Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

After breaking the internet with our Mia Khalifa Episode 111, we are bringing you another episode with John McAfee, Legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and 2020 U.S Presidential candidate. He joins us to share his experiences in Silicon Valley and talks about why he thinks “it doesn’t matter who the President is. This will no doubt be one of our most controversial episodes. Then and Now John has been called “The most interesting man in the world.” He was an outlaw, from parts unknown, He has lived part of his adult life, on the run, somewhere in Latin America. Today, John is a candidate for US President in 2020 If his name rings a bell, that is because he is the founder of McAfee The Security Company. John also got into a well-publicized Twitter war with Kim.com, the founder of now-defunct file hosting service Megaupload. Garden of Eden of Technology John passionately describes Silicon Valley then as the Garden of Eden of Technology. It was known as a tech hub for the world. He also shared interesting thoughts on Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, and Nolan Bushnell. “Most of the personalities in Silicon Valley were pleasant, creative, very different. Steve Jobs, as an example, never find time to take a bath. I can smell him across the room. That was just his thing, he did not have the f*cking time to take a bath. He is a serious businessman who took a bath at least once a month, I know I did. But I also work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for 2 years. Not because I had to, but because I f*ckin’ want it. I love what I was doing.” - John McAfee In the past, John describes Silicon Valley as heaven. He is also candid that he does not know anything about it now, as he left it 25 years ago.  “Everyone you met in your circle, did something or showed you something which opened your mind to the potential of digital technology. Trust me that’s not there anymore.” - John McAfee The President Doesn’t Matter John shares why he thinks it doesn’t matter who sits in the Oval Office. He claims that the CIA is running the show. He says there are instances that the CIA manipulates information, information that the President refers to when making decisions that affect not only the country but the whole world. John shares more of his insights on CIA, one of the biggest clients of McAfee Security Company in the past. “Selective information is the ultimate power.” - John McAfee To hear more information about John McAfee and to listen to his ideas on his bid to U.S. Presidency for 2020, download and listen to the episode. Bio: John David McAfee (/ˈmækəfiː/ MAK-ə-fee;[1][2] born September 18, 1945) is a British-American computer programmer and businessman. He founded the software company McAfee Associates in 1987 and ran it until 1994, when he resigned from the company. McAfee Associates achieved early success as the creators of McAfee, the first commercial antivirus software, and the business now produces a range of enterprise security software. The company was purchased by Intel in 2011 and spun back out in 2017 with TPG Capital owning a majority stake, though the software has always borne the McAfee brand name.  McAfee's wealth peaked in 2007 at $100 million, before his investments plummeted in the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Since leaving McAfee Associates, he has founded the companies Tribal Voice (makers of the PowWow chat program), QuorumEx and Future Tense Central, among others, and has been involved in leadership positions in the companies Everykey, MGT Capital Investments and Luxcore, among others.  His personal and business interests include smartphone apps, cryptocurrency, yoga, and all-natural antibiotics.  He resided for a number of years in Belize, but later returned to the United States in 2013. McAfee is also a political activist, who sought the 2016 Libertarian Party nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 election, losing to former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. Links: McAfee 2020

Join us in another fascinating and timely discussion with Yancey Strickler, Co-Founder & former CEO of Kickstarter, one of the most important new companies in the Startup ecosystem. He is the author of the new book This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. Yancey is an experienced entrepreneur who shares very powerful insights that apply to your business and your life. Listen to our discussion about Bentoism. It’s an intriguing way to think about life. A Chapter From The Book In a chapter of Yancey’s new book This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World, he shares about Adele and how he found a startup company that measures loyalty and engagement. Adele faced issues with scalpers purchasing and jacking up prices of her concert tickets. “Currently, we imagine that economics is how everything should be distributed and here, Adele, found some other value through which to make herself available.” - Yancey Strickler Through the algorithm, Adele chose Top 30 per area of her most loyal fans. These people got access to tickets at their original prices. According to reports, fans were able to save 6 to 10 million pounds. A New Lens in Doing Business Yancey considers the Adele example as a powerful and pervasive lens in doing business. Adele found a could-have-been a post-economic way to