Podcasts about ignition partners

Story of the Week (DR):UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty steps down for 'personal reasons' MM DRUnitedHealth Under Investigation: UnitedHealth Group is facing a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice for potential Medicare fraud related to its Medicare Advantage program. The company is also dealing with a civil fraud investigation and has suspended its 2025 financial forecast amid rising medical costs. CEO Andrew Witty resigned unexpectedly this week.Steve will receive a golden hello again consisting of a one-time $60M option award. While the company claims there will be no additional annual equity awards during the first three years of Steve's employment, there are no performance hurdles tied to this award meaning Steve could make a boatload of cash even if the stock market goes up independent of his work as CEO.A Kohl's board member resigned because she was 'continually disappointed' by governance and a lack of transparency MM DRKohl's Director and Compensation Committee Chair Christine Day resigned from the board on May 5, 2025.Kohl's initially claimed: “Ms. Day's decision [to resign] was not due to any disagreements with the Company on any matter relating to the Company's operations, policies or practices.”Day later sent an email (included in SEC filing) saying:I want to stress my concern that this is an inappropriate way to handle this. All shareholders deserve the same access to the same information. [ . . .] and for us to not respond to ISS is not good governance. In the 8K filing, for my departure, it would not be accurate to say I have no disagreements with the board. Unfortunately I have been continually disappointed with the level of governance process. The 8k needs to reflect this.”In another email she called out Board Chair Michael Bender: “There is no delegation to committees or chairs, Michael “handles” everything, maybe speaks to one person or 2, then “tells” everyone what the decision is. Some people know more than others leading to board members feeling alienated, out of the loop, and worse—developing a culture where real discussions rarely occur.”In a meeting held yesterday (may 14), only 5% of Kohls shareholders said NO to Board Chair Michael Bender while 45% said NO on Pay while average director support was 92% YESJohn Tyson joins Tyson Foods Inc. board, 9 months after criminal charges led him to step down as CFO MM DRDespite being part of the controlling family, The Tyson children will be paid $315,000 annually like all other non-employee directors.FedEx board member David Steiner to lead US Postal ServiceLD since 2009; CEO Waste Management; $15M in sharesGoodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Boulder's landmark lawsuit against Suncor, Exxon can proceed, Colorado Supreme Court rulesMM: NLPC Urges Exxon Mobil Shareholders To Vote Against Election Of CEO Darren Woods For Board On Exxon Mobil's 2025 Proxy Ballot DR MMThey are running a vote no campaign on Darren Woods… for being too woke! After suing his own shareholder who wanted him to be woke!Assholiest of the Week (MM):NasdaqNasdaq Supports Texas Senate Bill 29, Strengthening Corporate Governance and Business Growth in the State DREd Knight of Nasdaq says: “Senate Bill 29 is a milestone for corporate governance in Texas. By embracing smart, innovation-focused regulation like SB 29, Texas is showing the world what it means to lead on economic growth and modern, clear governance principles,” said Ed Knight, Executive Vice Chairman of Nasdaq. “We commend Senator Bryan Hughes, Representative Morgan Meyer, and Governor Greg Abbott for advancing legislation that strengthens Texas' position as a global center for capital formation.”The major features include a Musk “board independence” rule that allows an evidentiary hearing by a court to say a committee overseeing a transaction is “independent”, then they can exclude any lawsuits or challenges to the committee findings/approval - say, on something like a massive pay package - without the ability of a shareholder to get recourseThey also can refuse books and records if they THINK you might sue them, and they only allow derivative lawsuits for groups with 3% or more of the sharesEd Knight biography: A Texas native, Knight received his Bachelor of Arts, with honors, in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law.Stewardship teamsHarley-Davidson Leaders Survive Proxy FightThe company didn't reveal the preliminary vote total during its shareholder meeting. About 48% of shares voted withheld support from Zeitz, while about 40% withheld support from directors Thomas Linebarger and Sara Levinson, two people familiar with the tally said.Harley's bylaws require directors to resign if more than 50% of shares voted withhold support.Seriously investors? Seriously? Levinson has been a director since Clinton's FIRST TERM - AND SHE HAS A CHECKMARK FOR INDEPENDENT. 30 years isn't too much for you investors? 30? For an ex NFL and MTV executive at a company that makes motorcycles? If you're anti-woke, isn't this an easy vote out?? Not even for her woman-ness, but for the fact that she has literally nothing to do with making motorcycles? She started a women-focused dot com media company called “Club Mom”!If Blackrock and Vanguard voted to support Harley directors, they truly do not care - and ISS's fuckwit half-assed non-assessment is what's driving investors to do-nothingness. And I know ISS is listening, we've been told they don't like our criticism - tough shit, your assessments are feckless bullshit nothingburger with no real backing, and pension funds are starting to notice you give them a whole lot of puffery for 200k a yearIn other news… BlackRock wins 67% support for pay as CEO Fink assures on global economyEach of its 18 director nominees were easily elected with average support over 98%.Press ReleasesLumen Technologies Appoints Michelle J. Goldberg and Steve McMillan to Board, Strengthening Company's AI and Digital StrategyBecause no one cares, no one reads the bios to determine if, at least on paper, the headline matches the humans - “strengthening company's AI and digital strategy”Michelle J. Goldberg brings over 20 years of experience in early-stage technology, finance, and board governance. She served as a Partner at venture capital firm Ignition Partners and currently sits on the boards of both Bakkt Holdings and Ally Financial, previously having held board roles at Legg Mason, Taubman Centers, and Plum Creek Timber. Her expertise and guidance in early-stage technology startups has helped scale businesses through critical phases of innovation and expansion. Michelle holds a BA from Columbia University and an MA from Harvard University.Steve McMillan is a seasoned executive in global enterprise technology strategy, data analytics and big data. Since 2020, he has served as President and CEO of Teradata Corporation. His previous leadership roles at F5, Oracle, and IBM specialized in security, cloud management, and managed services—making him a key voice in modernizing technology platforms for customer success. Steve earned a First-Class Honours degree in Management and Computer Science from Aston University in Birmingham, England.So… not AI or digital strategy experts?Headliniest of the WeekDR: Elon Musk says everyone will want their 'personal robot' — but warns of 'Terminator'-style risksDR: Elon Musk's AI says it was ‘instructed by my creators at xAI' to accept the narrative of ‘white genocide' in South AfricaMM: Women contribute less to climate-heating emissions than men, study finds - this explains the anti woke movement, the atmosphere is super woke MM: Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC failed to pay swing state petition signers, new suit allegesWho Won the Week?DR: Olivia Tyson, for being the nepobaby nobody notices (when standing next to John R. Tyson)MM: The A in AI, since Elon has proven that you really don't need the “intelligence” part.PredictionsDR: After Disney CEO Bob Iger hears me on The Responsible Investor Podcast with Gina Gambetta he sends a cease and desist letter forcing me off all podcasts until 1001 years of the next popeMM: Exxon sues the NLPC for its exempt solicitation, and no one knows who to root for.

