Ideas to Invoices

Mark Josephson is a seasoned CEO, entrepreneur, executive coach, and host of the podcast Critical Moments. With over 30 years of experience leading venture-backed and private equity-backed companies, he has guided organizations from startups to large-scale success, culminating in multiple acquisitions, including Castiron, Bitly, and Outside.in. Known for his real-world insights and practical strategies, Mark helps CEOs and senior leaders achieve growth while maintaining balance. A passionate leader and storyteller, he brings a unique blend of experience and authenticity to every conversation, drawing on his journey as a leader, coach, and lifelong Bruce Springsteen fan.

Jeff Eversmann has built a dynamic career that spans Silicon Valley startups, commercial real estate, and private equity. With expertise in both technical and financial realms, Jeff has guided companies through transformative growth and strategic challenges. His MSEE, MBA, and CPA certifications, along with his experience in engineering technologies and securing early-stage investments, position him as a leader in navigating product/market fit. Jeff co-founded Long View Technology Ventures, which has invested in 12 tech startups since 2018 and has supported innovation in Central Texas. Jeff also serves as an Adjunct Instructor at Concordia University Texas, teaching Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Jeff's book, Fooled by Early Adopters, offers critical insights for first-time founders seeking to understand the path to product/market fit. He is exploring leadership roles with companies looking to scale from $10M to $100M in revenue, bringing a strategic vision for high-growth enterprises.  

Beth White is a trailblazing entrepreneur and the visionary Founder and Chief Bot of MeBeBot, a groundbreaking company revolutionizing the employee experience through AI-powered solutions. Beth's career began in the multifaceted world of Human Resources, where she honed her skills across various roles in startups and Fortune 100 companies. Recognizing the transformative potential of technology, she made a strategic shift to enterprise software sales within the retail tech industry, specializing in omni-channel mobile solutions. In 2018, Beth founded MeBeBot to infuse innovative Business-to-consumer (B2C) customer experiences into the workplace, digitally transforming how employees interact with their companies. Under her leadership, MeBeBot has earned prestigious accolades for its cutting-edge Future of Workplace solutions and Beth's exemplary leadership as a woman entrepreneur. Notably, she has been recognized by Women in Cloud and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Beth's academic journey includes a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Business Administration from St. Edward's University. Beyond her professional achievements, Beth is an avid runner, yoga enthusiast, and cyclist, balancing these activities with her appreciation for craft beers. She cherishes spending quality time with her family and friends, continually inspired by the balance she brings to her personal and professional life

Carla McDonald is the founder and managing director of Dynabrand Ventures, a boutique investment firm that provides capital and marketing expertise to early-stage consumer goods companies. She also serves as Chair of the Mayor's Task Force for Austin Women Entrepreneurs, is a mentor at SKU, the nation's leading CPG accelerator, and was a founding investor in Capital Factory, the nationally known startup accelerator and entrepreneurial hub. Before founding Dynabrand Ventures, Carla ran her own marketing firm for 15 years, advising companies ranging from startups to multi-billion-dollar corporations and the portfolio companies of L Catterton, a leading private equity firm. She also served as CMO of a venture-backed startup that was acquired by Omnicom Group. Prior positions include running the marketing practices at two of the world's largest PR firms, where she served as the top marketing strategist for clients including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Intel. 

Manu Rehani is an innovator in applied behavioral and cognitive linguistics. He is an inventor, mentor, and board advisor for a number of startups. After successfully exiting two tech ventures, he's currently focused on developing a new class of emotion-aware AI for general application in custom GPTs and LLMs and specific use in mental health and wellness applications to foster a healthy relationship with self and others through AI. His significant prior achievements include authoring patents fundamental to cloud storage and AI language models, and he plays an active role in mentoring at various incubators at the University of Texas and in the Austin area.

Aaron Thweatt is a dynamic executive coach and seasoned HR professional who strongly believes in the power of an individual's potential. His mission is to create meaningful connections between talent, ambition, and purpose by empowering executives and entrepreneurs to bridge the gaps in their personal and business lives, allowing them to thrive in their zone of genius. Before establishing his practice, Respark Coaching, Aaron forged an impressive career across diverse industries, including financial services, oil and gas, sales and marketing, human resources, and program management. During his tenure, he was pivotal in shaping executive and broad-based compensation strategies for esteemed companies such as AECOM, Activision Blizzard, SpaceX, and DoorDash. These experiences revealed to him unique insights into the inner workings of high-performing individuals and teams tackling the most audacious creative and technical challenges.

