Sacramento Startups Podcast

An interview with Mathew Magno, co-founder of JAPA, a Sacramento-based technology startup, JAPA delivers real-time parking availability to drivers and enhanced parking analytics to parking lot owners/management.

In January StartupSac Happy Hour returned after a break in December, kicking off our fourth year of Happy Hour events. For this event, we welcomed Zennify co-founder and CEO, Manvir Sandhu. In this podcast episode, Manvir tells the origin story of Zennify, and how they’ve become one of the fastest growing tech startups in the […]

Our October StartupSac Happy Hour featured a panel of three great veteran entrepreneurs — Kevin Kane, Beth Dodson, and John Bodrozic — who came out to share their experiences and expertise with the audience. In this podcast episode, they share their entrepreneurial journey and field questions from the audience about running a successful, high-growth startup. […]

Carolyn Peer is the founder of Sacramento startup, Humaxa. After spending more than 20 years in the HR industry watching organizations struggle getting to the root cause of employee retention issues, Carolyn and her team decided to do something about it. In the summer of 2017 the team launched Humaxa, an employee retention platform that […]

Ryan Barr is the cofounder of RePurpose Energy, a Sacramento area cleantech startup. RePurpose Energy reuses electric vehicle batteries to store solar energy. By offering low-cost energy storage and reducing battery waste, it aims to enable the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. Ryan walked away with second place at StartupSac’s Warm-Up Pitch competition […]

Sedale Turbovsky is a serial startup founder in the Sacramento startup community. His latest venture, Egeria Research, has the potential to help other startups with their funding needs by making it easier to identify, find, and apply for grant opportunities. I met up with Sedale at his office at Granite City Coworking in Folsom to […]

Wyatt Dike is the founder of VertX Advertising, an early stage startup in the Sacramento region at the intersection of advertising and health-positive impact. They partner with public transit agencies and install their pathogen-reducing standing passenger handles that are supported by advertising into city’s fleet. Wyatt was the winner of StartupSac’s recent StartupSac Warm-Up Pitch […]

Our June StartupSac Happy Hour featured  another great veteran entrepreneur  — Jeremy Perkins, Founder and CEO of Precision Medical Products — who came out to share his experiences and expertise with the audience. In this podcast episode, Jeremy shares his entrepreneurial journey and fields questions from the audience about running a successful, high-growth startup. Check […]

Christine Sison had a busy life running a dental practice in Sacramento. One of the headaches she often experienced was finding talent affordably and quickly that was appropriate for her office. As many startup founders do, she thought there had to be a better way and came up with an idea to create a dental-specific […]

Our May StartupSac Happy Hour featured Sacramento serial entrepreneur, Sonny Mayugba. In addition to his current role as Chief Marketing Officer of Waitr, Sonny is the founder of several local restaurants and has a long history in the local startup community having launched several ventures over the years. In this podcast episode, Sonny shares his […]

Our April StartupSac Happy Hour featured Barb DeHart, a startup advisor, investor, and co-founder & CEO of Sama Learning, virtual reality learning platform that recently was awarded “Best Pitch” by a panel of judges at the Capital Region ARVR Accelerator Demo Day. Barb shared her experience and insights as she fielded a range of questions […]

For this episode of the Sacramento Startups Podcast I met up with David Howie, who is the founder of Tellus Title. They’ve designed a new approach to real estate utilizing Blockchain technology, believing that the industry will benefit from blockchain and reduce title insurance premiums by 30%, saving U.S. consumers 4 Billion per year. David […]

I first heard about HoopMaps, a mobile app that allows people to find pickup games in their area, in 2017 when I saw them pitch at a Kings Capitalize event. I loved the idea, along with the passion that co-founding twin brothers Donte and Dominic Morris brought to their startup venture. Over the course of […]

StartupSac Happy Hour returned to Sacramento on March 26 at Hot Italian in Midtown. Our featured entrepreneurs fielding the questions this month were the co-founders of Webconnex,  Eric Knopf and John Russell. Webconnex is a SaaS platform for event registration, ticketing and fundraising. They have over 30,000 customers and have processed billions of dollars of […]

Last week we took a road trip to Folsom at Gaslight Co. for our February StartupSac Happy Hour. The Founder AMA featured Kevin Kane, CEO of Linkd, a project management, collaboration SaaS application serving Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) industry. Kevin fielded a range of startup questions from the audience. We recorded it once again […]

At our first StartupSac Happy Hour of 2019 we were lucky enough to welcome back Greg Connolly, Cofounder and CEO of Trifecta Systems. This was a great event and with the support of our food and drinks sponsors, KiwiTech and Witan Law, we demolished all previous attendance records with 65 people turning out to Hot Italian […]

Jocelyn Munroe, Founder and CEO of eHandoff, has developed an online patient note system for doctors and nurses for when they’re changing shifts or transferring patients that results in fewer communication errors and saving lives. She was also the winner at the StartupSac Warm-Up Pitch event recently. I met with Jocelyn at her office to […]