Kellan Carter is a founding partner of Bellevue-based FUSE where he focuses on early-stage investments in intelligent software in both horizontal and vertical categories. He currently sits on several Boards, including Zuper and Pictory. Previously, Kellan spent seven years at Ignition Partners, a leading early-stage venture capital firm, and two years in investment banking at Mooreland Partners in San Francisco. Kellan also currently sits on the Board of the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.We are excited to bring on Brendan Wales and Kellan Carter, Co-Founders and GPs of FUSE. Founded in 2020 with a thesis centered around the growth of the Pacific Northwest ecosystem, a geography both of our guests know well. With its just-announced close of a $250MM Fund 2, FUSE has a total AUM of just over $420MM. During our conversation, we covered the strategic nature of LP composition and how venture funds should think about their servicing model to founders. It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it. About Brendan Wales:Brendan Wales is a Founding Partner at FUSE. Prior to FUSE, Brendan served as a Partner at e.ventures (now Headline) for nine years, where he collaborated with founders of high-impact startups like Shipt (acquired by Target), Fetch Rewards, and Shopmonkey. His earlier career also includes being an early employee at zozi, showcasing his hands-on experience in startup growth.Brendan studied finance at the University of Georgia.About Kellan Carter:Kellan Carter is a Founding Partner at FUSE. Previously, as a Partner at IGNITION PARTNERS, he focused on enterprise software investments, contributing significantly to the firm's strategy and growth. His earlier career includes roles in technology sector mergers and acquisitions at Mooreland Partners and structured finance at KPMG Advisory.Kellan holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a Finance focus from The University of Montana.In this episode, we discuss:(01:22) Start of Fuse and Pacific Northwest Ecosystem(03:00) Raising Fund During COVID and LP Composition(06:34) Activating LPs for Strategic Advantage(09:40) Learning from Raising Funds in Challenging Times(17:00) Building a Cohesive Team and Operating Partners(24:33) Defining the Product Offered to Founders(26:10) Importance of Sourcing and Winning in Venture Capital(31:42) Seattle's Unique Position in Technology and Startups(38:25) Personal Advice for Venture Capital CareersI'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Brendan and Kellan. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

Learn about raising money for your startup, how to raise money for your Pre-Seed and Seed round from investors and a story about how Martin lost $500m and STILL won.ABOUT MARTIN TOBIASMartin Tobias is the Managing Partner and Founder of Incisive Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of technology companies that reduce friction at scale.  Martin was previously at Accenture and Microsoft and is a former Venture Partner at Ignition Partners.  Martin is a 3X venture-funded CEO rising over $500M as CEO with two IPOs who has also invested in hundreds of companies and is a limited partner in over a dozen VC funds. Martin was an early investor in Google, Docusign, OpenSea, and over a dozen Unicorns.Martin is the father of three daughters, a cyclist, surfer, poker player, and life hacker.Martin tinkers with motorcycles on the weekends.  He writes about Venture Capital on  Incisive Ventures Blog. https://incisive.vc/insight/ EPISODE LINKSIncisive Ventureshttps://incisive.vcMartin Tobias on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/MartinGTobias CONNECT WITH US Claim Your Weekly EDGE Newsletter. It's FREE.Written by Brandon with insights giving you an edge to win in your business and your life. Over 24,200 listeners and counting!-> https://edge.ck.page/bea5b3fda6 OTHER GREAT PODCASTS ON THE THE BEST PODCASTS NETWORK Danielle & Brandon Show All about owning a businesshttps://OnBusinessPodcast.com MARKETING PodcastMarketing science revealing successful marketing. https://PodcastOnMarketing.com 401k Plans PodcastSet up and run your company's 401k retirement savings plans correctly.https://401kplanspodcast.com Car Accident Lawyer PodcastBest lawyer advice.https://caraccidentlawyerpodcast.com PRODUCTIVITYTips.https://productivitypodcast.buzzsprout.com podcast for entrepreneurs...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Martin Tobias, Managing Partner at Incisive Ventures. Located in Seattle, Washington, Incisive Ventures is a $10M pre-seed fund currently seeking limited liability partners. They focus on technology companies that reduce friction at scale, targeting high-friction industries like Fintech, supply chain, vertical SaaS, and health and fitness.   Martin is also an ex-Accenture, Microsoft, and a former venture partner at Ignition Partners. He is a 3X venture-funded CEO raising over $500M with two IPOs and has also invested in over 200 companies as an angel, 50 through Incisive Ventures, and he is also a limited partner in over a dozen VC funds. He was an early investor in Google, DocuSign, OpenSea, and over a dozen unicorns. Martin is the father of 3 daughters, a cyclist, surfer, poker player, and life hacker. He writes about venture capital on [Incisive Ventures]() and notes to himself on how to live the good life on his [personal blog](). Martin shares some of the challenges startups face, his criteria for making an investment, and how he sees the startup industry evolving in the near future.  Visit Incisive Ventures at , and on LinkedIn at .  Reach out to Martin at: ; ; martin@incisive.vc; martin@slashr.com.   _______________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at:    Check out our other podcasts here:   For Investors check out:   For Startups check out:   For eGuides check out:   For upcoming Events, check out    For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group    Please , share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of .

Karl Jacob is a serial entrepreneur who has been building, advising, and investing in companies for the last 20 years. During his career, Karl has raised 23 rounds of financing from a wide range of investors, including True Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Richard Branson's Virgin Group, Microsoft, eBay, Integral Partners, Norwest Ventures, Greylock, Benchmark Capital, FT Ventures, Ignition Partners and Vulcan Ventures. Many of Karl's companies have been successfully acquired, including Dimension X, acquired by Microsoft; Keen/Ingenio, acquired by AT&T; Cloudmark, acquired by ProofPoint; and Coveroo, acquired by Zazzle. Across his various tenures as a start-up CEO, Karl has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in investor returns and up to $150 million in revenue per year. In 2005 he joined Facebook as one of its first advisors and has gone on to advise several other companies. Karl is also a prolific angel investor and mentor for start-up companies including Mayvenn, June, Healthtap, Everlane, Skillshare, Rescale, Memsql, Haven, Shippo and many others. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California's Engineering School, where he sits on its board of counselors.