distribute goods, placed a halt to that and ultimately, provided more value to her loyal fans. “To me, that is a new kind of choice, a very new kind of decision. It is suggestive of what, of how capitalism evolves, of how we evolve as a society. Basically, where we all recognize the importance of financial value. We can also recognize the limitations of financial value being so dominant, as it is right now.” - Yancey Strickler Social Entrepreneurship and Bentoism Christopher and Yancey exchanged stories about social entrepreneurship and how it has become an emerging conversation right now. Yancey believes that social entrepreneurship will succeed when it becomes a dominant point of view of everyone. “Right now, marrying a financial purpose for a nonfinancial purpose is like the cute indie thing to do. But we should root for this to be like mainstream arena rock. I want this, headlining stadiums.” - Yancey Strickler Yancey also shares his idea on Bentoism or Beyond Near Term Orientation. He came up with this idea when he was doodling and creating graphs while evaluating what he wants at the moment and what he would want to achieve in the future.  To hear more about This Could Be Our Future and more information about Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter Co-Founder, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur. He is the cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter, author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World, and the creator of Bentoism. Yancey has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People.  He’s spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, Web Summit, and events around the globe.  He cofounded the artist resource The Creative Independent and the record label eMusic Selects. Yancey grew up in Clover Hollow, Virginia, and began his career as a music critic in New York City.  Links: Yancey Strickler Bentoism  Book: This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Today, entrepreneur and the incredibly creative guy Steve Lieberman, Founder & CEO of SJ Lighting, joins us today for another riveting conversation. Steve and his team have had a hand in almost every nightclub and electronic music festival in the US for the last ten years. He shares how he creates a lasting impact on attendees and how the whole production process goes, from planning to execution. Monumental Impact Even at a young age, he shares how he finds big, monumental art pieces as impactful. He carried on this astonishment for impactful art as he pursued a career in events production, specifically focusing on lights. “Whether it’s a big show or a little show, its 100,000 or 300-people-intimate-club-show, we like impact. An audience is coming to some show, they want to be moved. They want to be stimulated.” - Steve Lieberman Steve Lieberman has worked with more than 50 clubs and major festival brands like Electric Daisy Carnival, Coachella, Ultra, Lollapalooza, Rolling Loud and many more.  Similar Philosophies Steve shares how he and his colleagues share the same philosophies when it comes to event production. He further describes the whole lighting experience as “fluid with the music” as it is a visual representation of what the music is.  “When an audience comes in there, we have their attention and we want to give them something that they're gonna live with. I want them to leave that show and have something specific. It doesn’t need to be ten things. Whether it’s visual, oral—something that they heard—just part of their experience that they're going to take with them and they’re going to keep that forever.” - Steve Lieberman Puzzle Pieces Steve describes how every show is a little bit different. He says that there is no linear path from a  to b. As a designer, it’s not just taking out a worksheet and figuring out math problems. He sees production as fitting different pieces of a puzzle.  The design, procedures, modify based on what’s required and is highly dependent on the scale of the show. He shares he has to absorb all the information of what the show is, what the performers might prefer and who are the headlining artists. “I’d like to think, the promoters and basically, the guys who write the checks for the show, we’re on the same team. At the end of the day, my contracts are 99.9% with them. My priority is to protect their best interest.” - Steve Lieberman To hear more about Legendary Lighting & Nightclub Designer Steve Lieberman, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Steve Lieberman has been working in the festival and nightclub community since 1987. As a teen exploring NYC nightlife, he saw the potential of enhancing the events visually and got involved as a lighting designer for warehouse parties. This led naturally to stage design as his career picked up steam. By the time he moved to California in 2001, Steve’s reputation for next-level work made him a no-brainer for Insomniac, who came knocking at his door.  Some of Steve’s favorite projects of the past 25+ years are not necessarily the largest; he recalls fondly several side stages at EDC LA in the late nineties, such as one bassPOD stage consisting of a complete grid of LED fixtures laid into a matrix creating a truly dynamic perspective, and another stage with sets of stairs leading in all directions à la MC Escher.  Steve approaches each show, each stage, each environment with special attention based on the needs of the producer, the artist riders and the creative concepts. The primary principle to which Steve has held true all these years is not to fight your environment but to embrace it. Links: SJ Lighting How I Made It: Steve Lieberman got his start lighting illegal warehouse parties. Now, it’s Coachella. An Interview With Steve Lieberman: Founder of SJ Lighting We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter,

