Failure - the Podcast

Today's episode, NonProfitPalooza, might better be titled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Overachievers.” Our guests are Marissa Fayer and Brody Galloway, both of whom founded and actively run MedTech nonprofits. Were that not enough, they also hold day jobs.Marissa Fayer is the founder and CEO of HERhealthEQ, an organization dedicated to reducing the equity gap in access to healthcare for women around the world — or, more simply put, deploying medical equipment to maternal health patients that really need it. When we spoke with her, she was just back from Ghana, where HERhealthEQ was installing screening and cervical cancer testing gear. All told, the organization has 10 clinics serving over 3.2 million patients, worldwide. Let's not forget that Marissa is also the CEO of DeepLook Medical, a for-profit that is commercializing technology that empowers health care providers to detect and diagnose lesions with unprecedented accuracy.Brody Galloway is just starting his career, but what a start it is. In addition to holding an A+ average in high school, Brody is the founder and CEO of Envision MedTech, a nonprofit dedicated to providing access to pediatric medical technology. To date, it has saved 13 lives, distributed 5,000 pediatric medical devices to underserved communities, and raised $7,000,000 in donations. Did we mention that Brody is still in high school?[Editor's note: our copywriter is suffering from post-election puffery and got a bit carried away. We really have no clue as to Brody's grade point average, though, it's possible it might be A+, so let's go with that. Oh, and the $7M raise, that may be off by three orders of magnitude. Again, our apologies. We hope our copywriter will cool his jets, now that we've settled into an era of unilateral re-dos of the Panama Canal sale and forceful takeovers of Greenland.]What might you, our one listener [Editor's note: don't worry, Rachel, we won't name names] learn from our session with Marissa and Brody? First, that snark is so 2010's and just isn't funny anymore — though, we anxiously await an even more sinister return of this mocking form of expression, now that Donald Trump, Jr., is back in the spotlight. Second, that snark never did and never will work with interview subjects that are doing actual good. Finally, that market gaps are as important to nonprofit startups as they are to for-profits. On that latter note, today's guests capitalized (no pun intended) on gaps in health care delivery to ensure success, not only in treating the underserved, but also in getting in-kind and cash sponsors.OK, ok, ok. But will you, dear listener, actually learn something from today's episode? Doubtful. We've been monitoring the stats, and we know that all you do is loop the outro music at the end of each podcast. We get it: it's catchy. There's no need to be embarrassed. That's all Jeff listens to, even if you count the 60+ minutes he's in the recording session. (By the way, Jeff, are you ever going to repost us to your 57,243 LinkedIn followers? [Editor's note: just testing to see if Jeff even reads these blurbs.])Enough said. Enjoy the show!

This episode of the "5-Minute Update" extends our discussion of ethically-informed licensing to enterprise software customer data. That's a mouthful. Let us explain.As our dedicated listener(s) will appreciate, the "5-Minute Update" recently explored whether technology licensing agreements might prove a viable mechanism for right-sizing the growth of AI from a risk/benefit perspective. The particular focus of Episode 85 was on the ethics of AI and how it might inform drafting those agreements from a perspective of fairness, when the value of consumer data collected by AI apps is taken into account.The present episode extends that question to data collected by enterprise software applications. Might licensing agreements for those applications similarly benefit from a dose of ethics, when it comes to fairness? Our guest is Seth Earley, founder and CEO of Earley Information Science, a Massachusetts-based software services provider that helps its clients leverage AI to deliver information to their customers.

Whether for autonomous vehicles or “smart” consumer products, government regulation may be too little and too late when it comes to right-sizing the growth of AI from a risk/benefit perspective. Can the private sector do better — and, if so, could technology and data licensing agreements provide a viable mechanism for regulating AI in consumer products? Join a panel discussion on the ethics of AI and how it might inform drafting those agreements as this new technology takes hold in the marketplace. The particular focus is on the fairness of those agreements, when the value of consumer data collected by AI apps is taken into account — as it rarely is.

Our Guest: Suman Lal

We'd thought we'd learned from a prior guest to this august podcast that Big Pharma could provide cures for more diseases, if only flaws in America's third-party payor health care system could be fixed. Today's guest is not so sure of that. Dr. Seth Powsner, a professor at Yale and a practicing ER physician, says that it's really a question of will: the collective will of a nation to solve a problem. That's especially true when it comes to curing diabetes. Sure, a cure might be around the corner, but more likely, it'll take the will the people and the government to solve the obesity crisis. And, by the time we belly up to that bar, it might be as well to simply start eating better. That may prove a better cure than even Big Pharma can provide, with or without an adequate reimbursement mechanism.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast (a/k/a Innovation Blab) as they stumble upon the dark underbelly of Big Pharma. Our guest, Imran Nasrullah, has 25+ years of experience in the industry, specializing in drug licensing and business development. He tell tales that few know or want to believe. One in ten thousand, for example: 9,999 candidate drugs tested and rejected for one that makes it to the next stage-gate. Few drugs make it through all the hurdles, but a surprising number that do are cures — not merely daily, weekly or monthly treatments. Unfortunately, the most efficacious drugs aren't necessarily the ones that either the makers want to make or insurers want to pay for. Is there a better way? Who knows. Join Jeff, David and Mark wrestle with Imran Nasrullah's picture of a dark aspect of the U.S. health care system which, like democracy, seems the worst there could be, except for all others that have been tried.

