Podcasts about kairos society

I met Michael Bervell through a mutual acquaintance some two months ago. Since then he and I have talked a few times and found that we have many interests in common.   Michael grew up near Seattle where he stayed through high school. He then went across the country to study at Harvard. He received a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy. He then returned to Seattle and began working at Microsoft where he held some pretty intense and interesting jobs he will tell us about.   At a young age and then in college Michael's entrepreneurial spirit was present and flourished. His story about all that he has done as an entrepreneur is quite impressive. Today he is back at Harvard working toward getting his Master's degree in Business.   Michael has developed a keen interest in digital accessibility and inclusion. We spend time discussing internet access, the various options for making inclusive websites and how to help educate more people about the need for complete inclusion.       About the Guest:   Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He is currently the founder of TestParty, an industry-leading and cutting edge digital accessibility platform.   In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, "Hugs for" has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations; impacted over 300,000 youth around the world; and expanded operations to 6 countries (Tanzania, Ghana, United States, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone). Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015 (alongside Pope Francis, Dikembe Mutombo, and 7 others).   Bervell is the youngest Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association and was the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle. He has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the WednesdAI Collective (a Harvard & MIT AI incubation lab), Enchiridion Corporation (a marketing consulting company), Sigma Squared (formerly the Kairos Society), and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas (a media and innovation company). He has experience working as a Chief of Staff at Databook, Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, Portfolio Development Manager at Microsoft's Venture Fund, Program Manager at Microsoft, and Software Engineer at Twitter.   His various efforts have earned him recognition as a Samvid Scholar (2022), Warnick Fellow (2021), Jonathan Hart Prize Winner (2019), GE-Lloyd Trotter Scholar (2018), World Internet Conference Wuzhen Scholar (2017), Walter C. Klein Scholar (2017), United Health Foundation Scholar (2016), Deutsche Bank Rise Into Success Scholar (2016), Blacks at Microsoft Scholar (2016), Three Dot Dash Global Teen Leader (2015), Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar (2015), National Achievement Scholar (2015), Coca-cola Scholar (2015), Elks Scholar (2015), AXA Achievement Community Scholar (2015), Build-a-bear Workshop Huggable Hero (2014), and more.   Ways to connect with Michael:   Personal Website: https://www.michaelbervell.com/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbervell/ Company Website: https://www.testparty.ai/ Company LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/testparty/     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello, everyone. I am Michael Hinkson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset. Our guest today is Michael Bervell, who is a Ghanaian American angel investor. He is a published author, and he is also an entrepreneur and a scholar by any standards. And if he wants to brag about all that and all the the different kinds of accolades and awards he's gotten, he's welcome to do that. And I will just take a nap. No, I won't. I won't take a nap. I'll listen to him. I've read it all, but I'll listen to it again. Michael, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Michael Bervell ** 01:58 Thanks so much for having me. It's a great name. You have too, both the podcast and your own name, another Mike.   Michael Hingson ** 02:04 You know, I think it's a great name. People have asked me, why I say Michael, and do I prefer Michael to Mike? And as I tell people, it took a master's degree in 10 years, a master's degree in physics in 10 years, to figure this out. But I used to always say Mike Kingston on the phone, and people always said Mr. Kingston. And I couldn't figure out, why are they saying Kingston when it's Kingston, and I introduced myself as Mike Kingston. And finally, one day, it hit me in the head. They're getting the mike the K part with the Kingston, and they're calling it Kingston. If I start saying Michael hingson, will that change it? I started saying Michael hingson, and immediately everybody got it right. They said Mr. Hingson or Michael, or whatever. I don't really care, Mike or Michael is fine, but the last name is hingson, so there.   Michael Bervell ** 02:50 It's so funny. Yeah, I'm glad no one's calling you Mr. Links and or something like, yeah, yell and adding it. They   Michael Hingson ** 02:55 do. They do. Sometimes do Hingston, which isn't right, yeah, which shows you sometimes how well people listen. But you know, what   03:03 do you do? Exactly, exactly? Tell   Michael Hingson ** 03:07 us a little bit, if you would, about the early Michael bervell Growing up in and where, and all that sort of stuff. And you know, then we can get into all sorts of fun stuff, because I know you've been very interested in accessibility and disabilities and all that, we'll get to that. But tell me about you growing up. Yeah. I mean,   Michael Bervell ** 03:24 for me home, home for me was in Seattle, and I actually lived and went to school in a place that was about 30 minutes apart. So my parents would drop me off at school in the morning. I go through the day, meet all my friends, and then come back home. They would pick me up, take me back home in the evening. So I had a lot of time in the day after school, you know, school ends at two, and my parents picked up a five to do all this other stuff. So I used to always be part of every student, student club. I did every sports team, you know, I was in high school, you know, on the captain of all these, all these teams and such. And of course, I would go home and my parents picked me up. And in that in that in between time, I spent a lot of time in the library, so I probably every day in middle and high school, spent three hours a day at the library, just in that in between time, waiting for your parents, waiting for my parents. So that for me, was a lot of time that I just used to incubate projects. I taught myself how to code and took some CS classes when I was, you know, in high school at the library, I became friends with all the librarians and joined the student library advisory board when I was in eighth grade at the library, and did a bunch of other things. But I think probably the most impactful library project that I had was actually a nonprofit that my family and I started, and it was memory of my grandmother, who born in Ghana. She used to always go back there in the winter times, because, you know, it's cold in Seattle, warm in West Africa in the winter   Michael Hingson ** 04:48 as well. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 04:49 yeah, it was super warm there. I mean, it's always, you know, 80 plus degrees, wow. Yeah, it's lovely. And so she would always go home. And whenever she went back to Ghana. She would, you know, come into our bedroom and tip doe at night and go into the bed and take a teddy bear or take some of her old school supplies. And whenever she visited, she would give that to kids in hospitals and schools and North pages. So, you know, when she, when we, when she passed away, we ended up going back to Ghana for her funeral. And, you know, all the burial ceremonies, and there were just so many people from the community there expressing their love for her and what she had done. And we realized that, you know, while it was small for us, you know, as a six year old or sixth grade kid, her taking a teddy bear had such a big impact, and it had these ripple effects that went far beyond her, so that that was, like one of my biggest projects I did at, you know, in sixth grade and beyond. It's an organization, a nonprofit called hugs for Ghana, which we've been running for the last 15 years, 15 plus years, and now is operating in six different countries. And we do the same thing. We get teddy bears and school supplies and all these things, and pick them up and hand deliver them to kids in developing countries. But that, for me, was one of my most fundamental parts of my childhood. When you ask me, you know, was it like as a child? I can't separate my growing up from, you know, those long drives to school, that time at the library and eventually the nonprofit made in honor of my grandmother,   Michael Hingson ** 06:10 and giving back,   Michael Bervell ** 06:13 yeah, and giving back exactly how   Michael Hingson ** 06:16 I talked fairly recently on this podcast to someone who formed. Her name is Wendy Steele. She formed an organization called Impact 100 and impact 100 is really primarily an organization of women, although in Australia, there are men who are part of it. But basically what Wendy realized along the way was that, in fact, people are always looking for, what can they do? And at the same time, they don't have a lot of time. So with impact 100 she said, and the way the organization works, the only thing that she requires that anyone who joins the organization must do is donate a check for $1,000 that's it. If you don't want to do any work, that's great. If you want to be part of it and all that. It's fine. If the organization is primarily composed of volunteers. I think they have now like 73 or 77 chapters in mostly in the United States, but they're also when Australia and a couple of other countries, and they have given out in the 20 years since the organization was formed, all told, close to $148 million what they do is they take the money that comes in, and they for every $100,000 that a Chapter raises, they give a $100,000 grant to someone no administrative costs, unless those are donated on top of the $1,000 so all the money goes back to the community. I think the first grant they ever gave was to a dental clinic to help with low income people and so on. But it's a fascinating organization, as I said, it's called Impact 100 and she started it because as a child, she was very much involved in giving back, and for a while she she didn't. And then it started again when her father passed away, and she realized how many people from the community supported her and the rest of her family because they didn't have the tools or the resources to do it all alone. Yeah, so I'm not surprised that you have the story of giving back and that you continue to do that, which is really pretty cool.   Michael Bervell ** 08:36 Well, I think I actually heard a statistic that I think they tried to track how early childhood development, or just early adulthood, affected later adulthood. I think one of the findings was that people who volunteered when they were in middle and high school or significantly more likely to volunteer later in life than those who never did. And so there is a certain level of kind of you know, how you experience the world in your early ages and your early days affects your potential to want to make a change, especially as it relates to giving back or giving time or money or whatever effort, whatever it might be, I think is a really interesting concept. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 it makes sort of perfect sense, because as you're growing up and you're forming your life, if you see that you're doing things like giving back or being involved in supporting other people, and that is a very positive thing, it makes sense that you would want to continue that in some way.   Michael Bervell ** 09:33 Yeah, yeah. I mean, it reminds me also of just like habits. You know, you build your habits over time, and it starts from super young ages not to say that you can't change habits. There's a bunch of research about the science of habit change and how to break a habit loop, and Charles Duhigg is a great author in that space, but it's also just really interesting just to think through that. But yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:54 and habits can be hard to break, or they can be easy if you're really committed. Into doing it. But I know a lot of people say it, it's fairly challenging to change or break a habit.   Michael Bervell ** 10:06 Exactly, yeah, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 10:09 Unfortunately, sometimes it's all too easy to make a habit. But anyway, there you go. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 10:14 my one of my it's, it's funny, because after you know one of my habits I made when I was in high school that, to my mom's chagrin, was I used to always love just doing work on my bed. The positive thing about the habit was I was always comfortable. The negative thing is I would sometimes fall asleep. So many times I mid paper, you know, mid take home exam, fall asleep. I have to wake up and scramble to finish. But that doesn't show me a faster writer. If anything   Michael Hingson ** 10:41 I remember, when I was in graduate school at UC Irvine, I had an office of my own, and I was in it one day, and I was looking at some material. Fortunately, I was able to get most of the physics texts in Braille, so I was studying one, and the next thing I knew, I woke up and my finger was on the page, and I had just fallen asleep, and my finger for reading braille, was right where I left off. Always thought that was funny,   Michael Bervell ** 11:14 yeah, just a just a quick, just a quick pause. You just pause for a second, even   Michael Hingson ** 11:18 though it was about 45 minutes, but whatever. But my figure didn't move.   Michael Bervell ** 11:24 You really focused, you know, just That's it. That's it.   Michael Hingson ** 11:27 The advantage of Braille, exactly. But, you know, I do think that it's great to have those kinds of habits, and I really wish more people would learn the value of giving back and sharing, because it will come back to benefit you so many times over.   Michael Bervell ** 11:48 Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's even what influences me, like now and even throughout, you know, post high school, like when I went into college, I knew I wanted to be in some sort of service and giving back type of industry, but I didn't really know what that was, right, like, I didn't want to do want to do philanthropy full time, because I found it difficult, right? Like, I found it hard to have to go back to investors, and I found it difficult to sometimes sell the vision. And my question was, is there a way to make this more sustainable? And so I spent a lot of my time in school and college just learning about social impact, which, at the time was just coming up, like a lot of those impact investment funds, impact bonds, the idea that you can tie finance to impact, and you can have carbon offsets that people buy and sell, that has some sort of social good, that you can somehow transact. All these kind of new and interesting ideas were coming around, and it started, it just got me interested, right? It's, you know, can I make a habit of creating an impact, but also habits somehow work within, you know, this capitalist system that the world operates in. It's something I've been wrestling with, you know, even in all my my future business and kind of current business, work and practices.   Michael Hingson ** 12:58 What do you do when you propose an idea or have a thought, and you discuss with people and they object to it. How do you handle objections?   Michael Bervell ** 13:05 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for me, I'm always interested in the root cause, right? I think I'm one who tries to understand first before trying to persuade. So I could give you an example, I think very early in my, very early my college career, I realized that my parents would be able to pay for college for me. That was the youngest of three. And, you know, they'd use a lot of their savings on my siblings, about the who ended up going to med school, which is very expensive, yeah, college, which was also very expensive. And being immigrants from Ghana, of course, they hadn't saved up an infinite amount of money. So my mom sat me down and told me, Hey, you have to pay your own tuition. And so, you know, the person I had to convince to kind of help me here was actually funny enough, restaurants are in Harvard Square, and the reason why is I decided to make a business that did restaurant consulting. So I went door to door, and I would ask people and like, hey, you know, do you need 20 Harvard students to come and help you understand how you can get more foot traffic in the door. You know, sell more pizzas or sell more burritos. I think I heard 20 or 30 knows. And finally, one woman said, Well, you know, if, if, if, if you think that you can do it, then, you know, show me. Show me the numbers, right? And that was, that was really interesting. And so I think it realized, you know, when I when she initially said, No, I said, Well, why not? She said, I just don't know if you can do it. And when I said, Oh, we can actually show you the proof, she's like, Okay, well, then if you can run a pilot and show me the proof, then I'll do it. And so understanding the why, I think, is more important than getting the rejection and, you know, getting the setback. But that's try to, that's how I try to deal with it.   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 One of the things that I learned fairly early on, when I was put in a position of starting to sell for a living, actually, in Cambridge, working for Kurzweil Computer Products and taking a Dale Carnegie sales course was stay away from asking closed ended or. Yes, no questions. And so most of the time, I wouldn't say, you know, can we do this? Or would you do this? I would say, I'd like to hear your thoughts about or we've got this idea, tell me what you think, and doing other things to get people to talk. And when I started using that in my career, it was easy to get people to talk because they they want to talk. Or, as I like to say, people love to teach, and most of the time, if you establish a relationship with people and they know you're listening, they're welcome, or they're willing to give you wisdom. And so there are so many examples I have of asking open ended questions like that, or I went into a sales meeting with one of my employees, and there were a bunch of people there, and I said, Tell me to the first person I talked with, tell me why we're here. And it totally caught him off guard. Of course. The other thing is that they didn't realize that the sales manager who was coming, that the the guy who had set up the appointment was was told to bring his manager, and they didn't realize that the sales manager was blind, which also was a great addition to help. But again, I didn't ask, so you want to take backup system, but rather tell me why we're here. Tell me what you're looking for. Why are you looking for that? What do you want it to be? And I actually realized by the time I went around the room that our product wasn't going to work, but we still did the PowerPoint presentation. And then I said, if case you haven't figured it out, our system won't work, and here's why, but here's what will work. And that eventually led to a much larger order, as it turns out, because they called back later and they said, We got another project, and we're not even putting it out for bid. Just tell us what we pay you, and we'll order it. And it's it's all about. The objections are really mostly, I think, from people who maybe have some concerns that you didn't learn about because you didn't ask an open ended up or the right question, which is something that only comes with time.   