Aruni S. Gunasegaram is a serial entrepreneur and start-up veteran. She consults and speaks on entrepreneurship, customer success, operations, building trust, and managing expectations with strategic stakeholders via Customer Concentric. She most recently worked with SecureAuth in the cybersecurity authentication industry.  Aruni also served as Director of Operations at the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), where she supported dozens of entrepreneurial CEOs and managed the incubator's internal operations.  She was a cofounding parent of the Magellan International School (a nonprofit language immersion, International Baccalaureate school) and an adjunct lecturer on entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and is currently an MBA+ project coach. She was co-founder/president of Isochron Data, a web and mobile application company targeting the vending and packaged ice industries (aka the “internet of things”), where she coordinated closing the company's first $1 million in revenue, raising $15 million in equity financing, as well as built a team of employees, board members, and advisors. She co-founded Babble Soft, a web and mobile application company targeted at new parents.   Her son attends The University of Texas at Dallas, and her daughter attends George Washington University. Aruni has a BBA (Accounting) and MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.

Gary Stephens, CEO and Co-Founder of Vendidit, is a visionary technology executive and is an industry thought leader in reverse logisitics. He is the Imagineer of both Vendidit, launched in 2024, and Renew Logic, which started from a single pallet of recyclables in 2016. His previous career includes working on the Windows 95 launch team, being head of Windows NT updates under Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates, and building a third electronics recycling company to $400 million from scratch. His positive contributions to ethical business practices and industry improvements led to testifying before Congress in 2018 about smart, diverse employment policies. Beyond tech, Gary's diverse passions include race car driving, piloting, and philanthropy – particularly helping dog rescues.  He's a proven leader, blending business acumen with a profound commitment to societal impact.

Nilma Achwal is the founder of The Female Founders Lab, a virtual accelerator and coaching service in Austin. Achwal moved to Austin about a year and half ago from Los Angeles. Before launching The Female Founders Lab, Achwal founded Iesha Learning, a technology education platform to teach sexual education to junior high school students in India. She also launched and ran SEED, a social enterprise incubation program at Villgro Innovations Foundation in Chennai. In addition, she was a Kiva Fellow in Bolivia and wrote business case studies at the University of Michigan.  

Kelsey August is the founding managing director of Austin-based DealFlowNow, a new VC firm that plans to invest $60 million into early-stage companies. August is also a super angel investor with forty active portfolio companies and a serial entrepreneur who founded Lone Star Direct, a marketing firm when she was 24.

In 2011, Petr Marek co-founded Invoice Home, formerly known as Wikilane, with Jiri Hradil. Invoice Home provides invoice generating software designed for the invoicing needs of small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs worldwide. They've grown the company to more than 8 million accounts worldwide and last January, Invoice Home relocated its headquarters to WeWork on Congress in Austin. The company was attracted by Austin's tech scene, quality of life, music scene, and access to talent, Marek said. The company is bootstrapped and caters to small businesses with most of its customers outside the U.S. Marek sold a Fintech company which he created in 1992 in the Czech Republic that focuses on montages brokers and insurance. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Marek discusses his entrepreneurial journey, hurdles the company has overcome, opportunities, management style and more that has contributed to the company's success.   

Alex Theuma is the Founder & CEO of SaaStock, an events and media company focused on supporting B2B SaaS founders to gain traction, grow and scale their businesses. In 2015, Alex began SaaScribe, a blog focused on all things SaaS, which quickly developed into a podcast, The SaaS Revolution Show, and eventually launched SaaStock, the world's only SaaS festival. Today SaaStock comprises two world-famous SaaS festivals, Dublin & Austin, local meetups across the globe, an exclusive founders-only membership program, educational content, and more.

Madhu Basu is the founder of Unnanu, a tech startup from Austin that helps businesses by using a patented contextual weighted keyword search. The company currently provides a simple solution for businesses to have resumes mapped to jobs contextually. Previously, Basu founded and served as CEO of PMCS Services, which provided IT consulting, staffing, and solution services for more than 16 years. He also co-founded IntegrateUS, Prachas Technologies, and The Fresh Vegetable Package company.