Today, my guest is Karl Jacob, the co-founder, and CEO of LoanSnap. Karl is a serial entrepreneur who has been building, advising, and investing in companies for the last 20 years. LoanSnap invented the world's first smart loan technology that uses AI and machine learning to analyze a person's entire financial picture and show them how to benefit from a smart home loan. LoanSnap is the parent company that built the Bacon Protocol, a decentralized mortgage lending protocol created using smart contract technology on the Ethereum blockchain. Anyone with a Web3 wallet can lend money and earn interest, all while seeing exactly which homes they're lending against. Moreover, anyone with a home that meets the protocol's criteria can create an NFT and use it as collateral to borrow money. Karl's career has been focused on founding companies that solve big problems, and those companies have helped tens of millions of consumers. He has raised 23 rounds of financing from investors, including True Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Richard Branson's Virgin Group, Microsoft, eBay, Integral Partners, Norwest Ventures, Greylock, Benchmark Capital, FT Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Vulcan Ventures. Many of his companies have had successful acquisitions, including; Dimension X, acquired by Microsoft, Keen/Ingenio, acquired by AT&T, Cloudmark, acquired by ProofPoint, and Coveroo, acquired by Zazzle. While CEO, Jacob has generated hundreds of millions in returns to investors and over $150 million in revenue per year. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California Engineering School, where he sits on the board of counselors. We discuss a wide range of topics, including LoanSnap, Bacon Protocol, the real estate industry, the benefits of blockchain, and much more. We begin our discussion by delving into why the banking/loan industry has been tough to disrupt. Our conversation leads us to how he and his team have finally found a way to disrupt their value chain. Karl explains how the Bacon Protocol works and what makes it unique. Karl elaborates why they decided to build the bacon protocol on blockchain/crypto rails instead of building on the traditional financial stack. He illustrates this by explaining how blockchain removes the barriers and overhead that plague the conventional loan and real estate industry. Karl discusses the fallacies that persist throughout the loan industry and how the Bacon Protocol democratizes access to affordable housing and the loan industry. We also discuss the socioeconomic impact of foreclosures on neighborhoods and how blockchain technology can be used to solve the misalignment between individuals and corporations. Karl also addresses the impediments that currently make it challenging to tokenize real-world assets and how they've optimized the Bacon Protocol to avoid these issues. We finish our conversation by discussing how Karl envisions the entire loan industry to be disrupted by blockchain technology. Please enjoy my conversation with Karl Jacob. -- This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co

During this season of Amplify Your Expertise, Tina Brinkley Potts is showcasing women in tech. Specifically, women that own tech businesses. Today, we begin to highlight Jamie Gilleland. Jamie Gilleland is an international speaker, best-selling author, and sales and marketing automation expert that has been involved in sales, marketing, and technology for decades. The results are impressive – thousands of happy clients and millions of dollars in closed sales.   She is one of the most successful Keap Partners in the world, garnering honors not only for sales but also retention. Her strategies and campaigns have been used by some of the biggest names in the coaching industry for one simple reason – they work. Now Jamie shares the secrets of business and automation success through her Next Comma Coaching programs, Keep It Simple Strategies, and as a trusted advisor to dozens of companies and businesses around the world. She sits on both the Ignition Partners and Product Advisory Group for Keap and still makes the time to personally train entrepreneurs and business owners through weekly calls, group coaching, and live training events. Jamie and her team help business owners and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses in ways they've never imagined – not only through practical advice, but also, by outlining the exact steps her clients need to take to reach their goals in their own businesses. Remember, you don't know what you don't know, and if you aren't sure where to start systemizing your own business and processes, you can never scale. Last year, Jamie and her brands helped to account for millions of dollars in closed sales for their clients – how much of that could have been yours? These are solutions that work! In this episode, you will learn: ·     How Jamie went from $60,000 per year to $60,000 per MONTH! ·     How to get off the sell vs. fulfill roller coaster most service based businesses experience. ·     Why focusing on the client journey will change your sales fast! ·     And so much more!   To get Jamie's tracker, go to https://tracker.keepitsimplestrategies.info/ (https://tracker.keepitsimplestrategies.info/)   Key quotes from this episode:   “Don't say they can't do it. Let them determine how bad they want it” – Jamie Gilleland.   “If you only focus on impulse buyers, you are leaving 97 percent of your opportunities on the table.” – Tina Brinkley Potts Support this podcast

The guest on this episode is Rachel Chalmers of Alchemist Accelerator. Rachel joined Alchemist from Autodesk, where she was Director, Transformation Growth Boards and Product Excellence. Prior to Autodesk, Rachel was a VC with Ignition Partners and Merian Ventures, leading investments in Docker, Wit.ai (acquired by Facebook), Unikernel (acquired by Docker) and Honeycomb.io. She began her career as employee number 10 with 451 Research (acquired by Standard & Poor), where she was the first analyst to cover VMware, Cloudera and Splunk. Find Rachel on Twitter and on LinkedIn. Alchemist Accelerator is at https://www.alchemistaccelerator.com Among many other things, our conversation touched on: “Survival strategies that have outlived their usefulness” “The humanities teach us what to do when STEM fails” The importance of core skills (they’re not soft skills!) And some truly excellent SF reading recommendations for those who listen all the way to the end Links mentioned by Dominic: Heart of Blandness: A Walking Tour of Silicon Valley manwhohasitall on Twitter Follow the show on Twitter @Roll4Enterprise or on our LinkedIn page. Theme music by Renato Podestà. Please send us suggestions for topics and/or guests for future episodes!