Michael Bervell ** 17:15 Yeah. I mean, I think it also sounds very similar to like, what journalists are are trained to do, like a great journalist. And I took a journalism class a few years ago, maybe five years ago, with Joe Abramson, who was one of the first female executive, executive editors of the New York Times. And this was kind of her exact lesson. Is that everyone has some story to teach, some wisdom to share, and the difficulty, or really the challenge on you as an interlocutor, as a journalist, as someone whose job it is to uncover the story, is to ask the right questions, yeah, to allow that person the space to teach.   Michael Hingson ** 17:51 And if you and if you don't know the right questions, you ask something open ended, enough that maybe you'll get to it.   Michael Bervell ** 17:57 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then the flip side, right, because there's, of course, you can't put all the burden on the person, no, right? You have to be an active listener. You have to listen to know, and then you have to prod and even say something like, Tell me more. Yeah, exactly right. Questions like, Tell me more, her second favorite question was, and then what happened? Yeah, right. Those are two such simple things, you know? And then what? Yeah. And it's just such an opening to really evolve and to grow.   Michael Hingson ** 18:23 And if they really think you're listening and that you want to know and understand, people will talk to you exactly which is, which is really what it's about. Well, so you did all of your so you went to high school in Seattle, correct? Yeah. And, and then what did you do?   Michael Bervell ** 18:43 Yeah. So High School in Seattle Graduated, went off to Boston for college, where, you know, of course, had to figure out a way to pay for school. And that was my first, I guess, for profit business. Was this restaurant consulting company. And of course, like I said, everything I want to do in my in my life, was focused on social impact. So the impacts there was that we only hired students to work for us who needed to pay tuition. There was this program called federal work study where, if you get trade, you have to, you know, work as part of a federal mandate for some amount of hours per week, and that was the book study requirement. And for the most part, students would do on campus jobs that would pay 10, $15 an hour to do this work study. Well, I'd spent up this consulting business as a sophomore that I then ran for all three years, and on an hourly basis, we were making significantly more than that, right? So I was able to go find students who traditionally had been working their whole life, right? Harvard has such a, you know, vast background of individuals. I knew, people who were homeless, people who were billionaires and everyone in between, who ended up coming to the school and so to find people who you know had been working 40 hours a week since they were in middle school, and give them a job where they could work less and actually have more free time to invest in their community or invest back into developing new skills, was, for me, super, super impactful. On the surface, it was a restaurant. A consulting business, but behind the scenes, what we were doing with our staffing and with our culture was was around that social impact. So I stayed out in in Cambridge for for four years, studied philosophy. I got a minor in computer science, and eventually went off to Microsoft back in in Seattle, where I eventually then, you know, was product manager and was a venture capital investor, and met a bunch of really phenomenal and interesting people who were pushing technology forward.   Michael Hingson ** 20:27 Now, why Harvard, which is all the way across the country?   Michael Bervell ** 20:33 Yeah, I mean, well, I think I love traveling. I loved, I loved, you know, being out and about, and I think growing up as the youngest of three, and also as the child of African immigrants, they'd always told me, you know, we moved here for you, like we moved 3000 miles away to a country where you don't speak the language, where you don't know anybody for you. And what they meant for that is, you know, we want you to really thrive. And even you know, now I'm at the age when my parents had first moved right to the US, and I can't imagine moving to a country where I don't know the language, don't know the people, and don't know a soul for my potential future children. And their children, that's what they did, and they invested a lot of time and energy and effort into me. And they always told me, you want you to be really successful. And so I remember when I was when I was in middle school, my sister got into Harvard, which was unheard of, right? No one in our high school had gone to Harvard in the past, especially not for, you know, a black family in a primarily white neighborhood, for one of us to go to Harvard was was a big deal. And so I knew that, you know, at the very least, for my parents, for my sister, for my family, I wanted to kind of match up to that   Michael Hingson ** 21:43 well, and it certainly sounds like you've, you've done a lot of that. Oh, here's a an off the wall question, having been around Cambridge and worked in Cambridge and all that is cheapo records still in Harvard Square.   Michael Bervell ** 21:57 Oh, man. You know what's so funny, I got a record player. I got a record player last semester, and I don't remember if cheaper records, that's the one that's like, I think I've is that the one that's in like, the actual, like, it's by, like, Kendall, take by Kendall, Kendall Square.   Michael Hingson ** 22:15 No, I thought it was in Harvard Square. Okay,   Michael Bervell ** 22:19 I think, I think it still exists. If I'm not mistaken, I think it still exists. I think I got a lot, got a lot of records from cheapo over the years record stores in Cambridge. And because I got a record player as a gift, I've been, I've been collecting a lot more,   Michael Hingson ** 22:31 ah, yeah, um, I've gotten a lot of records from cheapo and over the years. And of course, not so much now, since I'm out here. But next time I get back to mass, I'll have to go check,   Michael Bervell ** 22:43 oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We can do a cheapo records hanging how tactile It is, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:52 There used to be one in New York that I would go to. They were more expensive as New York tends to be colony records, and they're not there anymore, which is sort of sad, but cheapo. Cheap just seemed to be one of those places that people liked. I don't want to say it was like a cult, although it sort of is all the dedicated people to to real vinyl, but I hope it's still   Michael Bervell ** 23:16 there. Is it? It's a chain of record stores, or is it just,   Michael Hingson ** 23:18 no, I think it's a one. Oh, yeah. If there's more than one, I'm not aware of it, I'd   Michael Bervell ** 23:23 probably say I'm 80% certain it still exists. Well there,   Michael Hingson ** 23:27 yeah, so have to come back to mass. And yeah, I'll have to go to cheaper records and Legal Seafood.   Michael Bervell ** 23:32 Oh yeah, Legal Seafood. That was, yeah, I love Legal Seafood musical all the time with my roommates from college. And, yeah, we used to order the crab cakes and eat lobster rolls. It's a great time.   Michael Hingson ** 23:44 Yeah, and then their little chocolate desserts, which are great yeah, and the chowder. Oh, well, yeah, yep, gotta, gotta get back to mass. Okay. Now whoever   Michael Bervell ** 23:53 you're listening is probably getting hungry. Well, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 23:57 as as they should, you know, you know why they call it Legal Seafood. I actually don't know nothing is frozen. It's all fresh. It's legal. Oh, I love that. I love that, at least that's what I was told. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Well, so you, you went to college and went then back to Seattle and worked for Microsoft and so on. So clearly, you're also interested in the whole idea of investing and the whole life of being an entrepreneur in various ways. And so you brought entrepreneurialism to everything that you did.   Michael Bervell ** 24:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was my first job at Microsoft. I was, you know, managing what's called Windows IoT. So we were putting software on everything that wasn't a phone or a laptop. So think, you know, smart screens in airports, or screens in Times Square, or, you know, the type of software that your Amazon Echo, you know, maybe not Amazon in particular. But what that would run on that was working on IoT all these. They called it headless devices, yeah, devices with no screens. And that was my team for a little bit. I worked there for about year and a half. It was phenomenal. You know, we were managing multiple billions of dollars in revenue, and there was only, you know, 4050 people on my team. So you do the math, we're all managing hundreds, 10s to hundreds of millions of dollars in our products. And while I loved it, I realized that my my true passion was in was in meeting people, talking to people, and giving them the resources to succeed, versus giving them the actual technology itself. I loved being able to connect an engineer, you know, with the right supplier to work on a hard problem that could then be built for Microsoft to eventually get to a customer. And that sort of connection role, connector role is kind of the role of a venture capitalist. Yeah, right. You're connecting your limited partners who have invested in this fund to entrepreneurs who are trying to build some sort of idea from the ground up. And, you know, once you invest in the entrepreneur, then connecting the entrepreneur to mentors, to advisors, to potential employees, to potential customers. And so there's this value in being someone who's a listener, a journalist, right, like we had been talking about someone who has a habit of trying to make a broader impact. And it kind of all aligned with what I had been building up until that point. So I worked at M 12, it's Microsoft's venture capital fund, and invested in in a bunch of companies from Kahoot, which is like an education startup, to obviously open AI was a Microsoft investment as well, to other things like that. And so it was cool, because, you know, the fund was, was really, we had the mandate of just find cool companies, and because we were Microsoft, we could reach out to any founder and have a conversation. So it was, it really was a few years of just intense and deep learning and thoughtfulness that I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade for anything. What got   Michael Hingson ** 26:58 you started in the whole arena of thinking about and then being involved with digital accessibility, because we've talked about that a lot. I know that's a passion. So how did you get started down that road?   Michael Bervell ** 27:11 Yeah, I mean, it came partially through working at Microsoft, right? I mean, as I was at Microsoft, Satya Nadella, who was the CEO, he was making big, big investments into digital accessibility, primarily because his son, now, his late son, had cerebral palsy, and a lot of the technology at Microsoft, his son couldn't use, and so he had this kind of mission and vision to want to make more accessible technologies. But my first exposure to it even before then, like I said, in college, I had to work all these, all these jobs to pay tuition, and I built my own business, but one of the clients we consulted for was a large search engine. I'm sure you can imagine which one it was, and it wasn't Microsoft, and that were search engine. I helped them devise their ability strategy.   Michael Hingson ** 27:56 You mean the G word, something like that? Yeah.   Michael Bervell ** 28:00 Yeah. Duck, duck, go, yeah. No, that's it. Yeah, exactly. And so it was really cool to work with them and to see like at scale, at 200,000 employee scale, at 1000 product scale, how do you create systems and guardrails such that accessibility, in this case, digital accessibility, will be something that that actually ends up happening. Ends up happening. And so that was my first exposure to it. And then again at Microsoft. And then finally, a third time, while I was in business school, you know, working on various projects with friends. And one friend told me, you know, all I did at work this week was have to fix accessibility bugs because my company got sued. And that was and just all those moments combined with the idea that I wanted to impact the deep empathy that comes through learning and knowing and understanding people's backgrounds and histories, all of it came to a head with what I now work on at test party.   Michael Hingson ** 28:57 So now, how long has test party been around? And we'll get to that up. But, but how long have you had that?   Michael Bervell ** 29:03 Yeah, we started. We started about a year ago. Okay, so it's pretty recent,   Michael Hingson ** 29:07 so yeah, definitely want to get to that. But, so the whole issue of accessibility, of course, is a is a thing that most people don't tend to know a lot about. So so let's start this way. Why should people worry about making products and places like websites accessible? And I know websites, in a lot of ways, are a lot easier than going off and making physical products accessible, especially if they're already out, because redesign is a very expensive thing to do, and is not something that a lot of people are going to do, whereas, when you're dealing with websites, it's all about coding, and it's a lot easier. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 29:48 yeah. I mean, I think, I think fundamentally, it comes down to, you know, a set of core beliefs. And I think we could all agree, and I think we would all believe that, like everyone has the right to. You a decent, fulfilling and enjoyable life. I think regardless of where you fall on, you know, belief spectrums or anything, that's something that we all fundamentally believe. You know, you should live well. You should try to live a good life. It's what people talked about in writing for years. And I think when you think of the good life in today's terms, in the 21st century, it's almost inseparable from a life that also engages with technology, whether it's cell phones or computers or whatever it might be, technology has become so fundamental into how we live that it now has also become part of how we live well and how we live a good life. And I'll give you a clear example, right? Let's suppose you really believe that voting is part of living the good life. There is a time, 100 years ago, you know, you didn't need to really have a car. You could get a rehearsing buggy. Maybe you could even walk to a voting station and cast your vote in today's world, especially, let's suppose a COVID world, and even a post COVID world, computers, technology, websites, are fundamental in living that good life, if that's your belief system. And you can play this game with any belief that you have, and once you extrapolate into what does it take for you to do that thing in the best way possible? It almost inevitably, inevitably, you know, engages with technology. Yeah, so why do I think having accessible websites are important? Well, it's because pretty much 195 people has a disability of some sort, and so to live the good life, they have to engage technology. And if that technology is not working for them for whatever reason, then that needs to be fixed. That needs to be changed. And of course, there's the guardrails of laws, you know, ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, EAA European Accessibility Act and others that try to mandate this. And of course, there's the goodwill of companies who try to do this proactively. I think Apple is a really good example, and Microsoft as well. But fundamentally, the question is, you know, what is a good life? How do you enable people to live that? And I think through technology, people should be able to live a better life, and should not have any barriers to access.   