Josh Wilson is SciPlay's Chief Executive Officer. The company makes social casino games like Jackpot Party Casino and Goldfish Casino and others. Wilson recently moved to Austin where SciPlay has a large office. In this episode, he talks about the company's current outlook and plans for the future.  

Nick Soman is the founder and CEO of Austin-based Decent, a startup that offers affordable healthcare plans, low-cost payroll and HR to businesses. Nick is a serial entrepreneur. He sold his first company to Napster, and has worked to build the Kindle at Amazon and the growth team at Gusto.  In this episode, Nick talks about why he founded Decent and its mission to bring affordable healthcare to everyone. 

Michael Ramirez is the Founder and CEO of Austin-based evisio, which focuses on search engine optimization. Evisio helps agencies, marketers, SEO consultants, and businesses of all sizes get results, no matter your level of SEO knowledge. It takes the guesswork out of SEO by telling you exactly what to do to improve your rankings and makes SEO simple by bringing all the parts of your SEO process together in one place.

Larry Warnock is the Managing Partner of Ring Ventures, part of the family of funds run by Alumni Ventures.  He is a seasoned venture-backed tech executive with multiple exits via acquisition or IPO. He was most recently the President & CEO of Olono, an AI platform for sales effectiveness. Previously he was the CEO of Gazzang, a provider of big data security software (acquired by Cloudera), and Phurnace, a provider of DevOps software (acquired by BMC Software). After moving to Austin from Silicon Valley, Larry was a Venture Partner at AVLabs,

Tyler Norwood is Managing Partner for venture capital firm Antler in the United States, where he oversees the firm's US growth and geographic expansion. Tyler joined Antler in 2017 as its fifth full-time employee and has been instrumental in launching and scaling the firm. Antler recently launched in Austin and is accepting applications for its first cohort, which will begin in March.

Erin Reilly is a creator, educator, and strategist with 20 years of experience inventing new approaches, products, services, and experiences about storytelling, engagement, and learning through immersive technology. As an educator, Erin currently is Professor of Practice and founding Director of Texas Immersive Institute, the interactive and immersive media hub at the University of Texas at Austin focused on research, projects, and learning the future of media.

Joel Trammell is a successful tech entrepreneur, CEO, and investor, and Alicia Thrasher is a successful executive who has led programs for eBay/PayPal, Google, and Anheuser-Busch. Together, they are the co-founders of Manager360, a certification program for managers. They have also co-authored a book, The Manager's Playbook. The book and certification program are largely based on their 30 years of management experience. During their lifetime, people spend about 90,000 hours working and 70 percent of the workforce reports being disengaged at work. The Manager360 program teaches managers how to coach their employees, so they are content and productive.  

In 2015, Carolyn Lowe founded Austin-based ROI Swift, which helps market emerging consumer brands. Her team grew an apparel and footwear company from $0 to  $12 million in sales in 18 months. Carolyn's goal is to help 1000 brands grow profitably. So far, ROI Swift has helped nearly 200 including Tiff's Treats, Tecovas, Austin Eastciders, and Esker Beauty.  In September, Carolyn wrote  a book “Business Growth Dos and Absolute Don'ts Applied Wisdom from My Work with Dell, Costco, Amazon, and Multiple startups.” In 2015, Carolyn Lowe founded Austin-based ROI Swift, which helps market emerging consumer brands.

Shubhi Bhonsle-Rao is the founder and CEO of uplevyl, an Austin-based tech company that makes an app and digital platform geared to professional women. Shubhi is a former senior executive with Alphabet, Tesco, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ford Motor Company, among others. She also sits on the board of directors of Open Lending, Center for Global Development, International Center for Research on Women and is an honorary advisory council member of the Federal Reserve San Francisco.

Lisa Hendrickson is the co-author of Boom! Deciphering Innovation: How Disruption Drives Companies to Transform or Die. She is an adjunct professor teaching in the Sustainable Design Program at FIT in NYC and is a pioneer in sustainable product manufacturing. Hendrickson is also a serial entrepreneur, innovative strategist, an Inc. 500 and TEDx speaker. She is also a member of the leadership committee that organized 50/50 Women on Boards, the Austin chapter.  

