Recruit Rockstars Podcast: Recent Episodes
Strong Suit
As a rule, I don’t have many guests back on the Podcast. (I like to keep it fresh.) But in this case, I made a rare exception. Because Jonathan Treble, Founder & CEO of WithMe, is en fuego. He heads the Chicago-based leader in apartment community amenities. Their shared printers (PrintWithMe) and shared coffee makers (SipWithMe) are now in countless apartment buildings & dorms across the country. Not only is a great perk, but also it allows owners & managers to control expenses & provision supplies. Jonathan & team have partnered with the hardware manufacturers, created the software, all wrapped it all in a outstanding service experience & supplies. The business is backed by New Stack Ventures, M25, Little Engine Ventures, Network Ventures, and Great North Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, Jonathan reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat.
You don't meet many people like Tony Huang.
After graduating from Harvard, he pursued education as a fourth grade teacher outside of Boston.
He then transitioned to a business career at Axon where he helped commercialize & create the body camera industry that is integral to public safety.
Now he is on a new mission: to make financial products more fair & affordable for everyday people. For the past 5 years, he's been CEO and Co-Founder of Possible Finance, which helps communities break the debt cycle and unlock economic mobility.
And he's on to something big.
His venture investors include Canvas Ventures ,Columbia Pacific Advisors, FJ Labs, Hustle Fund, Union Bay Partners, Union Square Ventures and Unlock Venture Partners.
What impressed me most about Tony was how genuinely mission driven he is and how that echoes through the entire organization.
In this 20 minute conversation, Tony reveals how he’s done that and continues to attract people who are truly mission driven
You don't meet many people like Tony Huang.
After graduating from Harvard, he pursued education as a fourth grade teacher outside of Boston.
He then transitioned to a business career at Axon where he helped commercialize & create the body camera industry that is integral to public safety.
Now he is on a new mission: to make financial products more fair & affordable for everyday people. For the past 5 years, he's been CEO and Co-Founder of Possible Finance, which helps communities break the debt cycle and unlock economic mobility.
And he's on to something big.
His venture investors include Canvas Ventures ,Columbia Pacific Advisors, FJ Labs, Hustle Fund, Union Bay Partners, Union Square Ventures and Unlock Venture Partners.
What impressed me most about Tony was how genuinely mission driven he is and how that echoes through the entire organization.
In this 20 minute conversation, Tony reveals how he’s done that and continues to attract people who are truly mission driven
Akshay Krishnaiah is CEO & Founder of Line, the fast-growing fintech company.
After a successful career at Paypal & eBay, he stepped out on his own. And he personally interviewed hundreds of people to find his first few employees.
Based in SF, Line is the Venture-backed company helping American working-class Americans who are underbanked.
Their first offering is a “Get cash now, pay later” service.
Akshay & team have built a highly-scalable model. With a team of just 30, Line provides Underwriting, Dispute management, Risk operations, and 24-hour in-house customer support.
Clearly, they’re onto something big. Investors include: Techstars, Avesta Fund, CUNA Mutual Group, Goodwater Capital, overtime.vc, SustainVC.
In this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat.
Akshay Krishnaiah is CEO & Founder of Line, the fast-growing fintech company.
After a successful career at Paypal & eBay, he stepped out on his own. And he personally interviewed hundreds of people to find his first few employees.
Based in SF, Line is the Venture-backed company helping American working-class Americans who are underbanked.
Their first offering is a “Get cash now, pay later” service.
Akshay & team have built a highly-scalable model. With a team of just 30, Line provides Underwriting, Dispute management, Risk operations, and 24-hour in-house customer support.
Clearly, they’re onto something big. Investors include: Techstars, Avesta Fund, CUNA Mutual Group, Goodwater Capital, overtime.vc, SustainVC.
In this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat.
How does a startup with a dozen people change a monolithic industry?
Simple (but not easy): Hire for DNA Fit
And Brian King does it consistently.
He's CEO of Realto, the Kansas-based Private REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) marketplace. Brian & his team saw a gap in the market: there were limited options to buy and sell privately-held real estate.
So they created one.
Now, what used to be a manual paper-laden process is streamlined to days instead of months.
And he's onto something big....
Investors include KCRise & Firebrand Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, Brian reveals how he & his team hire primarily for DNA Fit (even before skills & competencies). And why it's helped them change an industry.
The only thing better than talking culture & leadership with a progressive talent leader? Talking with two of them.
Aparavi helps organizations that desperately need a solution to the mountains of data they need to manage.
It's the cloud based platform for finding & consolidating your company's unstructured & distributed data.
Speaking of distributed, Aparavi has a distributed team of 100. In this episode, Tania Williams (People & Culture Strategist) and Luis Zambrano (Chief of Staff) reveal how they put a Rockstar in every seat of the business.
And how they assess candidates for culture match with Aparavi.
Tania was previously a talent leader at 24 Hour Fitness and Sears Holdings. Luis was with HealthTrust Software and MGA Homecare.
There's a SaaS platform for everything... And everyone.
Including SimpleLegal, the fast-growing SaaS platform for in-house counsels. It's part of Onit, the leading provider of enterprise legal management & contract lifecycle management software, which is backed by the PE firm K1 Investment Management.
Mark Weidick is President & General Manager of SimpleLegal, and he has a unique perspective having joined when the business was VC-backed. Now that the company is PE-backed, it has a different pace, metrics, and cadence.
Prior, he was CEO with a number of Venture Capital backed companies and senior executive with Cisco.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he's put a Rockstar in every seat. And how he evolved the culture from VC-backed to PE-backed.
Jeff Grass knows how to get your hesitant employees back to the office.
This serial entrepreneur is Co-Founder & CEO of Hungry Marketplace.
Based in Arlington VA, Hungry is tackling the $100 Billion business food & events industry with a food-tech marketplace & logistics platform that provides unparalleled food & engagement solutions for businesses, powered by top local chefs.
In short, Hungry partners with local chiefs to bring food to your office. So far, they operate in 9 markets with 250 employees.
Clearly, Jeff's onto something big. Hungry doubled revenues last year, despite the pandemic.
And he's raised capital from leading VC firms: 10X Capital, Bread and Butter Ventures, Evolution PC Partners, GP Ventures, James Madison Innovations, Marcy Venture Partners, Motley Fool Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, Sands Capital Ventures, The Heritage Fund, The Torch Fund
After earning his MBA at The Wharton School and a stint with McKinsey & Company, Jeff was Co-Founder of other successful companies LiveSafe and buySAFE, which enables online businesses to increase trust & confidence with site visitors.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jeff reveals how he's put a Rockstar in every seat of Hungry (and how he keeps them)
Whether your team is hybrid or distributed or global, you’ve got nothing on Chad Mattix.
He’s CEO & Founder of Kinettix, the leading IT field service support company.
Based in Cincinnati, Chad & his team deliver 24/7/365 IT field service support on-site in over 100 countries.
He’s built a fulltime team of 80 with a remote distributed team of thousands!
Their customers are large IT service providers. And for them, they Install & service cameras, digital signage, POS systems, kiosks, network equipment.
In this 20-minute conversation, Chad reveals how he’s built a global team of Rockstars.
(Hint: She didn’t click “Apply” on some job board)
Morgan Smith is Work Reporter with CNBC and its industry-leading careers website “Make It”
Previously, you’ve read her pieces in People Magazine, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and The Associated Press.
Morgan discovered her passion for some meaty topics: the future of work, interviewing, hiring, job search.
So, she proactively went after the job she wanted. CNBC wasn’t looking. But she didn’t let that hold her back.
In this 20-minute conversation, she reveals step-by-step how she did it.
Plus, she reveals the most common mistakes that job-seekers make when looking for their next role.
Growth-stage companies don’t get much hotter than Salesloft, the leading platform for sales reps to execute their day to day selling tasks.
Put simply, they enable sales teams to drive more revenue. Customers include Stripe, ServiceNow, and Shopify.
And the company’s leadership team is committed to culture like few others.
Katie Branham is VP People at Salesloft, where she’s tripled headcount to 750 Lofters in just 4 years.
Unlike most, Katie & team have developed a crystal clear employer value proposition “we promise you’ll learn more here than anywhere” which has attracted Lofters in Atlanta & beyond.
Clearly, it’s working…
Investors include Atlanta Ventures, Emergence, HarbourVest Partners, High Alpha, Insight Partners, Storm Ventures, Techstars
Candidates are interviewed to ensure they possess the same core values. In this 20-minute episode, Katie reveals how you can do the same.
Few early-stage companies combine as many distinct components as Tovala.
Based in Chicago, the company pairs a smart oven with a meal subscription service. It truly makes foolproof food.
Weekly meals are delivered fresh to the your door. Scan the barcode & you’re done. Home-cooked meals that cook themselves.
And clearly Tovala is onto something big.
They’re venture investors include: Comcast Ventures, Finistere Ventures, Left Lane Capital, New Stack Ventures, Origin Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Service Provider Capital, Y Combinator
Mike Mason is Tovala’s Talent Acquisition Manager, which puts him in the crucial role of scaling this hypergrowth organization.
I just had the change to speak with Mike about how he puts a Rockstar in every seat. (And how you can do the same.)
Yum.
Few things wag my tail like meeting with a CEO who puts talent at the top of their agenda.
Here’s one.
Matt Hulett is CEO of publicly-held PetMeds, America’s most trusted pet pharmacy with 11 million customers.
Matt has driven more than $2 billion in value creation as a four-time public company CEO/President and a two-time private company CEO.
He’s led multiple turnaround successes at companies you know, including Rosetta Stone, RealNetworks, and Expedia.
And this week, he released his new book “Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power” - It’s fantastic, regardless of your company’s stage.
I just had the chance to speak with Matt about what role Recruiting has played in his personal success & that of his companies.
Arf! Arf!
In business, few missions are more vital than protecting & improving the health of Americans.
Sadly, 89M of us are pre-diabetic.
Dan Zavorotny & his team are out to change that.
He’s Chief Operating Officer & Co Founder of NutriSense, the fast-scaling VC-backed company that helps people prevent diabetes & heart disease.
NutriSense’s innovative model pairs glucose monitors, predictive software, and a team of live dietitians. They combine to form a cohesive program to improve health.
Clearly, Dan’s onto something big.
The business has scaled from 2 employees to 80 in just 2 years. And revenues, while confidential, are mighty substantial.
Investors have noticed, too. Backers include Milkbox Partners, LAUNCH (Jason Calacanis), Sutton Capital, Standing Oaks Venture Partners, and Techstars.
In this 20-minute conversation, Dan shares how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat. And mistakes to avoid along the way.
So few entrepreneurs “go the distance” from startup to IPO.
Most are “promoted to Chairman” at some point by their board of directors, because they fail to scale their personal skills as rapidly as their business.
But I found one.
Martin Babinec is Founder & Former CEO of TriNet, the legendary hypergrowth Professional Employer Organization (PEO) that got its start in Silicon Valley before becoming a global phenomena.
Serving more than 15,000 clients and their 325,000 employees, TriNet is the largest independent cloud-based HR provider leveraging the Professional Employer Organization model.
Martin founded TriNet in 1988, served as CEO until 2008 and Chairman until 2010. Along the way, he raised $130M in 5 rounds of equity financing, completed 6 acquisitions, and grew the PEO industry over two decades.
Today, TriNet is a public company with 3,500 employees, doing $4.5 Billion revenues annually.
I was a TriNet customer, and I simply couldn’t have started my companies without it. Because they handled all of the people part - payroll, benefits, administration, legal - which let me focus on what we did best.
Now, Martin is a leading venture investor in Upstate New York. As Managing Director of UpVentures Capital, he funds early stage technology companies. Portfolio companies include people.ai, Bungee, Carta, BrandYourself, Outmatch, and Drafted.
I asked Martin what made it all possible.
His answer was instantaneous and authentic: core values.
Martin was inspired by Jim Collins and EO & understood the importance of building TriNet based on distinct & authentic core values. They became filters for deciding would you join the company.
