The VentureFizz Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jessica and Steve are serial entrepreneurs. They both started successful companies separately in other industries, but it was their personal experiences that brought them together to build ianacare. If you’ve ever had to care for a loved one who is ill, then you know first hand how challenging it can be on so many levels. You need help but you don’t want to be a burden to others and there are challenges around coordinating the care. In the U.S. alone, there are over 43M family caregivers and over 90% of the care happens in the home, not a hospital. ianacare was built to support these caregivers. It is a mobile app that provides the emotional and practical support they need. The creation of ianacare is a perfect example of entrepreneurs who find a problem through real-world experiences and realize that something needs to change and it becomes their passion to create the solution. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Steve & Jessica’s background and entrepreneurial stories including scaling a consumer subscription business to an exit for Jessica and Steve’s experience taking a video AdTech company public. * The details behind their personal experiences caregiving for a family member and why they decided to take action. * A deep dive into ianacare in terms of their business and product. * What the Just Show Up movement means. * Advice for founders on hiring during different stages of a business. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

This episode must have been fate. I subscribe to an email newsletter about podcasting from PodReacher and they had recommended Otter for transcriptions. I had been looking for a way to include a transcript for each podcast episode on VentureFizz, but I wanted something that was accurate and cost-effective. No, this is not a commercial for Otter, but I tested out the product and was blown away by its accuracy. If you go to our recent podcast episode, you’ll now see a full transcript available, which is powered by Otter. Anyway, a few weeks later after becoming a fan of Otter, I heard from their PR firm about having Sam as a guest on our podcast. When I took a deeper dive into his background, things just got even more interesting. Sam started and led Google location server, which powered the blue dot feature on Google Mobile Map in 2006 - 2010. After Google, he launched a successful startup that was acquired and now with Otter, he has a very big vision in how their platform might even change our lives. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Sam’s background including his PhD studies at Stanford under famed professor, David Cheriton. * The story of his involvement in creating Google Maps and the blue dot. * The details on Sam’s previous company, Alohar, and the acquisition by Alibaba. * A deep dive into Otter in terms of its many use cases, plus the complexity of their platform and its use of AI & deep learning. * What the future might look like if you could document and search all of your conversations. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.