How Hard Can It Be?

First of all THANK YOU for being a loyal subscriber to How Hard Can IT Be?... after a couple years of it I’ve decided to take a bit of a hiatus, and use the opportunity to create a new pod I really want you to check out, called #AskTrap. #AskTrap solves what had become the 3 big challenges of HHCIB, namely that it took too long to listen to, too long to make, and was hit or miss in asking the questions most valuable to you, the current or aspiring entrepreneur or investor. I wanted to make something quick and easy to add to your podcasting queue in all the new platforms opening up the pod world to a bigger audience - from Spotify to Alexa and Google Home - while reducing the production burden on me so I could increase the frequency of new episodes. #AskTrap is built on the Anchor platform, which means I can pretty much do the whole thing on my phone, wherever I am. This time YOU’RE the one asking the questions - with a simple hashtag on Twitter or LinkedIn - and I promise to give you an answer for a busy person, meaning in about 5 minutes. Plan is to do that 3 times per week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and see where that gets us. Check out the all-new #AskTrap podcast wherever you’re listening to this, subscribe and rate us in the iTunes store and elsewhere, and help us spread the work if you like what you hear. Beyond that, if you have a questions I can answer about almost anything - brands, marketing, startups, VC, careers, whatever - just use the #AskTrap hashtag, and I’ll get on it. Thanks again, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Matt Walsh has a pretty unique perspective on the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. If you know Matt it's likely as "the Fidelity guy" on some crypto panel in Boston or New York, or from today's news that the crypto-focused venture firm he left Fidelity to found - Castle Island Ventures - is now writing checks and open for business. Before founding Castle Island Ventures Matt was a Vice President at Fidelity focused on the crypto-asset and blockchain space. He worked as a management consultant at Arthur D. Little before that, and later in the strategic initiatives group at Clear Channel Radio (now iHeartRadio). Matt is a proud graduate of Boston's own BC High - where he was of course called "Walshie" by "Fitzy" and "Sully" - going on to attend Babson and the Fuqua School of Management at Duke. Our conversation began as usual with his personal story, and went on to cover the adventure of being the crypto evangelist at one of the world's most highly regarded financial institutions. You'll get his thoughts on where the best opportunities are in the crypto space right now, and on why Bitcoin still may be a bargain.

How does a kid from Brooklyn became one of Boston's top startup CEOs? We invested on Hometap because it's a market opportunity on the scale of a whole new capital class, and because my friend Jeffrey Glass is one of the most backable CEO's in Boston. For this week's episode Jeff and I sat down to talk about why, and how he got to that place from the unlikely starting point of a humble household in pre-hipster, working class Brooklyn. Jeff is a remarkable guy with a remarkable story, hear him tell it and you'll learn along the way how he thinks about hiring, scaling a business, the important difference between execution and strategy problems, and why Hometap may just end up being the single most important thing he's done so far. Enjoy.

My conversation with Sue Graham Johnston, the President of G20 portfolio star 128 Technology. Sue actually came to Boston in 2017 to help run 128, a next generation networking company that closes the gap between what your business needs and what your network does. Much of 128's management team also led Acme Packet, a Boston-based unicorn acquired by Oracle in 2013 for a little over $2 billion. Sue was actually the executive at Oracle responsible for the integrating Acme Packet, and for running the resulting business. She was so well regarded by the team that when they were ready for a President in the new business, they called her first. Between Oracle and here Sue served as the Managing Director of British Oxygen Company, running the UK, Ireland and sub-Saharan Africa region of the Linde Group. While at Oracle she served as Vice President in the Communications Global Business Unit, having joined Oracle through the acquisition of Sun Microsystems, where she held numerous leadership roles in operations, supply chain, and engineering. Sue started her career in management consulting with Bain & Company, and holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering, an MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, and an MBA all from Stanford University, the Cornell of the west. Sue's about as polished and professional as they come, and she's risen to the top of every male engineer-dominated situation she's been dropped into her whole life. I learned over the course of our conversation where that poise and bearing comes from, and all I'll say going is that involves the management and shearing of lesser mammals. Curious? Well you should be. Check out my conversation with the President of 128 Technologies, Sue Graham Johnston.

My guest this week is Kirk Arnold, a veteran tech industry CEO, public board member, and lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Kirk was most recently the CEO of Data Intensity, a 650-person global managed services provider of cloud-based data, application and analytics acquired by EQT Partners in 2017. Before that she held roles as the COO of Avid, CEO and President of the then publicly traded billion-dollar service provider, Keane, Inc., and Founder and CEO of NerveWire. Kirk’s also become a kind of tech “CEO Whisperer” over the years, and serves on a range of boards from Ingersoll Rand to Cramer Marketing. She’s a huge supporter of the local innovation ecosystem here in Boston, rounding out her time at MIT with service on the Executive Committee and Board of Trustees of MassTLC, as a Board Member at The Commonwealth Institute, and on the Advisory Committee for the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. Kirk is the embodiment of the servant leader mentality, having started (and succeeded) as the kind sales person genuinely focused on earning her customer’s respect and not just their signature. Our conversation covers that, and a remarkable confluence of philosophies on matters significant and trivial, from what makes for an effective President to why showing up on time and prepared is a habit worth establishing and maintaining throughout your career.