Who knew?Join Innovation Blab/Failure - the Podcast in a double-header. A two-fer. “Episode 80 - Broken Down Cars” and “Episode 81 - The Singularity is Nigh.” Our special guests are … well … special.Sydney Robinson is CEO and co-founder of Vessl Prosthetics, an Ontario-based startup that is hellbent on improving the lives of below-knee amputees and on proving that not all orthopedic startups end up like broken down cars along the road to success. We think they've got a shot at both. If Sydney can survive 45 minutes of our drivel, she should have no problem navigating the tough medical industry market.Milind Sawant is an AI guru, currently with Siemens Healthcare and leading a team of 50 engineers and a $15M budget to drive AI integration into medical systems. It's no surprise that Milind is a big fan of AI and the promise it brings to healthcare. That shone through despite Jeff's probing questions, Dave's skepticism and Mark's snoring. (OK, we exaggerate: Mark was no noisier catching Zs than a former president at a felony trial).Who knew that podcasts could be so much better than a presidential debate between octogenarians?

Who knew?Join Innovation Blab/Failure - the Podcast in a double-header. A two-fer. “Episode 80 - Broken Down Cars” and “Episode 81 - The Singularity is Nigh.” Our special guests are … well … special.Sydney Robinson is CEO and co-founder of Vessl Prosthetics, an Ontario-based startup that is hellbent on improving the lives of below-knee amputees and on proving that not all orthopedic startups end up like broken down cars along the road to success. We think they've got a shot at both. If Sydney can survive 45 minutes of our drivel, she should have no problem navigating the tough medical industry market.Milind Sawant is an AI guru, currently with Siemens Healthcare and leading a team of 50 engineers and a $15M budget to drive AI integration into medical systems. It's no surprise that Milind is a big fan of AI and the promise it brings to healthcare. That shone through despite Jeff's probing questions, Dave's skepticism and Mark's snoring. (OK, we exaggerate: Mark was no noisier catching Zs than a former president at a felony trial).Who knew that podcasts could be so much better than a presidential debate between octogenarians?

Catch them on a good day, and we suspect that many an entrepreneur would say that bootstrapping a business is like a bowl of cherries, pits and all. Leaving aside the independently wealthy, that more traditional approach may destine the enterprise to slower, bounded growth. A lifestyle business. One that's likely to yield more pits than flesh early on, but that with the right mix of hard work, pivots and luck can be fruitful in the long run.Nasty, brutish and short might be what you hear of startup life from founders who took outside investment. Not all of them. Not all of the time. But, we bet they skew more that way on the spectrum than do the lifestyle-istas. What would you expect? Take on an angel investor and there's one more mouth to feed. Take on venture capital and it can be a vicious, gaping one.Join the Innovation Blab in a conversation with Thomas Collet, a serial entrepreneur who's on his seventh startup. Would Thomas describe his experiences as bowls of cherries or nasty, brutish and short? Listen to today's episode and you may find out.

Ask an entrepreneur: “what keeps you up at night?” They've heard The Question before and have an answer at the ready. But they'll make you wait through a feigned moment of reflection before they launch into it.Investors play the game, too. Get a group of them together and, invariably, one of them will pose The Question whenever an entrepreneur does a pitch. All present will nod knowingly as the collective's secret weapon is unleashed. The entrepreneur's perfectly timed pause, then, answer (the latter, offered with the gravity of a Churchill wartime address) only add to the excitement. Theatrics and reality merge, and all present will walk away convinced of the truth of the seemingly revelatory moment.Join the Innovation Blab in a discussion with Jamie Magrill and Anna Frumkin of DECAP Research and Development, Inc., a Canadian startup that aims to change the way hospital and healthcare workers dispose of syringes. Don't worry, we don't pose The Question to Jamie and Anna. We do get close, however, and some may find the discussion that ensues amusing. Have a listen …

Election fever. With all the news, who can avoid it? Not a news ticker scrolls by without a mention of Biden's age, Trump's trials and RFK's betrayals. We're not immune to it. So when a scheduled guest went AWOL, we figured we'd talk about the first thing that came to mind. Suffice it to say that MAGA conservatives aren't the only ones who hang out in echo chambers.

Join us in a discussion with Diane Bouis, director of MedTech Innovator, the world's largest life science startup accelerator program.

Not that we have a vested interest, but we'd suggest that Joe Biden make a go at it with a blue baseball cap sporting the acronym MIGA. You know, “make innovation great again!” Speaking of innovation, today's guest is John Daniels, a tinkerer turned entrepreneur who is daring fate by joining the Innovation Blab in a discussion of his latest venture. It's developing a rapid diagnostic kit to test for Covid and whatever else ails mankind. With a bit of luck, he'll launch the product before Kari Lake returns to Arizona politics following a two-year break.

Can't say that much has been made of the B-side of late. Baby boomers are probably the last to have given it much thought, but in its heyday, the B-side was pretty much the tomalley of 45 RPM, 7-inch vinyl records. (Don't know tomalley? Ask a lobster.) Aficionados looked forward to it. Everybody else, not so much. The B-side could grow on you, though. Take Elvis's “Hound Dog,” the Beatles' “I Am the Walrus,” the Rolling Stones' “You Can't Always Get What You Want.” The list goes on. So does the beat.To the armchair intellectual, the A-side and the B-side are like yin and yang. There's no need to drag Eastern philosophy into an LA marketing gimmick, though. Two sides of the same coin is more like it. The only philosophy here is KISS: keep it simple stupid.Speaking of innovation and failure (were we?), maybe they're like yin and yang. We asked ChatGPT, and we got a qualified “sort of.” It felt a little like the prize every kid gets at soccer, win or lose. Yes, the AI said, innovation and failure can be complementary forces, but no, they are not interconnected and interdependent opposites. Just to check that, we asked the electric savant the same of Donald Trump and the news media. We pretty much got the same answer. Consistency doesn't prove correctness, but it's a start.So what does any of that have to do with today's podcast? Have a listen and judge for yourself. Our guest is Stefan Koehler, director of therapeutics licensing at the University of Michigan. We didn't ask him about yin and yang, nor about failure — though, he did give some insights into licensing that would make Jim Harbaugh proud. (Sorry, Stefan, wrong department, but you catch our drift).