This Part 1 of my interview with Nick White, head of marketing for Osano, the leading website privacy management platform. Today's episode explores Nick's career and how he got his first head of marketing role at Wealthsimple.Subscribe to the podcast: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed.Transcript:Edward Nevraumont: Welcome to Marketing BS. My guest today is Nick White. Today's episode dives into his career, University of Washington, Pacific Continental Bank, Ignition Partners, A Place for Mom, Wealthsimple. He's now Head of Marketing at Osano, the leading privacy management platform.Nick, Osano was the first time you oversaw all of marketing, but you had everything except for brand at Wealthsimple, is that correct?Nick White: That's right.EN: You were hired there as a director of marketing and you worked your way into the head of growth. How did you make that happen?NW: I've been working at startups for a while and the nice thing about startups is that there's opportunity all over the place. There are way more things to do than there are hands to do it, and so you can just grab stuff. Over time, my interest and my desire to be opportunistic and add value to the company just led me to gradually expand my breadth of responsibilities, as I was also of diving into specific areas of marketing.It really just happened organically. Over time as I built up a reputation at Wealthsimple and as the company continued to grow and we needed more people, it was a pretty easy conversation for me to say, “Hey, we should hire this person and they should report to me.”EN: Did you take on more responsibility formally, or did you do the job before you had the job?NW: Usually did the job before I had the job. There wasn't a ton of formality in the initial stages when something needed to be done and that formality tended to come later.EN: Then who was doing it before you were doing it? Or just it wasn't getting done at all?NW: It wasn't getting done at all, or somebody was doing it as an afterthought. Most frequently, it just wasn't getting done at all. We realized that we need to do something. I was somebody who would very frequently put their hands up and say, “Yes, I'll do that thing.”EN: What were those things? How did your job change from being head of growth to being director of marketing?NW: I think the most straightforward way to think about it was on the basis of channels. We just started with pretty basic digital marketing. Over time, we expanded to doing a ton of e-mailing, to doing a lot of partnership marketing, to doing a lot of offline media marketing and a ton of data science and attribution work. With all of these different things, we didn't have domain experts in those areas. I knew some things about each of those areas. I knew that I could learn really quickly and that's just how it happened.EN: How did you learn that stuff? There was no one at the company to teach you, no mentorship. Where did you learn the skills you needed to do the job?NW: I think with most things in marketing, the basics are really basic. On day one at Wealthsimple, we set up paid search campaigns for the first time. Well, I never bought paid search before. It turns out, logging into google ads and setting up your first campaign is pretty darn easy. They put a lot of work into making sure that it's easy. Paid search can be really hard, really sophisticated, but not when it starts and not on day one.As the company grew, as we had to scale operations, as we got more sophisticated about our targeting and our bidding, my knowledge could grow with it. Nice thing about learning about marketing, rather than any other discipline, marketers like to talk about themselves online. They like to share how smart they are. There's a lot of crap out there, but if you look hard you can find the really smart people who are talking about this in a way that's really digestible, but substantive.EN: How are you able to find the good stuff and differentiate that from the crap?NW: I think to start with, it's reading a bunch of crap and understanding what that looks like. Over time, you realize that smart people tend to like to be around other smart people. Just finding the right areas, finding one or two people that tends to snowball, because the smart people will reference other smart people. The BS people will tend to reference other BS people.EN: That's helpful. What did you learn in that role that set you up for success at Osano?NW: Well, some of it is things that we've already talked about; the breadth of channels, the depth of knowledge required to scale at any given channel. All of these things are different. The way that you measure different channels are always different, at least slightly. Understanding things like that. Understanding operations was really valuable. A lot of the things that I learned that are most transferable are softer. Every business is different. To some extent, I'm learning a brand-new job.However, a lot of the softer stuff is quite transferable, so hiring, building a team and building a culture. Something that I really admire about Wealthsimple is that the founders were very thoughtful about creating a culture. They did a really good job of soliciting input, but not doing that too much and also, taking the reins and saying, “Hey, this is where the company and the culture is going.” That's not an obvious thing. Way too many businesses don't do that and especially early, that makes them bad places to be. That makes them difficult places to work and places that don't bring out the best in people. That's probably the most important thing that I've taken from Wealthsimple and then now applying at Osano.EN: I want to go back to the path that got you there. I have a theory that the things people do when they're in junior high school affect them their entire lives. Maybe even in grade nine. What did you spend your time doing when you were 12 to 14-years-old? What were you passionate about then?NW: I was into a lot of normal stuff. I grew up in North Dakota. Spent a lot of time riding my bike around with my friends, climbing trees and scraping knees. Did a lot of sports. I was very into geography and memorizing all of the capitals and all the lakes all over the world. There were a couple of non-standard things that I was pretty into. I happened to live right behind a golf course. If you cut through my backyard and a couple acres of woods and hopped a fence, you were on the third fairway of a public golf course in Bismarck, North Dakota.That was a really fun playground for me. I spent a ton of time in there with my friends building forts and golfing and also fishing golf balls out of the water traps at Riverwood. Around that same time, I got really into eBay. This would have been 1998. I would have been 13 and eBay was about 2. It was very small. The Internet was new and I was really into a couple of websites and eBay was one of them. The problem with that was I didn't have anything to sell and I didn't have any money.Going back to that golf course, my friends and I, we would go to the water traps at dusk when people weren't around and we'd collect a 100 or 200 golf balls. Then we'd fill up our golf bags. Really quickly, our golf bags got full. Then we'd go to used sporting goods stores around town and sell them. Well, pretty soon, their bins got full and then we had eBay. I started making money when I was 13. This was my real first job, by selling golf balls on eBay.I did that for a little while. As soon as I got enough money, I bought a trampoline. I happened to be very into trampolines at this time. I was an active kid. I bought one trampoline, kept selling golf balls, bought another trampoline. Then I started buying and selling trampolines on eBay. In hindsight, this is a very impractical item on eBay, given the shipping cost relative to the buying and selling price, but I was into it and it was a non-obvious place on eBay to be buying and selling stuff. It wasn't beanie babies or things like that.Pretty quickly, I cornered the market for trampolines on eBay. I knew exactly what price things would go for, and so I'd buy low and have them shipped to North Dakota and then I'd sell them for the market price. That was great, just because eBay was such an immature marketplace, there were arbitrage opportunities all over the place. That lasted for a little while and then that market was tapped out and the margins went away and then I got into golf clubs and things like that. Eventually, I got a real job, but that was a lot of fun for a couple of years.EN: Did you know the word arbitrage back then?NW: Definitely not. I just understood the concept of making money between a selling price and a buying price. I just intuited it.EN: Do you think that those experiences stayed with you in some way?NW: Yeah, I think so. I think as a kid, I was pretty restless, particularly in school. I wanted to move really quickly. I wasn't great at sitting still. I wasn't patient. Releasing those, or channeling those impulses into entrepreneurship and into having a side hustle certainly took me a long way, especially as a kid and into my career. I think those same things apply. If I didn't have that same level of hustle back then, I questioned whether or not I'd be – I would have been putting my hand up at Wealthsimple saying, “Hey. Oh, you need that thing done? I'm going to do it.” Not asking permission and just going at it.EN: Did you maintain side hustles through your career?NW: To some extent. I did until I didn't have the best experience. In 2011, I was living in Hong Kong. I was studying abroad for business school. I was feeling really restless there. School was really, really easy, and so I decided to start a business and I started a picture framing business, like