You could say Patrick Murck is the man who made Bitcoin respectable. The cryptocurrency’s journey from preferred medium of exchange for mail-order cocaine to Next Big Thing was a long, strange trip indeed, and my guest this week was right there the whole way. Meet Patrick Murck, Bitcoin insider and Special Counsel at the international law firm Cooley LLP, where his practice focuses on regulatory and legal issues facing the fintech industry. Patrick is probably best known as Executive Director of The Bitcoin Foundation, which he co-founded in 2012. A prominent, early figure in world of cryptocurrency, Patrick has also held roles in a multiple digital startups and served as an expert for US and European regulators and policymakers. In 2014, he was named among America’s 50 Outstanding General Counsel for 2014. Today Patrick serves as a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and his research focuses on the law and policy implications of Bitcoin, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. He also serves as President Board Member for the BitGive Foundation, a philanthropic representative for the Bitcoin and Blockchain Industry, aimed at leveraging this technology to improve public health and the environment worldwide.

My guest this week is Dave Balter, Founder and Partner of Flipside Crypto, a data solutions and investment club for cryptocurrencies. Dave really is a pillar of the Boston startup community… an innovation‐obsessed builder of companies, often as a Founder/CEO but also as a Board Member, advisor, or investor. As an operator Dave’s probably best known for Smarterer, which he founded, led, and sold to Pluralsight for $75 Million in 2014, and BzzAgent, which he founded, led, and sold to dunnhumby for $60 Million in 2011. Dave was named one of 30 Most Disruptive People in Boston Tech by Boston Magazine in 2016, was a Finalist for E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, and was recognized as a Future Legend by the Ad Club. He co‐founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and authored two books on the subject including Grapevine and The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II.  As both an independent angel and Venture Partner in Boston Seed Capital, Dave’s investments have included Draft Kings, Promoboxx, FitnessKeeper. and HelpScout. A longtime TechStars mentor, Dave also co-founded Intelligent.ly — a classroom space that helps star employees become managers — with his wife Sarah Hodges back in in 2011, and sits on the Board of Directors of Boch Center for the Performing Arts.

My guest this week is Jason Trevisan, Chief Financial Officer of Boston-based IPO darling CarGurus. After funding itself for its first 8 years with less than $5 million of total venture capital, CarGurus took its $200 million business to the public markets in October at $16/share, raising $150 million customer acquisition war chest on the back of a $1.7 Billion enterprise valuation. After beating estimates for Q3, the stock sits today around $30/share, representing a market cap of over $3.2 Billion. To call their exit a home run would be a massive understatement, and Jason Trevisan was at the center of it. This will be Jason’s first big interview since the end of their quiet period, and to set expectations we did NOT talk very much about the business. My focus as always was on Jason’s personal journey, which began at Duke and ran through Bain & Company, a stint at online advertising leader aQuantive until it was acquired by Microsoft, and an extended stay as a VC at Polaris Partners, a Boston VC firm focused on growth equity investments and buyouts in Internet, technology and healthcare.

Meet Carbonite President & CEO Mohamad Ali to hear his remarkable immigrant story, and learn the approach to business value creation that's not only transformed Carbonite into an exciting Boston company again, but enabled his string of successes from IBM, to Avaya, to HP. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first.

Peach co-founder & CEO Janet Kraus grew up in a household with two people living as “their best selves,” realizing their potential and doing what they loved. She’s spent the better part of her time since leaving home trying to figure out what that means for her, through a remarkable set of experiences as a student, entrepreneur, and professor at the very top of those professions.

Meet Nanigans Co-founder & CEO Ric Calvillo, hear lessons learned from the ups and the downs of the startup journey, and data-driven insight about what most Facebook advertisers are getting wrong.

My guest the week is healthcare VC superstar Michelle Dipp. Dr. Dipp is a co-founder and Partner of Longwood Fund, having co-founded Longwood portfolio companies Axial Biotherapeutics and OvaScience, both of which she now serves as Chairman of the Board. She previously served as the CEO of Alnara Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Eli Lilly), Verastem (NASDAQ: VSTM) and FlexPharma (NASDAQ: FLKS). BOTH of which Michelle Dipp is an overachiever in an industry of overachievers. As a young girl growing up in El Paso Texas, though, she dreamed of being a professional ballerina. She worked diligently at it for 8 years — studying under a Balanchine dancer from age 4 — before two attempts at New York auditions ended in heartbreak. Six years of strict Catholic school later, she failed again… this time to get into Harvard, which had become her “dream school” after coming to terms with her mother’s loving but pragmatic advice on ballet and on life. “Sometimes no matter how hard you work,” she said, “you’re just not going to be good enough. And you need to get over it.” Near as I can tell, Michelle Dipp was never not good enough for anything again. Her Oxford undergrad experience turned into 12 years of study abroad, culminating in a stint as a first class medical researcher. Her work, energy, and leadership skills garnered first the attention and then the high regard of both Big Pharma and Big Private Equity. Driven to the cutting edge of medical science, she used her power and influence to develop promising new platforms into a series of companies that would make any VC salivate. In her spare time she helped build the venture capital firm that would spawn them all — Longwood Fund — whose mission “to identify technologies and found companies that will advance new therapeutics that not only make a difference in the lives of patients worldwide, but also create significant value for investors.” Michelle Dipp wants it all. She wants what her mom had, which as a nurse in a Texas border town was to make a difference in the lives of real people across a broad spectrum of cultural and socioeconomic circumstances. And she wants what her dad had too, which is to build and lead businesses that make a difference in the community of which they are a part. That’s what Michelle Dipp wants. And there is simply no doubt she is good enough to get it. In our second segment this week Michelle and I talked about the differences, similarities, and inevitable convergence of the two great tribes of the Boston innovation ecosystem, Healthcare and Tech. Using the example of her latest project — Axial Biotheraputics — Michelle explains how new treatment “platforms” come about on the healthcare side, and the process by which enterprising entrepreneurs turn promising scientific breakthroughs into therapies that help people in the real world. Michelle is obviously a rock star, but also a delight to spend time with. I think you’re really going to enjoy getting to know her, in particular the person behind the pedigree.

