredibly powerful. The other piece that was incredibly powerful was my parents focused on giving back, everything from sponsoring classes of kids to going to college. We went to soup kitchens and volunteered on weekends, and they dedicated profits from their businesses to the local community they were operating in. So I also grew up with that model of giving back in mission, and that has really informed my view of how I spend my time, which is on mission-driven startups. That’s the entrepreneurship and the mission side coming together. The other piece that was really influential is that my dad died of cancer when I was 14. That was a really tough time. My family was very close, and we stayed close, and it helped us all get through it, but it was a really tough time. I think it taught me early on that even in the toughest times and the darkest days, you can get through it. You just keep going. I think those are lessons in entrepreneurship; the lessons about loss and resilience were incredibly powerful going through the entrepreneurial journey. I don’t mean to be melodramatic about it, but it’s a rollercoaster. There are ups and downs, and there are moments when you think you have a rocket ship going to the moon, and there are moments when you think, “This thing might not be around in six months. I think having those lessons of resilience and being able to put one foot in front of another have been incredibly helpful, and I’ve been fortunate to have developed them.

Alejandro: In terms of mindset, as you were saying, we may not be able to make it in the next six months. What is that mindset? Obviously, it’s an emotional rollercoaster to us in entrepreneurship, so what did you learn from those tough times when you were in your teens, and you guys had to go and endure that challenging situation for the family with the passing of your dad? How did you implement that so that you also have that same mindset when you’re tackling very uncertain situations when building and scaling a company?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. If you think about it conceptually, you’re often dealing in the context of complexity. Opportunity is often in complexity. You’re trying to understand complex systems complex problems, but the key is to break them down and to understand what are the key drivers? What are the key things you have to get right? What are the key metrics you have to move and be incredibly focused on? One of the lessons I’ve tried to internalize and tell myself and other folks in the team is: you never need to count higher than three because there are never more than three things that matter. Focus on the most important things in your business, the most important metrics you’re trying to move, and if you can get those right, then the other things follow. But if you solve for metrics 7-10, but not 1-3, 7-10 aren’t going to matter very much. I think that’s important in life when you have challenges as well. You figure out, “What do I need to do to keep going,” and whether that’s committing to school, committing to your family, committing to the different pursuits that are going to help you move forward, that’s true. You just have to keep moving forward in life and entrepreneurship. It’s all about moving forward. You need realism and not to deny the challenges, but also optimism that you can move forward and you can solve problems because life and entrepreneurship are about problem-solving and prioritizing them accordingly.

Alejandro: In your case, it took a little bit of time to get into entrepreneurship because after college, you thought the way to go was going into public service. But I’m sure that one of the key pieces that you learned was how to manage your agenda and time.

Kevin Bennett: Yes. It’s a great point. I did have that public service and giving back focus coming out of college, and that’s where I started in public service and working for the Governor of Virginia. I grew up in Virginia, just out of Washington, D.C., and worked there. That’s where I learned to see another executive. The Governor of Virginia was an entrepreneur, actually. He co-founded Nextel, Columbia Capital, venture capitalists. Mark Warner was very successful in the private sector before he went to the public sector. I learned from him, as well, when I was working for him in the public sector, but a lot of lessons he had learned in the private sector, and one of them was around managing his time. He had a whole team that was scheduling him and was focused on how to be strategic with his time and how to prioritize. My role was mostly in policy and speech writing, but I took those lessons around prioritization, focus, scheduling, and time management, and those have helped me throughout my career as well. I went to law school and ended up in the Obama administration working on technology policy, which is where I first engaged in technology. I’m an avid computer and dial-up modem. I’m dating myself a little bit. We used Prodigy growing up and all that, but I was never a tinkerer. I didn’t learn to take a computer apart and put it back together when I was ten, and I didn’t eliminate Stan Tycoon when I was 11 or anything like that, but where my entrepreneurial journey in a real way gets started is I discovered the magic of technology as a driver and forcing function for change. We all saw that working on technology policy and working with great companies in public and private partnerships that you could see that technology was going to change every aspect of the world and was changing every aspect of the world. So if you wanted to have a positive change on the world, it was all about leveraging technology to do that, and that was a huge opportunity. I ended up going to business school, and then I’ve been working on mission-driven startups ever since, primarily in the D.C. area where I am today.

Alejandro: What led you to finally go at it? Obviously, you did different companies, different startups. You were at Personal, then Opower, then LiveSafe, and that led you to Homezen, so what was that sequence of events that needed to happen for you to say, “You know what? I’m ready to do it on my own now.”?

Kevin Bennett: I wanted to develop my own pattern-matching. I wanted to get some reps; I wanted to get some experience working at different startups, and all mission-driven, but mostly post-Series A funded startups, and learn about the journey. All mission-driven, personal help consumers protect their data and ownership of that data. You had Opower, which was a later stage when I joined, and I was there through the IPO, and it was a great experience. I was helping residential energy users, and homeowners use less energy and help the environment that way. LiveSafe, back to an earlier-stage startup where it was about helping students stay safe on college campuses, was an incredibly powerful mission there. Then homes and helping make the housing market more affordable for buyers and sellers was really exciting. We helped people save money and got into the broader economy, and that was my entry point into the fintech ecosystem in a way. When we were selling that startup, I had gotten a note from the team of QED of Frank, Nigel, and Matt. They had this idea around vin MotorRefi that there are these consumer asset classes of debt starting with SoFi and that SoFi moment of digitizing and making it more consumer-friendly and fair. You would see that happen in mortgage; you would see that happen in credit builders and [10:41], but auto, there has been innovation about who sits in the car and what’s under the hood, but you hadn’t had that innovation around financing and the consumer’s financial relationship with their car. So starting with refinancing, what we’ve been able to do is help consumers save money. We save them, on average, $100 a month, MPS in the high 70s low 80s, and that was the ability to transform the American middle class and the relationship with our cars and save them money. That was something that I could get really excited about that Nigel, Frank, and Matt saw it as a mission-driven venture that had great economics behind it, as well, and we were excited. So I joined the team as the first CEO as they were getting it up and running. It’s been just under four years since then and an incredible journey.

Alejandro: And now, with Caribou, the advantage that you have, as well, is the experience that you go with Homezen, your previous company. There, you did the full lifecycle as an entrepreneur. What was that exit process for you, and what level of visibility does being a full-cycle entrepreneur give you when it comes to the entrepreneurial journey?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. In my case, there are a couple of aspects. One, I had worked in multiple functions. I had worked in product, marketing, business development, and different areas. You wouldn’t want me writing any code, but other than that, I had experience in different functions. I had a sense of how the different pieces of a startup or an organization work. And, to your point, I had been in different stages. I had seen the Series A stage. I had seen the IPO process play out, and with Homezen, my then co-founder, Mike Spainhower, and we worked at all of these startups together. He was the co-founder. We started from his couch, and he’s our CTO at Caribou today, so a long working relationship. The other piece of it is you build relationships. So many of the people that I work with today are people I worked with at Opower, or I had met at different startups along the way. So it helps you build the network of people who you trust because when you are early stage, it’s unproven, so when people come and work with you, they’re investing in you, your story, and your vision. So that kind of relationship aspect of it is really important, as is the culture you build in early days. As far as the exit, I think you just learn a little bit about that process and what that looks like. I had raised capital at Homezen through angel family offices venture funds, so I had a bit of experience with that, and I found that to be very helpful in the life and journey of Caribou. We’ve raised about $75 million at this point. Each stage is different, but it’s all been an education, and a creative and the experience has been helpful for sure.

Alejandro: With Caribou, what is the business model for the people listening. How do you guys make money?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. To the original vision, we thought it was an opportunity to build an online marketplace. Historically, first of all, most people didn’t even know they could refinance their homes. Less than half of the population even knows that’s something you can do. We’ll finance your car. Most people know they can refinance their homes, but very few people know they can refinance their car. In that case, what ends up happening is most folks don’t get a great deal at the dealership. They end up paying above an efficient market rate by two to three points APR often, and they can save money. So driving around and every month, they’re paying more than they need to on their financing or their insurance products, and there was a real opportunity to match them, build this matching marketplace that matched them with the best offers from credit unions, community banks, other lenders that they may not know or be aware of and other providers of insurance products. We built that, and consumers can check the rates in seconds without digging into their credit or giving up their social. Within 60 seconds or so, they can actually get firm offers of credit, and they can go through that process online and make it easy. As a result, as I mentioned before, you’re saving an average of $100 a month on your payments, often being thousands back and refunds from over-priced insurance products you had and have an MPS in the high 70s, low 80s, depending on the month. We’re really efficient because we’re a technology platform; we’re efficient for our lending partners, as well, because they love working with us. That’s how we got started, and the go to market was on a refinance. That’s been successful so far; we’ve been fortunate. Then we added traditional auto insurance last fall. As we’ve expanded the products we offer, we expanded the brand from MotorRefi to Caribou, which we launched late last year. With the new brand, auto insurance, plus refinancing, we’re really excited here in early ’22 about the continued progress traction and more product launches coming.

Alejandro: Before, you were alluding that you guys have raised $75 million from great investors like QED, the last round from Goldman Sachs, which was the Series B. I believe it was $50 million—not bad for a Series B. The question here that comes to mind is when you are engaging those investors, and you’re building trust, and you’re giving them the picture, and showing them how you’re able to execute over the course of time to give them that level of assurance that you might be able to find that direction toward success with your management team. How did you guys think about traction and metrics, and were you able to convey those in order to create that trust so that other people that are listening and are thinking about their own fundraising journeys, too, get inspiration from your own journey?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. I’d say one of the biggest learning curves for me in my entrepreneurial journey was around fundraising. It’s the thing you’ve never done until you’ve done it, and it’s hard to approximate. You could have worked in product or marketing and understand what that’s like. I think it’s easy to psych yourself out, but, ultimately, all of this, whether it’s working with your board—and I’m fortunate to have a great board—or working with investors, hiring and building a team, it’s all about human relationships. It really boils down to that and building relationships with other people. That comes down to trust. I think sometimes folks worry, “If I talk about my idea, maybe someone might steal it.” But I think it’s much more likely that people want to help you. The beautiful thing about the entrepreneurial ecosystem is that people generally want to help each other. Whether it’s an investor or another startup founder, reaching out, sharing your ideas and getting feedback, having a conversation, and understanding how they see the idea, where they see the strengths and weaknesses. When you get feedback from someone, that’s just their perspective on what they would do. That doesn’t mean you have to do it. You have conviction and your ideas. But, also, you can always get smarter. Investors are incredibly intelligent people, for the most part, and they can give you great feedback. Then you build that relationship and that trust. There’s also something powerful about being open to the relationship, allowing yourself to be a little vulnerable, which it is. One of my favorite lines that I heard from someone else was: vulnerability is the currency of human relationships. It’s how you build relationships. Then, building trust is often about sharing your vision, helping someone understand it, and then doing what you say you’ll do. So having a conversation with an investor and then checking in a month later, two months later, or a quarter later and say, “Here’s what we did. We said we were going to do it, and we did it.” That among, especially folks who don’t have a previous working relationship, can be incredibly powerful.

Alejandro: And being open and authentic about what the journey has been and what you have in front of you. Some founders are perhaps worried about being too open or too transparent, so what do you have to say about that, and also to them?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. I think two things: 1) investors get thousands of pitches. They know; they can smell it. So you’re better off being authentic because they see the body language; they hear it in your tone, your language. Generally, people are going to read and have a sense for where things are. The best thing you can be is to be yourself. One of my earliest pieces of advice I got from a friend who is also an entrepreneur was there’s no one way to do it. You have to be authentic to yourself, your style, and your personality. No one is perfect. You’re going to be better at some things and worse at some things, but be open and honest with yourself; be open and honest with other people about it. You’ll get better advice; you’ll get more help. That’s really important, that level of authenticity. People want to work with people who are authentic, and whether you’re adding someone on your team or adding an investor to your cap table, they’re committed to working with you for a long time. So you want to be able to build that relationship in a way that can be healthy. It’s not just a transaction. It’s not just a raising event. It’s a long-term relationship, and if you approach it that way, I think investors appreciate that. And they know everything isn’t going great all the time. Sometimes you can feel the pressure as an entrepreneur to say everything is great all the time. There’s never a point where everything is great all of the time. There’s always something. I think you can be open about that. I think you also have more credibility than when you say something is going great. It really is because you actually tell them when it’s not going great as well.

Alejandro: In terms of the operation, Caribou, for the people that are listening to get a better sense, is there anything that you can share in terms of the number of employees or anything else that you feel comfortable sharing?

Kevin Bennett: Yeah. One of the things that was fortunate that we did was to invest early in culture and the team because we’ve hired so quickly, and we’ve gone through a pandemic, obviously. I don’t think anyone had that on their bingo card. What that has allowed us to do is to be intentional about our culture and to have a strong culture. So every company has a culture, and they communicate in signal. Then people who are a good fit for your culture can opt-in to that culture because they understand who you are and what you’re about. We’re a mission-driven company. We’re a values-led company. Our values are a cultural operating system, and ultimately, your culture is your product. It’s how you get your team members to join. Obviously, great people create great experiences, great value, and build great companies. That’s what it’s all about. For us, the way that’s operationalized. When the pandemic started, we were roughly 40 people, and we’re over 400 today.

Alejandro: Wow!

Kevin Bennett: We grew over 300 people the last calendar year. We’re going to go through a similar journey this year in terms of growth. Revenue growth has followed a steeper trajectory in a positive way. So we’re excited about that. We crossed a billion dollars in loans last year. We’re really getting to scale and building the teams, structures, and support. There’s that phase of product/market fit. Then once you have product/market fit, it’s all about scale, building the management structures, empowering the team, hiring great leaders, and having the right coaches. The thing I’d say about coaching is that coaching is invaluable. Sometimes there is a stigma that coaching is what you get when you’re not doing a good job. I think it’s important for us, as entrepreneurs, to destigmatize that and talk about coaching as a critical asset. In fact, I’ve coached the entire time through Caribou, and it’s been an incredible process. Getting coaching from the members of the team, getting the right advisors, and surrounding your team with the right folks who can help them self-actualize, be their best selves, and improve. It’s an incredibly freeing perspective when you get there. Your goal is to hire great people, and it’s a huge investment. Then invest in their success, and invest in your own success as well. So coaching can be a huge asset. You can get that through formal coaching, through informal advisors, or a formal advisory board. I’m a huge fan of finding the right mentors and coaches.

Alejandro: I’ve heard you say that your culture is your product as we’re talking about people. Can you expand on that?

Kevin Bennett: Yeah. When you think about the leading indicator as opposed to the lagging indicator, a lagging indicator is revenue or a brand. The leading indicator is what creates that. Obviously, you’ve got to build the product; you’ve got to acquire a customer center. But before any of that, you have to bring the right group of people together to build the organization, to build the product, to build out marketing, to build the engineering team, to build it all. Culture is incredibly important. There was a very old-school capitalism that what was known as HR was effectively a call center, and you should spend as little as possible on it, minimizing everything else. I’m a believer in stakeholder capitalism and the view that you should be flipping that on its head, that actually, people and culture, as we call it, is the heart that pumps the blood through the body. If that organization isn’t high-quality and isn’t healthy, the rest of the organization won’t be healthy. You won’t be able to hire great people, obtain great people, build the culture that you want. So being proactive, seeing further down the field, and focusing on building a great culture can not only help you attract talent but keep talent and differentiate yourself in the market. I think culture is one of the only sustainable competitor advantages out there. Someone else can rip off your UI, your pricing model, or something else, but you can invite your competitor into your office. They can see your culture, and they can’t just go copy it. If you get that recipe right with culture, it sets you off to have a great and exciting path and to be financially successful, yes, but also to create a community and an organization that people really want to be a part of. That can be extremely powerful.

Alejandro: Imagine you go to sleep tonight, Kevin, and you wake up in a world where the vision of Caribou is fully realized. What does that world look like?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. We’ve been going through these exercises as we get traction and continue to grow. One of the fun things about the space we’re in, as we get deeper in the space, the opportunities continue to present themselves. There’s just more and more innovation and transformation that we can do in the space. I think we’re pretty far from a world where it’s solved, but what we’re aiming to do is transform consumers’ financial relationships with their cars. How do we do that? We look at startups and trends about how do you make illiquid assets liquid? How do you help consumers leverage what is the largest or second-largest asset in their lives and actually make it a financial asset and feel like a financial asset and not feel like a liability? There are so many opportunities and ways to do that. We’re excited about how can we build a much more sophisticated ecosystem in auto fintech? There’s a lot of opportunities out there to do that. It’s hard for me to imagine getting all the way there. There’s a ton to do. We’re really excited about it, and I think the other thing and some folks will ask you this question. I think it’s also okay to not know the answers to questions. This is another thing to be comfortable with, like, be comfortable with discomfort sometimes. You know, what would happen after that? I honestly don’t know. I’m so focused on this; it’s really exciting. The deeper we get into it, the more opportunity we see, so it’s really exciting.

Alejandro: Nice. One of the questions that I typically ask the folks that come on the show is, imagine that I put you into a time machine, and I bring you back in time with all this wealth of knowledge that you’ve been able to acquire. I bring you back in time, and you have the opportunity of speaking with your younger self, with that younger Kevin, maybe that younger Kevin back in 2015 that was launching his first company. Imagine you were able to have a chat with that younger self, and you were able to tell that younger Kevin one piece of business advice before launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Kevin Bennett: It’s a great question. I think it’s actually more life advice. My instinct is to say, believe in yourself and stay focused. There’s a lot of noise, and a lot of people have different opinions and advice. Some of it is great, and some of it is not great, or it’s great advice for someone else but not for you. Also, as we talked about, going back to the beginning of the conversation, it’s a rollercoaster. There are good times; there are bad times, but believing in yourself, staying focused, and being authentic to your vision and to yourself as a human being, is so critical. Especially when we’re early in our lives, sometimes you don’t know yourself as well, or sometimes you don’t have the confidence in the person you are becoming or will become. But have confidence in that person in your vision of that person, believe in yourself, stay focused, and when you hit hard times, shake it off and keep going. I think that’s advice that I’ve only gained more conviction on over time, and I think it’s incredibly powerful for people.

Alejandro: I love it. Kevin, for the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Kevin Bennett: Check us out at gocaribou.com at the website. Look us up on social media. I’m active at Twitter and social accounts for the company. Check us out. I would say we can save most people money, so hopefully, we can also save you some money along the journey.

Alejandro: Amazing. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Kevin Bennett: Great. Thanks so much. Take care.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Anoop Gupta had his first startup acquired by Microsoft, just 18 months after launching. He has now raised nearly $200M for his current company. The venture, SeekOut has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Madrona Venture Group, Mayfield Fund, and Founders Circle Capital.

Anoop Gupta had his first startup acquired by Microsoft, just 18 months after launching. He has now raised nearly $200M for his current company. The venture, SeekOut has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Madrona Venture Group, Mayfield Fund, and Founders Circle Capital.

In this episode you will learn:

What it was like working with Bill Gates
Pivoting, and why you should do it
How SeekOut is changing the future of recruiting and tech careers
Anoop’s top advice before launching your own business
Who to hire for your startup

Alejandro Cremades · EP 412 Anoop Gupta On Selling His Startup To Microsoft And Raising $200M To Deliver AI Recruiting SUBSCRIBE ON:

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About Anoop Gupta: Anoop Gupta is the CEO and Co-Founder of SeekOut, the AI-powered Talent 360 platform. Anoop started SeekOut after a 20-year career at Microsoft, which began with the acquisition of his first startup, VXtreme, in 1997.

During his tenure, Anoop was the Corporate Vice-President of the multibillion-dollar Unified Communications group.

He was TA to Bill Gates, advising on technology and product strategy as a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research, leading work on Telepresence and Natural User Interfaces.

Prior to Microsoft, Anoop was a tenured professor at Stanford University and he holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Connect with Anoop Gupta: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn * Twitter * Facebook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. I’m super excited about our guest today. I think that we’re going to be learning quite a bit about going from academics to founder, from founder to corporate, from corporate to founder, and you name it. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Anoop Gupta. Welcome to the show.

Anoop Gupta: Thank you, Alejandro. I’m delighted to be here and meeting your audience.

Alejandro: You were born in Delhi. You did jump quite a bit because of your father’s job, but doing a little bit of a walk through memory lane, how was life growing up there?

Anoop Gupta: Life growing up was golden. There were not a lot of electronics. There was not a lot of television, a lot of going to the neighbors and playing with the kids, so growing up was a lot of fun in a different world back then.

Alejandro: Tell us a little bit about jumping around. Because of your father’s job, I’m sure that you had to make a lot of new friendships if you were jumping around.

Anoop Gupta: Yes, that is totally true. We used to move every three or four years, so you went to a new school, and you made new friends. One of the interesting things for me was when I was in high school, my parents went to Africa. They went to Livingston, where the Victoria Falls area and they put me in a boarding school. So there were two interesting aspects out of it. First, I used to complain a lot about what I eat and what I do. After two months at a boarding school, all those problems were fixed. No problems. I ate everything without complaining. Also, this year was around 1972/1973. People didn’t fly that much, and we got to fly to Africa, see the world, stop in-between. It was a very eye-opening and broadening perspective for me to look at a larger world, to look at diverse people, and celebrate that diversity and that attitude that came to me.

Alejandro: So obviously, following the course there, from the culture in India where it seems that you are born with either a degree in medicine or in engineering, so you got your engineer degree, but after getting your electrical engineering degree, you thought it was time to come to the U.S. Why was that the case?

Anoop Gupta: It was something I had always thought about. Some of my cousins and uncles had done that and many friends. IIT is the premium institute. At that time, my class size was 42. Thirty-two out of the 42 people came to the U.S. to do graduate studies.

Alejandro: Wow.

Anoop Gupta: It was the done thing at that time that if you’re the best, you go and try to learn more. So it was not a big surprising move for me, but it was a very exciting move. I got to go to Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the best schools in computer science in the world.

Alejandro: And in this case, you decided rather than going the business route, which is essentially what you’re doing now, you thought it was better to teach others. So, where did you get that love for academia?

Anoop Gupta: The love for academia—one option was to do your Ph.D. One of the good things about Carnegie Mellon was I met my wife there.

Alejandro: That’s a big one.

Anoop Gupta: That’s a big one for anybody, and it was a fantastic school. I looked at companies. I looked at research labs but didn’t get an offer from Stanford, and you have that opportunity, that combination of research and teaching and innovating. I couldn’t give that up. It was very exciting to have that opportunity. I’m very blessed and grateful for that.

Alejandro: What is this thing about Stanford and the atmosphere there that gets people hooked when it comes to innovation?

Anoop Gupta: I think there are a couple of things. One is it is the air around you; it is the surrounding atmosphere. There are companies everywhere. The second thing is the culture at Stanford. The culture at Stanford is an entrepreneurial culture. After I got tenure in ’94, ’95, I went to my manager at that time, John Hennessy, who later became the president of Stanford University. I said to him, “I’m thinking about it. What do you think?” He said, “Just go and do it.” He said, “There are two options. One is you’re going to succeed, and that is fantastic, and you learned a lot. The second is, you might fail; the company doesn’t succeed. You still have a job at Stanford. It’s incredible, and you come back, and you will have still learned a lot.” So there is this entrepreneurial culture. He also has done two startups by that time already. In fact, it’s almost weird if you don’t do a startup if you’re a professor of computer science at Stanford.

Alejandro: And you took that seriously because literally ten years in, you decided to go at it on your own, and you started VXtreme. Tell us about VXtreme. How did that come about, and how frightening was that?

Anoop Gupta: Before we founded VXtreme, a couple of my graduate students and I started doing research. It was the very early days of the internet. The Netscape browser and Internet Explorer were just coming out. The network bandwidth was not that much, and we said internet video is going to be big. We had a lot of expertise about how to transmit video on the crappy network and browsers. We said, “There’s going to be a lot of interest.” CNN became our customer. They were postage-size clips, but they were there, and people could watch anytime. Another built-in customer for us was Stanford University. Stanford is very big in a remote education. A lot of the industry community people come into remote Masters at Stanford. Stanford, you see, is microwave technology via the internet to broadcast those lectures to those people, and we became the platform and the foundation for broadcasting those lectures on the internet using our platform, having discussions around it and things that came about only a decade and a half later than with Coursera, edX, and everything else. We were doing that in ’96.

Alejandro: How were you guys making money with that?

Anoop Gupta: We would sell the platform. “If you want to do these videos and here is the amount of bandwidth you need.” It was based on that. There was no cloud, so we had a lot of servers on our internet connection that we had purchased and deployed, so those were crazy and interesting times for us to be doing that.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. How did you capitalize the business? Right now, it has been one of the biggest years in raising money for companies. I’m sure it was not as easy raising money back then.

Anoop Gupta: On Sand Hill Road, the venture companies still existed, Benchmark Capital was there, Kleiner Perkins was there, and there were many other companies, but we bootstrapped the company with some more angel investors. One of my co-founders was Diane Greene, who later did VMware. She had contacts in the industry from many of the CEOs of companies. We raised the money that way rather than the traditional VC route. Then we were acquired by Microsoft, just 18 months into the company.

Alejandro: What was that process like?

Anoop Gupta: Microsoft was getting into streaming media. Rail networks were doing things. I don’t exactly remember, but they contacted us and said, “What are you doing? What is happening?” We visited them. They came and visited us once, and it was a quick transaction, and we were excited.

Alejandro: I remember you were talking about John Hennessy saying that it’s all about learning and that those experiences are what this is all about. In this case, for you, when it came to your first rodeo with VXtreme, if you could pick the three biggest lessons that now you’re keeping in mind as you’re executing with your most recent company, which we’re going to be talking about in a little bit. What are those three biggest takeaways that you took from that experience?

Anoop Gupta: I think the first thing I would take about is culture, values, and executive teams in some sense. All of us were young. For all of us, this was our first startup. For all of us, it was about a little bit too much of what I’m going to make versus what we are going to do together and increase the pie. Those were some hard conversations about who was contributing more and who was contributing less. That’s just not the right thing. We learned a lot. Everybody has gone out and done amazing things, but those were learnings and lessons. I believe a lot of startups may fail because of the dynamics that you may have internally, and those cultural values that you do are rare. We learned fast, and we were successful, so that was good. That is one. The second is focus and understand the market. We were much more technology-driven, and what the technology can do rather than where is the demand and how do we focus and deliver on that. Again, we ended up doing well. Did we end up being as big as we possibly could have been? Probably not, but those are product/market fit, really listening to the customer, focusing in, and not trying to do too many things. Those were all things that we had to learn as we were flying the plane rather than earlier on, and these are all things that get better when you’re doing it the next time.

Alejandro: One thing that is interesting here is that typically when you go through an acquisition, they put you in the vesting period where you’re supposed to be staying on board in the company that is acquiring you for around two years. That’s typically the norm. People call it, in a fun way, vesting and resting, but in your case, there was not a lot of resting because, literally, you were there for 18 years. What hooked you for so long in Microsoft?

Anoop Gupta: I was very blessed at Microsoft, just the opportunities, learnings, and what I could do there. At that time, Microsoft was just starting Microsoft research. It existed for a long time, and given my academic background, I spent my first four to five years at Microsoft research. I built one of the most amazing teams that had some of the best people in vision research, graphics research, UI research, and we built prototypes, and we showed prototypes. All of the CEOs used to have a summit where we would show. We had a great opportunity to work in cross-domains and do it without having to worry about the funding, which is always a big deal in academia and things you have to think about. That was a great opportunity, and I got to interact with Bill Gates and many of the senior leadership at that time. Then I got a call out of the blue that “Bill Gates will like you for this roll-off as technology advisor and work directly with him.” My office was right next to him. You know, you have the self-doubt syndrome: Am I good enough? Can I deal with it? What is it going to take? But I said, “This is a learning opportunity. He’s open to the idea. He doesn’t think I’m going to make a fool of myself, and I’ll help him.” I took on that role. They were some amazing years.

Alejandro: What were you doing there when reporting directly to Bill Gates? What was that like, and what did you learn from reporting to one of the best entrepreneurs of our era?

Anoop Gupta: Yeah. That’s a great question. When I was with Bill, I got a chance to look fundamentally at the product strategy as Bill was thinking about it. I worked with him at that level. I sat in almost each and every product review that he did. Teams used to come and say, “Here is what we are doing.” Bill would be nice, but Bill might also slice them into pieces. [Laughter] I would think a lot about not just what question he asked, but why was he asking the question. What was behind it? Bill was one of the biggest integrators. Every meeting he would go into, he will come out, and he would combine things from everything he knew in the past with the new information that he learned in the meeting. So, how to synthesize, combine, and build that collective you because everybody was caught up in this silo, but Bill built this collective view that was really powerful and great to see. Also, there’s a Netflix movie about Bill and what he does. They talk about Bill’s tank week, which is twice a year. He goes away for a week and reads a lot on everything. My job was to pre-read what he read. People from all over Microsoft will submit hundreds of things. “We want Bill to read this.” Bill trusted me with enough to know what was in his head, what would be interesting to him, so I did a lot of the selection process of that for him. While I was working, I also worked on what we call real-time collaboration, all of the things that you’re doing right now were a big part of the strategy, and we were going to acquire some companies. We were actually thinking about Webex; we were thinking [18:10] that time. Bill, at that time, was the Chief Software Architect and not the CEO; he gave that to Steve Ballmer. Bill used to be our coach on how to pitch to Ballmer. There were two things he would say, “Steve is going to ask you this question. You’d better prepare for it.” Or “This is the right way to answer it, so you don’t screw up.” So I got to work very closely with him. When it came time to do the next thing, the big question for me was to go back to the Microsoft research environment and go lead a business. I was lucky to have the opportunity to go on and lead a business.

Alejandro: Nice, because, obviously, in Microsoft, you did jump quite a bit from one department to another, which allowed you to get to learn different sides of a business, especially from such a successful entity like Microsoft. In this case, after such a long time, 18 years, you decide that it is time to give your notice. Why did you do that?

Anoop Gupta: Basically, Microsoft had been very good to me, and that gave me financial flexibility. One is to go and do something else. Even at Microsoft, I was driving incubations, which was good. One of the things that I said when I was leaving was, at some level in Microsoft someday, the way to think about innovation is, here is an 18-wheeler truck. Drive around and see what is new that you can find because what is of interest to them is things that are very big. They’re a very focused company and rightfully so on what needed to be done. We all have one life, and we all have to do things that we have to do. My co-founders and my feelings were that we wanted to be on a mountain bike. We wanted to go and explore places and roads that you don’t get to in an 18-wheeler. We wanted to do things that may or may not be relevant to Microsoft. We wanted that freedom, and there is something unique about building a business from zero to one rather than having the leverage and the brand and everything [20:34] large and successful business and doing something to start. That’s how SeekOut was born.

Alejandro: Tell us about that process because, as they say, ideas take time to incubate. It’s not like overnight. You’re like, “Okay, I’ve got it. This is it, and I’m going with it.” What was that incubation process like, and how did you guys think about bringing it to life?”

Anoop Gupta: At first, we did not jump ship from Microsoft with this specific idea in mind. We actually did a lot of brainstorming for the first two to three months on what we were going to do and take ideas and a very diverse set of ideas because we are very strong problem solvers. Amongst the founding team, we have 200 issued U.S. patents. So we know how to solve a problem. The problem we initially focused on was messaging, the messaging I had running exchange in Skype. I had a lot of background there, and we said, “Spam is such a big issue. The problem is people hide their email addresses; people hide their phone numbers; people do this thing because they’re afraid of spam. If you do it, everybody will blast you.” So we wanted to do a system where there was friction on the sender’s side, and we built a system [22:03], but you had to put a postage stamp, and you sent a message, and you could decide what the value of a postage stamp would be, how you can give it to a charity, etc. There was a lot of interest in the idea, but we were maybe a combination of bad consumer marketers. We could not scale the audience because, in a messaging system, you need millions and millions and millions of people to do that. We built something called Careers Inside where we could help people on analysis or resumes what they could do next—those opportunities that helped, but there was a lot of interest from the talent tech position community, and we had built a lot of scale. That was in the fall of 2017 when Seekout was born. We pivoted, and pivoting is hard. Actually, a lot of venture capitalists have told me the fact that you pivoted, that you listened, you observed, and you didn’t remain stuck on that idea. So we pivoted, and Seekout was born, and we had an amazing journey at Seekout.

Alejandro: That’s great that you say that because a lot of people think that there’s a negative connotation on doing a pivot, and I’m right there with you. I think that listening when it comes to business is absolutely everything, and a business plan or a pitch deck is not bulletproof. You’ve got to constantly iterate as you’re receiving feedback from customers, employees, or investors. That’s amazing. In your case, Anoop, what ended up becoming the business model of Seekout?

Anoop Gupta: Today, we are a talent tech position platform that helps and gives companies a competitive advantage recruiting hard to find and diverse talent. It is used by recruiters inside a company or otherwise. We sell a per-recruiter seat license. The price is between 5,000 and 10,000 per recruiter seat, and we’ll license it as a SaaS subscription. People can find amazing candidates, see that talent analytics, find the email or other addresses, and engage them. That’s the business model today.

Alejandro: You’ve raised a little bit of money. How much have you raised to date for the company?

Anoop Gupta: I think it’s $189 million.

Alejandro: Wow. That’s a lot of zeros, Anoop. What has been the process of going from one financing cycle to another one for you guys?

Anoop Gupta: We raised a seed round in 2016 when we were still working on a messaging system. Then we raised a Series A in early 2018 from Madrona and Mayfield, $6 million. Then one to two years later, we raised a Series B with Tiger and Madrona for $460 million, almost 20x of what we had done for Series A. Then, in the last nine months, we raised a Series C, which is 2.6x times the valuation of the Series B. So it’s been a rocket ship trajectory in terms of valuation, but it has also been a pretty amazing growth trajectory. Plus, here was your $1 million. The next year was $1-4 million. During the pandemic, we grew 2.5x for $10 million, and this year, we are growing 3x. It is a very rapid increase. One of the other unusual things about our company is, we are essentially breaking even. We’ve raised a lot of money, and we can use it, etc. We are essentially breaking even every dollar we’ve raised so far is still in the bank, available to us to acquire, build, and hire at Seekout.

Alejandro: So why did you raise the money?

Anoop Gupta: We raised the money because we are expanding into a much larger vision and how we plan. From a talent tech position, which is external people, companies, today—you know, the last two years have seen a seismic change in the world of work and how talent and companies engage. There is a lot at stake in how companies hire, retain, and grow their talent will make the difference in how companies are surviving, thriving, or dying. The balance of power is shifting to the employees, accelerating digital transformation, remote and hybrid work, diversity—so a lot is changing. While we are helping companies today with talent tech positions and six of the ten most highly-valued companies are customers of ours and lots of lots. We have over 1,000 customers. We are also hearing from our customers about the need for retention, growth, and development. In all of that, the foundation is having data. One of the things I say is, enterprises have become very data-centric and data about sales marketing everything. But when it comes to their most critical asset, the people they have or the people they want to hire, they don’t have data, the visibility thing. So we’re building a platform where we will provide the best data from internal sources, which are in silos, external sources, which spring them together. That’s what we call a talent 360 data platform. On top of that is a talent intelligence platform because data is useful without great insights and predictive insights. On top of that is a talent action platform that says, “Based on the inside, what is the action to do?” Collectively, we call it Talent360 for enterprise talent optimization because it’s really looking at your whole employee base and accel talent saying: what is the strategy; what is the action I’m going to take to drive success.

Alejandro: Imagine you go to sleep tonight, and you wake up in a world, let’s say five years later, where the vision of Seekout is fully realized. What does that world look like?

Anoop Gupta: What that world looks like is there are two audiences that we think for. One is for employees. Many employees today will tell you that it is easier for them to find a job outside than a growth opportunity inside the company. Employees don’t know one of their possibilities is inside the company. Is there a different career path they can take? Is there somebody they should talk to? What are the open jobs? Where do I match? What should I learn? One is, you will see our platform and a vision where employees are empowered with the help of managers, but otherwise, themselves, too, to grow their careers and to realize their potential. The second side of it is top-down, which is enterprise, the HR leaders and business leaders as they’re making the strategies for their talent and saying, who do we need to hire? Who do we have internally? How does the talent look between divisions? Oh, we’re starting this project; how do we distribute the talent. They will have the data and the insights to do great by the companies and realize their vision.

Alejandro: Imagine if I put you into a time machine, and I bring you back in time to that moment where you were still at Stanford and thinking about taking the leap of faith with your first company, but before taking the leap of faith, imagine you had the opportunity of going back in time and having a chat with that younger Anoop and giving the younger Anoop one piece of business advice before launching a business, what would that be and why given what you know now?

Anoop Gupta: I think who you choose as your co-founder and partner is really important, and the culture and values that you bring to the company from the very first hire to as you hire and build the company is really important. I would tell Anoop to be very thoughtful about that because the problems change. The world changes, but if you have the right team, you can overcome and be adaptable and succeed.

Alejandro: I love that. Anoop, for the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Anoop Gupta: They can come to my LinkedIn. It’s easy to find Anoop Gupta there. I do have an email: anoop@seekout.com. They can send me an email, and I will respond. Those are the two easiest ways to reach me.

Alejandro: Amazing. Anoop, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today. It has been an honor to have you on.

Anoop Gupta: Thank you so much, Alejandro.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Anand Janefalkar left corporate America to launch his first startup. It has already raised $100M and has become one of the fastest-growing ventures in its space on the way to transforming customer service. The venture, UJET has raised funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Citi Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and DCM.

In this episode you will learn:

What UJET is doing to transform customer service
What he would do more of instead of reading books
What helped them raise so much capital from great investors.

Alejandro Cremades · EP 411 Anand Janefalkar On Raising $100 Million To Help You Deliver A Better Customer Experience SUBSCRIBE ON:

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About Anand Janefalkar: As Founder and CEO of UJET, Inc., Anand Janefalkar has 15 years of experience in the technology industry and has served as a technical advisor for various startups in the Bay Area.

Prior to founding UJET, he served as Senior Engineering Manager at Jawbone, and also previously contributed to multiple high-profile projects at Motorola.

Anand received a Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics from Mumbai University and a Master of Science, Telecommunications from Southern Methodist University.

Connect with Anand Janefalkar: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn * Twitter * Facebook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. I’m super excited with our guest today. We’re going to be talking quite a bit about building and scaling, about coming here to the U.S., doing a little bit of the corporate side of things, and then diving into it and taking the leap of faith. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Anand Janefalkar, welcome to the show.

Anand Janefalkar: Thank you for having me.

Alejandro: Originally born in India, so let’s do a little bit of a walk through memory lane. How were the upbringings for you there?

Anand Janefalkar: As you can imagine, in India, at least in the days that I grew up, you had to basically take either engineering or being an engineer or doctor. Otherwise, you’re a social outcast. Things are much better now, and with my dad being a chemical engineer, obviously, engineering was the path that I gravitated toward. The other aspect of living in a large population that is very technically adept is the competition. The early things that shaped me for the journey that I’m on today are, essentially, a lot of competition, understanding that the world is a global market, and everything followed after that.

Alejandro: In your case and as you were saying, engineering. Why is that pressure in India happening around either becoming a doctor or becoming an engineer? What’s going on with that?

Anand Janefalkar: I think in those days, it was largely because people were looking around themselves, and the careers that were taking off were in the engineering and medical spaces. There were a lot of pharmaceutical companies that were seeing an explosion in a way, not just manufacturing, but research. On the engineering side, it was a lot about managed services and building websites. This was pre-2000 before I started my undergrad. I think those were the main reasons. Everyone loves job continuity and stability in their careers and the opportunity to do more. I think those were the main motivations why people were leaning toward those professions.

Alejandro: So, why come to the U.S. because, obviously, that was a pivotal moment for you in your career.

Anand Janefalkar: Yeah, very good question. I had a little bit of a different viewpoint. I found that out early in my journey in engineering. Even before engineering, yes, my dad’s engineering background was an influence on taking that path. However, I vividly remember looking at different kinds of media. Media was getting ubiquitous then and movies. In a movie, I remember that I had looked at a car phone. That sparked my interest in how does wireless communication work or cordless communication at that point, and how do you ensure the quality for that. That led to an interest in satellite communications and cellular communications. I was certain that I wanted to go ahead and build cellular devices. That led to looking at doing research and doing my Master’s in telecommunications, which led me to Dallas to do my Master’s in telecommunication. The rest is history.

Alejandro: In this case, you were in Motorola for quite a bit.

Anand Janefalkar: Yes.

Alejandro: Then, after six years there doing the telecommunications, you took a different approach, and rather than being in the super large type of corporations, you decided to join startup land.

Anand Janefalkar: That was also an interesting trajectory. Motorola was an incredibly great company to be an employee of. I’m not sure if it was a great company to be a customer, at least, in the latter days. However, I cut my teeth with the most amazing people around me, people that had tons and tons of research backgrounds, scaling backgrounds, security, the DMAIC processes, the Sixth Sigma. I do attribute a lot of my professional upbringing in security and scale to what I learned at Motorola. What I found out more and more in the years from 2003 to 2009 and beyond is that, yes, you can build incredible hardware, which we used to do at Motorola, but the world did not care about hardware as much as they cared about user experience. User experience was coming on in a very big manner post-2006. What I quickly realized is that user experience is rare where the world is going. I also figured out that to make an impact in the next generation of devices, services, or anything like that, I was not going to have that opportunity at Motorola because a lot of the focus was mainly on hardware, which was our bread and butter. That led me to take the leap of faith. I also was always very entrepreneurial, and looking at the trends, the infrastructure, and the investor circles in the Bay Area were extremely appealing, and that’s what led to me making the move from Chicago land to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Alejandro: What was that like, because I’m sure it was shocking? It was not only shocking at the employment level because here, now, but it was all about hyper-growth and a different mindset. But then, also, you were probably exposed to now the entrepreneurial drive, the innovation side of things, everyone with great ideas in the Bay Area. So how were those two fronts, because I’m sure those were quite shocking to you?

Anand Janefalkar: Yeah, on multiple levels. Yeah, some were shocking, definitely surprising, and new. It’s a funny story. One of the first shocking experiences I had was when I was interviewing at a company in the Bay Area, and someone offered me a beer after the interview. I thought it was a trick question because, at least in those days in Chicago land at Motorola, you needed a liquor license to be able to serve alcohol on the premise.

Alejandro: No kidding.

Anand Janefalkar: I really thought it was a trick question. But later, I found out that it’s common practice. So it’s a funny experience there. But like you said, it’s a very different focus. I think my motivation and the inspiration were to understand user experience. The world had moved on from the ‘90s or early 2000s, where people were like, “Yeah, you need to go through a 100-page catalog to understand how complicated the service is and to use it effectively. Technology appears in the background, and the user experience shines, and the ease-of-use shines. That’s one of the things I attribute to learning intimately at Jawbone. It’s a little bit of a shift of understanding on, “Yes, you need to design services with scale, security, and user experience in mind, but the user experience should not be taking the backseat where you need to have tons of help in doing that. I think it’s evident with the advent of smartphones. No one reads a manual before starting to use your smartphone. It is the user experience that shines. It’s very different from those perspectives, and I am eternally thankful that I made that move and was accepted in this community. Then the other understanding is how you need to expand your skill set to not just engineering and not just building teams, not just leadership but to having an appreciation for marketing and sales because that is something that you don’t really get at the companies is, yes, there is a machine of sales and marketing, but you’re working in the engineering and technical side of things. You really don’t appreciate how much effort and money and the emotional hooks are needed for getting the consumers’ attention or the target market’s attention. All of those things were very evident from my early days in the Bay Area, and the culmination of all of that is when I decided to start UJET is what helped me on this journey and, hopefully, will continue to help me in my team.