It's not often the team from Failure - the Podcast gets serious. Sure, there was the time Mark stole an air mask from Jet Blue and hooked it to a canister of helium. He was impersonating Marjorie Taylor Green for our "Fly Me to the Moon" episode, but forgot to put oxygen in the mix. Thankfully, the EMTs had a spare pig's brain on board for the transplant. And, how about when Mic hired Rudy Giuliani to defend "the team" in Joe Rogan's trademark infringement suit.It's times like these you realize that some things are serious. Mark turning blue while impersonating Greene. Serious. Handing over your defense to Rudy. Serious (mistake). Just ask Donald.Speaking of Donald, the porcine frontal cortex (Mark's, not Donald's) drifts to yellow raining down on the sheets in Moscow. And, from there, to yellow and blue flags flapping in a nuclear breeze. Now, we are at serious. Ukraine serious. Even the segue there from humor (or, in our case, faux humor) seems a crime. Though, to put things in perspective, Zelensky made the transition and proved a true hero.Which, the reader will be relieved to learn, brings us to the topic of today's podcast. Zelensky? Not directly. More like Putin in Ukraine. A bull in a china shop, but add enmity and cluster bombs. Not a pretty thing. So, how did we get here? Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a conversation with Daniel Barenboym, a Boston-area entrepreneur with roots in Eastern Europe, and Sam Bendett, an expert on the Russian military with the Washington D.C.-based think tanks CNA and CNAS.

No, it's not the ice cream. It's the podcast. This one, and you can be sure it's in bad taste. But, hey, don't be too disappointed. Before reality sunk in, we did offer you the briefest glimmer of hope. That's more than a certain congressperson from Georgia has done for you. What is today's podcast, other than the usual meaningless banter? There is that, of course. But, there is more, too. Coffee. Yep, you guessed it, and what a genius you are! The coffee business, to be more precise. And, because we failed, yet again, in finding a guest who didn't, it's about a coffee business that's prospering. Go figure.How much do you know about coffee — we mean really know? The Team from Failure - The Podcast has been imbibing for nearly 100 years, collectively. (Get your mind out of the gutter. We mean coffee.) And, that's only two of us. Add, Mic and ... well, you'd need to go to scientific notation. So, we thought we knew a thing or two about coffee. Just like many of you think you know a thing or two about wine, beer, or you name it. But, how much do you really know, other than where to buy them and what salesperson has you wrapped around his/her finger? So we brought in a coffee pro. We would say he was a pro from Dover, but unless you saw M*A*S*H, the movie (starring Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland), you really wouldn't get it. But we did bring in a pro. He was the seventh hire at one of the region's largest full-service coffee distributors. And what a success story he was. He rose from janitor to CEO in a matter of years. Many of them. And, in reality, he didn't quite come in as a janitor nor did he exit as a CEO, but you get the point.Anyway, you want to learn about coffee? Listen to this podcast. Erik Modahl, coffee curator and founder of BeanTrust Coffeebar, has something to say, even if it means talking over the knuckleheads that are Failure — the Podcast.

Sounds promising: fun with numbers. If not the mathematicians and physicists, certainly the accountants might get something from this podcast. And, if not them, the actuaries will have a field day. Think about it: a podcast even an actuary could love. Stultifying.Well, not so fast. If you’ve not learned anything from the last four years, it’s that labels can be deceiving. Take “Super Happy Fun America,” a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that, from the looks of it, should be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Dig a little deeper, and it’s clear that this group is about anything but fun. Super happy? We doubt it, not with the post-insurrection arrests.But, it’s not just the far right that is loose with labels. In fact, the team from Failure - the Podcast would hazard to guess that those of all political persuasions are guilty as charged. (Ya’ think?! Hey, give us a break, here. We’re just trying to meet our word quota on this blurb). Hell, even this podcast has been known to stretch the truth from time to time — and we are as about apolitical as it gets. Ha!So, fun with numbers. Not so much. But you can’t fault us for trying. After all, our guest was with one of the Big Four accounting firms. Admittedly, he was working as a lawyer, not an accountant. And, whether he actually saw a single number during his tenure is left for the imagination. Certainly, the team from Failure - the Podcast didn’t ask him. That would have taken advance preparation, and you know how we eschew that. Moreover, who would have thought months ago, when we recorded this, that we’d ultimately call it “fun with numbers”? Surely, you expect too much of us.Our guest? Why, it’s none other than Tony DaSilva. Lawyer to the stars … or, at least, the accountants. And, what an absolute wit. He lulled the team from Failure - the Podcast into believing that they were asking good questions, and that he was answering them. In fact, it was the same drivel as the last 71 episodes. You know the old saying: same stuff, different day. Well, we promise you only the latter. And, speaking of stepping in it, please don’t forget to wipe your shoes on Matt Goetz … er, the mat … before you leave.