My guest the week is venture capitalist and charter G20 Member Jeff McCarthy. Jeff’s a Partner at North Bridge Venture Partners, focused mainly on materials. He played leadership roles at two early, successful companies within the North Bridge portfolio, Cadia Networks and New Oak Communications, where he was the CEO until that company was acquired by Nortel. Before joining New Oak, Jeff was Vice President of sales and business development at Cadia Networks, a developer of ATM concentrator products for the service provider marketplace, and held senior management positions at Wellfleet Communications, including Vice President of Carrier and Channel Operations. Jeff is a proud and active graduate of the Northeastern University School of Management, and serves as an advisor to the University. In this week’s second segment Jeff and will focus on a problem that seems like a great one until you have it, which is how to pick the right VC partner when you have more than one to choose from. Jeff will share thoughts on the importance of chemistry and vertical expertise, respond to my question about what’s different for female entrepreneurs, and compare funds specialized in individual stages of the venture journey with those that invest throughout it. As always, How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple. Here now, my conversation with G20 Member Jeff McCarthy...

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of "How Hard Can It Be"...Up close and personal with the real people behind the hits and misses in Boston's venture capital ​big time. My name is Bob Hower and I'm the Co-founder of G20 Ventures. You can​ ​​​follow me on Twitter at @bobthevc, and​ link to our Medium publication at G20vc.com. ​Each week we'll​ ​be ​getting​ to know one of the​ ​luminaries in our local startup community, and drill into a specific area of their​​ ​expertise for the benefit of other entrepreneurs and investors.​ My guest the week is the usual host of this podcast, my new partner Mike Troiano! Mike is a new venture capitalist who brings nearly 25 years of executive leadership and marketing experience to bear for entrepreneurs. He most recently served as the Chief Marketing Officer of Actifio, a global enterprise data-as-a-service provider he helped turn from an obscure virtualization technology into a venture capital "unicorn" valued at over $1.2 Billion. As CMO from 2012 to 2017, Mike helped grow revenue over 80% per year, creating the Copy Data Virtualization category while expanding the business into blue chip accounts across 37 countries. He spent his early career at top worldwide ad agencies including McCann-Erickson and FCB, and was named the founding CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Interactive in 1995. He later served as the president of NASDAQ-listed systems integrator Primix, and as General Manager of mobile content pioneer m-Qube from inception through one of the largest Boston-based venture capital exits of 2006. In this week’s second segment Mike and I talked about the importance of belonging, what makes him such an effective communicator, how he decided to become a VC and what it means to him to be a great one. We also discussed what all great entrepreneurs have in common with bruce Springsteen, something this Garden State native liked a lot. As always, How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is ezCater Co-Founder and CEO Stefania Mallett. Stefania has spent over 25 years building and growing technology-enabled companies that solve real business problems. She co-founded and successfully sold InSite Marketing Technology to what is now KANA on NASDAQ, and prior to that led National Logistics Management (a broker for $225M in transportation services) to profitability for the first time in 4 years. As the COO of IntraNet (now ACI Worldwide,) Stefania revamped the firm and vaulted it to #1 in its market, a position it has maintained for 15+ years. What I find remarkable about Stefania is not only the depth of her competence but the breadth of her interests. A self-proclaimed “systems thinker” and engineer, she emerged from a difficult and non-traditional childhood determined to make sense of the world, proceeding through a hugely successful and entrepreneurial career to do exactly that through a series of executive management roles across a dizzying array of industries and company types. Far from the overly-intellectual engineer stereotype, though, she’s managed to remain a warm and insightful person who clearly cares deeply for the people she’s working with the build ezCater, a neat little company which itself has a story worth telling. We’ll spend our second segment doing just that, walking step by step through the unexpected yet highly typical twists and turns that characterized ezCater’s beginning, through the disciplined approach to management that’s created one of Boston’s most successful and thriving marketplace businesses. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is Patrick Sweeney, an Olympic athlete turned technology entrepreneur turned full time adventurer. Patrick chases adventure for a living, propelled by a passion to help others do the same through corporate speaking engagements and network television appearances, plus an upcoming book in 2017. Patrick grew up a working class Irish kid outside of Boston, and was shaped by a dramatic life experience he’ll share in our talk. He finished 2nd in the 1996 Olympic trials rowing the single scull and won international races from Canada to Norway. After attending a top business school, he built multiple ground-breaking technology companies, earned six patents, wrote two award winning books and appeared on media outlets from CNN to Bloomberg, CNBC, and The New York Times. One day, though, while working the 80-hour weeks and living the intense life of an entrepreneurial leader, Patrick got a wake-up call in the form of a life-threatening illness. When he recovered, he took his first steps toward finding his own adventurer again, unlocking a passion and energy for life all too often lost in the pursuit of material wealth. Today Patrick’s focus is on breaking world records and embracing every day as if it were his last. In Feb 2015 he became the first person to bike to Everest Base Camp in Nepal, and has now become the first to attempt cycling the Seven Summits. His mission is to help millions around the world find their adventurer within, and our second segment today focuses on the process of overcoming fear that’s central to achieving that or any goal in life and in business. This conversation is a fascinating one about breaking through what he calls the “fear frontier,” covering ground from startups to parenting, the limiting functions of our lizard brains, and the journey to find the “genius” we all have at the intersection of our passion and our vocation. PLEASE take a minute to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Overcast, or Pocket Casts, and consider giving us a quick, 5-star review on iTunes. It really helps spread the word and I would sincerely and personally appreciate it. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