Alejandro: So let’s talk about that. How did you come across the idea of UJET, and how did you realize like, “I think it makes sense for me to get this idea in this bus and take it in a direction to success?

Anand Janefalkar: Yeah. I kind of stumbled upon it, but the main reason for that is that I always wanted to start a company. I thought the elements that I had in my skillset were building great teams, retention, positioning people for internal and external success, as well as the technical know-how. But I wanted to take that further into a very impactful and high user experience-led effort. When I asked myself: what is the biggest problem that I face on a regular basis? If you look at my last name, you’re one of the few that pronounces it really well. You try to get onto a customer support call and have them pronounce that, let alone send an email to you, which is my last name at the popular email address. I never get those emails. To me, having the background of doing a little bit with this macro shift of people absorbing and communicating in the modern world with smartphones, it almost feels like it’s a broken path or a broken interaction when you talk to customer support because today when you communicate with friends and family, you communicate visually and contextually sharing photos, videos, screenshots, locations, other metadata, and all of that happens automatically. Whereas, when you get on a support call, you’re taking the same two humans who are very digitally acquainted who are very much in the interaction model of communicating visually, contextually, and using all of these smartphone APIs. You’re taking their senses; you’re almost raising the senses that they use in everyday life and asking them to jump on a conversation to solve the problem. That was very intriguing to me, and that is what led me to go into this path like there needs to be a system that is adapting an interaction model. As a technologist, you don’t get this opportunity too often, which is to build something with a behavior change that has happened in 2008, 2009, almost seven to eight years before I started UJET, and ensure that the continuity of those interactions go beyond just the sales cycle and go to the support cycle, the post-sale service, retention, and expansion. So that was very compelling. When I looked at the sector, there was no one that had the technical know-how or the interest, it seemed like, in taking a customer communication or customer experience to the smartphone era.

Alejandro: Let’s talk about business models. For the people that are listening, what is the business model, and how do you guys make money?

Anand Janefalkar: I think before understanding the business model, I would love to say the problem statement.

Alejandro: Go for it.

Anand Janefalkar: The problem statement is that today, consumers, pretty much for any product and service, communicate through the three main connection points that are separate from what our industry calls channels. Our industry calls channels as phone, chat, and self-serve or FAQs. However, when your consumers are connecting with you or any product and service, they’re usually connecting through the mobile, mobile app, or mobile browser. They’re either just picking up the phone. They’re searching on their favorite search engine and looking at a support phone number, or they are going to the web and trying to look for answers. The problem statement is that you need to meet the customer at the connection point and not just keep pushing the channels that you might have had for the last 10-20 years. That is what the value prop is. Our business model is taking the two ends of the conversation—there is the consumer, and there is the support team. Whether the support team is communicating in voice chat, SMS, FAQs, and all of that, that is secondary because both sides have a device that does not have the limitation of just doing voice, just doing chat, or just doing SMS, and so on, which was the issue ten years ago. To make sure that channel in-between them, the interaction model in-between them is the smartphone era; that is what UJET does. Our business model is to enable these communications in a very fluid and rich context manner and visual and contextual enablement so that when these two endpoints or these two humans are communicating with each other, they don’t feel like it’s different from communicating with friends and family. A lot of the information that is already available in their account, in their app, after they log in on the webpage, furthermore to their customer record and past history is immediately rendered onto the agent’s screen with our deep integration with the CRMs so that they can solve the problem very quickly. I state one nuance about the business model, which is it’s not about nickel-and-diming and saying, “It’s a transaction-based one.” It is more about the resolution-based model. That is different than what I saw in the sector. It’s very much time-based and not resolution-based. So that is the difference that the viewers or the listeners to this podcast would realize when they dig deeper into our solution is it’s a very different take even from the billing and the business model perspective.

Alejandro: As we’re talking about business, your background is very much engineering, and this is your first company where you’re taking the lead on the business side. I know for a fact that transitioning from the engineering mindset or the engineering background to blending it into the business side of things is not easy. What have you done in order to get up to speed quickly?

Anand Janefalkar: Fantastic question. Luckily, I was early days, even at the end of my high school. I came from a decent family, but we didn’t have a lot of money, so one of my first summer jobs was selling internet service packages, dial-up service packages on the streets of Bombay. Very early on, I had the appreciation for sales. That really helped. It wasn’t just a complete change of a viewpoint of the world is like, why do I need to do sales or why do I need to do that? I always had that appreciation, and then, luckily, I got introduced to a lot of great people that were subject matter experts in the sector for sales and marketing. Like I say, it’s not easy to have just a complete paradigm shift in your thinking, so for things like that, I just always rely on hiring people or people that are smarter than me to join that effort.

Alejandro: Absolutely. When it comes to business and to UJET, you guys have raised quite a bit of money, too. How much have your raised so far?

Anand Janefalkar: We’ve raised over $100 million from top investors.

Alejandro: You’ve definitely raised from top investors. Some of the names that we have there are people like Google Ventures, Citi Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sapphire Ventures, DCM. If it was the Oscars and the red carpet, you have them all, all the VCS, all the top ones. They’re walking in their tuxedos or their dresses. How did you manage to do that?

Anand Janefalkar: You say that, but if you look at these investors, they’re extremely human, and they’re very much driven to solve problems the same way that I am. I’m grateful that they took a chance on an engineer, too, that has no background in customer support but has a background in user experience to bring user experience to customer support. We’ve been fortunate, but I think it’s also because these leading investors have taken a chance more on the user experience side of things and then helped us capitalize so that we can move a little faster as opposed to raising less money and going a little bit slower. As you can see around us today, having brand awareness is something that is really important. Otherwise, there is someone else that will have better brand awareness, and even if they have over a solution, technically, it doesn’t matter. I’m definitely very happy that we’ve been able to capitalize on the company in a manner that helps us to move fast. And brand awareness is something that we are solidly working on right now because we’ve proven pretty much everything else. For seven quarters in a row, we have been rated #1 in customer satisfaction on D2 Crowd, and we’ve proven our scaling and security side, as well. We have all the certifications, except [19:18], which we will have later this year. It’s been a great journey, and the investors have definitely helped quite a bit. I often lean on their pattern recognition to understand what are the basic business trends that you see in a company of our size and scale and where it needs to be? And then the team. For any entrepreneurs listening out there, technology is predictable, but people are not, so always over-index on hiring the right people.

Alejandro: There are probably a lot of people that are listening that are foreigners, just like you and me that are also first-time entrepreneurs that maybe don’t have the connections and were in your same situation when you were thinking, “I need to raise money for this.” Do you have any strategy or method that you use that ended up being super effective and beneficial for you in order to get in front of the right people and in order to close them?

Anand Janefalkar: Yeah. If that is a question that people have, I’m probably a living example that it doesn’t matter about these connections. Just be genuine and have the drive and passion to do it. When I started raising money, I did not know anyone at all in the VC community. I emailed my network, and thankfully, a couple of people introduced me to their investors and the connections that they had. But I think one of the things, and I don’t want to speak for my investors, but I’m sure one of the things that they will say is, the authenticity and the drive are what they saw in our team that helps them continue to back us and purchase a bit in every follow-up round.

Alejandro: In terms of the journey ahead and how things are panning out, if you were to go to sleep tonight, and you wake up in a world where the mission and vision of UJET are fully realized, what does that world look like?

Anand Janefalkar: That world would look like—I’ll give a couple of examples. One of the most painful ones today is when you’re calling in for precertification of the CT Scanner or MRI, you get asked so many questions, things that are not related to what you’re trying to accomplish, and you’re always anxious and worried about that situation because it’s a very difficult situation that you’re in if you want to go into imaging for you or your loved ones. So the ability to do that in a very effective manner in the minimum amount of time and accurately and with automation be able to pass that information visually and contextually to the healthcare provider would look very different. I would be in a matter of a couple of minutes because they already have your information on file, and they can verify you through touch ID and face ID the same way you do with your other apps and be able to share some of your insurance information, take a picture of your card, and so on and so forth. Let’s say you’re on the highway. You’re driving along, and something chips your windshield. You’re pulling on the side. You’re calling your favorite company that’s going to help fix the glass as well as your insurance company. Being able to have the three, four, or five-way call in a matter of seconds, get connected, have your insurance card already teed-up to be shared with the team, your location automatically sent over there, getting the tow truck. Those are the things that it will enable. It will enable getting more of your time back. It will enable getting less frustrated on support calls, on things that you’re trying to achieve and get results. That is what the world would look like. And I can go on and on, but these are a couple of things that should resonate with the audience.

Alejandro: For the people that are listening to really get an understanding of the scope and size of UJET, is there anything that you can share, like maybe the number of employees or anything else.

Anand Janefalkar: Yeah, we’re about 200 employees is what we’re sharing, and we will be a seven-year-old company in July, so we’re still the youngest company in this sector that’s managing certain large enterprise accounts. What we want to do from here is increase our brand awareness, which is the thing that we need to work on the most, and getting people to know us, and getting people to understand how this can help them with not only customer loyalty but repeat customers as well as reducing churn on their products and services.

Alejandro: In the last year, you guys have grown the team by about 49%, according to some of the public data that I was able to come across. I think that when you grow your organization fast, typically, things may tend to break, so in order to avoid that and to make sure that people are very much aligned with the culture and the mindset, how do you guys go about that?

Anand Janefalkar: Great question, and we’ve typically doubled it every year from a standpoint of the team as well as the revenue and stuff. I strongly believe that when you’re a founder and CEO, you’re more of a Chief Enablement Officer than a Chief Executive Officer. Yes, you have your day job as a CEO, but the real thing that you’re doing once the team has passed 25 to 50 people is ensuring that all of the practices that helped you have a successful team from 25 to 50 team members continues to do that in terms of culture, in terms of hiring practices, in terms of effectiveness. We spend a lot of time ensuring that we’re hiring the right people. We like to get emotionally attached to whoever we’re going to hire because we don’t believe that it’s just a transactional type of relationship here. We enable people; we position them to be successful both internally and externally, so we spend a lot of time on our hiring. What that has allowed us to do is not only maintain an extremely high level of effectiveness but also maintain our culture. Our culture of values is very straightforward, being human, being accountable, being respectful, being transparent, and speaking up whenever you see something is wrong. Having clear guidelines around that, having that dialog with your team members, regardless of—it doesn’t really matter whether you’re two levels or three levels. We try to have a great organization, but it still doesn’t matter. You can speak up if you’re seeing something that is not working right. That has enabled us across the board, whether it’s my direct reports or their direct reports to maintain a very clear understanding of where the struggles are, whether they’re technical struggles, or they’re human struggles, or whether they are organizational struggles. Now being global and having employees in over seven countries, it really helps having that clear, open communication and quarterly meetings with every single team.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. That reminds me of the statement that I saw on the subway in New York City that said: if you see something, say something.

Anand Janefalkar: Exactly.

Alejandro: Yeah, good stuff.

Anand Janefalkar: It’s amazing how that can help because if you enable people to speak up and share things, of course, they also have to be accountable and be respectful, and they can’t cry wolf all the time, so that’s why all of these values go hand-in-hand. But it gives you a deep understanding of how things look from various different perspectives and not just yours.

Alejandro: 100%. Imagine I put you into a time machine, and I bring you back in time to that moment about five years ago or so when you were thinking about starting UJET, if you could go and have a sit-down with that younger Anand and share with that younger Anand based on your current wealth of knowledge, what has worked out, what hasn’t worked out, the fundraising, or engaging with the great investors that you’re engaging now if you were able to have a sit-down and give that younger Anand one piece of advice before launching a business, what would that be and why given what you know now?

Anand Janefalkar: Fantastic question. I actually think about this a lot every day. What I would do differently is I wouldn’t do anything else differently except for this thing. I would hire a sales leader in my first five hires. Furthermore, I would invest more in marketing and channel, especially for enterprise software. Those are the things that I feel that I didn’t have a great understanding about, obviously, because this is my first enterprise software gig. That would be one singular big thing that I would tell myself. I think we could have been where we were at least a year or two years ago, but I would have known that.

Alejandro: Why the sales individual? Why?

Anand Janefalkar: Because as a technical founder, you tend to think and do naturally is over-index on making robust technology. It’s great that we were able to do that, but having a sales marketing channel understanding as to the very early DNA of the company, especially in enterprise software, there’s no substitute for that. I think what that would have done is just accelerated our path even more. I think we’re fast-growing; I think we’re in one of the fastest-growing companies in this sector, if not all enterprise software, but that would have even furthermore accelerated our path. I think that’s something that I will carry with me to any future ventures that I may embark on. But that is absolutely what I would tell myself even three or four years ago, if not five years.

Alejandro: Nice. Now, obviously, first-time founder and a remarkable journey. What is a book that you wish you would have read sooner?

Anand Janefalkar: I would have just spoken to a lot more people that have had these journeys. I’m a big believer in the human connection. I believe that you’re a product of your relationships and experiences. I would have just met a lot of people that have done this before, and unfortunately, I didn’t have the network or the connections when I started this, but rather than reading a book—and there’s no problem with books, but I would rather talk to the individuals that have been there and done that and learned from their pattern recognition, lessons learned and helped guide my journey so that I don’t make the same mistakes or the same things that they had to painfully learn. I would benefit from them.

Alejandro: History repeats, as they say.

Anand Janefalkar: History repeats, and there are certain best practices that you learn or you architect best practices, and I want to know them from the architects.

Alejandro: 100%. Anand, for the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi? l

Anand Janefalkar: My LinkedIn is probably the best way. The absolutely best way is through connection, and I think if there’s one piece of information that I’d like to share with any entrepreneur or budding technologist is that the way that I got connected to the investors is through a second degree. So reach out to me at Anand@UJET.cx or over my LinkedIn.

Alejandro: Amazing. Anand, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Anand Janefalkar: Thank you for having me.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Anand Janefalkar left corporate America to launch his first startup. It has already raised $100M and has become one of the fastest-growing ventures in its space on the way to transforming customer service. The venture, UJET has raised funding from top-tier investors like Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Citi Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and DCM.

Despite initially resisting the call of entrepreneurship, Patrick De Nonneville has since built a fast-growing fintech startup that has raised over $50M in equity. He has also raised almost $1B in credit facilities to fund other small and medium-sized businesses. Patricks's venture, October, has raised funding from top-tier investors like The Caisse des Depots, Intesa Sanpaolo, Idinvest Partners, and Matmut.

Despite initially resisting the call of entrepreneurship, Patrick de Nonneville has since built a fast-growing fintech startup that has raised over $50M in equity. He has also raised almost $1B in credit facilities to fund other small and medium-sized businesses. Patricks’s venture, October, has raised funding from top-tier investors like The Caisse des Depots, Intesa Sanpaolo, Idinvest Partners, and Matmut.

In this episode you will learn:

Strategically building up your investor base and funding
How October works
How October is fighting financial fraud
The benefits of committing to extreme and rapid transparency
Patrick’s top advice when starting a business

Alejandro Cremades · EP 410 Patrick De Nonneville Raising $600 Million To Simplify Funding For SMEs SUBSCRIBE ON:

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Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

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About Patrick De Nonneville: Patrick is Chief Operating Officer of October. As a Partner at Goldman Sachs in London (2007 to 2014), Patrick was co-head of the European rates business and a member of the Global Operating Committee for Rates. He began his career at JPMorgan in Paris and London (1997-2003) as a “market-maker” on Treasuries, before joining Deutsche Bank (2003-2007)where he led the complex products trading activities and Inflation products. Patrick is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique.

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Connect with Patrick De Nonneville: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn * Twitter * Facebook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. Very exciting, the story of our guest today that he’s going to be sharing. It is incredible what’s going on now in Europe, and especially in this area that has to do more on the Fintech side of things, but definitely, a lot to learn around risk-taking and calculating the risks, and also around the building, scaling, financing, and a little bit of everything when it comes to the cycle of building a hypergrowth business. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Patrick De Nonneville, welcome to the show.

Patrick De Nonneville: Hi, Alejandro. Thank you very much for having me. This is actually my very first podcast, so I’m looking forward to it.

Alejandro: Amazing, Patrick. Well, let’s make it count. Let’s do so by doing a walk-through memory lane. So originally born and raised in Paris, France. So how was life growing up?

Patrick De Nonneville: It was an interesting time because it was very peaceful, but also, I think, a time when you were looking for opportunities and things to do around Paris, a very cultural city, etc. One of the experiences that I had a chance to do very early one, like a work experience, I was invited to spend a week at the Paris Stock Exchange. I was like 14 or 15. It was incredible. We were in the middle of a time when it was actual people doing the business. After a few days, they would give me an AutoBook, and I would work around and talk to those traders, passing orders, and establish quotations, etc., and I found it very stimulating to be given that kind of responsibility so quickly. That set my mind up for what I wanted to do, maybe not for my full life, but over the following two years.

Alejandro: Now, you have it in your blood, being an entrepreneur. You have your father and your grandfather, so you were just waiting for the right time, and we’ll talk about what you guys are doing now with October, but before doing that, what did you learn, and how did you get that inspiration going with seeing your father and then also your grandfather executing on their own initiatives?

Patrick De Nonneville: There are really two sides to this because, obviously, when you’re an entrepreneur, you take a huge amount of risks, and the amount of success that you get depends on your work, depends on the amount you’ve done on your market, and it also depends on luck. My grandfather created several companies, which still exist today in certain shapes or forms, usually successful. My father, after spending time at IBM, also started companies, and some of them did well for a while, and some of them didn’t. So I was exposed to the fact that he was putting a huge amount of work into these things and hope and excitement, and sometimes, things didn’t work out the way he was hoping or deserved. So it did put that seed in of the entrepreneur, but it also shoved me against it. I don’t know how you pronounce that word in English, but I guess people get it. It really put me off it for quite a while. I think as I grew up, I was looking more at classic opportunities than at launching a company myself. Interesting, all of my brothers have their own companies, almost immediately after their school. Yeah, there is something going on there.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. In your case, what you did, it sounds like problem-solving, has been very much present in your life, and that’s why you perhaps studied math and science, and you went in that direction. But one of the things that you did is rather than going at it, perhaps after having seen how tough it is to build and scale a company, you took more like the calculated-risk approach of taking a look at what the world of corporate would look like, and you did a great career in the financial services sector working at some of the biggest banks in the world. Why don’t we touch on that, and more importantly, what you learned from each one of the institutions that you worked at? Let’s start with JP Morgan. What did you learn at JP Morgan?

Patrick De Nonneville: First of all, if I step back a little bit, is how I got there. After that experience on the stock market, I knew I wanted to become a trader. At that time, it was becoming more technical, more mathematical, so people said you should probably study that. So I did this induction in school, which is quite well-known in France, very engineer-driven, which suited me very well. It’s really my mentality. Usually, after you leave that school, what you do is you go on to serve the state for ten years, or you do further studies for another couple of years, or you can actually quit, and that’s how it’s called and go straight into the workplace. But for foreign students, every year it’s a small [6:45] school, maybe five to six people do that. I was one of these because I knew what I wanted to do. The diploma gave me access to the job I wanted. I went straight into it in ’98, and it was an interesting sign because you have ‘97, ’98, ’99 small crises happening. You had the crisis in Asia; you had the crisis in Russia, and then you had the 2000 implosion of the stock bubble. I was like, “Okay. This is interesting.” However, I had never heard of any of these crises before when in trading myself, and they seemed to happen actually all the time. That was quite an indication. This [7:31] as I had booked, I was given a lot of responsibility very quickly after two months on the desk, you’re supposed to take risks, you’re supposed to quote prices for customers, and you have to live with those decisions, which is something that I absolutely love. You make a decision; it’s yours. You make one; you lose money. There are no ifs or buts. If somebody asks for whatever, it’s your responsibility. You learn the cost of too much risk in certain markets and not in others. And you have an attachment with the clients, as well, which is a really rich thing in terms of information, in terms of responsibility to the people on your team as well. A very collaborative environment, frankly, and very caring for the people, [8:14], getting us better, and spending time in New York. They had an investor training program. It was a really good time. Then there was the merger with Chase, which I think happened in 2000. Things started to change a bit, and then I moved on to another bank, and then Goldman.

Alejandro: In Goldman, you became a partner. Goldman is, without a doubt, the segue into October. Goldman is an amazing place. I know many former Goldman folks, and the training that you get from Goldman, also, and the type of culture that they have is really remarkable. So tell us about this culture because I’m sure that you’ve learned a lot from that type of culture that perhaps you’re also applying to October. What makes Goldman so special when it comes to the culture?

Patrick De Nonneville: The risk mindset, I think, is quite unique. I think at many banks, even the ones who do well, there’s an understanding that you have a career. You can have part of the big organization, and some of the decisions get very diluted. I went through an organization where my bosses did not want to understand the way I was making money. As long as I was making money, it was fine by them. The government was a complete opposite. There was a culture of ownership. Especially when I was making money, the people wanted to understand the way I was making money in order to make sure they were fine with the way I was making money, which was very surprising and very rich in terms of the discussions that we were having. I think during the crisis in 2007, 2008, that made quite a huge amount of difference. Of course, there were also some [9:58] taken then, which, to a point, the organization paid for, but it was a reflection of the richness of a culture of risk decision-making that allowed Goldman to go through this period, avoiding some of the things that killed quite a number of very respectable, very old institutions. Going through that risk at Goldman created something which carried me forward in the years after the crisis and making partner. That was really special. We all suffer, up to a point, from imposter syndrome, but when you have the CEO of Goldman who calls you on the desk and says, “Hi, Patrick. I’d like to offer you to become a partner of Goldman Sachs.” That was an unreal moment. Very unreal. I’m sure you see what I mean.

Alejandro: Definitely, something that you would tell your grandchildren, that’s for sure.

Patrick De Nonneville: I’m not sure. Hopefully, life is long, and there are other stories, but it was definitely an interesting moment.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. Now you did get your feet wet in the startup world, first by doing investments. You made a bunch of them—one of them on Kantox, which are great folks, also from Spain. You also passed on others that were good such as Revolut, which is one of the unicorns now in Europe. Obviously, this was new territory for you, but this was giving you that exposure and access to the venture world and what was happening in fintech. Tell us about that stage of phase for you.

Patrick De Nonneville: There were a number of things that played into that. The first was an interesting technology on the engineering side that always has been there. The other was—you remember that internship I did on the stock exchange where, by the time I started working, all these guys were gone and replaced by computers. I could see that happening more and more in business. In the equities business, for example, there used to be 150 traders, and by the time I left the business, there were only two. Everybody was replaced by a computer to a point. I could see these waves of changes were happening, and I could either stay on the beach and wait until the water was coming to me, or I could go and try to see how the water felt and swim in it. So one of the things that happened was one of my best friends, [12:39], who is partner at [12:41], who is a VC in Europe. It was the beginning of fintechs in Europe, and obviously, he knows a lot about tech. They didn’t know as much as they do now about finance, and for me, it was kind of the opposite. They were, from time to time, asking me to have a chat with some funders that they were looking at, and we would sometimes co-invest, as we did with Kantox, for example. Sometimes, I would tell them, “I think it’s a bad idea.” On Revolut, I was, at the time, very focused on compliance, etc., and I thought there was a real danger in the business of not handling the [EQYC and the AML 13:19] thing properly. So you know your customer and doing all these things, which, by the way, is hurting quite a few of the banks in Europe at the moment, and in Germany, etc. It’s a real risk, but, obviously, I completely missed the impressive growth potential of those businesses. So, yeah, as you say, you have to miss some to enjoy the ones as you go.

Alejandro: Absolutely. You can’t win them all. That’s for sure. Patrick, in this case, for you, what would you say was the trigger. Obviously, you were here a partner in Goldman. You were making it happen. You were very successful in your career, so what was that trigger that made you want to leave everything and start something from nothing?

Patrick De Nonneville: There was a combination to be good as a trader, and especially in a really demanding organization as Goldman Sachs, you really need to be 100% passionate and involved in what you’re doing. In my case, it was in rockets, and it was something I really loved for a long time. But I don’t know if it grew tired, or old, or the market changed. The period of 2013, 2014 was a bit boring, or that’s the way I felt about it. So I lost interest and became detached from it. The other aspect was this interest in technology. And the third and final piece of the puzzle is admitting, which was arranged by Partech with a guy called [14:55]. I had seen what was happening with the lending marketplaces in the U.S. and the UK, and I asked the Partech guys, “What do you see in Europe?” They said, “We know this guy. He’s thinking of doing something. You should meet.” So we meet. I go into the meeting thinking maybe this is going to be a good investment opportunity. I come out of the meeting, I call my wife, and I tell her, “We might need to change things a little bit if you’re okay with that.” I’m blessed that she was okay with that, which actually wasn’t a change, but what an adventure.

Alejandro: Yeah, no kidding. So then what happened next?

Patrick De Nonneville: We started the company in the late period of 2014. I officially left Goldman and started working full-time with October as soon as the year starts. The problem with the lending marketplaces in Europe is in some countries, and it was forbidden to lend to an SME if you were an auto bank. So they couldn’t emerge because they couldn’t exist, or not legally. At the end of 2014, the regulations changed, so all of a sudden, retail lenders could potentially finance companies. This is how we started, basically. We started by opening French SMEs to retail investors. But from the start, we knew two things. We knew that in order to scale this business, you also need institutional money, so not just retail investors, and that required both from regulatory experimentation because it was not exactly allowed at that time, and we needed to raise those funds. Also, that needed to happen across Europe. So, very quickly, we raised money from institutional investors. Very quickly, we went into Spain. Then into Italy, then into the Netherlands, then into Germany, which we opened with our first loans in 2020, which was a really interesting time, as you can imagine, was COVID.

Alejandro: Yeah, no kidding. We’ll talk about the fundraising in just a little bit, but for the people that are listening to really get it, what ended up being the business model of October. How do you guys make money?

Patrick De Nonneville: That’s a very good question that often people forget to ask because how you make money and start a plan is sometimes not the most interesting thing.

Alejandro: Or growth, crazy growth.

Patrick De Nonneville: Yeah, exactly. In our case, this model was known from the start. We actually have not changed it. Every time we make a loan, we make a loan of 100,000 euros, we take a fee of 3% from the borrower, and then as they repay their loan, we take a small fee for the repayment of the loan. We don’t take anything from the investors. Everything is cash to the borrower, which is tax efficient and quite inspiring for everyone as well. That’s how we made money, and that was the only way we made money until the beginning of this year when we launched a new thing, which we can talk about in more detail later, which [18:15].

Alejandro: In terms of the fundraising, you have two sides of the equation. You have the debt that you’re raising for, issuing those loans, and then you also have the equity side of the raises that you raise for the actual business, the corporate structure, and all of that stuff, and how you’re wrapping that up. How has the experience been of doing those dual raises, and how that works for the people that are listening to really understand it?

Patrick De Nonneville: When you’re in those fintech businesses, you need two kinds of money. You need the money which is going to be paying the salaries, paying for marketing, the offices, and all those things, which is usually equity and maybe some debt that the company is taking on. In our case, it’s been pretty much 100% equity. So we raised, in total, 52 million euros from a number of investors, and we can talk about the cap table a bit later if you want because we spent quite a lot of time thinking about who we wanted around that table. Then if you’re lending money to businesses, you need that [19:23 – 19:31]. The way we raised that is with retail investors and with the institutional investors. One of the things that we wanted to have from the start is alignment of interest between everybody. We have some fintech goals or platforms where some of the deals go to investors, some go to [19:50], and there’s skin in the game from [19:52], etc., and we thought that was a bit fortunate. If you want to do something different from the bank and something where transparency matters to have that kind of design. Every [20:05] on the platform is financed both by the retail investors and the institutional investors, and we, the funders and the managers of October put our money with the institutional investors so that automatically every single team was at work. Everybody is aligned on that. That’s a really rich driver of our culture. Transparency is one of the key things that differentiates us from traditional financial institutions. And structuring things this way physically forces us to be transparent. If you are retail investors, and you have a default, and for whatever messed-up reason you want to try to hide it, they’re not receiving the money on their accounts. They’ll all be upset, and they’ll ask why. You really need to be on top of things and to communicate with them in a very transparent manner because they’ll not follow you if you don’t do that. And they would be right, too.

Alejandro: Of course. Now on the debt side of things, how much have you guys raised?

Patrick De Nonneville: We’ve raised in total close to 850 million euros so far. When we say debt, it’s not debt that is taken on by October. It’s money that goes straight into lending to the SMEs.

Alejandro: Yeah.

Patrick De Nonneville: The people who invest in that debt, for example, insurance companies, don’t take a risk on October. They take a risk on the SMEs that October lends money to. We started this quite small. Our first fund was 25 million euros back in 2015. All of those 25 million euros, quite a bit of the money was coming from us, but we got our first external investors, an asset management company. Then we were very cautious in deploying this money, so that created a first-track record. Then we went to raise our second fund. We managed to attract insurance companies at the next stage of the investors’ side, and we closed that fund at 90 million. Then on the third fund, we managed to convince the people that were in the first and second for us, so that’s really important; it’s called re-up, something that investors are looking at. If you don’t have re-up from the existing investors, that’s usually a bad sign. But we got 99% of re-up, and that’s allowed us to then get the French Western Bank, which also helped us get the European Investment Fund, which helped us get most of the National Investment Banks of the countries we’re in. We closed our third fund at 190 million, and our fourth fund is now getting close to 250 million. We also raised a specific fund for Italy of 200 million in the middle of the COVID crisis, which was an interesting environment, but full of opportunities. A real increasing pace of raising money, but it’s also exciting to see that we will have the credibility and are really good at going through due diligence of the investors, of increasing sophistication, increasing requests, and also reporting requirements, which are getting more and more [23:19] in a way which is very appreciated by everyone.

Alejandro: What was the thought process? You were alluding to it before. What was the thought process of bringing the people that you did to the cap table as investors on the equity side?

Patrick De Nonneville: We wanted people who would help us on the debt funding, as well. It was important for us to have insurance companies in there because the asset we’re creating, those SME loans are well suited to the bank sheets of insurance companies. We got CNP on board. The name itself is super well-known because they don’t sell direct to customers but partners, but they are the fifth biggest insurance company in Europe. We also got Alliance on the [24:10] who are the [24:15] second-largest insurer in the world. That’s the first trend. Then because we were voicing ourselves as a tech company, fin and tech, but really a lot of investment in the tech, it was important for us to have these VCs, and the VCs that we have on our board are fintech; no surprise there. We knew each other. Olivier and I met through them. [24:40] was a very successful French VC. Then we have family offices. That’s a bit of maybe an unusual thing, but you know every time you go to an airport or anywhere, there’s one name you see everywhere, and that name is Decaux. They do all these billboards. They are the largest billboard company in the world, and they’re French, and it’s an amazing family story. You should do a podcast on them. It’s incredible. They joined our investors very early. They’re interested in helping us, and many of the customers [25:23], so there was an interesting angle there.

Alejandro: Nice. You were talking about the transparency of the culture. You guys have definitely taken that to another level when it came to either dealing with fraudsters or dealing, for example, with the illness of your co-founder, as well. Tell us what the fundamental building blocks are behind the culture of October.

Patrick De Nonneville: Some of it, to be honest, happened by accident. In this instance, in the moment, you have to take a decision that you don’t necessarily realize it’s going to be structural. But that is definitely what happened with transparency. It’s very easy to be transparent when things are going well, and you’re successful, and [26:10] fundraising you’ve done is. When it’s bad stuff, that’s when it becomes costly, and that’s also when you really have to do it. We had a first instance of that very early. In 2015 we made a loan of half a million euros to a company where we were feeling confident that the finances were good. We had conversations with the CEOs, etc. At that time, we had lent 12 million euros. So it was, seemingly, from exposure. In February of 2016, we realized that the company is almost a completely empty shell. We realized that because we see a request coming through that looks suspicious of that company, small details change. So we dug deeper, and it became very obvious that we got caught. We did three things. The first thing is we immediately involved the police. We also immediately informed our investors, equity, and the retail investors in the fund, and we informed everyone in the company, between the day that we fund and the day where absolutely everybody knew about it, was four or five days. Just the time [27:45], put everything together and put it out. We were also by luck, and because we were so fast, we managed to get the money back. The guys ended up in jail, and the end of the story was good. But it was a real baptism of fire for our culture to [28:05]. The funny thing is, those guys, now five years later, continue to try to fool us and many other financiers every week from jail. I don’t even know how they do it. They’re not supposed to have access to phones. We’ve built a tool that scans the deals that happen on all the platforms in order to avoid what is called layering. Layering is when people borrow from several platforms at the same time. We spotted one rolling under the platform, which was [28:42], and by digging deeper, we saw it was coming from the same guys. So we called the other platforms and told them what we had found, and it was a loss of 807 euros. On the back of it, we offered them to become one of our first customers of October. The technology was built to protect ourselves against fraud. We now offer to third parties. In the end, those guys were forced to help us.

Alejandro: There you go. A new model that comes out of that, so there’s always a positive and a negative, I guess.

Patrick De Nonneville: if you’re willing to learn. Yes.

Alejandro: [Laughter] No kidding. Now, in terms of now, for the people that are listening to really understand the size of October, is there anything that you can share in terms of maybe the number of employees or anything else?

Patrick De Nonneville: Today, we’ve got 110 employees in five countries, and more than a third of these are in tech-employed teams and also other teams. Instead of being a French company doing business abroad, we really try to have local teams as well. We’ve got 18 people in Amsterdam. That team is actually in Amsterdam. We’ve got 20 people in Milan. We’ve got a local in Madrid, which is a necessity in wealth, and an excuse to go and visit. And in Germany, as well, where we decided to be based in Munich. In each country, we have people doing this in the market, doing the credits, and all the ops, the recovery, all these we found need to be local. That’s our model. But all of them are using the same platform, and all of them are using the same tech tools, processes, and all that data is still advised and used in the same way. Every time you open a country, your professional leverage increases, and that’s how you scale up.

Alejandro: Nice. Now, imagine you go to sleep tonight, Patrick, and you wake up in a world where the mission and vision of October are fully realized. What does that world look like?

Patrick De Nonneville: That’s a fantastic question and something that we thought hard about before launching. It’s a world where getting finance is never top-of-mind in the mind of an entrepreneur because nobody dreams of taking on a loan. People dream of building companies. People dream of living in a nice house. They don’t want to take a mortgage. So if you manage to make that experience of getting the financing simple, fast, transparent for SMEs and etc., we think we free up a lot of possibilities for employment, for creation of general wealth and social wealth. That’s what that world will find. It’s a world where our business, our projects, the fact that I’m going to get funding for that project or not is a problem that I will solve fast, and it’s not going to be my main thing for two or three months, which is still to open the case as is the experience of many fundraisings both from the [32:14] and the liquidity side, but certainly on the debt side for small companies is something that is quite stressful and time-consuming.

Alejandro: Now, imagine if I put you into a time machine and I bring you back in time to that moment where you went into that Starbucks or a coffee shop or a restaurant where you met with Olivier, and you came out super ecstatic and calling your wife that there was a change of plans. Imagine you were able to say, “Patrick, come over here,” and you get that younger Patrick back in 2015, where you were starting to incubate the idea, and before bringing it to life, imagine you were able to give that younger Patrick one piece of advice before launching October. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Patrick De Nonneville: I’ll try to think in two.

Alejandro: Go for it.

Patrick De Nonneville: The first one would be to print out that mission in big, bold characters and put it in front of myself every single day because it’s so easy to get into the business and lose sight of where you want to go. Sometimes, you can do that for surprisingly long amounts of time, and then it becomes very costly. There was a period in 2017, 2018 where we achieved our goals by doing bigger and bigger loans. It was very efficient. We were spending the same amount of time on loans, and we made more money because of fees or a portion of that, and we were growing nicely. But at the same time, we were making zero progress toward the mission because we were not making progress on our tech; we were not making progress on our data because we didn’t need it to grow by growing by just increasing the size. That would be number one. Number two, which is linked and is more personal, is that I should have done myself into the tech side of things much sooner than I did. Because of my past, because of my skill sets, etc. I was very focused on getting the money, getting all the [34:32] in order. But at the same time, to move toward that mission, you need not only good tech teams, which is what we had; we had good tech teams. But also knowledge. You need to know what that tech is going to be used for. You need to show every single step of progress you made, and your tech takes you toward that mission. That is sometimes difficult for people who have just a tech background. In order to really become a fintech to bridge those two things and make progress toward the mission, it became important for me, personally, to become a lot more involved, to start coding again, to do things myself that I saw a need for in order to bring the tech team level of knowledge and involvement into making our mission happen at the level of intensity and excitement that I think we now have achieved in no small part thanks to our fantastic CPO, CTO, and an excellent head of HR, as well. They have that mission in mind in a very strong way. I understand the fact that I need to be involved in that, especially more than I was.

Alejandro: I love it. Patrick, for the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Patrick De Nonneville: I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Twitter. I love exchanging with people who are ambitious and realistic at the same time. It’s a tough balance even for me to have, but don’t hesitate. The European market is super exciting at the moment, so I’d be happy to exchange with people from the U.S. who are curious about what’s going on here.

Alejandro: Amazing. Patrick, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Patrick De Nonneville: Thank you, Alejandro. It was a pleasure.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Anshuman Singh is now on his second startup. A bold and fast-growing venture that is transforming and accelerating India’s supply chain. His company, Future Supply Chain Solutions has raised funding from top-tier investors like SSG Capital Management. It has also acquired ventures like Brattle Foods and Nippon Express.

In this episode you will learn:

Managing vast teams of employees
The $500B market Anshuman is tackling
Singh’s top advice for those considering becoming entrepreneurs in India

Alejandro Cremades · EP 409 Anshuman Singh On Raising $135 Million To Thrust India’s Supply Chain Into The Future SUBSCRIBE ON:

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About Anshuman Singh: Anshuman Singh is a pioneer in the area of Supply Chain and Logistics and is building Stellar Value Chain Solutions with a vision of a Stellar India and transforming the Indian Supply Chain landscape to bring India in the top 5 of the Global Logistics Performance Index.

In 2004, Anshuman became the first Supply Chain Professional in India to reach the position of CEO of a large corporate. Since then, he has led more than a dozen companies/businesses as the Entrepreneur/MD/CEO in the areas of Retail, Textiles, and Supply Chain and Logistics. Anshuman is credited with a lot of firsts – the first Factory Outlet Business for a Retail Chain in 2002, the first to start a Tele grocery business in 2003, first to start multiple formats of Home Retailing in 2004, etc. In 2007, he started his entrepreneurial stint in Supply Chain and is credited with multiple achievements in this area – building the first modern large warehouses exceeding 5 lac sqft (2007), first pan India wms implementation(2008), first pan India Put to Light Sortation (2009), the first 12 meter Grade A buildings in India, first Cross Belt Sortation systems and more such automation.

In 2016, he founded Stellar Value Chain Solutions and achieved a rare distinction of raising USD 125 million/ INR 900 crores on day one from the leading global private equity player Warburg Pincus.

Stellar has today become one of the largest SCM/3PL companies and works on a 9x9x9 model -9 sectors (E-Commerce, Lifestyle/Fashion/Retail, FMCG, Food, Pharma/Healthcare, Consumer Durables and Hi-Tech, Automotive, Industrial/Engineering), 9 Fulfilment Solutions and 9 Logistics/Transportation Solutions. It today operates 12 million sqft of total Logistics Space with over 50 states of the art Fulfilment Centres pan India and has acquired Kelvin Cold Chain, Innovative Logistics (Express), and Patel Roadways (LTL) and runs over 2000 trucks pan India.

Stellar won the ‘Emerging Company of the year from Zee Business and ‘Overall Best SCM company of the year from CII.

Anshuman has been recognized by Business Today (in 2008) as one of India’s Hottest Young CEOs for extraordinary achievement at an age less than 40. He has been recognized with multiple awards including the ‘Exemplary Leader of the Year’ by ELSC, Retail Icon of the Year, and Retail Leadership Award by Asia Retail Council. He is the Chair of several industry bodies

Connect with Anshuman Singh: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. I’m super excited today with the guest that we have—very incredible stuff that we’re going to be talking about, especially, I would say, not the ordinary type of structuring or capitalizing a business where it blends private equity right off the bat with the building and scaling of the operation. But we’re going to be learning a lot, especially going from corporate to entrepreneurship. I think that we can all relate to that, especially those of us that are entrepreneurs. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Anshuman Singh, welcome to the show.

Anshuman Singh: Thank you, Alejandro. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Alejandro: Let’s talk about your upbringing, and let’s do a little bit of a walk through memory lane. You’re someone that moved quite a bit there in India, so tell us about life growing up.

Anshuman Singh: I call myself on a journey from an upper-middle-class family and finally becoming an entrepreneur. India is very different from the rest of the world, actually. It used to be very, very different from the rest of the world in my earlier part of my life. There were two classes of people: one was business, and the other was the service class. And their greed was bad. Greed was one of the sins; money was not a good thing. The only aspiration that people used to have 40-50 years ago was to get into government jobs, get into a good engineering college, and then get into a good government job. I grew up in that era. My father happened to be a mining engineer from one of the world’s best mining [2:59] School of Mines and [3:02] in India, [3:04]. He was a mining engineer. He was in the private sector earlier, and then, later on, gold mines were nationalized. There’s a large corporate called Coal India, which actually there’s a monopoly company in the gold sector, and he was a part of Coal India, and he was a top man [3:22] mining engineers, other people who run that company. He happened to be a senior man from early days, and out of a very good upbringing in terms of I was in a very remote location in West Bengal. That’s where I grew up. The British left in 1947. They built huge bungalows, so I grew up in British-built bungalows of six acres and seven acres equipped with swimming pools, so I had some advantages of what the British had built in India in my growing up years. My father was running a very large corporate in mining. But money-wise, I did not see any money during my growing-up years because we never needed to see money. The dormant sector took good care of us in terms of bungalows and all the surrounding paraphernalia. Luckily, a lot of the British schools had come up in that area, so I got to be educated by some of the best schools in the country. But, at best, I would describe myself as an upper-middle-class family, classical service class where every generation had to make it on their own. One of the things my father taught me was that his father was in the [4:36] service [4:37]. He told him that, “You’d better study.” My father studied, and he was a self-made man. The same thing he told me was, “I do well in my career, but for you, you’ll have to root on your own because that’s how India is. So, study.” And that’s what I did. I was taught in a very good school. Then I did my 12th in one of the most premium schools in the country, St. Columbus in Delhi. I did my engineering and mechanical, and I did my MBA. Just like any classic upper-middle-class family, I joined a large corporate. In fact, that’s where destiny played a role. In my MBA campus, there was a very large finance company that had come in the early ‘90s. In those days, secular analysis was much in banking. Investment banking was the sector that was very hard in the country. I had done my MBA in finance, assuming that maybe one day I would get into merchant banking, etc. We didn’t know much about it in those days. On the campus on day one, one of the larger finance companies came onto the campus, and they offered a very good salary. That supposedly was a dream job. One hundred people applied. The whole batch was applied. Finally, six people were shortlisted. I was one of them, and in the final four, I was not selected, and I thought the world had fallen, and the whole world had ended, and the heavens had fallen. It was that kind of a feeling. The next day, another company came in, a corporate, which was offering one-third the salary and offering a position in a very, very remote location of the country, but the corporate was large. I was so frustrated with the previous day that I went and said yes to everything that the company offered, and I was selected the same day. That was destiny. One of the things that company said was, “You are a mechanical engineer and an MBA in finance. We have one of the largest business groups in the country, and that was [6:48]. It’s still one of the largest groups in India, the Builder Group. They said, “We are going to offer your technical commercial function, a function called Materials Management. All my dreams of getting into merchant banking disappeared that day, and I joined the function called Materials Management in a very remote location in a state called [7:13]. I’ve still got that small location. I joined the company, which is the flagship company, to build a group, which is one of the largest groups in the country at that point in time. Even today, it’s one of the largest groups in the country. I joined the Materials Function in Glosen. This was quite a plan. The only distinction there was, they’re called the largest. This was 5:00 in the morning.