In another riveting episode, Scott Kupor, the managing partner of one of the highest-profile VC on the planet over the last decade, Andreessen Horowitz, joins us today to discuss startups, how to get funded and a lot more! He is also the author of the book called Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. “Inside Baseball” Scott addressed the common issue of "inside baseball" between entrepreneurs and VCs. He shares that there is no reason why questions shouldn’t be answered and that VCs should reach out to entrepreneurs. “People don’t understand why decisions are made. I think that just leads to mistrust quite frankly between VCs and entrepreneurs.” - Scott Kupor Moreover, Scott shares the reason why he wrote the book. He wanted to bridge the gap between VCs and entrepreneurs. Through this book, he answers several entrepreneur questions that previously were assumed to be understood, since they have done a lot of deals in the past.  Information Asymmetry Scott discusses the idea about information asymmetry and how it results to one party benefitting at the expense of the other in those types of scenarios. “Capital is scarce and VCs have it. There was definitely a very different balance of power between entrepreneurs and VCs. There’s probably less incentive quite frankly for the VC. The biggest change, I think,  in the last 10 yrs is, its as competitive as its ever been.” - Scott Kupor  Money clearly a commodity in this business. For Scott, if VCs and entrepreneurs can level the playing field, he would enter into a relationship on a basis of actually understanding one another, knowing what motivates one another as it would definitely be a good place better place to start. More From Scott Aside from talking about Silicon Valley, Startups and how entrepreneurs could get funding, he shares his thoughts on the overall VC backed industry.  “My personal view is—I’ve talked about this with people in DC publicly—the idea that more and more growth is happening in the private markets, while beneficial, selfishly for people like me, who get to, kind of monetize that growth. I don’t think its good for the country. I don’t think its good to not have companies going public at a reasonable stage where a broader cross-section of public market investors can actually enjoy the appreciation there.” - Scott Kupor To hear more about Secrets of Sand Hill Road Venture Capital and more information about Scott Kupor, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Scott Kupor is the managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz where he is responsible for all operational aspects of running the firm. He has been with the firm since its inception in 2009 and has overseen its rapid growth, from three employees to 150+ and from $300 million in assets under management to more than $10 billion. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, Scott worked as vice president and general manager of Software-as-a-Service at Hewlett Packard. Scott joined HP in 2007 as part of the Opsware acquisition, where he was senior vice president of Customer Solutions.  In this role, he had global responsibility for customer interaction, including professional services, technical pre-sales, and customer support. Scott joined Opsware shortly after the company’s founding and held numerous executive management positions including vice president, financial planning and vice president, corporate development.  In these roles, he led the company’s private financing activities as well as its initial public offering in 2001. Scott also started the company’s Asia Pacific operations and led the execution of the company’s multiple acquisitions. Prior to Opsware, Scott represented software companies in both financing and mergers and acquisitions transactions at Credit Suisse First Boston and Lehman Brothers.  He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in public policy with honors and distinction.

Today, Dave Bittner, Producer and Host of The CyberWire Podcast and Hacking Humans podcast, joins us for a timely discussion about security, the future, deep fakes Apple glasses and more. He is a regular guest of podcast Grumpy Old Geeks with previous guests, Jason DiFillipo & Brian Schulmister. Trade-Off Between Operations and Risks Security has played a huge role in every technology company nowadays. The episode starts off with a very timely topic on security. Christopher poses the question “why security is hard?”  Dave honestly answers that there is a trade-off and risk-reward decision-making process that needs to happen.  