Michael Hingson ** 32:02 The thing is, though, take apple, for example. For the longest time, Apple wouldn't do anything about making their products accessible. Steve Jobs, jobs basically told people to pound sand when they said, iTunes, you wasn't even accessible, much less the iPod and the iPhone and the Mac. And it wasn't until two things happened that they changed really. One was target.com target had been sued because they wouldn't make their website accessible, and eventually too many things went against target in the courtroom, where they finally said, Okay, we'll settle and make this work. When they settled, it cost them $8 million to settle, whereas if they had just fixed it up front, the estimate is that it would have been about $40,000 in time and person hours, but because of where the lawsuit was filed and so on, it was $8 million to settle the case. And so that was one thing, and the other was it had been made very clear that Apple was the next company on the target list because they weren't doing anything to make their product successful. Well, Apple suddenly said, Okay, we'll take care of it. We will deal with it. And I think they had already started, but they and so as not to get sued, they said, We will do it. Well, probably the first thing that happened was the iPhone 3g well, maybe it wasn't the three, it was earlier, but the iPhone became accessible. The iPod became accessible. Pretty much all of them, iTunes, you the Mac. So by 2009 last when I got my iPhone 3g Apple was well known for making their products accessible, and they did it in a very clever way. It was accessible right from the outset. You didn't have to buy other stuff to make their products work. No need to buy a new screen reader or any of those kinds of things. So they spread the cost over every product that they sold, whoever bought it, so anyone who buys an iPhone can invoke accessibility today, which, which was cool, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 34:09 yeah. And I think through Apple, I mean, I think the initial argument I made for why is it import to make websites accessible was an ethical argument, right? I think in Apple's case, they, they probably did the business case analysis and understood this actually does make economic sense. And I think what you see today is there is even more economic sense because of the expanding market size. Right? Think the aging population that will develop some sort of disability or impairment, right? That's really growing larger, right? Think about, you know, individuals who may have what people call temporary disabilities that are not permanent, but last for some period of time, whether it's, you know, nine months, 10 months, two years, three years, and those types of things. So I think there is, there's also a business case for it. I think that's what Apple as a case study has shown. What you bring up, though, is, does it matter? Does it really matter? Like, why companies start doing this, right? And I think that's a question, you know, to grapple with. You know, if Apple did it out of the goodness of their heart versus because they didn't want to get sued, but the downstream effects are the same, you know, does that matter? And, you know, question, Do the ends justify the means? In this case, the ends are good, at least just by the start, perhaps, but sure that interesting question so, but I do think that they have done really good work   Michael Hingson ** 35:27 well. And you and you brought up something which, you know we talked about, which is that you talked about one company that dealt with some of because they got sued. And litigation is all around us. Unfortunately, we're a very litigious society and in our world today. So so like with accessibe, that that I work with, and work for that company, and a lot of what I do, some people have said, well, accessibe shouldn't always use the idea that, well, if you don't make your website accessible, you're going to get sued. That's a bad marketing decision, and I think there are limits, but the reality is that there are lawyers who are out there who still haven't been muzzled yet, who will file 5060, 100 complaints just to and they get a blind person to sign off and say, Yeah, we support this, because they'll get paid something for it. But they're not looking to make the companies deal with accessibility. They just want to earn money, 10,015 $20,000 per company. But the reality is, part of the market is educating people that litigation is a possibility because of the fact that the internet is a place of business under the Americans with Disabilities Act.   Michael Bervell ** 36:54 Yeah, exactly. I think when you think of like, you know, what is the purpose of litigation? Again, I, as a philosophy guy, I always think back to first principles, and it really is a deterrent, right? Obviously, no one wants to get sued. And, of course, no one wants to pay damages, punitive or reparative. And so in this case, these are all examples of punitive damages that people are paying for not having done the right thing. Right? In in, in the best case, you do the right thing to begin with. But I think it's, you know, the consequence of not doing the right thing. I think, of course, there's the question of you described, kind of these lawyers, or what people call as kind of the trolls who are just kind of suing and, you know, reaping the benefits from this. And I think it's an unfortunate side effect. I do wish that there was a world where these trolls wouldn't even need to exist, because things are working perfectly, right, well,   Michael Hingson ** 37:45 and the reality is that it goes back far earlier than the internet. I mean, there are places, there are people who would drive around and make people in wheelchairs who might find the smallest by violation wasn't even necessarily a legitimate violation, and they would sue and so and so. It isn't anything new that is just with the internet. Yeah, it's been going on for years. Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 38:11 those are the drive by lawsuits. I remember I heard about those, and I think it's, this is the digital equivalent of that,   Michael Hingson ** 38:16 right? Yeah, right. And it is an issue, and it is something that that needs to be dealt with, but you also talk about doing the right thing, and that's really the better reason for doing it. If you do, you really want to exclude up to 20% of your potential business by not making your website accessible. Or better yet, if you make your website inclusive for all, what is going to happen when somebody comes to your website looking for a product and then they buy it because they were able to are they going to come back to that website? Are they going to go looking elsewhere? And there are so many studies like Nielsen did studies, and others have done studies that show absolutely people appreciate brand loyalty, and when they feel that they're they're valued and included, they're going to stick with that company.   Michael Bervell ** 39:12 Yeah? But even with that said, right, there's so this conflict of we all logically know it's the right thing to do, there's business purpose for doing it, and yet people don't do it. Yeah, 97% of the internet is still not accessible, if you look at this correct right? And so our hypothesis release, what we take, and what I take as a business is that sometimes, if it's too hard to do the right thing, people won't do the right thing, but that's what they want to do. And so how do you make it easier to do the right thing? And that's hopefully what, what we're what we're hoping to change in the industry, is just making it easier and also letting people know that this is an issue. One   Michael Hingson ** 39:48 of the one of the criticisms, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. A lot of people   Michael Bervell ** 39:52 don't, don't do the right thing, because just don't know that there is a right thing to do. You know   Michael Hingson ** 39:56 right well. And one of the criticisms I've heard over the. Years, especially dealing with the products like accessibe is, well, the problem is, you just slap this AI thing on their site, you're not teaching them anything, and that's not a good thing. And with manual coders, they're going to teach people. Well, that's not true either, but, but this whole argument of, well, you just put it on there, and then you go away, which isn't true, but again, that's one of the criticisms that I've heard any number of times, and that you're not really educating people about accessibility. You're not really educating them much about it. And the answer is, look, the company that wants to do business came to you in the first place. So they obviously knew they had to do something.   Michael Bervell ** 40:44 Yeah, yeah. And I think when I think through it, it's like, how do you make sure that the downstream effects of whatever you do is just positive and beneficial, right? And the ideal, as we all agree, I think, would be just to build it right the first time. Whether it's physical buildings, build a building right the first time. Or, if it's websites, build the website correctly the first time. Whatever helps people to get to that stage and that level of thinking and habits I think are, are ideal   Michael Hingson ** 41:13 coming from your background and so on. You know now that there are two basic ways that people can work to make websites accessible. One is the traditional way where you have someone who goes in and codes in the access and puts it right on the website. And now, over the past several years, the other way that has come into existence is the whole concept of using as accessibe does AI and although AI won't necessarily do everything that needs to be done, it will do most of what needs to be done, and maybe everything, depending on how complex the website is. But what do you think about the whole fact that now AI has entered into the accessibility world and people are using it?   Michael Bervell ** 42:02 Yeah, I think AI is interesting. And I think AI is a tool. I think it's it's a tool that's been developed, obviously, over a long history, right? Like the first artificial intelligent computers were in the 60s and 70s, being able to predict things, and of course, you heard of AlphaGo and computers that could pay chess and all these different things. So I think we'll definitely be surprised by what AI can do as a tool, right? And the question is, it will be, you know, the panacea, the thing to cure it all. Well, we all love for that to be the case. Who knows? You know, if it'll be AI, maybe functionally, AI could do that. But in terms of compute power, you know, it won't be able to until we have quantum computing or something right, in which case maybe it'll leapfrog this whole type of technology, and maybe web page will be obsolete in a decade, and then this whole idea of even needing to use AI to fix web pages will be replaced something else, like, like Be My Eyes, or something like that. That's even more advanced. But I think, as I see it, it's a tool that can be used to make it easier. And whether it's ease of use in terms of physical effort, ease of cost, in terms of bringing down costs to you know, to make a website compliant or a digital asset compliant, or just ease of understanding, right? Someone can explain to you what these really complicated rules mean, and so you can actually think about it from day one. So I think AI as a tool can lead to ease, which can then furthermore lead to hopefully more accessible products.   Michael Hingson ** 43:30 Well, the first time I ran into real AI was working with Ray Kurzweil back in the late 70s. He developed a machine that would read print out loud to blind people. But one of the things that was unique about them, well, vinyl, whether it's totally unique, but certainly was unique for blind people and for most of us, was the fact that the more the machine read, the better the reading got. It actually learned, and it learned how to to understand and analyze its confidence. And so it would get better the more that it read. Chris. The only problem with that is, back in those days, the software was on a cassette that went into a player that was part of a Data General, Nova two. And so it had to learn all over again every time you rebooted the machine and loaded the program. But that's okay. It learned based on on what you were reading, but it really dramatically got better the more you read. And I think that today, the reality is that a lot of people really need to. And I would say this is true of manual coders. And I know a few who have adopted this, they'll use accessibe to do what it can do, and then they, in turn, then go and address the issues that access a B's widget doesn't do. And for me, my. My learning that lesson actually goes back to the mid 1980s when I couldn't get a job, and I started my own company selling computer aided design systems to architects. And a lot of architects would come in and say, well, we can't buy your system. Yeah, great. It works, but if we use it, we'll develop our drawings in a fraction of the time, and we can't charge what we did, because now we're not spending as much time, and I said you're missing the whole point. You change your model. You're not charging for your time. You're charging for your expertise. You don't need to charge less. And what you do is then you go off and you get more projects, but you can also do more for each individual customer that you bring in. We had access to a system that was a one of the early PC based three dimensional solid metal modeling CAD systems, so people could come into our office, or anybody who bought the product could could invite their customers in, and they could do actual walk throughs and fly throughs of buildings. They had light sources or Windows to look out. You could even see what was going on outside. It wasn't renderings. You actually saw everything right on the computer. Those are so many things that revolutionize the industry. Now, of course, CAD is everywhere as it should be, and the reality is that that I think that any manual programmer who is programming a website could use accessibe to do a lot of the work, and then an accessibe also has some tools using a product called Access flow, where they can analyze and even tell you exactly what you need to do with the things that aren't accessible, and then you can do it, but you can use accessibe to do most of the stuff, and it continuously monitors it's a scalability issue, and you don't get any scalability with manual coding at all. So again, it's the whole, as you point out, the whole tool of artificial intelligence really can make a big difference in what we're doing to create accessibility on in the internet and in so many other ways as we go forward.   Michael Bervell ** 47:06 Yeah, and already we're running right up on time with a minute or two left. But I think even fundamentally, what you're what you're describing, back to first principles is, is, if we make it easier, either in time or in effort or in understanding, to make things accessible. Will people do it right? Whether you're using, you know, an access to be or whether you're using another tool, there's this question, How will it help? And will it help? And I think in evaluating any tool, and really I can apply in so many cases, that's the core question task.   Michael Hingson ** 47:37 Since we started late, it's up to you, but time wise, we're fine. It's up to you, but I realize that we want to end fairly soon here, but I think you're right, and that gets back to the whole education issue. People really need to learn and understand the value of accessibility, why it's a good thing, and it's kind of hard to argue with losing 20% of your business because your website's not accessible. And accessible, and the reputation that you gain by not doing it can go beyond that 20% when people tell their own friends about the issues they're facing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But it goes the other way. You make it accessible, and you get all sorts of accolades. That's going to help too. But it is a conversation that we need to have, and it's part of the whole big conversation about disabilities. In general, we don't really see disabilities as much in the conversation. When we hear about people talking and discussing diversity, they talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, so on, but they don't talk about disabilities, and disabilities tend to be left out of the conversation for the most part, which is extremely unfortunate. Why do you think that is?   Michael Bervell ** 48:46 Yeah, I think, I think it comes down to, I'm not, I'm not sure why it is. I'm not sure. But I think even though I'm not sure why it is, I do know what I hope. And I think what I hope is for, you know, a world where every, every part of society reflects what it's made up of, right? So you look and it's representative of of all the constituents, people with disabilities, people of different genders and races and and so on and so forth, so, so I think that's what I hope for. I think it's difficult, right? It's difficult based on the systems that have been made people's biases and more to get there, but I do think, I do think that's ultimately the hope. But I   Michael Hingson ** 49:30 think that a lot of it comes down to fear people. Fear people with disabilities. I think that the whole fear factor, and even with race or gender or sexual orientation, so on, some of the comments, if you listen to them, all they're doing is promoting fear which which doesn't help at all. But in the case of disabilities, oh my gosh, I could become blind or paralyzed in a second, and that fear is something that we really don't tend to you. Do nearly as much about as we should. Now I know you and I earlier talked about fear, and the reality is that that we can learn to control fear. I would never tell people don't be afraid. No such thing as not being afraid, but you can certainly learn to control fear so that you can use it again as a very powerful tool to guide you and help you, and that's what the best aspects of fear are all about. I think, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 50:26 I totally agree. I totally agree. Well, speaking of fear, I would be afraid of what might go I'm a president for Section G, which is one of the sections here, HBS, and we have to go select our Class Day speaker. So I'd be afraid if I, if I missed too much of the well, if they,   Michael Hingson ** 50:43 if they want to hire a speaker, I'm just saying I know Mike was, I was like, Man, I wish I had met you, like, back when you're doing our, our, like alumni and friend speakers. On the other hand, we can certainly talk about next year, and I would love to do that. Well, I want to really thank you for being here. I think we'll just have to have another discussion about all of this in the future. But I really appreciate you being here a lot and chatting very, very frequently, and you're going to go off and play drums later too, right? Oh, yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:11 it's a busy I'm in my, you know, Shirley retirement era, you know, yeah, right. Go back into, back into the workforce.   Michael Hingson ** 51:19 So, real quick, though, you wrote a book. What's it called?   Michael Bervell ** 51:23 It's called unlocking unicorns. I'll send you a copy of the book, and so you can put in the show notes and everything else. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 that would be great. And if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Yeah,   Michael Bervell ** 51:34 but just my name, Michael purvell, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, B, E, R, V, E, L, l.com, contact my website. Is there? My bio, and this podcast will be there eventually   Michael Hingson ** 51:46 as well it will, and you'll get all the info. Well, thanks very much, and I want to thank you all for listening. Really appreciate you listening to us today. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael, h, i, m, I, C, H, A, E, L, C, we spell our names the same. H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www dot Michael hingson, H, I N, G, s, o, n.com/podcast, and would love to to hear your thoughts. Love it. If you would give us a five star review wherever you're listening. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, please introduce us. We're always looking for it. And I would also say if anybody needs a speaker, it is what I've been doing ever since September 11, and I'm always looking for speaking opportunities. So please reach out and let's see if we can chat and and one of these days, maybe we'll get Michael to bring us up to Harvard we can go visit the coupe. But thanks so much for listening, everyone. Thanks once more for thanks. Once more Michael, for being here. Thanks.   Michael Hingson ** 52:52 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

