The VentureFizz Podcast

I was excited to interview Rick for The VentureFizz Podcast, as he has a very unique background in terms of scaling great retail and restaurant brands like Borders, Panera Bread, and Wahlburgers, which was a startup at the time when he joined as CEO. Sure in the case of Wahlburgers, it is helpful when the owners are celebrities and you have an A&E reality show to support the company, but regardless… you still need to have the right vision, product, and service… and even more importanlty, you need to have the ability to execute, which is where so many companies fail. Rick is now tackling a new but related industry and that is in the world AgTech as CEO of Freight Farms. It is a company that I have been following and have admired since I first heard about them from their time at MassChallenge and Techstars. It is such a cool concept - hydroponic container farms where can grow food any time and anywhere. Freight Farms recently announced a $17.5M Series B3 round of funding to support the growth of the business. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Advice for scaling companies in the food industry. * Rick’s professional background throughout his early career including his time as the EVP and Co-COO at Panera Bread. * How he sought out Wahlburgers and became the company’s first CEO and helped it grow to a $100M brand, plus details on working with the Wahlberg family and the A&E show. * All the information on Freight Farms in terms of how their container farms work, plus details on the company’s business model which includes hardware, software, and services. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Who are the tech companies in the Boston tech scene that are going to scale and become the next anchor companies like Rapid7, CarGurus, Amwell, or DraftKings? If I was pulling together a list of companies, I would definitely add Fairmarkit to the short-list. The company is revolutionizing the way organizations buy and sell through automated sourcing. It is a massive market in a sector that has been vastly underserved in terms of leveraging technological advancements like AI. Plus, regardless of economic conditions, procurement teams are always going to be looking for ways to reduce expense and automate business processes. Fairmarket recently announced a $35.6M Series C led by OMERS Growth Equity, with participation from GGV Capital, Insight Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and ServiceNow. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Advice on taking that entrepreneurial risk of starting a company. * The beginning of Kevin’s professional journey and how sales helped propel his career at tech companies like EMC and Turbonomic. * The full story of Fairmarkit from the very early days of an idea to where it is today. * The benefits of having an executive coach. * 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 likely know these companies: Eventbrite, Canva, Houzz - so, what do all of these companies have in common other than being incredibly successful? All of the companies were founded by a married couple. Most of the interviews that I’ve had for the podcastare one on one with a few exceptions of talking to a couple of co-founders at once or even a founder and their investor for the podcast, but this was the first time that I’ve interviewed a married couple, which was cool. Gene and Elaine are looking to disrupt the sporting industry with Athletes Untapped, a private coaching platform for young athletes who are looking to take their game to the next level. What’s impressive about this couple’s entrepreneurial journey is that the business is bootstrapped and they are building it while they both have fulltime jobs. It’s something that I can relate to as VentureFizz was a side business until I went fulltime on it five years ago. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Taking the entrepreneurial leap while working full time. * A look at Gene and Elaine’s background including their athletic careers and how it influenced their interest in starting the company. * All the details on Athletes Untapped including how they get started and their progress around building the company to date, plus future plans. * Lessons learned. * Advice on building a company with your spouse. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Are we entering the primetime era for venture capital investments into Artificial Intelligence or AI startups? It at least seems that way, as things have cooled off with Web 3 and crypto. There is a ton of momentum in this space with lots of use cases including Jasper, an AI copywriting and content platform that recently announced $125M in funding. Or, it will be interesting to see what companies are funded that are built on top of tech like OpenAI’s DALL·E 2. Arthur is looking to ride this wave but they are taking a very smart approach an infrastructure play with its machine learning observability platform. A great analogy for this sector is what network monitoring software does for the netwrk, which detects outages, issues, and vulnerabilities… Arthur is looking to do the same for AI models. The company recently announced a $42M Series B round of funding co-led by Acrew Capital and Greycroft Ventures. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The pulse of innovation and entrepreneurship at two under-recognized institutions - University of Maryland and Carnegie Mellon. * John’s career prior to starting Arthur including a deep dive into his research, experience as an advisor, and his path to becoming a tenured professor. * All the details about Arthur and its platform, plus how the company is making AI more transparent and equitable. * Advice for academics who are thinking of taking on a leadership role at a 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.

There is a growing number of VC firms that are focused on investing in diverse founders. It’s a very important trend, as I believe these firms will continue to build a foundation that leads to more investing in great companies regardless of the founder’s gender or ethnic background. VamosVentures is one of these firms that is focused on changing the dynamic. 100% of the firm’s portfolio is diverse. Over 40% of their investments are women led and over 90% of their portfolio companies are Latinx led. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A deep discussion on what can be done to grow the number of diverse investors who are funding startups. * Ashley’s background story including her time at Brown University and how her career got started in various roles across investment banking and eCommerce. * How she got started in the world of venture capital while at MIT Sloan with the Dorm Room Fund and other firms. * What led her to join VamosVentures and some of the details around the firm’s investment thesis. * Lots of great advice for founders around fundraising regardless of the economic climate. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

