The VentureFizz Podcast

Episode 358 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Simon Taylor, Founder & CEO of HYCU. One of the things that I love about this podcast is hearing the stories of entrepreneurs and the ambitious moves they make to build their companies. For example, last week’s interview with Brian Liu was a great example where he and his Co-Founder cold called and got the most recognizable lawyer on the planet - that being Robert Shapiro - involved with LegalZoom in the early days of the company. Simon’s story is also legendary. At the point of having an MVP, they wanted to partner with a fast growing company called Nutanix. He flew out to the company’s offices in California and unannounced, he asked to speak to the CEO. After pitching his company and convincing team members during that initial unannounced call, the CEO did finally sit with him and after building a backup solution for Nutanix, a partnership was established and they were off and running. HYCU is a leader in the multi-cloud and SaaS data protection as a service industry. The company has raised $140M in VC funding to date. In this podcast, we cover: * A discussion around leveraging a partnership model for a company’s GTM strategy and how to build it with the right mindset and approach. * Simon’s background story, including receiving a signed book from legendary computer entrepreneur An Wang, the founder of Wang Laboratories, when his family moved to the U.S. * Starting his career in cubicle jobs and how he learned the importance of rigor like his experience as a 401K rep answering phones and how it helped shape him as an entrepreneur. * Building his first company in Prague, an IT outsourcing company which was acquired by Comtrade and then his next company, a monitoring tools company that was acquired by Citrix. * The full lifecycle story of HYCU and all the details about their platform. * The benefits of raising capital from corporate VCs. * And so much more. Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 357 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Brian Liu, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of companies like LegalZoom, BizCounsel, & Overture. Lots of the best ideas come from experience within your own industry and it was Brian and his co-founder, Brian Lee (who has since gone on to be a co-founder of ShoeDazzle and The Honest Company) who both had experience in the law industry and saw an industry which was ripe for disruption. After experimenting with some ideas, the idea for LegalZoom had the best validation for building a company and some of the most successful entrepreneurs take bold risks. For example, to bring validation for consumers about the legitimacy of their business for legal docs, they cold called and got Robert Shapiro (yes, the high profile attorney from the OJ Simpson trial) involved in the business… and from there, they were off and running… which ultimately led to a publicly traded company. His latest company is Overture, an attorney-to-attorney referral platform for solos & small firms. In this podcast, we cover: * A discussion about the impact and potential that AI has for the legal industry. * Brian’s background story and his experience as a practicing attorney. * The full lifecycle story of LegalZoom, including the Robert Shapiro cold call and how they scaled the company. * All the details about Overture. * Brian’s work as an advisor for entrepreneurs like Julia Rodgers from HelloPrenup, who was featured in Episode 336 of The VentureFizz Podcast. * And so much more.