He didn’t just write down some core values a the beginning, but he operationalized them thru the interviews, reference checks, Test Drives, and assessments to ensure that poor hires couldn’t slip in.
In this 20-minute conversation, Martin walks you through how to do the same at your company.
The bigger a company becomes, the bigger its organizational challenges become. Liz Steblay saw it over & over at the large companies she joined.
Now, she’s Founder & President of ProKo Agency, the consulting matchmaker that connects Fortune 500 leaders with pre-vetted consultants who specialize in organizational effectiveness.
ProKo represents high-calibre organizational health consultants, who are deployed to help companies clean up their talent-related messes.
Business is booming.
Liz is also Co-Founder of PICA - Professional Independent Consultants of America, which teaches consultants how to build their career & client base.
She’s well-suited to do it. Liz began her career in Organization Development at Intuit, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Levi Strauss & Co, and Medtronic.
In this 20-min conversation, Liz reveals the talent problems she sees most often, and how to tackle them.
Healthcare fashion used to be horrid. But Chat Razdan is rapidly changing that.
He’s Founder & CEO of Care+Wear. Based in New York, they combine fashion & function to take people from home to hospital and everywhere in between.
Their products include scrubs, port access shirts, post surgical bras & a ton more. The goal is a more human healthcare experience for patients & clinicians everywhere.
Between the aging population and a global pandemic, it’s no wonder business is booming. Investors include MedStartr Ventures and Grape Arbor Venture Capital.
Chat began his career at Goldman Sachs and Kearney.
In this 20 minute conversation, Chat and I “chat” about how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat of his company.
Whew! I finally finished paying off all my Amazon holiday gifts.
Guess I’m hooked on eCommerce.
Turns out I’m not alone.
And I have proof…
I just interviewed Dusty Holcomb. He’s CEO of fast-growing Red Stag Fulfillment.
Based in gorgeous Knoxville, Red Stag is the world-class order fulfillment company designed to unleash scalable growth for eCommerce companies.
In short, they do the picking, packing, storage, shipping, and returns for a ton of eCommerce companies (including the ones you used this past holiday)
And they’ve carved out a unique 3PL niche… Red Stag specializes in large, heavy, bulky products. Think expensive inventory, like those high-end office chairs.
With 1.1 Million feet of warehouse space in Knoxville & Salt Lake City, clearly Red Stag is onto something ‘big.’ They’re backed by leading Private Equity firm Mollenhour Gross.
Prior to his appointment, Dusty was with AAA for many years. He now leads over 500 full-time employees.
I wanted to find out how he’s scaling the company that scales other eCommerce companies.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to put a Rockstar in every seat.
Sir Wellington? An amazing mustard, mushroom and shallot blend Smashing Salmon? The mystical miso, soy and Shiitake blend
Vampire Killer? Garlic parmesan blend, of course.
Yum.
Chip Overstreet is CEO of Spiceology, the nation’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer and direct-to-chef provider of innovative spices.
And apparently, investors are hungry for it.
Spiceology has raised capital from the likes of Jackson Square Ventures and Cowles Company.
Formerly, Chip was VP Business Development at Affirm, the fintech wonder.
But he packed up from Silicon Valley and moved to Spokane Washington, where he now leads Spiceology’s 150 employees.
In this 20-minute conversation, Chip reveals how he’s put a Rockstar in every seat. (And which yummy spices are coming next.)
Isaiah Bollinger is Co-Founder & CEO of Trellis, the fast-growing full service eCommerce digital agency. Based in Boston, Trellis creates eCommerce businesses on Magento, BigCommerce, and Shopify.
And he’s onto something. Trellis recently was named to the Inc 5000 list, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies.
Isaiah invests the better part of his week on recruiting & leading a team of 80. This conversation reveals how he does it.
How’d you like to build a company with a 90% offer acceptance rate? With near-perfect employee retention? And with 50% of employees comprised of under-represented minorities?
Sean Byrnes has done it (and the company doesn’t interview candidates… at all)
Based in San Francisco, he’s Founder & CEO of Outlier, the VC-funded business intelligence company.
His customers are large consumer-facing companies with an
immense amount of data.
Outlier watches all of your business data & lets you know when unexpected things are happening, anywhere in the myriad metrics and dimensions of your data.
Outlier plugs into your business data where it lives (e.g. Google Analytics, Adobe Cloud, Salesforce, Stripe, SQL databases) and understands your business cycles, trends and patterns.
Clearly, he’s onto something. Outlier’s investors include: SV Angel, Capital One Growth Ventures, Emergence, First Round Capital, Susa Ventures, Ridge Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and Homebrew
Prior, he served as Founder/CEO of Flurry, the mobile analytics company, which was acquired by Yahoo.
In this 20-minute conversation, Sean reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat (and how he keeps them)
Seth Kniep has a remarkable entrepreneurship origin story.
He found himself working at Apple, leading a 20-person team of tech support advisors.
But he was miserable, working as a cog in the world’s most valuable company.
Fascinated with an idea, he went about doubling one dime 20 times. He shared his vision with random strangers & asked them to double his dime. He turned it into $400, just by asking.
Discouraged, $24,000 in debt, and living the death-by-paycheck cycle, Seth believed in a better future for himself & his family. He poured his heart into learning online eCommerce.
In 2016, Just One Dime was born, based in Austin.
He began teaching & training people how to sell on Amazon.
He’s trained multiple students to become Amazon eCommerce millionaires.
Amazon even flew him to its Seattle HQ for his consultation on improving their third-party platform.
Now his company builds Amazon stores for people who don’t have time to do it on their own. It’s a turnkey service, and they share the revenue.
Seth has recruited & leads a team of over 100 at Just One Dime. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat.
There are a gazillion ways to write your résumé (or LinkedIn profile).
Because everyone has advice: “Do it this way.” “No, do it that way.”
But what if you want to do it the best way? The right way?
I wanted to find an expert… the guru… who has the answers and can tell you everything you’ve always wanted to know about résumés.
I found him.
Marc Cenedella is uniquely-qualified to answer these questions, because he’s spent decades on the topic.
Based in New York, he’s Founder & CEO of Ladders, one of the nation’s leading online job boards.
And if that wasn’t enough, he’s also Founder of Leet Resumes, which actually will write your resume for free. Free!
Prior, he led finance & operations at HotJobs, acquired by Yahoo for $400M. And he began in Private Equity with The Riverside Company.
In this 20-minute conversation, Marc reveals the biggest mistakes people make when writing their resume or LinkedIn profile. And how to do it the right way, the best way.
(You’ll love the speed round, where Marc aced all the tricky job search questions.)
“I now pronounce you successful entrepreneurs.”
Nothing brings out the romantic in me like a New Year. The fresh possibilities, the clean start.
And a super-cool online business.
John Ruggiero & his wife are co-Founders & co-CEO’s of Manly Bands, one of the fastest-growing direct-to-consumer brands in wedding retail.
The couple quit their jobs, drove cross-country, and setup shop in Utah.
Following their own endless search for wedding rings, they decided to redefine the formerly-conservative category with unique & affordable ring designs for men.
And in just 3 years, they bootstrapped an 8-figure company from scratch, which is now an Inc5000-ranked company.
For the first time in human history, men are free to choose a wedding band that is more than just a boring silver or gold ring. Their options include rings made of wood, meteorite, antler, carbon fiber, even dinosaur bone.
In this 20-minute conversation, John reveals how he & his wife scaled Manly Bands by putting a Rockstar in every seat.
The smartest Venture Capital firms invest heavily in talent for their portfolio companies. After they cut the check, the hard work just begins.
Here’s an example.
Jason Felger is Head of Operating Platform at Chicago-based Jump Capital. He works with the CEO’s across Jump’s portfolio to help them scale their businesses, particularly by putting a Rockstar in every seat.
Says Jason: “Right now, it’s all about the recruitment & retention of talent, more than I’ve ever seen.”
Jump Capital, which recently raised $350 Million for its 7th fund, provides series A & B capital to data-driven tech companies in FinTech, IT & Data Infrastructure, B2B SaaS, and Media. It also invests globally in cryptocurrency companies & projects.
Portfolio companies include Fast Radius, M1 Finance, Upshow, AcreTrader, Autopay, Balto, Sporttrade.
Jason’s unique qualified, as he’s sat on both the investing & operating sides of early-stage companies. As CEO, he led Food Genius (acquired by US Foods) following his service at Redbox/Coinstar & Chicago Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jason reveals what VC’s look for when they hire. And his observations on the biggest mistakes business leaders make when scaling their team.
If you’re like most business leaders, you spend plenty of time designing your company’s business model.
Mike Maples warns that you need to spend as much time designing your team, based on your company’s stage & strategy.
He should know.
Mike is Co-Founder & Partner at Floodgate, one of the original early-stage venture capital firms (i.e. writing the first $1M check) he formed 15 years ago.
Mike’s been named to the Forbes Midas List 8 times in the last decade, and for good reason..
He was an early investor in the companies you love: Twitter, Lyft, Bazaarvoice, Storable, TaskRabbit, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Chegg, Demandforce, Smule, Outreach, Okta, Weebly (acquired by Square)
Better still, he’s built companies on both sides of the table, starting as an executive at back-to-back startup IPOs: Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent)
He’s one of the most insightful investors I’ve met. Which is why I’m hooked on his Starting Greatness Podcast. On it, he talks about teams & hiring
Says Mike: “To build your bench, you must spend 25% of your time on recruiting, no matter what.”
Something tells me if Mike wasn’t a legendary VC investor, he’d make a remarkable recruiter. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike shares how to design the right team for your business model & current stage.
Like you, I’m just too busy to listen to cruddy podcasts.
So, very few survive on my Podcasts app for more than an episode or two.
Mixergy is one of them. I never miss it.
Its creator & host Andrew Warner started Mixergy back in 2006, making it one of the top-ranked & longest-running business podcasts. Since then he’s interviewed over 2,000 entrepreneurs, business thought leaders, and authors.
(…including me in 2012 when my hair was thick & lustrous)
Andrew’s story is fascinating.
In his early 20’s, he started an internet company Bradford & Reed with his brother. They hit it big …like crazy big… by creating a website for sharing electronic greeting cards which processed over 400,000 greeting cards per day. With $1M in monthly revenue, the website’s traffic was ranked in the top 25 of ALL internet websites during the year 2000.
Then, Andrew burnt out. He sold the business, and decided to build a company helping entrepreneurs build their companies.
In addition to Mixergy, he’s also author of the new book “Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone” If you interview candidates, guests, customers, anyone… you’ll get a ton out of it.
In this 20-minute conversation, Andrew reveals how he scaled both businesses & what he’s learned from the world’s best entrepreneurs about the people part of growth-stage companies.
Charleston, South Carolina might seem like an unlikely place to find one of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies.
But it’s home to Digital Ignite.
Mike Samet leads this rollup of adtech, martech, and data businesses that was recently named to the Inc5000 list.
The full-service digital marketing agency using radical data-informed strategies to grow businesses & ignite sales
Their clients include national players like Hoover, Dominos, and Harris Teeter.
In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of the company.
They say that “the riches are in the niches.”
Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?)
He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies.
Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing.
He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees.
Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry)
In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.
They say that “the riches are in the niches.”
Well, Jason Hennessey proved them right. He’s built a highly-successful SEO firm within the legal vertical (a niche of a niche?)
He’s CEO & Founder of Hennessey Digital. His LA-based agency has been named multiple times to Inc5000’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing companies.
Since 2001, Jason has been reverse-engineering the Google algorithm as a self-taught student & practitioner of SEO and search engine marketing.
He started Hennessey Digital in 2015 and has grown a small consultancy to a $10MM+ business with 130 employees.
Jason is also author of the #1 Amazon Bestselling book “Law Firm SEO: Exposing the Google Algorithm to Help You Get More Cases” (but it’s equally applicable to every industry)
In this 20-min conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled his team & put a Rockstar in every seat.
Based in Golden, Colorado, Scott Lewis is CEO of Spartan Investment Group.