Dave continues that breaches started getting bigger as well as ramifications and costs resulting in bad publicity, too. Board Members now have started giving their attention to security threats, as they, themselves can be liable for these breaches. “I think these days good board members have to have a certain level of knowledge and education in cybersecurity because it touches everything.” - Dave Bittner More on Data Breaches and Hacking  Would there be more data breaches and hacking in the near future since the cost of technological equipment is getting cheaper? Dave answered, yes. Hackers are professionalizing themselves. They also have access to knowledge and tools that enables them to target victims, as opposed to the usual shotgun approach. “I think there are a few things going on right now, I think we are seeing the sophistication of the actors increased in the sense that, there’s an increase in the professionalism of them.” - Dave Bittner Other Future Related Topics Dave shares more about privacy and security. Also there's the fact that 60% of people in the US genetic connections can be implied from data available from 23andme or Ancestry.com. “The security implication is that biometric data—your DNA, your fingerprints, your face ID, facial recognition—those are the things that it’s very difficult to change, if not, impossible to change. If someone gets a hold of that and that something, that you’re using as a factor for your security, you cant just go reset that. That’s one of the long term concerns.” - Dave Bittner To hear more about Security, Deep Fakes and Apple Glasses and more information about Dave, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Dave Bittner is the Producer and Host of The CyberWire Podcast, Hacking Humans podcast. Links: Twitter: @bittner The Cyberwire Survey: Most Data Center Managers Rely on Outdated Security Practices Internet Companies Prepare to Fight the ‘Deepfake’ Future We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

We continue our run of legendary authors and today, we hang out with one of the smartest people in business, Joe Pine, one of the godfathers of “The Experience Economy.” It’s the 20th anniversary of his seminal work and he is reissuing an updated version of the book In this episode, we dig deep into the future of experiences and how companies use it to differentiate and create massive competitive advantage. Pay special attention to Joe’s radical insights around building a data flywheel and the big strategic difference between Facebook and Amazon. From UI to UX Joe Pine shares with us about the re-release of The Experience Economy, bearing a new preview, that he and his partner wrote. They focused on the subtitle: Competing for Customer Time, Attention and Money. Companies embraced the importance of user interface in the past and now, user experience, or UX.  “When the first book came out, we talked about it as a nascent, an emerging, a forthcoming experience economy and now, we say it’s here. It’s all around us. I used to have to argue with people that this was happening. Now, I just say it: people want experiences. People now say, ‘yeah I get it.’” - Joe Pine Further, Joe shared how the internet was at infancy back then. The www was just created in 1994 and in 1999, they didn’t have much to say about it. However, later over time, Joe shares they looked at it thoroughly and found the reason why people were on the internet was to surf the web—to have the experience of things that they couldn’t have otherwise. Data Flywheel Christopher shares his insights on how companies achieve category domination today. He shares that a big part of their strategy is getting their data flywheel spinning. “The data flywheel is a learning relationship. If you cultivate a learning relationship, it grows and deepens over time. You can almost lock your competitors out because you know more about these customers than they do. Even if they switch, they have to teach them all over again what you already know.” - Joe Pine Data Privacy Further, in the discussion, Christopher remarks about how other companies cannot replicate the “data on customer-intimacy” that Amazon has with its customers. Joe agrees with Christopher as Amazon has yet to sell data to anybody, as they want to use it themselves at the moment.  “From an authenticity standpoint, that corrodes them [Facebook and Apple] from the inside out, because they are selling your data. They're in it for the data, to sell to somebody else, rather than in it, for your best interest.” - Joe Pine To hear more about the co-author of “The Experience Economy” Joe Pine, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Co-author of The Experience Economy, Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups alike. In 1999, Joe and his partner James H. Gilmore wrote the best-selling book The Experience Economy: Work is a Theatre & Every Business a Stage, which demonstrates how goods and services are no longer enough; what companies must offer today are experiences – memorable events that engage each customer in an inherently personal way. In 2011, The Experience Economy came out for the first time in paperback as an Updated Edition with new ideas, new frameworks, and many, many new exemplars. Each of Mr. Pine's publications add a wealth of knowledge and experience to the business world, but The Experience Economy has become a quintessential read. Mr. Pine also co-wrote Infinite Possibility: Creating Customer Value on the Digital Frontier with Kim Korn, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want with Mr. Gilmore, and in 1993 published his first book, the award-winning Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition. Each book details Mr. Pine's breakthrough thinking as he has accurately charted many structural shifts -- from individualizing goods to today’s focus on customer experiences and many other changes in ...