“Aquellos que rechazan los héroes son aquellos que buscan vivir vidas no heroicas” - Julián Ríos Cantú ( 

Ketan Rahangdale with Unitea on the "Virtual Sessions" presented by The DJ Sessions 3/28/23   About Ketan -   Ketan believes music has the power to bring us all together. Ketan enjoys giving his feedback on any venture and helping fellow entrepreneurs reach their goals. Analytically-minded, he has started, worked with, advised, and raised capital for multiple ventures in the industries of Data Science, Clean-Tech, Energy, Retail, Consumer Electronics, Social Mobile/Web applications, Community & Crowd, and Tokenization. Ketan's first company, EarTop Technology, created the revolutionary product FLOW. FLOW is a device that plugs into the 3.5mm jack on on any audio device turning them into high fidelity wireless headsets. Ketan's current company, Unitea, rewards a community of super fans with experiential rewards from their favorite artists and brands. Ketan also works as Chairman of the Board of OTH: On The House, a creator monetization service for influencers. Ketan also has passions and much experience working with many non-profit groups, inclusive of the Young Entrepreneurship Council of America, Kairos Society, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, YPO, Empact 100, and more.   About The DJ Sessions - “The DJ Sessions” is a Twitch/Mixcloud "Featured Partner” live streaming/podcast series featuring electronic music DJ's/Producers via live mixes/interviews and streamed/distributed to a global audience. TheDJSessions.com The series constantly places in the “Top Ten” on Twitch Music and the “Top Five” in the “Electronic Music", “DJ", "Dance Music" categories. TDJS is rated in the Top 0.11% of live streaming shows on Twitch out of millions of live streamers. It has also been recognized by Apple twice as a "New and Noteworthy” podcast and featured three times in the Apple Music Store video podcast section. UStream and Livestream have also listed the series as a "Featured" stream on their platforms since its inception. The series is also streamed live to multiple other platforms and hosted on several podcast sites. It has a combined live streaming/podcast audience is over 125,000 viewers per week. With over 2,400 episodes produced over the last 12 years "The DJ Sessions" has featured international artists such as: BT, Youngr, Sevenn, Wuki, Scott Slyter, Simply City, Micke, Netsky, Rich DietZ, Bexxie, Boris, MJ Cole, Flipside, Skeeter, Bissen, Katie Chonacas, Hollaphonic, Lady Waks, Arty/Alpha 9, Miri Ben-Ari, DJ Ruby, DJ Colette, Nima Gorji, Kaspar Tasane, Andy Caldwell, Party Shirt, Plastik Funk, ENDO, John Tejada, Hoss, DJ Sash U, Arkley, Bee Bee, Cozmic Cat, Superstar DJ Keoki, Crystal Waters, Swedish Egil, Martin Eyerer, Dezarate, Maddy O'Neal, Sonic Union, Lea Luna, Belle Humble, Marc Marzenit, AthenaLuv, Maximillian, Inkfish, Kidd Mike, Michael Anthony, They Kiss, Downupright, Harry “the Bigdog” Jamison, DJ Tiger, DJ Aleksandra, 22Bullets, Carlo Astuti, Mr Jammer, Kevin Krissen, Amir Sharara, Coke Beats, Danny Darko, DJ Platurn, Tyler Stone, Chris Coco, Purple Fly, Dan Marciano, Johan Blende, Amber Long, Robot Koch, Robert Babicz, KHAG3, Elohim, Hausman, Jaxx & Vega, Yves V, Ayokay, Leandro Da Silva, The Space Brothers, Jarod Glawe, Jens Lissat, Lotus, Beard-o-Bees, Luke the Knife, Alex Bau, Arroyo Low, Camo & Crooked, ANG, Amon Tobin, Voicians, Florian Kruse, Dave Summit, Bingo Players, Coke Beats, MiMOSA, Drasen, Yves LaRock, Ray Okpara, Lindsey Stirling, Mako, Distinct, Still Life, Saint Kidyaki, Brothers, Heiko Laux, Retroid, Piem, Tocadisco, Nakadia, Protoculture, Sebastian Bronk, Toronto is Broken, Teddy Cream, Mizeyesis, Simon Patterson, Morgan Page, Jes, Cut Chemist, The Him, Judge Jules, DubFX, Thievery Corporation, SNBRN, Bjorn Akesson, Alchimyst, Sander Van Dorn, Rudosa, Hollaphonic, DJs From Mars, GAWP, Somna, David Morales, Roxanne, JB & Scooba, Spektral, Kissy Sell Out, Massimo Vivona, Moullinex, Futuristic Polar Bears, ManyFew, Joe Stone, Reboot, Truncate, Scotty Boy, Doctor Nieman, Jody Wisternoff, Thousand Fingers, Benny Bennasi, Dance Loud, Christopher Lawrence, Oliver Twizt, Ricardo Torres, Patricia Baloge, Alex Harrington, 4 Strings, Sunshine Jones, Elite Force, Revolvr, Kenneth Thomas, Paul Oakenfold, George Acosta, Reid Speed, TyDi, Donald Glaude, Jimbo, Ricardo Torres, Hotel Garuda, Bryn Liedl, Rodg, Kems, Mr. Sam, Steve Aoki, Funtcase, Dirtyloud, Marco Bailey, Dirtmonkey, The Crystal Method, Beltek, Darin Epsilon, Kyau & Albert, Kutski, Vaski, Moguai, Blackliquid, Sunny Lax, Matt Darey, and many more. In addition to featuring international artists TDJS focuses on local talent based on the US West Coast. Hundreds of local DJ's have been featured on the show along with top industry professionals. We have recently launched v3.1 our website that now features our current live streams/past episodes in a much more user-friendly mobile/social environment. In addition to the new site, there is a mobile app (Apple/Android) and VR Nightclubs (Oculus). About The DJ Sessions Event Services - TDJSES is a WA State Non-profit charitable organization that's main purpose is to provide music, art, fashion, dance, and entertainment to local and regional communities via events and video production programming distributed via live and archival viewing. For all press inquiries regarding “The DJ Sessions”, or to schedule an interview with Darran Bruce, please contact us at info@thedjsessions.

Jake Medwell and Joe Lynch discuss the 8VC story. Jake is a Founding Partner at 8VC, an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Austin, TX with offices in San Francisco, New York City, and Boston. About Jake Medwell Jake is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist who has spent his life building and scaling companies. He is a co-founder and partner at 8VC, a 6B AUM venture capital fund based in Austin, TX. 8VC is the leading logistics tech investing firm and has led deals in Project 44, Deliverr, Platform Science, FlexPort, FreightWaves, Motive, Trackonomy, The Boring Company, Outrider, and others. Prior to 8VC, he founded Humin (Acq. Tinder/IAC), a consumer mobile software company where he built the engineering team and led growth. Jake also co-founded The Kairos Society, where he sits on the Board of Directors. While in college, he founded Solé Bicycle Co. (Acq.) and grew it into an industry leader. Most recently he co-founded Operation Masks with partner Drew Oetting to help bring PPE to medical workers on the front line of the fight against COVID-19. Jake serves as an advisor and board member to a wide range of companies and nonprofits. Jake graduated from the University of Southern California in 2011, where he has been lecturing on entrepreneurship and technology for the last decade. About 8VC 8VC is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Austin, TX with offices in San Francisco, New York City, and Boston. 8VC partner with entrepreneurs to build technology platforms that create long-term economic and societal value. 8VC was built by a team of entrepreneurs, engineers, investors, and philosophers who value operating experience and action, as well as new ideas and creative theories. The partners have a proven track-record as founders of successful companies including Palantir, Addepar, Affinity and OpenGov, among others. The firm invest primarily in smart enterprise platforms across industries including financial services, healthcare, logistics and others, and Bio-IT.  For more information, please visit https://8vc.com Key Takeaways: The 8VC Story Jake Medwell is a Founding Partner at 8VC, a technology and life sciences investment firm that builds and invests in the world's most ambitious companies. In the podcast interview, Joe and Jake discussed the state of the logistics industry and the founding of 8VC. 8VC is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Austin, TX with offices in San Francisco, New York City, and Boston. Jake and 8VC team are knowledgeable and very active in the logistics space. 8VC has invested in platforms that help logistics companies become modern data enterprises. Key applications include streamlining resources, fleet operations, and finance; leveraging telematics for better performance, and, in special cases, building ambitious, next-generation forms of transportation. 8VC portfolio companies in the logistics space include: Deliverr, Flexport, Project44, Baton, HDVI, FreightWaves, Loop, Vector, The Boring Company, Platform Science and many more. Learn More Abou The 8VC Story Jake on LinkedIn 8VC on LinkedIn 8VC Interviews conductedwith 8VC: The HDVI Story with Chuck Wallace Ocean Freight Survival Guide with Nathan Strang Avoiding Port Congestion with Neel Jones Shah Eliminating Detention and Delighting Drivers with Erik Malin Will Chu and the Vector Story The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube  

Ryan Smith is the founder and CEO of Recyclops, a technology-driven startup that innovates solutions for sustainability, starting with recycling. Ryan believes that recycling and sustainable options should be accessible to everyone, and achieves this by leveraging community and technology. For his work in sustainability, Ryan was named to the 2020 Forbes 30 under 30.   Ryan attended Brigham Young University, where he received his Bachelor of Science in Business Management with an emphasis on Strategy. While at BYU, Ryan was a partner in the Campus Founders Club, where he co-managed a $500,000 student-run investment fund with the purpose of investing in student entrepreneurial ventures. From 2015 to 2020, Ryan was the regional president of the Kairos Society in the Provo, Utah area, where he helped Kairos HQ to create a 2-year strategic plan on building their community. Currently, Ryan sits on the board of the Recycling Coalition of Utah, where he works with other industry professionals to improve recycling throughout the state.   Read the show notes here: https://arcbound.com/podcasts/    Links: Homepage: Arcbound.com Services/Work with Us: https://arcbound.com/work-with-us/ About: https://arcbound.com/about/ Founders Corner: https://arcbound.com/category/founders-corner/ Connect: https://arcbound.com/connect/

Michael Bervell is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, and author. His debut book “Unlocking Unicorns” was an Amazon best-selling new release that investigates the founders, philosophies, and strategies for building a unicorn company in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In 2007, Bervell co-founded “Hugs for” an international, student-run non-profit organization focused on using grassroots strategies to develop countries around the world. To date, "Hugs for" has fundraised over $500,000 of material and monetary donations and impacted over 300,000 youths around the world. Because of his work, Bervell was awarded the National Caring Award in 2015. Bervell is the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and a former board member of the Harvard Alumni Association (which he joined when he was 19). He also helped start Sigma Squared in the US (formerly the Kairos Society). He has experience working as a Venture Fellow at Harlem Capital, a Portfolio manager at Microsoft's Venture Fund, a Program Manager at Microsoft, and as a Software Engineer at Twitter, and has helped to found and lead a variety of organizations including the Enchiridion Corporation, a marketing consulting company, and Billion Dollar Startup Ideas, a media and innovation company. Read the show notes here: https://arcbound.com/podcasts/  Links: Homepage: Arcbound.com Services/Work with Us: https://arcbound.com/work-with-us/ About: https://arcbound.com/about/ Founders Corner: https://arcbound.com/category/founders-corner/ Connect: https://arcbound.com/connect/