Alejandro: I think that the most important thing was that it was your first exposure to logistics. You’ve developed your career in logistics. I guess that even though you didn’t get that investment banking, I think that things are meant for a reason, as they say, because now, logistics has been your life, and, in fact, you’ve built two companies in this segment. One of the things that is very interesting here is that you are a very knowledgeable individual in this space. The reason why this is your case is because you have been able to grow through the ranks. So as you’ve been growing from being at the bottom, all the way at the top. What have been some of the key lessons that you’ve learned about a logistic company, and what makes it so successful?

Anshuman Singh: I’ll just go slightly backward and then tell you the whole sequence. When I joined the Materials Function, that was the early ‘90s. In those days, there was only one formula for success. You have to work really, really hard in India. I did work 50 hours a day. So I couldn’t agree more with you when you said that going through the ranks has its advantages and it gives you a phenomenal amount of knowledge. As one of the books suggests that 10,000 [8:59], I think I can work until now very early in life because I used to work 20 hours a day in the earlier part of my career. That was only then. That was not a very evolved country and not very economical. The only way to go was to work very, very hard.

Alejandro: In this case, what were some of the key lessons? You went from just being someone at the bottom to then becoming a general manager to then becoming a head and then becoming a Chief Executive Officer. Obviously, there are different functions, different responsibilities, and different problems that you’re dealing with.

Anshuman Singh: I think the entrepreneurial gene, now I realize, I did not know it then, every entrepreneur has a risk-taking ability inside him or her. Otherwise, you can’t be around some of them. I think this risk-taking ability was always inside of me in those years when everybody was afraid and insecure about jobs. If you don’t get a job, then what kind of a scenario—I took the risk of getting into a function about which I had no idea, a function on materials. I did not know that was going to shape my destiny in the future. I took that risk. I went to the remote location. I joined the sector [10:28], a commodity sector, [10:30]. I did not choose a large [10:37], although I had grown up [10:39], engineering, and [10:41]. I took that risk, and believe me, that stint actually honed my earlier years, the 20 hours working, I wasn’t—since I was the first [10:54] included by that large corporate group, I also happened to be the pampered law. I was put on the high-potential fast-track channel. Because of that, I got on the list exposure. I implemented the first modern [11:09] in the country 30 years ago, and that was phenomenal learning. I also kept rotating, and because I was doing well, and I was working very, very hard, they kept rotating me from one function to the other, and I kept on taking the challenges. Initially, I was put in charge of [11:28], now which Indian runs the store or goes down inside a plant. That’s not what you [11:34]. But I took that call. And I really got skilled in that area. Later on, they put me in charge of purchases. That corporate was a very old school corporate and normally in a purchasing function. You get the authority of signing purchase orders when you’re above 50 or 55. I was 25 then. I did well, and at the age of 28, I was buying almost 100 million U.S. dollars’ worth of procurement 20 years ago. That was phenomenal exposure, and that only happened because of sheer hard work and dedicating myself completely to the job. Those risks, that dedication, what happened in that [12:19] most people would spend time chatting, philosophizing, watching movies because those are the risks. You’ve just gotten a job; that’s what you want to do. I think I’ve done enough of that in my engineering and MBA years. I said the only thing I want to do is build my career and build it very well. My parents have great expectations of me. At that point in time, you are to prove to the world; you are to prove to your parents; you have to prove to yourself that you are worth what you are. That brought all of this.

Alejandro: In your case, a pivotal moment was Future Group India. Here, we’re talking about a company now with around 19,000 employees where you had big responsibilities and where this was the immediate step to you going out and saying, “I’m going to go and build my first company.” You were not young when you built this first company. Obviously, you were not in the early 20s like you would see here in Silicon Valley and stuff like that. So what happened there for you to say, “You know what? I’m going to go and build this company” for the first time in your life.

Anshuman Singh: I would link it again to the [13:33]. I started driving at the age of ten. I started driving my school bus at the age of 11. Today I realized that I never knew that I’d be driving thousands of trucks of my own [13:46]. But that’s what happened. [13:50]. I became a logistics guy. Then I became a supply chain guy. In [13:58] designated General Manager Supply Chain. I was the first person in India to have that designation. There were no supply chains in India at that time. You know what? Being in the supply chain right from procurement of raw materials to [14:13] to manufacturing to production planning to [14:18], and then transport in the goods and taking the goods to the dealers, I learned the entire gambit of business in my early years. Normally, it takes professionals 20-25 years to learn this. I learned it in five just because I happened to be in the field of the supply chain. I said, “This is destiny. I’ve learned it fast, and now I want to build a company, and I want to run.” [14:42], I was opening field stores. That was the first thing in the retail sector, and I was loving it. Then I said, “I’ve learned the entire business end-to-end.” I just desired it, and I headed into it. I was lucky. I became CEO at the young age of 35 for a very large textile corporate. Out of my supply chain background, now I was running a textile and retail company, and I ran that company for two and a half years [15:13] India. That came out of the first supply chain guy in India who became CEO of a large corporate. Before that, [15:22]. The first supply chain was to become CEO. Those were glory days, heady days. But after two years, what next? The founder of Future called me back, and he said, “You’ve been a successful CEO. What do you want to do next?” I said, my next stint logically should be automation.” And he said, “Yes, exactly. So let’s build a company together.” And that’s the first thing when I became an entrepreneur. I had saved a lot of money to get my own house. I did not buy a house. I put the entire money and founded Future Supply Chain along with [16:07]. The whole intent was that in India, logistics is extremely primitive. We are a [16:17] country, which is very primitive in its working. So Future Group can take the career solution in retail in the country, and [16:27] country. I thought, “My time has come to transform the supply chain in the country, and what better way to do it but with the founder of Future Group because it was the largest retail group. It would give me the ability to get automation and technology in this space. That’s how I founded Future Supply Chain, built a cross-over, and believe me, when I went to cross over with my team, I went to every part of the world, from China to the West Coast of America, and everything in the world, and several times. There’s no supply chain practice or process or technology or automation, which we did not see.

Alejandro: How were you guys making money on Future Supply Chain? What was the business model?

Anshuman Singh: The whole purpose was that we would take Future Group as the captive customer. We said the backend for Future Group. We’ll review the cost of supply chain, and we’ll create the spirit of Future Group. [17:26] to outside companies, and we’ll keep building that. That’s exactly what happened. Since we were the backend of the largest retail group in the country, and once we saw the world, we were able to get the global technology, global automation for this country, and we did a lot first in that country. We were the first large warehouse of 500,000 sq. ft. and several of them across the country. We got the first [17:49]. We got the first [17:50 – 17:59]. Then we kept on building the company over the years, and I started doing business with all tech companies other than that Future Group. It became quite a profitable company because what we had achieved, and what other people had not tried in earlier times, was building a modern supply chain and yet loading costs. There were a lot of [18:22] supply chain companies’ orders presented in the country, but they would approach customers saying, “We’ll improve your service, but you’ll have to pay more. In India, nobody pays more for better service.” And in the world, I think nobody pays more for better service. Everybody wants better service, but the [18:41] still go lower, and that’s what we achieved there. We were able to use automation and purchasing processes [18:48] and global expertise and reduce the cost of supplies despite making the most modern supply chain. That’s when I started feeling that the time had come that I should go on my own founder journey because my captive group was taking a lot of my time. I was not able to invest that amount of time in building the business for other companies in the country. Since I come from a Service Cloud [19:14]—my father worked in a government company; my grandfather worked in a government company. I felt that this country, specifically India, is still very primitive in [19:22]. I must have a mission or a vision greater than making only money. Why not take [19:30] to transform the whole supply chain landscape of this country, and making money or reputation will be a byproduct. That’s exactly the part that drove me to create a stellar value chain and [19:43]. Stellar days that we were trying and never to bring and never to profile the global [19:50]. That’s a long vision. So management mostly the businesses are made for creating profits and creating shareholders. I said, “That may not necessarily [20:00]. That can be a byproduct. Why not have a larger object?” And that’s what we are working on. This is the country that [20:05] and this was a country where I was well-placed to do so.

Alejandro: And we’ll talk about that in just a little bit. I want to ask you on Future Supply Chain, a big company, how many employees does the company have to date?

Anshuman Singh: Five thousand.

Alejandro: That’s quite a lot of employees and quite a big business. At what point did you realize, “It’s my time to go.”? This is your first baby. I’m sure parting ways with your first baby is not easy, so what was that process like?

Anshuman Singh: I realized it around 2014. It took me two years to convince the founder of Future Group that I wanted to move. We believe in a relationship; you don’t part ways for the sake of parting or for the sake of doing our own thing. We honor the relationship, so even if it’s at a personal cost—I personally did that here. The relationship lasted 15 years. It took two years for me to finally move out. The other thing was that it was well set. Future Group was well set and doing well. Future Supply Chain was doing well. I was ready for it to go public. So everything was well set. It turned out to be easy.

Alejandro: On Stellar Value Chain, what’s the business model? What is Stellar Value Chain all about? How do you guys make money?

Anshuman Singh: Stellar Value Chain was started basically is a journey which continued from [21:43]. But I started the journey from where I ended [21:48]. I built a practical expertise in the supply chain landscape, especially on the consumer side, and when I founded Future Supply Chain, initially, I named it Future Logistics. Later on, I named it Future Supply Chain. When I founded Stellar, on the day when I named it Stellar Value Chain that we would extend the whole gambit, we’ll move from the first end to the last point of the customer’s customer. Stellar is a company built for adding value to large corporates in this country. By doing that, we will make a difference in the landscape of this country. What do we intend to do here? Anything that is [22:32]. We want to transform that across the chain. Storage can be [22:39] storage, [22:39] storage, [22:40] storage. All modern warehousing, we have decided to become the largest clear and modern landscape. We are building logistic parts across the country through our partner when that partner developers. Fifty million [22:56 – 23:04] operating right now. We are already among the largest in five years. We have decided to make 50 million in the next five years and 100 million in the next ten years. Across 21 major [23:16] and production centers of the country. And we’ve decided to link all logistic parts with each of them with a network of trucks, and we’ll run approximately 50,000 trucks. That’s what we have done for the last five years. We are building this [23:32] 50 million sq. ft. On top of that, we started this company from scratch. We’ve been building expertise. We call ourselves today, nine-by-nine-by-nine company. We’re expertise today in nine sectors. We have nine products on the fulfillment side, and we’ve got nine products on the logistics side and the transportation side. Building these 18 products costs nine sectors, five years has been a perfect journey, and it’s been a lot of hard work to build 18 products in nine sectors within a period of five years and building them [24:08]. I think we have done well. We had our challenges in the pandemic, but I think we have done well. We’re a nine-by-nine-by-nine company. We have one of the largest [24:19] players with this kind of product portfolio. We still believe we have only begun.

Alejandro: And it requires money to do that. In your case, it was very unique the way in which you capitalized the business because typically, people would go the venture route, raise a seed, a Series A, Series B, Series C. In your case, you said, “That’s not for me. I’m going to go at it right away with a really big private equity round, which is not normal. Tell us about that thinking and how that happened.

Anshuman Singh: In 2014, when I started thinking about it, I was only 45, and I realized that I’ve only been a CEO for ten years. I’ve been a co-founder, I’ve built large companies, so why do I want to go a lot. I want to go a lot because I feel that I can actually build a legacy. I have transformed the supply chain of this country, and ten years later, when we look back, I have the fortune of looking back with the satisfaction that yes, I was able to move the needle in this landscape, in this sector, in this area, in this country or in this part of the world. I think that was a driving force. That cap was that if I wanted to go with [25:28], seed funding round [25:30], I couldn’t have made it big in a short period. This business requires a lot of expertise, a lot of [25:38], a lot of capital right away. That is the reason where right there [25:44] we feel entrepreneurial companies in this country are [25:47] Stellar. [25:49] retail group. Similarly, all other retail groups and multinational companies within India are one or two more [25:59] large corporates in other sectors. This is the only entrepreneurial company to build this [26:06] that I shouldn’t even try building this if I’m not able to raise large capital. I [26:11] very limited capital, and realize the importance of capital for fast growth, for fast scaling.

Alejandro: What’s the total amount that has been raised to date?

Anshuman Singh: $135 million.

Alejandro: $135 million was the private equity round. For the people that are listening to get a good understanding of the scope and the size of Stellar today, is there anything you can share in terms of maybe the number of employees or anything else?

Anshuman Singh: We have around 15,000 employees today. 15,000 is a large number, and we are present in approximately 150 towns and cities in the country. We run 12 million sq. ft. of operations. We run 3,000 trucks, and we still have a long way to go. We walk across fashion, lifestyle, retail, automotive, industrial, engineering, consumer goods, and the largest sector for us today is the most modern sector, eCommerce. But this is something I’ve not done in Future Supply Chain. A lot of eCommerce products [27:14] for the first time, and the one thing I want to share with the listeners is that, especially in a country like ours, the changes are only accelerating. Every year, the changes are so high that we have to keep reinventing ourselves to keep pace with the times. In 2016, when I started the company, and now in 2022, the world is very different. It’s very different than in 2007 when I started Future Supply Chain. The world had already changed by 2016. But between 2016 and today, the world has changed multiple times over. Especially with the pandemic, it has changed faster. eCommerce is a very big sector today, so we built phenomenal expertise in the eCommerce sector. Again, another sector, we call it the pandemic, has taken off in the pharmaceutical sector, where we are revolutionizing the supply chain. The supply chain in the pharmaceutical in this space is very primitive. We have done a lot of work there. eCommerce is the fastest-growing sector, so we have done a lot over there. Other sectors are already there, but the reason for building—you asked me why I decided to build Stellar in 2016. There’s a very big change that happened in India, and that’s the goods and services tax [28:28] came to India in 2016. The [28:32] in India. The whole nation became one nation, one tax. After that, every state was a different tax regime. That was the right time to form a supply chain company because all companies, all corporates, wouldn’t reconfigure the supply chain over the next five to ten years. They would need larger holdings, larger storage, modern accommodation. Before that, they didn’t need those. They were running a small operation in every state. It was the right time, and I think all that is happening today. All the sectors will be transforming the supply chains. All companies are moving toward a modern supply chain, and India is a country where 90% of the supply chain [29:16] sector. Only 10% was organized. In the next ten years, that 10% might go to 40%, and that’s a huge landscape. It’s a $500 billion market, and 40% of that is a $200 billion opportunity. Even today, there’s not a single company in the supply chain business, which is a billion dollars in revenues. You can just imagine that fortunately there is [29:42 – 29:46] in terms of [29:47]. The roads have improved, the forts have improved, the buildings have improved. The corporates haven’t yet made a large role in transforming supply chains, which we are here to do. Fortunately for our customers, and for us, the corporates are going to use us. Our goal is to help our corporate customers improve their sales, improve their profitability, improve their margins, improve their speed, time to market, and reduce the cost to market. That’s what we are here for, and that’s what we’re doing every day.

Alejandro: Now, 15,000 people is a lot of people to manage. What have you learned about people?

Anshuman Singh: I think that’s something I learned in my childhood. My father used to run [30:27] with 100,000 people, and I used to see him handle unions. Business-class families learn business while growing up. I learned management while growing up, and I think I learned a lot from my father on how to handle people, how to become passionate with people, how to have the context, and deal with people holistically. People here are not very demanding. You just have to be understanding, compassionate, and take good care of them. Don’t treat them as an outsider; treat them as part of the ecosystem, and they’ll go along very well with you. I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned with people is: don’t treat them as an HR function. I don’t have an industrial relations function. I’ve never built an industrial relations function. I’ve run 14 companies, UMB, German. I’ve run many companies, but I had two functions in my company. One has been in accelerations, but I don’t believe that my workers needed an acceleration department to handle them. It is us managers who will handle them directly. The second function is a legal function. If you don’t have a legal function, you’ll not have a business. If you have a legal function, they’ll find out for themselves. Similarly, if you’re in the [31:51] function, they’ll find work for themselves, and unions will be created. Today, fortunately, at Stellar, we don’t have a single union, and we don’t have a [32:00]. We keep people as equals. We have cricket matches with them. We play with them. We give them respect, and believe me, they give phenomenal respect. They are hardworking people.

Alejandro: Imagine you go to sleep tonight, Anshuman, and you wake up in a world, let’s say, five or six years later where the vision of Stellar is fully realized. What does that world look like?

Anshuman Singh: If I wake up five years later, I can see the supply chain landscape in the country, the speed of goods moving in this country, the speed of the way [32:39]. It is being done in the U.S. and Europe today. I think it will be a very satisfying moment that this is what we have been able to build. We were at least 50, 60, 70 years behind the world. We would [32:56] in the next five years. That will be a very satisfying dream that we have played out all in transforming the supply chain of this nation. This nation competes with the best in the world in terms of infrastructure, technology, supply chain, speed, cost, delivering service to the end customers, and all reducing [33:18] and making businesses much more efficient. That would be a very satisfying day.

Alejandro: It definitely sounds satisfying, Anshuman. Now, imagine that I put you into a time machine, and I bring you back in time. I put you into a time machine, and I bring you back in time to that moment where you were thinking about starting your first business. If you had the opportunity of going back and having a chat with that younger Anshuman, based on what you know now. Now, you’ve built a few companies. You’ve been around the block. So if you had the opportunity of having a chat with your younger self and giving your younger self one piece of advice before launching a business, what would that be and why given what you know now?

Anshuman Singh: I wouldn’t have changed anything. I would do exactly the same thing again. But if I had to give a piece of advice to people in India, I can’t say the same thing about the rest of the world. Entrepreneurship is now becoming easier. In the last one to three years, entrepreneurship has become easier, but entrepreneurship is a thing full of risks all the time. Get into it, not because it’s fashionable. Get into it only if you believe that you’re [34:34] and you can leave a cushy, rosy, comfortable job. In India, even today, a job is a very sought-after thing. Entrepreneurship is a fad even now. There are a lot of startup stories which if you read the newspapers every day and see a lot of startup stories. What you don’t read is 99.9% of the failures that happen every day in the entrepreneurship space. The country is evolving. I’m sure in the next five years, it will evolve phenomenally. [35:06]. This is a company I’ve built from scratch. To say that it was easy will be making a fool of everybody else, including myself. It was never easy. It had never been easy building businesses from scratch. It has always been difficult. When you read entrepreneurial stories today, the people are raising millions and millions of dollars. It’s only the success story that you’re reading. You’re not reading the stories which have not been successful. The larger [35:32] still is struggling, so get into entrepreneurship in this country only if you really believe that you want to take that risk and you’re not doing it for the sake of trying. Entrepreneurship is something you should not do but having to go at it or trying it. Do it only if you believe in it, and you believe in yourself.

Alejandro: Absolutely. So, Anshuman, for the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Anshuman Singh: They can write to me at Anshuman.Singh@StellarValueChain.com. They can go to my website. But the best way to say hi is my email. They can go to my LinkedIn and connect to me by LinkedIn. I’m not a very active social media person, so I’m not available on Facebook, Instagram, or Telegram, but I’m available on LinkedIn.

Alejandro: Fantastic. Anshuman, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Anshuman Singh: Thank you so much, Alejandro. Thank you so much!

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Anshuman Singh is now on his second startup. A bold and fast-growing venture that is transforming and accelerating India’s supply chain. His company, Future Supply Chain Solutions has raised funding from top-tier investors like SSG Capital Management. It has also acquired ventures like Brattle Foods and Nippon Express.

Ira Cohen’s SaaS startup has already raised $70M and is expected to attract even more capital from investors this year. Anodot has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Redline Capital, Alicom, Softbank Ventures Asia, and Intel Capital.

In this episode you will learn:

The unfortunate politics of startup fundraising
The costs and time loss of failing to focus intensely
Why their tech startup has a VP of Fish Care

Alejandro Cremades · EP 408 Ira Cohen On Raising $70 Million To Help You Find Business Incidents In Real-Time SUBSCRIBE ON:

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About Ira Cohen: Ira Cohen is a co-founder and chief data scientist at Anodot, where he’s responsible for developing and inventing the company’s real-time multivariate anomaly detection algorithms that work with millions of time series signals. He holds a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has over 12 years of industry experience.

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Connect with Ira Cohen: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn * Twitter

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. I’m very excited about our guest today; obviously, Startup Nation and there are incredible founders coming from there. The discipline and the mindset are really incredible. We’re going to be learning a lot about building, scaling, financing, and then going from corporate into startups. I think there’s a lot to unpack in the episode that we have today, so without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Ira Cohen, welcome to the show.

Ira Cohen: Thank you for having me, Alejandro. It’s great to be here.

Alejandro: So born in Israel. When we’re talking about your upbringings, that definitely entailed moving quite a bit for the first 18 years of your life, so tell us a little bit about growing up.

Ira Cohen: I was born in Tel Aviv, and one of my parents is an engineer, and my mother is a mathematician. In the early days, we were in the Tel Aviv area, so the center of Israel where most people live. But at some point, they decided to move to the south of Israel, [2:24], a place that had a movie on it called Turn Left at the End of the World, so it was a small town. That’s where I grew up most of the time. But they had the bug of moving, so we moved, at some point, to the U.S. for two years and lived in the LA area, which is very different from where I grew up. Then we went back to Israel to the desert again. Then we moved again to a greener place. So I had encountered a lot of different places and very different environments in my first 18 years.

Alejandro: I’m sure that was difficult as a child because you had to make relationships from the start; you had to deal with uncertainty. I’ve seen this with other entrepreneurs, too, that had a similar upbringing that, to a certain degree it shapes up the way that you are able to deal and analyze uncertainty. Do you think that played a role in you being able to become an entrepreneur later and how you deal with uncertain situations?

Ira Cohen: Definitely, because my life was changing so much. I had to adapt and know how to adapt to very different environments, very different types of friends, and very different types of even cultures. I do believe it helped me a lot to see people for what they are and not who they are, and that helps a lot also as you move around.

Alejandro: You did the military service, which is mandatory there in Israel. Then after that, you did your engineering degree. But then you decided to pack the bags and come to the U.S. Why did you decide to do that?

Ira Cohen: I don’t know. Ever since I was a child, and we lived in LA, I had this dream of going to CalTech. That was a bug that came to my head at some point and never left. When I finished my undergrad, I said, “Okay. Let’s get that bug out of my head. Oddly enough, I never applied to CalTech. I actually applied to other universities in the U.S. and was lucky to get accepted to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That’s where I went. I knew that I wanted to get an advanced degree. I wasn’t content with just an engineering degree. I felt that changing the atmosphere of where you studied—in Israel, it’s too small for a big change. Even though we have multiple universities there, the mentality is exactly the same. I wanted to experience a different mentality and a different form of learning, which the U.S. provided. But the main reason, if I’m honest, is that bug that went into my head sometime early on in my life that I should go to a top-notch U.S. university like CalTech.

Alejandro: Then, after doing your Masters, you joined Hewlett Packard, and you spent quite a bit of time at Hewlett Packard. First, here in the U.S., and then you went back to Israel and were building teams. You were before all this craziness around machine learning and AI. Now everything is AI and machine learning. So when you were building those teams, and you were seeing things around you, first and foremost, what did you learn from working at such a big organization like Hewlett Packard? And what was that experience of seeing those trends around the incredible growth around the talk, and conversations, and machine learning, and AI?

Ira Cohen: Yeah. It was quite a ride. I moved to machine learning. My undergrad was computer engineering. I worked a lot of single processing and image processing. When I moved to U of C, I thought I would be working on image processing, very theoretical. But then I got to the U.S. and started working on problems that needed machine learning, and I got the whole notion of analyzing data in the way that machine learning does with these models. I don’t know why, but it resonated with me internally, and I really like the field. I like to apply it to images and videos. I went into it because I love data analysis. Like you said, there was pretty much no market for it, but you do what you like when you do the Ph.D. That’s where it took me. As I started my professional career, both at the beginning of HP research labs, we started working on applying machine learning to various domains that HP was involved in. The reactions were always, “What is this? This is magic. This is pixie dust. This is not real,” even from fellow researchers that came out of Berkeley and had some understanding about machine learning, it always sounded like magic. I would say, “This is not magic. This is data talking. It’s taking data and making it talk instead of just data sitting around.” As time progressed, when I went back to Israel, I went to the software division and went to the executive VP there, and I told him, “I want to come and form a machine learning team, a team of people that know machine learning so we can put these capabilities into the product.” His question was, at the time, “What is machine learning? We don’t do any educational software for people to learn from. So what does this have to do with me?” That was his answer at the time, and I had to explain that machine learning is not educational software teaching people but rather exactly what it was. This was in 2009. It advanced quickly from there. It was so great to see how things progressed from being very theoretical and just being experimental universities and only a few select companies doing it like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others to the industries starting first to embrace it or trying to understand what it is, and then seeing the applications of it. Today, it feels like a lifetime ago where I had to explain what machine learning is. Now I have to actually explain, most of the time, what machine learning cannot do yet because people expect it to be the solution for everything.

Alejandro: Absolutely. In your case, about seven years ago, you decided that it was time to pack the bags and give your notice. We’re talking about at least 12 years that you spent at HP? Why, after so long, did you give your notice? What happened?

Ira Cohen: First, the HP experience, because I moved around somewhat, it felt like a few jobs. It didn’t feel like one job. You asked about the enterprise. That’s the advantage of being in a very large company: you can actually move within the company and do something completely new and not leave the company but feel like you are renewing yourself and learning. I felt that I had the glass ceiling in terms of what I could provide and what I could learn. As a researcher, I learned a lot about what works in terms of industrial research. What can you do as an industrial researcher that can make an impact, and what doesn’t work? That’s one of the reasons why I decided to transfer to the software division because I wanted to be much closer to the products themselves to make an impact. I felt, as a researcher, I could do a lot of great things, but it’s super hard to push them into the products. As I moved closer to the products, there were some successes of trying to push things into the various products, but I felt like a lot of times I had to add capabilities to an existing product, and doing that with machine learning, a lot of times hits a lot of barriers. I’ll give you an example. I would have endless discussions and arguments with the DBA of one of the products asking him, “I need this feature to work in the machine learning model. I need to query three months’ worth of data.” He would laugh me off and say, “No way. I can’t let the product do that. It would crash.” Then, as a machine learning developer or expert, I would have to start creating suboptimal algorithms. So the frustration was you come in with what you know, but then you have to make a lot of adjustments and a lot of compromises. In the end, you don’t get the optimal solution. When building your own company with your own product, you’re not limited to that. And, actually, we build the product from the ground up based on all the experiences that they had from what worked and what didn’t work. As a researcher, you have that entrepreneurial mindset because you always try to create new things that were not done before because, otherwise, why be a researcher? So that came naturally to me. All I needed was an adjustment of creating the business around it, the business framework around all of these ideas. That’s a new learning experience, which I’m still enjoying quite a lot.

Alejandro: So let’s talk about Anodot, your baby. Tell us about the band coming together, the co-founders’ meeting, and then all of you saying, “It’s time. Let’s give our notice. Let’s start this thing.”

Ira Cohen: It’s a good story of how we started Anodot. I got a message at the end of 2013 on LinkedIn, a cold message from somebody I didn’t know, who is today the CEO and co-founder. He asked me if I wanted to meet. He did a LinkedIn friend request and then, “Let’s meet.” We met a few days later over dinner, and he told me his story. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He sold the company to Akamai a couple of years earlier. He was basically looking for his new thing. At that time, he was working for an Uber competitor that is based in Israel—just to learn more about other domains other than what he did before. He realized he had some problems around getting monitoring to work for his business. This is like an Uber app, but not Uber, and they were monitoring everything in real-time constantly, but they were missing a lot of very costly incidents because even though the data was collected in real-time, it wasn’t telling a story. Somebody had to look at the data to get the story, to get that something’s happening in some city and people are not able to register as new users or not able to call taxis, or taxi drivers are not getting the calls because of all sorts of issues whether technical or nontechnical issues. The data was in real-time, but they were finding it two weeks later, a week later, if somebody accidentally looked at the data on some dashboard. Their main monitoring capability was dashboards, so eyeballs. It drove him nuts that they were losing so much money by not finding them immediately as they were happening even though the data was available immediately. In that meeting, I told them, “Yeah, machine learning can solve this problem. I know how to solve it.” Then he brought the third co-founder, who is VPRD in our company. He knew him before. He didn’t know me before. We created a deck and a small demo and started pitching it. Six months later, we opened the office and started the company officially.

Alejandro: What is the business model of Anodot for the people that are listening to get it?

Ira Cohen: What we do is autonomous business monitoring, so monitoring that is based on machine learning. We’re a SaaS company mainly, even though we have an on-premise offering as well. The business model is, you monitor your business; you send your monitoring data into our system. Our system continuously analyzes it and sends you notifications and alerts about interesting things that happen in the data that could be incidents and are incidents that you should pay attention to, whether it’s your marketing team, your revenue team, your cost team, or your customer experience team, whichever team it is. The business model is based on the volumes of data that you send us. The more things that you need to monitor, it means you’re a bigger company, the more you pay us. So it’s a SaaS model in that sense.

Alejandro: Up until now, how much capital have you guys raised to date?

Ira Cohen: We raised around $70 million to date in three rounds. We will probably raise the next in 2022. We actually closed the last one at the end of March 2020, so right as COVID was hitting. That was the seed round. That’s in terms of the capital funds that we have so far.

Alejandro: Very nice. The seed round happened very quickly, so why did it happen so quickly?

Ira Cohen: It’s always hard to exactly know, but I believe the answer is that our CEO, my partner and co-founder is a serial entrepreneur. I think that makes a whole lot of difference. We were able to come, not with paying customers yet, not with a product that is fully baked yet, but rather, he and I as the experts and our third co-founder as the head of R&D, so a strong team, good story, good references. We talked to potential customers already and got their backing that this is an important problem and that this type of solution can be useful for them. That was enough for the seed round, luckily, for us. I don’t think it would have happened if I had come alone without the history of being an entrepreneur.

Alejandro: How big was the seed round?

Ira Cohen: At the time, it looked big to me. Now it looks pretty small. I think it was a million and a half.

Alejandro: What happened with the Chinese investors? Because you had the opportunity early on of getting a big chunk of investment from folks in China, and you decided not to go that route. Obviously, it’s tough because, as an entrepreneur, you’re always raising money. So it’s hard to say no to money, but it turns out that in the long run, it was the right decision to make. Tell us about this story a little bit.

Ira Cohen: We were in touch with, like you said, a Chinese company that was doing investing. We had very good relationships with them. We visited them in China and felt very good about the people there and the company. There was a lot of back-and-forth, but at the time, this was about a year and a half that we were in business, so we were starting to think about the next round. They were fast in offering an infusion of cash that we knew the company needed. We had a big dilemma. We started talking to a few other investors at the time, but it wasn’t yet mature. This was the first one, and you want to finish it and move on so you can build a business. But there were always talks and chatter around the relationships between the U.S. and China and whether it would be smart to get an investment from a Chinese company or not. We were worried about it. On the one hand, these are great people, a great company, and the fact that they are from China, we’re not political in any way. But we don’t want to hurt the business. It turns out that we said no, and the next round actually came quickly, so some of the other investors matured quickly after that. We saw, just a few months later, in one of our biggest deals that we had, if we would have taken that investment, we wouldn’t be able to get some of the big deals that we got even six months later just because there were all these constraints between the U.S. and China. So that’s the story in a nutshell behind it. I would hope that politics is removed from our business, and we wouldn’t have to think about these kinds of things, but this is reality, and we have to live by the rules of reality.

Alejandro: Of course. In your case, it’s interesting how, even at the beginning, you were relentless about getting customers, even getting customers in [20:54]. Where is that drive coming from? It’s unbelievable.

Ira Cohen: It was quite incredible because I never did sales. I was a researcher; I was a developer; I was a very technical person. But as a researcher and somebody who keeps pushing innovation, you always know how to talk about your stuff because you have to market yourself. Nobody can market it for you as a researcher. But it was always within the constraints of the HP company, a little bit of talks with customers, but it never actually had a lot of interactions with real customers. But somehow, there was a flip in my mind, and immediately as we started the company, I started talking about it to anybody, anywhere. I was probably obnoxious to some people, but it’s this drive that pushes you to talk to people. One time, I was sitting in a jacuzzi in the gym where I work out. Somebody sits next to me. Immediately, I started asking questions, and it actually turned out to be somebody very relevant that had the need. We were able to get him to get that company just from a conversation in a jacuzzi. After that conversation, which was in the first six months or so, I realized, “I’d better do this all the time.” So I would fly, sit in a bar, and talk to people; I would do almost any interaction, and one of our biggest deals came out of meeting an old friend that I hadn’t met for a few years, sitting on the beach with a beer. In that instance, I wasn’t planning on talking about Anodot at all, but the person brought it up, and I started describing it because I thought it wouldn’t be relevant to where that person was working. It turns out that it was actually very relevant. Six months later, we signed our biggest deal to date with a very good company, which is a very large social network company that is extremely valuable to us.

Alejandro: Nice. Now, how does the life of a fish relate to the health of the company?

Ira Cohen: My title is Chief Data Scientist, but also the VP Fish Care, which I put on my LinkedIn title. It turned out it had another benefit I’ll tell you at the end, but what happened is, the first week when we started the company, my younger son got a birthday gift from one of his classmates—a small fish. We had never had a fish, and I didn’t want to have a fish in the house. So I decided to bring the fish to the office and put it in the office and see what happens. Then we started creating a whole narrative around the fish about how this fish is our lucky charm and how the fish supports the engineering systems. And if the fish is not healthy, the engineering systems are not healthy, so it’s like if you monitor the fish, you know what’s going on with Anodot. The fish died several times. It went through multiple iterations. Today, we have ten fish in a large aquarium. We have a camera that is attached to that aquarium that’s tracking the fish. This is monitoring, so it goes to the Anodot system. We created a special account for what we call the Anofish account. We’re alerted if the fish are not moving as they did before or moving more than they did before. We have a lot of sympathy for the fish.

Alejandro: Good stuff. It’s just amazing, the level of detail, and how you guys are relentless on everything, whether it’s the customers, the fish, and I love it. In terms of the vision and the mission, imagine you went to sleep tonight, as well as all of your co-founders, and all of you wake up five years from now in a world where the vision and mission of Anodot are fully realized. What does that world look like?

Ira Cohen: I’ll say it’s from the perspective of our customers, not from our perspective, and in terms of the product. When we complete the vision of the product, let’s say it’s completed five years from now, they would have a monitoring system that also fixes all problems by itself. So it’s a completely autonomous, self-healing environment that monitors your business, and it recognizes when there is an issue of people. Let’s say I’m a gaming company—an issue of ads not being displayed in a game because of some problem with interfaces with Facebook. It will detect it, and we’ll fix it, and deploy the fix or it does the remediation, and nobody in the company will even know that it happened or need to know that it happened. So having a system that completely automates everything around monitoring, which is similar to what happens in a lot of other environments that are more traditional environments like some factories or systems that fix themselves or perform remediation themselves, so do it for the digital world as well.

Alejandro: Got it. Now, imagine I put you into a time machine, and I’m able to bring you back seven years before the time that is now where you’re able to sit yourself and your other two co-founders down, your younger selves, and based on what you’ve experienced and all the lessons learned and everything, you’re able to share with them, one piece of advice before going at it with this business. What would that be, and why?

Ira Cohen: The advice would be: focus and focus on the use cases that we actually solve for today. When we started, we built a capability; we built a platform with a generic capability. The directions that we tried to sell it into in the beginning were all over the place—so lack of focus. The reason they were all over the place was because this was a new capability that we had to bring to the market. We didn’t know where it would stick or whether it would bring the most value and resonate the most with the companies that we were going after. So I would tell them, “Focus, and focus on these use cases, and don’t think about anything else. Don’t bother.” I think we wasted a lot of cycles and time—not wasted. We spent a lot of cycles and time to hone in on the right things, the right people, the right companies, and the right use cases to sell for. Again, this was because we weren’t coming at it from a very narrow focus of solving narrow problems, whether a much wider problem—building a capability that can solve a lot of different problems.

Alejandro: For the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Ira Cohen: Definitely, LinkedIn. I can give my email at Anodot. Ira@anodot.com. If you want to get to the company and not specifically to me, then our website is anodot.com. I think things pop up there all the time to ask you to fill in your details. So if somebody fills in their details, they’ll get a response quickly.

Alejandro: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Ira Cohen: Thank you very much for having me.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Ira Cohen’s SaaS startup has already raised $70M and is expected to attract even more capital from investors this year. Anodot has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Redline Capital, Alicom, Softbank Ventures Asia, and Intel Capital.

Entrepreneur Timothy Yu has turned his passion into an in-demand solution that is enabling the future of education. His startup has already raised $80M and has doubled its team size in the past year. Snapask has attracted investment from top-tier investors like Asia Partners Fund Management, InterVest.Co, Taiwan Startup Stadium, and Xie Zhan.

Entrepreneur Timothy Yu has turned his passion into an in-demand solution that is enabling the future of education. His startup has already raised $80M and has doubled its team size in the past year. Snapask has attracted investment from top-tier investors like Asia Partners Fund Management, InterVest.Co, Taiwan Startup Stadium, and Xie Zhan.

In this episode you will learn:

Important books for entrepreneurs
Doubling your employee count in just 11 months
The pros and cons of COVID for tech businesses
Timothy’s top advice when starting your own business

Alejandro Cremades · EP 407 Timothy Yu On Raising $75 Million To Give Homework Support To Students SUBSCRIBE ON:

iTunesGoogle PlayStitcherTuneInRSSSoundCloudSpotify

For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

FREE DOWNLOAD The Ultimate Guide To Pitch Decks

Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

Access The Pitch Deck Template Please subscribe to unlock this content. Just enter your email below.

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About Timothy Yu: Timothy Yu is the co-founder and CEO of Snapask, a Hong Kong-based edtech company that offers online tutorial services. Snapask is dubbed as the “Uber for tutoring,” as students can instantly connect with qualified tutors to receive on-demand academic support around the clock

Connect with Timothy Yu: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. Today our guest is really remarkable. I think that we’re going to be learning quite a bit when it comes to building and scaling, and also when it comes to turning things around from being like literally one month away from bankruptcy, recruiting over 120 or so in just 11 months. I think that it is going to be full, full, full of adrenaline stories. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Timothy Yu, welcome to the show.

Timothy Yu: Hi. Thanks for having me, Alejandro.

Alejandro: Let’s do a little bit of a walk through memory lane here, Timothy. You were born and raised in Hong Kong, so how was life growing up?

Timothy Yu: I would say it was quite normal and neutral. I won’t say it was a really amazing childhood, but like most Asian kids, you spend most of your life in tutorial centers. That’s basically for over 90% of the kids within my community. My whole life, I would define myself as a math student. I studied math in high school, theory into math for the whole time, and even in university, I studied math and statistics. It seems like it’s quite narrow as a skillset, which is quite natural that the only thing I knew how to do in college life was to tutor students. I started my first job as a tutor when I was in high school, actually, which eventually we built it into where we are today, Snapask in nine markets serving about 4 million students on the day-to-day site. So it’s quite a journey for us.

Alejandro: In your case, math and statistics were what you went to study at the university. You were alluding to it that you got into it quite early with math, so what do you think got that interest and attention for you so early on around math and statistics?

Timothy Yu: I guess the passion is always about finding truth and finding solutions. Solving math problems, solving these conundrums and puzzles, it’s always fascinating for me to make sure my head I clear. I’m always putting together the pieces I have, and if there was always a missing puzzle, I find out how we can fill that in. It’s problem-solving skills that we have acquired along the way, which led it to what it is today. Yeah, being a math student actually helps me a lot into building companies as well. It’s quite a similar logic as in you know something is not working. Students are not coming in. Users are not paying. There are always problems that are happening in a company 24/7. So, myself, as a trainer, with this kind of problem-solving skills and mindset, I think it’s really valuable for me as a skillset of bringing up from a young childhood era.

Alejandro: Also, growing up, you probably experienced the incredible growth that Hong Kong has experienced, the region. That was probably remarkable for you, as well, to see that, and perhaps at some point, you made the decision, “I’m going to do something of my own, too, in the future.”

Timothy Yu: Yes, definitely. Back then, when I was in college, there weren’t a lot of opportunities. Actually, having a startup was not a thing yet back then. It was 2008-2011 when I was in university. That was the age when Lehman Brothers, the whole financial crisis during the couple of years when people were in deep trouble. Back then, I was studying math and statistics, and I also had a major in finance as well. So my family always pushed me to become a financier somehow. I don’t know why, but being a banker or having a professional job in the financial world has always been one of the priorities for me in my career to be upstage. It was quite natural for me. As my first job, I joined a bank, but it didn’t feel right for me. There was always this passion about building something, not necessarily education back then, but building something for myself that can represent my own creativity, my own passion, as well as there was always this component of having a platform or playground for me to test and find solutions. I guess education, as a starting point for me, was almost like something that’s by chance. It so happened that I started my first career as a tutor, which eventually led to what it is today.

Alejandro: In your case, after university, you tested out the corporate angle, and you were working at this bank as a clerk, so managing that when at the same time really perhaps exploring what would eventually become Snapask. There are a lot of people listening now and watching, and they’re wondering: “When should it be the right time for me to maybe jump ship and finally allocate time to my startup full-time.” I’m sure that you were also dealing with that, so how was that time for you?

Timothy Yu: There was this moment when I knew I should start something, but it wasn’t like, “I have to start, so I throw everything away in my life and just start.” I think it’s quite similar for most people. You cannot just wake up one day and think, “I will start a company.” You almost would have a job that you’re still on and duties and responsibilities that you have. So, it was quite similar for me back then, having my job in the daytime in the bank. I wanted to try something out, so I applied for some programs in Hong Kong. There are programs that support people to start companies. So I submitted my proposal. I got a call from them, “You should come to our office and do a pitch.” I went there. I still remember that I went there in the morning. I got a day off that day to just pitch them my idea. I got *** quite badly. People don’t like the idea of being so young, first of all. First and foremost, you are not experienced at all. You are just one or two years out of college. There is no reason why you would have a much better pitch than any other people doing what you are thinking. What you have is just an idea. But eventually, I got in, luckily. I asked a manager of the program, “Where was I on the whole list?” They told me I was almost the last person on the list who got in, but then eventually, they helped me on some seed funding as well. So I started. I had a small office in the center. I started recruiting some interns from the university. So that’s how we started. It was 2011 at that time, my first year out of college. I guess for most people who are thinking, “I should start my own company,” my recommendation would always be don’t immediately start something until you have researched enough. I think there are lots of truths nowadays that you can definitely do it on the side to support and test out your ideas and do it scientifically.

Alejandro: About testing the ideas, at what point did you realize that this idea had legs.

Timothy Yu: The first version of Snapask is actually not Snapask. It was just myself teaching online. When I was still in the university, I got a couple of friends because we were all doing tutoring, having it as a gig, as a side job. I gathered a couple of friends, and we started a very small tutorial center. We split the rent, and we each had a classroom, and we started tutoring, having our own students in class, materials, and everything. But it was the second year when we found out—it was just myself being a lazy person. I feel like I am repeating myself a lot with the lectures that I’m teaching, so why don’t I just do a screen recording of me teaching online? And people should pay for my classes. I had that idea in mind. I thought, “Online education should work like this. I should not be repeating myself, but I should put this video online and charge for it.” It was a huge failure when I first had my first 20, 30 videos. It was just me teaching all the topics in the curriculum. I don’t know why, but I did everything I could. I taught the classes, and I uploaded them. It’s something I still remember until today about don’t do everything before you have a proper plan to test things out or execute. You have to know exactly what you’re testing, and you have to have the right amount of resources put in. If something works, you should put in more, and subsequently, within all of these steps, linking it; it’s not just a linear process. It branches. It branches out to a level that every step is a test, which comes back with results that drives you to the next step. This is something my team and I have been holding onto a lot during the whole process. But after the first stage, when we did videos online and started gathering some students, we had some students, but then no one was paying for the service, which means it’s a failing business, but then we got some traffic. So we pivoted. We knew this was not something that worked. If what I did back then was, “If the first 30 videos didn’t work, I should make 60 more.” Or “If the first 60 didn’t work, I should make another 100.” It will become a bigger and bigger failure. So the first thing I did was I went back, I studied what happened, and I talked to users and the students. One thing quite interesting that came out was students every day after they watched the videos, it’s different topics, so students left comments and they sent messages to my inbox and started asking questions. So I think it was only a month or two after the first batch of videos were accumulating on the platform. It was just a Facebook page back then. I started seeing a lot of messages in my inbox coming in asking questions about those videos. Then I started answering those questions, and more students came to ask questions, so I ended up having my friends lock into my account to help me answer questions. That’s almost like a version zero of Snapask of having a bunch of tutors on a platform just answering questions. l

Alejandro: What ended up being the business model that we know today of Snapask, and how do you guys make money?