After 20 episodes of the HHCIB Pod, it's time to ask... well... how hard it actually is? How are we doing? What could we do better? We've set up a quick typeform here to gather up your feedback, would love to hear from YOU what we're doing right and how we could do it better. So let us know: https://miketrap.typeform.com/to/YEeSzu

My guest this week is Matt Johnston, Chief Executive Officer of Mautic, the leader in open source marketing automation. Mautic makes it easy for you to put the right message in front of the right person at the right time, empowering enterprises and agencies with a flexible, open platform built for us by us. Before joining Mautic earlier this year Matt was the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Applause (formerly known as uTest). An integral part of Applause’s growth after joining in late 2008, Matt led that company’s marketing, community management, partner channel, and company strategy, helping it become one of Boston’s most highly regarded enterprise technology players. Before that he played a range of senior and strategic marketing roles at OnForce, Mimeo, and Herman Miller office furniture. Our second segment this week is a real treat for anyone interested in what it means to be a Chief Marketing Officer in 2017. Matt and I together have held just about every marketing role you can have, including the one at the top, and our conversation covered everything from the anxiety and stress of keeping up with the latest technology phenom du jour to the roots, current reality, and future of the latest and greatest Account Based Marketing (ABM) model. It’s always fun to trade war stories with another senior marketing guy, and you’ll be a fly on the wall for a conversation I know we both really enjoyed. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is Pierre-Loic Assayag, the CEO and co-founder of Traackr, the world’s most powerful and effective influencer management platform. Traackr lets marketers scale their influencer marketing programs by focusing on the individual people with the greatest impact on their objectives. Their customers include Coca-Cola, HP, OpenTable, Capital One, Kiehls, Travelocity, SAP and Adidas. Half of the top 50 communications agencies today use Traackr to drive successful social programs and earn more attention by engaging with the right people, an amazing achievement for a company just in the process of raising its first round of institutional capital. A longtime mar-tech veteran, Pierre-Loic has deep expertise in advertising and marketing innovation across the digital space. After starting his career at P&G, Pierre-Loic became Peugeot-Citroen’s first Director of New Media heading up an international portfolio of information technology projects. He went on to join the frontlines of the Internet economy at places including Viant and Optaros, bringing blue chip customers the vision and execution they needed to survive and thrive in a media landscape transformed by the slow, painful death of traditional mass media. In our second segment we’ll talk about a subject near and dear to any entrepreneur’s heart, which is when to raise money. Traackr’s been remarkably capital efficient in the way it’s grown into a global company, and that’s because Pierre-Loic has some strong views on the relative importance of customer revenue and investor capital. He also has a very specific and I think pretty unique way of thinking about when to go raise money, a model based on aligning your interests with that of investors I think could save a lot of us a lot of heartache as we journey down the road. -- How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is Eric Paley, Managing Partner of Founder Collective, an early stage fund begun by a team of entrepreneurs who themselves launched companies and led them through successful exits. Founder Collective is focused on helping the next generation of great entrepreneurs build important and lasting businesses through it’s refreshingly clear and often-stated mission, to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. Previously, Eric was the CEO and co-founder of Brontes, which was acquired by 3M in 2006. Founder Collective’s prescient investments in companies including Pill Pack, Seat Geek, the Trade Desk, Periscope, Buzz Feed, Hotel Tonight, and Uber have made it one of the most prominent seed stage funds in Boston and beyond. Fortune magazine’s influential Term Sheet recently identified Founder Collective as among a group of VC firms outside Silicon Valley who were moving investors beyond their strict belief in "the best and the rest" in venture, matching or beating the performance of the handful of storied West Coast firms to deliver some of the best performing funds of the past decade from firms that didn’t exist before the dot-com bubble. Our conversation on the importance of “founder friendliness” included Eric’s perspective on the challenges facing portfolio star Uber right now, an exchange I think our regular listeners will find particularly interesting. In our second segment Eric and I turned to what he calls The Idea Myth, the belief that every great company finds its genesis in some flash of inspiration born in the mind of some genius entrepreneur. The reality, and the core investment thesis of Eric’s firm, is that venture success tends to emerge from teams who deeply understand customer value creation, who have the talent and the will to persist in solving the the seemingly endless string of mundane challenges that must be overcome to will a successful company into existence from nothing. It’s a refreshing reminder of the importance of execution in a business that too often elevatea strategy above all else, and a view I very much share with him and his partners. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is Yumin Choi, Managing Director of Bain Capital Ventures Healthcare team. Yumin joined Bain's Boston team last year after ten years culminating as a General Partner at HLM Venture Partners. At HLM he led a variety of investments across healthcare IT and services sectors, serving as board director for AbleTo, mPulse Mobile, Oceans Healthcare, Payspan (acquired by Primus Capital), Spinal Kinetics, and Vets First Choice. Yumin has a really interesting background... born in Seoul, South Korea, lived in Japan as a child and moved to Hawaii at age 10 where he attended the Punahou School, President Obama’s alma mater. He's an investor and mentor in several healthcare accelerators, including Blueprint Health, Healthbox, Startup Health, Rock Health, and 500 Startups. Yumin serves with me on the board of the New England Venture Capital Association, and on the board of overseers for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the oversight committee for Boston University’s Coulter Foundation. He also served as a lecturer in the Gordon Institute at Tufts University, where he taught entrepreneurial finance. I think my conversation with Yumin about the job of being a VC is probably the most illuminating I’ve had to date, focusing on the importance of building a network, looking for patterns in the dots of what can be hundreds of near misses and good ideas below the threshold of Yes, and staying open to opportunities regardless of their source or pedigree. Our second segment, though, is about the single event that probably shaped Yumin’s views on the value of healthcare innovation more than any other... his own diagnosis with cancer at age 31, and a subsequent treatment regime that - all by itself - almost killed him. This is not the usual blah blah about relationships in venture, folks, try as we always do to avoid that. My conversation with Yumin was about his journey to understand why what he was doing mattered, and I was inspired by him and his story in a way I hope you will be too. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