Spartan syndicates investor capital to develop & operate real estate assets. Under Scott’s leadership, the business has pivoted from residential real estate to commercial, much of which is self-storage.
It’s the 2-time Inc500 ranked company, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing.
Following a successful career in the US Army, Scott started the company which now has 70 employees.
He’s got some no-nonsense views on leadership & building an organization. And in this 20-minute conversation, you’ll discover how to do the same.
Few VC investors have seen more than David Hornik.
He’s Founding Partner at Lobby Capital, which he co-founded after 20 years as General Partner of the legendary VC firm August Capital.
Based on The Lobby Conference, David admits that Lobby Capital is about one simple understanding: “it’s all about the people.”
He’s invested in 40 companies, 5 of which grew into multi-billion-dollar businesses. His success stories include Splunk, Bill.com, Fastly, GitLab, MaintainX, Vowel, PayNearMe.
Along with his colleagues at August Capital, David started the first venture capital blog, VentureBlog, and the first venture capital podcast, VentureCast.
He’s received Deloitte’s Venture Capitalist of the Year award and has been honored by Forbes Magazine as a member of its Midas List of top Venture Capitalists.
When not investing, David teaches entrepreneurship & VC at Stanford Business School and Harvard Law School.
In this 20-minute conversation, David reveals what 20+ years as a VC have taught him about the people part of growth-stage companies.
Before Disrupt & TechCrunch, there was Technori, the original startup showcase.
Its Co-Founder is Scott Kitun.
Based in Chicago, Technori helps promising upstart companies secure visibility & funding.
If that wasn’t enough, Scott is creator & host of a nationally-syndicated crowdfunding radio show, in partnership with Republic.
He’s also Co-Founder of Songfinch, the platform to buy custom songs from professional artists.
I was thrilled to finally interview Scott, because he knows where the bodies are buried. By studying (quite literally) thousands of startups, Scott knows first-hand the mistakes that most entrepreneurs make when scaling their company.
And he puts it plainly: “The people part of startups is the only thing that matters.” I couldn’t agree more.
In this 20-minute conversation, Scott reveals how to master it. And avoid the mistakes that tank so many entrepreneurs.
Digital publishers in every field are trying to figure out how to best monetize their website.
Kurt Donnell, CEO of Freestar, shows them the way.
Combining industry-leading tech, data, and scale, Freestar works with the leading online publishers to help them better personalize & increase their ad revenue.
And they’re onto something big…
Freestar’s been ranked as an Inc. 5000 company for 3 years in a row. That makes it one of that nation’s fastest-growing companies.
And it’s backed by Abry Partners, one of the nation’s leading Private Equity firms focused on media & communications.
Prior to joining, Kurt served as General Counsel for YogaWorks and SheKnows Media.
In this 20-minute conversation, Kurt shares how he’s scaled the team to130 employees and how he’s kept the culture intact during this unusual time.
He’s not just some tech CEO.
Jason Schubert is CEO of inBrain.ai, ranked as one of the fastest-growing companies in the US according to the Inc5000.
inBrain.ai is a people-based insights & survey monetization platform that connects and rewards people to surveys designed for them.
It facilitates research for market research firms and brands by connecting them to consumers on monetizable mobile applications.
Based in Atlanta, Jason led the company’s recent successful acquisition by Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data platform for insights, activation and measurement. With a reach that encompasses 60M consumers & business professionals globally.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jason reveals how he’s scaled the team & put a Rockstar in every seat.
Brian Nickerson’s story captivated me.
He began his career playing on the Los Angeles Dodgers. 6 knee surgeries and 1 Harvard Business School degree later, he found himself as an unlikely entrepreneur.
And started MagicLinks.
Based in LA, MagicLinks is the social commerce provider for social media influencers. They connect moments of inspiration to action. Example: viewers can buy the sweater they see the influencer wearing.
Think of it as a marketplace that connects brands & influencers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Clearly, he’s onto something big. MagicLinks is ranked amongst the Inc5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies.
Brian has some atypical leadership approaches that I found fascinating, (including how he begins every staff meeting.)
In this 20-minute conversation, Brian reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of the company.
This episode rocks, because it combines 3 of the hottest themes in the venture world:
Fintech + Outdoor power sports + Talent
Adam Redlich is VP Talent Acquisition of Octane, the specialty fintech company that makes your ‘passion purchases’ seamless. They’ve started with the $21B powersports equipment industry (motorcycles & ATV’s for example)
Instead of processing a loan in days or weeks, their team of 400 people do it nearly instantaneously.
Clearly they’re onto something big…
Octane has raised over $190M in venture capital from IA Ventures, Valar Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, Upper90, Parkwood, Progressive Insurance, Alive Capital Partners, Third Prime, Citi Ventures, Dreamt Ventures
Prior, Adam was an early key member of Google’s talent team during the company’s largest period of growth (1K to 40K employees)
And he led People Operations at some of the hottest early-stage companies including Elysium Health & Zest Finance.
In this 20-minute conversation, Adam reveals the 3 things you must do to put a Rockstar in every seat of your company
Josh Watts is Co-Founder of one of the nation’s fastest growing companies.
Recently ranked as an Inc5000 company, MedTrust Medical Transport is a private EMS company providing emergent & non-emergent medical transport services
Based in gorgeous Charleston, Josh has scaled a 400-person team.
In this 20-minute conversations, he reveals how he’s done it.
Supply Chain is the topic of the day. Covid has turned it upside down & inside out.
Fortunately, a wave of novel companies have come to the rescue & straighten things out.
Including Relay Payments, the fintech company reinventing payments for the logistics category. (Think of it as the “Venmo for Logistics”)
Badly needed in this industry that’s due for an overhaul.
I just met with Amy Zimmerman, Relay’s Chief People Officer.
With over 100 people, they’re onto something big. Investors include Ribbit Capital, Spark Capital, and Addition.
Previously, Amy led talent for Kabbage, one of the nation’s fastest growing companies that quickly provides online loans to small businesses. Amy scaled Kabbage from 50 people to over 500, prior to its successful acquisition by American Express.
In this 20-minute conversation, Amy reveals how she’s scaled the teams at 2 hypergrowth Fintech companies. And how you can do the same.
Andrew Amann wasn’t always CEO & Founder of one of the nation’s fasting-growing companies.
He started as a Nuclear Sub Engineer.
And taught himself business.
...And hiring.
...And how to lead a team.
When he was ready, he set out on his own course… a fascinating one.
Now, Andrew is CEO of NineTwoThree Digital Ventures, an Inc5000-ranked company with 1,344% growth over the past 3 years.
Based in Boston, NineTwoThree is an outsourced innovation studio that helps big companies grow digital ventures. Andrew & his team have birthed 8 startups & 45 apps.
Each of them needs a team. So, Andrew has become awfully good at spotting & landing talent.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how it’s done.
If you lead a SaaS company, you likely know Dan Martell, as the Founder & CEO of SaaS Academy.
But even if you’re in a different industry, Dan has a ton to teach about how to scale your business. Fast.
Because he’s built & exited 5 companies.
Most noteworthy, Dan was Founder & CEO of Clarity.fm which connects business leaders with experts in any field (I’m a customer). It was successfully acquired by Startups.co
Now, Dan is Founder & CEO of SaaS Academy.
He coaches & teaches over 1,000 Founders to become high-performance leaders (…although much of what he teaches is relevant to any business.)
Dan began his career as a software developer. But his passion (and gift) is leadership, strategy, culture, and communications.
Plus as a native of British Columbia, Canada, he’s just nice as heck.
In this 20-minute conversation, Dan reveals how he’s scaled his companies and how he teaches other leaders to do the same.
Joseph Ansanelli makes leadership look deceptively easy.
Perhaps it’s because he’s done it more times than most. Or because he brings the humility to know that it’s a lifelong journey.
Based in SF Bay Area, he’s CEO & Co-Founder of Gladly, the company he incubated during his time at Greylock Partners.
Joseph is fond of saying “People first. Strategy second.” He believes that one of the keys to effective leadership is ensuring that teams have the right tools to succeed.
With his team of 150 employees, Gladly empowers customer service agents with a SaaS platform that turns them into heroes.
And he’s onto something big…
His investors include New Enterprise Associates, GGV Capital, SV Angel, Future Fund, and Glynn Capital Management.
Prior, he was Co-Founder & CEO of Connectify which was acquired by Kana, one of the first digital customer service platforms which he helped take public.
He was also Co-Founder & CEO of Vontu, the leader in data loss prevention, which was acquired by Symantec.
During college, he & a few friends created Trio Development, which was acquired by Apple and their product became Claris Organizer.
Joseph serves on the Boards of Directors of Sumo Logic and Trifacta. He also hosts one of my favorite podcasts Radically Personal
In this 20-minute conversation, Joseph reveals where he developed his passion for hiring & leading teams. And how he does it every day at Gladly.
These days, if you’re not sending swag to your candidates & new hires, you’re missing out.
I’ve been doing it for years… Books. Wine glasses. Electronics. Shirts.
Anything to tip the scales in my favor - when they’re signing a job offer. But it’s been a logistical nightmare.
…Until now.
Meet Michael Martocci, CEO & Founder of SwagUp.
This 26-year-old has built an Inc5000 company, one of the nation’s fastest-growing. I’m a customer & a raving fan.
SwagUp is an API-first platform that streamlines the creation & distribution of quality swag globally. They’re reinventing this $30B market by digitizing the supply chain and making it available through beautiful interfaces and APIs.
Even more impressive, Michael’s bootstrapped the company.
They’re completely customer-funded and now work with over 2,000 companies to help them integrate quality swag into their workflows to make community a top priority and win back time.
I wanted to find out how he’s scaled the team that’s scaled the Swag.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals all.
If you’re like most leaders who hire, you’ve experimented with using online assessments to see if your candidates have the right stuff.
You’ve probably also wondered how accurate they are & whether you’re using them the right way.
Let’s find out.
The Predictive Index is considered the industry leader. This talent optimization company uses behavioral, cognitive, and job assessments to make hiring & managing people more effective.
Clients include AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield, TD Bank, DocuSign, LVMH, and Omni Hotels.
Mike Zani is PI’s CEO.
He’s also Co-Founder of Phoenix Strategy Investments, a private investment fund. An avid sailor, he was a coach of the 1996 US Olympic Team.
Mike recently published 'The Science of Dream Teams: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happiness'
In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals everything you should know about using (or misusing) candidate assessments.
Tracy Tobin is Chief People Officer of Denver-based Adswerve, the leading Google Marketing Analytics & Cloud Partner.
Following a 13-year career leading HR at The Integer Group, she was ready for something new.
Enter Adswerve.
Adswerve is a team of media & analytics veterans who believe that smart marketing is built on data discovery. The firm helps thousands of digital marketers, data analysts, and agencies make stronger connections with their customers through data-driven strategies.
The company has 200 people, in a distributed model.
In this 20-minute conversation, Tracy reveals how she’s building a vibrant culture… despite the team not being located in the same office.
Ten years ago, Jilliene Helman was working in Union Bank’s wealth management group. She couldn’t help but notice that the bank’s wealthiest clients earned their fortunes in real estate.
When our government passed the 2012 JOBS Act (intended to encourage funding of small businesses by easing securities regulations), Jilliene saw an opportunity.
So she quit the bank. And created RealtyMogul.
Her new way of investing in real estate has caught on. To put it mildly.
Her firm has done over 300 deals, with a real estate value of $4 Billion. And lets everyday people access institutional-quality investments.
Investors can participate in a deal at a time or invest in one of their REIT pooled vehicles with a diversified group of deals.
Clearly, she’s onto something.
Top investors Canaan Partners and Sorenson Capital have backed her vision.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jilliene reveals how she’s built her 70-person team to shake up the real estate investment field.
Brad Feld is one of the nation’s most prolific Venture Capital investors & business authors.
He’s been investing in early-stage companies since 1995, with dozens of successes to his credit. Based in Boulder, Brad is Co-Founder of both Foundry Group and Techstars.
Foundry’s portfolio companies include Whoop, Suzy, Ordermark, Glowforge, and Drip.