Timothy Yu: Based on the first version of students watching videos and asking questions based on the topics that they have doubts about, now what we’re doing is we connect students with questions about their homework, study, exam preparation, and we connect them with qualified tutors in the local market. Now we are serving over four million students with over 350,000 tutors around the world. Our primary focus right now is mostly in the Asian markets. We started off in Hong Kong. Now we’re in Taiwan, Singapore, most of the South Asian market, and the newly-developed markets like Japan and South Korea, also one of the fastest-growing regions that we’re in.

Alejandro: Obviously, you’ve had tremendous growth. How much capital have you guys raised to date?

Timothy Yu: To date, including the first couple of rounds, I think we have raised over 80 million in total since 2016, our first round. And currently, we are also working on new financing activities to keep up with the growth opportunities that we have seen in the pipeline.

Alejandro: Got it. The first round that you did was you and your professor investing, and that amount didn’t last long. In fact, you were literally one month away from bankruptcy, so tell us what the sequence of events was and how did you turn it around so that you were able to survive?

Timothy Yu: There was a stage where we were not monetizing much from our users, so we were testing a lot of things and investing a lot in building our products, and also the content, and all the services. There was a stage where we were building so much. It was my own capital back then and another investor in a very early stage. I guess the first person who was crazy enough to invest in this company when I first met him, he was 68 years old. I met him in a bar. I talked to him in an event about doing social good in a bar in Hong Kong. I told him about the idea of online education and how it can grow, how I’m actually doing tutoring online and getting a lot of students. The next day, he came to our office and gave us a check. That’s our first investor who joined this journey. But even with my own capital and some new capital coming in to support the growth of the business, it’s not enough. In 2016, we started our first round of fundraising, but it was not so successful. It took actually six months longer than we expected to close the round, so by the time the money came in for the first Series A round, we were one month away from bankruptcy. It wasn’t a very big team back then, not a huge burn, but then still 20-30 people in our team in Hong Kong. I still remember that we were writing checks for them, and we don’t know if we would have cash. The month after, luckily, everything worked out. The money came in, although it’s delayed. The round was delayed, but then eventually it was closed, and then everyone was happy.

Alejandro: Why do you think it took longer than expected? And if you could go back, how would you mitigate to avoid that happening again?

Timothy Yu: I won’t say it was something we could mitigate entirely. I would say it was just our first round. We didn’t have much experience in fundraising back then, and talking to a lot of people in Hong Kong about how we built this company and eventually we filtered out who would be the right investor for us. I think, back then, there was also this direction of how companies in Hong Kong can grow to a billion-dollar company or even larger. But then everyone realized the fact that Hong Kong was a very small market in every regard. The industry is small; the market is small because of the population. At the end of the day, we just have to look at the market size. So Hong Kong is inherently having some disadvantages in that regard. Raising money for a business purely focusing in Hong Kong is not easy. I guess that’s also one of the steps that we took early in the preparation of the company that we launched also our operation in places like Taiwan and Singapore. Although the sizes of these markets are not as huge as China, but with our expansion to these markets, we can successfully show our investors how scalable it is for Snapask to grow beyond just Hong Kong to other markets in Asia and how replicable it is to build a business based on all the resources we have on hand.

Alejandro: One thing that is very interesting is how the investor mindset is different from one geographic location to another. For example, in the U.S., investors, especially in an early stage, are big-time into growth and into product/market fit. For example, in Europe, let’s say in Spain, where I was raised, they’re more about profit versus growth. I think that mindset, especially if you’re thinking about marketplaces, could really kill the business because more money today is not going to be equal to more money tomorrow. In terms of the mindset there in Hong Kong and around you in the region, what is the mindset of investors? What gets them excited?

Timothy Yu: It changes from stage to stage, definitely. I would say we went through three main rounds of fundraising. So from pre-A Round and A/B/C Rounds, there were definitely different investor mixes in conversations with, so definitely pre-A Rounds are about how scalable your idea is, how big the market is and what kind of unique selling point your product is actually building. Not necessarily a successful business model that you have already tested out and generated a lot of revenue within that model, but at least testing how well it can monetize and showing some pre-scaled-up metrics that this is, from a unit economics point of view, it actually makes sense. Testing out these smaller components from a smaller scale can get an investor excited at that time and at that stage. Of course, once you have your first ticket coming in Series A and until you get to Series B, it’s about how big the market you have pitched people about and how much you have actually acquired within that market that you’ve imagined yourself in being. I guess some very concrete steps would be how well you are scaling your business with the team that you can hire and how your structure is actually built up for the long haul. For our case, I would say it’s quite unique. The reason being, we have an operation in nine markets at this stage that we are only five to six years into operation. We already have nine different teams in nine different markets operating independently as well as they are global teams with a lot of processes overlapping. I would say at the B to C Round stage, not only do you have to prove the business model works, but it had to work in multiple markets with the same kind of construct, team construct, operation model, as well as logistics. In unit economics, the same model can be applicable to each of the markets. It’s also about the show and return on investment. Not the return on investment on the investors’ money, but more on how well you are making decisions in your quarter-by-quarter. In smaller decisions, how you are investing money to measure your return as well. These are all the topics that I think, although quite broadly speaking, everyone knows what it is. But then, when you are multiplying this topic to four to five markets, it’s definitely more difficult than if you’re only in one market. I would say Asia is unique in that way because everything is so scattered. Each market is quite small, but then the whole market is quite big, per se.

Alejandro: For you guys, the last 11 months have been really incredible when it comes to headcount. Right now, you’re closing in on 300 employees. But in the last 11 months, you’ve experienced adding around 120 or so. There are a few things there that are interesting. One is, what do you think really caused that tremendous growth. Do you think that maybe COVID was something that treated you guys very well?

Timothy Yu: Yeah. As you mentioned, we doubled our size just within 2021 in the first 11 months of 2021. The team is quite happy about the growth. I, myself, and some of my partners are also quite happy about the growth. But at the same time, it’s quite scary. The reason being, when your organization grows, not necessarily the leaders would grow. So we have to always keep everyone at the same speed, the same expectation, the same standard, and most importantly, I have to also push myself a lot to get up to speed. As a first-time entrepreneur, first-time founder, I would always say I’m learning everything along the way. I don’t have any management experience. I don’t have anything about how to run a 100-people company. I would not have experience in any of the topics that right now I have to be good in, so that’s why I think along the journey, I’m quite grateful. I have very good team members that I’m learning from and learning with, as well as having mentors who are being very helpful. And there is always a community with us in facing these difficult times. Growing the team to 200+ people, right now, very close to 300 people, just within 12 months, is quite scary. The scariest part is, these are people you cannot see. I have more than half of the team who are actually outside of Hong Kong. These are people that I don’t work with every day, and we’ll see some of them that we hired after COVID that have not been flying around between markets for the last two years. It means that there are a lot of members that I haven’t even met in person. This is the part that impacts collaborations a lot, as well as building relationships for us to have a tight-knit team. But then to your point about is COVID one of the main factors in helping the business to grow, I would say yes, in a way because we have set up this whole launch again, the whole platform and technology for online education and digital learning since day one. There is nothing about that change to the new online education behavior at all since COVID started in 2020. But then we had some earlier success since the beginning of the pandemic when school was suspended and students could not go out to tutorial schools anymore. They had to do everything at home, so they were stuck at home, but then exams were still happening. That’s why they came to our platform. Active users spiked as well as usage, and revenue increased a lot during the past two years. One thing we also see is other traditional businesses; although they have been suffering a lot since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, like any other business, we are all finding a way to survive. These businesses are facing impact and disruption during the beginning of the outbreak. They have also found a way to come out of it, to revamp their business, to reinvent some of the components in their business model. Now, suddenly, we have 10, 15 more competitors in the same market, and combining all the nine markets that we’re in, there are almost 100+ competitors on our radar. This is something that always keeps us up at night.

Alejandro: Got it. Talking about being up at night, imagine if you go to sleep tonight—obviously, a tremendous snooze. Nothing is keeping you up, and you sleep like you never have before, and you wake up in a world five years later where the vision of Snapask is fully realized. What does that world look like?

Timothy Yu: Technology has been advancing at tremendous speed for the past decade, so we’re no longer talking about a technology that needs three years to be built. We can see technological advancement almost weekly. New things are coming out every day. I think five years is a very long timeframe. One of the first priorities for us is to make education personalized and available for all. Even though we are only focusing on a small segment of the markets in Asia, these markets have a significant enough representation of the entire demographic in Asia, as well as also students globally. I think education eventually will go to a stage where we don’t have to go to school anymore. School will no longer be on our day-to-day. If we can effectively acquire knowledge online through every means that are available nowadays, we can almost imagine five years from now it will get to a stage where everything you have acquired is already online. Then what’s left in school is no longer applicable to how we imagine the school function is like today. This is something that I think keeps me up at night every day and also for the team. That pushes us to think about how we can build a better product, better service, and also better performance for the entire community.

Alejandro: You’ve been at it now for quite a while, and I’m sure there are a lot of lessons learned. You were talking about it. This is your first company, your first rodeo, and I’m sure that the incredible lessons that you’ve been able to get along the way have been remarkable. So keeping that in mind, if you were able to go back in time. Imagine I put you into a time machine, and I bring you back in time to that moment where Timothy is coming out of school and thinking about building something of his own, and you were able to have a sit-down with that younger Timothy and be able to give that younger Timothy one piece of business advice before launching a business. What would you tell your younger self and why, given what you know now?

Timothy Yu: I won’t just tell him one thing if I actually have a chance to meet him again. But if there was only limited time and I could only tell him one thing, it would be to stay focused. I think it’s the same message for a lot of entrepreneurs, as well. We can always do a lot of things, and every day we have new ideas coming out. But the true ability of an entrepreneur, a founder, or a leader is never about doing more things. It’s about doing less things. Being able to filter what is not necessary in your pipeline, what is not something that you should prioritize now is a true edge for a leader. That’s something I would definitely prioritize for myself, for my younger self, and also for my future self.

Alejandro: For this journey that you’ve had, obviously learning a lot, I’m sure that you’ve read a lot too. What would you say has been one book that you wish you would have read sooner?

Timothy Yu: There is this book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

Alejandro: Ben Horowitz. Good stuff.

Timothy Yu: Yeah, Ben Horowitz. It’s a #1 read for every entrepreneur, I would say. Short stories, you can read it within a day, and a lot of life lessons that Ben Horowitz accumulates over his 20+ years of entrepreneurial life.

Alejandro: Amazing. Well, Timothy, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show. It was an honor to have you here.

Timothy Yu: Yes. My pleasure. Thank you, Alejandro.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Amir Barsoum is an innovative Egyptian entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to transforming healthcare. And, making it more accessible to everyone. He grew up in a household of pharmacists and developed an early interest in the field.

Amir studied pharmacy and founded a pharmaceutical distribution company in Egypt shortly after graduation.

He was excited to work for huge multinational pharmaceutical corporations such as AstraZeneca, which provided him with a worldwide perspective.

Amir started a new firm in the space that has since grown to be a global brand with operations on four continents.

His venture, Vezeeta has raised funding from top-tier investors like VNV Global, Crescent Enterprises Venture Capital, Beco Capital, and Gulf Capital.

In this episode you will learn:

How to nurture a childhood dream
The value of risk-taking
How companies can survive financial shortages
Amir Barsoum’s top advice for other entrepreneurs

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About Amir Barsoum: Amir Barsoum is the Founder & CEO of Vezeeta.com.,the leading digital healthcare platform in MENA that connects patients with healthcare providers and health services.

Prior to Vezeeta, Amir was a Management Consultant at McKinsey & Company advising Healthcare and FMCGs across public and private sectors in Europe and MENA.

He also led theStrategy Team of AstraZeneca in MENA.

With his profound knowledge and expertise of how different Healthcare systems operate in International Markets, Amir introduced Vezeeta in 2012 empowering millions of patients through data and the ability to better access healthcare in the region.

Amir holds an MBA from the American University of Cairo, Bachelor of Pharmacy from Ain Shams University and an Executive Education Certificate from Harvard Business School about Scaling Startups.

He is also an Endeavor Entrepreneur and on the Board of Directors of Endeavor Egypt and a Board Member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization.

Amir has been featured by Cairo Scene Magazine as one of the 17 most influential Egyptians in 2017.

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Connect with Amir Barsoum: * Crunchbase * LinkedIn * Twitter * Facebook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview: Alejandro: Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the DealMakers show. I’m very excited about our guest today, who is very much the international type of approach, the global approach that he has taken, and I think that we’re going to be learning a lot about building, scaling, expansion, raising, pivoting, and you name it. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today. Amir Barsoum, welcome to the show.

Amir Barsoum: Hello, Alejandro. Thank you very much for having me today.

Alejandro: So originally born and raised there in Cairo to a family of pharmacists. How was life growing up?

Amir Barsoum: It was seeing entrepreneurship from its starting point. I was born to a father who was working 12-14 hours a day trying to build up his small business from scratch. In the 1980s, there was not much fundraising in the Middle East. It was really bootstrapping it, saving from here to add there. I think we’ve learned entrepreneurship and how fulfilling a journey it could be, but also how demanding it is.

Alejandro: 100%. Did you see your parents, and then you thought to yourself that one day you were going to do it as well?

Amir Barsoum: All my life, I was thinking that one day or another, I would end up being an entrepreneur. I never thought that I would be a tech entrepreneur because we were a very pharmacological and medical family to the extent that when I was young, I used to go to my dad, to the pharmacy, and play with—you know, the bottles for children? I used to actually play with those as my play toys. You get a plastic one and hit the glass, you want to break it, and then you win. That’s how it was in my childhood, so I thought that one day I would be running this pharmacy chain and take it to the next step, but I never thought that I would be a tech entrepreneur thinking more of the innovation, the new market pains versus growing a traditional business. I think the old merged together to almost the same set of your daily tasks, but I would say they don’t start at the same point or the same starting line.

Alejandro: Yeah. In your case, you definitely did follow your parents’ footsteps because you studied pharmacy, but then literally coming out of your studies, you actually did your Master’s too, but then you started your first startup. So what was that first startup that you did back then?

Amir Barsoum: When I did pharmacy, the path was either to go toward the traditional retail store line or to go into a pharma company. I wasn’t necessarily excited by any of these paths, so I decided to do something differently, and I built a distribution pharmaceutical business. Every single thing that you can sell in a pharmacy in the [4:34] side, not in the prescription side, and with time, we were a distributor. Then we started to make input and expert deals with different players focusing primarily on Egypt. We took the company from just starting it, and I sold it when we were around 120 employees distributing to almost all the cities of Egypt. I exited three years after, but again, I wasn’t an expert, so I hadn’t made real money out of this, but I think the learning was amazing and immense, especially for somebody who was 21 years old just out of college trying to make a deal with the carpool of the world, the big, big markets of the world, and I think that was an incredible piece.

Alejandro: In your case, you exited here to investors as opposed to exiting to another company. Why exit to other investors?

Amir Barsoum: At that time, that was the disturbance and the disruption that was happening in Iraq in the Middle East. Some of the prominent people there started to choose countries to move from, and they actually moved to Egypt, and that’s when I made the exit. It was an individual investor who was trying to establish a presence in Egypt. He came in as an investor and partner. Then after six months, he decided to buy it all, and I was happy to take it to the next step. The dream in my head was one I applied to go work for a multi-national company to learn how the multi-national companies worked. It was very interesting. I was a 24-years-old kid. I built my resume. It was an amazing one, I think. I thought it was an amazing one with the achievement that I had done with this company, and I started applying to different multi-national companies, especially the pharma ones. Every single one of them told me, “You are a burned case. It’s not going to work. You’re advanced to become an entry-level, and you never worked in multi-national. You’re not good enough to be in a managerial level, so we’re sorry. It’s not going to work.” It took me six months with that until in just one day, as surprising as it gets, I got two offers, one from McKinsey and one from Loreal, and I decided to jump on the McKinsey one.

Alejandro: That’s amazing. You did a little bit of the management consulting, but that definitely got you, right after that, into AstraZeneca, which was the most immediate step prior to starting your latest baby, the rocket ship that you’re in. So tell us about that experience being at AstraZeneca, and more importantly, that incubation process of the idea that would eventually become your next company.

Amir Barsoum: If you don’t mind, I also want to shed some light on the McKinsey project. That was the first time I got to be more exposed at the global scale and also a different way of thinking. That shaped me. I think it was one of the best schools I have been in, honestly. I started to look at things from a very different perspective. I started working in Algeria, South Arabia, UK, Switzerland, Belgium. So I started to see the world from very different angles and very different perspectives. It was an amazing time. Then when I moved to AstraZeneca, I had an ultimatum from my wife. When we got our first baby, she told me, “Forget it. It’s either McKinsey or me,” and lucky me, I chose my wife, and I took a job offer from AstraZeneca where you go back to the real corporate world in big growth at that age where I was reading strategy and business development, including M&A activities, portfolio management, and so on for almost 48 countries in different parts of the region. But at that time, it was so obvious to me how all pharma companies have been doing exactly the same way of go-to-market as they used to be 100 years ago. You have the medical representative go visit the doctor physically, you have waiting time, and you manage the waiting time. I was like, “If a company that managed to put in the palms of the doctor an application, and then we go and sell this to the pharma companies, we’re going to save tons of money, we’re going to create massive efficiencies of the system, and this company would be the coming unicorn. I was so carried about this idea, and I felt this was a global thing. This could be everywhere in the world. I’ve seen this problem in AstraZeneca in London, Germany, South Africa, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. I say Egypt is a fantastic starting point because of the availability of tech talent. I know the market inside out, and we could do a lot of times and errors, and if it works, we scale it. Then I decided to jump the ship. I remember the day when I told my dad, “I’m going to raise a million dollars. I have a friend from McKinsey who went to have his own venture capital. He’s a key component to Astra Zeneca, an investor named [10:38], and I’m leaving.” My dad was like, “Are you nuts? You’re 28 years old. You’re running a pharma company for 48 countries, and you’re leaving this to start whatever you want to start. Are you crazy or what? What are you thinking?” I was like, “But, Dad, I’m going to be a star in a year’s time or so.” “What are you talking about?” I went to my wife, and that was a totally different side of the spectrum. She was like, “I told you to leave McKinsey. You did, and I’m supporting this. I want you to be happy; I want you to be excited.” So I got these very different and diverse responses from my family, and I did it with a great cofounder who is our Chief Technology, Ahmed Badr, and we did it in 2012. I will never forget those days. We went into the market and did a survey about building electronic medical record ideas. We will build an electronic medical record for doctors in their clinics. They use it. We tell pharma companies to do advertisements of these electronic medical records, and we make tons of money, and we’re the richest people on the planet. We did the survey, and I’ll never forget this: 82% of the doctors said they’re willing to buy MR now. Even the survey, we did the pricing and the likes. We put it to the market after six months of building it in February or March 2015. We started to see adoption rate, and it was very good. I would say that was a moment when you actually hit the reality. The research and the idea when it faced execution, it’s a very different life.

Alejandro: No kidding. What ended up being the business model because you guys went through a serious pivot there. It came close, the company going bankrupt, so tell us about that.

Amir Barsoum: When you build something that you thought everybody would like, we used to go and sit with the doctors, and it was like, “Why are you not using the electronic medical records that were given.” By the way, it was fabulously built. Microsoft gave us a trophy. We traveled to Belgium to take it. It was the best MR in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. We asked the doctor, “Why are you not using it.” We used to hear this very weird comment. “It’s my fault; it’s not yours. I need to discipline myself.” Then we realized that we had built something that people are not willing to use, and still, in the virgin markets, there are no rules and regulations that enforce MR. We realized it wasn’t going to go to the next step. We started to ask them, “What do you want?” But the real outcome that we got, healthcare has been designed and built to serve the providers, serving the doctors, the pharmacists, the hospital, the diagnostic centers, not the patients. And every company on the planet actually thinks that they’re serving the patients, but the reality is they’re serving the other side, which is the provider, because if you think about it, they usually make money from the provider. We thought, “You know what? We want to change patients to consumers.” I’m the patient. I’m the same person. I’m called a consumer if I go to a restaurant. I look at the menu, and I choose whatever I want, and they call me a consumer. I leave, I go to the clothing store next door, and I’m still called a consumer. And if the same guy the same day would go next door into a clinic, he’s called a patient. I think in the clinic, I’m deprived of a choice, not because of anything, but because of lack of knowledge, lack of information, and lack of tools that empower me to take it to the next step. We thought, “We should be in the business of empowering patients.” Then we decided that we would create an accessibility platform, and we help patients choose doctors and book these doctors. We say, “But we’re not a booking platform; we’re a choice platform. We are empowering patients to choose.” So we are very big on ratings and reviews, copays, availability, what they do, or they don’t do, backgrounds of these doctors. It was very big in our heads, and if you think about it, doctors are being rated and reviewed. I think this is one of the handful of platforms at the global scale that you go on the website, and you will see negative reviews on the doctors as much as you’ll see positive reviews. I remember that it was quite problematic in 2013 to tell a doctor that somebody would give you a negative review. They were offended. But with time, with a very strong insistence on this model, it picked up amazingly well because patients started to use it to choose their doctors. In reality, despite that we could be classified as a booking platform, we are way bigger as a search platform. We have replaced your friend to give them a call to ask about a doctor. We have replaced your mom and dad to ask them about who is the best dentist around? That has actually given a lot of information through real, live information ratings, reviews, and comments. It’s like curated information by other patients about the providers and about the experience. If you think about it, that has ended up scaling the entire ecosystem quality. Waiting time in the market was at a range of 90 to 100 minutes, and its time keeps going down because they see the waiting time of the clinic, and they don’t want to wait in these clinics that have these crazy waiting times. That has ended. Actually, providers go back and say, “We will use the practice management. Also, they want to get their medical data saved, so doctors are actually now back again asking to use electronic medical records, and so on, and so forth. I think that was a very big component in the success story. But you also need to endure the pain to do this because of the money we were almost out of money in 2015. So before the glory, before the victory, we ended up downsizing. I think we were 53 employees, and we ended up going down to six employees in early 2015 to go back to the drawing table, leave some money in the bank. That was a devastating moment. The people that believed in the early idea, you need to let them go because the company is not going to make it, and you accepted to go back again.

Alejandro: Absolutely. Those are the times where you get to learn the most. So it’s just part of the journey. In your case, Amir, here you are making it happen, and then you decide to do an MBA at the same time as building a startup. I mean, building a startup is already a massive undertaking, so why did you go and study for an MBA where you were actually doing the real MBA in real life?

Amir Barsoum: I basically looked at the world map, and I said, transportation, fintech, you are building the ecosystem because you are convincing somebody who is not a driver to become a driver, and you’re convincing somebody who is a passenger or a driver to use different tools of that. Accordingly, you could create, hypothetically, a bigger source of your supply of your driver. But it has helped to solve the case. In healthcare, what you can do is improve the interactions with already existing suppliers. If you want to create and build a great company, you need to go to markets that have already established supplies, but still, the pains are still kind of comparable. You say I want to go to the big oceans and see how we can do there. Getting closer to the U.S. ecosystem, which is the largest in the world, and also getting closer to one of the schools like MIT, which is very heavy in tech and analytics, 1) it will get me closer to the U.S. ecosystem and 2) it will also get me to be more appreciative of how technology and analytics will upscale the quality of Vezeeta and take it to the next step. The dream in my eyes is I want to be a global player. I don’t want to be an emerging market player. I don’t want to be a develop market player. I want to be a global player, and I want to take it to the real world. The first thing that we did after that, after seven or eight months, one of my friends I pushed and was like, why don’t we come into build this platform, and I got [20:25] to be leading on part of our U.S. expansion story because the whole idea in my head is how to take it to the next step. The concept and the patients are not empowered, are not given tools to help them access healthcare, remains as solid as it gets in Egypt as it gets in the U.S. and in Germany. We are now in the process of taking it and proving it in more markets. We did it in Egypt; we did it in Saudi, which is a very, very different platform and ecosystem of healthcare—very different. I would say Saudi is closer to the U.S. than it is of Egypt because of the big payer systems, diverse landscape of big hospital groups, and smaller clinics and public clinics, but it’s very close to that. Then we went to Nigeria, and now we are in the U.S.

Alejandro: In your case, how much capital have you guys raised to date for Vezeeta?

Amir Barsoum: To date, we have raised $73 million in capital. A big portion of that was deployed to build the technology that we have, the patient-side technology. We are also a big online pharmacy—also the online pharmacy and the clinic side of the tech. So always think we are a triangle of these three pieces: the patient, accessibility, and medical data from one end of the pharmacy side and the doctor side. Also, a big part of the capital was used to build the team and the expansion from one market to another. Most of the capital has been raised from investors in the Middle East, but we’ve also got Endeavour Capital from the U.S., which is part of the Endeavour Entrepreneur Network, one of the best things that every entrepreneur in the world should do and should join. I also have [22:35] of new ventures, a great venture capital firm and private equity firm based out of Sweden and definitely Gulf Capital from the Middle East here, a big player; Esteve, from Saudi; Silicon Badia, in Jordan and the U.S.

Alejandro: In your case, this is amazing, all these investors that you’ve got, but more impressive is the way that you guys have thought about expansion going from Cairo to Saudi, from Saudi to the U.S., and having that global mindset. There are probably a lot of entrepreneurs who are right now watching and listening, and they’re thinking about, “How would it look if I were to go global or if I went to other territories? What have you learned about expansion that you think could be useful for the people that are listening?

Amir Barsoum: First of all, if you are a Middle East company, and you tell somebody you’re going to go and operate in the U.S., they will probably tell you that you’re crazy and forget about it, and that would happen, definitely. We are in the process of starting it smaller until you make sure that it’s working, and then you start going big. I would always believe that in every country you go to, spend the first three to six months, which depends on how fast you are and how lucky you are, to reiterate your product/market fit. Think about the key need in the market and the product/market fit, and who are the key players or the key team members that you will get on board to make it happen. You could be the smartest person in the world, but you’re not the one that’s going to make it happen. You need to hire people who are going to make it happen. When the fundraising comes, you will disappear. When you need product/market fit, I would say be very, very involved. If you feel confident about it, get the person who would take the lead on that. I think that’s my advice. In some countries, we’re fast at product/market fit. What are you talking about? And we failed because of that, so I would always spend, personally, significant time in the beginning of each country, especially if the country is large in size, and take it from there. And I would find the key talents who would be leading the operation. I would also think about country expansion. There are two ways of thinking about that—something like geofencing. Somebody says, Asia Pacific or Europe. That’s geofencing or the Middle East. The reality is, Germany is not like the UK, and it’s not like France. So you would see it’s geofencing in our head, but it’s not the reality. We thought about it and will continue thinking about it in what are the factors that impact our business? Accordingly, you would start grouping the countries according to that. Then we look at these countries, and we say, “How different our product needs to change to adapt to the market needs,” and then we decide on whether it’s relevant or why to take it or not. I think it’s a new way of looking at countries than the virtual geofencing concept, but I think it’s the more pragmatic way of looking at it. For example, that’s what made a very logical compass. You go from Egypt to go to Dubai, for example, but the dynamics of Dubai are different than that of Egypt, and it’s better to go to Saudi. And the same: it’s better to go to Nigeria than to go to South Africa because, despite that it could be a more developed country, but know that the dynamics are like that, and so on.

Alejandro: 100%. One of the questions that I want to ask you now is for the people who are listening to get a sense of the scope of the Vezeeta today. Is there anything that you can share to give us an idea of how big Vezeeta is today?

Amir Barsoum: We are operating in markets that have a total population today, not including the U.S., but a similar operation in the making. We are in markets that surround half-a-billion population habitants: Egypt, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, or a little bit less than that which surround 350 or so. We have around 40,000 medical doctors on our platform that are actively using our platform on a monthly basis, and we’re serving around 7-7.5 million patients across different verticals, and I think the two biggest of them, one of which is the doctor consultation. That could be a visit to a doctor. So the patient goes to the doctor, or the doctor goes to the patient home visit or a teleconsultation, which we consider a vertical of the consultation. Then the other one is medication ordering and delivery or the online pharmacy space.

Alejandro: Very cool. Imagine that I put you into a time machine, and I take you back in time to that moment where you were actually starting the company and that time where you were still at AstraZeneca and thinking about Vezeeta and the idea and what you’re going to be bringing to life. If you could go back in time and have a chat with that younger Amir and give that younger Amir one piece of advice before launching that business, what would that be and why, knowing what you know now?

Amir Barsoum: I know it’s very controversial, but I would have taken the MIT MBA first to get this exposure to the world of startups. One thing that I realized is that startup is an industry. It’s an industry on its own, building a tech company. It’s an industry that is very different, and being exposed to this industry is a big thing. The second advice would be to take more time to understand the product/market fit and take and put the product in the market earlier to test the monetization. Then start raising money and scaling because if you know that it’s working, I think you will find very different types of investors coming on board, a very different excitement level, very different valuations, very different control over your company, and a very different team to build at that time. I would say these are the two things, and I think education, whether it’s formal or informal. It doesn’t matter much but get very strong exposure and understanding and educational-based information. It changes how you look at the startup. I’m not talking about the traditional by-the-book education only, but I’m talking about how startups work, how startups fail. Sit with the CEOs who have failed or succeeded. Get access to this world and definitely spend time product/market fit and to the product early-on in the market, and then raise money.

Alejandro: And you were alluding to education by the book. What is one book that you wish you would have read sooner?

Amir Barsoum: I love Zero to One, by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel. I’m in love with this book. Personally, I always think of the idea: I’m going to compete and win over the competition. I’m in love with the concept of trying not to compete. I think this book has so many fabulous and fantastic pillars of how to build a great startup. It doesn’t take you by-the-book like Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, but I actually like this book a lot. I would say another book that I really like one particular chapter is Outliers.

Alejandro: By Malcolm Gladwell.

Amir Barsoum: Malcolm Gladwell. And I like 10,000 rules and that you’ll never be an expert unless you keep doing this to the moment when you are so bored, and you still continue doing it, and then you’re going to find yourself. I think this has changed the way I look at myself and what I’m supposed to do because I always think—I get bored easily, and I should move from one step to another, but the reality is, you’re only excelling when you accept that being bored doesn’t mean that it’s the end of your practice. You keep on practicing again and again. I think it’s a very good one.

Alejandro: Amazing. Amir, for the people that are listening, what is the best way for them to reach out and say hi?

Amir Barsoum: You’ll find me on LinkedIn, Amir Barsoum. I’m very active on messaging. Send to my email and on Twitter. I’m quite responsive on these channels. My email is amirbarsoum@vezeeta.com. You’re going to find me on all of these platforms.

Alejandro: Amazing. Amir, thank you so much for being on the DealMakers show today.

Amir Barsoum: Thank you, Alejandro, for having me. I truly enjoyed the conversation and the questions.

If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at alejandro@pantheraadvisors.com.

Amir Barsoum is an innovative Egyptian entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to transforming healthcare. And, making it more accessible to everyone. He grew up in a household of pharmacists and developed an early interest in the field. Amir studied pharmacy and founded a pharmaceutical distribution company in Egypt shortly after graduation. He was excited to work for huge multinational pharmaceutical corporations such as AstraZeneca, which provided him with a worldwide perspective. Amir started a new firm in the space that has since grown to be a global brand with operations on four continents. His venture, Vezeeta has raised funding from top-tier investors like VNV Global, Crescent Enterprises Venture Capital, Beco Capital, and Gulf Capital.

Fahd Rachidy is now on his third startup venture. His second financial services startup was acquired for $200M. His latest venture has already raised close to $15M from top-tier investors like MassChallenge, ACE & Company, Downing Ventures, and Thames Trust.

Fahd Rachidy is now on his third startup venture. His second financial services startup was acquired for $200M. His latest venture has already raised close to $15M from top-tier investors like MassChallenge, ACE & Company, Downing Ventures, and Thames Trust.

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Zachary Sweeney is on a mission to discover important drugs to cure and manage some of the biggest present and future threats to our health. His biotech startup has already attracted almost $100M in capital and some great talent to further this mission. The venture, Interline Therapeutics has attracted the interest of top-tier investors like Foresite Capital and ARCH Venture Partners.

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The world is your oyster, and it is up to you to take chances in life and make things happen. Life is short as Omair Tariq has been reminded by the near-death experiences that have prompted him to go big rather than remain stagnant. His venture, Cart.com has raised funding from top-tier investors like Sebastian Rymarz, Moonshots Capital, Oaks HC/FT, and Clearco.

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Yuval Brisker is a true serial entrepreneur who has launched and taken several companies full cycle. Including one for which he went from bootstrapping to raising $105M in funding before it was acquired by Oracle for $500M. His venture, Alviere has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Viola FinTech, Opera Tech Ventures, CommerzVentures, and Viola Ventures.

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With creativity and tech, Gina Bianchi from California has created multimillion-dollar companies. She continues to pave the way for startups entering the market. As she continues to pave the way in the tech industry, everything Gina touches seems to turn to gold. She is bringing communities from various cultures together to learn from each other, and to provide an online platform where they can feel like they belong. Her venture, Mighty Networks has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Marie Forleo International, LionTree, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Owl Ventures.

With creativity and tech, Gina Bianchi from California has created multimillion-dollar companies. She continues to pave the way for startups entering the market. As she continues to pave the way in the tech industry, everything Gina touches seems to turn to gold. She is bringing communities from various cultures together to learn from each other, and to provide an online platform where they can feel like they belong. Her venture, Mighty Networks has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Marie Forleo International, LionTree, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and Owl Ventures.

Turning your passion into a billion-dollar company is exactly what Socrates Rosenfeld did. After spending seven years in the military as a helicopter pilot, Socrates suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and turned to cannabis for healing therapy. He always knew that the plant had healing factors. He then used his eCommerce skills to make purchasing cannabis online a simple process for others too. In turn, his company, Jane Technologies, has supported local cannabis retailers across the nation.

Turning your passion into a billion-dollar company is exactly what Socrates Rosenfeld did. After spending seven years in the military as a helicopter pilot, Socrates suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and turned to cannabis for healing therapy. He always knew that the plant had healing factors. He then used his eCommerce skills to make purchasing cannabis online a simple process for others too. In turn, his company, Jane Technologies, has supported local cannabis retailers across the nation.

Born and raised in the city of Los Angeles, Alex has always wanted to solve the problems of the city. He has a bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics and a Master's degree in Fine Arts, filming, and Production. His most epic contribution to the city and world is being a serial entrepreneur who has raised firms with one almost merging for $300 million dollars. Alex's venture, Metropolis has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Dragoneer Investment Group, RXR Realty, Halogen Ventures, and 3L capital.

Born and raised in the city of Los Angeles, Alex has always wanted to solve the problems of the city. He has a bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics and a Master's degree in Fine Arts, filming, and Production. His most epic contribution to the city and world is being a serial entrepreneur who has raised firms with one almost merging for $300 million dollars. Alex's venture, Metropolis has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Dragoneer Investment Group, RXR Realty, Halogen Ventures, and 3L capital.

Pierre Dubuc is a French businessman born in Normandy, France. He has had a passion for educating the masses since middle school. His first project was simply to build a free online course for all subjects in France free for all to access. The team continued to keep the project alive from 1999 to 2013 when they got the drive to commercialize it into an educational company. The company, Openclassrooms has gone through blitz-scaling over the past few years to form a massive global educator. It has raised funding from top-tier investors like Lumos Capital Group, General Atlantic, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Salesforce Ventures.

Pierre Dubuc is a French businessman born in Normandy, France. He has had a passion for educating the masses since middle school. His first project was simply to build a free online course for all subjects in France free for all to access. The team continued to keep the project alive from 1999 to 2013 when they got the drive to commercialize it into an educational company. The company, Openclassrooms has gone through blitz-scaling over the past few years to form a massive global educator. It has raised funding from top-tier investors like Lumos Capital Group, General Atlantic, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Salesforce Ventures.

Justin Borgman was born in Chicago and was raised in Akron. He went through public school with a big dream to change the world one day. He learned a lot from his mom. In high school, he was the studious type and went onto college and an MBA where he found the “eureka” moment to change data analytics for good. Justin's venture, Starburst has raised funding from top-tier investors like Index Ventures, Coatue, Salesforce Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Justin Borgman was born in Chicago and was raised in Akron. He went through public school with a big dream to change the world one day. He learned a lot from his mom. In high school, he was the studious type and went onto college and an MBA where he found the “eureka” moment to change data analytics for good. Justin's venture, Starburst has raised funding from top-tier investors like Index Ventures, Coatue, Salesforce Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Marnix Broer is a Dutch businessman who has continually found entrepreneurial opportunities within the environment around him. His love for business has been seen since his childhood when he started selling old nails to his neighbors at a young age. His current business grew from a challenge at college that ended up spiraling to great success in the Netherlands and Europe. StuDocu has successfully raised financing from top-tier investors like Partech, Piton Capital, Point Nine, and Peak.

Marnix Broer is a Dutch businessman who has continually found entrepreneurial opportunities within the environment around him. His love for business has been seen since his childhood when he started selling old nails to his neighbors at a young age. His current business grew from a challenge at college that ended up spiraling to great success in the Netherlands and Europe. StuDocu has successfully raised financing from top-tier investors like Partech, Piton Capital, Point Nine, and Peak.

Uri Marchand has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his latest startup. He recently appeared on the Dealmakers Show to share the latest developments at Overwolf, and his journey building companies. His venture has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Marker, Ubisoft, Kevin Chu, and Liberty Media.

Uri Marchand has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his latest startup. He recently appeared on the Dealmakers Show to share the latest developments at Overwolf, and his journey building companies. His venture has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Marker, Ubisoft, Kevin Chu, and Liberty Media.

Jeevan Kalanithi scaled and sold his first tech business before raising over $80M to fund and scale his latest startup venture, OpenSpace. His venture has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Alkeon Capital, JLL Spark, Zigg Capital, and Menlo Ventures.

Jeevan Kalanithi scaled and sold his first tech business before raising over $80M to fund and scale his latest startup venture, OpenSpace. His venture has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Alkeon Capital, JLL Spark, Zigg Capital, and Menlo Ventures.

Everett Cook has gone from young entrepreneur to investment banking and building a big fintech startup of his own. His venture, Rho Business Banking has raised more than $130 Million from top-tier investors like Rogue Capital, Eric Kinariwala, M13, and Josh Stech.

Everett Cook has gone from young entrepreneur to investment banking and building a big fintech startup of his own. His venture, Rho Business Banking has raised more than $130 Million from top-tier investors like Rogue Capital, Eric Kinariwala, M13, and Josh Stech.

Oz Alon’s journey is a living story and a fairy tale of how he and his wife met at around age 13 and became friends and managed to build a huge business. Both of them are co-founders of Honeybook which they created on a whim after a generous offer. Their story is exciting, inspiring, positive, and filled with many lessons for entrepreneurs. The venture, Honeybook has raised funding from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Zeev Ventures, Citi Ventures, and Durable Capital Partners.

Oz Alon’s journey is a living story and a fairy tale of how he and his wife met at around age 13 and became friends and managed to build a huge business. Both of them are co-founders of Honeybook which they created on a whim after a generous offer. Their story is exciting, inspiring, positive, and filled with many lessons for entrepreneurs. The venture, Honeybook has raised funding from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Zeev Ventures, Citi Ventures, and Durable Capital Partners.

Oron Afek has already built several companies from the ground up. His newest venture, Vim brings together all that he has learned so far, and has already attracted $100M in capital. Oron has successfully acquired funding from top-tier investors like Optum Ventures, Anthem, Frist Cressey Ventures, and Walgreens Boots Alliance.

Oron Afek has already built several companies from the ground up. His newest venture, Vim brings together all that he has learned so far, and has already attracted $100M in capital. Oron has successfully acquired funding from top-tier investors like Optum Ventures, Anthem, Frist Cressey Ventures, and Walgreens Boots Alliance.

As a child, Xu was taught to be both resourceful and hardworking. He learned from his father’s enterprises and started building websites from an early age before turning into an entrepreneur. Today, he has successfully raised more than $65M for his venture from top-tier investors like Newion, Jelte Vrijhoef, SmartFin, and Jerome Laredo.

As a child, Xu was taught to be both resourceful and hardworking. He learned from his father’s enterprises and started building websites from an early age before turning into an entrepreneur. Today, he has successfully raised more than $65M for his venture from top-tier investors like Newion, Jelte Vrijhoef, SmartFin, and Jerome Laredo.

John Kim grew up on computers. He has been a pro-gamer and built a gaming company fresh out of university. He was able to sell that firm for $10M, and start a social gaming site. He pivoted from a social app to his current model that has raised $200M. His venture, Sendbird has raised financing from top-tier investors like World Innovation Lab (WiL), Meritech Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, and Emergence.

John Kim grew up on computers. He has been a pro-gamer and built a gaming company fresh out of university. He was able to sell that firm for $10M, and start a social gaming site. He pivoted from a social app to his current model that has raised $200M. His venture, Sendbird has raised financing from top-tier investors like World Innovation Lab (WiL), Meritech Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, and Emergence.

Hari Ravichandran grew his first startup into a multi-billion dollar business. Then his entrepreneurial DNA drove him to start all over from scratch again. He started Aura, a venture that has earned funding from top-tier investors like Warburg Pincus, General Catalyst, and WndrCo.

Hari Ravichandran grew his first startup into a multi-billion dollar business. Then his entrepreneurial DNA drove him to start all over from scratch again. He started Aura, a venture that has earned funding from top-tier investors like Warburg Pincus, General Catalyst, and WndrCo.

Philip Belamant has been there, made mistakes, and come up with great solutions for the customers that have helped him build multi-million dollar companies in developing and developed economies. He was able to achieve remarkable success despite dropping out of college to pursue business. His latest venture, Zilch has raised funding from top-tier investors like Goldman Sachs Asset Management, dmg Ventures, M&F Fund, and Gauss Ventures.

Philip Belamant has been there, made mistakes, and come up with great solutions for the customers that have helped him build multi-million dollar companies in developing and developed economies. He was able to achieve remarkable success despite dropping out of college to pursue business. His latest venture, Zilch has raised funding from top-tier investors like Goldman Sachs Asset Management, dmg Ventures, M&F Fund, and Gauss Ventures.

Jakob Freund’s business has grown from a small services business to a large venture-backed enterprise with customers like NASA. His company, Camunda has raised financing from top-tier investors like Highland Europe and Insight Partners.

Jakob Freund’s business has grown from a small services business to a large venture-backed enterprise with customers like NASA. His company, Camunda has raised financing from top-tier investors like Highland Europe and Insight Partners.

Alfonso De La Nuez's passion and desire to build something has elevated him to a CEO of a multi-million dollar company. His business has touched large tech firms such as PayPal, and he has kept on innovating on his dream for over two decades. UserZoom has raised funding from top-tier investors like Enjoy HQ, Validately, WhatUsersDo, and YouEye.