buying and selling picture frames and professional printing. I set up a website. The reason why I chose that is I just knew that I could buy picture frames for really cheap, just over the border from where I was.I was going to go back to Seattle within a couple of months and I could create some relationships with picture frame manufacturers in Southern China and then have them ship first couple thousand picture frames while I set up a website, since when I got back I'd be in business. I started doing that. That was my first real foray into online marketing. Grew the business and it was going well. It was fine when I was in business school. Then I graduated business school and I joined A Place for Mom. I met you and started working in this very serious job.The problem was the company started doing really well. It just turned into this monster. Picture printing and framing is an offline business, their operations. I just been band-aiding everything. I had my roommates printing and framing these things and spraying down to ship them off. Then that didn't scale and then I brought in people on Craigslist. Then I would be leaving for work and letting people into my house. Then the wheels just really fell off. People started stealing from me and things were just constantly breaking. It was really awful.Meanwhile, I was trying to focus on this very demanding job, but I'd have to leave at lunch and not eat lunch, because I had to go fix a printer at home. It was insanely stressful. At that point I said, “Screw it. That's it. I'm done.” I sold the website and I haven't had a sidekick since. I've been really thankful. To some extent, I thought I just burnt out on it. But no. I think I'm better off just having side gigs within any given company. It's a lot easier to manage yourself that way.EN: You went to university at the University of Puget Sound. How did you come out different than when you went in?NW: I think that you're doing it right if when you look back on yourself a couple years before, you think that that person was stupid and naïve. I don't mean that to disparage myself, but I do find that I feel that way about myself over time. I think that's good. That's a good signal. That means that I'm growing and I'm getting smarter and better. That was certainly true from the first day to the last day at school. I think that I came to school with a very narrow view of people.I come from North Dakota and people are very similar there. There isn't much diversity. Most people are white. Most people are Christian and Republican. Most people like football and hunting and fishing. I'd done a lot of traveling as a kid, but I hadn't done a lot of really getting to deeply know diverse people and understanding that and appreciating diversity and understanding the importance of diversity was something that took me until I was 18-years-old to really get my head around. That was a tremendously valuable thing that stuck with me.EN: Say you'd gone to Minot State University, instead of the University of Puget Sound, how do you think your life and career would be different?NW: I'm not sure. I suspect – if I could answer that question by analogy, looking at my peers that went to college in North Dakota, I'd probably still be there. I probably would have gotten married in my early 20s, rather than my early 30s. I probably would have not moved to a different state. I probably may have moved to Minnesota, but that would have been as far as I would have gone. I'd probably still be there.EN: Some of that though is that those people that chose to stay are different people than you. Do you think you would have got the urge to leave later?NW: Maybe. A lot of my friends there have had the urge to leave and haven't left. It's really easy to rag on places like North Dakota, when we drive through it and see that it's just a wasteland. I am a defender of my home states and I do think it's a great place. I could have been entirely happy there. It's just a question of being a big fish in a little pond, versus a little fish in a big pond.EN: You started your career in finance. Even post-MBA, you were still in finance. How did you switch into marketing? How did you make that happen and why?NW: Really, I was just following finance. It was interesting to me. I did finance out of school. Really liked it. I did commercial banking through the 2008 recession, which was hard, but a very good learning experience. Then I did venture capital. Then I joined A Place for Mom doing corporate finance.It just so happened that that team, A Place for Mom, happened to do a lot of operational analytics, in addition to financial analytics. We were looking at numbers, but not all of the numbers had dollar signs in front of them, like at a lot of finance organizations. A Place for Mom had three big areas of the business. There was our call centers, our sales teams and marketing. We would disperse into these different areas. Over time, we formed a dedicated business intelligence team that I worked on, that was a little bit separate from finance. Was working on that and I was leading that.I was always the marketing guy. It wasn't from happenstance. I really was interested in it. I was interested in the people and I was interested in the problems. I was interested in one area of marketing in particular, which was TV and offline media. We're used to being very accurate and precise with our measurement of online media and the challenge of bringing that same rigor to offline media was really cool to me. I spent a lot of time doing that, working really closely with the person who ran that channel. Then one day, that person left. I walked in the CMO's office and I said, “Hey, I want that job.” I built up a reputation of being a smart person, that could learn quickly. They said, “Sure.”EN: Nick, what were the biggest failure points in your career? Where did things not go as expected?NW: I think the biggest failure point for me was probably right out of the gate. Not eBay, but when I graduated from college. I graduated in 2007 and the economy wasn't that hot, but a lot of my peers got good jobs and I didn't. I think a lot of the reason why that happened is me. I didn't take finding a job very seriously. It was winter and then spring of our senior year and I wasn't being very aggressive, or dedicating very much time to finding my next thing after school.My first job out of school was being a secretary at a law firm. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That job was useful in that I learned that I didn't want to be a lawyer. Just talking to the attorneys in that law firm, they were telling me, “No. Don't do this. If you can do anything else, don't do this.” Aside from that, it was really, really not fun. I spent my days learning Spanish and reading The Economist. My job was just way too easy and it wasn't stimulating and it wasn't allowing me to grow.I moved out of that just about as quickly as possible. In hindsight, it was a massive mistake. It was a really inauspicious way to start my career. Eventually, I got into banking, which there was a lot more upward mobility in, but that first step right out of the gate was pretty sub-optimal.EN: Now, it sounds like you learned something there. What would have happened if you hadn't had that experience? Would it have mattered?NW: I don't know. I emphasized one key thing that I learned, but I could have learned that probably by just getting coffee with five lawyers and not wasted six or eight months of my life doing a job that wasn't right for me. I've always valued learning and I was learning there, but it wasn't the things that I wanted to – it wasn't the knowledge that I wanted to gain. It wasn't the skills that I wanted to acquire. I learned some stuff, but I don't think it was the right stuff.EN: I want to end with one of your productivity secrets. Would you recommend that others get up regularly at 2 or 3 a.m.?NW: Maybe. I was a night owl my entire life. Then four or five years ago, something changed and I became a morning person. I really became a morning person, to the point where I wake up embarrassingly early. A lot of times, it's 2 or 3 a.m. I don't do this deliberately, so I wouldn't recommend that people set alarms to do that. I'm a huge fan of sleeping as much as you need. It just so happens that I can naturally wake up very, very early. It's been really great for me. I used to live in New York and the work culture in New York City is coming to work late, but stay really late. You work hard, but a lot of times people's days start at 10:30, 11 a.m. Really, really late.My co-workers would traipse in at that time and meanwhile, I've been working for eight hours. My level of preparation and the amount of throughput that I could have, just they couldn't compete, because I could be so far ahead. I basically had a free extra day of work relative to them. For me, it was great. This has just been a weird thing about my body's chemistry that's been really nice. I don't set an alarm. It just happens. If it just happens for you – 3 a.m. is a great time to work. There aren't any distractions, because there can't be distractions. Even if you go to Twitter, there's nothing happening. In that sense, it's really nice.EN: Thank you, Nick. We'll continue this interview tomorrow with a dive into how Nick is growing Osano. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Hanif Joshaghani is the co-founder and CEO of Symend which is a behavioral analytics platform that provides customer engagement products to identify customers having trouble with their bills. The company has raised over $52 million from investors like Ignition Partners, Inovia Capital, TELUS Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, and Impression Ventures to name a few. 

