The VentureFizz Podcast

The 800 meter race is said to be one of the hardest events for a runner. You need to have the long distance endurance combined with all-out effort as a sprinter. This is a perfect analogy for being an entrepreneur where you have to move fast, but you need to also think about the long haul for building a long-standing company for the future. Thus, it’s fitting that Alasdair is a runner who specialized in the 800. He grew up in England before coming to America to attend Harvard, where he was the captain of the Track and Field Team. To help him buy textbooks, Alasdair began selling products out of his dorm room, which led to him becoming one of the first third-party sellers on Amazon. It was this experience that ultimately led him down the path of starting Teikametrics. Teikametrics is the leading Retail Optimization Platform (ROP) for sellers on Amazon. They are optimizing billions of transactions for thousands of sellers, brands and agencies around the world to increase their overall sales and profits. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Alasdair’s journey to America to attend Harvard with only $900 in his pocket and two suitcases. * The story of how he became an entrepreneur and how being one of Amazon’s first third-party sellers led him down the path to starting Teikametrics. * All the details on their platform, how they are helping their customers, and growth plans ahead. * Alasdair’s prediction on what the future of E-Commerce could end up looking like * Advice on when’s the right time to raise funding. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

It takes courage to be able to take a risk and leave a career to pursue something that is your passion. Although it might be hard at times, they say that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. Chris is a perfect example of this scenario. He developed a passion for lacrosse that carried over into his college career playing at Wesleyan University. After working in an industry that didn’t inspire him, Chris and his co-founder and teammate, Matt Wheeler, took a risk to start a company around their passion for lacrosse. They recognized an opportunity to help student-athletes and parents with the recruitment process. Thus, SportsRecruits… or what was originally called LacrosseRecruits, was born. SportsRecruits, based in Brooklyn, is a platform that helps high school athletes market themselves to college coaches across the country. Think of it like a LinkedIn for college recruitment, where the student-athletes and parents have the tools and communication capabilities to assist with the recruitment process. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The current state of lacrosse as a growing sport and how the Premier Lacrosse League is getting traction as a professional league. * Chris’ background and the story of how he left a steady job in real estate to pursue his passion. * The early days of the company and how their scrappiness built a solid foundation for their business over the years. * The evolution of their business to where it is today. * Advice on the recruitment process for high school athletes. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Let’s face it. Your company is only as strong as your team and Mike knows this first hand. As a former Olympic sailing coach, you can’t compete unless you have a winning team of people that mesh well. Yet, finding and hiring the right people that help you climb that mountain together is really hard. It was Mike’s own use of The Predictive Index at a former company that opened his eyes to how effective their behavioral assessment tool was in terms of hiring. It was so effective, in fact, that he and his partner, Dan Muzquiz, went on to purchase the company to help expand its value for helping companies with designing and executing their talent strategies. This interview actually takes place at the company’s first annual Optima conference, which brought together the best minds in business to learn cutting edge strategies for designing, hiring, and inspiring high-performing teams. We discuss why they started this talent optimization conference and its importance. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Details on his background - growing up on the water and racing sailboats and what his experience as a coach for the US Olympic Sailing Team was like. * How he got into the business of buying businesses. * The history of The Predictive Index and the value it provides to building teams. * How they SaaS'ified the business and their plans ahead for growth. * Advice on scaling a company once you hit product-market fit. * How to let things go. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Modern advancements in technology have impacted almost every industry, but there are still some areas that might not be modernized. As we discuss in this podcast, Matt and his co-founders found one of those industries that was ripe for disruption while at Harvard and that is the public safety sector. Based on the important role that first responder, law enforcement, and public safety professionals play in our lives, you would think they would be leveraging state of the art technology to make their jobs more efficient and effective. However, this wasn’t the case and Mark43 is building a company to solve this issue with a modern, cloud-native platform for dispatch, records, evidence, and analytics. The company is backed by lots of notable investors such as Spark Capital, General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs, Lowercase Capital, Jeff Bezos, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Eisenmann, and many others. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Matt’s background and how a class at Harvard led him and his co-founders down the path of starting a company. * All of the details on Mark43 and how the company is building a modern tech platform for public safety professionals. * How Mark43 was able to land a who’s who list of notable investors. * The ways that Mark43 has been successful with PR initiatives. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

For the 149th episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Keith Frankel, Co-Founder & CEO of Parlor. Keith’s professional journey has not been a linear one. It has been the exact opposite. It’s been one that has taken lots of interesting twists and turns. From producing reality television shows to running creative & design for software companies, he has never been afraid to stretch outside of his comfort zone. Keith and his co-founders are now focused on tackling a problem which surprisingly, hasn’t been solved. Parlor, which recently closed a round of funding led by Bain Capital, is an all-in-one Discovery platform designed to help product teams validate the impact of all the features they're thinking about building, so that you are actually building the stuff that your customers actually want. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Keith’s backstory in terms of how he got to Boston and ended up being the captain of a touring stepping dance squad and brought him to MTV. * Why he made the transition to the software industry and how he worked his way into a creative and design leadership role, including his experience at HubSpot. * The a-ha moment that led the founding team at Parlor to start the company and the details on how they are solving this problem. * The unconventional method that Parlor used to raise funding. * And so much more. We just published the December edition of Career Forward. It has over 100 of the hottest jobs across the Boston tech scene. There are positions listed across all levels of experience and all functional areas like sales, product management, software engineering, and more. Go to venturefizz.com/careerforward to start exploring.