When he’s not investing, Brad is writing. He’s got 8 books on entrepreneurship to his credit.
And now, he’s got a new one “The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors” co-authored with serial entrepreneur Dave Jilk with a forward by Reid Hoffman
It turns out that Friedrich Nietzsche, the late 1800’s philosopher, wrote countless lessons that could be easily applied to entrepreneurship.
In the book, each quick, digestible chapter expands on a quote from Nietzsche to stimulate your thinking about a vital aspect of entrepreneurship, with stories from real-life entrepreneurs help make the ideas concrete.
The book is fascinating, as is Brad.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals the lonely struggles that entrepreneurs face & how to keep your wits about you, no matter what role you play in scaling a company.
Nothing lights me up more than a meaty conversation with a successful entrepreneur.
I just bagged the elephant (You can thank me later.)
Godard Abel is one of the most successful SaaS entrepreneurs you’ll meet. And G2 is his Unicorn baby.
After wrapping his studies at Stanford MBA and MIT Engineering, Godard was Co-Founder & CEO of BigMachines, a pioneer of the Configure, Price, Quote software category. He scaled the business from scratch to $50M revenues & 300 people, before its acquisition by Oracle.
As CEO of SteelBrick, the leading Quote-to-Cash software platform, he built the team from 5 to 200 people, before its acquisition by Salesforce.
And currently, Godard is Co-Founder & CEO of G2, which makes B2B tech buying easy by connecting buyers to vendors. It’s “Yelp for Business Software & Services” with 1 million customer reviews & real-time ratings. 5 million tech buyers visit each month.
And he’s onto something big…
G2 has raised over $200M from top investors: Accel, Chicago Ventures, Emergence, High Alpha, Hyde Park Venture Partners, IVP, Permira, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Salesforce Ventures, HubSpot Ventures.
I was curious to understand how Godard makes it look so easy (It’s not.) He attributes not some… but ALL… of his success to “hiring & nurturing incredible people.”
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals step-by-step how to build your Unicorn team.
Private Equity is so mysterious to so many people.
But it doesn’t have to be.
With billions of capital sitting on the sidelines, P.E. funds are making investments & recruiting talent like never before.
I wanted to find a P.E. investor to show us how it’s done, and pull no punches.
Paul Stansik is Principal at Chicago-based ParkerGale Capital. The P.E. firm leads buyouts of profitable B2B software companies with $10M+ revenue.
ParkerGale’s portfolio companies include Contelligent, Profisee, and Source Intelligence.
Following a successful career with Bain & Company in its Leadership & Talent group, Paul moved to P.E. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School.
In this 20-minute conversation, Paul reveals how the best P.E. investors put a Rockstar in every seat of every portfolio company.
Few people make the transition from being a Venture Capitalist to running an operating company.
Even fewer do it successfully.
I just met one of them. His name is David Wald, CEO & Co-Founder of Aclaimant.
After years at Bain & Company and dough, he was a successful venture investor at Lightbank.
Now, his fast-growing Chicago-based SaaS platform helps companies manage their risks. Specifically, tracking the processes around people who get hurt & property that gets damaged.
With over 50 distributed employees, David & his team have weathered the pandemic with strength.
Clearly, he’s onto something big… Aclaimant investors include Royal Street Ventures, Mercury Fund, KEC Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Aspen Capital Group, RRE Ventures, EBSCO Capital, KEC Ventures, Moderne Ventures, SMW Capital
In this 20-minute, David reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat of the business.
If you’ve never served on a Board of Directors, you may envision it as a country club day filled with palm fronds & chardonnay.
The reality is that most Board meetings are …well… boring. And ineffective.
Indianapolis-based Boardable, the SaaS platform, is out to change that. And to make Boards far more effective in this pivotal role. It manages the agenda, notes, voting, every aspect of communications.
It was specifically designed for mission-driven community organizations & non-profits. They’re countless across the US.
Gabby VanAlstine leads Talent & Culture at Boardable. Prior, she led talent at Emplify.
Clearly, Boardable is onto something big.
It’s raised over $10M from High Alpha, Base10 Partners, Collina Ventures, VisionTech Partners.
In this 20-minute conversation, Gabby reveals the recruitment process that she uses to put a Rockstar in every seat.
Venture Capital is booming. Everywhere.
…Yes, even in Iowa.
With $80M assets under management, Des Moines-based Next Level Ventures originally invested in early-stage Midwestern agriculture & B2B data companies.
Building on their success, they recently broadened their focus to Fintech companies nationally.
Which means a ton of hiring.
I wanted to find out how they do it So I spoke with Scott Hoekman, Partner at Next Level.
Scott has helped birth 26 companies so far. With a typical check size between $500K & $5M, he’s been early in success stories like Eltropy, Nymbus, and MotoRefi.
Scott takes hiring seriously.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he assesses Founders & helps them put a Rockstar in every seat of the portfolio company.
There’s nothing like a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic to instill stress, uncertainty, and fear into people’s lives.
And that includes your employees.
Jan Bruce is out to change that. She’s CEO of meQuilibrium.
Based in Boston, meQuilibrium gives your employees online stress management solutions & measurements. Which has a major impact on your business.
Previously, she was Managing Director & Publisher at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
And she’s onto something big. Her backers include Chrysalis Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, Safeguard Scientifics, Crimson Seed Capital, Eastward Capital Partners.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jan reveals what this past year has taught us about mental health & how she’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of her company.
Car insurance isn’t exciting.
Unless you’re the Silicon Valley company turning this enormous industry on its head.
That’s Jerry.
Thanks to machine learning, Jerry finds its customers the best, customized quotes from more than 50 insurance carriers in 45 seconds. For free.
The typical customer saves $800 a year on car insurance.
And now its evolving into a mobile-first car ownership “super app,” aiming to save customers time & money on all their car expenses.
I wanted to find out how they’re scaling the team. So I tracked down John Spottiswood, Chief Operating Officer of Jerry.
John knows how to build a Rockstar team because he’s been a part of some of the valley’s biggest success stories.
He led business development for Lending Club, Earnin, and GoodHire. Led a division of QuinStreet. Even served as President of Match.com
Clearly, Jerry is onto something big.
The company has raised $130M in VC from: Y Combinator, SV Angel, Bow Capital, FundersClub, Goodwater Capital, Kamerra, Liquid2 Ventures, Oriza Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Park West Asset Management.
In this 20-minute conversation, John shares how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat at Jerry.
After a successful career with Wayfair building its B2B division, Joel Stevenson had a random chance meeting with the team at another Boston-based company, Yesware.
(He points out that their names rhyme, but have little else in common.)
Industry-leading Yesware makes tools to help salespeople build better relationships with their prospects & customers. This all-in-one sales productivity toolkit includes email, phone, video, and meeting scheduling.
He was hooked.
Joel joined Yesware as head of Sales & Marketing. And was later appointed to Chief Executive Officer, succeeding one of its Co-Founders.
He now leads the 100-person team, which he describes as “clever & friendly.” And he’s able to drill into specifically what that means.
Clearly, he’s onto something big.
Yesware has raised over $40M from top investors like Battery Ventures, Foundry Group, Golden Ventures, Ridge Ventures, Shea Ventures, GV, and Techstars.
In this 20-minute conversation, Joel delves into what it’s like to be named CEO and how he’s scaling the team that helps salespeople scale their business.
M&A is on fire.
Which means not just combining companies, but merging cultures.
And there’s where so many deals fall apart or fail to live up to expectations. (Some research shows that 75% of M&A deals bomb.)
And it’s often because the team was too busy making sure the technology was compatible or figuring out how to streamline the sales organization or merge brands.
Nobody bothered to figure out if the 2 teams were aligned in the first place.
Such a shame.
So, I found an expert to guide us on doing it properly.
Sloan Gaon is CEO of PulsePoint, the leading global authority in programmatic health advertising, recently acquired by WebMD parent company Internet Brands. Prior, he was CEO of DotMenu, acquired by GrubHub. And he led M&A at Miva, acquired by Adknowledge.
He’s forgotten more about M&A than most will ever know.
So, he knows how to assess teams for compatibility. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to do it (and potentially avoid a huge M&A mistake)
Based in Chicago, Akuna Capital is an innovative derivatives-based trading firm. With a team of over 400, the firm continues to scale rapidly.
Akuna’s core competency is providing liquidity as an options market-maker – meaning they provide competitive quotes that they are willing to both buy & sell.
Doing this successfully requires that they design & implement their own low latency technologies, trading strategies, and mathematical models.
I wanted to learn about the people part of the business.
Evan Demchick is Partner at Akuna, where he leads Junior Traders during their inaugural 2 years with the firm. He also oversees trader recruitment, and runs courses for traders & developers.
In this 20-minute interview, Evan reveals how he finds, onboards, and develops the talent at this fast-growing firm.
During his years leading the residential lending division of a major bank, Patrick Boyaggi closed over $11B in residential mortgages.
Yet, he knew there had to be a better way.
Did you know that …depending on the mortgage they select… consumers can spend an extra $30,000 over the life of their loan?
So he started & is CEO of Own Up
This Boston-based fintech business is on fire.
Own Up has changed the way that consumers shop for & secure a mortgage. The service includes a marketplace of lenders who have agreed to charge below-market prices.
So consumers save a ton on their mortgage.
Clearly, Patrick is onto something. He’s raised $25 million from Link Ventures, Listen, Techstars Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, and Brand Foundry Ventures.
In this 20-minute interview, Patrick reveals how he’s scaled the 120-person team that’s turning mortgages upside-down.
If you’re like most people, you think that printing things on paper has gone the way of the Dodo Bird.
You’re be wrong.
Combined, we still print over one Trillion pages in the US annually. Sure it’s declining a bit each year, but that remains a lot of used toner cartridges.
Not to mention hassle.
When Jonathan Treble learned the magnitude of the problem, he saw an opportunity...
And started PrintWithMe, the Chicago-based & fast-growing company, on a mission to make printing convenient for everyone.
He & his team have built a distributed network of 2,000 printer kiosks in coffee houses, apartment buildings, and college dorms. That’s more than the FedEx Offices in the US.
And a whole lot easier.
By the time you pay an Uber to take you to & from the FedEx Office or UPS Store - not to mention forking out a buck a page - that printed lease agreement costs a small fortune.
Jonathan is onto something big. He’s raised venture capital from Network Ventures, Great North Venture, New Stack Ventures, and M25.
In this episode, he reveals how he’s scaled & led a distributed team to build this distributed network.
I just interviewed one of the top Growth Capital investors around.
Todd Cozzens is Managing Partner of Transformation Capital, with 30+ years of experience in the digital health industry that includes founding, operating, building, investing in and exiting innovative companies.
He has a rare history of creating value both as an operator & as an investor.
As investor, he's served on the Boards of leading companies PatientPop, LetsGetChecked, Sword Health, PatientPing, and Health Catalyst. Previously, Todd co-led digital health investing at Sequoia Capital, where he helped build several breakthrough companies like AirStrip, MedExpress, ZirMed, SCIO Health Analytics, and Natera. Prior to investing, Todd was a Founder & CEO of Marquette Medical (acquired by GE) and Picis (acquired by UnitedHealth Group) Todd was a member of the US Sailing Team for three Olympiads, reaching a No. 2 worldwide ranking and winning several North American & European championships, two Bacardi Cups and a gold medal in the Pan American Games. Safe to say, Todd knows a thing or two about why, how, and when it's vital to make the difficult decisions around your team.
The questions then is: Will you?
Being on an Olympic team is a life-changing event.
From what I’ve heard (You don’t wanna see me on those Rings)
But there’s one thing even better. More gratifying…
And that’s coaching an Olympic team to victory.
Seeing those under your charge go on to achieve unthinkable things. Break records. And change history. It’s breathtaking.
Not to mention hearing your name on MSNBC at 3:30am in the morning US time.
To do that, you’ve got to commit.
To practice.
(Actually, to perfect practice.)
And to putting a Rockstar in every spot on your team.
Easier said than done.