It took a little doing, but the team from Failure - the Podcast think they found the first use of that magical phrase "testing, testing one, two, three.....". No, it wasn't in 2010, when Biden dropped the F-bomb on an open mic while introducing then-President Obama's eponymous health care bill. Nor, was it when Sleepy Joe muttered "God save the queen" at the close of the 115th Congress in 2017, after announcing that The Donald had won the electoral college. Had Joe prefaced these utterances with "testing, testing one, two, three," we might be more sure they weren't gaffes and that he isn't the Democrat re-incarnation of Jerry Ford.We took our search to Google Books, hoping to find something through its Library Project. You remember that, don't you? All the fanfare over scanning the world's books onto the Internet so that they could be searched from your browser. No such luck: the copyright laws prevailed. Good thing for that. Which brings us to Google n-grams, a handy tool that searches millions of books (perhaps, collected during the ill-fated Library Project?) for words and phrases and returns their frequency by year. Search for "pandemic," for example, and you get spikes at 1920, 2008 (remember the "swine flu"), and ... well ... let's just assume 2020, once the books are written on this one.So, how about "testing, testing one, two, three ...," when did that phrase come about? Best the team from Failure - the Podcast can tell, it was the mid-1940's. World War II, and all that. Sounds about right, doesn't it? You can just imagine a John Wayne character at the mic as he readies to rally the troops for yet another epic battle. (Don't know John Wayne? Think Ronald Regan minus the political years, but with a whole lot more luck at the box office).Which brings us back to testing. COVID-19, that is. Black gold. Texas tea. (Cue the "Beverly Hillbillies" theme). It's not behind us. Testing, that is. (The hillbillies? Like the 1960s, they _are_ behind us). Sure, the vaccine will help. A whole lot, we hope. But the need for testing? Well, let's just say that serial entrepreneur Sanjay Manandhar has it right when he says "24 hours to get COVID-19 test results? There's got to be a better way!" Who's Sanjay? Have a listen to today's episode of Failure - the Podcast, and find out.

Yup, the team from Failure – the Podcast has been busy, too. End of year, and all that.When we weren’t worrying about systemic election fraud, it was that “undemocratic coup“ that the New York Post was railing about. But, with vaccine distribution started, the pandemic relief bill signed and the defense bill ... well … we’ll just see…, it’s time to move forward.We might’ve been busy, but that doesn’t mean that rednose from the north, the old guy and his minions, or even Harry (yeah, you remember him: Jon Lovitz, in SNL’s X-mas special, circa 1989), couldn’t get their jobs done. And, what a gift indeed: Episode #70 of Failure – the Podcast.In case you really need more proof that civilization is coming to an end — wasn’t our modern-day Nero fiddling on the golf course this past weekend, enough? — have a listen. The witty repartee with Karen Temple, startup guru from U of T (Toronto, that is), is a sure-fire cure to any New Year’s Day hangover. Enjoy!

Fintech intelligentsia light up when they hear about new payment processing platforms, sometimes referred to as "rails." It's an allusion to moving goods via railway with tracks, switches, sidings and all those other things grandpa used to reminisce about but that you've never actually seen in person — save for that one harrowing flight out of Midway Int'l in January 2015, when you swore you could count the rivets on boxcars at the Corwith railyard. Only difference is that payment rails can move money from, say, your credit card account to a prince's bank account in some far-off land, rather than, say, pork from Washington D.C. to a senior Congressman's home district. (Hmmm....)Whether routing freight or funds, using the requisite rails can be complex, slow and expensive. That's fine if you happen to own a critical section of the track, so to speak, and can skim a tad for every boxcar or transaction passing by. It may not be so good for your customers, and everyone else downstream in the food chain (think pork bellies, if you wish, but financial transactions work, too). Hence, the collective shudder of excitement from the Fintech community when new rails give promise to potentially cheaper and faster payment processing.(Yes, yes. The podcast. We know. We're almost there. Promise. Can you wait until the next rest stop, or should we pull over by the side of the road?)Introducing new payment platforms is as bold as even the most daring of entrepreneurs care to go. Sure, you do hear about the occasional one that proposes a new form of currency, but ever since the central bankers and securities regulators cracked down on cryptocurrencies, anyone enterprising enough might fare better as a counterfeiter. (No, boys and girls, we don't recommend trying that at home.)Creating a digital marketplace can prove nearly as satisfying as introducing a new currency, but it's fair to wonder whether that dog will still hunt. Though it only just recently crawled out from under a rock, even the team from Failure - the Podcast has heard of eBay, Alibaba, or ... what is it now? ... Amazon. You would think that starting another one of these in 2021 (yep, think about it, we are almost there, and January 20th is right around the corner -- nervous, anyone?) has about the same chance of success as Rudy G's hair dye at a presser. Yet, some may differ. Take Pakira Inc., the Boston-based Fintech startup that hopes to revolutionize the market for physical commodities throughout the entire supply chain. By providing a digital marketplace for transactions, coupled with Bloomberg-like information on all of its players, Pakira is aiming to be the go-to platform for buying and selling everything from lumber to pork bellies.Will Pakira succeed? If winning pitch competitions is any gauge, the answer is most certainly. On the other hand, if appearing on this podcast is the better measure, we will look forward to speaking with them again for a postmortem. Either way, we welcome you to join us in an … interesting… discussion with Nadia Shalaby and Andrew Gibson of Pakira on the origins, workings and future of their online marketplace.

Some things just take a long time. The campaigning. The lawsuits. The voting. The lawsuits. The counting. The lawsuits. The re-counting. The lawsuits. The certifications. The lawsuits. It’s a process. And, after all, nobody said democracy was easy. In fact, had the 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck had the foresight, he might well have said that democracy, like sausages, is best not seen in the making. Walking is the same way. It’s a process. You put your left foot in. You put your left foot out. You put your left foot in, and you shake it all about…. Oops. Wrong one. That’s the Hokey Pokey. It’s useful in a wedding, but not so much for getting about town. Unless, of course, you marry well — in which case the Hokey Pokey can be a prelude to …. Well, never mind. That’s best left to our co-host Mic and his cowboy poet stories.So let’s try again. Walking is a process, and not an easy one. Our friends at John’s Hopkins say it involves two of the brain’s three major regions: the cerebrum and the cerebellum. The former handles the planned muscle movements; the latter, the balance, coordination and muscle control. That’s a lot of grey matter for something that’s as simple as falling forward.All of which brings us to the today’s podcast. Ambulatory Innovations is a Massachusetts startup that’s all about helping patients learn to walk. They’ve come up with a patent-pending mat that simulates the feel of sand, cobblestones, and whatever else one might find underfoot — even sidewalk chewing gum or worse. (Yes, feel free to ask Mic about stepping on things worse than already-chewed gum). And, while the team of Failure - the Podcast couldn’t get the name of the mat quite right during the recording session, we are sure that Ambulatory Innovations co-founders, Dr. Michelle Mailloux and Dr. Katie Muise, will make their product a success in the marketplace.