Alfonso De La Nuez's passion and desire to build something has elevated him to a CEO of a multi-million dollar company. His business has touched large tech firms such as PayPal, and he has kept on innovating on his dream for over two decades. UserZoom has raised funding from top-tier investors like Enjoy HQ, Validately, WhatUsersDo, and YouEye.

After getting his first startup acquired, Johan Attby has gone on to raise $70M for his second profitable venture. His startup, FishBrain has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Consensus Asset Management, Softbank Ventures Asia, Adrigo Asset Management, and B Capital Group.

After getting his first startup acquired, Johan Attby has gone on to raise $70M for his second profitable venture. His startup, FishBrain has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Consensus Asset Management, Softbank Ventures Asia, Adrigo Asset Management, and B Capital Group.

Reuven Aronashvili’s startup has already raised $140M in capital and they’re growing fast as they work to equip organizations to fend off growing cybersecurity threats. His venture, CYE has acquired funding from top-tier investors like EQT, 83 North, and V Ventures.

Reuven Aronashvili’s startup has already raised $140M in capital and they’re growing fast as they work to equip organizations to fend off growing cybersecurity threats. His venture, CYE has acquired funding from top-tier investors like EQT, 83 North, and V Ventures.

Jens Wohltorf’s startup is making travel simpler by closing the first and last-mile gap that has been long underserved in the travel industry. His company has already raised close to $100M, and their service can be found around the globe. The venture Blacklane has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Recruit Strategic Partners, RI Digital Ventures, Daimler, and btov Partners.

Jens Wohltorf’s startup is making travel simpler by closing the first and last-mile gap that has been long underserved in the travel industry. His company has already raised close to $100M, and their service can be found around the globe. The venture Blacklane has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Recruit Strategic Partners, RI Digital Ventures, Daimler, and btov Partners.

Jay Giraud’s latest startup is taking on the motorcycle industry with game-changing improvements, just as Tesla rocked the world of carmakers and dealers. His venture, Damon Motors has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Benevolent Capital, Sol Global Investments, SmartHub, and Predictive VC.

Jay Giraud’s latest startup is taking on the motorcycle industry with game-changing improvements, just as Tesla rocked the world of carmakers and dealers. His venture, Damon Motors has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Benevolent Capital, Sol Global Investments, SmartHub, and Predictive VC.

Swapnil Shinde and his twin brother are now on their third startup venture. Their first two companies were both successfully acquired. Including one by AMEX. Their venture, Zeni has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Elevation Capital, Sierra Ventures, Amit Singhal, and Neeraj Arora.

Swapnil Shinde and his twin brother are now on their third startup venture. Their first two companies were both successfully acquired. Including one by AMEX. Their venture, Zeni has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Elevation Capital, Sierra Ventures, Amit Singhal, and Neeraj Arora.

Tim Sweeney has raised over $200M for his biotechnology startup which is about to bring groundbreaking new healthcare solutions to the market. Inflammatix, his venture has acquired financing from top-tier investors like OSF Ventures, D1 Capital Partners, Think.Health, and Northpond Ventures.

Tim Sweeney has raised over $200M for his biotechnology startup which is about to bring groundbreaking new healthcare solutions to the market. Inflammatix, his venture has acquired financing from top-tier investors like OSF Ventures, D1 Capital Partners, Think.Health, and Northpond Ventures.

Austin Allison sold his college startup for $120M, after raising just $14M. His latest venture has already brought $1.7B in capital onboard and is growing. He has raised funding from top-tier investors like Fortress Investment Group, Kathleen Hale, First Republic Bank, and Acrew Capital.

Austin Allison sold his college startup for $120M, after raising just $14M. His latest venture has already brought $1.7B in capital onboard and is growing. He has raised funding from top-tier investors like Fortress Investment Group, Kathleen Hale, First Republic Bank, and Acrew Capital.

Isaac Oates helped take one startup through to an acquisition by Etsy. Now his current company, Justworks, has already raised $143M across seven rounds of funding to help the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses on its platform grow with confidence. He has raised funding from top-tier investors like Union Square Ventures, Redpoint, Spark Capital, and Latitude.

Isaac Oates helped take one startup through to an acquisition by Etsy. Now his current company, Justworks, has already raised $143M across seven rounds of funding to help the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses on its platform grow with confidence. He has raised funding from top-tier investors like Union Square Ventures, Redpoint, Spark Capital, and Latitude.

Angel Sahagun is now on his third company, and it has already raised tens of millions of dollars to completely disrupt a major industry. His venture, Albo has raised funding from top-tier investors like Valar Venture, Dr. Cornelius Boersch, Conny & Co, and Greyhound Capital.

Angel Sahagun is now on his third company, and it has already raised tens of millions of dollars to completely disrupt a major industry. His venture, Albo has raised funding from top-tier investors like Valar Venture, Dr. Cornelius Boersch, Conny & Co, and Greyhound Capital.

Ashutosh Garg has raised $400M for his latest startup, with almost half a billion raised across his first two ventures so far. His startup, Eightfold has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Foundation Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), and SoftBank Vision Fund.

Ashutosh Garg has raised $400M for his latest startup, with almost half a billion raised across his first two ventures so far. His startup, Eightfold has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Foundation Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), and SoftBank Vision Fund.

Robert Piconi has been involved in some of the biggest transatlantic M&A deals. He’s now working with Bill Gross on a renewable energy startup that has already attracted significant capital from Softbank. His venture, Energy Vault has also acquired $117M in funding from investors like Helena Special Investments, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, Cemex Ventures, and Neotribe Ventures.

Robert Piconi has been involved in some of the biggest transatlantic M&A deals. He’s now working with Bill Gross on a renewable energy startup that has already attracted significant capital from Softbank. His venture, Energy Vault has also acquired $117M in funding from investors like Helena Special Investments, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, Cemex Ventures, and Neotribe Ventures.

Jeff Seibert is a repeat founder, with multiple full cycle startups and exits under his belt. Including going from zero to selling a company to Twitter for $100M in just 14 months. He has raised 10M for his next venture, Digits from top-tier investors like Benchmark, GV, Jeff Fagnan, and Chloe Sladden.

Jeff Seibert is a repeat founder, with multiple full cycle startups and exits under his belt. Including going from zero to selling a company to Twitter for $100M in just 14 months. He has raised 10M for his next venture, Digits from top-tier investors like Benchmark, GV, Jeff Fagnan, and Chloe Sladden.

Tony Atti’s startup has raised a substantial amount of capital to bring big change to the working of many things you touch on a daily basis. His venture, Phoninic has raised $230 Million in funding from top-tier investors like Goldman Sachs Asset Management, GGV Capital, Wellcome Trust, and Eastward Capital Partners.

Tony Atti’s startup has raised a substantial amount of capital to bring big change to the working of many things you touch on a daily basis. His venture, Phoninic has raised $230 Million in funding from top-tier investors like Goldman Sachs Asset Management, GGV Capital, Wellcome Trust, and Eastward Capital Partners.

Varun Talwar has already raised tens of millions of dollars to empower developers to build more new technology faster and to drive the success of small to enterprise-sized companies. His venture, Tetrate has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like 8VC, Dell Technologies Capital, Scale Venture Partners, and Sapphire Ventures.

Varun Talwar has already raised tens of millions of dollars to empower developers to build more new technology faster and to drive the success of small to enterprise-sized companies. His venture, Tetrate has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like 8VC, Dell Technologies Capital, Scale Venture Partners, and Sapphire Ventures.

Robin Thurston is an energetic person who began life in sports. First as a skier, and then as a professional bike racer who competed internationally before switching to business after a major accident. His rise in the business world has been plutonic ever since, carrying lessons from each part of his life to build better. His venture, Felix has raised more than $180M from top-tier investors like Sequoia Heritage, Jazz Venture Partners, Zone 5 Ventures, and Next Ventures.

Robin Thurston is an energetic person who began life in sports. First as a skier, and then as a professional bike racer who competed internationally before switching to business after a major accident. His rise in the business world has been plutonic ever since, carrying lessons from each part of his life to build better. His venture, Felix has raised more than $180M from top-tier investors like Sequoia Heritage, Jazz Venture Partners, Zone 5 Ventures, and Next Ventures.

Francis Davidson launched his startup while still in school. That company now has over 1,000 employees and is going public through a SPAC deal. The venture Sonder has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Greenoaks Capital, Sandy Cass, Inovia Capital, and Spark Capital.

Francis Davidson launched his startup while still in school. That company now has over 1,000 employees and is going public through a SPAC deal. The venture Sonder has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Greenoaks Capital, Sandy Cass, Inovia Capital, and Spark Capital.

Tomer Tagrin has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his startup which is empowering large brands and entrepreneurs alike to win online. His venture, Yotpo has raised funding from top-tier investors like ClalTech, Global Coin Ventures, Tiger Global Management, and Hanaco Venture Capital.

Tomer Tagrin has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his startup which is empowering large brands and entrepreneurs alike to win online. His venture, Yotpo has raised funding from top-tier investors like ClalTech, Global Coin Ventures, Tiger Global Management, and Hanaco Venture Capital.

Oisin O’Connor built a formidable eCommerce company by bootstrapping it for years before taking outside investor money. Now they’ve raised almost $300M to empower even more businesses to go online. ReCharge has raised funding from top-tier investors like ICONIQ Growth, Bain Capital Ventures, and Summit Partners.

Oisin O’Connor built a formidable eCommerce company by bootstrapping it for years before taking outside investor money. Now they’ve raised almost $300M to empower even more businesses to go online. ReCharge has raised funding from top-tier investors like ICONIQ Growth, Bain Capital Ventures, and Summit Partners.

Alex Zivoder has been involved in building and scaling several companies. His latest venture has already attracted tens of millions of dollars in capital and is proving incredibly popular with parents and their kids. His startup, goHenry has raised funding from top-tier investors like Muse Capital, Citi Ventures, Gaia Capital Partners, and Edison Partners.

Alex Zivoder has been involved in building and scaling several companies. His latest venture has already attracted tens of millions of dollars in capital and is proving incredibly popular with parents and their kids. His startup, goHenry has raised funding from top-tier investors like Muse Capital, Citi Ventures, Gaia Capital Partners, and Edison Partners.

Will Graylin is a true serial entrepreneur who has done it again and again. Today, he is juggling two big startups that have already raised a combined $150M. Indigo and OV Loop, his two ventures have raised funding from top-tier investors.

Will Graylin is a true serial entrepreneur who has done it again and again. Today, he is juggling two big startups that have already raised a combined $150M. Indigo and OV Loop, his two ventures have raised funding from top-tier investors.

Jake Kloberdanz has built a business with a purpose, and it is touching thousands of lives all over the country. His startup, ONEHOPE has millions of dollars in financing from top-tier investors like Wesley Chain, PLG Ventures, Matt Cheng, and West River Group.

Jake Kloberdanz has built a business with a purpose, and it is touching thousands of lives all over the country. His startup, ONEHOPE has millions of dollars in financing from top-tier investors like Wesley Chain, PLG Ventures, Matt Cheng, and West River Group.

After many years of research, Sir Peter Donnelly made the leap from academia to founding his own company, to lead the charge in having a truly tangible impact with everything we are learning about genetics. His venture, Genomics PLC, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like F-Prime Capital, Oxford Sciences Innovation, Foresite Capital, and Lansdowne Partners.

After many years of research, Sir Peter Donnelly made the leap from academia to founding his own company, to lead the charge in having a truly tangible impact with everything we are learning about genetics. His venture, Genomics PLC, has acquired funding from top-tier investors like F-Prime Capital, Oxford Sciences Innovation, Foresite Capital, and Lansdowne Partners.

Carey Smith bootstrapped his own startup from zero to selling it for $500M. He is now a startup investor helping others grow their own ventures. He has invested in several startups like Awkward Essentials, Vibrant Gastro, Vibrant, Shotgun Seltzer, Lumen, and Tushy.

Carey Smith bootstrapped his own startup from zero to selling it for $500M. He is now a startup investor helping others grow their own ventures. He has invested in several startups like Awkward Essentials, Vibrant Gastro, Vibrant, Shotgun Seltzer, Lumen, and Tushy.

Erik Schiemann has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in financing to scale commercial solar across the US via his startup Distributed Solar Development. This company has acquired investment from top-tier investors like Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Fifth Third Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank.

Erik Schiemann has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in financing to scale commercial solar across the US via his startup Distributed Solar Development. This company has acquired investment from top-tier investors like Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Fifth Third Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank.

Alex Frommeyer has been a builder all of his life. He has taken that from childhood construction projects to engineering technology, and now creating a large and fast-growing startup, Beam. He has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Nationwide Mutual Insurance, Drive Capital, Georgian, and Banner Ventures.

Alex Frommeyer has been a builder all of his life. He has taken that from childhood construction projects to engineering technology, and now creating a large and fast-growing startup, Beam. He has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Nationwide Mutual Insurance, Drive Capital, Georgian, and Banner Ventures.

Reichen Kuhl is an entrepreneur who seems to have a knack for turning challenges into big wins. He has already raised tens of millions of dollars to solve a problem facing millions of US households, that was born out of him being told “no.” His company, LeaseLock has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Westerly Winds, Vertex US, Moderne Ventures, and Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures.

Reichen Kuhl is an entrepreneur who seems to have a knack for turning challenges into big wins. He has already raised tens of millions of dollars to solve a problem facing millions of US households, that was born out of him being told “no.” His company, LeaseLock has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Westerly Winds, Vertex US, Moderne Ventures, and Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures.

Rasty Turek has gone from living on his own at 14 years old to raising $64M for a startup that may be in one of today’s fastest-growing markets. His company, Pex has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Susa Ventures, NextGen Venture Partners, Illuminate Ventures, and Amaranthine.

Rasty Turek has gone from living on his own at 14 years old to raising $64M for a startup that may be in one of today’s fastest-growing markets. His company, Pex has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Susa Ventures, NextGen Venture Partners, Illuminate Ventures, and Amaranthine.

Malte Horeyseck is a multi-time startup entrepreneur. His most recent venture rolls up his previous experiences in M&A, backed with over $100M in funding. His startup, SellerX has raised funding from top-tier investors like 83North, Christopher North, Felix Capital, and Francois Nuyts.

Malte Horeyseck is a multi-time startup entrepreneur. His most recent venture rolls up his previous experiences in M&A, backed with over $100M in funding. His startup, SellerX has raised funding from top-tier investors like 83North, Christopher North, Felix Capital, and Francois Nuyts.

Adam Singolda is taking his adtech company public through a SPAC. They’ve already amassed over $1B in annual revenue, and with over $500M raised expect to keep on growing to become a household name. The company Taboola, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Daily Mail, Yahoo! Japan, dmg Ventures, and Planven Investments.

Adam Singolda is taking his adtech company public through a SPAC. They’ve already amassed over $1B in annual revenue, and with over $500M raised expect to keep on growing to become a household name. The company Taboola, has raised funding from top-tier investors like Daily Mail, Yahoo! Japan, dmg Ventures, and Planven Investments.

Alexey Dubov is a global entrepreneur who has started several companies. His latest venture, Mighty Buildings, has already raised tens of millions of dollars in capital and has been establishing new construction standards. Alexey has attracted funding from top-tier investors like AltaIR Capital, Foundamental, Abies Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

Alexey Dubov is a global entrepreneur who has started several companies. His latest venture, Mighty Buildings, has already raised tens of millions of dollars in capital and has been establishing new construction standards. Alexey has attracted funding from top-tier investors like AltaIR Capital, Foundamental, Abies Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

If anyone could realistically hope to replace Google, it is probably Sridhar Ramaswamy and his team of talented engineers and advisors. Some of the best-known investors have already backed him with tens of millions of dollars too. His venture, Neeva has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Inovia Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Greylock.

If anyone could realistically hope to replace Google, it is probably Sridhar Ramaswamy and his team of talented engineers and advisors. Some of the best-known investors have already backed him with tens of millions of dollars too. His venture, Neeva has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Inovia Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Greylock.

Stefan Lederer has built a tech startup that has been used to create the future of streaming online video by some pretty well respected international brands. His company Bitmovin has raised funding from top-tier investors like Swisscom Ventures, Atomico, Highland Europe, and Constantia New Business.

Stefan Lederer has built a tech startup that has been used to create the future of streaming online video by some pretty well respected international brands. His company Bitmovin has raised funding from top-tier investors like Swisscom Ventures, Atomico, Highland Europe, and Constantia New Business.

Amin Shokrollahi has raised some serious startup capital for his tech company, Kandou Bus. Amin has raised $130M in funding from top-tier investors like Raging Capital, Digital Transformation Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Kreos Capital.

Amin Shokrollahi has raised some serious startup capital for his tech company, Kandou Bus. Amin has raised $130M in funding from top-tier investors like Raging Capital, Digital Transformation Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Kreos Capital.

Jake Soberal has raised close to $100M for his own startup which is spawning a new tech ecosystem. His company, Bitwise Industries has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Owens Corning, GingerBread Capital, JP Morgan Chase, and Plum Alley Investments.

Jake Soberal has raised close to $100M for his own startup which is spawning a new tech ecosystem. His company, Bitwise Industries has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Owens Corning, GingerBread Capital, JP Morgan Chase, and Plum Alley Investments.

Charlie Lee is now on his second startup. With a mission of reaching one billion unserved people with fintech solutions, his venture has already raised $90M. Charlie has raised financing from top-tier investors like Northern Arc, Bon Angels Venture Partners, Daesung Private Equity, and Softbank Ventures Asia. His venture True Balance also goes by Balance Hero and Balancehero India.

Charlie Lee is now on his second startup. With a mission of reaching one billion unserved people with fintech solutions, his venture has already raised $90M. Charlie has raised financing from top-tier investors like Northern Arc, Bon Angels Venture Partners, Daesung Private Equity, and Softbank Ventures Asia. His venture True Balance also goes by Balance Hero and Balancehero India.

Sudheer Koneru has raised over $200M for his latest startup, Zenoti. A big software company that powers brands in the health and wellness space. Sudheer has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Advent International, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global Management, and Accel.

Sudheer Koneru has raised over $200M for his latest startup, Zenoti. A big software company that powers brands in the health and wellness space. Sudheer has acquired funding from top-tier investors like Advent International, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global Management, and Accel.

Chris Gladwin is a true business builder. It is his craft. He has now launched four startups, including one which raised $100M and sold for over $1B to IBM. His current venture is Ocient, operating out of Great Lakes. It has raised more than $65M from top-tier investors like Gaingels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PSP Capital Partners, and Northwestern University.

Chris Gladwin is a true business builder. It is his craft. He has now launched four startups, including one which raised $100M and sold for over $1B to IBM. His current venture is Ocient, operating out of Great Lakes. It has raised more than $65M from top-tier investors like Gaingels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PSP Capital Partners, and Northwestern University.

After helping others achieve great exits for their own businesses Patrick Quigley set out to fix some of the biggest problems in the health insurance industry. He has already raised $175M for the mission and is revolutionizing how it works with his own health tech startup. His company has raised $175M from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Alpha Edison, GreatPoint Ventures, and Drive Capital.

After helping others achieve great exits for their own businesses Patrick Quigley set out to fix some of the biggest problems in the health insurance industry. He has already raised $175M for the mission and is revolutionizing how it works with his own health tech startup. His company has raised $175M from top-tier investors like Tiger Global Management, Alpha Edison, GreatPoint Ventures, and Drive Capital.

Gustaf Agartson is an international entrepreneur who set off to prove his business idea in a new emerging market. His venture has already raised over $100M in capital while attracting tens of millions of new customers. He has attracted funding from top-tier investors like CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, LeapFrog Investments, Allianz X, and Kinnevik AB.

Gustaf Agartson is an international entrepreneur who set off to prove his business idea in a new emerging market. His venture has already raised over $100M in capital while attracting tens of millions of new customers. He has attracted funding from top-tier investors like CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund, LeapFrog Investments, Allianz X, and Kinnevik AB.

Cyriac Roeding is a full-cycle entrepreneur who has been launching his own ventures since he was a teenager. He sold one of his companies for $250M and has since helped lead two new health tech startups which have raised tens of millions of dollars.

Cyriac Roeding is a full-cycle entrepreneur who has been launching his own ventures since he was a teenager. He sold one of his companies for $250M and has since helped lead two new health tech startups which have raised tens of millions of dollars.

Jordan Silbert and Ben Karlin have raised tens of millions of dollars to improve your drinking experience with a premium mixer that is proving to be a big hit. Their startup, Q Mixers has attracted interest from top-tier investors like Eurazeo and First Beverage Group.

Jordan Silbert and Ben Karlin have raised tens of millions of dollars to improve your drinking experience with a premium mixer that is proving to be a big hit. Their startup, Q Mixers has attracted interest from top-tier investors like Eurazeo and First Beverage Group.

Hossein Azari sold his first startup to Goldman Sachs for nine figures. He has already raised funding for his second fintech venture that you may describe as the Google of finance. His startup, Cmorg has raised funding from top-tier investors.

Hossein Azari sold his first startup to Goldman Sachs for nine figures. He has already raised funding for his second fintech venture that you may describe as the Google of finance. His startup, Cmorg has raised funding from top-tier investors.

Miguel Fernandez’s fintech startup has already raised at least $90M in debt and equity to help more SaaS companies supersize their growth rates. His startup Capchase has raised $90M from top-tier investors like i80 | Group, Ben Orthlieb, ONEVC, and Amara Venture Partners.

Miguel Fernandez’s fintech startup has already raised at least $90M in debt and equity to help more SaaS companies supersize their growth rates. His startup Capchase has raised $90M from top-tier investors like i80 | Group, Ben Orthlieb, ONEVC, and Amara Venture Partners.

Ruairi Kelleher spun off his fast-growing fintech startup with $80M in funding to help global companies manage taxes and payroll around the world. His company, Immedis has raised $80M from top-tier investors like Lead Edge Capital and Scottish Equity Partners.

Ruairi Kelleher spun off his fast-growing fintech startup with $80M in funding to help global companies manage taxes and payroll around the world. His company, Immedis has raised $80M from top-tier investors like Lead Edge Capital and Scottish Equity Partners.

Jason Boehmig is the cofounder and CEO of Ironclad which is one of the nation’s top makers of enterprise software for managing contracts. The company has raised $183 million from top tier investors including Accel, Sequoia, Greylock, and Bond to name a few.

Jason Boehmig is the cofounder and CEO of Ironclad which is one of the nation’s top makers of enterprise software for managing contracts. The company has raised $183 million from top tier investors including Accel, Sequoia, Greylock, and Bond to name a few.

Asesh Sarkar has built a big finance business with an emphasis on blending social good and lending. His startup has already raised more than $100M in equity and $500M in debt financing. During our interview on the Dealmakers Podcast, Sarkar talked about finding the idea for a good business, the triangle needed for a great startup idea, and the truth about leadership. Plus, working your way through funding rounds with progressing investor expectations, and raising debt versus equity.

Asesh Sarkar has built a big finance business with an emphasis on blending social good and lending. His startup has already raised more than $100M in equity and $500M in debt financing. During our interview on the Dealmakers Podcast, Sarkar talked about finding the idea for a good business, the triangle needed for a great startup idea, and the truth about leadership. Plus, working your way through funding rounds with progressing investor expectations, and raising debt versus equity.

Vishal Marria has raised around $100M for his big data analytics startup, offering more powerful insights to all large and small businesses. His startup, Quantexa has raised $100M from top-tier investors like HSBC, British Patient Capital, Dawn Capital, and AlbionVC.

Vishal Marria has raised around $100M for his big data analytics startup, offering more powerful insights to all large and small businesses. His startup, Quantexa has raised $100M from top-tier investors like HSBC, British Patient Capital, Dawn Capital, and AlbionVC.

Richie Serna learned the value of hustling early on in life. That has certainly paid off in raising over $100M for his own startup that is fueling the future of financial services with billions of transactions. Finix has raised $102M in financing from top-tier investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, American Express Ventures, PSP Growth, and Inspired Capital Partners.

Richie Serna learned the value of hustling early on in life. That has certainly paid off in raising over $100M for his own startup that is fueling the future of financial services with billions of transactions. Finix has raised $102M in financing from top-tier investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, American Express Ventures, PSP Growth, and Inspired Capital Partners.

Simon Taylor is one of the rising numbers of highly successful startup entrepreneurs to be coming out of the UK’s growing startup scene. His startup, HYCU has raised $89M in funding from top-tier investors like Acrew Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.

Simon Taylor is one of the rising numbers of highly successful startup entrepreneurs to be coming out of the UK’s growing startup scene. His startup, HYCU has raised $89M in funding from top-tier investors like Acrew Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.

Jason Flick has founded several tech startups. His latest venture was recently acquired by AT&T’s WarnerMedia for more than $100M. He has acquired funding from several top-tier investors like FedDev, Sky UK, Causeway Media Partners, and Kayne Partners.

Jason Flick has founded several tech startups. His latest venture was recently acquired by AT&T’s WarnerMedia for more than $100M. He has acquired funding from several top-tier investors like FedDev, Sky UK, Causeway Media Partners, and Kayne Partners.

Matin Movassate has raised almost $100M for his deep analytics startup to help entrepreneurs systemize building great products. During our interview on the Dealmakers Podcast Movassate shared how he got hooked on coding, the gap between finding product-market fit and being ready to scale your business, how he got inspired to reinvent analytics tools, and the fundraising journey. Plus, his insights on building a leadership team.

Matin Movassate has raised almost $100M for his deep analytics startup to help entrepreneurs systemize building great products. During our interview on the Dealmakers Podcast Movassate shared how he got hooked on coding, the gap between finding product-market fit and being ready to scale your business, how he got inspired to reinvent analytics tools, and the fundraising journey. Plus, his insights on building a leadership team.

Eugene Danilkis has raised close to $175M to reengineer how financial and banking services are designed and delivered. During our interview on the Dealmakers Show Danilkis shared his adventures into entrepreneurship, his perspective on taking risks, fundraising, and growing as a startup CEO.

Eugene Danilkis has raised close to $175M to reengineer how financial and banking services are designed and delivered. During our interview on the Dealmakers Show Danilkis shared his adventures into entrepreneurship, his perspective on taking risks, fundraising, and growing as a startup CEO.

Ross Buhrdorf is the co-founder and CEO of ZenBusiness which offers business products and services that help business owners in starting, running, and growing a business. The company has raised over $70 million from top-tier investors which include Founders Fund, Greycroft, and Slow Ventures to name a few. Prior to this is was the founding CTO of HomeAway which was acquired for $3.9 billion.

Ross Buhrdorf is the co-founder and CEO of ZenBusiness which offers business products and services that help business owners in starting, running, and growing a business. The company has raised over $70 million from top-tier investors which include Founders Fund, Greycroft, and Slow Ventures to name a few. Prior to this is was the founding CTO of HomeAway which was acquired for $3.9 billion.

Nick Desai is a multiple-time entrepreneur who has raised over $100M for his most recent startup venture alone. During his recent appearance on the Dealmakers Show Desai shared his evolution through several businesses, the decision not to get too comfortable, how much the wrong boards and investors can cost you, as well the more sustainable future of healthcare he and his wife have been creating.

Nick Desai is a multiple-time entrepreneur who has raised over $100M for his most recent startup venture alone. During his recent appearance on the Dealmakers Show Desai shared his evolution through several businesses, the decision not to get too comfortable, how much the wrong boards and investors can cost you, as well the more sustainable future of healthcare he and his wife have been creating.

After being robbed on the beach Amir Elichai vowed to transform the emergency services industry. His startup has been making great strides to thrust 911 services around the world into the future. His startup Carbyne has recently raised over $60M in investments from top-tier investors like Elsted Capital Partners, FinTLV Ventures, Founders Fund, and Hanaco Venture Capital.

After being robbed on the beach Amir Elichai vowed to transform the emergency services industry. His startup has been making great strides to thrust 911 services around the world into the future. His startup Carbyne has recently raised over $60M in investments from top-tier investors like Elsted Capital Partners, FinTLV Ventures, Founders Fund, and Hanaco Venture Capital.

Christian Owens started coding at just 12 years old. His startup has now raised nearly $100M, and is bringing in billions in revenue as they empower software startups around the world to scale. His startup Paddle has recently raised investments from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, FTV Capital, Kindred Capital, and 83North

Christian Owens started coding at just 12 years old. His startup has now raised nearly $100M, and is bringing in billions in revenue as they empower software startups around the world to scale. His startup Paddle has recently raised investments from top-tier investors like Notion Capital, FTV Capital, Kindred Capital, and 83North

Mahmoud Abdelkader is a full-cycle startup founder who has been around the block more than once. His latest venture could massively change how businesses handle data. His venture, Very Good Security has recently raised over $100M from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, GS Growth, Vertex Ventures, and Visa Ventures.

Mahmoud Abdelkader is a full-cycle startup founder who has been around the block more than once. His latest venture could massively change how businesses handle data. His venture, Very Good Security has recently raised over $100M from top-tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, GS Growth, Vertex Ventures, and Visa Ventures.

Karthik Venkateswaran has raised tens of millions of dollars to modernize one of the biggest markets in the world. His startup Jumbotail has raised $45M from top-tier investors like Klinkert Investment Trust, Discovery Ventures, VII Ventures, and Peter Crosby Trust.

Karthik Venkateswaran has raised tens of millions of dollars to modernize one of the biggest markets in the world. His startup Jumbotail has raised $45M from top-tier investors like Klinkert Investment Trust, Discovery Ventures, VII Ventures, and Peter Crosby Trust.

Dor Abuhasira has already raised over $70M for his tech startup, and it’s soaring in more than one way. His startup, Percepto has raised more than $73 million from top-tier investors like State of Mind Ventures, Delek Group, Arkin Holdings, and Koch Disruptive Technologies.

Dor Abuhasira has already raised over $70M for his tech startup, and it’s soaring in more than one way. His startup, Percepto has raised more than $73 million from top-tier investors like State of Mind Ventures, Delek Group, Arkin Holdings, and Koch Disruptive Technologies.

Anshul Ruparell has raised a significant amount of financing and capital for his venture that is transforming one of the biggest and most entrenched markets. During our time on the Dealmakers Podcast Ruparell shared with our audience how he was inspired to entrepreneurship, spent time on both sides of the table as a startup investor and founder, and the pattern recognition he has picked up on the way. Plus, what he has learned about picking cofounders and investors, pivoting a business, and the importance of extreme focus.

Anshul Ruparell has raised a significant amount of financing and capital for his venture that is transforming one of the biggest and most entrenched markets. During our time on the Dealmakers Podcast Ruparell shared with our audience how he was inspired to entrepreneurship, spent time on both sides of the table as a startup investor and founder, and the pattern recognition he has picked up on the way. Plus, what he has learned about picking cofounders and investors, pivoting a business, and the importance of extreme focus.

Dhirendra Mahyavanshi has been making big strides in one of the fastest-growing sectors, in one of the biggest markets in the world. During our interview on the Dealmakers Show, Dhirendra Mahyavanshi shared his journey to startup founder and raising tens of millions of dollars from top international investors. Plus his take on the insurance market in India, how his company has helped bring about the digitization of insurance, what he sees as one of the most critical decisions that makes or breaks a startup. Plus, how to pick your cofounder.

Dhirendra Mahyavanshi has been making big strides in one of the fastest-growing sectors, in one of the biggest markets in the world. During our interview on the Dealmakers Show, Dhirendra Mahyavanshi shared his journey to startup founder and raising tens of millions of dollars from top international investors. Plus his take on the insurance market in India, how his company has helped bring about the digitization of insurance, what he sees as one of the most critical decisions that makes or breaks a startup. Plus, how to pick your cofounder.

Steve Fambro has started several companies, including relaunching his car startup for a second time. His company Aptera has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Sandy Munro, Bay Wharf Capital, Meyer Equity, and NRG Energy.

Steve Fambro has started several companies, including relaunching his car startup for a second time. His company Aptera has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Sandy Munro, Bay Wharf Capital, Meyer Equity, and NRG Energy.

Stefan Batory has experienced living on a potato diet to several successful businesses and raising over $100M for his latest venture. Hi company Booksy has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Manta Ray Ventures, Kai Hansen, ENERN Investments, and VNV Global.

Stefan Batory has experienced living on a potato diet to several successful businesses and raising over $100M for his latest venture. Hi company Booksy has successfully raised funding from top-tier investors like Manta Ray Ventures, Kai Hansen, ENERN Investments, and VNV Global.

Mateo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy which develops and commercializes a low-cost battery system that can store wind and solar energy for a long duration. The company has raised $125 million from top-tier investors, including Temasek Holdings, Coatue, Prelude Ventures, Capricorn Investment Group, Macquarie Capital, and Energy Impact Partners to name a few.

Mateo Jaramillo is the co-founder and CEO of Form Energy which develops and commercializes a low-cost battery system that can store wind and solar energy for a long duration. The company has raised $125 million from top-tier investors, including Temasek Holdings, Coatue, Prelude Ventures, Capricorn Investment Group, Macquarie Capital, and Energy Impact Partners to name a few.

Bill Smith is the founder and CEO of Landing which develops a membership-based network of fully-finished urban apartment homes. The company has raised over $145 million from top-tier investors which include Greycroft, Foundry Group, Maveron, and Abstract Ventures. Prior to this Bill Smith founded Shipt which he sold to Target for $500 million.

Bill Smith is the founder and CEO of Landing which develops a membership-based network of fully-finished urban apartment homes. The company has raised over $145 million from top-tier investors which include Greycroft, Foundry Group, Maveron, and Abstract Ventures. Prior to this Bill Smith founded Shipt which he sold to Target for $500 million.

Venkat Venkataramani has worked with some of the biggest and fastest-growing tech companies in the world. Instead of just collecting an easy paycheck he decided to take on the challenge of doing something even bigger and more impactful for other businesses. His company, Rockset, has been successful in raising more than $60 million in funding from top-tier investors like Sequoia Capital and Greylock.

Venkat Venkataramani has worked with some of the biggest and fastest-growing tech companies in the world. Instead of just collecting an easy paycheck he decided to take on the challenge of doing something even bigger and more impactful for other businesses. His company, Rockset, has been successful in raising more than $60 million in funding from top-tier investors like Sequoia Capital and Greylock.

Rotem Iram has been pioneering what’s next in business insurance. His startup has already raised nearly $100M from top-tier investors like Qumra Capital, Shlomo Kramer, Munich Re Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Rotem Iram has been pioneering what’s next in business insurance. His startup has already raised nearly $100M from top-tier investors like Qumra Capital, Shlomo Kramer, Munich Re Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Daniel Vogel became fascinated by bitcoin far before most had heard of it. His passion for crypto has morphed into the dominating exchange in Latin America, which processes more than $1B a year in the US to Mexico bitcoin transactions. His company has raised financing from top-tier investors like Kaszek Ventures, Pantera Capital, QED Investors, and Coinbase Ventures.

Daniel Vogel became fascinated by bitcoin far before most had heard of it. His passion for crypto has morphed into the dominating exchange in Latin America, which processes more than $1B a year in the US to Mexico bitcoin transactions. His company has raised financing from top-tier investors like Kaszek Ventures, Pantera Capital, QED Investors, and Coinbase Ventures.

Spike Lipkin is the cofounder and CEO of Newfront Insurance which is a modern commercial insurance brokerage. The company has raised so far over $100 million from top tier investors such as Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, or Meritech Capital Partners to name a few.

Spike Lipkin is the cofounder and CEO of Newfront Insurance which is a modern commercial insurance brokerage. The company has raised so far over $100 million from top tier investors such as Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, or Meritech Capital Partners to name a few.

Sergio Furio made the leap from corporate job to fintech founder. Having raised around $600M in capital, his startup was recently valued at $1.7B. His company, Creditas has recently raised funding from top-tier investors like Sunley House Capital Management, e.ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Wellington Management, among others.

Sergio Furio made the leap from corporate job to fintech founder. Having raised around $600M in capital, his startup was recently valued at $1.7B. His company, Creditas has recently raised funding from top-tier investors like Sunley House Capital Management, e.ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Wellington Management, among others.

Rami Karjian’s healthcare startup has not only raised tens of millions of dollars, but has redefined what hospitals are. The timing couldn’t have been better. His company Medically Home has successfully raised $80M from top-tier investors like Cardinal Health.

Rami Karjian’s healthcare startup has not only raised tens of millions of dollars, but has redefined what hospitals are. The timing couldn’t have been better. His company Medically Home has successfully raised $80M from top-tier investors like Cardinal Health.

Alex Collmer is the founder and CEO of VidMob, the world's largest video creation platform. As the web transitions to a video-driven medium, Collmer recognized the need for businesses to have access to the world’s best video creators who could produce quality content for a variety of platforms that was affordable. VidMob has raised $95M from top-tier investors like BuildGroup, Acadia Woods Partners, Macanta Investments, and Interlock Partners.

Alex Collmer is the founder and CEO of VidMob, the world's largest video creation platform. As the web transitions to a video-driven medium, Collmer recognized the need for businesses to have access to the world’s best video creators who could produce quality content for a variety of platforms that was affordable. VidMob has raised $95M from top-tier investors like BuildGroup, Acadia Woods Partners, Macanta Investments, and Interlock Partners.

Nick Hazell is an international entrepreneur who made the leap from a corporate job to a highly impactful startup, in one of the biggest industries worldwide. Nick's company v2food has successfully raised $100 million in funding from top-tier investors like Sequoia Capital China, China Rennaissance, Novel Investments, and Esenagro.

Nick Hazell is an international entrepreneur who made the leap from a corporate job to a highly impactful startup, in one of the biggest industries worldwide. Nick's company v2food has successfully raised $100 million in funding from top-tier investors like Sequoia Capital China, China Rennaissance, Novel Investments, and Esenagro.

Roman Pedan is the cofounder and CEO of Kasa Living which is a hospitality company that offers flexible accommodations for business and leisure travelers. The company has raised over $55 million from top tier investors including BoxGroup, Founder Collective, Ribbit Capital, NextGen Venture Partners, Touchdown Ventures, RET Ventures, and FirstMark Capital to name a few.

Roman Pedan is the cofounder and CEO of Kasa Living which is a hospitality company that offers flexible accommodations for business and leisure travelers. The company has raised over $55 million from top tier investors including BoxGroup, Founder Collective, Ribbit Capital, NextGen Venture Partners, Touchdown Ventures, RET Ventures, and FirstMark Capital to name a few.

Corey McCann is the cofounder and CEO of Pear Therapeutics which is a software-based digital therapeutics platform designed to treat disease and enhance the efficacy of pharmaceuticals. The company has raised over $250 million from investors such as Temasek Holdings, 5AM Ventures, Softbank Vision Fund, EDBI, and Trustbridge Partners to name a few.

Corey McCann is the cofounder and CEO of Pear Therapeutics which is a software-based digital therapeutics platform designed to treat disease and enhance the efficacy of pharmaceuticals. The company has raised over $250 million from investors such as Temasek Holdings, 5AM Ventures, Softbank Vision Fund, EDBI, and Trustbridge Partners to name a few.

Raphael Vullierme is the cofounder and CEO of Luko which is a neo-insurance company that provides home insurance and security technology. The company has raised over $70 million from top tier investors such as Accel, Founders Fund, Kima Ventures, and Orange Ventures to name a few.

Raphael Vullierme is the cofounder and CEO of Luko which is a neo-insurance company that provides home insurance and security technology. The company has raised over $70 million from top tier investors such as Accel, Founders Fund, Kima Ventures, and Orange Ventures to name a few.

Chris Hayes is a true serial entrepreneur with several startups under his belt. His latest venture, Alturus has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, and is reinventing how companies manage their energy needs. The company has raised $600M from the top-tier investors such as Generate Capital.

Chris Hayes is a true serial entrepreneur with several startups under his belt. His latest venture, Alturus has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, and is reinventing how companies manage their energy needs. The company has raised $600M from the top-tier investors such as Generate Capital.

Ariel Katz is the cofounder and CEO of H1 which develops a healthcare data analytics platform intended to help companies make smarter scientific decisions. The company has raised over $70 million from top tier investors such as Menlo Ventures, IVP, Lux Capital, Lux Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Lead Edge Capital to name a few.

Ariel Katz is the cofounder and CEO of H1 which develops a healthcare data analytics platform intended to help companies make smarter scientific decisions. The company has raised over $70 million from top tier investors such as Menlo Ventures, IVP, Lux Capital, Lux Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Lead Edge Capital to name a few.

Sam Zaid is the cofounder and CEO of Getaround which is a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace that enables car owners to rent out their cars. The company has raised close to $600 million from top tier investors which include General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint, Bpifrance, Correlation Ventures, and Tuesday Capital to name a few.

Sam Zaid is the cofounder and CEO of Getaround which is a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace that enables car owners to rent out their cars. The company has raised close to $600 million from top tier investors which include General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint, Bpifrance, Correlation Ventures, and Tuesday Capital to name a few.

Roberto Oliveira has founded, bought, and funded multiple startups. He seems to have great intuition when it comes to seeing what the next big thing is in tech. Now he is betting on a new form of digital asset your company needs.

Roberto Oliveira has founded, bought, and funded multiple startups. He seems to have great intuition when it comes to seeing what the next big thing is in tech. Now he is betting on a new form of digital asset your company needs.

While many entrepreneurs may have found it more challenging to fund their ventures recently, Daniel Hawkins raised not one, but two funding rounds in the middle of the 2020 COVID pandemic, totaling over $100M. His company has raised over $100 million from top-tier investors like D1 Capital Partners, Sonder Capital, Coatue, and Playground Global.

While many entrepreneurs may have found it more challenging to fund their ventures recently, Daniel Hawkins raised not one, but two funding rounds in the middle of the 2020 COVID pandemic, totaling over $100M. His company has raised over $100 million from top-tier investors like D1 Capital Partners, Sonder Capital, Coatue, and Playground Global.

Cherif Habib has been a lifelong entrepreneur. He started his first business at just 16, has taken startups full cycle, and has now raised $100M for his latest healthcare venture. His company, Dialogue, has just raised $100M from top-tier investors like HV Capital, White Star Capital, Walter Capital partners, and Sun Life Financial.

Cherif Habib has been a lifelong entrepreneur. He started his first business at just 16, has taken startups full cycle, and has now raised $100M for his latest healthcare venture. His company, Dialogue, has just raised $100M from top-tier investors like HV Capital, White Star Capital, Walter Capital partners, and Sun Life Financial.

Gautam Tambay’s startup is breaking the 500 year old education system with a new way to empower workers for the new economy. Their mission is to help a million people to find a more efficient and relevant way to learn and gain modern employment in the new world of work.

Gautam Tambay’s startup is breaking the 500 year old education system with a new way to empower workers for the new economy. Their mission is to help a million people to find a more efficient and relevant way to learn and gain modern employment in the new world of work.

Michael Mueller is the cofounder and CEO of Form3 which is a cloud-native connectivity, payment processing, clearing and settlement services to Financial Institutions and Fintechs globally.. His company, Form3 has raised $60M from top-tier investors like Mastercard, 83North, Draper Esprit, and Nationwide Building Society.

Michael Mueller is the cofounder and CEO of Form3 which is a cloud-native connectivity, payment processing, clearing and settlement services to Financial Institutions and Fintechs globally.. His company, Form3 has raised $60M from top-tier investors like Mastercard, 83North, Draper Esprit, and Nationwide Building Society.

Lance Hill’s health tech startup is one of those few companies that appears to have had the incredibly fortunate of enjoying a huge surge in demand thanks to the recent disruptions brought on by the coronavirus and how it has accelerated the use of technology, new needs, and hiring changes.

Lance Hill’s health tech startup is one of those few companies that appears to have had the incredibly fortunate of enjoying a huge surge in demand thanks to the recent disruptions brought on by the coronavirus and how it has accelerated the use of technology, new needs, and hiring changes.