In this episode, we continue our run of legendary authors as we feature Buster Benson and his new book, “Why are we yelling?: A fascinating look at why and who we argue.” Buster shares with us the inspiration of his book, the constant-learning that he is having and how it can be applied to work and life, in general. Agree to Disagree Buster candidly shared with Christopher that of all the hard topics he decided to take on, it was the topic about disagreements that he deemed to be one of the hardest. He still pursued this topic as he was challenged to tackle this topic. He also admits that the inspiration for the book was his curiosity on cognitive bias. “That is the initial problem. in order to have a conversation about disagreement, we have to be open to the idea that we don’t have the right answer.” - Buster Benson Birds and Biases Buster shares that cognitive bias is an evolutionary term. It is a threat that could potentially lower our survival. It has the connotation that if we’re wrong, we would want to avoid it. In modern society, being wrong leads to being ousted from a certain group. To illustrate this, Buster shared the habits of birds looking for a nesting ground. These birds fight off other birds and other animals to have authority over a tree. In real life, human beings as a bird, are not going to engage other “birds” in civil disagreement.  “You’re going to just try to be the bigger bird and force the other one out. When we’re no longer in a situation and there’s only one tree and we have to have a nest here, or else we’re gonna die, we ask, is this tree big enough for multiple birds?” - Buster Benson Growth is the Consequence The consequence of being wrong is actually growth. Further, Buster shares that if we are good at several skills, it makes us more skilled at everything else. For example: talking, being literate, being able to self reflect magnifies the value of other skills. He introduces the importance of productive disagreement as well in this episode. “‘How do I treat somebody that is normally a threat to my survival, as an opportunity for growth’ is the core cognitive dissonance in disagreement.” - Buster Benson To hear more about the author of “Why are we yelling?” Buster Benson, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Buster Benson wrote the book titled "Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement". He also run 750words.com with my wife. His interests include creative businesses, collaborative disagreements, cognitive biases, enterprise software, messaging platforms, behavior change, social games, silly drawings, making life a little bit better through technology.  Read more about his through this link.  Links: Book: Why are we yelling?  Cognitive bias cheat sheet Linkedin: Buster Benson We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

We continue our run of legendary VCs and legendary authors like our guest for today, Ted Dintersmith. He’s a former top tech VC and he’s the author of the book What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers Across America. This is a powerful look at what’s possible in education from a smart, committed, super thoughtful guy. What School Could Be Ted Dintersmith went to all fifty states, visiting some 200 schools and spoke to different school personnel and students. He says he was stunned by the innovative classrooms and schools he found across the USA. However, he also talked about schools who he described as good in paper, but not as good in reality. “There were so many schools like that, where on paper, it looks likes the kids are doing really well. Good grades, good test scores, reasonable to good College placements. The point I make is that I think these kids, are not really being helped in terms of being prepared for a world defined and shaped by innovation. They're actually being impaired.” - Ted Dintersmith Shifting Mindsets Ted shares his conversations with school teachers, administrators and students shifted his thinking. He further says that the measure of success in so many schools is aligned with a few narrow capabilities. He questioned the schools, asking if he puts a kid in their school who excelled at memorizing material, replicating low-level procedures and following instructions, he bets that kid would be on the honor roll. “SAT tutors say, ‘don’t be creative when you take this test. Don’t think of unusual ways to answer it. Think clearly, simply and formulaically. The 2nd thing is, if it’s hard and it’s going to take a while to figure it out, skip it.’ Is that a great message for the kids?” - Ted Dintersmith Education is a Pie Eating Contest Ted continues to share with Christopher his insights that many kids are being told that they're not gifted because they don’t match up to those narrow skills. Christopher also remarked in an overly simplistic form, that education nowadays is like a “Pie Eating Content” where you jam everything, regardless of what kind of pie it is, and know that the more you take, the better. “It’s crazy. We organize most of education around what’s easy to test and not what’s important to learn.” - Ted Dintersmith To hear more about how to encourage kids, unleash their passion and support dedicated teachers and more about Ted Dintersmith, download and listen to the episode. Bio: About Ted Links: Ted Dintersmith Twitter: @dintersmith We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

This special episode is with Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce.com Vala Afshar. Coinciding with Dreamforce —Salesforce.com’s annual mega-conference in San Francisco, Vala shares with us what it’s like to be a leader in the digital media age.  He also shares some of the key practices that have made Salesforce #1 on Forbes most innovative companies list. Social Business Excellence Vala is the author of The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence. He is also the co-host of DisrupTV and one of the most visible and impactful thought leaders in enterprise tech. On the side, he is a contributing writer at HuffPost, which he claims were one of his ticket for his CMO career. “I was a CMO for 4 years. Complete impostor syndrome from beginning to end because I never had Marketing experience, I never went to school to study the art and science of Marketing. My CEO called me on  a weekend saying ‘on Monday I'm gonna announce that you’re going to be the CMO.” - Vala Afshar He narrates to Christopher how the energy and confidence that he used to have as an athlete, did not translate to who he has become as a business person. However, he got through this challenge as he had the passion to share information. From An Introvert to a Keynote Speaker For an introvert, Vala narrates how he spent 10 years writing codes. He was perfectly happy locked up in a cube, just writing software. He is still amazed with how he opened himself up to people and to be able to share the stage with Christopher in various events.  “Movement is the ultimate status symbol. Movement of information. Again, in my first 40 years, if I read a book or listened to your podcast, I would just consume it and then that's it, it stayed with me. In the last 5 or 6 years, when I learned something, I try to capture that and share.” - Vala Afshar Salesforce Innovation Vala quotes other professionals on why they think Salesforce is successful: it’s because of technology disruption. This disruption is in terms of ‘how do you build an ecosystem, how do you give away your time, money and profit, how do you build a company based on emerging technology and how do you create new business models. “The 111 Philanthropic model was pretty unique and now about 10,000 companies have adopted that. The subscription model, pay as you go, that's like the envy of most business..” - Vala Afshar He also shares about the Salesforce module called V2mom, a mobile compatible app where employees align with the company vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measurements.  To hear more about the best practices of Salesforce.com and leadership advice from Vala Afshar, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Vala Afshar is the Chief Digital Evangelist for Salesforce. Afshar is the author of The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence. Afshar is also the co-host of DisrupTV, a weekly show covering the latest digital business and innovation market trends. Links: Twitter: @ValaAfshar Linkedin: Vala Afshar Salesforce Blog: Vala Afshar HuffPost Contributor: Vala Afshar We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes! Get amazing, different stories on business, marketing, and life. Subscribe to our newsletter The Difference.