It certainly seemed that the team from Failure - the Podcast went into Covid-induced hibernation these past few months. We might say that we spent them on a promotional tour to shore up flagging subscriptions in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, with Joe Rogan putting the last few bricks into his “blue wall” of podcast fame in those hotly-contested markets — a wall, we will note, is rumored to have been funded by the Mexican government — we’d have to walk back that claim.We might also say that we had learned, at the start the hiatus, of the seriousness of the affliction known as “listener apathy,” and that we were holding back for fear of scaring (yes, you’re right, scarring might have been the better choice of verbs) the few subscribers we had left. After all, what’s a little dishonesty when it’s only the health of our fellow citizens at stake? If it works when you’re running for office, why not when you’re running a podcast.Sure, we might say all these things, and more. But let’s start afresh. No lies. No pressers. No fake news. No Fox News. No walk-backs. As Bob Barker might have said, let’s go with Door #1: the truth.OK, here goes: the Team was busy. It happens. We’d apologize, but the revenues from Failure - the Podcast speak for themselves.So enough with the idle chatter. (Really, you say? Isn’t that this podcast’s raison d'etre?) Today’s episode is about secret societies ... oops, sorry, that was last week’s news … we mean virtual private networks. They are the gold standard of secure Internet communications, or so we thought. Have a listen or a gander (or both) to today’s episode and see what you think. Perhaps you’ll pick up a thing or two from our guests Dan Edlebeck and Humam Malas of Exidio, a Boston-based startup that’s looking to make your jaunts on the web a little more secure.

Before starring as the criminal mastermind, Wo Fat, in the CBS television series Hawaii Five-O, Mark Dacascos emceed the Food Network hit, Iron Chef America. Though he probably never uttered the words himself, Dacascos will forever be associated with the iconic opening line “if memory serves me correctly …” that launched the Iron Chef brand into camp TV lore.If memory serves us correctly, it was a sage podcast that brought you the trials and tribulations of a travel startup in the post-pandemic epoch. (Perhaps, it’s not an epoch yet, but if you vote this November like you did last time, it may turn into one.) “Timing. Timing. Timing.” wasn't Failure - the Podcast’s finest hour, but none are. Today’s episode is no exception. Still, if it stands for nothing else, it’s that the pandemic offers succor to no business.Welcome to the world of pick-up sports. No, not leagues. We mean ad hoc pick-up sports. Let us explain …. Imagine you are a Gen X’er, in Canada. Your pick-up volleyball games are routinely canceled for lack of attendance. Sure, on Sunday, they told you’d they be there promptly at 5:30 p.m., the following Wednesday. But hump day rolls around and nada. No quorum. No game. Sure, you can practice your digs and jousts, but that’s not the same.Flagging attendance got your game down? There has to be a better way! And, of course, there is. It’s an app, and it’s by Bloxo, a social-networking — or should we say, a sports-networking — startup from Halifax of the great colorful north. No, Bloxo’s app doesn’t post compromising pictures of AWOL team members to the Internet. It starts from a different premise: that every pick-up game can be a winner, if the players plunk down the cash to ensure they’ll show up. With an adult amateur sports market of over $1 billion, how could a startup in that market-space possibly go wrong?Well you know where this one goes… COVID-19. Yup. But any business resilient enough to survive the Canadian winters, can certainly tough out the perils of a humidity-loving pathogen. And, Bloxo is no exception.Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a scintillating discussion with Jennifer McHattie of Bloxo. You probably won’t get the urge to do your own pick-up sports startup, but you might learn a thing or two about weathering a pandemic.P.S.,Time for a shameless plug: did we mention that Bloxo was one of the winners of the MIT Enterprise Forum Startup Spotlight for 2020?

Have you ever looked out over the Midwest farmlands while taking a cross country flight? Just another pretty view, you ask? The guests of today’s podcast think not.Whether the swamp lands in our nation’s capital or a cornfield in the Midwest, a picture can be worth a whole lot. Sure, a satellite photo might give you some insight into the corruption that is Washington DC, but a cornfield from on high is the real money shot. Imagine, if you could identify rows of maze ripening ahead of schedule or under siege by the infamous corn borer. (Yes, unlike earwigs, corn borers do really like corn). Yields might go up and costs down. And, while most city dwellers can size up a garden in seconds, gauging the health of a mega-acre factory farm is another matter entirely.You could send out dozens of workers to survey the land, but as the team from Failure - The Podcast is apt to say, “wait, there’s gotta be a better way!” In fact there is, and our guests from Cloud Agronomics have found it. They propose launching microwave oven-sized cameras into the clear blue yonder to diagnose the ailments of our farmlands. Wait a minute, you say. It’s 2020. Hasn’t this already been done? Yes and no. Bits and pieces. Cloud Agronomics is banking on the fact that nobody’s come up with a solution as robust as theirs.Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in one of the few level-headed discussions they’ve had since college with the management and science gurus behind Cloud Agro. Your dinnertime salad will never look the same.