Now on his second startup, Martin Lindman has raised almost $100M to drive the digital transformation of the global healthcare system. Lindman has had a long journey of jumping into different industries to apply his skills, competitive spirit, and eagerness to take on a challenge. He is keenly interested in the digitization of healthcare.

Now on his second startup, Martin Lindman has raised almost $100M to drive the digital transformation of the global healthcare system. Lindman has had a long journey of jumping into different industries to apply his skills, competitive spirit, and eagerness to take on a challenge. He is keenly interested in the digitization of healthcare.

Niall Murphy is the cofounder and CEO of EVRYTHNG which develops an IoT platform for consumer product brands, articulating data with real-time insights for billions of things. The company has raised $60 million from top tier investors such as Samsung Ventures, Cisco, Atomico, Cisco Investments, Dawn Capital, Sway Ventures, and The Future Fund to name a few.

Niall Murphy is the cofounder and CEO of EVRYTHNG which develops an IoT platform for consumer product brands, articulating data with real-time insights for billions of things. The company has raised $60 million from top tier investors such as Samsung Ventures, Cisco, Atomico, Cisco Investments, Dawn Capital, Sway Ventures, and The Future Fund to name a few.

Rodolphe Ardant is the cofounder and CEO of Spendesk which is a smart spend management software designed for both finance teams and employees. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors including Index Ventures, Kima Ventures, FundersClub, Eight Roads Ventures, Financiere Saint James, and eFounders to name a few.

Rodolphe Ardant is the cofounder and CEO of Spendesk which is a smart spend management software designed for both finance teams and employees. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors including Index Ventures, Kima Ventures, FundersClub, Eight Roads Ventures, Financiere Saint James, and eFounders to name a few.

Krish Subramanian is the co-founder of Chargebee that offers subscription and recurring billing system for subscription-based SaaS and eCommerce businesses. It is built with a focus on delivering the best experience to provide a seamless and flexible recurring billing experience to customers and manage customer subscriptions. The company has raised over $100M from top-tier investors like Steadview Capital, Insight Partners, Tiger Global Management, and Accel.

Krish Subramanian is the co-founder of Chargebee that offers subscription and recurring billing system for subscription-based SaaS and eCommerce businesses. It is built with a focus on delivering the best experience to provide a seamless and flexible recurring billing experience to customers and manage customer subscriptions. The company has raised over $100M from top-tier investors like Steadview Capital, Insight Partners, Tiger Global Management, and Accel.

Antoine Hubert is the cofounder of Ynsect, which is dedicated to insect breeding and derivative bioproducts manufacturing, such as oils and protein powders. His company has raised $435 million from top-tier investors like Supernova Invest, Caisse d'Epargne, Footprint Coalition, and Arnmat Group.

Antoine Hubert is the cofounder of Ynsect, which is dedicated to insect breeding and derivative bioproducts manufacturing, such as oils and protein powders. His company has raised $435 million from top-tier investors like Supernova Invest, Caisse d'Epargne, Footprint Coalition, and Arnmat Group.

Derek Steer has raised just shy of $100M for his startup already. His venture is already transforming how tech companies and data analysts work, and they’ve got some pretty notable investors behind them.

Derek Steer has raised just shy of $100M for his startup already. His venture is already transforming how tech companies and data analysts work, and they’ve got some pretty notable investors behind them.

Demetri Karagas is the cofounder and CEO of Thirty Madison which offers direct-to-consumer healthcare and wellness products. The company has raised over $70 million from top tier investors which include First Round Capital, Greycroft, Polaris Partners, and Maveron to name a few.

Demetri Karagas is the cofounder and CEO of Thirty Madison which offers direct-to-consumer healthcare and wellness products. The company has raised over $70 million from top tier investors which include First Round Capital, Greycroft, Polaris Partners, and Maveron to name a few.

Timothy Sheehan is the cofounder and CEO of Greenlight which is a developer of a smart debit card used to help parents monitor their child's spending habits. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors including NEA, Social Capital, Service Provider Capital, Relay Ventures, DST Global, and TTV Capital to name a few.

Timothy Sheehan is the cofounder and CEO of Greenlight which is a developer of a smart debit card used to help parents monitor their child's spending habits. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors including NEA, Social Capital, Service Provider Capital, Relay Ventures, DST Global, and TTV Capital to name a few.

Yakir Gola is the cofounder and CEO of goPuff which delivers everyday essentials, from cleaning supplies, home needs, and OTC medications to food and drinks in just minutes. The company has raised over $1.4 billion from top tier Accel, e.ventures, Softbank, D1 Capital Partners, 3L Capital, Anthos Capital, and Luxor Capital Group.

Yakir Gola is the cofounder and CEO of goPuff which delivers everyday essentials, from cleaning supplies, home needs, and OTC medications to food and drinks in just minutes. The company has raised over $1.4 billion from top tier Accel, e.ventures, Softbank, D1 Capital Partners, 3L Capital, Anthos Capital, and Luxor Capital Group.

Juli Hu is the cofounder and CEO of Lark Health which is a digital health startup that provides virtual care through AI coaching, smart devices, and tele-monitoring. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Social Starts, Tuesday Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Asset Management Ventures, and Golden Seeds to name a few.

Juli Hu is the cofounder and CEO of Lark Health which is a digital health startup that provides virtual care through AI coaching, smart devices, and tele-monitoring. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Social Starts, Tuesday Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Asset Management Ventures, and Golden Seeds to name a few.

Trevor Koverko is the cofounder and CEO of Polymath Network which is the interface between financial securities and the blockchain. The company has raised $59 million. Prior to this, Trevor Koverko founded several other companies.

Trevor Koverko is the cofounder and CEO of Polymath Network which is the interface between financial securities and the blockchain. The company has raised $59 million. Prior to this, Trevor Koverko founded several other companies.

Benjamin Miller is the cofounder and CEO of Fundrise which offers an alternative to investing in stock and bonds, the first low-cost, and direct private market investment built. The company has crowdfunded over $1.5 billion for itself and also counts with institutional backers such as ReRen.

Benjamin Miller is the cofounder and CEO of Fundrise which offers an alternative to investing in stock and bonds, the first low-cost, and direct private market investment built. The company has crowdfunded over $1.5 billion for itself and also counts with institutional backers such as ReRen.

Brad Hargreaves is the cofounder and CEO of Common Living which is a community-driven residential company that brings community, convenience, and flexibility to housing. The company has raised over $113 million from top tier investors such as 8 VC, Maveron, Norwest Venture Partners, and Grand Central Tech to name a few.

Brad Hargreaves is the cofounder and CEO of Common Living which is a community-driven residential company that brings community, convenience, and flexibility to housing. The company has raised over $113 million from top tier investors such as 8 VC, Maveron, Norwest Venture Partners, and Grand Central Tech to name a few.

Chaitanya Kalipatnapu is the cofounder if Eruditus which collaborates with top universities to make executive education accessible globally. The company has raised over $160 million from top tier investors including Prosus Ventures, Sequoia Capital, or Bertelsmann.

Chaitanya Kalipatnapu is the cofounder if Eruditus which collaborates with top universities to make executive education accessible globally. The company has raised over $160 million from top tier investors including Prosus Ventures, Sequoia Capital, or Bertelsmann.

Jonathan Langer is the cofounder and CEO of Medigate which owns and operates a medical device security platform that protects all connected medical devices on health care provider networks. The company has raised $50 million from investors like US Venture Partners, Partech, Blumberg Capital, YL Ventures, and Maor Investments.

Jonathan Langer is the cofounder and CEO of Medigate which owns and operates a medical device security platform that protects all connected medical devices on health care provider networks. The company has raised $50 million from investors like US Venture Partners, Partech, Blumberg Capital, YL Ventures, and Maor Investments.

Ramu Sunkara is the cofounder and CEO of Alan AI which has pioneered Spoken Language Understanding for enterprises to build, deploy, and manage voice experiences in their apps and IoT devices. Prior to this he cofounded Qik which was acquired for $150 million by Microsoft.

Ramu Sunkara is the cofounder and CEO of Alan AI which has pioneered Spoken Language Understanding for enterprises to build, deploy, and manage voice experiences in their apps and IoT devices. Prior to this he cofounded Qik which was acquired for $150 million by Microsoft.

Daniel Hegarty is the cofounder and CEO of Habito which is a digital mortgage brokerage services company that offers a personal and modernized approach to the home buying experience. The company has raised $80 million Atomico, Ribbit Capital, Mosaic Ventures, SBI Group, Loric Ventures, and Mojo Capital to name a few.

Daniel Hegarty is the cofounder and CEO of Habito which is a digital mortgage brokerage services company that offers a personal and modernized approach to the home buying experience. The company has raised $80 million Atomico, Ribbit Capital, Mosaic Ventures, SBI Group, Loric Ventures, and Mojo Capital to name a few.

Sandeep Akkaraju is the cofounder and CEO of Exo which is a medical device startup which develops handheld ultrasound devices and AI for imaging and therapeutic applications. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors such as Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, Sony Innovation fund, Rising Tide, Bold Capital Partners, Creative Ventures, Raimagined Ventures, and OSF Ventures to name a few. Prior to this he built and sold IntelliSense for around $750 million.

Sandeep Akkaraju is the cofounder and CEO of Exo which is a medical device startup which develops handheld ultrasound devices and AI for imaging and therapeutic applications. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors such as Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, Sony Innovation fund, Rising Tide, Bold Capital Partners, Creative Ventures, Raimagined Ventures, and OSF Ventures to name a few. Prior to this he built and sold IntelliSense for around $750 million.

Keith Richman is a serial entrepreneur and currently the cofounder of Boosted Commerce. The company has raised $87 million from investors such as Crosscut Ventures, Spencer Rascoff, Torch Capital, and Elie Seidman to name a few. Prior to this he has also cofounded VOI Technology, Break Media, and OnePage.

Keith Richman is a serial entrepreneur and currently the cofounder of Boosted Commerce. The company has raised $87 million from investors such as Crosscut Ventures, Spencer Rascoff, Torch Capital, and Elie Seidman to name a few. Prior to this he has also cofounded VOI Technology, Break Media, and OnePage.

Felix Reinshagen is the cofounder and CEO of NavVis which is a global provider of indoor spatial intelligence solutions for enterprises. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors such as European Investment BAnk, Target Partners, BayBG, MIG, Digital+ Partners, Cumulus Ventures, and Kozo Keikaku Engineering to name a few.

Felix Reinshagen is the cofounder and CEO of NavVis which is a global provider of indoor spatial intelligence solutions for enterprises. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors such as European Investment BAnk, Target Partners, BayBG, MIG, Digital+ Partners, Cumulus Ventures, and Kozo Keikaku Engineering to name a few.

Lynn Seely started Myovant Sciences which delivers innovative women's health and prostate cancer solutions by efficiently advancing new medicines to market. The company has raised $1 billion from investors such as Danippon Sumitomo Pharma. Myovant Sciences was one of the largest biopharma IPOs in 2016.

Lynn Seely started Myovant Sciences which delivers innovative women's health and prostate cancer solutions by efficiently advancing new medicines to market. The company has raised $1 billion from investors such as Danippon Sumitomo Pharma. Myovant Sciences was one of the largest biopharma IPOs in 2016.

Peter Briffett is the cofounder and CEO of Wagestream which is a financial services firm that allows employees to stream their earned wages into their accounts through an instant app. Between lines of credit, equity, and debt, the company has raised $79 million with investors such as Balderton Capital, Northzone, QED investors, London Co-Investment Fund, Village Global, Firestartr, and Latitude to name a few.

Peter Briffett is the cofounder and CEO of Wagestream which is a financial services firm that allows employees to stream their earned wages into their accounts through an instant app. Between lines of credit, equity, and debt, the company has raised $79 million with investors such as Balderton Capital, Northzone, QED investors, London Co-Investment Fund, Village Global, Firestartr, and Latitude to name a few.

Kara Goldin is the CEO and cofounder of Hint which is a beverage startup that produces natural flavored unsweetened essence water. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors such as The Perkins Fund, Verlinvest, GingerBread Capital, and Springboard Growth Capital to name a few.

Kara Goldin is the CEO and cofounder of Hint which is a beverage startup that produces natural flavored unsweetened essence water. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors such as The Perkins Fund, Verlinvest, GingerBread Capital, and Springboard Growth Capital to name a few.

Patrick Burns is the co-founder and CEO of Spruce Holdings which aims to improve title insurance assessment and issuance to reduce the time needed to close a real estate deal. The company has raised over $50 million from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, Scale Venture Partners, and Collaborative Fund to name a few.

Patrick Burns is the co-founder and CEO of Spruce Holdings which aims to improve title insurance assessment and issuance to reduce the time needed to close a real estate deal. The company has raised over $50 million from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, Scale Venture Partners, and Collaborative Fund to name a few.

Trevor Martin is the cofounder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences which develops novel CRISPR applications for disease detection, research, agriculture, biodefense, and more. The company has raised over $75 million investors from top tier investors such as Mayfield Fund, 8VC, or NFX to name a few.

Trevor Martin is the cofounder and CEO of Mammoth Biosciences which develops novel CRISPR applications for disease detection, research, agriculture, biodefense, and more. The company has raised over $75 million investors from top tier investors such as Mayfield Fund, 8VC, or NFX to name a few.

Milind Mehere is the cofounder and CEO of Yieldstreet which is an investment platform that is changing how wealth is created by connecting investors to asset-based alternative investments. The company has raised $85 million from investors such as Greycroft, FJ Labs, Edison Partners, Greenspring Associates, and Expansion Venture Capital to name a few. Prior to this is, Milind Mehere cofounded Yodle which he sold for $342 million.

Milind Mehere is the cofounder and CEO of Yieldstreet which is an investment platform that is changing how wealth is created by connecting investors to asset-based alternative investments. The company has raised $85 million from investors such as Greycroft, FJ Labs, Edison Partners, Greenspring Associates, and Expansion Venture Capital to name a few. Prior to this is, Milind Mehere cofounded Yodle which he sold for $342 million.

Amrit Acharya is the cofounder and CEO of Zetwerk which is an online marketplace that connects buyers and suppliers for manufacturing jobs. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors such as Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India, InnoVen Capital, and Kae Capital to name a few.

Amrit Acharya is the cofounder and CEO of Zetwerk which is an online marketplace that connects buyers and suppliers for manufacturing jobs. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors such as Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital India, InnoVen Capital, and Kae Capital to name a few.

Bill Barhydt is the cofounder and CEO of Abra which is a digital wallet that supports bitcoin and over 50 fiat currencies. The company has raised over $35 million from investors such as First Round Capital, RRE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Digital Currency Group to name a few. Prior to this, Bill Barhydt founded three other companies.

Bill Barhydt is the cofounder and CEO of Abra which is a digital wallet that supports bitcoin and over 50 fiat currencies. The company has raised over $35 million from investors such as First Round Capital, RRE Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Digital Currency Group to name a few. Prior to this, Bill Barhydt founded three other companies.

Ryan Smith is the cofounder and CEO of LeafLink which is a wholesale management platform for the cannabis industry. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors including Lerer Hippeau, Thrive Capital, Fairhaven Capital Partners, Muse Capital, Casa Verde Capital, TIA Ventures, Phyto partners, Canopy Rivers, Brand New Matter, Wisdom VC, Nosara Capital, and L2 Ventures to name a few.

Ryan Smith is the cofounder and CEO of LeafLink which is a wholesale management platform for the cannabis industry. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors including Lerer Hippeau, Thrive Capital, Fairhaven Capital Partners, Muse Capital, Casa Verde Capital, TIA Ventures, Phyto partners, Canopy Rivers, Brand New Matter, Wisdom VC, Nosara Capital, and L2 Ventures to name a few.

Ilir Sela is the cofounder and CEO of Slice which transforms independent pizzerias with the tech, data, marketing, and shared services needed to serve today’s digital-minded customers. The company has raised over $80 million from top tier investors like GGV Capital, KKR, Primary Venture Partners, or RiverPArk Ventures to name a few.

Ilir Sela is the cofounder and CEO of Slice which transforms independent pizzerias with the tech, data, marketing, and shared services needed to serve today’s digital-minded customers. The company has raised over $80 million from top tier investors like GGV Capital, KKR, Primary Venture Partners, or RiverPArk Ventures to name a few.

Brian Powers is the cofounder and CEO of TemperPack which manufactures insulated packaging solutions that meet the needs of all industries that ship perishable items. The company has raised over $80 million from investors like Revolution, SFJ Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, Tao Capital Partners, Third Prime, Interplay Ventures, Haas Portman, and Dolik Ventures to name a few.

Brian Powers is the cofounder and CEO of TemperPack which manufactures insulated packaging solutions that meet the needs of all industries that ship perishable items. The company has raised over $80 million from investors like Revolution, SFJ Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, Tao Capital Partners, Third Prime, Interplay Ventures, Haas Portman, and Dolik Ventures to name a few.

Ross Lipson is the cofounder of Dutchie which is an online cannabis ordering platform that connects consumers to local cannabis retailers. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Thrive Capital, Sinai Ventures, Thirty Five Ventures, Casa Verde Capital, and Gron Ventures to name a few.

Ross Lipson is the cofounder of Dutchie which is an online cannabis ordering platform that connects consumers to local cannabis retailers. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Thrive Capital, Sinai Ventures, Thirty Five Ventures, Casa Verde Capital, and Gron Ventures to name a few.

Andrei Cherny is the cofounder and CEO of Aspiration which is a socially conscious fintech platform that offers a range of products oriented around conscious consumerism. The company has raised over $200 million from top tier investors which include Omidyar Network, 8VC, Allen & Company, Capricorn Investment, SuRo Capital, Renren, Alpha Edison, AGO Partners, Enabling Future, and DNS Capital to name a few.

Andrei Cherny is the cofounder and CEO of Aspiration which is a socially conscious fintech platform that offers a range of products oriented around conscious consumerism. The company has raised over $200 million from top tier investors which include Omidyar Network, 8VC, Allen & Company, Capricorn Investment, SuRo Capital, Renren, Alpha Edison, AGO Partners, Enabling Future, and DNS Capital to name a few.

Sanjay Sharma is the cofounder of Aye Finance which is a finance company that provides business loans to micro and small businesses. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors such as CapitalG, FMO, Accion Venture Lab, and Aspada to name a few.

Sanjay Sharma is the cofounder of Aye Finance which is a finance company that provides business loans to micro and small businesses. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors such as CapitalG, FMO, Accion Venture Lab, and Aspada to name a few.

Craig Fuller is the founder and CEO of FreightWaves which is a data and content forum that provides market participants with near-time analytics. The company has raised over $75 million from investors such as Revolution, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, 8VC, Hearst Ventures, Story Ventures, and Ascend Venture Capital to name a few.

Craig Fuller is the founder and CEO of FreightWaves which is a data and content forum that provides market participants with near-time analytics. The company has raised over $75 million from investors such as Revolution, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, 8VC, Hearst Ventures, Story Ventures, and Ascend Venture Capital to name a few.

Nigel Verdon is the cofounder and CEO of Railsbank which is an open banking API and platform that gives regulated and un-regulated companies access to global banking. The company has raised over $14 million from top tier investors like Kima, Moneta VC, and Visa to name a few.

Nigel Verdon is the cofounder and CEO of Railsbank which is an open banking API and platform that gives regulated and un-regulated companies access to global banking. The company has raised over $14 million from top tier investors like Kima, Moneta VC, and Visa to name a few.

Jason Springs is the co-founder and CEO of Endpoint Health which provides precision medicine and integrated therapies for critical care. The company has already secured $12 million in funding from investors, including Mayfield, AME Cloud Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, and Y Combinator. Prior to this, Jason Springs sold the previous company he cofounded, GeneWEAVE, to Roche in 2015 fo $425 million.

Jason Springs is the co-founder and CEO of Endpoint Health which provides precision medicine and integrated therapies for critical care. The company has already secured $12 million in funding from investors, including Mayfield, AME Cloud Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, and Y Combinator. Prior to this, Jason Springs sold the previous company he cofounded, GeneWEAVE, to Roche in 2015 fo $425 million.

Iyad Tarazi is the cofounder and CEO of Federated Wireless which develops a spectrum controller for wireless networks and communication intended to revolutionize the wireless industry. The company has raised $140 million from top tier investors such as GIC, Woodford Investment Management, Allied Minds, Charter Communications, American Tower, Arris Group, SBA Communications, and Pennant Equity Partners to name a few.

Iyad Tarazi is the cofounder and CEO of Federated Wireless which develops a spectrum controller for wireless networks and communication intended to revolutionize the wireless industry. The company has raised $140 million from top tier investors such as GIC, Woodford Investment Management, Allied Minds, Charter Communications, American Tower, Arris Group, SBA Communications, and Pennant Equity Partners to name a few.

Drew Perkins is the co-founder and CEO of Mojo Vision which is a developer of products and platforms that re-imagine the intersection of ideas, information, and people. The company has raised $159 million from top tier investors such as NEA, Khosla Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, 8VC, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Kakao Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, and Gradient Ventures to name a few. Prior to this he cofounded Lightera (acquired by Ciena), OnFiber (acquired by Qwest), Infinera (IPO), and Gainspeed (acquired by Nokia).

Drew Perkins is the co-founder and CEO of Mojo Vision which is a developer of products and platforms that re-imagine the intersection of ideas, information, and people. The company has raised $159 million from top tier investors such as NEA, Khosla Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, 8VC, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Kakao Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, and Gradient Ventures to name a few. Prior to this he cofounded Lightera (acquired by Ciena), OnFiber (acquired by Qwest), Infinera (IPO), and Gainspeed (acquired by Nokia).

Alex Robinson is the co-founder and CEO of Juniper Square which operates an investment management platform for commercial real estate. The company has raised over $100 million from investors such as Redpoint, Felicis Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Red Swan Ventures, LeFrak, Maiden Lane Ventures, OVO Fund, and Zigg Capital to name a few.

Alex Robinson is the co-founder and CEO of Juniper Square which operates an investment management platform for commercial real estate. The company has raised over $100 million from investors such as Redpoint, Felicis Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Red Swan Ventures, LeFrak, Maiden Lane Ventures, OVO Fund, and Zigg Capital to name a few.

Felix Van de Maele is the founder and CEO of Collibra which delivers the only end to end data intelligence platform to accelerate digital business transformation. The company has raised over $300 million from top tier investors such as Index Ventures, Battery Ventures, ICONIQ Capital, Dawn Capital, CapitalG, Newion, Durable Capital Partners, and Brustart to name a few.

Felix Van de Maele is the founder and CEO of Collibra which delivers the only end to end data intelligence platform to accelerate digital business transformation. The company has raised over $300 million from top tier investors such as Index Ventures, Battery Ventures, ICONIQ Capital, Dawn Capital, CapitalG, Newion, Durable Capital Partners, and Brustart to name a few.

David Rosenberg is the cofounder and CEO of AeroFarms which is an urban cleantech company that provides aeroponic growing systems to produce plants without sun or soil. The company has raised over $200 million from top tier investors which include GSR Ventures, Newark Venture Partners, Middleland Capital, 21Ventures, Wheatsheaf Group, MissionPoint Capital Partners, Cibus Fund, and ADM Capital to name a few.

David Rosenberg is the cofounder and CEO of AeroFarms which is an urban cleantech company that provides aeroponic growing systems to produce plants without sun or soil. The company has raised over $200 million from top tier investors which include GSR Ventures, Newark Venture Partners, Middleland Capital, 21Ventures, Wheatsheaf Group, MissionPoint Capital Partners, Cibus Fund, and ADM Capital to name a few.

Tom Shea is the cofounder and CEO of OneStream Software which is an independent CPM software company. The company has raised over $600 million from investors like KKR. Prior to this he founded UpStream Software which was acquired by Hyperion which would later be acquired by Oracle for over $3 billion.

Tom Shea is the cofounder and CEO of OneStream Software which is an independent CPM software company. The company has raised over $600 million from investors like KKR. Prior to this he founded UpStream Software which was acquired by Hyperion which would later be acquired by Oracle for over $3 billion.

Eran Shir is the co-founder and CEO of Nexar which makes every car smart and is building the world’s safe driving network. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors like True Ventures, Slow Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Expansion Venture Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Aleph, Maniv Mobility, Tusk Venture Partners, Ibex Investors, Nationwide Ventures, 40 North Ventures, Micron Ventures, and Corner Ventures to name a few.

Eran Shir is the co-founder and CEO of Nexar which makes every car smart and is building the world’s safe driving network. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors like True Ventures, Slow Ventures, Samsung NEXT, Expansion Venture Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Aleph, Maniv Mobility, Tusk Venture Partners, Ibex Investors, Nationwide Ventures, 40 North Ventures, Micron Ventures, and Corner Ventures to name a few.

Arcady Sosinov is the cofounder and CEO of FreeWire Technologies which provides smart battery systems for EV charging and mobile distributed power. The company has raised $45 million from investors such as EASME, Silicon Valley Bank, Alumni Ventures Group, Total Access Fund, Elemental Excelerator, BP Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Momenta Ventures, Chestnut Street Ventures, Spike Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Strawberry Creek Ventures, Stanley Ventures, and Energy Innovation Capital to name a few.

Arcady Sosinov is the cofounder and CEO of FreeWire Technologies which provides smart battery systems for EV charging and mobile distributed power. The company has raised $45 million from investors such as EASME, Silicon Valley Bank, Alumni Ventures Group, Total Access Fund, Elemental Excelerator, BP Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Momenta Ventures, Chestnut Street Ventures, Spike Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Strawberry Creek Ventures, Stanley Ventures, and Energy Innovation Capital to name a few.

Max Simkoff is the cofounder of States Title which is an insurtech platform that uses machine intelligence to remove friction from residential real estate transactions. The company has raised $230 million from top tier investors such as Foundation Capital, Horizons Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Greenspring Associates, Fifth Wall, Assurant Growth Investing, Lennar Corporation, SCOR Global P&C Ventures, HSCM Bermuda, and Eminence Capital LP to name a few.

Max Simkoff is the cofounder of States Title which is an insurtech platform that uses machine intelligence to remove friction from residential real estate transactions. The company has raised $230 million from top tier investors such as Foundation Capital, Horizons Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Greenspring Associates, Fifth Wall, Assurant Growth Investing, Lennar Corporation, SCOR Global P&C Ventures, HSCM Bermuda, and Eminence Capital LP to name a few.

Oleg Tumanov is the cofounder and CEO of ivi which is a video-on-demand platform that brings the traditional television experience online with a free video player. The company has raised $200 million from investors such as Tiger Global Management, RTP Global, Flashpoint, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Mubadala Capital, Russian Direct Investment Fund, Frontier Ventures, Winter Capital, Alfa-Bank, and Prof-Media to name a few.

Oleg Tumanov is the cofounder and CEO of ivi which is a video-on-demand platform that brings the traditional television experience online with a free video player. The company has raised $200 million from investors such as Tiger Global Management, RTP Global, Flashpoint, Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Mubadala Capital, Russian Direct Investment Fund, Frontier Ventures, Winter Capital, Alfa-Bank, and Prof-Media to name a few.

Lisa Alderson is the co-founder and CEO of Genome Medical which is a telegenomics technology and services company allowing access to genomic-based medicine. The company has raised over $60 million from investors such as Canaan Partners, GE Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Techammer, Casdin Capital, Manatt Venture Fund, and Samsung Catalyst Fund to name a few.

Lisa Alderson is the co-founder and CEO of Genome Medical which is a telegenomics technology and services company allowing access to genomic-based medicine. The company has raised over $60 million from investors such as Canaan Partners, GE Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Techammer, Casdin Capital, Manatt Venture Fund, and Samsung Catalyst Fund to name a few.

Brandon Krieg is the co-founder and CEO of Stash which is a New York-based digital investing and banking platform. The company has raised over $300 million from top tier investors including Founders Fund, Union Square Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Greenspring Associates, Coatue Management, Entree Capital, Valar Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Breyer Capital, and Lending Tree to name a few. Prior to this, he co-founded Edge Trade (acquired by Knight Capital Group).

Brandon Krieg is the co-founder and CEO of Stash which is a New York-based digital investing and banking platform. The company has raised over $300 million from top tier investors including Founders Fund, Union Square Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Greenspring Associates, Coatue Management, Entree Capital, Valar Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Breyer Capital, and Lending Tree to name a few. Prior to this, he co-founded Edge Trade (acquired by Knight Capital Group).

Jason Gardner is the founder and CEO of Marqeta which provides infrastructure and tools to help companies build and manage payment programs. The company has raised over $500 million from top tier investors which include Daintree, Granite Ventures, Coatue Management, Lone Pine Capital, Greyhound Capital, CommerzVentures, 83North, Geodesic Capital, Visa, Spark Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Vitruvian Partners, and Greylock to name a few. Prior to this, he founded Vertical Think, and PropertyBridge (acquired by MoneyGram).

Jason Gardner is the founder and CEO of Marqeta which provides infrastructure and tools to help companies build and manage payment programs. The company has raised over $500 million from top tier investors which include Daintree, Granite Ventures, Coatue Management, Lone Pine Capital, Greyhound Capital, CommerzVentures, 83North, Geodesic Capital, Visa, Spark Capital, ICONIQ Capital, Vitruvian Partners, and Greylock to name a few. Prior to this, he founded Vertical Think, and PropertyBridge (acquired by MoneyGram).

Hanif Joshaghani is the co-founder and CEO of Symend which is a behavioral analytics platform that provides customer engagement products to identify customers having trouble with their bills. The company has raised over $52 million from investors like Ignition Partners, Inovia Capital, TELUS Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, and Impression Ventures to name a few.

Hanif Joshaghani is the co-founder and CEO of Symend which is a behavioral analytics platform that provides customer engagement products to identify customers having trouble with their bills. The company has raised over $52 million from investors like Ignition Partners, Inovia Capital, TELUS Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, and Impression Ventures to name a few.

Maximilian Bittner is the CEO of Vestiaire Collective which is a global marketplace enabling people to buy and sell luxury, pre-owned fashion products. The company has raised over $250 million from top tier investors such as Bpifrance, Idinvest Partners, Balderton Capital, Ventech, Vitruvian Partners, Eurazeo, Fidelity International, Korelya Capital, Conde Nast, Vaultier7, Cuir Invest, and Luxury Tech Fund to name a few. Prior to this, Maximilian cofounded Lazada which he sold to Alibaba for $4 billion.

Maximilian Bittner is the CEO of Vestiaire Collective which is a global marketplace enabling people to buy and sell luxury, pre-owned fashion products. The company has raised over $250 million from top tier investors such as Bpifrance, Idinvest Partners, Balderton Capital, Ventech, Vitruvian Partners, Eurazeo, Fidelity International, Korelya Capital, Conde Nast, Vaultier7, Cuir Invest, and Luxury Tech Fund to name a few. Prior to this, Maximilian cofounded Lazada which he sold to Alibaba for $4 billion.

Jay Desai is the cofounder and CEO of PatientPing which is a health technology company that is building a national network of engaged providers who are sharing information, coordinating care, and working together to get patients healthier faster. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors including SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, GV, Eight Roads Ventures, F-Prime Capital, Leerink Transformation Partners, and Transformation Capital to name a few.

Jay Desai is the cofounder and CEO of PatientPing which is a health technology company that is building a national network of engaged providers who are sharing information, coordinating care, and working together to get patients healthier faster. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors including SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, GV, Eight Roads Ventures, F-Prime Capital, Leerink Transformation Partners, and Transformation Capital to name a few.

Rahul Gandhi is the cofounder and CEO of MakeSpace which is an on-demand storage company that makes it easy to order, store, and retrieve physical belongings. The company has raised $140 million so far from top tier investors such as Iron Mountain, Provenio Capital, Maywic Select Investments, Upfront Ventures, CX Collective, Ten Eighty Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, and Lowercase Capital to name a few.

Rahul Gandhi is the cofounder and CEO of MakeSpace which is an on-demand storage company that makes it easy to order, store, and retrieve physical belongings. The company has raised $140 million so far from top tier investors such as Iron Mountain, Provenio Capital, Maywic Select Investments, Upfront Ventures, CX Collective, Ten Eighty Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, and Lowercase Capital to name a few.

Taejun Shin is the co-founder and CEO of Gojo & Company which extends financial inclusion to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors such as JAFCO Japan, SBI Investment, Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, Dai-ichi Life, Credit Saison, Sompo Holdings, Link and Motivation, MARUI Group, Seven Bank, Tokyo University of Science Investment Management, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Aizawa Securities, Tokyo Star Bank, 15th Rock Ventures, and Dimension.

Taejun Shin is the co-founder and CEO of Gojo & Company which extends financial inclusion to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors such as JAFCO Japan, SBI Investment, Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, Dai-ichi Life, Credit Saison, Sompo Holdings, Link and Motivation, MARUI Group, Seven Bank, Tokyo University of Science Investment Management, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Aizawa Securities, Tokyo Star Bank, 15th Rock Ventures, and Dimension.

Alan Hahn is the cofounder of MycoTechnology which utilizes fungi based food-processing platforms to transform the flavor and value of agricultural products. The company has raised $120 million from investors such as Wavemaker Partners, Seventure Partners, Middleland Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, S2G Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, Emerson Collective, Continental Grain Company, Cibus Fund, Eighteen94 Capital, Closed Loop Capital, Tyson Ventures, Health for Life Capital fund, Bunge, Evolution Capital Partners, Ajinomoto, and Greenleaf Foods to name a few. Prior to this he cofounded Shared Technologies Fairchild, Corvigo, and SolarX.

Alan Hahn is the cofounder of MycoTechnology which utilizes fungi based food-processing platforms to transform the flavor and value of agricultural products. The company has raised $120 million from investors such as Wavemaker Partners, Seventure Partners, Middleland Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, S2G Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, Emerson Collective, Continental Grain Company, Cibus Fund, Eighteen94 Capital, Closed Loop Capital, Tyson Ventures, Health for Life Capital fund, Bunge, Evolution Capital Partners, Ajinomoto, and Greenleaf Foods to name a few. Prior to this he cofounded Shared Technologies Fairchild, Corvigo, and SolarX.

Tomas Martins is the co-founder and CEO of tembici which is a Brazilian bike-sharing company. The company has raised over $60 million from investors such as International Finance Corporation, Redpoint eventures, Valor Capital Group, and Joa Investimentos to name a few.

Tomas Martins is the co-founder and CEO of tembici which is a Brazilian bike-sharing company. The company has raised over $60 million from investors such as International Finance Corporation, Redpoint eventures, Valor Capital Group, and Joa Investimentos to name a few.

Ola Sars is a serial entrepreneur and the cofounder of Soundtrack Your Brand which is a background music streaming service with curated background soundtracks for business use. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Balderton Capital, Wellington Partners, Northzone, Creandum, Industrifonden, NJF Capital, and Spotify to name a few. Prior to this he helped built Beats into a $3 billion business.

Ola Sars is a serial entrepreneur and the cofounder of Soundtrack Your Brand which is a background music streaming service with curated background soundtracks for business use. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Balderton Capital, Wellington Partners, Northzone, Creandum, Industrifonden, NJF Capital, and Spotify to name a few. Prior to this he helped built Beats into a $3 billion business.

Sujal Patel is the cofounder and CEO of Nautilus Biotechnology which offers a high-throughput, low-cost platform for analyzing and quantifying the human proteome. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona Venture Group, AME Cloud Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Bezos Expeditions, Bolt Ventures, and Defy Ventures to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Isilon which he sold to EMC for $2.6 billion.

Sujal Patel is the cofounder and CEO of Nautilus Biotechnology which offers a high-throughput, low-cost platform for analyzing and quantifying the human proteome. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona Venture Group, AME Cloud Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Perceptive Advisors, Bezos Expeditions, Bolt Ventures, and Defy Ventures to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Isilon which he sold to EMC for $2.6 billion.

James Isilay is the cofounder and CEO of Cognism which is a B2B sales acceleration software company that provides a marketing and sales acceleration solution. The company has raised over $20 million from top tier investors such as Investiere, London Co-Investment Fund, Newable Private Investing, AXA Venture Partners, Fintech Sandbox, and PeakSpan Capital to name a few.

James Isilay is the cofounder and CEO of Cognism which is a B2B sales acceleration software company that provides a marketing and sales acceleration solution. The company has raised over $20 million from top tier investors such as Investiere, London Co-Investment Fund, Newable Private Investing, AXA Venture Partners, Fintech Sandbox, and PeakSpan Capital to name a few.

Kelvin Teo is the co-founder and CEO of Funding Societies which is an online peer-to-peer lending marketplace for SMEs to acquire loans and fuel their growth through investor funding. The company has raised close to $60 million from top tier investors such as Sequoia, Softbank Ventures, Golden Gate, Alpha JWC Ventures, Qualgro VC, The Graduate Syndicate, and Line Corporation to name a few.

Kelvin Teo is the co-founder and CEO of Funding Societies which is an online peer-to-peer lending marketplace for SMEs to acquire loans and fuel their growth through investor funding. The company has raised close to $60 million from top tier investors such as Sequoia, Softbank Ventures, Golden Gate, Alpha JWC Ventures, Qualgro VC, The Graduate Syndicate, and Line Corporation to name a few.

Avi Freedman is the co-founder and CEO at Kentik which is a network intelligence platform that provides visibility, performance, and security services to digital enterprises. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors such as First Round Capital, Data Collective DCVC, August Capital, Webb Investment Network, Glynn Capital Management, Third Point Ventures, Engineering Capital, and Tahoma Ventures to name a few.

Avi Freedman is the co-founder and CEO at Kentik which is a network intelligence platform that provides visibility, performance, and security services to digital enterprises. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors such as First Round Capital, Data Collective DCVC, August Capital, Webb Investment Network, Glynn Capital Management, Third Point Ventures, Engineering Capital, and Tahoma Ventures to name a few.

Rahul Dhanda is the cofounder and CEO of Sherlock Biosciences which is an engineering biology company offering unparalleled breadth and versatility for diagnostic solutions. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Baidu Ventures, Northpond Ventures, and Open Philanthropy Project.

Rahul Dhanda is the cofounder and CEO of Sherlock Biosciences which is an engineering biology company offering unparalleled breadth and versatility for diagnostic solutions. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Baidu Ventures, Northpond Ventures, and Open Philanthropy Project.

Jay Bregman is a serial entrepreneur and currently the cofounder and CEO of Thimble which is an insurance producer enabling small businesses to succeed on their own terms. The company has raised $30 million from Slow Ventures, LocalGlobe, Frontline Ventures, AXA Venture Partners, OpenOcean, Novel TMT Ventures, ValueStream Ventures, and IAC to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Hailo (acquired by Daimler Mercedes-Benz) and eCourier (acquired by Royal Mail).

Jay Bregman is a serial entrepreneur and currently the cofounder and CEO of Thimble which is an insurance producer enabling small businesses to succeed on their own terms. The company has raised $30 million from Slow Ventures, LocalGlobe, Frontline Ventures, AXA Venture Partners, OpenOcean, Novel TMT Ventures, ValueStream Ventures, and IAC to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Hailo (acquired by Daimler Mercedes-Benz) and eCourier (acquired by Royal Mail).

Orr Danon is the co-founder and CEO of Hailo which has developed a specialized deep learning processor that delivers the performance of a data center-class computer to edge devices. The company has raised $90 million from top tier investors including Easme, Maniv Mobility, ABB Technology Ventures, Glory Ventures, NEC Corporation, and Latitude to name a few.

Orr Danon is the co-founder and CEO of Hailo which has developed a specialized deep learning processor that delivers the performance of a data center-class computer to edge devices. The company has raised $90 million from top tier investors including Easme, Maniv Mobility, ABB Technology Ventures, Glory Ventures, NEC Corporation, and Latitude to name a few.

Drew McElroy is the cofounder of Transfix which provides trucking brokerage services in the United States. The company has raised close to $130 million from top tier investors which include NEA, Lerer Hippeau, Founder Collective, Expansion Venture Capital, Corigin Ventures, Bowery Capital, Canvas Ventures, G Squared, Deep Fork Capital, Charge Ventures, and Thayer Street Partners to name a few.

Drew McElroy is the cofounder of Transfix which provides trucking brokerage services in the United States. The company has raised close to $130 million from top tier investors which include NEA, Lerer Hippeau, Founder Collective, Expansion Venture Capital, Corigin Ventures, Bowery Capital, Canvas Ventures, G Squared, Deep Fork Capital, Charge Ventures, and Thayer Street Partners to name a few.

Jason Guss is the co-founder and CEO of Octane Lending which offers a point of sales financing and insurance platform for niche consumer markets. The company has raised over $100 million from IA Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Valar Ventures, FinTech Collective, Third Prime, Berenson & Company, and Rider Insurance to name a few.

Jason Guss is the co-founder and CEO of Octane Lending which offers a point of sales financing and insurance platform for niche consumer markets. The company has raised over $100 million from IA Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Valar Ventures, FinTech Collective, Third Prime, Berenson & Company, and Rider Insurance to name a few.

Michael Winn is the co-founder and CEO of DroneDeploy which is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors which include Bessemer Venture Partners, Threshold, Redpoint, Data Collective DCVC, Uncork Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Emergence, AngelPad, AirTree Ventures, High Alpha, Drone Fund, and Energize Ventures to name a few.

Michael Winn is the co-founder and CEO of DroneDeploy which is a cloud-based drone mapping and analytics platform to help businesses get things done. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors which include Bessemer Venture Partners, Threshold, Redpoint, Data Collective DCVC, Uncork Capital, Scale Venture Partners, Emergence, AngelPad, AirTree Ventures, High Alpha, Drone Fund, and Energize Ventures to name a few.

Michael Cassau is the founder and CEO of Grover which brings the access economy to the consumer electronics market, by offering a simple, monthly subscription model for the best in tech. The company has raised over $300 million from top tier investors such as Global Founders Capital,, Seedcamp, Samsung NEXT, coparion, Enjoyventure Management, Chromo Invest, main incubator, Augmentum Fintech, K-Invest, Commerzbank, June Fund, Circularity Capital, Verengold Bank, and Hannover Innovation Fund to name a few.

Michael Cassau is the founder and CEO of Grover which brings the access economy to the consumer electronics market, by offering a simple, monthly subscription model for the best in tech. The company has raised over $300 million from top tier investors such as Global Founders Capital,, Seedcamp, Samsung NEXT, coparion, Enjoyventure Management, Chromo Invest, main incubator, Augmentum Fintech, K-Invest, Commerzbank, June Fund, Circularity Capital, Verengold Bank, and Hannover Innovation Fund to name a few.

David Poritz is the co-founder and CEO of Credijusto which provides an online lending platform designed to offer easy, reliable, and transparent credit for SMEs. The company has raised over $300 million from Goldman Sachs, QED Investors, Credit Suisse, Kaszek Ventures, Thomvest Ventures, GS Growth, Point72 Ventures, Ignia, Supernode Ventures, Broadhaven Capital Partners, and Victory Park Capital to name a few.

David Poritz is the co-founder and CEO of Credijusto which provides an online lending platform designed to offer easy, reliable, and transparent credit for SMEs. The company has raised over $300 million from Goldman Sachs, QED Investors, Credit Suisse, Kaszek Ventures, Thomvest Ventures, GS Growth, Point72 Ventures, Ignia, Supernode Ventures, Broadhaven Capital Partners, and Victory Park Capital to name a few.

Jake Weatherly is the co-founder and CEO of SheerID which is an enterprise verification platform that provides instant verification while minimizing friction and mitigating fraud. The company has raised close to $100 million from top tier investors including Voyager Capital, CVC Capital Partners, Centana Growth Partners, and Arnold Venture Group to name a few.

Jake Weatherly is the co-founder and CEO of SheerID which is an enterprise verification platform that provides instant verification while minimizing friction and mitigating fraud. The company has raised close to $100 million from top tier investors including Voyager Capital, CVC Capital Partners, Centana Growth Partners, and Arnold Venture Group to name a few.