So, my job is to seek out those who have done it. To figure out how. And to make sure you know how to replicate their success.
(And to avoid their occasional bellyflops.)
I just had the chance to interview a business Olympian, who’s built & led successful teams in both large companies and small.
In multiple geographies.
And numerous industries.
Gian Fulgoni is a champion in the measurement of consumer behavior & the effectiveness of advertising and promotion programs in TV, print, and online.
He co-founded comScore in 1999 & helped grow it to become a global leader in cross-platform measurement.
Previously, he led Information Resources, Inc (IRI) through a period of dramatic growth, from $2 million in annual revenue in to $500 million annually in 1998 and a market value of $1.4 Billion along the way.
And he’s still on the field.
As Chairman of PetMeds, the publicly-held largest pet pharmacy. And Executive Chairman of VC-backed Varcode. Plus, Gian is a Venture Partner at 4490 Ventures. And he serves on the Board of Directors of Prophet, the brand consultancy.
No wonder he’s been twice named Illinois Entrepreneur of the Year.
In this 20-minute conversation, Gian reveals how he put a Rockstar in every seat of his teams. And how he gets the most out of them.
Just had a chance to interview Jon Stross.
He’s President & Co-Founder of Greenhouse Software, the smart recruiting SaaS platform used by over 4,000 companies including Cisco, Airbnb, and Time Inc.
He’s also Co-author of the new bestselling book Talent Makers, which reveals how talent-savvy companies find, land, and keep the best talent.
Prior, Jon was GM International at BabyCenter (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), the leading destination on the Internet for new & expectant parents.
Jon also led Product at enterprise performance management software company Merced Systems (acquired by NICE for $170MM.)
Clearly, Greenhouse are onto something big. He’s raised over $100M in VC from Frontline Ventures, Riverwood Capital, Benchmark, Lumia Capital, Thrive Capital, Social Capital, Resolute Ventures, Felicis Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jon reveals how a company that helps companies hire hires (very meta!) We also talk thru the Hiring Maturity curve, and how to propel your business to the next phase.
Scaling a company from $5M revenues to $50M to $250M isn’t just about a great product.
In fact, that’s the easy part.
Scaling a great team, which enables the business to scale, is far more difficult.
So I sought out an expert to find out how it’s done.
Carter Griffin is General Partner of Updata Partners, the growth equity firm with $1 Billion in committed capital. He & team have invested in over 60 B2B software growth-stage companies.
In short, he knows how to pour fuel on the fire when a company has $5M to 50M revenues.
You know his investments. They include Built In, DataCore Software, Interactions LLC, Jellyvision, LendKey Technologies, Inc., Piano, Ruby.
Scaling often comes down to the CEO (Carter likes to back “tenacious storytelling leaders”)
Carter serves on the Board of Directors of Mindshare, a leading forum for 900 tech CEOs. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association
In this 20-minute conversation, Carter reveals how he helps his portfolio companies put a Rockstar in every seat.
Obesity is America’s #1 underlying health issue.
Because it causes or increases the likelihood of over 100 other health conditions.
Now, Isabelle Kenyon is out to change the way the world treats weight.
She’s Founder & CEO of Calibrate, the VC-backed medical metabolic health company.
It’s creating a new category by improving metabolic health to drive long-term, sustainable weight loss with a program designed by world leaders in obesity & nutrition science.
This is the first direct-to-consumer telemedicine business aligning incentives for doctors, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and consumers.
Calibrate combines FDA-approved metabolic medication with a holistic curriculum and 1:1 virtual coaching sessions that drive lasting behavior change.
Prior to Calibrate, Isabelle led the business operations, growth, and strategic partnerships & communications teams at Capsule, a technology business that is rebuilding the pharmacy from the inside out.
Clearly, she’s onto something big.
She recently closed a $22.5 million round of venture capital including Threshold Ventures, Redesign Health, and Forerunner Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, Isabelle reveals how she’s putting a Rockstar in every seat at Calibrate
Food. Activity. Sleep.
If you’re not doing all 3 properly, you’re far less likely to scale your business successfully.
In fact, we’re getting less sleep than ever. And, with today’s understandable stressors, the quality of our sleep has suffered.
But I tracked down a Venture-backed CEO who sleeps like a baby. Nine hours a night.
He’s Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder & CEO of Eight Sleep
Based in NY, Eight Sleep developed a proprietary technology called the Pod that enhances sleep performance, and is currently used by pro athletes and top performers across multiple industries to fall asleep faster and get more restful sleep. The end goal of the Pod is to compress sleep and scan your body while asleep to monitor your health.
It’s the “Peloton of Sleep”
Eight Sleep was named one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” in 2018, recognized as one of TIME’s “Best Inventions” in 2019.
Matteo & team are backed by some of top VC’s around: Azure Capital Partners, Comcast Ventures, Craft Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, 8VC, Jason Calacanis, Sway Ventures
In this 20-minute episode, Matteo reveals how he’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of Eight Sleep.
(It’s sure to keep you awake.)
8 years ago, Casey Berman worked in real estate when he had an “A-Ha” moment.
He began searching for tech companies to help automate the real estate workflow. There weren’t many.
So Casey formed Camber Creek, a venture capital firm providing strategic value & capital to technology companies focused on the real estate market.
Camber Creek eats its own cooking. The firm uses PropTech and Real Estate Tech products before making the investment decision.
Fast forward to today. ..
The firm has $250 million under management and has nearly 30 portfolio companies. They include: Turbo Appeal, TaskEasy, whyhotel, Notarize, and Curbio.
In this 20-minute conversation, Casey reveals how he helps his portfolio companies scale by putting a Rockstar in every seat.
Shawn Boom, CEO of Vanco, is crystal clear about the companies’s “Why” - Serve those who enrich communities
Based near Minneapolis, Vanco delivers online payment processing solutions & software that enables churches, schools, and nonprofit to operate more efficiently. In short, they can accept electronic payments from students, parents, patrons, and churchgoers.
More than 40,000 churches, nonprofits, and schools now trust Vanco to simplify administrative processes, organize events, and securely complete transactions every day.
Vanco’s 300 people came together from the 9 companies that Shawn has rolled up. (As you’d expect, when he’s not working, he’s running ultra-marathons.)
Vanco is backed by legendary Private Equity firm Great Hill Partners, with $8B under management and over 80 portfolio companies.
In this 20-minute conversation, Shawn reveals how to find your company’s “Why” & how to hire only people who live it. Everyday.
Based in Silicon Valley, Rashmi Gopinath is General Partner at B Capital Group, the global VC firm that specializes in equity investing in growth-stage companies that have achieved traction with customers.
With a focus in horizontal enterprise software (cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, devops, database SaaS for F500), she’s invested in and/or served on the Boards of: Synack, Yalo, Labelbox, Clari, Phenom People.
Prior, Rashmi served at Intel Capital and M12, Microsoft’s venture fund.
And now she invests in the growth stage (Series B thru D), writing checks between $30-60M.
After more than a decade of VC investing, Rashmi says “The team is the #1 factor”
In this 20-minute conversation, she reveals why & how to build a Rockstar team every time.
How can you beat Silicon Valley in the war for talent?
(…or if you’re in Silicon Valley, how can you compete for talent with Apple, Tesla, Google, and Facebook?)
A few years back, a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists upped & moved to Columbus Ohio to invest in (under-invested) Midwest companies.
They named the firm Drive Capital.
And Robert Hatta is its Partner responsible for talent across their 50+ portfolio companies.
You know the companies they’ve funded… Root Insurance, Duolingo, Greenlight, and Olive
Robert shows the companies how to compete for talent, how to get the most out of that talent, and how to adapt to 2021’s new way of working.
In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals the keys to mastering the people part of your business.
You only turn 400 once.
So for this special 400th episode of Recruit Rockstars Podcast, I knew you were counting on me to land a very special guest.
I think I bagged the elephant.
David Cohen is Co-Founder (and now Chief Instigator) of the legendary Techstars venture accelerator. It’s birthed over 2,300 startups. (You know their names: SendGrid, Outreach, SalesLoft…)
And for 20-minutes, we discussed a very delicate, sensitive, personal subject:
Stepping Aside.
What if the Founder isn’t the right person with the right skills to scale the business? (Odds are, they’re not)
How do we get the Founder into their “zone of genius”?
When & how should a Founder be “promoted” to Chairman, and a new CEO appointed?
If it doesn’t happen, when & how should a VC & Board member make this very difficult decision?
How do you separate the Founder (and their identity) from the business, which needs to have its own life & legs.
While Mark Zuckerberg Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk went from Founder to CEO to Mega Industry Changer, that type of tenure is rare.
(You can safely assume that you are none of those people.)
So for you, the day will come when your business outgrows you. Your skills. Your passions. Or both.
And then what?
David is uniquely qualified to address this topic.
Many startups …including those birthed by Techstars… go thru this transition. He’s sat on the Boards of countless companies who have successfully gone thru a transition from Founder to a new CEO.
And last month, David - and Techstars Co-Founders David Brown, Brad Feld, Jared Polis - recruited a new CEO to lead Techstars next phase of growth.
After evaluating 350 candidates, they selected Maëlle Gavet, an outstanding global business leader.
She’ll build on Techstars’ heritage, which is pretty remarkable to consider:
- Over 2,300 startups funded & launched
- 85% of which have been acquired or are still active
- Funding 500 companies per year
- 8,000 mentors advise the 3 month program in 35 cities in 16 countries
- The average company raises $1M
- They’ve raised over $11B in total
- Cumulative market valuation a $32B
In this 20-minute conversation, David gets vulnerable & no-BS about how to make the most challenging people decision in the life of a company:
When to Step Aside.
Treating 300,000 patients per month, NURX has rapidly become the leading Telehealth platform with a female focus.
CEO Varsha Rao has led NURX to deliver remote treatment of specific conditions: Contraception, treatment for Acne & Migraine, testing for HPV & STI.
To do it, she’s scaled of doctors who evaluate each patient & pharmacists who prescribe appropriate medication.
Investors seem to like it too. NURX has partnered with Wittington Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Fifty Years, Trustbridge Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Alumni Ventures Group, Lowercase Capital, Y Combinator
Varsha says she spends 50% of her time on the people part of NURX.
Prior to Nurx, Varsha served as COO of Clover Health where she brought operational leadership to the health insurance startup.
Plus she served as Airbnb’s Head of Global Operations, managing the company’s market expansion & host growth globally. She was also Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Eve.com, the online cosmetics company.
In this 20-minute conversation, Varsha reveals how she designed the organization & puts a Rockstar in each seat.
You may not know Mark Suster, Managing Partner at LA-based Upfront venture capital firm.
But you know the companies in which he’s invested (…early!)
They include Bevy, thredUP, Bird, ChowNow, GOAT, and MakeSpace.
VC’s come & go.
Mark came & stayed. And he has the track record to prove it.
Prior to co-founding Upfront in 2007, Mark was Founder & CEO of 2 successful enterprise software companies, the most recent of which was acquired by Salesforce.com where he became VP Products.
In this 20-minute conversation, Mark reveals how a top VC thinks about hiring, and how he ensures that each portfolio company puts a Rockstar in every seat.
I rarely meet a tech entrepreneur whose background is firmly grounded in science.
Jacob Sattelmair is a public health scientist turned technologist.
He’s CEO & Co-Founder of Wellframe, which works at the intersection of healthcare, technology, data analytics, and consumer engagement.
Based in Boston, Wellframe has reimagined healthcare relationships through a new approach that uses high-tech to deliver the high-touch support that people need - when and where they need it.
Its Digital Health Management platform offers solutions for care management & advocacy that help organizations forge more meaningful connections with their members.
Jacob holds degrees in Neurobiology & Epidemiology from Harvard University and Physiology from University of Oxford.
He’s partnered with high-profile investors including: Threshold, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Formation 8, QueensBridge Venture Partners, Waterline Ventures, Azimuth Ventures, and Tim Draper.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jacob reveals how he’s built the Rockstar team at Wellframe.
Spring is here….
…Which means lawn care.
(Blech!)