This week's guest is Drift Co-Founder and CEO David Cancel. If you’ve ever landed on a web page and had a real person offer to help you find what you were looking for, there’s a decent chance Drift helped make it happen. Their mission is to “help businesses grow by delivering a better, personal experience across every conversation with their customers," and it’s a space David knows all too well. He’s spent his career building great products for marketers at companies he’s founded including Compete, Lookery, Ghostery, and Performable. He served as Chief Product Officer at HubSpot after it acquired Performable in 2011, and is widely credited as having re-architected both the product and the engineering team at that company prior to its wildly successful IPO in 2014. David’s active in the Boston tech community investing in and advising organizations like Charles River Ventures, Spark Capital, NextView, DormRoom Fund, EverTrue, Visible Measures, Yottaa, and HelpScout. You can and absolutely should catch his Podcast - Seeking Wisdom - which offers practical advice on health, wealth, life, and learning for fellow entrepreneurs. As you’ll hear in our conversation, David was born and raised in New York City and now lives in the Boston area with his wife and two kids. In this week’s second segment he and I talked about the process of developing products that win, which is so different from the mythology most startups are framed in after the fact. If you had to develop a person from scratch to drive that process, you’d be hard pressed to design a better fit than David, and we’ll dig into the relationship I’ve always found fascinating, between the person and the products they create. I’ve known David for a long time, and he’s not only one of the best product guys in Boston, but one of the most broadly read and genuinely thoughtful people in our community. I think you’re really going to enjoy our conversation, which drifts into the working class backgrounds that have shaped us both, the importance of family, and the unvarnished truth about what it takes to create something the world wants badly enough to pay for it. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is Kevin Bitterman, a Partner in Polaris Partners Boston office. Kevin joined Polaris in 2004 to focus on investments in healthcare, after playing a key role in getting Sirtris Pharmaceuticals off the ground while a graduate student at Harvard Medical School. What was that role? Well, it depends who you ask. When Kevin was asked by the Boston Business Journal he said, "I deserve next to no credit for the tremendous accomplishments they've had there." His team had a different view... "All you have to do is read Kevin’s Ph.D. dissertation," said lead investor Terry McGuire, "He was a co-discoverer of (Sirtris' science), and a big reason for their success." Sirtis was acquired by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline PLC in 2008, for $720 million. Trust me when I tell you a VC who downplays their role in a startup’s success is the rarest of creatures indeed, and Kevin’s atypical humility is one of the things that’s made him a go-to guy on the Boston biotech scene. In his time at Polaris, Kevin also co-founded Genocea Biosciences (NASDAQ: GNCA) and was the founding CEO of Editas Medicine (NASDAQ: EDIT), Morphic Therapeutic and Visterra. He currently represents Polaris as a director of Editas Medicine, InSeal Medical, Genocea Biosciences, Kala Pharmaceuticals, Morphic Therapeutic, Neuronetics, Taris Biomedical and Vets First Choice. Kevin is also active in the local life science and healthcare start-up community, serving on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) and with me as Board Chair of the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA). He has a BA, summa cum laude, from Rutgers University and a PhD in genetics at Harvard Medical School. In this week’s second segment Kevin and I talked about how cutting edge biotech companies like the one’s he’s been involved in get off the ground, how they emerge from our great universities to create companies that have collectively saved millions of lives. His answer is nothing like the way most people think of VC, and even different from the technology venture model some of us know so well. Kevin and I live in the same town in the Western suburbs and have even spent a few Dad’s weekends down in Mohegan Sun (which will NOT be discussed in this podcast.) I know him to be a family man of great kindness, talent, and intelligence, and it was a pleasure spending a little time to get under what makes him tick. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