Hanif Joshaghani is the co-founder and CEO of Symend which is a behavioral analytics platform that provides customer engagement products to identify customers having trouble with their bills. The company has raised over $52 million from investors like Ignition Partners, Inovia Capital, TELUS Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, and Impression Ventures to name a few. 

Rand Fishkin is CEO & co-founder of SparkToro, author of Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World, and previously co-founded and ran Moz. Since publishing his book in 2018, he has earned 4.7 stars out of 5 from 170 reviews, a remarkable achievement!   “Find something you’re passionate about, where you can add unique value, and where your audience wants to pay attention. Nail those three, and you’ll do great marketing.” Rand Fishkin   Worst investment ever Time to grow business funds Rand’s worst investment ever happened when he was the CEO of Moz. In 2011, the company turned down an acquisition offer from HubSpot, a very well known marketing platform. At the time, Moz had been growing at 100% year-on-year for about six years in a row and producing about $11 million in revenue. In 2012, Moz sought to increase funding and got $18 million, of which $15 million came from a new investor, Foundry group, and $3 million of it came from a previous investor Ignition Partners. Venturing into more forms of marketing Rand’s company used the Venture Capital (VC) funding ostensibly to grow the business from just providing search engine optimization tools and software to providing different aspects of web marketing, email marketing, content marketing, PR, and social media marketing. Essentially, all of the new forms of marketing that Moz had not served previously. Cutting off what was working Over the next few years, the company cut off all growth of its software platform. As a result, existing products stopped improving and staggered. While their competitors kept making investments, Rand was pouring all of his new money into hiring a huge team, trying to figure out the new management structures, growing his offices, and acquiring other companies. Rand thought that by putting on hold what was previously working and putting all his energy into launching his new idea, the new venture would propel Moz into superstardom with this exciting and incredibly broad software suite. The horrific failure The new venture fell flat on Rand’s face. Moz’s growth rate fell from 100% year-on-year to 50% and then from 50% to 25%. Over the years, Moz continued to plateau in terms of growth and was surpassed by two direct competitors – SEMrush and Ahrefs. Over the last few years, Moz has tried to recover and refocused on SEO after a big round of layoffs in 2016. Stepping aside While the company was still profitable, the failure put a massive strain on the company and Rand. He was not able to handle it well and had an emotional breakdown. Rand ended up stepping down from the company, replacing himself with the chief operating officer who’s still the CEO today at Moz. The myth that leads even the best of us to failure Rand’s biggest driver to his failure was believing in the myth that once you have invested, made a decision, and gone down a path, you have to keep pursuing that path until you see it through to determine whether it was the right decision or the wrong decision. In reality, the right thing to do is to release one small thing that puts you in this direction and see if that works. And then another little thing in the same direction and if it also works launch another. Don’t do anything big until you’ve released a small series of things and validate that your market wants this. Lessons learned Have structure and incentives in place Structure and incentives matter more than almost everything else when it comes to business success. Know what you’re signing up for before accepting venture capital VC financing comes with a lot of glitz and glamor, and you get a lot of media attention. Don’t fall into the trap of chasing the glamor at the expense of serving your customers, your employees, and your happiness. Find the in-between financing model Today, there are financing models in between being wholly bootstrapped trying to build a business with your own or your family’s funds and building a business with institutional investor capital. Don’t be afraid to explore such models. Andrew’s takeaways You can’t do everything Don’t be addicted to growth, and try to do everything. Things seem easier on paper than they are. Companies just can’t do everything. The startup world is a trap Small businesses are trapped. So be very careful when you go in. You can have all the dreams that you want, have a billion-dollar company, but for the majority of people, it’s pain and despair. Leave risk management to the board As the CEO, your job is growing the business while that of the board is reducing risk. When a board gets caught up in growth, they betray their obligation to the bigger world. Let the CEO in the management team propose the growth plan while the board handles the risks. All board members should, therefore, understand the role of risk assessment and risk management. Do not let investors push you Listen to different opinions, but do what’s right for you. Do not be dragged into hitting quarterly profit numbers and all that. Don’t be the CEO who spends time building a competitive advantage and chasing your tail because investors are pushing you. Actionable advice When looking for business financing, be sure to recognize what you’re signing up for and commit wholeheartedly to one path. So if venture capital appeals to you, just understand why to make sure it’s the best choice for your business. No. 1 goal for the next 12 months Rand’s number one goal for the next 12 months is profitability. SparkToro just launched, and so Rand’s main focus right now is trying to get it to a profitable, sustainable business. Parting words   “If the world around you is guiding you in a particular direction, if the sources that you read and follow, the people that you listen to and admire, are pushing you to go in one particular direction, it pays to explore the alternatives.” Rand Fishkin   Connect with Rand Fishkin LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Website Blog Email: rand@sparktoro.com Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever 9 Valuation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Transform Your Business with Dr.Deming’s 14 Points Andrew’s online programs Valuation Master Class How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market Finance Made Ridiculously Simple Become a Great Presenter and Increase Your Influence Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming’s 14 Points Connect with Andrew Stotz: astotz.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube My Worst Investment Ever Podcast

Kellan Carter "I graduated in 2009, eerily similar conditions to today. The job market was tough so I combed through our alumni list and reached out to John persistently till I got a reply. When he agreed for a call, I flew out to meet him at his office. If he was kind enough to give me time, I was going to respect him by flying out there. Several years later when I was ready, he brought me in at Ignition". Kellan Carter is a Partner at Ignition Partners, a dedicated early-stage enterprise software VC firm. Kellan is also a board member and investor at several leading tech startups such as botkeeper, Icertis, and Symend. He led Symend's $7.5mn Series A earlier this month. Kellan is an alum of University of Montana. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theindustryshow/support

I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. Just interviewed Shannon Anderson. She is Director of Talent with the legendary VC firm Madrona Venture Group. Based in Seattle, Madrona specializes in seed, startup, and Series A deals. They’ve made over 300 investments in 110 companies since its inception. In this role, Shannon is the center of Madrona’s talent network, identifying rising stars for their portfolio companies & the Pacific NW startup ecosystem. She also serves as the strategic HR advisor to portfolio CEO’s. Prior, she served a similar role as Founding Talent Partner at Ignition Partners. And she spent 9 years at Microsoft, where she built the recruiting function that scaled the company from 8,000 to 40,000 people. Shannon knows as much as anyone I’ve met on hiring for early-stage companies. During this 20-minute conversation, I learned a ton. You will too.

Bill Clerico is the co-founder and CEO of WePay which is a leading provider of integrated payments for software platforms. The company raised $75 million from SV Angel, Highland Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, August Capital, and founders of YouTube and PayPal. Ultimately the company was acquired by JPMorgan for a reported $400 million.

Bill Clerico is the co-founder and CEO of WePay which is a leading provider of integrated payments for software platforms. The company raised $75 million from SV Angel, Highland Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, August Capital, and founders of YouTube and PayPal. Ultimately the company was acquired by JPMorgan for a reported $400 million.

In this episode, we talk to Silicon Valley investors, Jim Connor, currently with Sand Hill Angels and Nick Triantos, an investor at Ignition Partners, with 20 years experience in the industry, from being a successful technical founder right through to his current role as an investor. Our investors discuss: The characteristics that make a successful entrepreneur What’s involved in the sometimes harsh but rewarding reality of being a startup founder The best way to reach out to investors If you like what you hear, please rate, review and subscribe so that we can keep bringing you more investors!