In this conversation with Oliver and Leo, we explore how does an idea started at an international school in Rome transforms into an international company with a global presence, the creative tensions and challenges of running and leading a startup in the education sector, and how Leo and Oliver manage and lead their teams.  Learnings and reflections from their journey.   About Oliver Page Oliver founded his first startup NutKase Accessories when he was 17 and studying in high school in Rome Italy. NutKase Accessories is a device protection company focused on designing and manufacturing protective iPad, Chromebook, and Laptop cases for the K12 Education, Health Care, and Enterprise markets. Oliver led the sales and growth of the company into the 7 figures and now supplies customers in 50 countries around the world. After his one year of studies in the UK, he attended Draper University of Heroes, a Silicon Valley school for entrepreneurs founded by Tim Draper (An investor in Tesla, Twitch, Skype, Baidu, Hotmail). Whilst there, Oliver co-founded a business called Flowity that won first place at the Draper Demo Day and received an investment from Tim Draper. After living and working in the Bay Area for two years, he returned to Italy to co-founded Scooterino, a scooter ride-sharing business that won a grant from the European Space Agency and subsequently raised $800k of follow-on venture capital. Oliver is also a keynote speaker and has spoken at corporate, education, and private events around the world, including two TEDx's. Oliver is also an angel investor in Zaptic and StudyTracks and a fellow of the Sigma Squared Society (formerly Kairos Society).   Oliver Page on Social Media LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olpage/   About Leo Shortland Leo Shortland is an Australian entrepreneur who has worked in three continents, started a Georgian Wine Import business (King St Imports), a menswear direct to consumer brand (Divaska), and after joining K12 focused accessories company (NutKase) quickly became a partner in 2017 before his appointment as Chief Operating Officer in 2021.  While working to scale NutKase towards a $100M business, Leo has been an ardent supporter of digital nomadism and remote work, travelling to over fifty countries in the past decade and making investments in high growth EdTech startups.   Good entrepreneurs can change often; the best change all the time. Leo's driving passion is to change himself and to transform the companies and the employees he leads.    Leo Shortland on Social Media LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leoshortland/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/leo_shortland Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lshort10/   Resources: Big fan of Josh Braun's content on Linkedin Morning Brew Newsletter   John Mikton on Social Media LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmikton/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jmikton Web: beyonddigital.org   Dan Taylor on social media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantcz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanTaylorAE Web: www.appsevents.com   Listen on: iTunes / Podbean / Stitcher / Spotify / YouTube   Would you like to have a free 1 month trial of the new Google Workspace Plus (formerly G Suite Enterprise for Education)? Just fill out this form and we'll get you set up bit.ly/GSEFE-Trial

Raphael Danilo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Yobs and an angel investor with 12 portfolio companies. His entrepreneurial journey started at the age of 16. He was awarded the selective O1 Visa for extraordinary ability and Kairos Society fellowship. Raphael talks about artificial intelligence, funds, and being an entrepreneur. Listen to this podcast and know Raphael's interesting entrepreneurial journey and he also shares about fundraising for complicated technical solutions and what early-stage founders do to build it.   Please Enjoy! If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider being 1% and leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/ iTunes? It takes less than 30 seconds, and it really makes a world of difference in reaching new interesting guests! To sign up for Kevin's Podcast email Newsletter and to view the show notes & past guests please visit-https://officialkevindavid.com/podcast Follow Kevin: https://mmini.me/@FollowKD

Koen Aarns vertelt over hoe hij en zijn 3 data-science co-founders zich zonder juridische achtergrond hebben genesteld in het veld van rechten, ze dit gebrek om hebben getoverd tot hun kracht en hoe spiritualiteit en creativiteit hem rust geven en hem een betere ondernemer maken. Bij de Young Creators Weekly ontvangen we iedere week een toffe ondernemer of maker met een inspirerend verhaal. Daarnaast passeren de belangrijkste nieuwtjes en weetjes voor en door jonge ondernemers de revue.

EWOR Wants to Make Entrepreneurship Training Fit for the 21st Century Entrepreneurship is one of the most complex things in the world … you don’t know what you don’t know. Daniel Dippold, Founder EWOR The FounderDaniel Dippold (https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieldippold/) has been an entrepreneur for some time, but he is also active in societies and education, furthering entrepreneurship. He is also the President of Europe’s arm of the Kairos Society (https://kairoshq.com/). Before all of that and during this he studied at several universities, including Columbia University in New York, Cambridge University in UK and in Switzerland University of St. Gallen. There is sooo much upside potential in the way we teach … Daniel Dippold, Founder EWOR Affiliate LinksIs your startup in need of a bank account in Germany? Try our partner affiliate Penta http://bit.ly/3bdHX3dLooking to open a bank account to shift between crypto and fiat? Try our partner Bitwala with this affiliate link here http://bit.ly/2w01Zye The StartupEWOR (https://www.ewor.io/)was built to be practical first and later study theory to question what one does. It was built to “do” a different kind of training for entrepreneurs. EWOR allows with a dynamic learning map to learn the way one likes, going back and forth as one pleases. EWOR itself is a SaaS tool, which is also licensed to corporates by the company as well. Unicorn startups is never the perfect measure, it is just a financial figure Daniel Dippold, Founder EWOR The Audio InterviewYou can subscribe to our podcasts here Further Readings / Additional Resources Kairos Society https://kairoshq.com/ Feedback Reach out to us, here is our audience survey, to give us feedback, suggest topics, interview partners or just to say “Hallo!” https://forms.gle/mLV6mVKwGwKuut8BA The InterviewerThis interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him: LinkedIn Twitter Email Follow us on Social MediaInstagram https://www.instagram.com/startuprad.io/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/4837115/ Twitter https://twitter.com/startuprad_io Keep Up to DateHere is our publication calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=MDEyaTI3YWs1MjVxaTNzbWdqbDh2OXRiaW9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ Folge direkt herunterladen

Tim is a friend of Bryan's from the Kairos Society. Tim ran the UK section of Kairos and sourced young entrepreneurs. Bryan emphasizes how ambitious and caring Tim is and how his initial plan for his company wasn't entrepreneurial, it was more about helping people around the world who faced the same challenges as him. Bryan really appreciates how Tim stays true to himself and cares so much about his team and the people he works with. You can read more about this episode here: https://bwmissions.com/tim-brownstone-podcast/ Follow Bryan Wish on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/bryanwish/ Follow Bryan Wish on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bryanwish_?s=11 Follow Bryan Wish on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanwish_/ Join our Mission: bwmissions.com/join/ Join our Community: my.community.com/bwmissions

Episodes will include conversations with thought-leading entrepreneurs, emotionally intelligent business leaders and college and high school trailblazers who have accepted my challenge, discovered their ‘One Word' personal brand and are sharing it with the world in ways that are helping them Stand-out Conquer Obstacles and Reach Excellence, in other words, SCORE.   Here are the 5 things you need to know about today's guest, Bryan Wish:   Number 1:  He's a graduate of The University of Georgia.   Number 2: Will Smith taught him a very important life lesson and you'll learn what that is in this episode.   Number 3: He's the Founder of BW Missions, an idea-inspired agency that transforms experts such as CEOs, authors, entrepreneurs and visionaries into thought-leaders by crafting their pathways to BELONGING so they can be seen, heard & valued.   Number 4: Prior to BW Missions, Bryan was instrumental in establishing a foundational community outreach system for The Kairos Society - a network of young entrepreneurs - building a fellowship of more than 500 up-and-coming entrepreneurs in 40+ countries.   Number 5:  Bryan's ‘One Word' Personal Brand…Take a listen to this episode to hear his answer.   Let's meet Bryan Wish

Today's guest is Bryan Wish. Bryan is the founder of BW Missions, a firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, CEOs, and authors build their communities and amplify their voices. Some of their past clients include The Kairos Society, Allen Gannett, and the Atlanta Hawks. BW Missions offers their clients everything from strategy & brand architecture, website development, and PR & marketing services all with the intention to help thought leaders find and carve their path forward. As his prior work shows, Bryan has always had a passion for building community and amplifying voices for thought leaders. While at the University of Georgia, he founded and ran and college sales and marketing program with the Atlanta Hawks that now generates over $250k in annual ticket sales. Following that, he founded a platform called Wish Dish that connects people through the sharing of personal stories. He describes it as TED Talks for personal storytelling and since launch in 2015 the platform serves more than 600 contributors. In this interview, we discuss how and why Bryan did the deep, inner work early on in his life to find his true path. We touch on his days at the University of Georgia and what it took him to build the Atlanta Hawks Brand Ambassador program. We discuss his major takeaways from building Wish Dish and prior work with the Kairos Society and Allen Gannett. Finally, we delve into BW Missions and future plans for the firm. Timestamps 00:02:37 Upbringing and finding his way 00:14:54 Fitting in vs. standing out in college 00:18:09 Turning point to pursue the startup 00:20:55 Reflecting back on his college experience 00:24:13 Atlanta Hawks Ambassador Program 00:32:50 Wish Dish 00:45:35 Path after Wish Dish 00:52:12 BW Missions 00:56:30 His daily routine 00:59:10 His driving force 01:00:14 Advice on finding purpose for the 20-something year old listening

Daniel is a passionate entrepreneur, who has founded multiple tech and ecosystem ventures. He's been named Germany's, Austria's and Switzerland's top talent under 25, is a TEDx speaker, Global Shaper, and a frequent advisor to governmental organizations and larger corporations. Currently, Daniel oversees the Kairos Society in Europe as its president, a community, summit, and ‘impact amplifier' of the world's most outstanding entrepreneurs. Daniel is furthermore working on launching a 9-figure blockchain-driven fund at Project Investment Group, an investment firm with 3.2 billion euros under management, where he serves as a supervisory board member. Daniel has built three companies: Emoti, EWOR, and Unlimitix. You can read more about this episode here: https://bwmissions.com/blog/daniel-dippold-podcast Follow Bryan Wish on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/bryanwish/ Follow Bryan Wish on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bryanwish_?s=11 Follow Bryan Wish on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanwish_/ Join our Mission: bwmissions.com/join/ Join our Community: my.community.com/bwmissions

Eyal Grayevsky is the CEO and co-founder of Mya Systems. Mya, the company’s conversational AI assistant, was launched in July of 2016 and quickly became the industry leader in addressing inefficiencies in recruiting and improving the experience for job candidates and recruiters. Prior to Mya, Eyal founded FirstJob, a job marketplace for early career talent, and worked for his family’s recruiting agency, giving him over 15+ years of expertise in the staffing and HR tech industries. Mya Systems has been recognized by CB Insight’s AI 100, AI Breakthrough Awards, Brandon Hall Awards, and Kairos Society’s K50, among others. The company is backed by top tier investors such as Emergence Capital, Foundation Capital, and Workday Ventures, and now supports over 450 enterprise brands, including 52 of the Fortune 500 and 6 of the 8 largest global staffing businesses.

Hi Selfies! In der heutigen Folge spreche ich mit Karim Mustaghni über Netzwerken und Unternehmertum. Des Weiteren geht um Themen wie Startups aufbauen und darum worauf man in Zukunft bei der Berufswahl achten sollte. Karim ist Direktor der europäischen Community bei der Kairos Society und ist in verschiedensten Startups als Kreativ und Innovationsberater tätig. Ich wünsche euch viel Spaß beim Zuhören. Grüße Janik Zur Instagram Seite des Podcasts https://instagram.com/jugendfragtpodcast?igshid=g5a42t2o37ae Zu Karims Podcast What if…? https://open.spotify.com/show/2SjrWXEzo6huXprTvO2wWh

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Riley chose to study software engineering, leaning into his natural interests and experiences to guide his path forward. After graduating from Georgia Tech with a degree in computer science, Riley Austen started his career as a Software Engineer for Amazon. Not long after, Riley ended up pivoting out of big tech to take the leap into entrepreneurship - joining the startup accelerator Techstars with a team of friends to build and scale their startup: Shotcall. Shotcall is a platform designed to connect content creators with their fans through video games. I chat with Riley about the whole story: what he's learned, what he's building, and advice he'd share looking back. I met Riley back at Georgia Tech, through the connection of my friend and mentor, Bryan Wish. Riley and I were both studying computing with a vested interest in young entrepreneurship and finding our community on campus. Together, we started Georgia Tech's first chapter of the Kairos Society: a fellowship and fund for top students aiming to solve the world's greatest challenges. Even after Riley graduated and I leaned more into my passion for TEDx events, we stayed in touch and I'm so glad we did, because getting to know Riley and the Shotcall team led us to this conversation today. This episode is for you if you've ever wondered: - What's it like to grow up in Silicon Valley, study software engineering and subsequently join a tech giant like Amazon straight out of undergrad? - What's the difference between starting a product and starting a business? - Do you have to be the world's most creative problem solver in order to start or join a startup? - Why is there so much money in the gaming industry, what the opportunities look like to get in on that action, and what Shotcall is doing to bridge the gap between fans and stars? - The good, the bad, and the ugly of starting any new venture. - What a startup accelerator is and provides, and whether working through the same program as companies like Classpass and SalesLoft changes how you think your team and your business. - Riley's advice if you're interested in starting a startup from the ground up. And more. It's fast, it's to the point, and we get straight into the why behind tech entrepreneurship - something I literally get HYPE to talk about. Ready? --------------------------- Join Shotcall: https://shotcall.gg/ Connect with Riley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rileyauten/ More episodes of Passages: http://www.placeandpassage.com/podcast.html Follow Passages on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passagespod/ Follow Chloe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chloe.belangia/

In the penultimate episode of our first series of Zanda Talks, we interview telehealth innovator and host of “Digital Health Entrepreneurship Daily” (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtTCTa-oR4Zm2jrQ0ZZkelg ) Laurence Girard   Laurence, Founder of Fruit Street (https://www.fruitstreet.com/) and CovidMD.com (https://covidmd.com/) , shares how his past evolved him into the conscious, motivated founder he is today, through playing soccer for the New York Red Bulls Academy in his teens and twenties and being an alumnus of the Kairos Society, a global network of social entrepreneurs focused on having a social impact. We gain an understanding of how he acquired the resilience needed for leading a startup, as well as finding employees who are inherently passionate about helping society.   Laurence shares with us how he grabbed the opportunity when the pandemic began and pivoted to create CovidMD.com. He is heading up a team of technology experts, business leaders, and nationally recognized physicians who have joined forces to create this risk assessment, triage, and telemedicine platform that keeps people informed during the pandemic, and connects them with medical professionals in the safety of their homes.  Laurence intends to mould the future of healthcare whilst the need is urgent and then continue the mainstream use of telemedicine in every household. Just like Fruit Street’s flagship product, diabetes prevention and weight loss program (https://www.fruitstreet.com/program/) which is delivered via live video conferencing with registered dietitians. 