My guest this week is Brent Grinna, the Founder & CEO of EverTrue. EverTrue is a social donor management software platform that helps hundreds of higher education, independent school, and other non-profit fundraising organizations track and engage alumni and donors. EverTrue participated in TechStars and was selected as a winner of MassChallenge in 2011. Bain Capital Ventures is their lead investor today, and their partner institutions include household names like Amherst, Williams, Colgate, Brown, Boston University, Phillips Andover, and Phillips Exeter. The business was born after Brent - who’d been fast tracking as a venture capital and private equity investor - was asked to serve as an Alumni Volunteer for his undergraduate alma mater, Brown University. He found a system in desperate need of upgrade to 21st century technology and tactics, and set out to bring them to the education fundraising process he cared deeply about. The reason he cared so deeply was that access to higher education had changed the lives of both he and his brothers, who’d grown up on rural farmland in a far flung corner of Iowa. Football and smarts were Brent’s ticket to Brown, where he not only excelled academically but ended up Captain of the Varsity Football Team. After graduating he spent four years in finance at William Blair & Company and Madison Dearborn Partners, then earned his MBA with honors from Harvard Business School. In this week’s second segment Brent and I talked about the people stuff that almost always ends up being the primary focus of the CEO, at any stage of the business. I think other CEOs and those who aspire to be one will relate to both the insights and the struggles we both shared in this aspect of the job, if not to uncover all the answers then at least to commiserate on some of the harder questions. I consider Brent both a true friend and one of the most promising entrepreneurs in Boston, I think you’ll enjoy listening in on our conversation... especially if you don’t mind a couple Pats fans / ex-jocks taking apart the parallels of football and business. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is Jules Pieri, Co-Founder and CEO of the product launch platform The Grommet. The company’s Citizen Commerce™ movement is reshaping how consumer products get discovered, shared, and bought. Jules started her career as an industrial designer for technology companies and was subsequently a senior executive for large brands, such as Keds, Stride Rite, and Playskool. The Grommet is her third startup, following roles as VP at Design Continuum and President of Ziggs.com. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and people tell her she is the first designer to graduate from Harvard Business School, where she is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence. Jules was named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs in 2013. In June, 2014, she was invited to the White House Maker Faire to launch The Grommet Wholesale Platform, connecting Makers with Main Street Retailers. She writes a personal blog at jules.thegrommet.com, and the “CEO Unplugged” column on Inc.com. She posts as @julespieri on Twitter and Instagram. The title of our second segment this week is “Amazon Sucks.” To be honest, no one is more surprised to be writing those words than me, having been an Amazon customer since all they sold were books. To be honest I’ve LOVED Amazon for a long time. I respect their execution and how they take care of me as a customer, and it’s the default store in our household, which spends more than it probably should online. When I posted something to that effect on Facebook, though, my longtime friend Jules stepped in to set me straight, about the impact of Amazon’s policies related to pricing on fellow entrepreneurs. She has some very specific concerns about the way they’ve gone after counterfeiters in particular, and I have to say having spent some time with Jules that I now share them. If you’re skeptical, that’s great. Hear her out in our second segment today, and judge for yourself. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is Steve Kokinos, founder and CEO of Fuze, a unified communications platform that improves business productivity by integrating voice, video, and always-on collaboration into a global, cloud-based service and all-in-one app people actually want to use. Under Steve’s leadership, Fuze has become one of the hottest and most highly regarded startups in Boston, creating the Unified Communications as a Service market and transforming the way enterprises view communications as a key driver of business visibility, process improvement, and results. Before Fuze Steve was a founder of BladeLogic, a company he took public at $17/share before it was acquired by BMC software for $28, and WebYes, an early market leader in the Web hosting and application service provider business acquired by Breakaway Solutions in advance of their IPO in 1999. Steve is 3 for 3, folks, and we spent the first part of our conversation talking about what he’s learned along the way, from startup through product market fit and scale. In our second segment Steve and I discussed the proliferation of apps and fragmentation of communications channels that’s ironically making it harder for all of us - at work and at home - to connect with each other. Think about how many messaging and communications apps you have spread across your laptop, tablet, and smartphone right now, then about the big, dumb piece of plastic that’s probably sitting on your desk at work, and all time, energy and effort we’re all wasting trying and failing to get the right info in the right context to the right person right now. Fuze solves that problem in a rather elegant way, of course, but having spent the last decade or so reflecting on how to help people and companies communicate more effectively, Steve’s got some great insight on the problem, where we are in solving it, where we’ll go from here. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is fellow G20 member Craig Spitzer. Craig’s the CEO of a2c Boston, New York and Philadelphia, an IT consulting and staffing company he co-founded in 2007 with the mission of assisting clients who need new talent and technology to achieve their business objectives. Craig founded his first company — Alliance Consulting Group — in 1994, at the tender age 29. By 1999 ACG was ranked in the top ten of the Inc. 500, an honor it earned again the following year, becoming the only consulting firm ever to do so. Ernst & Young recognized Craig as their 2000 NYC Entrepreneur of the Year in Consulting and Outsourcing Services, and by age 36, he was recognized as one of Philadelphia’s top 3 CEOs under 40. ACG was sold to Safeguard Scientific in 2002, after growing to 720 employees and producing annual revenues of over $100 million. What makes Craig‘s story and life remarkable, though, is its sheer scope. He’s produced or co-produced three feature films; was a founding investor in businesses including two successful nightclubs, and sat as Director and Chairman for Halcyon Jets and on the Board of Trustees at the Kiski School, which he attended as a boy. Our conversation ranged from the streets of Pittsburgh to the beaches of St Barth’s, from the summit of Kilimanjaro to a pre New Year’s Eve party on the Octopus. He counts high school buddies and fraternity brothers among those closest to him, but maintains intimate friendships with people including Dick Vermeil, Michael Strahan, and Billy Bob Thornton. It’s a life touched by the triumph of a hugely successful business and the tragedy of 9/11, in vivid personal terms. It’s not an exaggeration to say our conversation was one of the most fascinating I’ve had so far, and I think you’re really going to enjoy it. Our second segment features Craig’s unique insight on the role of relationships in selling. As a student of enterprise selling myself I promise you this is a master class in the approaches and personal habits that lead to sales success. Relationships are at the core, of course, but Craig goes way beyond the usual blah-blah-blah to share his thoughts on the importance of being both interested in and interesting to the people you want to get to know better, and his secrets on how to seed, harvest and just enjoy the kinds of relationships that propel a business and a life forward. I really think you’re going to enjoy this one, don’t forget to tell your friends, subscribe, and rate us on whatever podcast app has my in your head right now. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is G20 member Dino Di Palma, who most recently served as the Chief Executive Officer of Benu Networks, a provider enterprise technology that allows network operators to dynamically and exponentially scale existing networks for better service agility and increased stickiness in the home and business. Prior to that he was the Chief Operating Officer at Acme Packet, a company he helped take public and eventually sell to Oracle in a transaction valued well over $2 Billion. Dino also served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development at Acme Packet, and as Vice President of Sales and Business Development prior to that. Before Acme Packet Dino was the Vice President of International Business Development of SEMA/Priority Call, where he spent six years in systems engineering, sales, and business development. He holds a BA degree in Economics and Political Science and an MBA from McGill University and an MA degree in Public Policy and Public Administration from Concordia University. Dino’s twice been the first guy on the ground to open up a new international territory, and we spent the second part of our conversation talking about what it takes to do so effectively. Our conversation included his single most important piece of advice when it comes to doing that right, thoughts on how to pick the right time and place to begin, and another 20 minutes of hands-on, practical thinking on the right way to take your business from the country it happens to be born in to those that might end up being critical to its growth, shaping both your product vision and the scale of your success. This is a topic I’m also passionate and have also learned a lot about during my time at Actifio, and I really hope anyone considering doing the same will listen in on what a couple of guys who’ve made all the big mistakes have to say about doing it right. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week's episode features my conversation with Sarah A. Downey, a Principal at Accomplice focused on venture investing in virtual and augmented reality and frontier tech. Before getting into venture she served as Director of Marketing at Ovuline, a women’s reproductive health startup making fertility and pregnancy mobile apps, and as Manager of Content and Communications at Abine, a consumer online privacy startup. She got her J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law, and a B.A. in Psychology from Hamilton College. Sarah’s pretty well known in VR circles as a contributing writer for UploadVR.com, and has been featured as a source in over 250 publications including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, The Economist, CNET, and CNN. She’s a video gamer, weight lifter, and scifi fan, or as her Twitter bio says, a “17 year-old boy interests in the guise of an adult female.” Awesome. To me Sarah’s one of the more fascinating characters on the Boston venture scene these days, and what I most hoped to get out of our conversation was a better understanding of how a nice girl from Connecticut goes from being a lawyer to an inked up, cosplaying, video game fanatic helping to make sure Boston holds its spot at the virtual reality grown up table. I found my answer where she did; in the parking lot of a Barnes & Noble a few years back, where she decided to stop living the life other people expected her to live, and started to build a new one around the truth of who she was, what she wanted, and what she loved to do. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week we’re going to do something short and sweet, a Holiday Quickee coming in a little over 30 minutes. I think you'll really enjoy my conversation with G20 member Jim Herrnstein, one of the most brilliant yet humble people I’ve encountered in my travels. To say Jim’s not your typical entrepreneur would be a dramatic understatement... First off he has a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard, and in Astrophysics circles he is best known as part of the team that in 1995 used an $86 million radio telescope to find the first black hole hidden at the center of a galaxy. Rather than rest on his laurels as a tenured professor in some Ivy-covered sanctuary, Jim signed on to apply his remarkable skills in math and physics to one of the world’s most legendary quantitative hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies. But even that’s not the most interesting thing about Jim Herrnstein. In his spare time, Jim is the Chairman of of an organization called Pivot, whose mission is to create a model system of universal access to quality health care for Madagascar via comprehensive health system strengthening in a region near Ranomafana National Park. Why the hell Madagascar? Why should anyone who could do a guest cameo on Billions spend his time trying to save lives on an Island 8,600 miles from home? Those are the questions I asked Jim in the second segment of our interview, and a big part of the reason this particular conversation was so special to me, and something I wanted to share during this season of giving. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored as always by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is my longtime friend and co-conspirator Jim Crowley, who most recently served as CEO of Skyhook Wireless. Before that was the CEO and President of BuyWithMe, and before that of Turbine, a massive multi-player gaming company that was acquired by Warner Bros. in 2010. Jim and I worked closely together at m-Qube before that, where he was our Chief Operating Officer and ran our gateway business while I was the GM of mobile advertising and interactive TV. Jim actually started his career as an Attorney at Hale and Dorr, a Boston law firm, from 1992 to 1994. He holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and a BA in Economics and Philosophy from Connecticut College in 1986. In today’s second segment Jim and I will talk about the importance and the challenges of business model innovation, something that provides a threadline through his entire career, and a challenge facing more and more entrepreneurial leaders as the rate of change and innovation increases around the world. While this episode is on the long side I think you’ll enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoyed making it. It’s a chance to get to know someone I consider one of the finest people in the startup ecosystem, not only for his individual talents and track record but because of the values of team and family that, as you’ll hear for yourself, originate in a childhood spent right in the middle of a whole mess of Crowley brothers and sisters in a house where everybody was expected to do their part. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is Bill Wiberg, co-founder, General Partner, and spiritual guide of G20 Ventures. Bill is an accomplished executive and 14-year venture investor passionate about technical innovation, and helping entrepreneurs win. He has extensive operating experience, culminating in his role as the President of Lucent Technology’s $5 billion Cellular and PCS Wireless Networks division. Prior to that he held senior management positions in product development and marketing at AT&T, Bell Labs, and Lucent, and made the change to venture investing in 2000. Bill serves on the Boards of G20 portfolio companies Mautic and Siemplify. He remains a GP at Advanced Technology Ventures, and serves on the Boards of Great Point Energy, Rive Technology, Silicor Materials, Oasys Water and Aquion Energy. He earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University, an M.S. from Stanford University, and a B.S. from Cornell University. He and his wife and two daughters one of whom is also a recent graduate of Cornell - live in Wellesley. In today’s second segment I’ll ask Bill about the death of IT, exploring the implications of the rapid commoditization of the compute, networking, and storage technologies businesses large and small have used to differentiate themselves from competition for the last 60 years. We’ll explore what the coming generation of enterprise tech looks like from the centrality of enterprise data, AI, machine le arning and the evolution of voice technology from novelty to business value driver. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is Steve Kraus, the general Partner who leads healthcare investing activities as Bessemer Venture Partners a storied century-old VC firm headquartered right here in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. Steve has been recognized by Forbes Magazine as one of the top healthcare investors in the industry, having led or actively participated in investments in Ovascience, Sirtis Pharmaceuticals, Affymax, Aveo, Transave, Verastem, Acceleron, Restore Medical and Flex Pharma… and those are just the ones who made it onto the NASDAQ. Today he serves on the boards of Welltok, Bright Health, Health Essentials, Docent Health, Allena Pharmaceuticals, Alcresta, and Docutap. Steve graduated summa cum laude from Yale was a Baker Scholar at the Harvard Business School. Before joining Bessemer he worked in private-equity and as a management consultant at Bain & Company. He worked on a couple of big political campaigns throughout his career, and serves with me on the board of the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA,) and on that of the Achievement Network, on the investment committees of BCBS Massachusetts and Rock Health, and as an innovation advisor to Boston Children’s Hospital. ​ In today’s second segment we’ll talk about how healthcare is changing in the shadow of our new President-Elect, where it is and where it’s headed for us as Americans, New Englanders and plain old patients of a system in a pretty dramatic state of flux.