Daniel Barel is the Co-Founder and CEO of REE Automotive, leading all product strategy, technology innovation, and business operations. A disruptive thinker who builds and leads game-changing companies, Daniel is shaping the way the world moves people and cargo with never-before-seen advances in EV technology. REE Automotive is establishing a manufacturing site in Austin. 

Matt Wursta is CEO and Founder of Wursta, a Cloud advisory business that helps organizations of all sizes compete. He is a former Googler. His experience in the Google ecosystem has allowed Wursta to identify opportunities to help organizations large and small take advantage of the operational efficiencies of Google's Cloud. Wursta was listed as No. 440 on this year's Inc5000 list, ranking in the top 500 for the second year in a row.

Henry Yoshida is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rocket Dollar, the fastest-growing self-directed IRA platform. Henry Yoshida is a Certified Financial Planner™ and second-time founder. In the past, Henry was the founder of venture capital-backed Robo-advisor Honest Dollar, acquired by Goldman Sachs, was the founder of MY Group LLC, a $2.6 billion assets under management retirement plan advisory firm, and spent 10 years at Merrill Lynch.

Gillan Taddune is the Chief Executive Officer of Banyan Water, the makers of data-driven water conservation software. Previously, she served in leadership positions at Recyclebank, EnerNoc and Green Mountain Energy. She also served as chief economist for the Public Utility Commission of Texas. She currently sits on the Austin Technology Incubator's water Advisory Board where she advises startups in the water conservation field. Gillan has served as a member of the board of directors of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association. She holds a MA from The John Hopkins University and a BA from the University of Vermont.

Benish Shah is a go-to-market strategist who specializes in growing companies via brand, revenue, and product. She's worked across tech, media, and consumer packaged goods. A licensed lawyer, she's been published in Forbes, Refinery29, and more. She is also the author of two children's books. Shah co-founded and served as CEO of a fashion tech startup. She also served as director of marketing strategy at SAY Media, VP of Marketing at Raised Real, which was acquired by Once Upon a Farm, and head of product marketing at Refinery29.

Andrew Eye is a serial entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas. His most recent startup is ClosedLoop.ai, which he co-founded a couple of years ago and he serves as its CEO. ClosedLoop.ai recently closed on $34 million in Series B funding to expand the reach of its data science platform for the healthcare industry.  Earlier this year, the company won the healthcare AI contest: $1.6M CMS AI Health Outcomes Challenge.  In this podcast, Eye discusses how ClosedLoop.ai is building better machines to create algorithms tailored to a healthcare client's specific data. That way they can extract unique insights based on that data and create better healthcare treatments as well as preventive measures for people. 

Ingrid Vanderveldt is an American businesswoman, media personality, and investor. She was the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Dell and is the founder and current CEO of the Empowering a Billion Women. Vanderveldt was the creator and manager of the Dell $100 million credit fund, and a member of the 2013 United Nation's Global Entrepreneurship Council  

Joe Lonsdale wants to build an experimental tech Beta City on the outskirts of Austin with transportation tunnels, autonomous vehicles, robots, flying drones, smart buildings, and all the latest technology applications. Lonsdale is an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist, who recently moved 8VC, his investment firm, and The Cicero Institute, a public policy think tank, to Austin from San Francisco. The project would rival Neom, the revolutionary $500 billion new city that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is building in the desert bordering the Red Sea. That project is slated to be complete by 2025 and will include drones, robots, artificial rain, holographic teachers and more, according to plans obtained and reported on by the Wall Street Journal. Lonsdale, the Co-Founder of Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Esper, is also on the board of The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk. The Boring Company recently bought a building in Pflugerville, according to the Austin American Statesman. Lonsdale plans to help solve Austin’s transportation problems using technology and tunnels built by The Boring Company. Lonsdale plans to do that project and the Beta City with a little help from his friends, which include Musk, who recently moved to Texas. 

Pat Matthews is the Founder and CEO of Active Capital, based in San Antonio. The firm recently announced it has closed on its second fund worth $25 million. Matthews knows what it’s like to build a company from idea to exit. While a college student at Virginia Tech, he co-founded Webmail.us. He helped build Webmail.us into a $10 million business which sold to Rackspace in 2007. Then he spent six-year in executive positions at Rackspace as a Racker. He has invested in dozens of startups as an angel investor before founding Active Capital.