In this episode, we hear from Nick Triantos, Venture Partner at Ignition Partners in Part 2 of a 2 part episode. Take a look at our back catalog for Part 1 of the episode – it should be 2 episodes back. Ignition is a well-known VC firm in the Bay Area that invests in startups at Seed and Series A stages. They’ve had over 60 successful exits and are actively investing out of their fifth fund of $200 million. Nick discusses: How to start thinking about selling your company as a founding team The kind of startups that would entice him to invest Rules of thumb for figuring out a valuation Views on M & A trends in the software industry What happens with convertible notes, and Where he sees the VC landscape heading in terms of ICOs in the next few years.   If you like what you hear, please rate, review and subscribe so that we can keep bringing you more investors!

Welcome to the Silicon Valley Startup Podcast, hosted by Founders Floor - an immersive coworking accelerator that mentors and backs startups in Silicon Valley. This episode is part of our Investor Series where we invite expert Silicon Valley investors share their wisdom with you on the fundraising process. In this episode, we hear from Nick Triantos, Venture Partner at Ignition Partners in Part 1 of a 2 part episode - Part 2 will be released next week. Ignition is a well-known VC firm in the Bay Area that invests in startups at Seed and Series A stages. They’ve had over 60 successful exits and are actively investing out of their fifth fund of $200 million. Nick discusses: How to manage the transition from being a highly technical founder to a well-rounded business CEO What he looks for in a startup at each funding round Post-funding expectations Managing rapid startup growth (including managing company culture during these periods), and Advice on how to persevere through hard times. If you like what you hear, please rate, review and subscribe so that we can keep bringing you more tech and startup news each week!  

Preeti Rathi, Partner at Ignition Partners, discusses the changing dynamics of seed investing.

Martin Tobias is the CEO of Bulletproof Labs, the CEO of Upgrade Labs and the co-founder of People For Cause, Element 8 Angels, and MGT Investments. He’s served on the board of directors for Cloudmark and Tippr, and co-founded numerous startups, including Kashless, Imperium Renewables, and Loudeye Technologies. He was a partner at Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm in Seattle, and previously served as an executive at Microsoft. In addition to being an experienced technology executive, Martin is a health enthusiast and an advocate for people taking control of their own biology. Bulletproof Labs is a high-end health center with an emphasis on biohacking. Bulletproof Labs features the latest, cutting-edge workout equipment and experimental and emerging therapies, including cryotherapy, float tanks, and high-intensity interval training. In this episode, we answer questions on biohacking and discuss the latest trends in life extension. What are telomeres? Can you regrow your telomeres? What are NAD supplements? Could nicotine be part of a healthy diet? What is a vampire facial? About Martin bulletprooflabs.com Martin Tobias Twitter Martin's Personal Blog Show Links Palo Alto Longevity Prize 40 years of Zen Telomere extension turns back aging clock in cultured human cells, study finds Epithalon peptide induces telomerase activity and telomere elongation in human somatic cells Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) NAD+ and sirtuins in aging and disease, Shin-ichiro Imai, Leonard P. Guarente BrainCheck Martin’s blog on NAD supplementation: DO THIS: Increase your NAD levels TRU NIAGEN Elysium Basis Bulletproof Labs' Body Hacks Bulletproof products Will a Nicotine Patch Make You Smarter? [Excerpt] Platelet-rich Plasma (PRP) Oura DO THIS: Morning Pages Hacks DAVID Delight Pro Muse

Snap’s share price has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, adding to its woes sourced from a lackluster Q1 earnings report. Snap now trades below its IPO price. Its declines are worrisome for other unicorns looking to defend private valuations in the public sphere. The venture capital sexual harassment scandal continued this week, with allegations leading to the ouster of Frank Artale from Ignition Partners. More on that, and a round-up of the rest of the mess here. Uber grew about 10 percent last quarter and is now working with a former competitor in Russia. If that sounds familiar, just repeat the word ‘China’ in your head about seven times until you recall. And, très surprise, WeWork raised more money. Because why not. What asset-light coworking startup shouldn’t be worth $20 billion, right?

Snap’s share price has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, adding to its woes sourced from a lackluster Q1 earnings report. Snap now trades below its IPO price. Its declines are worrisome for other unicorns looking to defend private valuations in the public sphere. The venture capital sexual harassment scandal continued this week, with allegations leading to the ouster of Frank Artale from Ignition Partners. More on that, and a round-up of the rest of the mess here. Uber grew about 10 percent last quarter and is now working with a former competitor in Russia. If that sounds familiar, just repeat the word ‘China’ in your head about seven times until you recall. And, très surprise, WeWork raised more money. Because why not. What asset-light coworking startup shouldn’t be worth $20 billion, right?

Listen to the first ever taping of Seattle Growth Podcast before a live audience at the Impact Hub in Seattle. University of Washington's Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship organized the event on October 17th, 2016. Host Jeff Shulman moderated a panel of three individuals who have made immeasurable contributions to Seattle and will play a major role in its future: Maggie Walker, John Connors, and John Creighton. Maggie Walker is well known in Seattle as a philanthropist and civic leader. Walker was a founding member of Social Venture Partners and of the Washington Women's Foundation. She is Chair and Board President of Global Partnerships. She is Vice Chair of the National Audobon Society Board of Directors. She is a member of the UW Foundation Board of Directors and the Seattle Art Museum Board of Trustees where she previously served as President. She is a board member of Friends of Waterfront Seattle. She is an advisory board member for the University of Washington's College of the Environment, the Evans School of Public Policy, and the College of Arts & Sciences. Walker previously served as chair of The Bullitt Foundation's Board of Trustees, co-chair of the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) Board of Trustees, chair of the Washington Women's Foundation (founding member and first Chair) and was the first vice-chair of The Seattle Foundation Board of Trustees. John Connors is a managing partner at Ignition Partners, an early stage, business software venture capital firm. Connors was named to the 2013 Forbes Midas List, a ranking of the world's top venture capital investors, and to Business Insider's 2013 list of top enterprise technology VCs. Connors joined Ignition in 2005 after a distinguished career as a software-industry executive. Connors spent sixteen years at Microsoft in several high-level, strategic roles. From January 2000 to April 2005 he was senior vice president of finance and administration, as well as the company's chief financial officer. Connors is a member of the board of directors of Nike (NKE), Splunk (SPLK), FiREapps, DataSphere, Motif Investing, Chef, Azuqua, Tempered Networks, and Icertis. John Creighton has served on the Port of Seattle Commission since 2006. He came to the commission with broad experience as a lawyer specializing on complex international transactions in the port cities of Singapore, Helsinki and Istanbul prior to returning home to Seattle. Creighton currently has a solo practice focused on business law and public policy. As a commissioner, Creighton has focused on keeping the Port strong as a jobs creation engine while increasing the agency's commitment to the environment and making it a more accountable, socially responsible public agency. Creighton grew up on the Eastside and graduated from Interlake High School in Bellevue. He earned a B.A. and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, a J.D. from Columbia University and a Certificate of Administration from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Today we have a panel discussion between 3 Venture Capitalists from the VC corner stage at Startup Grind’s 2016 global conference held annually each February in Silicon Valley. Rachel Chalmers is a principle at Ignition partners, prior to ignition Rachel led research into enterprise computing infrastructure for the 451 Group.  Nick Sturiale, is the managing partner at Ignition Partners, prior to becoming MP at Ignition Nick spent 15 years in venture helping over 100 startups including Reputation.com, Bill.com and Delphix. As an operator Nick was the founding CEO of Timbre Technologies which sold to Tokyo electron for 138 million dollars in 2001.  Sandeep Bhadra is a partner with Menlo Ventures where he actively focuses on enterprise investments including AppDome, Platform9, and Signifyd. Sandeep had a Phd from the university of Texas and an MBA from INSEAD.  Let’s listen into this interesting discussion with Rachel, Nick, and Sandeep at Startup Grind’s Global Conference. 