Ken Davis set out to change that.
He’s CEO of TaskEasy, based in Salt Lake City.
TaskEasy simplifies life by connecting people & technology to provide hassle-free yard care.
They bring convenience & relief to homeowners, renters, and businesses and empower local landscaping entrepreneurs with robust software.
What’s super-cool is TaskEasy’s patent-pending formula to establish fair market pricing for yard care services in statistical metropolitan areas in all 50 U.S. states.
So, no more haggling on price.
Since its consumer launch in 2013, TaskEasy has performed over 1 million tasks in 12,000 US cities & established a network of 10,000 screened and rated contractors.
Clearly, they’re onto something big. Investors include Camber Creek, Moderne Ventures, River Cities Capital, Grotech Ventures, Access Ventures.
Ken was named the prestigious EY Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst Young, so he knows a thing or two about scaling.
In this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s built an 80-person Rockstar team.
I’ve long been fascinated by unique business models.
And here’s one.
NYC-based Public Goods is a one stop shop for healthy, sustainable, everyday essentials you can trust. They sell products in personal care (shampoo), household goods (cleaners), grocery (cereal).
Uniquely, Public Goods has a $59/year membership model which allows them to smooth revenue & offer high quality products at a great value. And everything they sell is branded Public Goods.
Imagine: no more spending time choosing between a bevy of seemingly-identical brands.
Morgan Hirsh is Founder & CEO.
And he’s onto something big, because he recently closed an expansion capital round from L Catterton, the largest & most global consumer-focused private equity firm with $20B under management.
Other investors include: Listen, Day One Ventures, Yes VC, Investo, and KF Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, Morgan reveals how he’s built the team.
New consumer investment platforms are all the rage.
As are women leaders in fintech.
This episode puts it all together. Maria Selvaggio is VP People at M1 Finance, one of the nation’s fastest growing money management platforms.
Over 500,000 now use M1’s Finance Super App to invest, borrow, and spend. With a total of $4 billion in client assets, clearly M1 is on to something big.
Based in Chicago, Maria got her talent management chops at Grubhub, Tempus, Groupon, and Google.
Now she’s building a Rockstar team at M1, where the mission is to empower people to improve their financial well-being.
The company is backed by top-notch investors Coatue, Left Lane Capital, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Chaifetz Group, Jump Capital, 50 South Capital and Chicago Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, Maria reveals how M1 is building the team that builds financial independence.
As businesses reopen, you should be thinking about your employees’ commutes.
For their benefit, and yours. Not to mention your city’s.
TransitScreen makes software that makes cities smarter and more sustainable. It provides live transportation information to real estate owners & employers internationally, helping people make more informed, more sustainable choices.
I tracked down CEO & CO-Founder Matt Caywood to see how he built this impressive team.
Matt is wicked smart. He spent years earning degrees in Neuroscience & working as a AI Engineer and Applied Neuroscientist before starting TransitScreen.
Clearly, he’s on to something. Investors include TIMIA Capital, 1776 Ventures, Moderne Ventures, and Carbon Ventures
In this 20-minute conversation, Matt shares how to get your employees safety & smartly to your office, and how to build a Rockstar team once they arrive.
The up & comers in Generation Z (Gen Z) are now aged 5 to 25.
And you’ll soon be hiring them.
But they’re unlike any people who came before them. In fact, they have little in common with Gen X, Millennials, or Baby Boomers.
So it’s time to learn how to recruit them & what’s most important to them.
To do that, I sought out an expert.
I found two.
Based in Austin, Denise Villa & Jason Dorsey are the authors of Zconomy: How Gen Z Will Change The Future of Business - And What You Need To Do About It
They co-lead The Center for Generational Kinetics, where they advise hundreds of Venture Capital firms, Private Equity Firms, startups, and other companies on how to tap into Gen Z.
In this 20-minute conversation, Denise & Jason reveal what’s most important to Gen Z, how to recruit them, and most important - how to keep them.
Frank Furman was destined to lead. First, as an Infantry Officer in the US Marine Corps. Then as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company
And now, he’s Chief Operating Officer of the VC-backed & fast-growing PadSplit.
PadSplit is disrupting the affordable housing industry by creating safe, attractive, and respectable co-living environments. One room at a time, often for workforce housing. Unlike AirBnB, this is long-term rentals
Based in Atlanta, PadSplit has 1,200 bedrooms listed & its average rental is 8.5 months
Clearly, Frank & PadSplit are onto something. Because they’ve been backed by a who’s who of early-stage ventures. Including Impact Engine, Cox Enterprises, Kapor Capital, Techstars, 1984 Ventures, Base Ventures and Core Innovation Capital.
But this episode isn’t about funding. It’s about leadership.
And how Frank is scaling his team at PadSplit.
Nothing inspires me more than a brilliant young company founder with a huge vision.
Such as Sam Walder.
He’s CEO & Co-Founder of Chicago-based Trala. And he intends to make world-class music education accessible to everyone.
Eventually, Trala plans to expand its app to help people learn all instruments in the symphony orchestra. And they’re starting with violin.
Why?
It’s hard. Nail the violin, and you can use tech to teach virtually any instrument.
Trala’s app features video tutorials with notable violinists along with “signal processing” technology that listens while you play the violin & gives instant feedback on rhythm and pitch mistakes.
The app has been downloaded over 250,000 times and students spend an average of 5 hours per week on the app. Trala charges $20 per month or $120 for the entire year.
Clearly, Sam is onto something.
He recently raised venture capital from Next Play Ventures, the early-stage VC fund launched by former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.
Other investors include Techstars Ventures, Blue Titan Ventures, Hyde Park Angels, Webb Investment Network, Phoenix Rising, Concrete Rose Capital.
How can a Rockstar team of 12 people teach your app to teach you any musical instrument?
In this 20-minute conversation, Sam reveals how he’s built a highly-diverse team.
In this overheated market, it’s become relatively easy to land a Venture Capital investor.
But finding one who adds real value post-investment remains tricky.
I found one.
Constance Freedman is Managing Partner of Moderne Ventures, an early stage investment fund which invests in technology companies in real estate, mortgage, finance, insurance and home services.
Based in Chicago, she’s invested in over 90 companies including Better, Bento for Business, Hippo, Homesnap, Porch, and TaskEasy.
Equally notable is the network she’s built. She adds immense value to her portfolio companies by connecting them with the major players in their respective sectors.
Think of her as the Venture Connector.
No surprise, Constance has been the recipient of several prestigious awards including HousingWire’s Women of Influence, Crain’s Business 40 under 40, Crain’s Chicago Top Tech 50, 2019 Mavericks 50, and Inman’s Top 101 in Real Estate.
Along the way, she’s learned how to spot talent, how to land it, and when to make a change on your team. In this 20-minute conversation, she reveals her hard-fought lessons.
After spending time at Facebook and Dropbox, Russ Heddleston saw the need for a secure document sharing platform.
So he created the SaaS platform DocSend, where he’s now CEO.
Based in Silicon Valley, DocSend now has 15,000 customers & 60 employees. Plus, talented investors like DCM Ventures, August Capital, Cowboy Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Uncork Capital
(You may never send an attachment again.)
Russ says “A Rockstar at one place might not be a Rockstar someplace else”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
In this 20-minute conversation, Russ reveals how he’s scaled a team of Rockstars.
If you’re like me, you’re always out to pick up a new skill. So, you’ve likely heard of MasterClass, one of the fastest-growing VC-backed companies around.
With over 100 high-quality online courses, MasterClass teaches you something new every day. The instructors are anything but ordinary.
MasterClass includes:
Annie Leibovitz’s course on photography
Serena Williams’ course on tennis
Carlos Santana’s course on guitar
Steve Martin’s course on comedy writing
And they add a new one each month.
The quality is astounding. These aren’t some homemade YouTube videos. Masterclass treats each as a mini movie production.
In just 5 years, they’ve gone from an idea to a team of 400 people.
And they’ve raised over $200 million from top investors like Fidelity, NEA, IVP, Owl Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta.
So, I caught up with Mark Williamson, Chief Operating Officer, to find out how he’s scaled the team.
In this 20-minute conversation, Mark provides…well…a master class on recruiting.
In case you missed it, Venture Capital is booming everywhere… not just in Silicon Valley.
New York is one of those places. And Primary VC is one of those firms.
So I wanted to find out how they’re doing it.
Gina Yocom is Director of Talent at Primary VC, where she’s focused on building & engaging the firm’s network.
Gina is a connector at heart. She’s mastered how to built relationships & opportunities that accelerate growth of Primary’s 50 portfolio companies.
No surprise. She’s seen this movie before. Previously, Gina was Partner on the Market Development team at Andreessen Horowitz.
Primary VC focuses exclusively on seed-stage NY-based market-defining companies. And you’ve been a customer. They include Ticketfly, Slice, Latch, Deliveroo, Noom, and Chief.
Their successful exits include Mirror (acquired by Lululemon) and Jet (acquired by Walmart.)
Primary VC’s portfolio is a who’s who of New York growth companies. Here’s how Gina has built a network of who’s who in New York.
Think your company has embraced being remote or virtual?
Meet John Jahnke, CEO of Tackle.io
Based in Buffalo NY, John leads a team of 50 employees located in 28 states.
Tackle.io has created a Cloud Marketplace Platform that enables software companies to sell via the cloud. The Platform makes it easy to list software on AWS, Azure, and GCP… with zero engineering resources.
So, John’s team allows companies to focus on goto market & selling vs integration. Customers include Pagerduty, Github, and Snowflake.
And clearly, John’s doing something right. He’s raised major funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Sandusky Ventures.
In this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s successfully scaled a distributed team.
How do you make your hiring decisions?
If you’re like most people, you probably make a pro & con list, spend a ton of time obsessing about hires that didn’t work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly seek other people’s opinions, and wind up going with your gut.
Hiring is far too important to do it this way. So I sought out a guru on decision-making.
For 20 years, Annie Duke was one of the world’s top poker players.
In 2004, she bested a field of 234 players to win her first World Series of Poker bracelet. The same year, she triumphed in the $2 million winner-take-all Tournament of Champions. In 2010, she won the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship.
And it’s no surprise.
Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Now she’s written a fantastic book “How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices”
It shows a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess yourself less, and ultimately be more decisive & productive.
In this 20-minute conversation, Annie reveals what she’s learned about people at the table.
Love the movie Ironman?
Or your childhood tv show The Six Million Dollar Man?
Well, I recently met an entrepreneur who’s building a futuristic technology by recruiting a genius team.
And his story inspired me.
Coincident with founding his previous company, Drew Perkins developed cataracts in his eyes. He underwent cataract surgery to implant advanced Intraocular Lenses (IOLs) in both eyes, essentially giving him bionic eyes.
While his new bionic eyes gave him perfect vision near & far, they still had some deficiencies.
So, he decided to start a company to solve the problem, not just for himself, but for millions of other people in the world. He founded Mojo Vision with exactly that goal: to give all people superpowers, even if they have impaired vision.
His team is creating the Mojo Lens, the first true Smart Contact Lens.
The Mojo Lens will help people struggling with low vision by projecting enhanced image overlays onto their retinas. It provides real-time contrast & lighting enhancements as well as zoom functionality and other low vision aids.
It remains discreet for the wearer and allows a hands-free experience, while delivering enhanced functional vision to assist in mobility & reading.
The Mojo Lens has a built-in display that also gives its wearer useful & timely information without forcing them to look down at a screen or losing focus on the people and the world around them. Mojo calls this eyes-up experience Invisible Computing, a platform that enables information to be instantaneous, unobtrusive and available hands-free. People can interact with each other more freely and genuinely.
Ironman, indeed.
To scale Mojo Vision, Drew raised $150M in venture capital from NEA, Liberty Global Ventures, Helios Capital, Khosla Ventures, HP Tech Ventures, 8VC, and others.
No surprise. Drew is no amateur.
Gainspeed, his previous startup, changed the game for cable operators & was acquired by Nokia.
Drew co-founded Infinera, which developed the first optical system based on large-scale photonic integrated circuits, before its IPO in 2007.
