Growth Investor with GrowthCap‘s RJ Lumba

In this episode we chat with Kyle Griswold, a Partner of FTV Capital and a Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investor of 2020. FTV Capital is a growth equity investment firm that has raised nearly $4 billion since inception and has invested in 120 high-growth companies across enterprise technology and services, financial services, and payments and transaction processing. Kyle and I chat about some of the investment areas he is most excited about, how FTV Capital drives value for the companies it backs, and how FTV has built a strong firm culture over the years. We hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome to the GrowthCap podcast where we chat with CEOs, investors, and other key industry leaders to uncover insights and strategies for accelerating growth and succeeding in business. I am your host RJ Lumba. In this episode we chat with Jan Arendtsz, a former corporate software professional turned entrepreneur. Unlike many of today’s startup founders, Jan took a more methodical approach to founding and ultimately building his company, Celigo. Celigo simplifies the integration of business applications and data sources in the enterprise. Its integration Platform-as-a-Service or iPaaS solution allows both technical and business users to connect applications together quickly through an industry-leading guided user interface. Based in San Mateo, California, Celigo is backed by growth equity. In setting out as a software entrepreneur, Jan first identified a distinct need in the market through his client engagements as an IT services provider. He then began gradually transitioning to developing a software product while ensuring a true product-market fit. As we hear from Jan, building a company is not easy but with passion and a single-minded focus, one can overcome the inevitable challenges which accompany the entrepreneurial journey. We hope you enjoy the show.

Entrepreneurs who have built their business with no outside capital understand the skill it takes and greatly appreciate when seeing others who have done it. Sana Commerce has been growing 50% each year for the past 12 years and now has approximately 400 employees.  The secret to their success is a combination of favorable market conditions and a culture which emphasizes entrepreneurship and empowerment. We spoke with the CEO Michiel Schipperus who built the b2b ecommerce software company from the start.  It was hatched as a spin off from an IT services company that recognized the need for a productized solution from their existing client base.  The spin off ended up being wildly successful as ecommerce has continued to manifest as a megatrend.  Listen to Michiel as he describes more about the company today as well as what has contributed to their success. Welcome to the GrowthCap podcast where we chat with CEOs, investors and other key industry leaders to uncover insights and strategies for accelerating growth and succeeding in business. I am your host RJ Lumba. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with Nehal Raj, a Partner at TPG, which is a leading global alternative asset firm founded in 1992 with approximately $85 billion of assets under management. Nehal co-leads the firm’s investment activities in software and enterprise technology across its private equity platforms (TPG Capital, TPG Tech Adjacencies, TPG Growth, and The Rise Fund). Nehal shares with us the investment themes he’s currently most focused on as well as some of the keys to TPG’s success over the years. Today, the firm’s investment platforms span a wide range of asset classes, including private equity, growth equity, real estate, impact investing, and public equity. TPG aims to build dynamic products and options for its investors while also instituting discipline and operational excellence across the investment strategy and performance of its portfolio. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode we chat with Gus Warren, Co-Founder and CEO of Bindle, a company that is revolutionizing the way health data can be quickly and securely shared prior to entering a venue. A perfect confluence of events led to Bindle’s inception, allowing Gus and his five co-founders to leverage recently developed technology and domain expertise across multiple areas to solve a very timely problem. Bindle utilizes a self-sovereign identity network to allow individuals to share information, such as test results or vaccine certificates in the case of COVID-19, with stadiums, schools, or even family events that may require such information. The venue then has a certain level of confidence to permit entry, without actually having to view the source data. Thus privacy is maintained without the need for the Venue to attain HIPAA compliance. Gus shares with us the exciting implications Bindle’s platform has for both the current pandemic and beyond. He also shares his advice for other entrepreneurs looking to get their business off the ground. Gus can be reached at gus@bindlesystems.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

In this episode, we chat with David Butler and Rick Firmine of Argosy Real Estate Partners, a fund manager with $1.3 billion currently under management. It has invested $5.5 billion in gross real estate investments since inception and operates out of three offices in Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco. Argosy has proven that a unique investment approach can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage over the long run. As one of the few institutional diversified real estate fund managers focused on the underserved lower middle market, the firm has created value for institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals over many years. David and Rick speak to their strategy, the trends they are seeing in the market and also share with us the tax advantages of investing in Opportunity Zones. We hope you enjoy the show.