Jay is a serial entrepreneur, who has a history of building companies that have reflected the trend towards the gig economy. From package delivery to the taxi industry’s answer to Uber, he has transformed multiple industries and his latest company is tackling the insurance industry. If you are a small business owner or freelancer, it is probably smart to have insurance to protect yourself, but you probably don’t need insurance all the time. You probably just need it while you are actually providing your service. In the past, if you wanted coverage, you would have to purchase a plan for a full year. Thimble is disrupting the industry by providing essential risk protection with a flexible model where you can purchase coverage by the hour, day, or month - starting at just $5. The company recently announced $22M in Series A funding led by IAC. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * What its like building a company that ended up being an answer to a Jeopardy question. * Jay’s background growing up and how he ended up in entrepreneurship. * His first two startups eCourier and Hailo, which both transformed an industry and led to an exit. * All the details on Thimble and how it is allowing small businesses and freelancers to get flexible insurance on demand. * Advice on hiring during the early stage of a company. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Inspiration for a business idea can come from the most unique scenarios. Case in point, take Arik, who as a serial tech entrepreneur, decided to purchase a small-town grocery store in Vermont at Sugarbush. And pretty much everyone, for good reason as I would have told him the same thing, was that he was crazy and it was just an overall bad idea. Well, this crazy idea turned into the inspiration that led him down the path of Mable. As he was getting into the weeds of running a local grocery store, he discovered how archaic this industry was in terms of the ordering process, which was still phone, text, or email. Mable is modernizing the ordering process with an enterprise-level B2B eCommerce platform to simplify wholesale in the grocery and convenience industry. The company recently announced a $3M seed round of funding led by Venrock, Accomplice, and Founder Collective. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: *Arik’s career and his different roles in numerous successful startups, including the story of how his company was acquired by WHERE, which was then acquired by PayPal just months later. *The a-ha moment that led him to start Mable and all the details on the company. *Tips on what makes a great Product Manager. *Advice for first-time founders on raising capital. *And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

A couple of years ago, I rarely used emoji while communicating with friends, family, or professional contacts. Now, I use them all the time, as it is an easy and accepted way to communicate with people, especially since you can’t read tone with just words. Holler is a venture-backed company in New York City that is helping people have better conversations through expressive content. Travis saw the future of this form of communication early on and this is definitely a situation where being early to market was definitely a competitive advantage for Holler. It is an industry that has exploded where messaging is one of the top 5 activities that people engage in and last year alone,100 trillion messages were generated. What is also truly inspirational about Travis’ career path is how his whole career began at Chick-fil-A as a teenager and how he quickly rose up through the ranks into management and what this experience taught him at an early age. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Why he decided to turn down an offer at Goldman Sachs to start his own company. * All the details on what Holler does, and where they plan on heading in the future. * How the company is working with leading brands to help bring visual, engaging, and expressive content to the masses. * Advice for founders who might be early to market. * How to successfully leverage PR to grow awareness for your company. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

The best part of hosting The VentureFizz Podcast is getting a chance to talk to some of the most intelligent and driven entrepreneurs in the tech scene. Paul definitely fits the bill on both accounts. He is a highly accomplished technologist, who earlier in his career, actually worked on the broadband network infrastructure that we would all later know as the cloud. Paul, along with his twin brother Peter, founded iboss to address security issues for a mobile workforce. The problem is that traditional security appliances were ineffective at protecting a cloud-first and mobile world. The iboss cloud has solved this problem by providing organizations and their employees secure access to the Internet on any device, from any location, in the cloud. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * What it’s like founding and running a company with your twin brother. * A deep dive into the early foundation of Paul’s career and various technical initiatives he worked on. * The full background story on iboss and all the details on their platform. * Why they decided to move the company’s headquarters to Boston. * Advice for scaling a venture-backed company * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

The concept of Sable was born based on Andrej’s own personal experience as an international student while attending business school at Columbia. The complexity and the process of getting a bank account set up was incredibly archaic and challenging. The same goes for obtaining a credit card and it all can take months to get set up. Like any ambitious entrepreneur, especially one who was interested in the Fintech industry, Andrej took action. Along with his co-founders, Sable is making banking in the US for internationals easy. This NY startup recently graduated from Y Combinator’s summer cohort. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Andrej’s background and professional history. * What led the team down the path of solving the problem of banking for internationals. * All the details on Sable and how they got started. * The challenges they had to be overcome while dealing with the complicated and regulated banking industry. * Advice on the application process at Y Combinator and how to maximize your company’s time there. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.