He was co-founder of telecommunications service provider OnFiber Communications, which brought high-bandwidth fiber-based data services to small & medium-sized businesses. OnFiber was acquired by Qwest Communications.
Drew co-founded Lightera Networks, which developed the CoreDirector optical switching platform. Lightera was acquired by Ciena Corporation.
Along the way, he’s built incredible teams to execute on his futuristic visions. In this 20-minute conversation, Drew explains how & why he does it.
You don’t become a leader just because of your job title or your location on the org chart. (And even if you do have the Chief title, you shouldn’t rely on it to show your people the way.)
This reality is more important than ever, because work happens in networks.
So, I wanted to find the authority on this topic.
Keith Ferrazzi is the bestselling author of Never Eat Alone, the authoritative guide on how to build your network
His newest book is Leading Without Authority
Keith was the youngest-ever partner & Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte
Now, he works with all sorts of companies to get them unstuck. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to master the people part of your business.
Start a company.
Raise funding.
Purchase an add-on company.
Go public or sell it.
These are no small feat.
But fruitless, unless you also build a Rockstar team.
That’s where Will Herman comes in.
Along with Raj Bhargava, he’s co-author of the fabulous book “The Startup Playbook”
Collectively, Will & Raj have:
...Started 12 software companies
...Raised over $500M from investors
...Acquired 35 companies
...Taken 3 companies public
...Sold 6 companies
...And made Billions for their investors
Will knows that the people part of a Startup is everything. And in this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he successfully scales the team.
Small experiments often lead to ginormous breakthroughs for your business. Including revenue increases.
So, why do most of us get stuck in a rut?
I wanted to find the answer. So, I tracked down an expert…
Stefan Thomke is an authority on Innovation.
He’s the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business at Harvard Business School. And he’s worked with countless firms on innovation in product, process, technology, customer experience, and org design.
And he’s written an outstanding new book “Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments”
Stefan has received countless awards for his work, including the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching at HBS, and was a finalist for the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award.
In this 20-minute conversation, Stefan reveals how you can recruit & build a team of “Experimenters” who can take your business to new heights.
CEO’s often ask my favorite book.
Right near the top of the list is “Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t” by Verne Harnish.
Verne is Founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), with over 14,000 members worldwide, and teaches the “Birthing of Giants” held at MIT.
Verne’s company, Gazelles Inc, shows mid-market companies globally how to build & execute their strategic plan.
So, what’s a Gazelle?
It’s a business that has increased revenue by at least 20% per year for 4+ years, starting from a revenue bass of at least $1 million.
It’s surprisingly rare.
…And can’t be done without putting a Rockstar in every seat.
In this 20-minute conversation, Verne reveals how to do that.
Great tech startup ideas can come from anywhere.
This one came from the waiting room of a high-end car wash.
Following a successful career in sales with med device maker Medtronic, Brent Oakley started Prime Car Wash, now with 5 locations.
In the process, he discovered how setting the right mood creates an exceptional customer experience that keeps customers coming back.
So, he co-founded Vibenomics, the marketing tech software company that provides location-based businesses with an easy & effective way to create whatever vibe they want to convey within their space.
It’s an audio out-of-home advertising & experience platform. Vibenomics promotes products in-store, educates shoppers, and drives them to websites or apps for coupons.
His investors include BIP Capital, High Alpha, Elevate Ventures, Allos Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners.
In this 20-minute conversation, Brent reveals how he’s scaled his team comprised of 40 Rockstars.
You don’t find many attorneys running VC-backed tech startups.
But here’s one.
Jacob Babcock is Founder & CEO of NuCurrent, which recently raised another $11M.
With over 100 patents, NuCurrent is the leading developer of high-efficiency wireless power solutions. They work closely with electronic device OEMs & integrators to determine the best implementation of wireless power for their product.
Jacob’s timing couldn’t be better, as wireless is all the rage.
With a team of 40 & growing, he’s raised capital from IU Ventures, Purple Arch Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, HBS Angels Chicago, and Independence Equity.
In this 20-min conversation, Jacob reveals how he hires, including the importance of crafting a Scorecard for each position.
Even if you don’t live in his hometown of Chicago, you should know Chris Gladwin.
Because he’s a 6-time Founder… including at least one Unicorn.
Chris is CEO & Co-Founder of Ocient, which has created the leading high-performance database & analytics platform for the world’s largest datasets.
Ocient’s database handles datasets in the petabyte to exabyte range. It’s designed to hold quadrillions of rows of data, ingress at speeds of billions of rows per second, and compute results at rates of trillions of rows per second.
To put that into perspective: Caltech researcher Roy Williams suggested that “all words ever spoken by human beings” could be stored in 5 exabytes of data.
To scale Ocient, Chris raised venture capital from OCA Ventures & In-Q-Tel. He also serves as Co Chair of P33, the ambitious initiative to boost Chicago’s tech economy.
Prior, he founded Cleversafe, the object storage software & systems developer which IBM acquired for $1.3 billion.
In this 20-minute conversation, Chris reveals how he hires Rockstars, what he looks for, and why he does it.
Your luck is about to change.
And after 2020, we could all use some of that.
But it doesn’t just happen… You need to make it happen.
Even the most successful business leaders will tell you that luck & serendipity played a huge role in their ride. Warren Buffett famously said that much of his success is due to winning the lottery of being born in the United States at the right time in its evolution.
So how do you change your luck? I wanted to find the answers from an expert.
Christian Busch is author of the fascinating new book The Serendipity Mindset: The Art & Science of Creating Good Luck
Christian is a brilliant guy. He’s Director of NYU’s Global Economy Program where he teaches purpose-driven leadership, entrepreneurship, and (social) innovation
He’s also visiting professor at London School of Economics.
In this 20-minute conversation, Christian reveals how to change your luck in 2021.
Humble. Soft-spoken. Not your typical tech CEO.
That’s Mike Gamson, CEO of Relativity and one of Chicago’s most seasoned tech executives & investors.
Relativity’s software helps users organize data, discover the truth, and act on it. Its e-discovery platform is used by thousands of organizations to manage large volumes of data and quickly identify key issues during litigation, internal investigations, and compliance projects.
Relativity has over 180,000 users in 40 countries including the U.S. Department of Justice and 75 of the Fortune 100 companies.
Its investors include ICONIQ Capital.
Mike knows a thing or two about scaling teams:
In his former role at LinkedIn, he oversaw LinkedIn’s Global Solutions Organization. Mike led a salesforce that grew from a handful of people to more than 5,000 employees in 36 cities, generating more than $6 billion in revenue.
In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals what he looks for in a Rockstar and how he scales companies by putting people first.
Talk about a rocketship…
Fishtown Analytics, named for Philly’s hip namesake neighborhood, started this year with 16 employees. Next year, it’ll have over 100.
I wanted to find out how CEO Tristan Handy is doing it.
He Co-Founded Fishtown, which created the open-source data engineering platform named dbt (“data build tool”) that’s used by thousands of data analysts & engineers. dbt enables the modern analytics workflow by organizing, cleansing, and aggregating data so that it’s ready for analysis.
It’s a big vision.
So, it’s backed by tens of millions in Venture Capital by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Amplify Partners.
In this 20-minute conversation, Tristan reveals how he’s scaling the team 6x this year. And how you can do the same.
Here’s the perfectly-named & ideally-timed company of 2020:
Remote.
Its CEO & Co-Founder, Job van der Voort, is based in Portugal.
And he just raised $35M in Venture Capital so that You can hire the best people remotely in just an hour… Even across the globe.
The pandemic has been rough on the work world.
But the silver lining: you’re no longer limited to hiring the best people in your town. Now you can hire the best from the world. This opens up a new chapter in hiring.
But if you’re going to do it, you need to abide by the rules & regulations of the states & countries of your new hire.
And that can be super complex.
But it doesn’t need to be.
Job’s company Remote handles everything … Payroll, benefits, compliance when you hire internationally. (You don’t need to be an expert on Liechtenstein’s labor laws.)
Before starting Remote, Job was VP Product for GitLab a distributed company… so he’s been doing this for long before the pandemic.
His investors include Sequoia Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, Index Ventures, General Catalyst
In this 20-minute conversation, Job reveals how he’s scaled his own team. And how he can help scale yours.
Even in Liechtenstein.
Hopefully you haven’t had to deal with it.
I’m talking about employee ethics breaches. Not fun. But unfortunately, one day you will.
So I tracked down J Rollins, CEO & Founder of Ethix360, to take a look.
Based in Charlotte NC, its software manages employee ethics issues, breaches, and compliance. Clients include global leaders in insurance, package delivery, retail, tech, and energy.
J is a veteran CEO who’s worked in startups & large companies alike. He’s an expert on the topic.
And in this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s successfully scaled his team.
During 2020, the majority of companies began working remotely or virtually.
But Evan Walden, CEO of Getro, was one step ahead. Because he’s been doing it since before we’d heard the word Covid.
Based in NYC, but with a widely distributed team, Getro help companies & talent do work that matters. They match the two together, by creating talent networks for VC firms, PE firms, and Accelerators.
Getro itself successfully completed the Techstars program.
In this 20-minute conversation, Evan shares the keys to leading a team across time zones. And the gotchas that can hold you back.
Startup Grind is the legendary community of 600 Chapters in 125 countries that educates, inspires, and connects entrepreneurs.
Since 2012, it has hosted 10,000 events for over 250,000 entrepreneurs.
And I just had the chance to interview its Founder Derek Andersen, based in Silicon Valley.
He’s spent the past 10 years building communities.
Derek is also co-founder & CEO of Bevy, the Customer-to-Customer SaaS platform that helps Salesforce, Atlassian, and Slack scale their event communities. His investors include Accel & Upfront Ventures.
So he knows a thing or two about building communities, scaling startups, and hiring Rockstars.
In this 20-minute conversation, we cover all three.
When Joshua Motta’s dentist was attacked by ransomware, demanding $200K to open the files, he found it was cheaper to just shut his practice & retire.
Sad.
So Joshua’s doing something about it.
He’s CEO & Co-Founder of Coalition. Based in SF, his fast-growing company now has 130 employees.
It provides Cyber & Technology Insurance (up to $15 million of coverage) with reinsurance partners Lloyd’s of London and Swiss Re Group.
And he’s onto something big.
Coalition’s investors include Felicis Ventures, Hillhouse Capital Group, Ribbit Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Sam Altman, and Greyhound Capital
Prior, Joshua worked at Francisco Partners & IGNIA Partners. So he understands the perspectives of both a sophisticated investor, and an entrepreneur.
And in this 20 minute conversation, Joshua shares how he’s scaled the team that may save you from Ransomware.
Few things are as painful as the home buying process. And in particular, the closing day.
Max Simkoff started States Title in 2016 after personally experiencing the friction & labor caused by title insurance.
Max Simkoff is Founder & CEO of States Title, the mortgage analytics software company focused on reducing friction & expense for several of the largest pain points across the $1.5 Trillion/year mortgage origination market.
Prior to States Title, he was Founder and CEO of Evolv, an HR predictive analytics software company that he scaled from zero to 100 employees, an eight-figure annual revenue, and 20% of the Fortune 500 as customers. Max led Evolv through its acquisition by Cornerstone.
Last month, States Title raised $123 million in in venture funding by Greenspring Associates, Fifth Wall Ventures, and Foundation Capital.
And to scale even faster, Max purchased the massive North American Title Group, cement ing a position as leader in digitizing the home buying process.
In this 20-minute conversation, Max shares how he’s scaled a Rockstar team.
Few industries are more competitive & commoditized than real estate.
If you can succeed in Sales there, you’ve got something.
Larry Kendall’s got something.
He is one of the founding partners of The Group, one of the nation’s largest real estate company - with 190 sales associates & 6 Colorado offices.
He’s also the author of the terrific book Ninja Selling. It’s less about selling and more about how to create value for people.
If you’re selling anything to anyone, my 20-minute conversation with Larry will help.
When creating new drugs, it’s often difficult to find enough patients for clinical trials.