Lanham Napier is the Co-founder and CEO of BuildGroup, an Austin-based venture capital firm, founded in 2015. Previously, he served as CEO of San Antonio-based Rackspace where he led the company from $1.5 million in revenue to more than $1.5 billion in revenue during his 13-years there. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Rice University. He is also the author of Billion or Bust! Growing a Tech Company in Texas, which was published last year.

A native of Austin, Leigh Christie has seen the city change from a sleepy college town to a high tech boomtown. Today, she serves as senior vice president of global technology and innovation at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. She's also a lawyer who previously served as executive director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas and served as director of Lemonade Day Austin, which is geared to getting youth involved in entrepreneurship.  In this episode, Christie talks about the 2020 A-List Austin Awards, which has broadened its scope this year to include more entrepreneurs than ever. She also talks about how the Pandemic has affected entrepreneurship in Austin and how businesses are coping with the dramatic changes. 

Jess Gaffney, CEO and Executive Director of Women@Austin, discusses the new angel network the organization just launched called Beam Angel Network. Its focus is on funding female-founded startups in a variety of industries. Applications open up on Sept. 1. Notley Ventures has pledged $250,000 in initial funding for the network. 

Brian White is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Mashup Foods, maker of Picklesmash, salsa made from pickles. He founded the company a few years ago with his wife, Liz, in Waco, Texas. Last year, Picklesmash participated in the consumer packaged goods accelerator SKU in Austin. During SKU, the company went through a rebranding and grew its distribution channels. Soon the product will be available in Central Market. 

Ben Lamm is a serial technology entrepreneur and the founder/CEO of Hypergiant. Previously, he was the founder/CEO of Conversable acquired by LivePerson, founder/CEO of Chaotic Moon Studios acquired by Accenture and Team Chaos, acquired by Zynga.

Carla Piñeyro Sublett is the Chief Marketing Officer at NI, an Austin-based tech company that is publicly traded with revenues of more than $1 billion annually and more than 7,700 employees. She is the former Chief Marketing Officer at Rackspace where she helped define the corporate strategy, pioneered a new visual identity, and doubled the company’s brand awareness. Prior to her role at Rackspace, she spent 15 years at Dell in a variety of executive leadership roles across sales, marketing, and operations. In this episode, she talks about NI's recent rebranding and its focus on "Engineering Ambitiously."  

Christy Cardenas is the managing partner of Austin-based Ecliptic Capital, LLC, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups. Cardenas joined the firm a year and a half ago after working in private equity and investment banking focused on the energy industry. Cardenas recently published a new report on "The Silver Linings" of the COVID-19 Pandemic.  "The Silver Lining is a deep dive into the macroeconomic conditions in the United States in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the opportunity that lies in entrepreneurship and innovation," according to the report. In this podcast, Cardenas discusses how Texas and its maverick and risk-taking entrepreneurs are poised to lead innovation in the wake of the Pandemic.     

Steve Cody is the co-founder of Ruckify, which it bills as the world’s largest peer to peer rental platform. He is a serial entrepreneur who has built and sold six different rental companies and a software company. And in March, at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Ruckify moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas.

Brian is an entrepreneur, investor, author, and is currently the CEO of AlertMedia, a company he founded in 2013. AlertMedia is now the world’s leading provider of emergency communication software, used by over 2000 enterprise companies in 100 countries to keep employees safe from threats to their health and safety. Before AlertMedia, Brian co-founded Xenex in 2008, where he and his team developed a germ-killing robot, now used in over 500 hospitals around the world, preventing infections and saving thousands of lives each year. He is also an investor and adviser to dozens of early-stage startups through his investment firm, Marketdriver Ventures. Brian’s focus on starting companies with a positive impact stems, in part, from his experience working at Enron, where he was part of mass layoffs when the energy giant went bankrupt in 2001. He turned his Enron experience and the lessons learned into a best-selling book, Anatomy of Greed, and later a movie.

Morris Miller is the Chief Executive Officer at Xenex Disinfection Services, based in San Antonio. Morris co-founded and provided the initial funding for Xenex, which produces a robot used to disinfect healthcare facilities, nursing homes, schools and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities and other environments. Previously he co-founded Rackspace Managed Hosting. Morris also founded Curtis Hill Publishing, the first company to publish Texas case law on CD-ROM, which sold to Thomson Legal Publishing. On this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Miller discusses how Xenex robots are being used to clean environments that have come into contact with the Coronavirus. Its robots have been highly effective in reducing infections in hospital environments. Xenex is also in talks to provide up to 2,000 robots to the committee hosting the summer Olympics in Japan. 