Today’s guest is none other than Silicon Valley Legend, Heidi Roizen. She is an accomplished, Entrepreneur, former head of developer relations at Apple and now, a legendary VC. She shares with us why today is the Golden Era for entrepreneurship, how any company is literally a tech company and more about VC-backed company, Memphis Meats. Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector The Financial Women of San Francisco honored Heidi as Financial Woman of the Year in 2018. She is also dubbed as “Silicon Valley's Greatest Connector.” She is currently sits on the board of companies such as Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT. “I talk about the fact that there should be more women entrepreneurs and there should be more women venture capitalists and diversity. Not just gender diversity but other diversity and I try to support that through my actions. I think it’s appropriate given my role in Silicon Valley. If I have an opinion about that, I should be vocal about that.” - Heidi Roizen Other than these achievements, Heidi is a self-proclaimed animal lover. She adopted several dogs from the shelter, which she fondly shares in her social media. Golden Era of Entrepreneurship Heidi describes the market as a seller's market when it comes to early-stage equity. There are a lot of sources of capital in the market, its very competitive. She enumerates all the positive assets entrepreneurs have in today’s world. “There's just so many different avenues for funding. There are so many tech breakthroughs that can be built upon, whether that is networking or processing power, sensors, devices, GPS, next-gen VR technologies, ubiquitous platforms. When you think about the kinds of businesses you can start today for pennies, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past.” - Heidi Roizen The only negative she can mention is about competition, as she believes everyone else can also solve many big, interesting problems. Additionally, she mentions why companies nowadays are considered tech companies. “I do think it’s interesting today is, every company is a technology company, right? For the most part, how they interact with the customers, how they distribute their products, how they garner feedback, how they handle customer service, tech support, logistics, supply chain, internally, HR systems—every company is deep in technology now.” - Heidi Roizen Memphis Meats. Cell-based Meat Heidi shares more about Memphis Meats and why she believes there is a huge growth potential for cell-based meat. First, she discusses how meat is inefficient to produce: from breeding to feeding to slaughtering and distribution to markets. Not only does it requires more resources, such as land and water use, it is also highly prone to contamination. “The great thing about being a venture capitalist is, we don’t have to actually invent this stuff. There are really awesome entrepreneurs that are way smarter than we are who come up with these ideas. We just have to make sure they want to come to talk to us, and that we can validate sufficiently what they are doing through our own research learning.” - Heidi Roizen To hear more about legendary Silicon Valley stories of Heidi Roizen, download and listen to the episode. Bio: Heidi represents the voice of the entrepreneur, having been one herself. But she also represents the voice of the user, as those are the roots that led her to start a company in the first place. She is on the boards of directors of Zoox, Planet, Memphis Meats, HelixRE and DMGT (LSE:DMGT.) After Heidi earned her undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford, she co-founded T/Maker, where she served as CEO for over a decade through its acquisition by Deluxe Corporate in 1994. Next, she joined Apple as VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, and from there, Mobius Venture Capital. She's been named to the Corporate Board Member's "Top 50 Women in Tech" list and Hot Topics' Top 100 Women in Tech. In 2018, Heidi was named the Financial Woman of the Year ...