Earlier this month we held our 20th StartupSac Happy hour event. Since launching in January 2017, this event has provided a networking and mentoring platform for over 600 people in our community. Once again we had a great veteran entrepreneur come out to share her experience and expertise with the audience at Hot Italian Pizza […]

At the most recent StartupSac Happy Hour on October 23, over 40 people came out to the Monk’s Cellar in Roseville for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with Riskalyze CEO and co-founder Aaron Klein. Riskalyze is an Auburn-based fintech startup that provides software as a service to financial advisors in the United States. They’ve raised a […]

For our most recent StartupSac Happy Hour AMA we partnered with Founder Institute Sacramento to bring in Founder Institute alum and CEO of Bay Area startup Evolute, Kristopher Francisco. Kristopher has innovated cloud computing, big data and storage architectures amongst the world’s most admired technology companies (Apple) and the world’s largest technology challenges (Chevron), so he has […]

Last week, our StartupSac Happy Hour was at Hot Italian in midtown again and featured Adam Kalsey. Adam has been an Internet entrepreneur since 1995, starting five companies, including a few acquisitions with the most recent one by Cisco where he now leads Developer Relations for Cisco Webex, helping startups reach enterprise with Webex APIs […]

At the most recent StartupSac Happy Hour on June 26, dozens turned out to the patio of Hot Italian midtown for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the co-founder of Engage3, Ken Ouimet. Ken cofounded Engage3 with his brother to disrupt retail pricing using advanced data analytics. Once again we captured the AMA session to […]

On May 22, StartupSac held another Happy Hour event where dozens turned out to the office of the law firm Buchalter, downtown for our founder AMA with guest entrepreneur Jon Coss, founder and CEO of Pondera Solutions.In 2017, this Sacramento-based govtech startup closed on an eight-figure equity deal and won the Sacramento Innovation Award in […]

On April 18, StartupSac held another Happy Hour event where dozens turned out at Hot Italian in Midtown for our founder AMA with guest entrepreneur Beth Dodson, co-founder of Homezada. We captured that AMA session so  we could share it with the broader startup community. Amidst the cacophony and at times raucous celebrations of a children’s birthday […]

In this episode of the Sacramento Startup Scene Roundup Laura Good and I rundown what happened in the Sacramento region startup community since the last episode, including: TechEdge on March 22 The final round and winner of the 3rd Annual Kings Capitalize Pitch contest StartupSac Happy Hour in Davis with John Bissell Tech Futures Group, […]

On March 27, StartupSac took our monthly Happy Hour event on a road trip to Davis where dozens turned out for our founder AMA with guest entrepreneur John Bissell, cofounder of Origin Materials. Once again we captured that AMA session so  we could share it with the broader startup community. In this episode you can […]

In this episode of the Sacramento Startup Scene Roundup Laura Good and I cover what has happened in the Sacramento startup community over the last few weeks, including: 2 Startup Weekends StartupSac Happy Hour with Dermveda cofounder Venita Sivamani Kings Capitalize Semi-finals pitch day We also take a look forward at what’s coming up, including: […]

At the Startup Grind Sacramento event on January 9, Tracy Saville, led a panel discussion consisting of the graduating 2017 FourthWave (a Sacramento startup program focused on scaling female-led technology companies committed to conscious leadership and inclusion as a path to higher value) cohort of female founders. Learn about the challenges and lessons they learned during […]

One of the programs we run at StartupSac is a monthly AMA mentoring and networking event with an entrepreneur  answering questions from the audience. In this episode, Venita Sivamani, Cofounder of Dermveda, fields questions from the audience about entrepreneurship and her startup.

In this episode of the Sacramento Startup Scene Roundup I cover what happened at StartupSac Happy Hour with Brandon Salzberg on January 31, the Aggie Innovation and Startup Symposium on February 8, Startup Weekend Women on February 9 – 11 as well as upcoming events and happenings in the Sacramento region startup community.

In the opening keynote address at the Aggie Innovation and Startup Symposium, Lokesh Sikaria from Moneta Ventures provided an overview of the Sacramento region’s innovation and startup ecosystem along with a primer on venture capital and the outlook and trends for startups in our region.

TheUC Davis STEM Strategies Group hosted the Aggie Innovation & Startup Symposium at UC Davis on February 8, 2018 to help students learn about career opportunities in entrepreneurship. In an afternoon panel discussion, Mariah Lichtenstern led the discussion with panelists Venita Sivamani, Anh Tran, and Kimmy Paluch around the theme,  Creating a New Normal: Increasing Diversity in […]

In this episode of the StartupSac podcast, Laura Good and I visit, CoWo Campus, a new coworking space opening soon, and chat about upcoming events in the startup community in the coming weeks and about what we hope to see in the startup community this year. In the episode, we mention several upcoming events. Links […]

Hey everyone! Happy New Year and welcome back to the StartupSac podcast. It’s been awhile since we’ve released an episode. This episode is all about why we’ve been on hiatus and updates on what to expect from the podcast in 2018. Also a big shout out and thanks to SacTown Magazine for including us in their […]