Episode 356 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Erika Ebbel Angle and Colin Angle. I’ve had co-founders on my podcast in the past but it is very rare that I have a married couple and it is very hard not to use the phrase power-couple of this one. Having both Erika and Colin on the podcast was awesome, as we were able to dig into both of their background stories and professional journeys. If you are in the Boston tech scene, you probably know about Colin as a co-founder and former CEO of iRobot, but equally impressive is his wife, Erika. Here are some examples of her many professional accomplishments: * B.S. in Chemistry from MIT; Ph.D. in Biochemistry from BU. 2004 Miss Massachusetts * Founder of a non-profit organization called Science from Scientists which teaches STEM lessons to students in grades third through eight. * TEDx speaker about Your Gut Microbiome that has over 2 million views. Co-Founder & CEO of Ixcela. Ixcela is a pioneering company in internal fitness, specializing in the gut microbiome. The company recently announced its Ixcela Cancer Support Program in collaboration with Roper St. Francis Healthcare which showed the critical role that gut microbiome health plays in reducing cancer care side effects. Ixcela's supportive care is designed to be hyper-personalized to help mitigate symptoms and improve the patient’s health. In this episode of our podcast, we also cover: * A discussion about the gut microbiome and Erika’s research. * The story of iRobot and how they discovered product-market-fit through a combination of work in mine-hunting algorithms, industrial store cleaning, and the My Real Baby doll with Hasbro led to the Roomba. * All the details about Ixcela and how their personalized care and support works. * Colin’s role in Ixcela as a member of its Board of Directors. * The state of personalized healthcare and how AI has its place but why the human element is still very important. * The future of robotics and AI, plus a discussion about 10Beauty. * What dinner looks like in the Angle household. * And so much more. Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 355 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Maitland-Lewis, Director of Startup Banking & Founder Success at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and yes, this episode is also sponsored by SVB. Ben and I go way back. His previous company, Pretty Instant, had a long-standing relationship with VentureFizz. This Y-Combinator company was an on-demand photography marketplace that did all of our office tour photoshoots on VentureFizz. It honestly was an amazing experience… such a great company. But even when you work with someone for a long time and you have a great professional relationship, there is so much about the person that you don’t know and this is one of the reasons why I love this podcast. I learned that Ben’s background story is very eclectic… from living abroad as a child, to being a street performer and being in the circus to playing music with an orchestra… and then being in a band playing the top clubs in LA to playing drums for other bands like Incubus, Dishwalla, and others… I could go on and on, so I’ll stop here and let him tell his story in this interview. Today, Ben is still leveraging his experience as a founder but helping other entrepreneurs in lots of meaningful ways at SVB. In addition to Ben’s background story, we also cover: * A discussion about making the transition from founder to employee. * Ben’s journey into entrepreneurship and the story of PressKit. * All the details about Pretty Instant and how the company got started and scaled. * His current role at SVB and the different ways he is working with founders. * Some analysis and positive vibes from SVB’s State of the Markets report. * And so much more. Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 354 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Paul Morville, Co-Founder & CEO of Parrot AI. This episode was recorded live at Startup Boston Week at Suffolk University. I recorded two episodes at this year’s event, so stay tuned for the second episode in a couple of weeks. Paul is a serial entrepreneur and as you’ll hear from our podcast, he is very successful but likes to fly under the radar. Case in point, while most companies can’t wait to broadcast a round of funding, I couldn’t find any press releases or media coverage about any outside investment for Parrot AI. Come to find out, the company raised capital in 2021 from Accomplice, Pillar, Legion Capital, and others. We discussed his reasoning as to why they decided against announcing funding which was very interesting. Parrot AI is not just a meeting recorder, transcription, and note-taking tool. It is an AI-powered collaborative workspace that turns conversation into results because of its understanding of the full context of a business. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * The 2 biggest lessons learned while building multiple companies. * Paul’s background story and his work on building Barron’s online property which was one of the first financial websites. * His professional journey as a Product Manager, including experience at Arbor Networks and how so many people have gone off to start other companies like Twilio. * The founding story of Confer which was one of the first endpoint security solutions in the cloud that was acquired by Carbon Black which later went public & was acquired by VMware. * His decision to pass on an opportunity to join a VC firm and continue down the entrepreneurial path. * All the details about Parrot AI and how it differentiates itself from competitors. * What makes a great Product Manager. * And so much more.

Episode 353 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Giuseppe Stuto, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 186 Ventures. Did you know that the venture capital industry originated in Boston back in 1946 with the founding of American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) which backed Digital Equipment Corporation and saw a 1200X return when the company went public. Since then, Boston has been very fortunate to have a steady stream of VC investors at all stages to foster the local startup ecosystem and one of the newest firms is 186 Ventures. Co-Founded by Giuseppe and Julian Fialkow, 186 Ventures is a pre-seed & seed stage VC firm investing broadly across technology. I kept hearing about the firm, so I was excited to interview Giuseppe for the podcast as they have been out there hustling and have been earning the respect from entrepreneurs and their peers in the VC industry. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * A discussion around the importance of investor & founder alignment. * How a conference at Stanford changed the trajectory of his career into entrepreneurship. * The full background story of SmakHigh and how they evolved to Fam, the first live group video application for iMessage, including how Jeff Bussgang’s book - Mastering the VC Game - helped them raise venture funding from Jeff. * The full story of how the acquisition by DraftKings came to fruition. * The details about 186 Ventures and what they are targeting for investments. * The 4 fundamental parts of a business that matter. * The importance of building a repeatable sales model for not only your go-to-market strategy but also how it factors into raising capital. * Why Boston is the best place to build an AI startup. * And so much more.