Andrew Smith is the founder and CEO of Outrider which provides autonomous yard operations for logistics hubs. The company has raised over $53 million from investors such as NEA, 8VC, Loup Ventures, Schematic Ventures, Fraser McCombs Capital, Prologis, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and Goose Capital. Prior to this, he cofounded ATDynamics which got acquired by Stemco.

Andrew Smith is the founder and CEO of Outrider which provides autonomous yard operations for logistics hubs. The company has raised over $53 million from investors such as NEA, 8VC, Loup Ventures, Schematic Ventures, Fraser McCombs Capital, Prologis, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and Goose Capital. Prior to this, he cofounded ATDynamics which got acquired by Stemco.

Jean Nehme is the cofounder and CEO of Digital Surgery which is a pioneer in surgical artificial intelligence (AI), data and analytics, and digital education and training. The company raised over $90 million from investors like Balderton Capital, 8VC, Upscale, Blueprint Health, Episode 1, Redline Capital, and Ballpark Ventures. The company ultimately got acquired by Medtronic.

Jean Nehme is the cofounder and CEO of Digital Surgery which is a pioneer in surgical artificial intelligence (AI), data and analytics, and digital education and training. The company raised over $90 million from investors like Balderton Capital, 8VC, Upscale, Blueprint Health, Episode 1, Redline Capital, and Ballpark Ventures. The company ultimately got acquired by Medtronic.

Chang Wen Lai is the co-founder and CEO of Ninja Van which is a tech-enabled express delivery firm serving businesses across Southeast Asia. The company has raised $400 million from YJ Capital, B Capital Group, Abraaj Group, Monk‘s Hill Ventures, Grab, DPD Group, Geopost, Bangkok Bank, Intouch Holdings, and Carmenta Capital Management to name a few.

Chang Wen Lai is the co-founder and CEO of Ninja Van which is a tech-enabled express delivery firm serving businesses across Southeast Asia. The company has raised $400 million from YJ Capital, B Capital Group, Abraaj Group, Monk‘s Hill Ventures, Grab, DPD Group, Geopost, Bangkok Bank, Intouch Holdings, and Carmenta Capital Management to name a few.

Daniel Wiegand is the co-founder and CEO of Lilium which develops an on-demand air mobility service, enabling a world where anyone can fly anywhere and anytime. The company has raised more than $340 million from investors like Tencent Holdings, Atomico, Obvious Ventures, Freigesit, and LGT Capital Partners to name a few.

Daniel Wiegand is the co-founder and CEO of Lilium which develops an on-demand air mobility service, enabling a world where anyone can fly anywhere and anytime. The company has raised more than $340 million from investors like Tencent Holdings, Atomico, Obvious Ventures, Freigesit, and LGT Capital Partners to name a few.

Campbell Brown is the CEO & Co-Founder at PredictHQ, the demand intelligence company. The company has raised over $30 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Aspect Ventures, AddVenture, Rampersand, and Tidal Ventures. Prior to this, he sold GrabOne for over $89 million.

Campbell Brown is the CEO & Co-Founder at PredictHQ, the demand intelligence company. The company has raised over $30 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Aspect Ventures, AddVenture, Rampersand, and Tidal Ventures. Prior to this, he sold GrabOne for over $89 million.

Fahri Diner is the co-founder and CEO of Plume Design which is is the creator of a Consumer Experience Management Platform for the curation and delivery of new Smart Home Services rapidly at scale. The company has raised $150 million from top tier investors such as Spark Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, or Qualcomm to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Qtera Corporation which he sold for $3.25 billion.

Fahri Diner is the co-founder and CEO of Plume Design which is is the creator of a Consumer Experience Management Platform for the curation and delivery of new Smart Home Services rapidly at scale. The company has raised $150 million from top tier investors such as Spark Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, or Qualcomm to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Qtera Corporation which he sold for $3.25 billion.

Rohit Paranjpe is the co-founder and CEO of SugarBox which enables consumers to access relevant content at super-fast speeds. The company has raised so far $80 million from investors like Zee Entertainment Enterprises.

Rohit Paranjpe is the co-founder and CEO of SugarBox which enables consumers to access relevant content at super-fast speeds. The company has raised so far $80 million from investors like Zee Entertainment Enterprises.

Dilip Goswami is the co-founder and CEO of Molekule which is a San Francisco-based science and clean air company that has developed a fundamentally new approach to cleaning the air. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors such as Crosslink Capital, Uncork Capital, Foundry Group, TransLink Capital, Highway1, Foxconn Technology Group, Hack VC, Founders Circle Capital, Hone Capital, CSC, Inventec Corporation, and RPS Ventures.

Dilip Goswami is the co-founder and CEO of Molekule which is a San Francisco-based science and clean air company that has developed a fundamentally new approach to cleaning the air. The company has raised $100 million from top tier investors such as Crosslink Capital, Uncork Capital, Foundry Group, TransLink Capital, Highway1, Foxconn Technology Group, Hack VC, Founders Circle Capital, Hone Capital, CSC, Inventec Corporation, and RPS Ventures.

Geraldo Thomaz is the co-founder and CEO of VTEX which provides a cloud-based e-Commerce Platform and Omnichannel solutions. The company has raised over $140 million from top tier investors such as Softbank.

Geraldo Thomaz is the co-founder and CEO of VTEX which provides a cloud-based e-Commerce Platform and Omnichannel solutions. The company has raised over $140 million from top tier investors such as Softbank.

Jack Newton is the co-founder and CEO of Clio which is a suite of web-based tools that help law firms in practice management and client collaboration. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, TCV, Point Nine Capital, JMI Equity, and Acton Capital to name a few.

Jack Newton is the co-founder and CEO of Clio which is a suite of web-based tools that help law firms in practice management and client collaboration. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, TCV, Point Nine Capital, JMI Equity, and Acton Capital to name a few.

Bill Powers is the co-founder and CEO of Cambridge Mobile Telematics which develops DriveWell, a complete telematics, and behavioral analytics solution to improve safety. The company has raised over $500 million from top tier investors like Softbank Vision Fund.

Bill Powers is the co-founder and CEO of Cambridge Mobile Telematics which develops DriveWell, a complete telematics, and behavioral analytics solution to improve safety. The company has raised over $500 million from top tier investors like Softbank Vision Fund.

Steven Kramer is the co-founder and CEO of WorkJam which is a frontline digital workplace that unleashes the full potential of non-desk workforces. The company has raised $70 million from investors like Lerer Hippeau, Founder Collective, Inovia Capital, Blumberg Capital, Fonds de solidarite FTQ, Harmony Partners, Novel TMT Ventures, and Claridge to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded iCongo which merged with hybris and sold to SAP for $1.5 billion.

Steven Kramer is the co-founder and CEO of WorkJam which is a frontline digital workplace that unleashes the full potential of non-desk workforces. The company has raised $70 million from investors like Lerer Hippeau, Founder Collective, Inovia Capital, Blumberg Capital, Fonds de solidarite FTQ, Harmony Partners, Novel TMT Ventures, and Claridge to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded iCongo which merged with hybris and sold to SAP for $1.5 billion.

Jeffrey Glass is a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he is the cofounder and CEO of Hometap which aims to revolutionize home financing, giving homeowners a new way to take advantage of the equity in their homes. The company has raised over $100 million from investors like General Catalyst, ICONIQ Capital, American Family Ventures, G20 Ventures, Pillar VC, and Pillar Ventures. Prior to this, he co-founded Zooba (acquired by Bertelsman), m-Qube (acquired by VeriSign), and NRG eSports.

Jeffrey Glass is a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he is the cofounder and CEO of Hometap which aims to revolutionize home financing, giving homeowners a new way to take advantage of the equity in their homes. The company has raised over $100 million from investors like General Catalyst, ICONIQ Capital, American Family Ventures, G20 Ventures, Pillar VC, and Pillar Ventures. Prior to this, he co-founded Zooba (acquired by Bertelsman), m-Qube (acquired by VeriSign), and NRG eSports.

Carlos Cashman is a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he co-founded Thrasio which is an acquirer of Amazon third-party private-label businesses. The company has raised over $130M from top tier investors such as Western Technology Investment, RiverPark Ventures, WTI, Upper90, PEAK6 Investments, and Harlan Capital Partners. Prior to this he cofounded several companies including Asset Performance, Course Advisor, ConstellationCK, CueNotes, and OrionCKB.

Carlos Cashman is a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he co-founded Thrasio which is an acquirer of Amazon third-party private-label businesses. The company has raised over $130M from top tier investors such as Western Technology Investment, RiverPark Ventures, WTI, Upper90, PEAK6 Investments, and Harlan Capital Partners. Prior to this he cofounded several companies including Asset Performance, Course Advisor, ConstellationCK, CueNotes, and OrionCKB.

Oren Zaslansky is the founder and CEO of Flock Freight which is a business-to-business freight shipping company. The company has raised to date over $70 million from top tier investors such as Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, SignalFire, Karmel Capital, and GLP Capital Partners.

Oren Zaslansky is the founder and CEO of Flock Freight which is a business-to-business freight shipping company. The company has raised to date over $70 million from top tier investors such as Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, SignalFire, Karmel Capital, and GLP Capital Partners.

Paul Taylor is the founder and CEO of Thought Machine which is a fintech company that builds cloud-native technology to revolutionize core banking. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors like Draper Espirit, IQ Capital, Playfair Capital,and Backed VC to name a few. Prior to this he founded Phonetic Arts which was acquired by Google.

Paul Taylor is the founder and CEO of Thought Machine which is a fintech company that builds cloud-native technology to revolutionize core banking. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors like Draper Espirit, IQ Capital, Playfair Capital,and Backed VC to name a few. Prior to this he founded Phonetic Arts which was acquired by Google.

Peter Yared is a 7x entrepreneur. Most recently he cofounded InCountry which is a data residency-as-a-service platform that enables global data compliance for international business. The company has raised over $20M. Prior to this, he sold Sappho to Citrix for $225 million and j.rad to Sun Microsystems for over $200 million.

Peter Yared is a 7x entrepreneur. Most recently he cofounded InCountry which is a data residency-as-a-service platform that enables global data compliance for international business. The company has raised over $20M. Prior to this, he sold Sappho to Citrix for $225 million and j.rad to Sun Microsystems for over $200 million.

Nick Huzar is the co-founder and CEO of Offerup which provides an online and mobile C2C marketplace app for people to buy and sell electronics, furniture, and cars. The company has raised $380 million from top tier investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus, T. Rowe Price, and Allen & Company to name a few.

Nick Huzar is the co-founder and CEO of Offerup which provides an online and mobile C2C marketplace app for people to buy and sell electronics, furniture, and cars. The company has raised $380 million from top tier investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus, T. Rowe Price, and Allen & Company to name a few.

Ariel Cohen is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of TripActions which is a corporate travel management company. The business has raised so far close to $1 billion in equity and debt. Some of its top tier investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank, Frontline Ventures, Comerica Incorporated, Group 11, and Zeev Ventures to name a few.

Ariel Cohen is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of TripActions which is a corporate travel management company. The business has raised so far close to $1 billion in equity and debt. Some of its top tier investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank, Frontline Ventures, Comerica Incorporated, Group 11, and Zeev Ventures to name a few.

Robin Richards is the CEO and founder of CareerArc which is an HR technology company helping business leaders recruit and transition the modern workforce. The company has raised over $30 million. Prior to this Robin Richards founded 6 other companies that he sold for over $600 million.

Robin Richards is the CEO and founder of CareerArc which is an HR technology company helping business leaders recruit and transition the modern workforce. The company has raised over $30 million. Prior to this Robin Richards founded 6 other companies that he sold for over $600 million.

Dean Sysman is the co-founder and CEO of Axonius which is a cybersecurity asset management platform that helps secure and manage connected devices in use by businesses. The company has raised $95M from top investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, OpenView, Bessemer Venture Partners, and YL Ventures to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Cymmetria (acquired by Stage Fund).

Dean Sysman is the co-founder and CEO of Axonius which is a cybersecurity asset management platform that helps secure and manage connected devices in use by businesses. The company has raised $95M from top investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, OpenView, Bessemer Venture Partners, and YL Ventures to name a few. Prior to this, he cofounded Cymmetria (acquired by Stage Fund).

Chase Lochmiller is the cofounder and CEO of Crusoe Energy Systems which is on a mission to help the oil industry reduce routine flaring of natural gas. The company has raised so far $75 million from investors like Founders Fund, Bain Capital, Winklevoss Capital, Pathfinder, Polychain, Wicklow Capital, KCK, and Upper90 to name a few.

Chase Lochmiller is the cofounder and CEO of Crusoe Energy Systems which is on a mission to help the oil industry reduce routine flaring of natural gas. The company has raised so far $75 million from investors like Founders Fund, Bain Capital, Winklevoss Capital, Pathfinder, Polychain, Wicklow Capital, KCK, and Upper90 to name a few.

Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks which is a cloud-based accounting software that allows owners to invoice clients, track time and run their small businesses in the cloud.

Mike McDerment is the co-founder and CEO of Freshbooks which is a cloud-based accounting software that allows owners to invoice clients, track time and run their small businesses in the cloud.

Stephan Schambach is the founder of NewStore which operates a platform for retailers to run their stores on iPhone. The company has raised $130 million from General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures, Enjoyventure Management, and Activant Capital. Prior to this he founded Demandware (acquired by Salesforce for $2.8 billion), Torqueedo (acquired by DEUTZ for $100 million), and Intershop.

Stephan Schambach is the founder of NewStore which operates a platform for retailers to run their stores on iPhone. The company has raised $130 million from General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures, Enjoyventure Management, and Activant Capital. Prior to this he founded Demandware (acquired by Salesforce for $2.8 billion), Torqueedo (acquired by DEUTZ for $100 million), and Intershop.

Hesaam Esfandyarpour is the founder and CEO of GenapSys which has developed a novel DNA sequencing technology and detection system for applied genomic testing and medical sequencing. The company has raised $250 million from top tier investors such as Oxford Finance, Foresite Capital, Decheng Capital, and IPV Capital to name a few.

Hesaam Esfandyarpour is the founder and CEO of GenapSys which has developed a novel DNA sequencing technology and detection system for applied genomic testing and medical sequencing. The company has raised $250 million from top tier investors such as Oxford Finance, Foresite Capital, Decheng Capital, and IPV Capital to name a few.

Laurin Hahn is the co-founder and CEO of Sono Motors which is a global mobility and energy service provider. The company has raised over $70 million raising one of the largest crowdfunding rounds in history with over $60 million raised from the crowd.

Laurin Hahn is the co-founder and CEO of Sono Motors which is a global mobility and energy service provider. The company has raised over $70 million raising one of the largest crowdfunding rounds in history with over $60 million raised from the crowd.

Girish Mathrubootham is the co-founder and CEO of Freshworks which provides businesses with SaaS customer engagement solutions. The company has raised $400 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Some of its investors include Sequoia Capital, Accel, Tiger Global Management, and CapitalG to name a few.

Girish Mathrubootham is the co-founder and CEO of Freshworks which provides businesses with SaaS customer engagement solutions. The company has raised $400 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Some of its investors include Sequoia Capital, Accel, Tiger Global Management, and CapitalG to name a few.

Gangesh Ganesan is the cofounder and CEO of PeerNova which enables financial firms to quickly optimize their data, processes, and business. The company has raised over $70 million from investors such as Revolution, Blockchain Capital, Mosaik Partners, Three Tree Ventures, Medici Ventures, Intuitive Venture Partners, and Overstock to name a few.

Gangesh Ganesan is the cofounder and CEO of PeerNova which enables financial firms to quickly optimize their data, processes, and business. The company has raised over $70 million from investors such as Revolution, Blockchain Capital, Mosaik Partners, Three Tree Ventures, Medici Ventures, Intuitive Venture Partners, and Overstock to name a few.

Steve White is the founder and CEO of Harvest Health which is a multi-state cannabis operator (MSO) and vertically-integrated cannabis company. The business has raised over $300 million from investors such as Canaccord Genuity Group or Alliance Global Partners.

Steve White is the founder and CEO of Harvest Health which is a multi-state cannabis operator (MSO) and vertically-integrated cannabis company. The business has raised over $300 million from investors such as Canaccord Genuity Group or Alliance Global Partners.

Adam Jiwan is a serial entrepreneur and most recently the co-founder and CEO of Spring Labs which is a transformative and centralized infrastructure for credit and identity data. The company has raised $38.8 million from investors such as RRE Ventures, August Capital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Jump Capital, General Motors Ventures, and GreatPoint Ventures to name a few.

Adam Jiwan is a serial entrepreneur and most recently the co-founder and CEO of Spring Labs which is a transformative and centralized infrastructure for credit and identity data. The company has raised $38.8 million from investors such as RRE Ventures, August Capital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Jump Capital, General Motors Ventures, and GreatPoint Ventures to name a few.

Craig Unger is the co-founder and CEO of HyperProof which is radically reducing the risk and cost of keeping companies and their customers' data in compliance. The company has raised over $5M. Prior to this Craig Unger cofounded Azuqua which he sold for over $50 million.

Craig Unger is the co-founder and CEO of HyperProof which is radically reducing the risk and cost of keeping companies and their customers' data in compliance. The company has raised over $5M. Prior to this Craig Unger cofounded Azuqua which he sold for over $50 million.

Pierre-Francois Thaler is the co-founder and co-CEO of Ecovadis which offers a collaborative platform that allows companies to assess the environmental and social performance of their suppliers. The company has raised over $200 million from top tier investors such as Partech, CVC Capital Partners, and Zobito to name a few.

Pierre-Francois Thaler is the co-founder and co-CEO of Ecovadis which offers a collaborative platform that allows companies to assess the environmental and social performance of their suppliers. The company has raised over $200 million from top tier investors such as Partech, CVC Capital Partners, and Zobito to name a few.

Michael Katz is the cofounder and CEO of mParticle which is a customer data platform for multi-channel consumer brands. The company has raised $120 million from top tier investors such as Greylock Partners, Google Ventures, Battery Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Social Capital, Correlation Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Bowery Capital to name a few. Prior to this Michael Katz founded Interclick which he sold to Yahoo for $300 million.

Michael Katz is the cofounder and CEO of mParticle which is a customer data platform for multi-channel consumer brands. The company has raised $120 million from top tier investors such as Greylock Partners, Google Ventures, Battery Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Social Capital, Correlation Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Bowery Capital to name a few. Prior to this Michael Katz founded Interclick which he sold to Yahoo for $300 million.

Josh Genderson is the founder and CEO of Holistic Industries which operates as a medical cannabis company. The company has raised over $60 million at a $500 million valuation.

Josh Genderson is the founder and CEO of Holistic Industries which operates as a medical cannabis company. The company has raised over $60 million at a $500 million valuation.

Roman Rittweger is the founder and CEO of Ottonova which provides health insurance through its digital platform. The company has raised over $100 million from HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, btov Partners, TEV Ventures, Vorwerk Ventures, STS Ventures, and Debeka to name a few.

Roman Rittweger is the founder and CEO of Ottonova which provides health insurance through its digital platform. The company has raised over $100 million from HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, btov Partners, TEV Ventures, Vorwerk Ventures, STS Ventures, and Debeka to name a few.

Deidre Paknad is the cofounder and CEO of Workboard which is an enterprise SaaS company that helps companies unlock growth by making alignment and accountability remarkably easy. The company has raised over $60 million from Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, Crosslink Capital, Floodgate, Granite Ventures, M12, and Opus capital to name a few.

Deidre Paknad is the cofounder and CEO of Workboard which is an enterprise SaaS company that helps companies unlock growth by making alignment and accountability remarkably easy. The company has raised over $60 million from Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, Crosslink Capital, Floodgate, Granite Ventures, M12, and Opus capital to name a few.

Charlie Bachtell is the co-founder and CEO of Cresco Labs which serves medical cannabis patients and incites the progressive evolution of the medical cannabis industry. The company went public and raised closed to $400M in debt and equity.

Charlie Bachtell is the co-founder and CEO of Cresco Labs which serves medical cannabis patients and incites the progressive evolution of the medical cannabis industry. The company went public and raised closed to $400M in debt and equity.

Tom Livne is the co-founder and CEO of Verbit.ai which specializes in combining human and artificial intelligence to provide transcription and captioning solutions. The company has raised over $65 million from investors such as Vertex Ventures, Viola Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners, and Stripes.

Tom Livne is the co-founder and CEO of Verbit.ai which specializes in combining human and artificial intelligence to provide transcription and captioning solutions. The company has raised over $65 million from investors such as Vertex Ventures, Viola Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners, and Stripes.

Ryan Disraeli is the cofounder of TeleSign which is the leading provider of single-platform global communications and trusted identity data solutions. The company raised $78 million from investors like Telstra Ventures, March Capital Partners, and Summit Partners. Ultimately it was acquired for $230 million by BICS.

Ryan Disraeli is the cofounder of TeleSign which is the leading provider of single-platform global communications and trusted identity data solutions. The company raised $78 million from investors like Telstra Ventures, March Capital Partners, and Summit Partners. Ultimately it was acquired for $230 million by BICS.

David Richards is the co-founder and CEO of WANdisco which enables the replication of continuously changing data to different environments. The company has raised $120M by going public early without the need for traditional funding sources used by early-stage companies. He is a serial entrepreneur that has previously built, scaled, and exited multiple companies.

David Richards is the co-founder and CEO of WANdisco which enables the replication of continuously changing data to different environments. The company has raised $120M by going public early without the need for traditional funding sources used by early-stage companies. He is a serial entrepreneur that has previously built, scaled, and exited multiple companies.

Robert Sadow and Jonathan Sadow are the cofounders of Scoop which brings commuters together in convenient carpools by partnering with their employers. The company has raised so far over $100 million from top tier investors including Activate Capital Partners, Index Ventures, G2VP, and Signia Venture Partners to name a few.

Robert Sadow and Jonathan Sadow are the cofounders of Scoop which brings commuters together in convenient carpools by partnering with their employers. The company has raised so far over $100 million from top tier investors including Activate Capital Partners, Index Ventures, G2VP, and Signia Venture Partners to name a few.

Mark Sears is the co-founder and CEO of CloudFactory which is a distributed workforce company for automating business processes. The company has raised $70 million so far from investors such as FTV Capital, Sovereign‘s Capital, The Social Entrepreneurs Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Weatherfront Capital, and Dolma Impact Fund to name a few.

Mark Sears is the co-founder and CEO of CloudFactory which is a distributed workforce company for automating business processes. The company has raised $70 million so far from investors such as FTV Capital, Sovereign‘s Capital, The Social Entrepreneurs Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Weatherfront Capital, and Dolma Impact Fund to name a few.

Fredrik Skantze is the co-founder and CEO of Funnel which designs and develops software/platforms that help marketers automate their data collection for reporting and analysis. The company has raised so far $65 million from investors such as Eight Roads Ventures, Balderton Capital, F-Prime Capital, and Industrifonden to name a few.

Fredrik Skantze is the co-founder and CEO of Funnel which designs and develops software/platforms that help marketers automate their data collection for reporting and analysis. The company has raised so far $65 million from investors such as Eight Roads Ventures, Balderton Capital, F-Prime Capital, and Industrifonden to name a few.

Idriss Al Rifai is the co-founder and CEO of Fetchr which is an international express, mail delivery, and logistics services company. The business has raised so far $100 million from top tier investors including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), NGP Capital, Winklevos Capital, and Mobility Ventures to name a few.

Idriss Al Rifai is the co-founder and CEO of Fetchr which is an international express, mail delivery, and logistics services company. The business has raised so far $100 million from top tier investors including New Enterprise Associates (NEA), NGP Capital, Winklevos Capital, and Mobility Ventures to name a few.

Jack Smith is a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he cofounded Vungle which provides a way for developers to put video ads in their apps. The company raised $25 million and was recently acquired for over $750 million.

Jack Smith is a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he cofounded Vungle which provides a way for developers to put video ads in their apps. The company raised $25 million and was recently acquired for over $750 million.

Jason Tan is the CEO and co-founder of Sift, a San Francisco-based technology company that fights online fraud with large-scale machine learning. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, Union Square Ventures, and Spark Capital.

Jason Tan is the CEO and co-founder of Sift, a San Francisco-based technology company that fights online fraud with large-scale machine learning. The company has raised over $100 million from top tier investors like Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, Union Square Ventures, and Spark Capital.

Murli Thirumale is the co-founder and CEO of Portworx which is the solution for stateful containers running in production. The company has raised over $50 million from HPE, Cisco, GE, and others. Prior to this, Murli Thirumale worked at Dell (following a successful acquisition), Citrix (also post-acquisition) and HP in executive roles.

Murli Thirumale is the co-founder and CEO of Portworx which is the solution for stateful containers running in production. The company has raised over $50 million from HPE, Cisco, GE, and others. Prior to this, Murli Thirumale worked at Dell (following a successful acquisition), Citrix (also post-acquisition) and HP in executive roles.

Brenden Millstein is CEO & Co-founder of Carbon Lighthouse which is on a mission to stop climate change by making it easy and profitable for building owners to cut carbon emissions caused by wasted energy. The company has raised over $130 million from investors like Elemental Excelerator, CEAS Investments, Cox Enterprises, SV Tech Ventures, The Social Entrepreneurs Fund, JCI Ventures, and GRC SinoGreen Fund to name a few.

Brenden Millstein is CEO & Co-founder of Carbon Lighthouse which is on a mission to stop climate change by making it easy and profitable for building owners to cut carbon emissions caused by wasted energy. The company has raised over $130 million from investors like Elemental Excelerator, CEAS Investments, Cox Enterprises, SV Tech Ventures, The Social Entrepreneurs Fund, JCI Ventures, and GRC SinoGreen Fund to name a few.

Andrew Collins is the co-founder and CEO of Bungalow which is a residential real estate platform that provides renters with a more convenient, flexible, and communal living solution. The company has raised $68 million from Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Maverick Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Coatue Management, UpHonest Capital, Wing Venture Capital, CAA Ventures, Atomic, Nine Four Ventures, and A-Rod Corp.

Andrew Collins is the co-founder and CEO of Bungalow which is a residential real estate platform that provides renters with a more convenient, flexible, and communal living solution. The company has raised $68 million from Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Maverick Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Coatue Management, UpHonest Capital, Wing Venture Capital, CAA Ventures, Atomic, Nine Four Ventures, and A-Rod Corp.

Will Glaser is the founder and CEO of Grabango which is a provider of checkout-free shopper technology for existing stores. Prior to Grabango, Will co-founded Pandora (internet radio and recommendation services) which was acquired for $3.5 billion.

Will Glaser is the founder and CEO of Grabango which is a provider of checkout-free shopper technology for existing stores. Prior to Grabango, Will co-founded Pandora (internet radio and recommendation services) which was acquired for $3.5 billion.

Sacha Labourey is the co-founder and CEO of CloudBees which develops an end-to-end automated software delivery system that allows companies to balance governance and developer freedom. The company has raised over $100 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Verizon Ventures, HSBC, Delta-v Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures, Unusual Ventures, and Golub Capital to name a few.

Sacha Labourey is the co-founder and CEO of CloudBees which develops an end-to-end automated software delivery system that allows companies to balance governance and developer freedom. The company has raised over $100 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Verizon Ventures, HSBC, Delta-v Capital, Blue Cloud Ventures, Unusual Ventures, and Golub Capital to name a few.

Derrick Fung is the co-founder and CEO of Drop which is an intelligent mobile rewards platform for debit and credit cards. The company has raised over $70 million from investors such as NEA, ff Venture Capital, Sierra Ventures, CRCM Ventures, Rothenberg Ventures, Hedgewood, White Star Capital, HIGHLINEvc, and RBC Capital, to name a few.

Derrick Fung is the co-founder and CEO of Drop which is an intelligent mobile rewards platform for debit and credit cards. The company has raised over $70 million from investors such as NEA, ff Venture Capital, Sierra Ventures, CRCM Ventures, Rothenberg Ventures, Hedgewood, White Star Capital, HIGHLINEvc, and RBC Capital, to name a few.

Jaron Waldman is the cofounder of Curbside which develops a mobile application to find, buy, and pick up products from stores. The company raised $60 million before its acquisition by Rakuten. Prior to this Jaron Waldman founded Placebase which he sold to Apple.

Jaron Waldman is the cofounder of Curbside which develops a mobile application to find, buy, and pick up products from stores. The company raised $60 million before its acquisition by Rakuten. Prior to this Jaron Waldman founded Placebase which he sold to Apple.

Yinglian Xie is the co-founder and CEO of DataVisor which is a fraud detection company powered by transformational AI technology. The company has raised $100 million from investors like NEA, Sequoia, GSR Ventures, and Genesis Capital.

Yinglian Xie is the co-founder and CEO of DataVisor which is a fraud detection company powered by transformational AI technology. The company has raised $100 million from investors like NEA, Sequoia, GSR Ventures, and Genesis Capital.

Saar Yoskovitz is the cofounder and CEO of Augury which is an Industrial IoT company that brings predictive maintenance to new markets with cutting-edge machine learning and AI technology. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors such as Lerer Hippeau, First Round Capital, Insight Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Pritzker Group, Formation 8, Sound Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, and Munich Re Ventures to name a few.

Saar Yoskovitz is the cofounder and CEO of Augury which is an Industrial IoT company that brings predictive maintenance to new markets with cutting-edge machine learning and AI technology. The company has raised over $60 million from top tier investors such as Lerer Hippeau, First Round Capital, Insight Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Pritzker Group, Formation 8, Sound Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, and Munich Re Ventures to name a few.

Mitchell Kahn is the co-founder and CEO of Grassroots Cannabis which is a grower, processor, and dispenser, of medical cannabis in over four states including Maryland. The company raised over $90 million and was recently acquired in a reported $875 million deal.

Mitchell Kahn is the co-founder and CEO of Grassroots Cannabis which is a grower, processor, and dispenser, of medical cannabis in over four states including Maryland. The company raised over $90 million and was recently acquired in a reported $875 million deal.

Peter Reinhardt is the cofounder and CEO of Segment which provides a customer data infrastructure that helps businesses put their customers first. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors such as Accel, Google Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Thrive Capital, NEA, Kleiner Perkins, and General Catalyst to name a few.

Peter Reinhardt is the cofounder and CEO of Segment which provides a customer data infrastructure that helps businesses put their customers first. The company has raised $300 million from top tier investors such as Accel, Google Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Thrive Capital, NEA, Kleiner Perkins, and General Catalyst to name a few.

Eran Kirzner is the co-founder and CEO of Lightbits Labs which offers solutions that separate storage and compute without touching the network. The company has raised $55 million from investors like Cisco Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, and Micron.

Eran Kirzner is the co-founder and CEO of Lightbits Labs which offers solutions that separate storage and compute without touching the network. The company has raised $55 million from investors like Cisco Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, and Micron.

Minnie Ingersoll is the cofounder of Shift which is an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. The compány has raised $300 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and DCM Ventures to name a few. She is now a partner at the early stage VC TenOneTen and also hosts the LA Venture podcast.

Minnie Ingersoll is the cofounder of Shift which is an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. The compány has raised $300 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and DCM Ventures to name a few. She is now a partner at the early stage VC TenOneTen and also hosts the LA Venture podcast.

Gero Decker is the co-founder and CEO of Signavio which provides tools for business process management. The company has raised over $200 million from investors like Apax Digital and Summit Partners. The company has become an emerging global leader for Business Process Management.

Gero Decker is the co-founder and CEO of Signavio which provides tools for business process management. The company has raised over $200 million from investors like Apax Digital and Summit Partners. The company has become an emerging global leader for Business Process Management.

Joshua Motta is the co-founder and CEO of Coalition which protects the value of a business with Coalition's intelligence, risk management, and insurance offerings. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors such as Hillhouse Capital House, Ribbit Capital, Vy Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Greenoaks Capital to name a few.

Joshua Motta is the co-founder and CEO of Coalition which protects the value of a business with Coalition's intelligence, risk management, and insurance offerings. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors such as Hillhouse Capital House, Ribbit Capital, Vy Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Greenoaks Capital to name a few.

Mike Cagney is the co-founder and CEO of Figure which provides consumer financial solutions intended for home improvement, debt consolidation, and retirement planning. The company has raised over $230 million at a $1.2 billion valuation from investors like DCM Ventures, Digital Currency Group, DHVC, Ulu Ventures, DST Global, Thomvest Ventures, Nimble Ventures, and Ribbit Capital to name a few. Prior to this, he founded SoFi which has raised billions and is worth over $4 billion at the moment.

Mike Cagney is the co-founder and CEO of Figure which provides consumer financial solutions intended for home improvement, debt consolidation, and retirement planning. The company has raised over $230 million at a $1.2 billion valuation from investors like DCM Ventures, Digital Currency Group, DHVC, Ulu Ventures, DST Global, Thomvest Ventures, Nimble Ventures, and Ribbit Capital to name a few. Prior to this, he founded SoFi which has raised billions and is worth over $4 billion at the moment.

Oisin Hanrahan is the cofounder of Handy which is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers. The company raised over $100 million from investors like General Catalyst, Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Box Group, Revolution, and Fidelity to name a few. Handy was recently acquired by ANGI Homeservices.

Oisin Hanrahan is the cofounder of Handy which is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers. The company raised over $100 million from investors like General Catalyst, Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Box Group, Revolution, and Fidelity to name a few. Handy was recently acquired by ANGI Homeservices.

Rachel Drori is the founder and CEO of Daily Harvest which delivers superfood eats delivered to your door, frozen and ready to enjoy on your schedule. The company has raised $43 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund, BAM Ventures, Hedgewood, 14W, M13, Rubicon Venture Capital, and Serena Ventures to name a few.

Rachel Drori is the founder and CEO of Daily Harvest which delivers superfood eats delivered to your door, frozen and ready to enjoy on your schedule. The company has raised $43 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund, BAM Ventures, Hedgewood, 14W, M13, Rubicon Venture Capital, and Serena Ventures to name a few.

Aman Narang is the co-founder and President of Toast which is an all-in-one point-of-sale and restaurant management platform for businesses in the foodservice and hospitality space. The company has raised so far over $400 million from top tier investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Tiger Global Management, TCV, Eight Roads Ventures, E-Prime Capital, T-Rowe Price, and Lead Edge Capital to name a few.

Aman Narang is the co-founder and President of Toast which is an all-in-one point-of-sale and restaurant management platform for businesses in the foodservice and hospitality space. The company has raised so far over $400 million from top tier investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Tiger Global Management, TCV, Eight Roads Ventures, E-Prime Capital, T-Rowe Price, and Lead Edge Capital to name a few.

Paul Hedrick is the founder and CEO of Tecovas which designs and sells beautiful, handmade men's and women's western boots directly to their customers. The company has raised over $30 million from Blue Collective, Elephant, Hammerstone, and YETI Capital.

Paul Hedrick is the founder and CEO of Tecovas which designs and sells beautiful, handmade men's and women's western boots directly to their customers. The company has raised over $30 million from Blue Collective, Elephant, Hammerstone, and YETI Capital.

Amar Hanspal is the co-founder and CEO of Bright Machines which focuses on changing the speed, flexibility, and economics of manufacturing through intelligent software and adaptive robotics. The company has raised over $200 million from Eclipse Ventures, Geodesic Capital, and Flex. Prior to this, he was the co-CEO of Autodesk.

Amar Hanspal is the co-founder and CEO of Bright Machines which focuses on changing the speed, flexibility, and economics of manufacturing through intelligent software and adaptive robotics. The company has raised over $200 million from Eclipse Ventures, Geodesic Capital, and Flex. Prior to this, he was the co-CEO of Autodesk.

Alex Kazerani is the co-founder and CEO of Openpath which offers a mobile and cloud-enabled access control system for businesses and landlords. The company has raised $30 million from investors like Unfront Ventures, Pritzker Group, Emergence, Sorenson Capital, Bonfire Ventures, and Fika Ventures. Prior to this, Alex Kazerani cofounded HostPro (acquired by Micron Electronics for $25 million), KnowledgeBase Solutions (acquired by Talisma for over $10 million), and EdgeCast (acquired by Verizon for $400 million).

Alex Kazerani is the co-founder and CEO of Openpath which offers a mobile and cloud-enabled access control system for businesses and landlords. The company has raised $30 million from investors like Unfront Ventures, Pritzker Group, Emergence, Sorenson Capital, Bonfire Ventures, and Fika Ventures. Prior to this, Alex Kazerani cofounded HostPro (acquired by Micron Electronics for $25 million), KnowledgeBase Solutions (acquired by Talisma for over $10 million), and EdgeCast (acquired by Verizon for $400 million).

Osama Elkady is the co-founder and CEO of Incorta which is an analytics software platform that speeds up data ingestion. The company has raised nearly $75 million from a host of Silicon Valley heavyweights – the company counts GV (formerly Google Ventures), Kleiner Perkins, M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), Sorenson Capital, Telstra Ventures, and major investor Ron Wohl.

Osama Elkady is the co-founder and CEO of Incorta which is an analytics software platform that speeds up data ingestion. The company has raised nearly $75 million from a host of Silicon Valley heavyweights – the company counts GV (formerly Google Ventures), Kleiner Perkins, M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), Sorenson Capital, Telstra Ventures, and major investor Ron Wohl.

René Rechtman is the co-founder and CEO of Moonbug which is a universe of fun and safe digital IP for pre-schoolers. The company has raised $145 million from The Raine Group, Felix Capital, and Fertitta Capital. Prior to this, he sold Maker Studios for $500 Million to Disney and before this, he sold Goviral to AOL for $100 million.

René Rechtman is the co-founder and CEO of Moonbug which is a universe of fun and safe digital IP for pre-schoolers. The company has raised $145 million from The Raine Group, Felix Capital, and Fertitta Capital. Prior to this, he sold Maker Studios for $500 Million to Disney and before this, he sold Goviral to AOL for $100 million.

Peter Bailis is the co-founder and CEO of Sisu which is a software that empowers people to make better decisions with data. The company has raised $66 million from top tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Green Bay Ventures.

Peter Bailis is the co-founder and CEO of Sisu which is a software that empowers people to make better decisions with data. The company has raised $66 million from top tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and Green Bay Ventures.

Jill Layfield is co-founder and CEO of Tamara Mellon which offers apparel and accessories for women. The company has raised close to $90 million from New Enterprise Associates, AAF Management Ltd., Quadrille Capital, and Centricus.

Jill Layfield is co-founder and CEO of Tamara Mellon which offers apparel and accessories for women. The company has raised close to $90 million from New Enterprise Associates, AAF Management Ltd., Quadrille Capital, and Centricus.

Poojan Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Clumio which is a data backup and recovery software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider. The company has raised close to $200M from Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimer Capital, and Human Capital. Kumar’s previous company, storage startup PernixData, was acquired by Nutanix.

Poojan Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Clumio which is a data backup and recovery software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider. The company has raised close to $200M from Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimer Capital, and Human Capital. Kumar’s previous company, storage startup PernixData, was acquired by Nutanix.

Colleen Cutcliffe is the cofounder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics which develops novel interventions that target the human microbiome to improve the lives of patients suffering from a variety of diseases. The company has raised so far $57 million from top tier investors like Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and True Ventures.

Colleen Cutcliffe is the cofounder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics which develops novel interventions that target the human microbiome to improve the lives of patients suffering from a variety of diseases. The company has raised so far $57 million from top tier investors like Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and True Ventures.

Mauria Finley is the founder and CEO of Allume which is an on-demand personal shopping service that matches women with experienced stylists who help them find clothing and accessories that fit their body, budget and style. The company has raised $10M from True Ventures and GGV Capital. Prior to this Mauria Finley founded Citrus Lane which was acquired for $50M by Care.com.

Mauria Finley is the founder and CEO of Allume which is an on-demand personal shopping service that matches women with experienced stylists who help them find clothing and accessories that fit their body, budget and style. The company has raised $10M from True Ventures and GGV Capital. Prior to this Mauria Finley founded Citrus Lane which was acquired for $50M by Care.com.

Sean Haper and Lucas Ward are the cofounders of Kin Insurance which fixes home insurance through intuitive tech, affordable pricing, and world-class customer service. The company has raised so far over $60 million from investors such as 500 Startups, Omydiar Network, August Capital, Chicago Ventures and Commerce Ventures to name a few.

Sean Haper and Lucas Ward are the cofounders of Kin Insurance which fixes home insurance through intuitive tech, affordable pricing, and world-class customer service. The company has raised so far over $60 million from investors such as 500 Startups, Omydiar Network, August Capital, Chicago Ventures and Commerce Ventures to name a few.

Michelle Cordeiro Grant is the co-founder and CEO of Lively which delivers bras and undies that blend high-style, comfort, and simplicity. The company raised $15 million prior to its acquisition by Wacoal for $85 million.

Michelle Cordeiro Grant is the co-founder and CEO of Lively which delivers bras and undies that blend high-style, comfort, and simplicity. The company raised $15 million prior to its acquisition by Wacoal for $85 million.

Arad Levertov is the cofounder and CEO of Sunbit which is a financial technology platform that helps retailers and customers split in-store purchases into manageable payments. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Chicago Ventures, Group11, Zeev Ventures, G-Bar Ventures, and Heroic Ventures.

Arad Levertov is the cofounder and CEO of Sunbit which is a financial technology platform that helps retailers and customers split in-store purchases into manageable payments. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Chicago Ventures, Group11, Zeev Ventures, G-Bar Ventures, and Heroic Ventures.

Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems which is a computer systems company dedicated to accelerating deep learning. The company has raised so far $200 million from top tier investors like Benchmark, Foundation Capital, and Altimer Capital. Prior to this, Andrew Feldman cofounded SeaMicro (acquired by AMD for $355M) and Riverstone Networks (acquired by YAGO for $280M).

Andrew Feldman is the co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems which is a computer systems company dedicated to accelerating deep learning. The company has raised so far $200 million from top tier investors like Benchmark, Foundation Capital, and Altimer Capital. Prior to this, Andrew Feldman cofounded SeaMicro (acquired by AMD for $355M) and Riverstone Networks (acquired by YAGO for $280M).

Jeff White is the co-founder and CEO of Gravy Analytics which is the leading provider of real-world location intelligence for marketers. The company has raised over $20 million from investors such as Gannett, Spring Lake Equity Partners, and Loeb Global Ventures. Prior to this, he co-founded Blue Canopy (acquired by Jacobs) and GovWin (acquired Deltek).

Jeff White is the co-founder and CEO of Gravy Analytics which is the leading provider of real-world location intelligence for marketers. The company has raised over $20 million from investors such as Gannett, Spring Lake Equity Partners, and Loeb Global Ventures. Prior to this, he co-founded Blue Canopy (acquired by Jacobs) and GovWin (acquired Deltek).

Sammy Dorf is the cofounder of Verano Holdings which is a vertically-integrated operator of licensed cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and retail facilities dedicated to improving lives by providing safe access to effective organic cannabis products that enhance health and wellness and by positively impacting the communities it serves. The company raised over $120 million before it got acquired by Harvest Health And Recreation in a deal worth $850 million.

Sammy Dorf is the cofounder of Verano Holdings which is a vertically-integrated operator of licensed cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and retail facilities dedicated to improving lives by providing safe access to effective organic cannabis products that enhance health and wellness and by positively impacting the communities it serves. The company raised over $120 million before it got acquired by Harvest Health And Recreation in a deal worth $850 million.

Marco Zappacosta is the co-founder and CEO at Thumbtack which is an online marketplace that connects millions of people with local professionals for their projects. The company has raised over $420 million from top tier investors such as Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Draper Associate, and Javelin Venture Partners to name a few.

Marco Zappacosta is the co-founder and CEO at Thumbtack which is an online marketplace that connects millions of people with local professionals for their projects. The company has raised over $420 million from top tier investors such as Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Draper Associate, and Javelin Venture Partners to name a few.