Do you remember what you were passionate about when you were 24? Do you still have those dreams? What about when you were seven years old? What did you want to be when you "grew up"? I believe it is never too late. If you haven't started following through on your dreams yet, I hope this episode will inspire you to start now. We are going to hear from three young entrepreneurs who share their passion and engagement with us and the stories of their journeys and their incredible accomplishments.   About Christine Souffrant A globally recognized speaker, Christine Souffrant is a Haitian American entrepreneur with 7 years of business management experience across 30+countries. As the founder of Vendedy (a mobile network connecting global travelers to street vendors of developing countries), she has been featured with IBM, Microsoft, Fast Company, Manatt Ventures, etc. Learn more about Vendedy at Vendedy was selected as a Poverty Alleviation commitment by the Clinton Global Initiative and won global competitions for social impact including the 2015 Digital Entertainment World Competition, Master Card Priceless Pitch, and the $1 Million Dollar Chivas Venture USA competition. As the Managing Director of Startup Grind Dubai, she works with dozens of leading CEO’s within the Middle East and around the world. She has spoken on leadership, disruptive entrepreneurship and tech social impact innovation at conferences located in Trinidad, Dubai, New York, San Francisco, Russia, Romania, LA, and more.   About Daniel Fine Daniel Fine is the founder & CEO of Team Brotherly Love and The Fine Companies, which includes sunglass company Glass-U, medical app Dosed, and Boston based tutoring firm NexTutors. Team Brotherly Love has raised over $2.1 million for Type-1 diabetes research. Glass-U makes fully-folding sunglasses and is licensed to hundreds of universities and many greek organizations in the US. It has been featured at events ranging from The Rose Bowl to Lollapalooza and this past summer was an official licensee to produce sunglasses for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Dosed is a mobile solution intended to revolutionize the way that diabetics manage and track their insulin dosage. Learn more about Daniel at . Fine has been named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 25 International Leaders of Tomorrow and one of the World’s Top 5 Young Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneurs Organization. He has received the “President’s Volunteer Service Award” twice and is a Fellow of the Kairos Society.   About Ladislas de Toldi Ladislas is a 26-year-old biotech engineer, passionate about computers, robotics & spearfishing. He is the founder of Leka, a young startup whose goal is to develop smart and innovative educational toys for children with disabilities. Learn more about . Leka is currently developing Moti, an interactive spherical rolling robot specially designed for children with autism spectrum disorders. Ladislas is in charge of hardware design & technical development. After graduating as a biotech engineer he learned robotics on his own to build the first prototypes of Moti.   Links:     Find Powerful Conversations on | | |  

What would it be like to have an international network of thousands of people championing you on your journey and sponsoring you as much as possible? Relationships are at the core of everything we do. We need people to build great experiences, to buy our services or products, to contribute to our endeavors. Join us for The Power of Global Communities and learn how to create value from the depth of your relationships. Hear from Aura Cotofan, Network EverAfter in Romania; Christine Lai, Delivering Happiness in San Francisco; and Nadine Bongaerts, Hello Tomorrow in Paris. With 7.3 billion people in the world, how do you connect meaningfully with the relationships that are important to you? What opportunities do you have to expand your perspectives in order to understand and contribute to a better world? How do you find the people who are going to help you on your journey? In this episode we hear from entrepreneurs building global communities from Romania, Paris, and San Francisco.   About Aura Cotofan "A powerful network isn't made up of a social profile with thousands of connections you barely know. The real value comes from the depth of your relationships, because true friends will do anything to see you succeed—and what better way to make friends than to travel together and live unforgettable experiences." That is what Aura Cotofan is all about - building scalable communities. Mostly, start-up communities. Over the past two years, she has grown and managed a global community of 1,000 influencers from top networks in 360 cities. Her platform is connecting members when they travel so they can meet-up and build meaningful relationships. Now, she is focused on creating an invite-only platform/community for entrepreneurs, as well as setting up a global co-living system together with Caravanserai. From connections to friendships – learn more at  and at     About Nadine Bongaerts Nadine Bongaerts is a Dutch synthetic biologist, entrepreneur, speaker who is actively bridging science and technology with business and society. She has a great passion for science education, entrepreneurship, and technological developments that change the world. In 2014, she joined the international board of Hello Tomorrow as Global Community Director. Hello Tomorrow connects scientists with entrepreneurs and investors to accelerate lab inventions to the market. Learn more at She also joined the Kairos Society, a global community of young changemakers who combine entrepreneurship and innovation to advance the world. Learn more at Her interest in synthetic biology was sparked in 2010, when she successfully participated in iGEM, a synthetic biology competition organized by MIT. Her team developed so-called biobricks to transform bacteria into oil digesting cells. The work was recognized nationally and internationally.   About Christine Lai Christine Lai is the Chief of Staff at Delivering happiness—the organization founded by Tony Hsieh, to help people create great organizational cultures. She's at the core of this impactful movement. Learn more at She joined the team to cultivate relationships with organizations that are looking to align their profits, passion, and purpose. At her core, Christine loves identifying and maximizing the true potential of individuals and organizations. Fueled by her passion for uniting people and purpose, Christine blends her experience in the private and social sector to build and strengthen collaboration among impact communities. Drawing on her previous experiences, Christine truly believes in and values communities that challenge, inspire, and support one another to succeed. She continually strives to support individuals and organizations to create cultures focused on cultivating the maximum potential in people by doing amazing things together.   Links   Follow Monica on | | |

Christian Torres es emprendedor ecuatoriano. Co-Fundador de Kriptos (kriptos.io), la primera Startup Latinoamericana invertida por el Banco de Barclays dentro de su programa de aceleración apoyado por Techstars en Tel Aviv, Israel. Parte de Kairos Society, una comunidad global de emprendedores apoyada por reconocidos empresarios como Richard Branson, Bill Clinton, entre otros.

Catalog is a platform that helps digitally native businesses produce branded content at scale to supercharge their online presence. They provide businesses with all the content they need by modernizing the production process with new technology, while aligning with the brand’s creative input, and at a fraction of the time. The company has been used by National Geographic, Sony Music and 200+ other businesses. Patrick Ip is a digital pioneer, entrepreneur, and Co-Founder of Catalog. But he also has an inspiring backstory. Patrick was at Google serving as a Business Innovation Lead focused on business strategy & social good. Within social good, Patrick is part of the Google for Nonprofits Marketing Team & the Billion Acts Team, where he works with 13 Nobel Laureates to achieve 1 Billion Acts by 2019. The initiative has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize seven times. Patrick started Kip Solutions, a social media consulting firm for social causes, which was acquired in February 2013 by New York-based firm Post+Beam. Patrick Ip has been featured on Forbes, Inc. Magazine, ABC, CBS, Star News Australia and many others. Patrick's start-up, Kip Solutions has been recognized as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative College Student-Run Companies by the Kairos Society and Inc. Magazine's Coolest College Start-ups 2012. I also wanted to find out more about his awards which include being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (2015, 2016), Google's Platinum Award (Highest honor for an employee at Google), Presidents Volunteer Service Award, Jefferson Award for "Outstanding Service for an American 25 and under"

Guest: Caroline Pugh Age: 26 years Location: Washington, DC Bio: Caroline Pugh is the Chief of Staff at CareJourney, a healthcare data analytics company based in Washington D.C. She is the Chief of Staff to Aneesh Chopra, the former Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Pugh is currently an advisor to Prime Chief of Staff, where she has helped build a national and international network of Chiefs of Staff. Pugh is also the Senior Advisor to the Africa Rising Foundation, a non-profit focused on youth empowerment and leadership in Africa started by Ndaba Mandela. Caroline was previously the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of VirtualU, a tech startup that developed 3D human scanning technology, that she started while an undergraduate at Virginia Tech. Pugh was the former Global Director of Partnerships and the Washington, D.C., President of Kairos Society, one of the world's largest student-run nonprofit organizations for entrepreneurship. She was also a contributor on health and entrepreneurship for the Huffington Post and a public speaker, where she has been invited to speak at international events like the Ambrosetti Forum, Milken Global Conference and the Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit. She was recently named "15 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch" by Entrepreneur magazine and  "master networker"  in Forbes. Pugh has also been cited in the Washington Post, Fox News, NBC, TechCrunch, USA, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal for her work. The World Needs More: 1. Authentic connecting for good WOW factor: Tune in and find out!!  Favorite color: Purple 

Bryan is a Growth Consultant aiding global-impact visionaries with past clients including The Kairos Society, Allen Gannett, and the Atlanta Hawks/Braves. His clients have been represented in Inc., Forbes, CNBC, TechCrunch, and Wired Magazine. Based in Washington D.C., he pursues life with a dedicated resiliency to discover, build, and grow missions that matter.

Episode 28 features Bryan Wish, Growth Consultant for global-impact visionaries and the marketing strategist behind Allen Gannett’s book “The Creative Curve”. I met Bryan serendipitously last year when setting up Allen Gannett on the Just Get Started Podcast. Unfortunately, as I tell the story, the audio didn’t record properly and the interview with Allen never launched. However, I stayed in contact with Bryan and was appreciative for him to share his story on this latest episode. We went into some depth around his childhood and how early challenges helped ultimately pave the way for carving out some great opportunities with some sports franchises and now some of his business endeavors. A lot of energy and passion out of Bryan and really enjoyed his insight on business, networking, and creating your own opportunities.About Bryan: For years, I have used my abilities to both discover and foster growth opportunities behind professional sports franchises, global investment funds, and CEO visionaries turning their dreams into tangible results. Noticing untapped potential in ticket sales in the collegiate market for the Atlanta Hawks and the Atlanta Braves, I created segmented marketing and sales programs that have done more than $300k in sales to date. My own vision helped curate 800+ impactful stories which have been read by more than 500,000+ readers on The Wish Dish. From 2016-2017, I helped establish a foundational community outreach system for The Kairos Society – a network of young entrepreneurs featured in Inc., Forbes, and Wired Magazine – building a fellowship of more than 500 up-and-coming entrepreneurs in 40 countries and counting. Currently based in Washington D.C., I spend my waking hours meeting, fostering, and influencing entrepreneurs to act on their most empowering visions.Through years of reflection, I’ve developed a high-functioning growth mindset to continuously progress, despite obstacles of every kind. Time after time, I’ve transitioned one “no” into the next “how can I get there?” I can see a story, visualize its potential, and then get up and go make it happen.Find Bryan Online:Website: http://bryanwish.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanwish_/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanwish/About the Host:It's hard to write these things about yourself but I'm just a very curious guy that wants to learn as much as I can about the world and the people in it. With a new found motivation many years ago to achieve certain goals and push beyond status quo, I wanted to speak with people that were breaking out of their comfort zones and try to capture how they were doing it and what insight could be shared to help others. I hope you all will continue along on the journey with me and share any feedback you have.If you enjoyed this episode or others please consider leaving a review on iTunes or whichever Podcast platform you listen on.Here's where you can find me:Website: https://www.brianondrako.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianondrako/Twitter: https://twitter.com/brianondrakoFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/justgetstartedpodcast/ Thank you very much!Brian The post Bryan Wish (Ep.28) – Growth Consultant and Marketing Strategist appeared first on Just Get Started. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast features two South African startup founders working the trenches of the emerging gig economy. Human geneticist-turned-entrepreneur Aisha Pandor is the Co-founder and CEO of SweepSouth, an on-demand booking platform for home cleaning services. SweepSouth is quite notably the first South African start-up to be accepted into the 500 Startups Accelerator in Silicon Valley. Velani Mboweni is the Co-founder and CEO of the ride-sharing service, LULA. This Global Fellow of the San Francisco-based Kairos Society and alumnus of the South Africa-Washington International Program is currently spearheading a mission to transform the way people commute by leveraging on the shared economy and mobile technology. Aisha and Velani were both born into families with a rich political history and have inherited considerable privilege as a result. Aisha is the daughter of South Africa’s current Minister of Higher Education, Dr Naledi Pandor, and Velani is the nephew of former South African Reserve Bank governor, Tito Mboweni— who was just recently appointed Minister of Finance by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Listen in to learn what motivated these founders to forgo cushy professional paths in favour of becoming entrepreneurs, and to find out what it’s like to launch and run startups servicing two highly politicised industries. Editorial Disclaimer: Airbnb (https://airbnb.com) is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, which is part of an African Tech Roundup (https://africantechroundup.com) miniseries focused on inclusive travel and tourism— recorded at the Africa Travel Summit 2018 (https://africatravelsummit.com). African Tech Roundup retains full editorial control over all published content. Opinions expressed by the host, Andile Masuku, and his guests, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the presenting sponsor, Airbnb.

