Entrepreneur Stories 4⃣ Inspiration

Zach Smith is Co-Founder of the World's Largest Crowdfunding agency - Funded Today. He enjoys starting, running, managing, and selling businesses. Most importantly, he loves helping others turn their dreams, ideas, and inspirations into successful companies.  He is the Co-Author of the upcoming book “Funded” and also the Co-Founder of “CrowdCon Virtual”, the world’s first and biggest virtual crowdfunding summit.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode with Zach Smith, visit here. ***    

Jonathan Burlingham is President of Starfire Direct.  His company is the one stop shop for all things fire. Starfire Direct works with some of America’s finest designers, architects, homeowners, and contractors.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode with Jonathan Burlingham, visit here. ***      

Hjalte Wieth is Co-Founder of SoundBoks. He along with his two co-founders, Jesper Theil Thomsen & Christoffer Nyvold, wanted to create something that would combine enjoying life while creating value for a lot of people.  Driven by a passion for speaker design and great experience, the boys created SOUNDBOKS. In less than 3 years, the just-out-of high school guys have managed to get accepted into Y-Combinator and deliver more than 15,000 SOUNDBOKS to happy customers.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode with Hjalte Wieth, visit here. ***    

Dana Severson is Founder of StickinaBox.co, Co-founder of StartupsAnonymous.com, and Director of Marketing at Promoter.io. He is an AngelPad alum, a weekly contributor to Inc.com, and the former CEO of Wahooly. On top of all this, Dana was born with a large forehead and natural ability to develop absurd ideas.  He was immediately drawn to the advertising industry at a very early age.  Growing up, he’d often get caught sipping a three-finger apple juice (disguised as cognac), smoking candy cigarettes, dressed like his favorite superhero, David Ogilvy.  Dana has found therapy by writing on a regular basis for Fastcompany.com, Adage.com, MN Business, and TCBmag.com.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode with Dana Severson, visit here. ***    

Bill Lyons is the Founder & CEO of three companies in the real estate industry: Griffin Funding, Revestor, and Lyons Realty. Griffin Funding was named the 83rd fastest growing company in the nation by Inc 500 in 2017 as well as the #1 fastest growing mortgage company. Bill is focused on carving out a large segment of the $11 Billion online real estate advertising market and the residential investors that make of 25% of the real estate market. He built his former company, from zero to $20 Million per year in revenue with $3+ Billion in transactions inside of 36 months. As President & CEO, Mr. Lyons managed a $6 million per year online marketing budget offering opportunity to well over 250 employees.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode with Bill Lyons, visit here. ***    

Mike McCready has experienced success as a musician, and separately as an entrepreneur, but has found his true passion by combining music with business. As a signed musician, he achieved two hit singles. As an entrepreneur, his companies have been featured in Success Magazine, The New Yorker, and other media. As CEO of Music Xray, he has led the company through its challenging start-up phase and through it's angel and institutional rounds of investment. Music Xray has become what is probably the largest online community of music industry professionals in the world.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, Resources Mentioned, & the Fabulous 4 Questions on this episode with Mike McCready, visit here. ***    

Vignesh Sundaresan is a blockchain entrepreneur and an open protocol architect and Y Combinator Alumni. He designed and leads the project that implements the open protocol - Lendroid. A professional programmer with expertise in blockchain technologies, back-end programming, software product management, marketing performance mechanisms, knowledge organization, and data-mining. With over 10 years of experience in product development, he's now excited about open protocols and believes we are in the middle of a paradigm shift.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode with Vignesh Sundaresan, visit here. ***    

Bill Bragman began YakGear with a little innovation and open water.  He was an avid fisherman and curious inventor, often tinkered with ways to improve the kayak experience. When he happened across two seemingly simple designs — leashes for paddles and fishing poles — friends took notice, and he knew he was on to something.  Bill refined his idea and, in 2006, made the products available to the public under the name Reel Deels. Word got out and, as the company grew, so did its offerings. In November 2007, with 20 items to its name, YakGear made its official debut as the original ‘yak accessory company.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode with Bill Bragman, visit here. ***      

Jesse Mecham is a recovering CPA that started a company called "You Need A Budget" (aka YNAB) while in college. His company teaches people their unique Four-Rule Method that completely transforms how they view and manage their money. When people follow the YNAB Method, they break the paycheck to paycheck cycle, get out of debt, and save more money.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode with Jesse Mecham, visit here. ***      

Amandeep Khurana is CEO & Co-Founder of Cerebro Data.  His company works with cloud native data management and governance software for enterprises.  Before this he was the Principal Solutions Architect at Cloudera Inc, where he worked with Cloudera’s customers to help them with their adoption and usage of the Hadoop ecosystem. Amandeep has been been involved in the big data ecosystem since 2009 and worked at AWS prior to Cloudera. Amandeep has also co-authored HBase In Action, a book on developing applications on the popular NoSQL datastore, HBase.   *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode visit here: Amandeep Khurana Interview. ***