Alex Friedman is the co-founder and CEO of LOLA which is the first lifelong brand for a woman’s body, providing the transparency and candor women deserve when it comes to products and content for their reproductive health. The company has raised over $35 million from top tier investors such as Lerer Hippeau, Spark Capital, BoxGroup, and tennis player Serena Williams to name a few.

Alex Friedman is the co-founder and CEO of LOLA which is the first lifelong brand for a woman’s body, providing the transparency and candor women deserve when it comes to products and content for their reproductive health. The company has raised over $35 million from top tier investors such as Lerer Hippeau, Spark Capital, BoxGroup, and tennis player Serena Williams to name a few.

Fred Kneip is the co-founder and CEO of CyberGRX which provides the most comprehensive third-party cyber risk management platform to cost-effectively identify, assess, mitigate and monitor an enterprise’s risk exposure across its entire partner ecosystem. The company has raised over $60M from top tier investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, AllegisCyber, Blakstone, Telstra Ventures, and Rally Ventures to name a few.

Fred Kneip is the co-founder and CEO of CyberGRX which provides the most comprehensive third-party cyber risk management platform to cost-effectively identify, assess, mitigate and monitor an enterprise’s risk exposure across its entire partner ecosystem. The company has raised over $60M from top tier investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, AllegisCyber, Blakstone, Telstra Ventures, and Rally Ventures to name a few.

Nathan McCauley is the co-founder and CEO of Anchorage which is a crypto-native digital asset custodian that uses modern security engineering to help institutions safeguard their investments. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Blockchain Capital, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Polychain to name a few. Prior to this Nathan McCauley was an early employee at Square.

Nathan McCauley is the co-founder and CEO of Anchorage which is a crypto-native digital asset custodian that uses modern security engineering to help institutions safeguard their investments. The company has raised over $50 million from investors such as Blockchain Capital, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Polychain to name a few. Prior to this Nathan McCauley was an early employee at Square.

Reuven Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Litify which provides technology solutions for law firms by providing a trusted, intelligent, user-friendly platform for practice management. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors like Tiger Global or Fortress Investment Group. Prior to this, he cofounded OneReceipt (acquired by Performance Marketing Brands) and Penguin Digital (acquired by Shutterfly).

Reuven Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Litify which provides technology solutions for law firms by providing a trusted, intelligent, user-friendly platform for practice management. The company has raised over $50 million from top tier investors like Tiger Global or Fortress Investment Group. Prior to this, he cofounded OneReceipt (acquired by Performance Marketing Brands) and Penguin Digital (acquired by Shutterfly).

Valentin Stalf is the co-founder and CEO of N26 which provides mobile banking solutions. The company has raised more than $600 million from some of the world’s most well-known investors, including Insight Venture Partners, GIC - Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Battery Ventures to name a few.

Valentin Stalf is the co-founder and CEO of N26 which provides mobile banking solutions. The company has raised more than $600 million from some of the world’s most well-known investors, including Insight Venture Partners, GIC - Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Battery Ventures to name a few.

Michael Wystrach is the co-founder and CEO of Freshly which delivers gourmet ready-made meals, prepared and delivered to your door. The company so far has raised $110 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Insight Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Total Access Fund, White Star Capital, Monkish Equity, The Yard Ventures, Chestnut Street Ventures, and Blue Ivy Ventures to name a few.

Michael Wystrach is the co-founder and CEO of Freshly which delivers gourmet ready-made meals, prepared and delivered to your door. The company so far has raised $110 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Insight Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Total Access Fund, White Star Capital, Monkish Equity, The Yard Ventures, Chestnut Street Ventures, and Blue Ivy Ventures to name a few.

Bhavin Turakhia is a serial entrepreneur that has found five companies. The first company he started at 17 got acquired for $160 million. He is presently heading Radix - a leading registry for top-level extensions, Flock - a suite of productivity apps, and Zeta - a digital payments platform. Radix is a $200 million company, Flock he has invested his personal wealth on, and Zeta has raised already over $60 million.

Bhavin Turakhia is a serial entrepreneur that has found five companies. The first company he started at 17 got acquired for $160 million. He is presently heading Radix - a leading registry for top-level extensions, Flock - a suite of productivity apps, and Zeta - a digital payments platform. Radix is a $200 million company, Flock he has invested his personal wealth on, and Zeta has raised already over $60 million.

Immad Akhund is the co-founder and CEO of Mercury which is a bank for startups, engineered in Silicon Valley for tech companies. The company has raised over $25 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Charles River Ventures. Prior to this, he cofounded Heyzap which he sold for $45 million.

Austin Russell is the cofounder and CEO of Luminar which is an autonomous vehicle sensor and software company. The company has raised over $250 million from investors like Peter Thiel, The Westle Group, Canvas Ventures, Moore Capital, 1517 Fund, GVA Capital, Invariantes Fund, and Corning to name a few.

Rebecca Minkoff is the founder and creative force behind Rebecca Minkoff, which is a fashion brand distributed in 900 stores worldwide. The company is doing more than $100M in revenue. Rebecca Minkoff also established Female Founder Collective, a network of businesses led by women that invests in women.

Eric Kinariwala is the founder and CEO of Capsule is a healthcare technology business rebuilding the pharmacy from the inside out. The company has raised so far $270 million from TCV, Thrive Capital, Sound Ventures, Virgin Group, M13, and Glade Brook Capital Partners.

Thejo Kote is the co-founder and CEO of Airbase which is an all-in-one platform for spend management, giving companies unprecedented financial control and visibility. The company has raised so far $7 million from First Round Capital, BoxGroup, Village Global, and Quiet Capital. Prior to this, Thejo Kote sold a company for over $100 million.

Dimitri Sirota is the cofounder and CEO of BigID which develops a software that helps companies have a secure customer data and satisfy privacy regulations. The company has raised so far $96 million from investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Western Technology Investment, Boldstart Ventures, and Deepfork Capital to name a few. Prior to this the founded wo enterprise software companies focused on security (eTunnels) and API management (Layer 7 Technologies), which was sold to CA Technologies in 2013 for $200M.

Chuck Cohn is the co-founder and CEO of Varsity Tutors which is a live learning platform that connects students and professionals with personalized instruction to achieve any goal. The company has raised so far over $100 million from investors such as TCV, Learn Capital, and the Chan Zuckerberg initiative to name a few.

Ben Sigelman is a co-founder and CEO at LightStep, a company that makes complex microservice applications more transparent and reliable. The company has raised $70 million from investors like Sequoia Capital, Redpoint, Harrison Metal, Cowboy Ventures, and Altimer Capital. Prior to this, he was an employee at Google for nine years.

Shoaib Makani is the co-founder and CEO of KeepTruckin which is helping trucking companies manage their fleets and have their drivers legally log their hours. The company has raised over $200 million at a $1.4 billion valuation from investors like Index Ventures, Google Ventures, IVP, Scale Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, and ITOCHU Corporation. Before becoming a trucker, Shoaib Makani was a VC at Khosla Ventures and also an employee at Google.

Shishir Mehrotra is the CEO and Co-Founder of Coda which creates online documents and the utility of applications into a single new canvas. The company has raised over $60 million from investors like NEA, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, Greylock, and General Catalyst. Prior to this, he served as Vice President of Product and Engineering at Youtube.

Lior Elazary is the cofounder of inVia Robotics which provides next-generation robotics warehouse automation solutions for e-commerce distribution centers and supply chains. The company has raised $30 million from Point72 Ventures, Upfront Ventures, and Embark Ventures to name a few. Prior to this, Lior Elazary sold his first business for $20 million and his next one for $400 million.

Sujai Hajela and Bob Friday are the cofounders of Mist Systems which is leading the transition to AI-driven IT, making Wi-Fi predictable, reliable and measurable by providing visibility and proactive automation to the user experience across the AI-driven enterprise. The company raised $90 million from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners. Ultimately the company got acquired by Juniper Networks in a deal worth $405 million.

Stuart Landesberg is the co-founder and CEO of Grove Collaborative which has an owned direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform for natural home and personal care products. The company has raised over $200 million at a $1B+ valuation from investors like Norwest Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, General Atlantic, Marc Bell Ventures, Greenspring Associates, Nextview Ventures, and Bullpen Capital to name a few.

Sanjay Shah is the founder and CEO of Vistex which is an enterprise software company, providing solutions to drive customer growth and partner relations. The company was bootstrapped to $250 million in revenue without outside investment. Recently the company raised $65 million from Accel-KKR.

Vivek Ravisankar is the CEO and co-founder of HackerRank, a company that is on a mission to match every developer to the right job based on skills, not pedigree. The company has raised $60 million from investors like SV Angel, Khosla Ventures, Battery Ventures, JMI Equity, and ZenShin Capital.

Ashish Thusoo is the co-founder and CEO at Qubole which delivers a Self-Service Platform for Big Data Analytics built on Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle Clouds. The company has raised $87 million from top investors like Charles River Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, IVP, Singtel Inno8, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Vijay Balasubramaniyan is the co-founder and CEO of Pindrop which is a pioneer in voice security and authentication. The company has raised to date over $200 million from top tier investors such as Andresseen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Redpoint, Felicis Ventures, Sigma Partners, and IVP.

Jennifer Fitzgerald is the co-founder and CEO of Policygenius which has developed an easier way to compare and buy insurance. Policygenius has raised to date over $50 million from top investors like Norwest Venture Partners, Revolution, Susa Ventures, AXA Venture Partners, Otter Rock Capital, and Karlin Ventures to name a few.

Saeju Jeong is the cofounder and CEO of Noom which provides mobile health coaching, focused on combating chronic and pre-chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. The company has raised over $100 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, RRE Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures, TransLink Capital, Scrum Ventures, Recruit Strategic Partners, and LB Investment to name a few.

Jonathan Cherki is the founder and CEO of Contentsquare which provides a solution for mobile & web customer experience optimization. Jonathan Cherki has raised over $120 million for Contentsquare from investors such as Canaan Partners, Highland Europe, Eurazeo, and H14. In addition, the company has also acquired Clicktale and Pricing Assistant.

Rajaie Batniji is the cofounder of Collective Health which is a company providing an alternative to traditional health insurance. The company has raised over $430 million. Their lineup of tier-one investors includes Softbank, DFJ Growth, Life Financial, Google Ventures, NEA, Formation 8, Great Oaks, RRE Ventures, Signatures Capital, Maverick Ventures, Redpoint, Oakhouse Partners, S28 Capital, MSA Capital, and Green Bay Ventures.

Steve Loughlin is a partner at Accel Partners where he focuses on AI, collaboration, and Sass startups at an early stage. Prior to Accel Partners, Steve Loughlin cofounded RelateIQ which offered a relationship intelligence platform that allows teams to track, share and analyze professional relationships. The company was acquired by Salesforce for $390 million.

Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan are the cofounders of ServiceTitan which is a service management software that helps leading home services businesses generate more leads and close more sales. The company has raised over $370 million at a $1.6 billion valuation from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Index Ventures, ICONIQ Capital, Battery Ventures, I2BF Global Ventures, and Dragoneer Investment Group.

Michael Serbinis is the co-founder and CEO of League which is a digital health platform that connects people to a comprehensive network of health services and benefits. The company has raised over $70 million from Omers Ventures, BDC Venture Capital, Foundation Capital, Real Ventures, Telus Ventures, and RBC Venture Partners to name a few. Prior to this, Michael Serbinis founded DocSpace (acquired by Critical Path) and Kobo (acquired by Rakuten).

Ali Ghodsi is the cofounder and CEO of Databricks which accelerates innovation by unifying analytics across data science, data engineering, and the business. The company has raised $500M at a $2.75B valuation from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Data Collective, Microsoft, Coatue Management, Green Bay Ventures, and SineWave Ventures to name a few.

Daniel Cane is the cofounder of Modernizing Medicine which has created the Electronic Medical Assistant, a cloud-based, specialty-specific electronic medical record system. The company has raised to date around $300 million in funding from Warburg Pincus, Summit Partners, Sands Capital Ventures, and IBM. Prior to this he was a cofounder of Blackboard which sold for $1.6 billion.

David Karandish is the co-founder and CEO of Capacity which is an enterprise artificial intelligence SaaS company focused on helping teams do their best work. The company has raised to date over $23 million from a Midwest network of private and angel investors. Prior to this, David built and sold Answers.com for $950 million.

Ido Susan is the cofounder and CEO of DriveNets which is a fast-growing software company that is revolutionizing Communications service provider (CSP) networks. The company has raised one of the largest Series A financing rounds to date which amounted to $120 million. Prior to this he founded Intucell which offered a self-optimizing network solution that enabled radio operators to better utilize their radio access networks. Intucell was acquired by Cisco for $475 million.

Yuchun Lee is the founder and CEO of Allego which provides a mobile video-based sales learning and development platform. Prior to this, he was the founder and CEO at Unica which offered enterprise marketing management and cloud-based marketing solutions to companies and different industries. Unica was acquired by IBM for $500 million after taking it public. Interestingly, while at MIT he was also a member of the famed MIT Blackjack Team that inspired the bestseller Bringing Down the House and subsequent movie “21.”

Jay Chaudhry is the co-founder and CEO of Zscaler which is a global cloud-based information security company. He took Zscaler public and currently has a $10B market cap. Prior to this, he founded AirDefense (acquired by Motorola), CipherTrust (acquired by Secure Computing), CoreHarbor (acquired by AT&T) and Secure IT (acquired by VeriSign).

Bill Clerico is the co-founder and CEO of WePay which is a leading provider of integrated payments for software platforms. The company raised $75 million from SV Angel, Highland Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, August Capital, and founders of YouTube and PayPal. Ultimately the company was acquired by JPMorgan for a reported $400 million.

Joe DeSimone is the cofounder and CEO of Carbon which is reinventing how polymer products are designed, engineered, manufactured, and delivered, towards a digital and sustainable future. The company has raised over $680 million from Sequoia, Google Ventures, GE, Adidas, BMW, Johnson & Johnson, and JSR. They’ve also got Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and Madrone Capital Partners as well as investment from additional international sovereign funds. Prior to this Joe DeSimone was a university professor for over 20 years.

Tim Hwang is the co-founder and CEO of FiscalNote which uses artificial intelligence and big data to deliver predictive analytics of governmental action to determine its impact. The company has raised $230 million from investors like Mark Cuban, Jerry Yang (co-founder of Yahoo!), New Enterprise Associates, Plug and Play, AME Cloud Ventures, QueensBridge Venture Partners, Dorm Room Fund, Winklevoss Capital, Middleland Capital, Visionnaire Ventures, or 645 Ventures to name a few.

Sanjay Beri is founder and CEO of Netskope which is a leading cloud access security broker. The company has raised $400 million at a $1B+ valuation. Investors include Lightspeed, Accel, Social Capital, and ICONIQ. Prior to this, Sanjay was the co-founder of one of the world’s first data center encryption companies, Ingrian Networks, which was acquired by SafeNet.

Michael Cammarata is the CEO of Neptunes Wellness Solutions which is a publicly-traded company around health and wellness products with a valuation north of half a billion. Prior to this Cammarata cofounded Schmidt Naturals which he sold to Unilever. From 13 to his mid-twenties he also established several other companies which brought him hundreds of millions in revenues.

Amit Sharma is the founder and CEO of Narvar, an intelligent customer experience platform that helps commerce companies simplify the everyday lives of consumers. The company has raised $64 million from Accel, Battery, Freestyle Capital, Scale Venture Partners, and Salesforce Ventures. Prior to this Amit was a senior executive at Walmart and Apple.

Andy Ory is the co-founder and CEO of 128 Technology which allows company networks to better facilitate the delivery of business services and applications. The company has raised $70 million from G20 Ventures and The Perkins Fund. Prior to this Andy co-founded Acme Packett which provided voice, data and communications services and applications across IP networks for service providers and enterprises. Acme Packet was sold to Oracle for $2.1 billion. He also co-founded Priority Call Management which became one of the world‘s leading suppliers of enhanced calling and messaging solutions. The company got acquired for $162 million.

In this episode you will learn:

When to sell your company The smoke and mirrors of selling a public company How to choose your investors wisely Why raise money, even when you don’t need the cash Why embrace your mistakes

SUBSCRIBE ON:

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For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

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Gene Berdichevsky is the CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies Inc. which is a chemicals and materials company making next-generation Li-ion battery materials. The company has raised $295 million from investors such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Next47, and 8VC. Prior to Sila, Gene was also employee number 7 at Tesla.

In this episode you will learn:

The essential ingredients for raising money Gene’s top piece of advice for his younger self and new founders How to grow as a leader when your team is growing at 92% in two years His approach to solving strategic problems

SUBSCRIBE ON:

iTunesGoogle PlayStitcherTuneInRSSSoundCloudSpotify

For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

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Ray Grainger is the co-founder and CEO at Mavenlink which provides a modern software platform for professional and marketing services organizations. The company has raised so far $111 million from investors like Goldman Sachs or Carrick Capital Partners. Prior to Mavenlink, Ray Grainger was the Global Managing Partner at Accenture and also had a leadership position at InQuira.

Sid Sijbrandij is the co-founder and CEO of GitLab which is a web-based open source Git repository manager with wiki and issue tracking features and built-in CI/CD. The company has raised over $158 million from Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, August Capital, ICONIQ Capital, 500 Startups, and Sound Ventures. The valuation of Gitlab is over $1 billion.

Sanjay Dastoor is the co-founder and CEO of Skip which operates shared electric scooters for reliable last-mile transportation. The company has raised so far over $30 million from Accel, Y Combinator, SV Angels, Menlo Ventures, Initialized Capital, and Maven Ventures. Before Skip, Dastoor cofounded Boosted which builds and develops lightweight, wireless, remote-controlled motorized electric longboards. The company raised $70 million from top investors like Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, and iNovia Capital.

Sanjay Govil is the founder and Chairman of Infinite Computer Solutions which provides technology-based business process solutions, next-gen mobility solutions, and product engineering services. On its initial public offering, the company raised $1.8 billion. The company has over 7,000 employees and generates more than $700 million in annual revenue. Sanjay also founded Zyter(R) which is a cPaaS based platform that leverages the power of the connected enterprise.

Reza Merchant is the founder and CEO of The Collective which is a community of co-living, serviced living or co-working spaces. The company has raised over $850 million. The Collective currently has over 200 employees with locations in London, New York, and Berlin.

Eyal Lifshitz is the co-founder and CEO of BlueVine which provides small and medium-sized businesses with access to fast and simple financial products through an advanced, online platform. The company has raised $140 million in equity capital and over $400 million in debt financing. Its investors include the likes of M12 (Microsoft), Citi Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners – to name a few. Before BlueVine, Eyal was a principal at Greylock Partners’ where he invested over $100 million in capital in start-up companies.

Mark Dankberg is the co-founder and CEO of Viasat which produces satellite and other digital communication products that enable fast, secure, and efficient communications to any location. He took the company public in 1996. Viasat has a $5 billion market cap at the moment. Viasat has made more than 12 acquisitions.

Rohit Arora is the co-founder and CEO of Biz2Credit which is a hub connecting small business owners with lenders and service providers, and seek solutions based on their online profiles. The company has raised over $55 million from investors such as WestBridge Capital and Nexus Venture Partners. So far Biz2Credit has provided over 15,000 companies with $2.2 billion in loans.

Assaf Wand is the CEO and co-founder of insurtech startup Hippo which offers intuitive and proactive home insurance by taking a smarter, tech-driven approach. The company has raised over $100 million from Lennar Corporation, GGV Capital, Felicis Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Munich Re Ventures, Aquiline Technology Growth, Abstract Ventures, Sinai Ventures, Fifth Wall and Propel Venture Partners. Prior to Hippo Assaf founded Foris Telecom and Sabi (acquired by Urbio Inc.).

David Steinberg is the co-founder and CEO of Zeta Global which offers technology and marketing services to help brands acquire, engage, and retain customers. The company has raised over $150 million at a valuation that is rumored to be over $1.3 billion. Prior to Zeta Global, Steinberg cofounded Sterling Celullar Inc., Inphonic Inc, CAIVIS Acquisition Corp, and XL Marketing Corp.

Kristo Käärmann is the co-founder and CEO of TransferWise which is a money transfer service allowing private individuals and businesses to send money abroad without hidden charges. The company has raised so far $689 million with a $3.5 billion valuation. Investors include SV Angel, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Kima Ventures, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, IA Ventures, Valar Ventures, or Mosaic Ventures to name a few. Other individual investors include Richard Branson or Max Levchin.

David Gurle is the co-founder and CEO of Symphony which is a secure team collaboration platform. The company has raised so far $460 million at a $1.4 billion valuation from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, Standard Chartered, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Google, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Citi Group, HSBC, and Wells Fargo. David founded and sold Perzo before founding Symphony.

Don Brown is a serial entrepreneur. The first company he co-founded was Dealership Programming which computed finance payments for customers of car dealers. The company was acquired by General Motors. Don then cofounded Software Artistry, a helpdesk software automation platform, which he sold to IBM for $200 million. He then launched Interactive Intelligence with the idea of providing software-based communications for customer service settings in large organizations. This company was acquired for $1.4 billion. His most recent company is LifeOmic which focuses on precision health where he has invested $20 million of his own capital to finance the operation.

Andrew Dudum is the co-founder and CEO of Hims & Hers which offers a modern approach to health and wellness by eliminating stigmas and making it easier for people to access care as well as treatment for the conditions that impact their daily lives. The company has raised $200 million from Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures, SV Angel, Redpoint, Founders Fund, IVP, Cherubic Ventures, 8VC, Maverick Ventures, and Uphonest Capital. He also co-founded the venture builder Atomic which has raised $600 million from top tier investors such as Peter Thiel. Previously he co-founded Ledforpeace and Ever.com.

Vishal Garg is the co-founder and CEO of Better.com which is a direct lender that provides a fast, transparent digital mortgage experience backed by superior customer support. The company has raised so far $160 million from investors such as American Express Ventures, Citigroup, Ally Financial, Goldman Sachs, and Kleiner Perkins. Previously Vishal cofounded MyRichUncle (went public in 2006), Future Finance (raised $450 million), and Climb Credit (raised $100 million).

Tim Chen is the co-founder and CEO of NerdWallet which is a personal finance website and app, that provides unbiased advice. From finding the best credit card to buying a house to investing their next dollar, and more. The company has raised over $69 million from investors such as IVP, RRE, iGlobe Partners, Core Innovation Capital, or Silicon Valley Bank.

Ian Siegel is the co-founder and CEO of ZipRecruiter which is an online employment marketplace that connects millions of employers and job seekers through mobile and email services. The company has raised over $200 million from investors such as IVP, Industry Ventures, or Basepoint Ventures.m

Craig Walker is the co-founder and CEO of Dialpad which offers a cloud-based business phone solution simplified for every business. The company has raised $120 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Felicis Ventures, SoftBank, and Iconiq Capital. Previously he led Dialpad Communications Inc., (acquired by Yahoo! for $50 million), a provider of VOIP services, and cofounded GrandCentral (acquired by Google for $100 million), communications services.

Brian Liu is the co-founder and founding CEO of LegalZoom which is a technology platform giving access to professional legal advice. The company has a $2B+ valuation today with over 1,000 employees. Brian is currently the co-founder and CEO of BizCounsel. Modeled as a Saas service, for a $69 monthly fee, BizCounsel members can get legal advice from its network of business attorneys, without paying by the hour as it is typically structured with lawyers.

Daniel Saks is the co-founder and co-CEO of AppDirect which provides an end-to-end cloud commerce platform for succeeding in the digital economy. The company has raised so far $300 million from investors such as Foundry Group, Inovia Capital, StarVest, Peter Thiel, and Mithril Capital.

Philippe Von Borries is the co-founder and CEO of Refinery29 which is a leading digital media and entertainment company dedicated to inspiring young women to live an informed & well-rounded life. The company has raised so far $130 million from investors such as First Round, Lerer, Floodgate, Stripes Group, and even Hearst Communications.

Christopher Ahlberg is the co-founder and CEO of Recorded Future which is a technology company specializing in threat intelligence powered by machine learning. He raised $58 million from top tier investors such as Google Ventures, Insight Partners, and Balderton Capital. The company was recently acquired for $780 million by Insight Partners. Prior to Recorded Future, Christopher cofounded Spotfire which he sold to TIBCO for $190 million.

Al is the co-founder and CEO of Avant which is an online lending platform that offers alternatives to its clients with safer, faster, better financial products. The company has raised over $600 million from top tier investors such as RRE, QED, DFJ, KKR, Tiger Global, August Capital, General Atlantic, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Origin Ventures to name a few. Prior to Avant, Al co-founded Pangea Properties and Enova International which he sold for $250 million.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur. He is best known for being the co-founder and CEO of Grasshopper, a virtual telephone service that was acquired by Citrix for $176 million that he bootstrapped without outside investors. The first company he co-founded at 17 was Return Path which raised $120 million and was acquired by Validity for an undisclosed amount. David has also co-founded a number of other startups including Chargify, Spreadable, PopSurvey, or Deck Foundry.

Emil Eifrem is the CEO and Co-Founder of Neo4j which provides a graph platform that helps organizations make sense of their data by revealing how people, processes, and digital systems are interrelated. They've raised $160 million to date, including an $80 million round in 2018. Some of its investors include Eight Road Ventures, Heartcore Capital, Dawn Capital, or Conor Venture Partners to name a few. The company is rumored to be valued at over $1 billion.

Adam Pritzker is the co-founder of Assembled Brands which is a modern holding company providing a new way to finance consumer brands. Prior to Assembled Brands, Adam Pritzker cofounded General Assembly which raised $100 million from top tier investors. General Assembly was reportedly acquired for over $400 million by The Adecco Group.

In this episode you will learn:

The three biggest challenges that new consumer brands have to deal with Ways to finance your startup The danger of popups The best use of offline distribution channels Why starting with wholesale has great profit margin advantages

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For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

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Steve Newman is the Founder of Scalyr which offers a cloud platform for high-speed log management and server monitoring. The company has raised over $30 million from investors such as Google Ventures, Shasta Ventures, or Bloomberg Beta. His most recent company prior to Scalyr, Writely, was acquired by Google to become Google Docs. Steve Newman has co-founded 6 companies so far.

In this episode you will learn:

How to pick an idea that serves you where you are a representative of the customer How to survey customers to get to product-market fit, quickly Why he finally raised money for his latest startup, after bootstrapping all the others What traits to look for when seeking investors The importance of competition – and of sharing your ideas The advantage of being the underdog, even against a giant like Google

SUBSCRIBE ON:

iTunesGoogle PlayStitcherTuneInRSSSoundCloudSpotify

For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

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padding-bottom: 10px; } .sumo-wrapper .content-block .sumo-form { padding: 0px 5px; } .sumo-wrapper .sumo-form-wrapper.listbuilder-popup-embedded { position: relative; margin: 20px 0; }

@media screen and (min-width: 992px) and (max-width: 1199px){ .sumo-wrapper .content-block h3 { font-size: 38px; } .sumo-wrapper .content-block h4 { font-size: 35px; } } @media screen and (min-width:768px) and (max-width:991px){ .sumo-wrapper .

Lori Torres is the founder and CEO of Parcel Pending which provides innovative package management solutions. The company raised over $15 million from investors such as Tech Coast Angels. Parcel Pending was acquired in January 2019 by Neopost for a reported $100 million.

Derek Wall is the cofounder of HUBX which is a marketplace platform democratizing and disrupting the trillion dollar secondary distribution industry by empowering manufacturers, brands and distributors to sell anonymously direct to worldwide B2B customers. Within 12 months the company has achieved over $200 million of revenue with no outside investment. Prior to HUBX, Derek was involved with the founding teams of Ezequiel Clothing, Dita Eyewear, Techstore, Buynow.com, PriceGrabber, and VAULT.

Dave Girouard is the co-founder and CEO of Upstart which leverages machine learning to price credit and automate the borrowing process. The company has raised $160 million from investors such as Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Google Ventures, Mark Cuban, CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff, Khosla Ventures, or Founders Fund.

Lidia Yan is the CEO and Co-Founder of NEXT which is the world’s first trucker-centric, tech-enabled marketplace that efficiently matches freight with available truck capacity- easing the logistics bottleneck. The company has raised to date $125 million from investors like China Equity Group, Sequoia, or Brookfield.

Ajeet Singh has built two multibillion-dollar technology companies from the ground up - ThoughtSpot and Nutanix. ThoughtSpot is a company revolutionizing analytics with search and AI. He has raised over $300M for ThoughtSpot from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, or General Catalyst. Prior to starting ThoughtSpot, he was co-founder and Chief Products Officer at Nutanix, the leader in the enterprise cloud industry and largest tech IPO of 2016.

Frida Polli is the co-founder and CEO of pymetrics which improves the efficiency and diversity of hiring through neuroscience games and AI. The company has raised $58 million from Khosla Ventures, General Atlantic, Salesforce Ventures, Workday Ventures, and Jazz Venture Partners to name a few. They have their U.S. headquarters in New York, as well as offices in London, Singapore, and Sydney.

Max Rhodes is the co-founder and CEO of Faire which helps retailers find and buy wholesale merchandise for their stores. The company has raised to date $115 million from investors such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, or DST Global to name a few.

Stefan Heck is the cofounder and CEO of Nauto which is an AI technology company on a mission to make driving safer and smarter. Today, the company has raised over $174 million with partners and investors including General Motors, Toyota AI Ventures, BMW iVentures, SoftBank Vision Fund, Greylock Partners, and DNX Ventures at a valuation rumored to be over $1 billion.

Doug Winter is the co-founder and CEO at Seismic which offers a global sales and marketing enablement solution for improving close rates and delivering larger deals for sales. The company has raised $179 million at a valuation that is rumored to be $1 billion from investors like JMI Equity, General Atlantic, Jackson Square Ventures, Lightspeed, and T. Rowe Price. Prior to that, he co-founded Objectiva Software Solutions, a software outsourcing company that provides projects and products to help ISV's and enterprise companies. The company was sold to EMC for $90 million.

Ray Reddy founded PushLife which was a mobile commerce platform for mobile operators. He sold the company to Google and after spending 4 years there he went on to launch his next company, Ritual. The company is a social ordering app that taps into networks of co-workers and colleagues for fast and easy pick up and pay at a wide variety of local restaurants and coffee shops. So far Ritual has raised $120 million from investors such as Greylock, Insight Partners, or Golden Ventures.

Henry Ward is the CEO and co-founder of Carta, which is a global ownership management platform that helps companies, investors, and employees manage their equity. The company has raised close to $150 million from investors like Meritech, Tribe Capital, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and Menlo Ventures. Carta has a valuation that is rumored to be over $1 billion.

Nick is the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, which is an online retailer with over 2,500 high-quality healthy foods, vitamins, home goods, and beauty supplies. Thrive Market is doing $200 million in sales and also raised $200 million from celebrity investors. Some of those investors are Demi Moore, John Legend, Deepak Chopra or Tony Robbins. On the VC side, they have investors like Greycroft, e.ventures, and Kapor Capital.

Reggie Aggarwal is the founder and CEO of Cvent which is an event management platform enabling planners to manage all aspects of an event. Reggie raised over $130 million for Cvent from investors like NEA or Insight Partners before doing an IPO in 2013. He ended up selling his business to Vista Equity Partners for $1.65 billion.

Frank Poore is the founder and CEO of CommerceHub which is a cloud-based e-commerce merchandising, demand generation and order fulfillment platform for retailers and brands. Frank successfully built an industry-leading company that created 3 liquidity events for shareholders and employees - first through a sale to Liberty Media/QVC in 2006, second via public offering in 2016 (Nasdaq:CHUBK), and through a take-private sale of the company to GTCR and Sycamore Partners for $1.1 billion in 2018.

Jonah Goodhart is the CEO and co-founder of Moat, a New York–based analytics company focused on driving success for brand marketers and premium publishers. Moat raised $70 million from investors like First Round Capital, Founders Fund, Lerer Hippeau, Insight Partners, or Founder Collective to name a few. Moat was ultimately acquired by Oracle for a reported $850 million. Jonah was the founding investor and board member of Right Media (acquired by Yahoo for a reported $680 million), founding partner of WGI Group and co-founder of Billions.org. Jonah was also a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s Council on Technology and Innovation.

Jeff Raider is a serial entrepreneur. The first company he cofounded was Warby Parker which is a lifestyle brand that offers designer eyewear at a revolutionary price. With over 2,000 employees, the company has raised $300 million from top tier investors at what is rumored to be a valuation of almost $2 billion. Jeff is currently the cofounder and CEO at Harry‘s which allows users to buy razors, German engineered blades and shaving creams. The company employs over 1,000 people and has raised $375 million with a valuation of over $1 billion.

Ben and Moisey Uretsky are the cofounders of DigitalOcean which is the third largest hosting company in the world. They have today more than 500 employees and over $200 million in annual revenues. They have raised for their business $123 million at a valuation rumored to be over $1 billion. Some of the investors include Andreessen Horowitz, IA Ventures, or Trinity Capital to name a few.

Duke Rohlen is a serial entrepreneur. He is the cofounder of FoxHollow Technologies (acquired by Ev3 for $780 million), CV Ingenuity (acquired by Covidien for $300 million), Spirox, Inc. (acquired by Entellus Medical for over $200 million), and EPIX Therapeutics (acquired by Medtronic for $350 million). His most recent company is Ajax Health which will source and provide operational and financial capabilities to a diversified portfolio of emerging medical device companies. The company has raised over $120 million from investors such as KKR.

Mohit Aron was an early employee at Google. He is a serial entrepreneur and previously co-founder of Nutanix which is worth more than $6 billion today. Nutanix is a virtualized data center platform that provides disruptive datacenter infrastructure solutions for implementing enterprise-class. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Cohesity which delivers the industry’s first hyperconverged secondary storage for backup, test/dev, file services, and analytic datasets. He has raised for Cohesity over $400 million from investors like Sequoia, Accel, Battery, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, Trinity Ventures, Qualcomm, or SoftBank to name a few.

Gil Elbaz cofounded Applied Semantics which he sold to Google for over $100 Million. Applied Semantics was the creator of Adsense which Google turned into a $15 billion business representing 23% of its total revenue. Elbaz most recently founded Factual which provides accurate and comprehensive data on places and people worldwide. The company has raised over $100 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Felicis, Founder Collective, or Data Collective.

Ned Tozun is the cofounder of D.light which is looking to serve the 2.3 billion people that doesn‘t have access to reliable electricity. The company has raised over $100 million from investors such as Omydiar Network, DFJ, or Garage Technology Ventures. The social enterprise has 1,000 employees and 3,000-5,000 commissioned agents, is generating about $100 million of revenue a year, and experiencing 40-50% growth annually.

Jyoti Bansal is the cofounder and founding CEO of AppDynamics which develops application performance management (APM) solutions that deliver problem resolution for highly distributed applications.. He raised over $220 million from top tier investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, Battery Ventures, or Lightspeed. AppDynamics got acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion. Jyoti went on to launch his own fund, Unusual Ventures, and his most recent company, Harness, which is a Continuous Delivery as-a-Service platform for engineering and DevOps teams to release applications into production.

Eswar Priyadarshan is a serial entrepreneur. He sold his first company, m-Qube, to Verisign for $275 million. His next company was Quattro Wireless which he sold to Steve Jobs himself also for $275 million. His most recent company is BotCentral which was recently acquired by LivePerson for an undisclosed amount.

Peter Rahal is the cofounder and founding CEO of RXBAR. He bootstrapped the company from 0 to hundreds of millions in revenue and hundreds of employees only taking a loan from his father. Rahal sold the company five years later to Kellogg for $600 million.

Cameron Chell has been an entrepreneur since age 14 and is currently the CEO of Business Instincts Group, a Venture Creation Firm with a focus on building high-tech startups. Cameron is the cofounder of Urthecast, Cold Bore Technologies, Slyce, Raptor Rig, Trace and Trax. Most recently, Cameron has served as an advisor to KodakCoin, one of the first compliant cryptocurrencies.

Alexei Agratchev is the cofounder and CEO at RetailNext which enables retailers and manufacturers to collect, analyze, and visualize data about in-store customer engagement. The company has raised to date $200 million from investors such as Qualcomm Ventures, August Capital, American Express Ventures, or NGP Capital.

Daniel Ramot is the cofounder of Via which provides on-demand transit on a mass scale. The company has raised so far over $450 million from investors such as Pitango Venture Capital, Daimler, Kapor Capital, Hearst Ventures, or RiverPark Ventures. Daniel has a Ph.D in neuroscience from Stanford. Prior to Via, Ramot built supercomputers designed to discover new pharmaceutical drugs and developed avionic systems for F-15s and F-16s for the Israeli Air Force.

Rick Stollmeyer co-founded MINDBODY in his garage in 2001. He raised over $100 million before leading the IPO for the company. Some or his investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, or Catalyst Investors. The company was recently acquired by Vista Equity Partners in a $1.9 billion deal.

Matt Salzberg founded Blue Apron in 2011 and served as President & CEO for its first six years. After raising $200 million from the likes of Bessemer, First Round, or Stripes Group, Matt led Blue Apron's $1.9 billion IPO and served as CEO until the company had approximately $910 million of trailing revenue and 5,000 employees. Matt is currently Blue Apron's Executive Chairman, and serves on the company's Board of Directors.

Alex Mashinsky is on his eighth startup company, Celsius Network, which has already raised $50 million via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). He’s also made around 120 VC investments himself, holds 34 patents, raised over a billion dollars for his companies, and has achieved at least over $3 billion in exits.

Henrique Dubugras is the founder and CEO of Brex. The company is valued at over $1.1 billion and has raised over $220 million. Current investors include Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, DST Global, Ribbit Capital, Global Founders Capital, or Institutional Venture Partners to name a few. Prior to Brex, he cofounded Pagar.me. The company got acquired in 2016. Before this he built an educational platform and a gaming company at age 12.

Robbie Cape is the cofounder of 98point6 which combines deep technology with the expertise of board-certified physicians to provide text-based primary care anytime, anywhere. The company has raised over $86 million. Prior to this Robbie founded Cozi (acquired by Time Inc.) which provided mobile and internet-based applications to help families stay organized. Robbie started initially at Microsoft where he worked for 12 years.

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an online magazine that offers articles about popular topics. He is also a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. Prior to that, he was the chief evangelist of Apple and an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google. Kawasaki is the author of ten books, including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

Todd Olson is the founder and CEO of Pendo, which is a product cloud creator for digital products and data-driven product teams with headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina. The company has raised $108 million from top tier investors such as Battery Ventures, Spark Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, or Sapphire Ventures. Prior to Pendo, Todd started 6th Sense (acquired by Rally) and Cerebellum which raised $17 million in institutional capital only to shut down during the dotcom era.

David Klein is the CEO and CoFounder of CommonBond, a leading marketplace lender that lowers the cost of student loans for borrowers and provides financial returns to investors. The company has raised $4 billion to date. That is $130 million in equity and the rest in debt capital or lending capital. Investors include Social Capital, August Capital, Tribeca Venture Partners, Nyca Partners, etc. and also Vikram Pandit, the former CEO of Citigroup.

Jon Carder is the founder of Mogl - a frictionless online to offline rewards program & Empyr - an online to offline ad platform. Mogl/Empyr has raised $50M from investors like Sigma Partners or Aequitas Capital. In college Jon founded eHeaven, an online e-commerce superstore that was purchased by BabyUniverse in 2002. Jon Carder then founded Client Shop, a website dedicated to finding consumers the lowest rates on home loans. ClientShop was sold to Internet Brands in 2006. Prior to Mogl, Jon Carder founded MojoPages.com, an online local search engine which received $5M (series A) from Austin Ventures and operates out of La Jolla, CA.

Sam Yagan is currently the CEO of ShopRunner which has raised over $100M from the likes of Alibaba Group or August Capital. Previously, he served as CEO of The Match Group and led it through a period of growth culminating in its initial $400M public offering. Yagan cofounded OkCupid in 2003 and it was acquired by Match Inc. for $90 million in 2011. Earlier, he founded SparkNotes, which he sold to Barnes & Noble Inc. SparkNotes transaction was reported to be $30M. Yagan cofounded Excelerate Labs (now TechStars Chicago), a startup accelerator, and founded Corazon Capital, an early stage fund.

Josh Abramson is the cofounder of Connected Ventures which was the parent company under which he cofounded CollegeHumor, Vimeo, and BustedTees. IAC purchased a majority stake in Connected Ventures for over $20 million. Josh Abramson is also the cofounder of the crowdsourced T-shirt design company TeePublic. TeePublic was acquired by RedBubble for over $41million cash.

Jon Stein is the cofounder of online investment advisor Betterment. One of the first FinTech companies, and a startup that launched in the pit of the 2008 financial crisis. Betterment has landed $275 million in funding. Investors include Fabrice Grinda, FJ Labs, Andy Dunn, Menlo Ventures, and Bessemer, as well as large family offices with patient capital.

Randy Hetrick is a former Special Forces Commander and the founder of the hyper-successful TRX fitness brand. TRX is a $50 million business with products that are used by celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Drew Brees, Michael Phelps, or Gisele Bündchen to name a few.

Eric Ryan has launched two very successful ventures. These are Method Products and Olly. Together they’ve already raised more than $34 million in funding. Method Products sold to SC Johnson. Olly has attracted some very high profile investors, and effectively went from zero to $100 million a year in sales within 24 months of launching.

Roger Dickey is the founder of Gigster, a venture-backed start-up that gives clients a way to systematically outsource software development to a large network of freelance coders. Gigster has raised over $32 Million from high profile investors including Redpoint Ventures, Andreessen Horowtiz, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former basketball player Michael Jordan, actor Ashton Kutcher, and "Super Angel" Ron Conway. The company has quickly become a Silicon Valley darling.

Eugenio Pace is the cofounder of Auth0, a technology company that builds a suite of modern platforms for developers. The company has raised to date $110 Million from the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners,Trinity Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Sapphire Ventures, or K9 Ventures amongst other VC firms.

Anthemos Georgiades is the co-founder and CEO of Zumper, the largest startup in the rental industry. The company has raised $90 million from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Blackstone, and now Marcus & Millichap and Axel Springer.

Martin Rawls-Meehan is the cofounder and CEO at Reverie. He has taken a different route to generating $100 million in revenue a year with over 150 employees. He has proven that building a profitable company can still lead to becoming a sizable enterprise without the need of taking outside capital. One which can give you even more control over your startup and its ability to live out your vision. In our exclusive conversation he revealed some of his own startup bootstrapping hacks, hurdles you can face, and when it might be better to take that VC money, or not.

Heini Zachariassen is the founder behind Vivino. He has raised for the company over $55 million to date. The app now has 33 million users, looking up around 2 million wines every single day, and is attracting 20,000 new users per day. On a recent episode of the DealMakers Podcast, Heini graced us with his presence, told us what he is drinking now, and had fun debating some of the big questions startup founders are juggling today

Kevin O‘Connor founded Double Click, the advertising machine now owned by Google. A part of a bundle of services that Google ended up paying around $3.1B for. He was also an early investor in ISS which was bought by IBM for $1.5B.

Julie Clark is the founder of the Baby Einstein brand. A company she built from scratch, to being bought by Disney for $25M, and becoming a $300M a year phenomenon. In our exclusive interview on the DealMakers Podcast Julie also revealed some unconventional beginnings of this household brand in the eyes of many of today’s founders. Yet, which are clearly recognizable common threads that are shared with some of the biggest tech companies, like Facebook and Microsoft.

Michael Ellenbogen built an exited Reveal Imaging where he raised over $20M and sold to SAIC giving investors an 8x multiple of returns. Now he has cofounded Evolv Technology, has already raised $30M and has also landed investors such as Bill Gates.

Thomas Korte is one of the founders at one of the consistently top ranked startup accelerators. They’re always up there with names like 500 Startups, Y Combinator, and TechStars. To date Angel Pad companies have raised around $1.4 billion, with Thomas’ own company having raised close to $80 million itself.