Episode 352 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Mark Ghermezian and Manisha Shah, Founder of Tildei. Mark is the Founder and General Partner of m]x[v Capital and he’s also the CEO of two companies that have spun out of his firm, that being Tildei and Gynger. Mark has been an entrepreneur pretty much his entire life and he shares lots of fun and interesting stories of these ventures, including the full story of Braze, a customer engagement platform that eventually went public in 2021. Manisha is a Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Tildei. In this interview, she shares her professional journey into the tech industry and ultimately running customer success at Rebel which was acquired by Salesforce. Tildei is changing how companies and customers communicate. The company’s AI-powered platform, which is initially focused on WhatsApp, enables brands to build deep relationships with customers through conversation at scale. The company has raised $6M in funding led by Susa Ventures with participation from Ludlow Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Vine Ventures, MXV Capital, Marcelo Claure, Jason Lemkin, and other angel investors. In this episode of our podcast, we also cover: * The importance of persistence and grit when building a startup. * How Mark and Manisha came together to build Tildei and how it works. * Building and investing into companies from m]x[v including the details on Gynger. * Mark’s contrarian point of view of PLG sales models and why he favors a traditional outbound sales operation. * Manisha’s biggest lessons learned as a co-founder. * And so much more.

Episode 351 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Meredith McPherron, CEO & Managing Partner at Drive by DraftKings. Legalized sports betting, NIL, transfer portals, college conference re-alignment, streaming, pitch clocks, new kickoffs, the explosion of pickelball, and so much more, there is no denying it, the sports industry is going through a rapid amount of transformation. But the number one area that I’m the most excited about is the explosion of women’s sports… from college basketball, WNBA, NWSL, Olympic success, and more… there is so much going on! Thus, I couldn’t pick a better person to have a conversation about how women’s sports are having a moment than with Meredith and this topic is exactly how we kick off our interview. If you are not familiar with Drive by DraftKings, the firm invests in seed and Series A companies in the SportsTech and Entertainment industry specifically in Gaming, Fandom, and Human Performance. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Meredith’s background story including being a walk-on two sport Division 1 athlete at Harvard. * Getting her career started in investment banking and consumer products at General Mills and how she made the switch to the tech industry. * Running her own startup called Zipteva, which was early to market and would have been perfect in today’s world of NIL deals. * Her role at The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at HBS which was the segue into her role as a VC at Glasswing Ventures. * All the details about Drive by DraftKings and what she is targeting for investments, plus its all-star network. * Biggest challenges around building a startup in the sports industry. * And so much more.

Episode 350 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Steve Papa, serial entrepreneur, mentor, and investor. It is time for another milestone episode and I couldn’t be more excited about this interview. Steve has accomplished so much throughout his career, so let’s just dive in. In this interview you are going to hear lots of amazing stories like: * Steve’s background and how he got his career started in the tech industry, including his involvement in the early days of Akamai. * The full lifecycle story of Endeca in terms of how the idea originated, to getting traction and raising funding, scaling, to a $1.1B exit to Oracle… plus so many amazing stories along the way. * The Special Ops team at Endeca and how many of the members of this team have gone on to be founders & leaders of companies. * Investing all of the money that he made from Endeca back into startups. * The story of Toast and how its distribution channel innovation drove the company’s success and helped create the vertical SaaS category. * The importance of Parallel Wireless and why it is such a passion project for him. * The problem that Shoobx was solving for startups and its exit to Fidelity. * How the tech industry repeats itself and his thoughts on AI. * Plus so much more! Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.