It takes a lot to rile the team from Failure - the Podcast — especially, when they’re recording an episode. So much so that one wonders whether they spend more time listening to themselves than to their guests. (Yeah, we get it. It’s a process, and at Mark’s age, a slow ship to turn.)But riled they were. In fact, Dave almost had a conniption arguing the benefits of angel investing over, what, equity crowdfunding? Whose heard of that? Come on raise your hands. Higher, please…. There. That proves it. Not a single hand up in the audience.... Oh, that’s right. We have no audience.Irregardless (take that, grammar hounds!), equity crowdfunding is a thing. You know, like Kickstarter, but instead of the hope of receiving a bauble, you get a piece of paper and a dream. It’s just like investing. In fact, it is investing, but ooooohhhhh sooooo much cooler. (Yep, the keys were stuck. Chocolate.)But who are we to judge? Our guest says traditional investing is done with. Kaput. No more of those age-challenged, ethnically-challenged, double-X-chromosome-challenged homo sapiens telling startups what to do and when to do it. The old guard is out. The people are in. (Failure - the Podcast is all for that. We are with the people one hundred percent. It’s the electoral college that scares us. Chads, too.)Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a punchy session with Mike Burtov, serial entrepreneur and author of The Evergreen Startup — The Entrepreneur’s Playbook for Everything from Venture Capital to Equity Crowdfunding (Wow, you’re right: that was a long title.) Mike’s says he’s got the answer to funding-raising for the next generation of entrepreneurs and, hey, he just might be right.

We were curious. Just what is a skeeter? In the midwest it’s slang for mosquito. Perhaps, everywhere. Wikipedia thinks so. It lists “skeeter” as one of the top off-book expressions for the little disease-carrying buggers. Regardless, nobody seems to like them. Nobody, except the birds and the bats. Fish and frogs, too —- though, the latter might not be with us much longer, if the chytrid fungus has its way. So, forget the frogs. Turtles like skeeters, and so do dragonflies. None of these little beasties vote, so let’s forget the lot of them.When you come right down to it, nobody or nothing that matters likes the little flying blood-suckers. There’s nary a good one out there. Let’s get rid of them all. As to the birds, bats, turtles, dragonflies and (for now) frogs, they’ll have to fend for themselves. If our public schools can call ketchup a vegetable, than surely our non-voting planetmates can eat those white floaty things from dandelions instead.All of which brings us to today’s guest. Hanan Lepek is the CEO of Senecio Robotics, an Israeli startup that’s using AI and robotics to help rid the world of skeeters. Just the disease carrying ones, of course. (The garden variety biters get a pass, so don’t throw away that 1960s can of DEET you inherited from grandpa, quite yet). Join us in a post-pandemic conversation that tested the limits of both Skype and Bluetooth. It’s vaguely informative, a little scratchy, occasionally worth a laugh and, certainly, better than watching a coronavirus plume waft up from a political rally at the foot of Mt. Rushmore.

Jennie Nigrosh’s epic failure on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2013 is the stuff of legends. The rising entrepreneur and founder/CEO of eco-friendly laundry-bag maker The Green Garmento got her legs cut out from under her during taping of the ABC reality show. Though she walked away without a penny from “the sharks,” her business took off. The Green Garmento, a multi-use alternative to plastic dry cleaning bags, is used by dry-cleaners and hotels worldwide.Why Jennie deigned to take the call — much less, suffer through a grueling hour of questioning by the team from Failure - the Podcast — is a mystery. Perhaps, it’s our listenership. Jennie’s no dope. She knows that, in the battlefield of business, marketing and sales are the hand-to-hand combat of success. So be it, if it takes an hour on Zoom with the knuckleheads from Failure - the Podcast to reach another potential customer or three.To seal the deal, Jennie has offered to YOU, our three loyal listeners, a deal of a lifetime. Click on this link: https://thegreengarmento.com/failure and save a little on your next purchase of Green Garmento bags. Best bags in the business, Jennie tells us. Who are we to judge? And, don’t ever say you didn’t get something from Failure - the Podcast.

This episode has nothing to do with Amy Cooper. In fact, it doesn’t mention any Karens or their victims. Amy’s dog was named Henry. He’s not in this podcast. Last we heard, he was back with the cocker spaniel rescue league. They are not mentioned in today’s episode, either. This episode has nothing to do with coronavirus. Nor, vaccines, anti-vaxxers or Betsy DeVos. In fact, although the episode was recorded at socially-acceptable distances on the order of miles (and, in the case of our guest, a continent’s worth of them), you will hear no discussion of health today. Not a memorable one, at least. Did we mention X Æ A-12 — or Little X, as Grimes more affectionally calls the tike? We might have, here, but not in the podcast. Speaking of Elon, the Gigafactory is in Nevada. Neither come up in today’s episode. Nor do the Kardashians, Kanye West, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner or Blitzen. What is this episode about? We’ll give you a hint: Tim Forbes. He’s in sports management. He worked his way up through the PGA, became an acclaimed author and now runs his own sports business. Tim has quite a story to tell, and if you listen to today’s episode you might catch a little of it.

So, let’s talk Internet. For sure, it had a beginning. Conventional wisdom says Al Gore gets the credit. The facts say otherwise — but who listens to them anymore. Haven’t you ever wondered how the Internet got started? The team from Failure - the Podcast hasn’t either. Given the number of times we repeat that old saw about Veep Gore, we really should, though. Our guest, for today’s travesty … er, episode … is Tim Horgan, the former web services guru of Digital Equipment Corporation. Haven’t heard of DEC (rhymes with “deck”), as it was known? Ask your grandparents. Perhaps, they’ll remember. Anyway, Tim was there when it happened: he witnessed the dawn of the Internet era. Join the team for Failure - the Podcast in a rousing, coronavirus-era, socially-distant, Zoomtastic call with Tim Horgan. You’ll be the better for it.

Abby Hoffman would not be pleased. The Vietnam War-era activist and author of the iconic work, Steal this Book, had values after all. So why might today’s episode of Failure - the Podcast have Hoffman rolling in his grave? Perhaps, it’s because Hoffman was anti-establishment, whereas our guest, Jason Kraus, is an investor and author of Prepare 4 VC. He is a capitalist. Worse yet — we’re channeling Hoffman, here — he’s a capitalist who’s intent on spawning others through his writing. Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a half-hearted discussion with Jason on investing, publishing and the life of a millennial. Whether you’ll learn anything from it is a mystery.