On this week's MashTalk, we chat Twitter's recent user growth, Amazon's new Alexa-powered Echo Look camera, and the mysterious-sounding Kairos Society.

Dr. Jan Engels (26) hat dieses Jahr seinen Doktor in Chemie und Nanotechnology in Hong Kong an der Hong Kong University of Science und Technology, einer der besten Universitäten Asiens, abgeschlossen, investiert seit seinem Bachelorstudium in verschiedenen Assetklassen und ist Mitglied in der Kairos Society fuer die smart young entrepreneurs von morgen. Schon frueh began sich Jan fuer verschiedenen Fomen von Investments zu interessieren und lebte lieber im billigeren Studentenwohnheim waerend seines Bachelor Biotechnologie Studiums anstelle eine WG zu Gruenden oder Wohnung zu mieten um so monatlich mehr zuruecklegen zu koennen zum reinvestieren. Im Bachelor Studium fing Jan an sich fuer Aktien und Optionen zu interessieren, welche er an der Borse und Broker anfing zu traden. Wie bei allem neuen ob nun Sport, Sprachen oder auch Investment musste Jan erstmal ordentlich Lehrgeld bezahlen, da die Borsen jeden bestrafen wer nicht emotionslos bzw. Logisch agiert. Nach monaten des tradings lernt man jedoch das chartlesen sowie Moeglichkeiten besser einzuschaetzen und erste gute Gewinne wurden eingefahren und vorherige Verluste reduziert bis es endlich in die Gewinnzone ging. Ein tip hierbei: Lieber erstmal laengerfristig mit einem Demoaccount zu traden um ein Gefuehl fuer die Boerse zu bekommen. Als es Jan jedoch fuer sein Doktorstudium nach Hong Kong verschlug stoppte er seine trading aktivitaeten und handelte nurnoch vereinzelnte Titel aufgrund von Zeitmangel sowie Zeitunterschied zu den Deutschen Aktienwerten. Nebst Aktien hat Jan schon frueh den mehrwert von passive Einkommen durch Immobilien kennengelernt und Wertgeschaezt. Er fing an, warend eines Austauschsemesters an die Cambridge Universitaet in UK, sich genauer mit Immobilien auseinander zu setzten was zum Kauf einer Wohnung in Dusseldorf in Top Lage mit Kaufpreis von ca. 15% unterm Marktwert fuhrte. Nebst Immobilien investiert Jan seid ein paar Jahren auf Seiten wie Companisto oder Seedmatch passiv in Startup Unternehmen, wobei Produkt und Business Struktur Ihn ueberzeugen muessen. Aufgrund seines eigenen Interesses in Entrepreneurship gruendete Jan in Hong Kong nebst Doktor studiums 2014 mit einem Komilitonen das Medizintechnik startup Sonikure Technology mit dem er schon etliche nationale und international Preise gewann sowie 2015 vom Inc. Magazin zu den top50 young entrepreneurs gekuehrt wurde. Bei dem startup handelt es sich um ein Universitaets spin-up bei dem es sich um Arzneimittelabgabesystem fuers Auge handelt. Im falle von vielen Auenkrankheiten wie zum Beispiel der Alters Bedingte Makular Degeneration ist die gaengige Behandlung, die Medikamente mit einer Nadel in den Augapfel zu spritze. Nebst der schlimmen Vorstellung eine Nadel ins Auge gestochen zu bekommen hat diese Anwendung weitere Nebenwirkungen wie steigender Augeninnendruck, Verletzung des Augen oder erhohtes Infektionsrisiko. Sonikure, zur Zeit in der Seed funding round, entwickelt ein ultrasound basiertes System, welches die Medikamente topographisch von der Augenoberflache komplett nicht invasive an die Rueckseite des Augen bringt. Dein Pitch Stell dir vor eine Nadel sticht in deinen Augapfel, schreckliche vorstellung oder? Ich entwickel mit meinem startup eine nicht invasive altnerative mit Ultrasound medikamente ins auge zu bringen und der nadel lebwohl zu sagen. Womit und wie verdienst Du Dein Geld? Groesster Umsatz leider nur normales Gehalt bzw. Unterdurchschnittliches Gehalt als Firmen Gruender da wir noch in der Seed funding phase sind. Nebst Gehalt noch passiv Immobilien, Dividenden oder andere Firmenanteilige Ausschuettungen. Laengerfristig wird es jedoch Gehalt sowie Gewinn des Startups sein, Produktverkauf sowie Exit des Unternehmens. Als Firmenbesitzer oder entrepreneur wirkt man nunmal weit vorne in der Geldschoepfkette mit, im Vergleich eines angestellten oder verkaeufers. Falls die Technik auf dem Markt ist, schafft diese basierend auf dem Marktpotenzial einen millionenumsatz sowie Wertsteigerung von Firmenanteilen. Ich bin mein Produkt und daher vermarkte ich mich selbst durch das was ich tue. Offen, freundlich sein, viel networking und auf leute zugehen, never eat alone etc. Wie wichtig ist für Dich Geld? / Macht Geld glücklich? Ich denke Geld gibt einem eine Sicherheit, dass man Weiss wenn es nicht so laeuft, man mal mehr zahlen muss, waschmachine ist kaputt etc., dass man bei vielen Ruecklagen, investitionen sicher ist und nicht bei jedem kleinen Problem ins Minus geraet und somit strafzinsen, dispozinsen, schlechter Schufaeintrag das Resultat ist. Geld macht glucklich im Sinne, dass man wie gesagt eine sicherheit hat, aber mit dem Geld sich was leisten kann, ob es nun markenklamotten, handy, auto oder einfach eine tolle Reise und erlebniss ist. Wobei ich ein Erlebniss ueber etwas materielles stelle. Geld selbst horten macht nicht gluecklich. Denke mal ca. 8/10 da ich mich viel mit geld, investments beschaeftige Auch wenn viele es nicht wahrhaben wollen, ich denke schon. Es kann positive und negative sein, zum einen veraendert man natuerlich seine Sicht auf Geld, wenn man viel oder wenig davon hat. Und dies veraendert indirekt den charakter mit. Was war Dein schlimmster Moment als Investor? Zum einen natuerlich beim Trading wenn man nen schlechten Tag hat und nen knockout schein oder option sich bis zum komplettverlust entwickelt. Desweiteren 1-2 Startups bei besagten plattformen welche in die Insolvenz gegangen sind und es wohl auch nach Komplettverlust ausschaut. Daher zum einen beim trading immer money management im Kopf behalten bzw. Stop-loss setzen und nicht hoffen das es sich wieder dreht. Wie hast Du es geschafft, Deine Leidenschaft zu finden? Ich finde es schwer zu sagen eine bestimmte Leidenschafft, da ich ja bis vor ein paar Monaten noch Student war und das Leben ja eher in Semester, Klausuren und Seminaren aufgeteilt ist. Was ich jedoch schon frueh gemerkt habe, dass mich tutoring, teaching, vorlesung halten und andere Studenten im Labor zu betreuhen spass macht, kommt eventuelll daher das meine beiden Eltern Lehrer sind. Desweiteren mein Interesse an Entrepreneurship, quasi etwas neues zu schaffen und aufzubauen was einem ein besseres gefuehl gibt anstelle ein typsicher 9 to 5 job und etwas fuer andere schaffen. Wie triffst Du Entscheidungen? Treffe viele Entscheidungen sehr spontan, einzig das typische eine Nacht drueber schlafen hilt, vorallem wenn ein Konsumgut kaufen meochte, was ja oft eine sehr spontane Entscheidung ist. Wenn man ueber viele Dinge eine Nacht schlaeft und nochmals dran denkt oder draufschaut sieht man es aus einem anderen Blickwinkel. Nichts ist unloesbar, ansonsten immer um Rat Fragen, andere Leute freut es wenn man sie um hilfe bittet oder um rat fragt bei Problemen, sprich Freunde oder Family fragen. Wie bekommst Du Deinen „inneren Schweinehund“ in den Griff? Bei mir kommt es sehr auf die Umgebung an, daher tue ich mich auch oft schwer mit home office weil es viel Ablenkung gibt. Lieber in nem leeren office sitzen und dann einfach anfangen zu machen. Manchmal hilft es auch zu sagen ich mache 10% und dann ne pause, dann die naechsten 10%, sprich sich goals setzten und die Aufgabe runterbrechen in kleinere tasks. Verabschiedung Sei offen und nett zu anderen Menschen, ob nun der chef, Partner oder Hausmeister, Putzfrau. Erstens gibt man was gutes und bekommt so auch etwas gutes zurueck, und vorallem bei denen wo man denkt das die keine Macht haben kann dir ein Hausmeister mal mehr helfen als dein Boss. Kontaktdaten des Interviewpartners www.sonikure.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-engels-4b1a3399 Jan.Engels(at)sonikure(dot)com Deine Buchempfehlung The Way to Wealth - Benjamin Franklin   https://www.companisto.com/de https://www.seedmatch.de/