David Perez launched Lumen Insurance Technologies in 2016. He saw a need in the marketplace for someone to provide insurance policies to funded technology startups. Lumen’s clients have included Opcity, Strangeworks, Vault, previously known Student Loan Genius, Rocket Dollar, Valkyrie Intelligence, Kronologic, Living Security and others. Lumen provides policies for startups with products like directors and officers’ liability insurance, general liability, and commercial property insurance. Lumen is based at Galvanize in downtown Austin. In this episode of Ideas to Invoices, Perez talks about the maturation of Austin's technology industry, greater access to funding, the InsureTech boom in Austin and opportunities for further growth. 

Sean Foley co-founded Nine Banded Whiskey in 2014 in Austin and launched the product two years later. In 2018, he became CEO of the company and is leading the company's growth phase. It is available in 12 states and recently inked a deal with the Los Angeles Rams to be the featured whiskey in the Rams' football stadium. Foley has a background in sports and entertainment. He previously served as venture capital and media executive for Raptor Group. He is also a partner in Austin Sports & Entertainment.  And he is a three-time national swimming champion for the University of Texas at Austin.  

Lloyd Armbrust, the co-founder and CEO of Own Local, an automated digital ad platform for local media, talks about the changes in the newspaper industry and journalism in the latest edition of Ideas to Invoices. Own Local, founded in 2010, has gone through the Y-Combinator Accelerator and has raised $3.4 million in venture capital and another $3 million in debt financing. The Austin-based company works with more than 4,000 publications worldwide on creating digital ads. 

Will Young is the Co-Founder and CEO of Austin-based SANA Benefits, a healthcare insurance technology startup. Young founded the company with Nathan Hackley in 2017. The two formerly worked together at Justworks, a benefit and payroll company in New York. They moved SANA Benefits to Austin a year ago and since then they have grown dramatically from less than 10 employees to almost 40. The company also recently closed on $ 3.6 million in seed-stage venture funding. And it moved into larger headquarters at Manchaca and Slaughter Lane in South Austin. 

Joyce Durst is co-founder and CEO of Growth Acceleration Partners, a software company in Austin, Texas. GAP offers analytics, cloud, mobile and QA services. Before co-founding GAP, Durst served as CEO of venture-backed startup Pinion Software, a security software company. She also served as a senior executive at BMC Software where she oversaw a $200 million division. And she began her career at IBM. In this podcast, she talks about bootstrapping GAP to more than $20 million in revenue and 300 employees. 

Jay Hallberg, founder, and chairman of Spiceworks founded the Austin-based company with three friends in 2006. They built Spiceworks into a giant social network for information technology system administrators and tech professionals. Recently, Ziff Davis bought the company for an undisclosed price. At SpiceWorld, an annual convention held at the Austin Convention Center, Hallberg talked about the company's evolution and plans for future growth. 

Brandon Austin, flounder of Go Fish Cam, and Adam Kahn, Sheephead of Operations of Go Fish Cam, talk about the Austin-based startup's growing market for its underwater cameras. Unorthodox Ventures, a venture capital firm and business incubator started by Carey Smith, founder of Big Ass Fans, acquired Go Fish Cam in March of 2019. It's one of the first investments Unorthodox Ventures has done. Go Fish Cam is now working out of the same offices as Unorthodox Ventures and working to expand its market.  Meanwhile, the cameras are not only being used by anglers worldwide to help them catch big fish, but the U.S. Navy Seals are using the cameras to detect underwater mines. 

Carey Smith sold Big Ass Fans, the company he founded in Lexington, Kentucky, for $500 million in December of 2017 and then moved to Austin. He bought Lance Armstrong’s 8,800 square foot home near downtown in 2018 and launched Unorthodox Ventures, an Austin-based business incubator and VC firm that invests in innovative companies with great products. Smith runs Unorthodox Ventures with a small group of former employees, known as the Kitchen. They are headquartered in an office park off Friedrich Lane in South Austin.     To date, Unorthodox Ventures has invested in Tushy Bidets and it acquired Austin-based Go Fish Cam earlier this year. good market and customer demand, and the right founders, Smith said.