“Timing. Timing. Timing. …. ?” Yep. You read well.It got the team from Failure - the Podcast thinking about the seafood wholesaler/restaurant supplier who opened his new business three days before the lockdown. By any standard, this was a no-brainer. People like fish, but don’t like to prep, cook and clean. Restaurants are good at that. The product’s known: no need to create a market, like, say, Henry Ford did with the Model T in the early 1900’s. The infrastructure is in place. Unemployment is down and wages are up. Good price, quality and service should clinch it. Like our co-host Mic might say, “opening a seafood supply shop in the 2020’s, what could possibly go wrong?”Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion with Garrett Weinstein, of TravelEZ. The Boston-based startup is hoping to define a market that the novel coronavirus just rendered an oxymoron: worldwide travel for the elderly. If the fundamentals are good, hopefully for Garrett, it’s now just a question of timing.

It’s tricky how the same word can mean so many different things. Take the word “is,” for example. At a low point in his presidency, Bill Clinton came up against a perjury charge when his own lawyer, Robert Bennett, told a federal judge that “there is absolutely no sex of any kind” between Clinton and then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Confronted with the obvious lie, Clinton argued that the statement might nonetheless be true if one took “is” to mean “is none” rather than “is and never has been.”OK. So where does that leave the team from Failure - the Podcast? Join us and learn even less about the novel coronavirus, remote computing software, the new iPad and, yes, the multiple meanings of “appendix.” We weren’t any better off for recording this episode, and you won’t be either for listening to it.

Some things just aren’t easy. Try explaining the presidential caucuses, for example. Even the NY Times has trouble with that one. Just because you’re a pro, doesn’t mean the words come easily. Writing an intro to this podcast has proven no exception. Regardless, join us in a discussion with Ron Murphy, CEO of Boston-based medical device company Theromics, and perhaps it will all come together for you.

We thought long and hard about publishing this podcast. With no guest in the mix, we were torn between 45 minutes of absolute silence (“dead air,” as they say in the business) and the same of pointless chatter between Mark and Dave. (We tried to drag Mic into the fray, but he said he’d be busy cleaning the rotary dialer on his cell phone). We consulted the oracle to see which would best help our flagging stats in iTunes. According to Google, a wholly silent podcast will hurt the publisher’s ratings. That settled the matter, or so we thought. Seconds after initial results of our query popped up, a mysterious message appeared on the screen. Letter by letter, as if Sundar Pichai himself were typing it in real time, we learned that in the case of “Failure - the Podcast,” the ratings were likely to improve with silence. No surprise there. In the end, our poor judgement prevailed. (That, and the fact that we simply had nothing else in the can). Hence, you’re stuck with drivel. Forty-five minutes of it. Mark in Hawaii. Dave in Boston. Mic … well, who ever knows where he is… We wish you the best of luck getting through this one.

Just like the title says, today’s episode is about corporate boards and … get this … corporate board failure. Fancy that: truth in advertising. Corporate board failure. Is it possible? What do boards do, after all? If their mission is to rubber stamp the CEO, that leaves a big margin for error. You’d practically have to have sat on the board of directors to Theranos to run into trouble. Oh wait, we forgot. They didn’t get into trouble either. But, some boards do. As the Financial Times points out, boards of Google, Wynn Casinos, Signet Jewelers, Marriott and Wells Fargo have all been sued, whether in connection with failures against their charges for harassment, security breaches, or otherwise. Believe it or not, there are standards, even for corporate boards. Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they explore the duties and failings of corporate boards with Joseph Ayoub, of Varuna Strategies. Like Ben Solo née Kylo Ren’s return from the dark side in the latest of the Star Wars saga, Joseph is a litigator turned corporate consultant, specializing in forming and fixing corporate boards.

Notwithstanding what you may have thought about college psych, communications and business majors, the instructors who teach those disciplines can be as nerdy as any academician. Take the guest of our latest episode of Failure - the Podcast. Elaine Chen is an instructor on technology innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic management at the Sloan School. That’s MIT’s prestigious B-school. (OK, technically, she’s a senior lecturer at Sloan. We suspect the students don’t know the difference. Remember, this is B-school.) Elaine is as nerdy as they get and proudly admits it. Why shouldn’t she? We certainly are not going to be able to MAGA (make America great again) without MANA (make America nerdy again).

Taking the plunge into entrepreneurship can be a scary thing. Seasonally speaking, you could think of it as the Halloween of job changes: it’s best for young or the steel-nerved. (Yeah, we left out ignorant and desperate, but go with us here ....). For those who have what it takes, the plunge can be well worth it. Not only for the excitement of building a business from scratch but, for the lucky few, the handsome financial returns.Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a disjointed discussion of startups, the young, the steel-nerved and, well, the life of entrepreneur Marc Held. Now, the head of IoT Solutions at Turvo, you could say that Marc was a serial entrepreneur before even finishing college. Who amongst us can beat that?

Back in the day, the sale of land was consummated by a ceremonial act: the buyer gave to the seller a fistful of dirt from the property being sold. It was beauty in its simplicity. And, what could possibly go wrong? Either the buyer delivered the dirt or she didn’t. Well … the parties might have different understandings of the tract being sold. The supposed sale of the “back nine” of one man’s yard might spark a country-wide invasion. (OK, it’s a stretch. But it’s based on something we read in Wikipedia).Today, we are more sophisticated. Buyers and sellers located continents apart may negotiate and close deals for land that they’ve never seen, much less, held the dirt of (yep, you caught us, a dangling preposition). All of this, through middlemen, like brokers, lawyers, and escrow agents. With such an august crew facilitating the transaction, what could possibly go wrong?Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they explore the wild world of title insurance with Ethan Powsner, Vice President of Market & Technology Development, for the Fidelity National Title Group. You’ll be thankful that there’s someone there to make right things that go wrong.