Ryan MacCarthy has developed an innovative way to tap into social media signals and engage with consumers on behalf of brands to win customers for brands right when the customer is expressing a need. In this episode, learn about how Ryan’s startup KickFactory allows brands to reach customers even before they start shopping by engaging […]

Judging for the second annual Sacramento Region Innovation Awards wrapped up recently and many of the judges were winners from last year’s Innovation Awards, including last year’s winner in the medical and health technology category, Evolve Biosystems. Evolve Biosystems is a privately held microbiome company dedicated to developing the next generation of products to establish, […]

Valley Extends is a Full Service Sales and Marketing Accelerator that helps Companies grow, by offering services that impact operations such as – hiring, sales and marketing, back office, payroll and human resources – with 35 companies in their program with plans to grow that number. I met with Clayton at Valley Extends to learn […]

In just a few short years, Moneta Ventues has become Sacramento’s largest venture capital firm. In this episode of the StartupSac podcast I chat with Sabya Das, Associate Partner at Moneta whose task is to evaluate new opportunities for investment and to assist Moneta’s portfolio companies in a variety of operational roles.  I met with Sabya […]

Kim Box, President and CEO at Gatekeeper Innovation, worked at HP for 29 years, leading a billion dollar organization as an executive of IT services. Eight years ago she decided to take a change in direction and doing something more purposeful that made an impact in the world. She wrote a book on diversity an […]

Le Thuy Vuong is the founder and CEO of The Redmelon Company, formerly known as Fishrock Laboratories. As part of her PhD thesis she discovered that a fruit indigenous to her native country of Vietnam has the potential to help tackle Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. In this episode, I sat down with Le […]

Inspired by Victor Patton’s recent article in the Sacramento Business Journal on diversity, I had the idea to organize a roundtable discussion on diversity for the StartupSac podcast. The main purpose in my mind was to get a group of Black entrepreneurs together in the studio to discuss the issue of diversity from their perspective […]

During the third trimester of her pregnancy with her daughter, Beata Adamczyk was frustrated and alarmed by how difficult it was to find reliable and affordable products. Having worked with tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, she had the drive to launch her own solution to address the problem. She met her technical co-founder Patrick Guderski, a developer […]

Mentors and advisors play a key role in any startup ecosystem. The knowledge and experience that veteran business people can share with entrepreneurs is incredibly valuable. Kyle Kaneshiro spent nearly 30 years working for Intel in Folsom, most recently as Director of Strategic Planning. About a year ago, Kyle retired and he now spends much […]

For patients recovering from surgery, medical drains are a necessary yet uncomfortable and awkward part of post-op recovery. Medical drains like a Jackson Pratt® (JP) drain collect fluids from the surgical area. Most medical teams only offer safety pins to suspend and manage these drains. Experiencing this firsthand, Cinde Dolphin thought there had to be […]

Stephane Come and Criss Come have created a STEM educational comic book series called PodPi for kids 9-14 as a series of story-based monthly adventures that teaches kids electronics and JavaScript coding by building their first simple circuits to WiFi enabled devices and the Internet of Things, all in comic book format, on a mythical […]

Open submission for the second annual Sacramento Region Innovation Awards wrapped up recently and the judging committees have begun reviewing submissions. Judges will include several winners from last year’s Innovation Awards, including last year’s winner in the software category, Riskalyze. Riskalyze believes that everybody has a Risk Number, a measurement from 1 to 99, that […]

Elizabeth Dodson is the co-founder HomeZada, a platform that gives homeowners a valuable tool to manage their home and the assets and possessions in it. I met up with Elizabeth in the wilds of the Sacramento startup scene at Old Soul Weatherstone in Middtown to learn more about her experiences in entrepreneurship. Old Soul was packed […]

Deema Tamimi is the co-founder and CEO of Giving Garden, a local food & gardening social network launched last year when she and her team won the 2016 Apps for Ag hackathon. She’s also the key organizer of this year’s Apps for Ag hackathon. I met up with Deema at Old Soul Weatherstone in Midtown […]

As a mechanical engineering student at Rochester Institute of Technology, Jordan Darling created a new plastic for use in jet ski hulls that’s stronger and more durable than traditional fiberglass, then launched his business, Free Form Factory, based on that innovative technology. Faced with the challenge of growing his fledgling personal watercraft business in upstate […]

Charlie Hinojosa is passionate about finding great apps, but knows it can be difficult. So he set out to solve the problem of mobile app discovery by combining social networks with app marketplaces. In 2016 he founded Tapp That App, a new social, app discovery platform that allows you to see the favorite apps of people […]

It’s Sacramento Region Innovation Awards time with submissions for the 2017 awards open through the end of July. To help celebrate innovation in our region, the StartupSac podcast will feature a series of podcast episodes on the awards program, including interviews with last year’s winners. In the previous episode of the StartupSac podcast I met […]