For this podcast, I typically interview founders and investors, but there are times that I like to switch things up and get a different perspective about startups and entrepreneurship. Thus, I was excited to interview Jorge, as he teaches Entrepreneurial Strategy at Columbia Business School and his research has been focused on entrepreneurship policy, regional entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial strategy. He is also one of the creators of The Startup Cartography Project, which is an interactive map showcasing the quantity, quality, and performance of entrepreneurship across America. Jorge received his PhD from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and was previously a postdoc at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a lecturer at MIT Sloan. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Jorge’s thoughts on the current economic conditions and what it means for entrepreneurs. * His background story and the path his career took to becoming a professor. * The latest in terms of the entrepreneurial culture at Columbia Business School, including the details on the school’s brand new Manhattanville campus. * The expansion of entrepreneurship across lots of different regions and does it matter to be in Silicon Valley? * A discussion on his research around the gender gap in entrepreneurship. * Common mistakes that Jorge sees entrepreneurs make over and over again. * 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 might have heard the oxygen versus aspirin analogy for finding product market fit for a company. For Matt, he likes to use the burnt pizza analogy. Most people don’t like burnt pizza, but if you are solving a problem that has a very high degree of importance, they will eat the burnt pizza when the product is at an early stage no matter how bad it tastes. Obviously, as the product evolves it will hopefully end up being a delicious slice of pizza, but you need to eat to survive and it all goes back to what has been discuss several times on this podcast. Don’t build your product in a vacuum where you have cool technology in search of a problem. Instead, talk to your customers or potential customers, figure out the critical challenges they are dealing with, and determine if you can build the product to solve it. Pave is on a mission to build the world's best compensation tools and easily accessible market data so companies can plan, communicate, and benchmark in real-time. The company recently announced its $100M Series C round of funding at a $1.6B valuation. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A deep dive into the state of the tech industry and how current market factors are affecting compensation. * Matt’s experiences while at Penn and how he caught the entrepreneurial bug, plus his experience traveling the world. * The background story of Pave and how he figured out the burnt pizza problem that needed to be solved and how their initiative approach won over customers. * All the latest on Pave in terms of its platform, recent round of funding, and goals for the future. * How he came up with the name for the rebrand and was able to obtain a single word .com domain. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Most companies in the tech industry that scale aggressively and create a category leading company usually raise a significant amount of venture capital funding. In the case of LinkSquares, the company has raised over $161M in funding which includes a $100M Series C round of funding that was announced in April. The funding has come along at a very steady clip with its Series B round in 2021 and Series A round in 2020. Needless to say LinkSquares is in hypergrowth mode and this capital is helping the company take advantage of its product market fit, but Vishal and I start off the conversation with a deep dive into how he’s been able to raise capital each year while balancing his responsibilities as a CEO with hundreds of other taks that need to be tackled. LinkSquares is the company behind the AI-powered contract management platform for legal teams aiming to move their business forward faster. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Vishal’s background growing up, including the start of his professional career and how the Startup Institute helped pave his way into the world of startups. * His experience at Backupify and various roles that he played at the company. * The full story of LinkSquares and how they identified this opportunity to disrupt an industry and take on incumbants. * All the details on the LinkSquares platform and how they are leveraging AI, plus the company’s growth plans ahead. * His biggest lessons learned as a CEO of a hypergrowth company. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

It’s always great to speak with a fellow podcaster, as Nathan is the host of How I Raised It. He interviews founders of startups and dissects the details on how they raised each round of funding. It’s a great podcast that I recommend, but as I dug into his archives, I realized that we’ve been podcasting for about the same length of time and almost the same number of episodes, which I thought was pretty cool. Nathan’s podcast makes a lot of sense based on his company. Foundersuite is the leading platform for raising capital, used by thousands of startups, VCs, accelerators and investment bankers around the world. Companies using the platform have raised over $3B in seed and venture capital. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * More of the details on his podcast including his experiences and some of his biggest takeaways. * His career path coming out of school and his decision to get his MBA at the McCombs School of Business at UT, Austin. * What led him down the path of starting Foundersuite and all the details on the company, plus a look at its features. * The most common mistakes that founders make when raising capital. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Did you know that: * Supermarkets waste $25B of food every year * 63 million tons of food is wasted every year in the U.S. * ⅓ of all food produced in the U.S. ends up in a landfill * It’s a $400B problem That’s some staggering statistics and obviously a massive problem that needs to be solved. Luckily, this world has brilliant entrepreneurs who think differently and are able to address these complex problems. In the case of Divert, they are tackling this key issue for supermarkets and retailers. Divert works with five Fortune 100 companies and more than 5,200 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states, providing technology, logistics and anaerobic digestion facilities to help retailers reach their sustainability goals. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A discussion focused on the food waste issue that I previously mentioned. * Ryan’s professional background working at Raytheon and what this experience taught him. * The founding story of Divert and what led him down the path of starting the company. * All the details on what they are doing and how they are working to transform the food industry into a zero-waste sector. * Ryan’s lessons learned on hiring executives. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.