Listeners more erudite than us — yes, grammarians, it could be “we” — are undoubtedly familiar with Carole Cadwalladr. Her work was the subject of the recent Netflix documentary “The Great Hack,” exploring the weaponization of social media.The Cadwalladr and Netflix work adds further fuel to an on-going debate: would society be better off regulating Facebook, Twitter and the like as proposed by certain now-vacationing Washingtonians, or is Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” the answer?Economists might argue the latter: that aggregate consumer self-interest, unhindered by governmental or capitalist influence, will always produce the best outcome. But, if that’s so, how do you explain the 300,000,000,000 burgers sold by McDonald’s?Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion with Nadeem Mazen, co-founder of fabrk.io, a social network that is powered by cryptocurrency and consumer choice, and decide for yourself.

Our guest walked in saying he had so many failures, he kept a notepad to remember them. Even showed us the pad. Our mistake was we didn’t look closely. Surely, though, we should have known something was up when he said he had already listened to some of our episodes. In retrospect, we had to wonder whether that was casual listening — or something more akin to Belichick and Brady watching Rams videos in the run-up to the Super Bowl. This was clearly going to be Christopher Mirabile’s podcast. Managing director of Launchpad Venture Group, chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association. You got it. Join the team from Failure - the Podcast and Christopher Mirabile in a wandering story of consultancy, the auto business, entrepreneurship, investment, and you name it. It’s a nail biter.

You’d think the team from Failure - the Podcast would learn. Screen, screen, screen. We have to screen our guests before making the invite. Certainly, we have to have a word or two with them before pressing the record button (assuming we remember to do that, at all). We think Mic’s confusing his cold calls for Failure - the Podcast with those for our favorite angel investment group. Instead of bringing in guests ready to pitch their stumbles, he’s getting ones that stumble through their pitches. Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in an uproarious discussion with Bob Allard, co-founder and managing partner of Extension Engine, a consulting firm that’s trying to Make Education Great Again! What will you learn from today’s episode? Who knows? What do you ever learn from this podcast?

Join the team from Failure - The Podcast in an irreverent tour of an MIT party, and learn — once again — what startups think about failure.

We first met our guest, Randall Levere, in 2012. He had just launched Erba Cycles and was geared up (get it? geared up) to sell a new breed of bicycle — one that was not only environmentally friendly to ride, but also to produce. And, it was downright fine looking. Randall was a guest on our first podcast, The Tech Entrepreneur, and graced us with a discussion of turning a passion into a business. Flash forward seven years and Randall’s the guest on Failure - the Podcast. Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a retrospective look at Erba Cycles, one of the last great bamboo bike makers, and learn why.

Before every good sale, there’s a story. For investors, it’s no different. You might think that all they want from the first meeting is the entrepreneur’s story. But, often, they have to tell stories of their own. After all, in some markets, willing investors are easy to come by. So whom to choose? The teller’s story may decide. Join the Team from Failure - the Podcast as venture capitalist Arjun Bhatnagar regales them in stories of goats, airplanes and startups gone bad.

You’d think that after 40+ episodes, the Team from Failure - the Podcast would know a thing or two about failure. We certainly thought we did, until we met today’s guest: futurist, speaker, author and leader Tom Koulopoulos. Turns out that Tom’s all about success through failure. Who knew? Perhaps we should have done some research on him, first. Anyway, we quickly learned that Tom travels the globe talking to the best and brightest about failure as a critical component of business innovation. Join the Team from Failure - the Podcast as Tom Koulopoulos schools us in failure. Perhaps, you’ll learn a thing or two. We did.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as they explore a writer’s world with Ken Briodagh, a story teller and adventurist in the Connecticotian mold of Mark Twain — but with a tech twist.

Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion of the custom rug business. If you’re like us, you’ll learn about an online business you might never have imagined. But, on the other hand, who would have thought there was money to be made online in shoes, pre-packaged meds, or you name it …..

Navigating life is challenge enough. Failure, it seems, is waiting at every turn. Most would imagine that living with a disability would only add to the worries. AccessSportAmerica has long recognized that resilience is the foil to the fear of failure. The Boston-based charity’s mission is to inspire people with disabilities. One of its key teaching aids: windsurfing! Join the Team from Failure - the Podcast and Ross Lilley, executive director of AccessSportAmerica, in a meandering discussion of failure, resilience and the challenges of running a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of the challenged and disabled.

Seven is a big number when it comes to co-founders. You have to expect that most startups will go a few pivots before finding their niche. Try it with seven co-founders, and the number goes up exponentially.Join the team from Failure - the Podcast as the wind their way through the story of media and entertainment start-up ROTU with co-founder Jason Parks. He and the company are onto something, now. Is it just a siren song of another pivot, or have they hit on something truly big?

As listeners of a certain age will appreciate, when a man’s yearly physical goes beyond the “now, cough!” stage, things can become downright awkward. What more need we say, here, about the prostate exam? Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a discussion with Christopher LaFarge and learn that circles of torment are neither the exclusive realm of hell nor the health care system. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, it can seem that the investment community has become pretty good with them, too.

“Conversations” are a favorite topic of this podcast. This includes not only those attendant to new product introductions, but also those between entrepreneurs and investors. Today’s episode delves into both. Our guest, Brandale Randolph, is doing well by doing good. His business, 1854 Cycling Company, is built around the notion that a local business operating in the heart of the city can end recidivism through the sale and maintenance of premium bicycles. Join us in a digression-filled discussion with Brandale and learn how an entrepreneur’s vision, when shaped and fueled by conversations with customer and investor marketplaces, can drive potentially exponential business growth.