And that limits the number of trials you can run.
Which slows down drug development. And costs lives.
Charles Fisher is out to change all that.
He’s CEO of Unlearn.AI
Based in San Francisco, Unlearn helps biopharma companies develop drugs more efficiently by leveraging AI to reduce the number of patients required for placebo controls in clinical trials.
In fact, Unlearn.AI enables clinical trials that are twice as fast, require fewer patients, produce better evidence about efficacy, and in which fewer patients need to be given placebos.
Last week, the company announced a major venture investment from Epic Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, and the global Pharma company Eisai
Charles & his team are creating the first commercial product providing AI-derived Intelligent Control Arms to increase the statistical power of clinical trials, and accelerate study timelines in Alzheimer’s Disease.
In this 20-minute conversations, he reveals how he’s scaling the team.
Your company can’t operate at peak performance until you do.
But how?
Steven Kotler is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance.
He’s a New York Times-bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective.
Steven is the author of 9 bestsellers including The Art of Impossible, The Future is Faster Than You Think, and Stealing Fire. His work has been nominated for 2 Pulitzer Prizes, and translated into 40 languages.
In this 20-minute conversation, Steven reveals the keys to speeding up -and tightening up- performance at your company.
Industries don’t come much larger than self-storage. It’s $38 billion a year.
And disruptors don’t come much more determined than Rahul Gandhi, CEO & Co-Founder of MakeSpace.
Based in New York, it’s a convenient, simple, on-demand storage solution that takes the “self” out of “self storage.”
To create a new kind of storage company, Rahul raised $100 million in venture capital from Founders Fund, Upfront Ventures, 8VC, Lowercase Capital, 8VC, Primary Venture Partners, Winklevoss Capital, Iron Mountain, and… yes… Carmelo Anthony of Portland Trail Blazers.
MakeSpace took the struggle out of storage—and reinvented an antiquated industry in the process. They designed a hassle-free experience that allows people to store & retrieve their belongings on-demand, so they can skip the whole schlep-to-a-storage-unit thing.
In just a few years, Rahul has expanded to two dozen major cities in North America.
To support this seamless experience, he built the industry’s first fully integrated system, from back-end routing to warehouse logistics, and a consumer app complete with a digital photo inventory of stored items.
Prior, Rahul was Principal with Primary Venture Partners.
And in this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he’s scaled the team that takes your stuff (…and brings it back!)
Sad but true. Bain & Company rejected my application to join the firm… twice.
But I’m still a fan.
They hire one Rockstar after another. And I just had the chance to meet one.
Darrell Rigby is a Partner who’s been with Bain for 40 years, and he leads the firm’s Global Innovation and Agile practices.
Forget everything you think you know about Agile.
It has the power to transform your company … but only if it’s implemented the right way.
You’re painfully aware of the huge chasm between your hope for a nimble, flexible company and the reality of silos, sluggishness, and frustrated innovation.
Today, Agile is hailed as the essential bridge across that chasm.
People say it can transform your company, catapulting you to the head of the pack.
Not so fast.
Darrell is co-author of the wonderful new book Doing Agile Right.
This clear-eyed & indispensable book provides a much needed reality check. It dispels the myths & misconceptions that have accompanied Agile’s growth — the idea that it can reshape your organization all at once, or that it should be used in every function and for all types of work.
In this 20-minute conversation, Darrell explains how Agile can put turbochargers on your company. (If you do it right.)
It’s been a rough year.
As the pandemic grows, so have all sorts of unhealthy behaviors… including alcohol abuse.
Fortunately, there’s Mike Russell.
Mike is Co-Founder & CEO of Monument, an online treatment platform for those looking to change their relationship with alcohol.
Designed to support sobriety or moderation, Monument plans are personalized to members’ goals, lifestyles, and preferences. Plans include access to therapist-moderated support groups, video therapy, and physician-prescribed medication.
Mike started the company, driven by his own struggle with alcohol.
And he knows what he’s doing. Mike is a member of the founding teams of Paintzen (Acquired by PPG Industries), Bombas, Zipdrug, and MyClean.
Investors love it too.
They include Lerer Hippeau, Collaborative Fund, Red Sea Ventures, NextView Ventures, Corigin Ventures, and Data Point Capital.
In this 20-minute conversation, Mike shares how he’s built a Rockstar team at Monument.
Jim McKelvey had trouble selling a $2,000 art piece from his glassblowing studio.
So, he co-founded the now-legendary payments firm Square with Jack Dorsey.
Jim remains on Square’s board and has started a new company, Invisibly, which powers micropayments for journalism & publishing.
He also sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (the only time he ever wears a tie) and started the nonprofit LaunchCode to teach people how to program.
This year, Jim published the terrific book “The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time” which details Square’s battle against Amazon to create a better payments system.
In this 20-minute conversation, Jim shares how he scaled the early team at the hypergrowth company Square and how you can do the same.
Sizing people up is hard.
It takes getting under their skin to see what makes them tick. And deciding whether they’d be a good match with your company’s unique culture.
In fact, getting it wrong with even just a few crucial hires can be a company killer.
So I tracked down an expert.
Robin Dreeke is a veteran FBI leader who just published “Sizing People Up” the outstanding box to help you predict behavior.
And when it comes to hiring, that’s what it’s all about.
The book starts with Robin nearly being obliterated by a falling tower on 9/11, and then step-by-step how to assess people’s true motivations & tendencies.
In this 20-minute conversation, Robin reveals how to cut thru the candidate’s BS when hiring.
When a leading Private Equity firm has 50 portfolio companies & 100 consolidating acquisitions, continuing to attract the best talent is crucial.
Period.
So, Boston-based Great Hill Partners added Heather Fox Ewing to the team. She’s Director of Talent & leads the firm’s executive talent network management.
Heather collaborates with the firm’s investment team to engage the next generation of CEO’s & leadership teams with whom the firm can partner.
Prior to joining Great Hill Partners, Heather was Senior Recruiter with the hypergrowth startup Drift, where she scaled the sales team by 80 people.
In this 20-minute conversation, Heather reveals how she finds, vets, and lands the best talent.
And how you can do the same.
Do you have a To-Do List a mile long of all the things you need to accomplish for your business?
Some days, I look at mine & feel stuck. (And hopeless.)
Because I have no idea how to prioritize it.
Can you imagine having a roadmap to help you prioritize your To-Do List and get rid of the junk that won’t add value?
I tracked down the guy that can show us how.
By his 35th birthday, Mike Michalowicz had founded & sold two multi-million dollar companies.
Confident that he had the formula to success, he became an angel investor… and proceeded to lose his entire fortune!
So he started all over again, driven to find better ways to grow healthy, strong companies.
Mike is the creator of Profit First, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit.
And his latest, arguably most impactful discovery, is his new book Fix This Next. In it, Mike details the strategy that you can use to determine what to do, in what order, to ensure healthy, fast, permanent growth (and avoid debilitating distractions).
Here’s my 20-minute conversation with Mike.
Long before he became legendary business speaker & bestselling author, Pat Lencioni was my executive coach.
It was late 90’s in Silicon Valley. I was building my first startup, leading people for the first time, and wrestling with my own demons.
He kicked my butt when I needed it most. Pat was brilliant.
(And he still is.)
As founder of The Table Group, he’s known as the pioneer of the organizational health movement. He is the author of 11 books, which have sold over 6 million copies in 30 languages.
They include The Five Dysfunctions of A Team, Death by Meeting, and my personal favorite The Five Temptations of a CEO (I re-read it every year.)
Pat’s passion is leadership, teamwork, organizational health and he advises the nation’s top CEO’s & leadership teams.
This week, Pat & his team launched a new tool to help you determine your specific type of Genius.
Everyone is a genius in their own way. Pat boiled it down to the 6 specific types.
In this 20-minute conversation, Pat reveals them & why it’s so vital to know yours and those on your team:
Here’s Pat & me.
And if you’d like to take the profile, here’s the link to www.WorkingGenius.com
Amongst other things, 2020 has been the year of Telemedicine.
And Heal.com is proof … With a twist.
The LA-based company provides house call doctors for grownups & kids. You can get an experienced physician to your door in under an hour for $99. (Or if you prefer, via your phone or computer.)
Founded by Nick Desai in 2015, Heal.com is now in network with Aetna, Anthem, Humana, and a host of others. So it’s covered.
Investors have noticed too. Nick has raised $200M from Humana, Fidelity, Bascom Ventures, Pritzker Group, Slow Ventures, March Capital Partners, and (my favorite) Lionel Richie.
In this 20-minute conversation, Nick shares how he’s built a team of 250 who bring healthcare to your front door.
Raw intelligence is one of the most highly-overrated qualities in hiring.
I’m not going to tell you that high IQ doesn’t help in business.
But without EQ, or Emotional Intelligence, to go with it - a leader is going nowhere fast.
Because EQ is how we understand ourselves and the people we work with. What’s important to them. How we motivate & inspire them. How we negotiate with them.
In short: EQ > IQ
To dig in, I sought out an expert on the topic.
Christopher Connors is a #1 bestselling author on the topic and a leadership consultant to countless CEO’s.
His new book “Emotional Intelligence For The Modern Leader” empowers leaders to use EQ to build thriving cultures & winning teams.
As a 25-year Headhunter, I prioritize EQ over IQ any day of the week. And twice on Sunday. Now more than ever, in these trying times, being a successful leader for your team demands Emotional Intelligence.
In this 20-minute conversation, Christopher reveals how to develop yours.
Want to empower your team to make better decisions & take greater ownership?
Tired of micromanaging & babysitting them?
Former US Navy Captain David Marquet is the author of 2 outstanding books: Leadership is Language and Turn The Ship Around!
A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, David served in the U.S. submarine force for 28 years.
After being assigned to command the nuclear-powered sub USS Santa Fe, (then ranked last in retention & operational standing) he realized the traditional leadership approach of “take control, give orders,” wouldn’t work.
So David “turned the ship around” by treating the crew as leaders, not followers, and giving control, not taking control. This approach took the Santa Fe from “worst to first” achieving the highest retention & operational standing in the Navy.
In just months!
In this 20-minute conversation, David shares how he did it. And, even if your business is not a turnaround, how you can get the most out of your team.
Companies have more data than they know what to do with.
Kendall Clark, Founder & CEO of Stardog, helps them do something with it.
Based in DC, his 65-person company has created an Enterprise Knowledge Graph. This platform helps you understand & interpret your data. And make more data-driven decisions.
Customers include Morgan Stanley, Bosch, Ericsson, and NASA
Stardog’s investors include Presidio Ventures, Dcode, Contour Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures, Tenfore Holdings, Boulder Ventures, Core Capital.
In this 20-minute conversation, Kendall reveals how he’s scaled the team.
It took me a long time to finally book this guest. And it was worth the wait.
Dr Roy Schoenberg is Co-Founder and CEO of Amwell, the transformative telemedicine company that IPO’d last month.
After serving in the Israel Defense Forces & earning his MD, Roy co-founded the company (originally American Well) with his brother in 2006.
It’s become one of the largest most important telemedicine & telehealth companies in the world
Amwell connects on-demand telehealth visits between patients in need & available providers. Once just a scrappy startup, the Amwell ecosystem has attracted 200 of the nation’s largest payers, health systems, employers, retailers and reaches 80 million Americans as a covered benefit.
Prior to Amwell, Roy was Founder of CareKey & CISO of TriZetto, following its acquisition of CareKey. Roy is the recipient of the American Telemedicine Association Industry award for leadership in the field of telemedicine.
This year has been transformative for Amwell. Usage is up 3,000% since the pandemic began. It’s convenient, intimate, and avoids costly ER visits.
On its journey, Amwell raised $800M from Allianz X, Takeda, Inventure Partners, and Google Cloud.
Then, the Coronavirus set the business on fire.
And on Sep 17, 2020, the company went public.
In this 20-minute conversation, Roy reveals how he overcame the odds & skepticism. And how he’s scaled the team to 1,000 full-time employees + 10,000 clinicians.