Summary:In the early 1990s, Brad Silverberg was one of the key champions of the Internet within Microsoft. As the first ever Senior Vice President of the Internet Platform and Tools Group, he essentially led Microsoft’s efforts to embrace the Internet and the Web beginning in late 1995. As the senior Vice President of the Personal-Systems Division, Brad also led the development of Windows, from the launch of Windows 3.0 through Windows 95, which he helped establish as Microsoft’s greatest ever product. Today, he is a venture capitalist with both Fuel Capital and Ignition Partners. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Host Alex Williams says he's hard-pressed to find a better episode of The New Stack Analysts that we've had this year than this one, recorded at AWS re:Invent. The panel discusses APIs and containers, the inexorable progression of architecture continua, and the changeling as a metaphor for abstraction naïveté. Alex's guests are Al Hilwa, Program Director for IDC's Application Development Software research, Rachel Chalmers, Principal at Ignition Partners, and Steve Willmott, CEO at 3scale. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO63UlCs31o Learn more at: https://thenewstack.io/tns-analysts-show-61-the-metaphors-the-continua-and-jedi-mind-tricks/

Would you go to the gym more often if someone was paying you? What if your employer not only encouraged you to be healthy but reinforced that behaviour? Does a healthy employee actually reduce expenses for a company and raise the bottom line? We were joined today by the Founder and CEO of KrowdFit, Jim Miller. We discussed the correlation between getting healthy and monetary incentives in the work place.   Jim is a serial entrepreneur companies and experienced CEO with 25 years experience leading early stage technology driven companies.  He is keenly focused on improving the human health condition and is passionate about performance sports and nutrition.  He currently is the founder and CEO of KrowdFit, a platform that financially incentivizes healthy choices.   He is an expert in loyalty marketing, incentive rewards program design and has successfully led several venture-funded companies through periods of rapid growth, holding key senior leadership roles & has successfully raised over $125 million to fund his start-ups.   Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of uTANGO the world's richest Visa® Rewards program, rewarding individual lifetime consumer loyalty with up to $1 Million in cash rewards.  Prior to leading uTANGO, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence with Ignition Partners and Frazier Technology Ventures where he participated in the investment process and provided interim executive leadership to portfolio companies.   He has been a guest lecturer on Entrepreneurship and Raising Venture Capital at Seattle University, Portland State University Schools of Business Administration and Northwest University.  Jim has been recognized in Kiplinger's Magazine How to get Other People's Money to Finance your Business and Success Magazine Get Venture Capital for Your Business. Jim currently resides with his wife, Mimi, and daughters Alex and Bridget in Bend, OR. Interests include: cycling, skiing, golf, technology, wine and domain name speculation.  He studied Finance and Marketing at Linfield College, however never one to sit still, he became bored and dropped out during the last semester.     To find out more visit: WWW.KrowdFit.com   Personal Finance Cheat Sheet Article: http://www.cheatsheet.com/…/how-schools-can-improve-their-…/ You can listen live by going to www.kpft.org and clicking on the HD3 tab. You can also listen to this episode and others by podcast at: http://directory.libsyn.com/shows/view/id/moneymatters or www.moneymatterspodcast.com ‪#‎KPFT‬  

Rachel Chalmers knows your Achilles heel. After two plus decades sitting in Silicon Valley's front row watching start-up technology companies, she has a very clear idea of the single biggest cause of start-up failure.  Rachel was kind enough to sit down for a few minutes at the Montgomery Summit and talk about it. Listen in to hear what she sees as most critical for entrepreneurial success. My Guest Rachel Chalmers has been a long time observer and analyst in the world of technology.  She describes herself as a failed English teacher.  She received a BA degree in English from the University of Sydney and a master’s in philosophy, with a focus on Anglo-Irish literature, from Trinity College, Dublin.  But her time hanging out with engineering students pointed her towards technology writing. She started her career writing for MIS Magazine and Computerwire during the mid-late 90's.  In 2000 she moved to the 451 Group and focused infrastructure computing for the enterprise.  As she puts it she covered: "tools for programmers, power systems administrators and data center operators...and virtualization. Lots and lots and lots of virtualization." Then in mid-2013 Rachel joined Ignition Partners as a principal investing in enterprise software companies such as BlueData, Carmelo Systems, StreamSets, StrongLoop and Wit.ai Since 201 Rachel has been an adviser to the Ada Initiative, a non-profit that supports women in open technology and culture. Resources & Links Rachel's email:  Rachel [AT] ignitionpartners [DOT] com LinkedIn Twitter: @rachelchalmers Ignition Partners website The Ada Initiative I also mentioned a presentation by Bill Gross of IdeaLab from the Montgomery Summit.  Here's his slides for the same presentation at a different conference. The whole thing is good, but slide 20 is the key factors in failure. There's also a 15 minute video of his presentation from a conference in Europe. Bill Gross CEO of Idealab from Vator Subscribe With Your Favorite App Share With Entrepreneurial Colleagues & Friends Connect With Me Why a Venture Capital Podcast About Failure? From early childhood you always hear the saying “Learn from your mistakes.” In the venture capital industry you frequently hear “Fail fast” to learn and get to the right idea. Great advice. So, for this venture capital podcast I interview venture capital backed entrepreneurs about what they learned when their start-up didn't go as planned. I hope you can learn from their valuable experience. The post Shut-up and Listen! Rachel Chalmers Explains the Biggest Mistake You Can Make appeared first on Venture Capital Coroner's Report.

Enclarity, a healthcare IT company based in Aliso Viejo, CA, announced today it has closed a $5.5 million Series C round led by Bellevue, WA-based Ignition Partners and Boston, MA-based Bain Capital Ventures. The funds will be used for R&D and product development. Enclarity makes software that helps companies manage healthcare provider information and records.Click here to play