Adaptability has long been a feature of thriving businesses and industries. Add in the impacts of a global pandemic, and now companies are being forced to adapt in ways they never imagined. Enter Plex Systems, a company that has not only been able to meet the changing demands of its own market but has also provided solutions that have helped its customers to do the same. CEO Bill Berutti chats with us about how Plex’s solutions use inventory, human capital, and process flow information, along with analytics and automation, to address inefficiencies in the manufacturing industry. Plex Systems offers a cloud-based, single instance, multi-tenant solution to manufacturing companies. The company boasts success stories across manufacturing verticals and the results speak for themselves, as their customers turn their inventories two and a half times faster, have a significantly lower cost of quality, and have between 15% and 25% more productive output than their competitors. Bill also speaks to the ways in which Plex’s diverse customers have been able to use Plex’s systems to facilitate changes in response to COVID-19, such as a shift to producing PPE or enabling employees to work remotely. Throughout his career, Bill has worked to help companies navigate complex transitions. Bill shares how he has used this experience to help Plex position itself to meet the increasing demand for smart, cloud-based manufacturing solutions—in a market where many large manufacturers are accustomed to building solutions themselves. Bill’s observations highlight the importance of adaptability and efficiency in the manufacturing environment and demonstrate how Plex has used this model to maintain an 11-year track record of double-digit organic growth. We hope you enjoy the show.

Mario Schlosser, CEO and co-founder of Oscar Health, is no stranger to the challenges that many people encounter when dealing with insurance companies. When Mario’s wife was pregnant with their first child, he became overwhelmed by the costly and complicated healthcare system and was frustrated when he found that their health insurance company was unable to help them navigate it. That’s when Mario, along with co-founders Josh Kushner and Kevin Nazemi, decided to start Oscar – a different kind of health insurance company. Oscar is an innovative health insurance company offering individual and family plans, business plans, and Medicare Advantage plans. What sets Oscar apart is its unique, customer-focused model that emphasizes member satisfaction and engagement. Their goal is to delight their customers and provide world-class service – an objective that has gained them more than 420,000 members across 29 cities and annual growth of about 70%. Mario shares with us Oscar’s secrets for engaging its customers and providing end-to-end healthcare support, features which have become rare in the health insurance industry. Mario also speaks on Oscar’s rapid and effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including being the first company to provide a nationwide database of COVID testing locations. Mario’s insights illuminate the complexities of providing quality insurance in a changing market and demonstrate how Oscar was able to earn its reputation for having the best customer satisfaction in the individual healthcare market. We hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome to the GrowthCap podcast where we chat with CEOs, investors and other key industry leaders to uncover insights and strategies for accelerating growth and succeeding in business. I am your host RJ Lumba. In this episode, we chat with Paul Black, the CEO of Allscripts, which is a leading provider of healthcare information technology solutions ranging from population health management to virtual care to precision medicine to genomics to pharma data analytics and to post-acute care, among many other solutions. Paul shares with us his focus on maximizing opportunity and the importance of continuous innovation in producing long term relevance and a strong path to growth.  He speaks to his young years where work ethic was instilled as he experienced what it was like to work on a farm.   He also recounts the impressive set of folks he worked with during his IBM and Cerner years and the importance of vision.  In addition, Paul shares more foundational insights such as the five key attributes of humility, kindness, patience, gratitude and being happy.  We hope you enjoy the show.           

In this episode, we chat with Jake Sattelmair, Co-founder and CEO of Wellframe, a leading provider of digital health solutions that dramatically improves the patient and provider experience.  Jake is a Harvard and Oxford trained public health scientist and technologist, making him a unique person to tackle the task of improving the way healthcare is delivered. Jake shares with us his journey building Wellframe and insight into how the company’s solutions are addressing today’s healthcare needs particularly in light of the current pandemic. We hope you enjoy the show.