This week my guest is Patrick MeLampy, co-founder of 128 Technology and that company’s Chief Operating Officer. With longtime partner Andy Ory, Patrick co-founded Acme Packet Inc. and served as its Chief Technology Officer, eventually taking the company public and selling to Oracle in a transaction valued at over $1.7 Billion. Patrick holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Boston University. A great student of innovation, Patrick has accumulated 26 issued or pending patents, and has some very specific ideas to share on what keeps most people and companies from innovating, the subject of this week's second segment. ​ How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week my guest is Ram Sudireddy, pretty universally regarded as one of Boston's best engineers and entrepreneurs in the world of microprocessors. Starting as a UMass computer and electrical engineer, Ram realized his dream early to work at the legendary Bell Labs where he was the chief architect and lead designer for a number of highly complex ASICs. He left Bell Labs to found Siltek Corporation, which provided ATM and SONET design services for companies including Lucent, SGS Thomson, and Sun Microsystems. Through a series of successful acquisitions Ram ended up at Applied Micro, where he served as SVP, GM, and CTO managing a worldwide group of more than a thousand engineers. He founded Chil Semiconductor, acquired by International Rectifier in 2011 for 75 Million in cash. An active investor and angel, Ram also serves on the Dean's Council of the Harvard Divinity School. In Part II of our podcast this week we'll spend some time talking about Religion and Entrepreneurship, including Ram's thoughts on the role and importance of religious thinking and ethical responsibility for entrepreneurs. ​--​ How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​. Actifio​ virtualizes​​ data ​the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ​to ​help customers enable the​ ​hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.​ ​Actifio​... ​Radically Simple.​

This week's episode features my conversation with the great Jit Saxeena, founder and CEO of Applix and Netezza, Boston startups he led through successful IPO's before being acquired by Cognos and IBM, respectively. The secret of his remarkable success? The desire to zag when others zig, and the conviction to follow through. This week's second segment features a conversation on venture boards, including Jit's best advice on how to be a better board member, the right way to leverage a board as CEO, and what makes for a healthy board culture.

Our inaugural episode features my conversation with Bob Hower, Founding Partner of Boston-based G20 Ventures. Bob is a 13-year VC vet twice named to the Forbes "Midas List," having led investments in great ideas and great teams including Acme Packet (APKT, acquired by Oracle), AppIQ (acquired by HP), Channel Advisor (ECOM), Actifio, [x+1] (acquired by Rocket Fuel), Evergage and Fuze. Learn Bob's story growing up in New Jersey, why he loves Hamburger Helper, and his unlikely journey from pulling drywall to venture capital. This week's second segment features Bob's thoughts on the changing face of venture capital, the innovations driving it and the shifting landscape that led to the creation of G20 ventures.