Dr. Jan Engels (26) hat dieses Jahr seinen Doktor in Chemie und Nanotechnology in Hong Kong an der Hong Kong University of Science und Technology, einer der besten Universitäten Asiens, abgeschlossen, investiert seit seinem Bachelorstudium in verschiedenen Assetklassen und ist Mitglied in der Kairos Society fuer die smart young entrepreneurs von morgen. Schon frueh began sich Jan fuer verschiedenen Fomen von Investments zu interessieren und lebte lieber im billigeren Studentenwohnheim waerend seines Bachelor Biotechnologie Studiums anstelle eine WG zu Gruenden oder Wohnung zu mieten um so monatlich mehr zuruecklegen zu koennen zum reinvestieren. Im Bachelor Studium fing Jan an sich fuer Aktien und Optionen zu interessieren, welche er an der Borse und Broker anfing zu traden. Wie bei allem neuen ob nun Sport, Sprachen oder auch Investment musste Jan erstmal ordentlich Lehrgeld bezahlen, da die Borsen jeden bestrafen wer nicht emotionslos bzw. Logisch agiert. Nach monaten des tradings lernt man jedoch das chartlesen sowie Moeglichkeiten besser einzuschaetzen und erste gute Gewinne wurden eingefahren und vorherige Verluste reduziert bis es endlich in die Gewinnzone ging. Ein tip hierbei: Lieber erstmal laengerfristig mit einem Demoaccount zu traden um ein Gefuehl fuer die Boerse zu bekommen. Als es Jan jedoch fuer sein Doktorstudium nach Hong Kong verschlug stoppte er seine trading aktivitaeten und handelte nurnoch vereinzelnte Titel aufgrund von Zeitmangel sowie Zeitunterschied zu den Deutschen Aktienwerten. Nebst Aktien hat Jan schon frueh den mehrwert von passive Einkommen durch Immobilien kennengelernt und Wertgeschaezt. Er fing an, warend eines Austauschsemesters an die Cambridge Universitaet in UK, sich genauer mit Immobilien auseinander zu setzten was zum Kauf einer Wohnung in Dusseldorf in Top Lage mit Kaufpreis von ca. 15% unterm Marktwert fuhrte. Nebst Immobilien investiert Jan seid ein paar Jahren auf Seiten wie Companisto oder Seedmatch passiv in Startup Unternehmen, wobei Produkt und Business Struktur Ihn ueberzeugen muessen. Aufgrund seines eigenen Interesses in Entrepreneurship gruendete Jan in Hong Kong nebst Doktor studiums 2014 mit einem Komilitonen das Medizintechnik startup Sonikure Technology mit dem er schon etliche nationale und international Preise gewann sowie 2015 vom Inc. Magazin zu den top50 young entrepreneurs gekuehrt wurde. Bei dem startup handelt es sich um ein Universitaets spin-up bei dem es sich um Arzneimittelabgabesystem fuers Auge handelt. Im falle von vielen Auenkrankheiten wie zum Beispiel der Alters Bedingte Makular Degeneration ist die gaengige Behandlung, die Medikamente mit einer Nadel in den Augapfel zu spritze. Nebst der schlimmen Vorstellung eine Nadel ins Auge gestochen zu bekommen hat diese Anwendung weitere Nebenwirkungen wie steigender Augeninnendruck, Verletzung des Augen oder erhohtes Infektionsrisiko. Sonikure, zur Zeit in der Seed funding round, entwickelt ein ultrasound basiertes System, welches die Medikamente topographisch von der Augenoberflache komplett nicht invasive an die Rueckseite des Augen bringt. Dein Pitch Stell dir vor eine Nadel sticht in deinen Augapfel, schreckliche vorstellung oder? Ich entwickel mit meinem startup eine nicht invasive altnerative mit Ultrasound medikamente ins auge zu bringen und der nadel lebwohl zu sagen. Womit und wie verdienst Du Dein Geld? Groesster Umsatz leider nur normales Gehalt bzw. Unterdurchschnittliches Gehalt als Firmen Gruender da wir noch in der Seed funding phase sind. Nebst Gehalt noch passiv Immobilien, Dividenden oder andere Firmenanteilige Ausschuettungen. Laengerfristig wird es jedoch Gehalt sowie Gewinn des Startups sein, Produktverkauf sowie Exit des Unternehmens. Als Firmenbesitzer oder entrepreneur wirkt man nunmal weit vorne in der Geldschoepfkette mit, im Vergleich eines angestellten oder verkaeufers. Falls die Technik auf dem Markt ist, schafft diese basierend auf dem Marktpotenzial einen millionenumsatz sowie Wertsteigerung von Firmenanteilen. Ich bin mein Produkt und daher vermarkte ich mich selbst durch das was ich tue. Offen, freundlich sein, viel networking und auf leute zugehen, never eat alone etc. Wie wichtig ist für Dich Geld? / Macht Geld glücklich? Ich denke Geld gibt einem eine Sicherheit, dass man Weiss wenn es nicht so laeuft, man mal mehr zahlen muss, waschmachine ist kaputt etc., dass man bei vielen Ruecklagen, investitionen sicher ist und nicht bei jedem kleinen Problem ins Minus geraet und somit strafzinsen, dispozinsen, schlechter Schufaeintrag das Resultat ist. Geld macht glucklich im Sinne, dass man wie gesagt eine sicherheit hat, aber mit dem Geld sich was leisten kann, ob es nun markenklamotten, handy, auto oder einfach eine tolle Reise und erlebniss ist. Wobei ich ein Erlebniss ueber etwas materielles stelle. Geld selbst horten macht nicht gluecklich. Denke mal ca. 8/10 da ich mich viel mit geld, investments beschaeftige Auch wenn viele es nicht wahrhaben wollen, ich denke schon. Es kann positive und negative sein, zum einen veraendert man natuerlich seine Sicht auf Geld, wenn man viel oder wenig davon hat. Und dies veraendert indirekt den charakter mit. Was war Dein schlimmster Moment als Investor? Zum einen natuerlich beim Trading wenn man nen schlechten Tag hat und nen knockout schein oder option sich bis zum komplettverlust entwickelt. Desweiteren 1-2 Startups bei besagten plattformen welche in die Insolvenz gegangen sind und es wohl auch nach Komplettverlust ausschaut. Daher zum einen beim trading immer money management im Kopf behalten bzw. Stop-loss setzen und nicht hoffen das es sich wieder dreht. Wie hast Du es geschafft, Deine Leidenschaft zu finden? Ich finde es schwer zu sagen eine bestimmte Leidenschafft, da ich ja bis vor ein paar Monaten noch Student war und das Leben ja eher in Semester, Klausuren und Seminaren aufgeteilt ist. Was ich jedoch schon frueh gemerkt habe, dass mich tutoring, teaching, vorlesung halten und andere Studenten im Labor zu betreuhen spass macht, kommt eventuelll daher das meine beiden Eltern Lehrer sind. Desweiteren mein Interesse an Entrepreneurship, quasi etwas neues zu schaffen und aufzubauen was einem ein besseres gefuehl gibt anstelle ein typsicher 9 to 5 job und etwas fuer andere schaffen. Wie triffst Du Entscheidungen? Treffe viele Entscheidungen sehr spontan, einzig das typische eine Nacht drueber schlafen hilt, vorallem wenn ein Konsumgut kaufen meochte, was ja oft eine sehr spontane Entscheidung ist. Wenn man ueber viele Dinge eine Nacht schlaeft und nochmals dran denkt oder draufschaut sieht man es aus einem anderen Blickwinkel. Nichts ist unloesbar, ansonsten immer um Rat Fragen, andere Leute freut es wenn man sie um hilfe bittet oder um rat fragt bei Problemen, sprich Freunde oder Family fragen. Wie bekommst Du Deinen „inneren Schweinehund“ in den Griff? Bei mir kommt es sehr auf die Umgebung an, daher tue ich mich auch oft schwer mit home office weil es viel Ablenkung gibt. Lieber in nem leeren office sitzen und dann einfach anfangen zu machen. Manchmal hilft es auch zu sagen ich mache 10% und dann ne pause, dann die naechsten 10%, sprich sich goals setzten und die Aufgabe runterbrechen in kleinere tasks. Verabschiedung Sei offen und nett zu anderen Menschen, ob nun der chef, Partner oder Hausmeister, Putzfrau. Erstens gibt man was gutes und bekommt so auch etwas gutes zurueck, und vorallem bei denen wo man denkt das die keine Macht haben kann dir ein Hausmeister mal mehr helfen als dein Boss. Kontaktdaten des Interviewpartners www.sonikure.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-engels-4b1a3399 Jan.Engels(at)sonikure(dot)com Deine Buchempfehlung The Way to Wealth - Benjamin Franklin   https://www.companisto.com/de https://www.seedmatch.de/

Dr. Jan Engels (26) hat dieses Jahr seinen Doktor in Chemie und Nanotechnology in Hong Kong an der Hong Kong University of Science und Technology, einer der besten Universitäten Asiens, abgeschlossen, investiert seit seinem Bachelorstudium in verschiedenen Assetklassen und ist Mitglied in der Kairos Society fuer die smart young entrepreneurs von morgen. Schon frueh began sich Jan fuer verschiedenen Fomen von Investments zu interessieren und lebte lieber im billigeren Studentenwohnheim waerend seines Bachelor Biotechnologie Studiums anstelle eine WG zu Gruenden oder Wohnung zu mieten um so monatlich mehr zuruecklegen zu koennen zum reinvestieren. Im Bachelor Studium fing Jan an sich fuer Aktien und Optionen zu interessieren, welche er an der Borse und Broker anfing zu traden. Wie bei allem neuen ob nun Sport, Sprachen oder auch Investment musste Jan erstmal ordentlich Lehrgeld bezahlen, da die Borsen jeden bestrafen wer nicht emotionslos bzw. Logisch agiert. Nach monaten des tradings lernt man jedoch das chartlesen sowie Moeglichkeiten besser einzuschaetzen und erste gute Gewinne wurden eingefahren und vorherige Verluste reduziert bis es endlich in die Gewinnzone ging. Ein tip hierbei: Lieber erstmal laengerfristig mit einem Demoaccount zu traden um ein Gefuehl fuer die Boerse zu bekommen. Als es Jan jedoch fuer sein Doktorstudium nach Hong Kong verschlug stoppte er seine trading aktivitaeten und handelte nurnoch vereinzelnte Titel aufgrund von Zeitmangel sowie Zeitunterschied zu den Deutschen Aktienwerten. Nebst Aktien hat Jan schon frueh den mehrwert von passive Einkommen durch Immobilien kennengelernt und Wertgeschaezt. Er fing an, warend eines Austauschsemesters an die Cambridge Universitaet in UK, sich genauer mit Immobilien auseinander zu setzten was zum Kauf einer Wohnung in Dusseldorf in Top Lage mit Kaufpreis von ca. 15% unterm Marktwert fuhrte. Nebst Immobilien investiert Jan seid ein paar Jahren auf Seiten wie Companisto oder Seedmatch passiv in Startup Unternehmen, wobei Produkt und Business Struktur Ihn ueberzeugen muessen. Aufgrund seines eigenen Interesses in Entrepreneurship gruendete Jan in Hong Kong nebst Doktor studiums 2014 mit einem Komilitonen das Medizintechnik startup Sonikure Technology mit dem er schon etliche nationale und international Preise gewann sowie 2015 vom Inc. Magazin zu den top50 young entrepreneurs gekuehrt wurde. Bei dem startup handelt es sich um ein Universitaets spin-up bei dem es sich um Arzneimittelabgabesystem fuers Auge handelt. Im falle von vielen Auenkrankheiten wie zum Beispiel der Alters Bedingte Makular Degeneration ist die gaengige Behandlung, die Medikamente mit einer Nadel in den Augapfel zu spritze. Nebst der schlimmen Vorstellung eine Nadel ins Auge gestochen zu bekommen hat diese Anwendung weitere Nebenwirkungen wie steigender Augeninnendruck, Verletzung des Augen oder erhohtes Infektionsrisiko. Sonikure, zur Zeit in der Seed funding round, entwickelt ein ultrasound basiertes System, welches die Medikamente topographisch von der Augenoberflache komplett nicht invasive an die Rueckseite des Augen bringt. Dein Pitch Stell dir vor eine Nadel sticht in deinen Augapfel, schreckliche vorstellung oder? Ich entwickel mit meinem startup eine nicht invasive altnerative mit Ultrasound medikamente ins auge zu bringen und der nadel lebwohl zu sagen. Womit und wie verdienst Du Dein Geld? Groesster Umsatz leider nur normales Gehalt bzw. Unterdurchschnittliches Gehalt als Firmen Gruender da wir noch in der Seed funding phase sind. Nebst Gehalt noch passiv Immobilien, Dividenden oder andere Firmenanteilige Ausschuettungen. Laengerfristig wird es jedoch Gehalt sowie Gewinn des Startups sein, Produktverkauf sowie Exit des Unternehmens. Als Firmenbesitzer oder entrepreneur wirkt man nunmal weit vorne in der Geldschoepfkette mit, im Vergleich eines angestellten oder verkaeufers. Falls die Technik auf dem Markt ist, schafft diese basierend auf dem Marktpotenzial einen millionenumsatz sowie Wertsteigerung von Firmenanteilen. Ich bin mein Produkt und daher vermarkte ich mich selbst durch das was ich tue. Offen, freundlich sein, viel networking und auf leute zugehen, never eat alone etc. Wie wichtig ist für Dich Geld? / Macht Geld glücklich? Ich denke Geld gibt einem eine Sicherheit, dass man Weiss wenn es nicht so laeuft, man mal mehr zahlen muss, waschmachine ist kaputt etc., dass man bei vielen Ruecklagen, investitionen sicher ist und nicht bei jedem kleinen Problem ins Minus geraet und somit strafzinsen, dispozinsen, schlechter Schufaeintrag das Resultat ist. Geld macht glucklich im Sinne, dass man wie gesagt eine sicherheit hat, aber mit dem Geld sich was leisten kann, ob es nun markenklamotten, handy, auto oder einfach eine tolle Reise und erlebniss ist. Wobei ich ein Erlebniss ueber etwas materielles stelle. Geld selbst horten macht nicht gluecklich. Denke mal ca. 8/10 da ich mich viel mit geld, investments beschaeftige Auch wenn viele es nicht wahrhaben wollen, ich denke schon. Es kann positive und negative sein, zum einen veraendert man natuerlich seine Sicht auf Geld, wenn man viel oder wenig davon hat. Und dies veraendert indirekt den charakter mit. Was war Dein schlimmster Moment als Investor? Zum einen natuerlich beim Trading wenn man nen schlechten Tag hat und nen knockout schein oder option sich bis zum komplettverlust entwickelt. Desweiteren 1-2 Startups bei besagten plattformen welche in die Insolvenz gegangen sind und es wohl auch nach Komplettverlust ausschaut. Daher zum einen beim trading immer money management im Kopf behalten bzw. Stop-loss setzen und nicht hoffen das es sich wieder dreht. Wie hast Du es geschafft, Deine Leidenschaft zu finden? Ich finde es schwer zu sagen eine bestimmte Leidenschafft, da ich ja bis vor ein paar Monaten noch Student war und das Leben ja eher in Semester, Klausuren und Seminaren aufgeteilt ist. Was ich jedoch schon frueh gemerkt habe, dass mich tutoring, teaching, vorlesung halten und andere Studenten im Labor zu betreuhen spass macht, kommt eventuelll daher das meine beiden Eltern Lehrer sind. Desweiteren mein Interesse an Entrepreneurship, quasi etwas neues zu schaffen und aufzubauen was einem ein besseres gefuehl gibt anstelle ein typsicher 9 to 5 job und etwas fuer andere schaffen. Wie triffst Du Entscheidungen? Treffe viele Entscheidungen sehr spontan, einzig das typische eine Nacht drueber schlafen hilt, vorallem wenn ein Konsumgut kaufen meochte, was ja oft eine sehr spontane Entscheidung ist. Wenn man ueber viele Dinge eine Nacht schlaeft und nochmals dran denkt oder draufschaut sieht man es aus einem anderen Blickwinkel. Nichts ist unloesbar, ansonsten immer um Rat Fragen, andere Leute freut es wenn man sie um hilfe bittet oder um rat fragt bei Problemen, sprich Freunde oder Family fragen. Wie bekommst Du Deinen „inneren Schweinehund“ in den Griff? Bei mir kommt es sehr auf die Umgebung an, daher tue ich mich auch oft schwer mit home office weil es viel Ablenkung gibt. Lieber in nem leeren office sitzen und dann einfach anfangen zu machen. Manchmal hilft es auch zu sagen ich mache 10% und dann ne pause, dann die naechsten 10%, sprich sich goals setzten und die Aufgabe runterbrechen in kleinere tasks. Verabschiedung Sei offen und nett zu anderen Menschen, ob nun der chef, Partner oder Hausmeister, Putzfrau. Erstens gibt man was gutes und bekommt so auch etwas gutes zurueck, und vorallem bei denen wo man denkt das die keine Macht haben kann dir ein Hausmeister mal mehr helfen als dein Boss. Kontaktdaten des Interviewpartners www.sonikure.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-engels-4b1a3399 Jan.Engels(at)sonikure(dot)com Deine Buchempfehlung The Way to Wealth - Benjamin Franklin   https://www.companisto.com/de https://www.seedmatch.de/

In episode 36, Kenny Nguyen talks about how to craft a killer presentation that will leave your audience wanting more. Kenny Nguyen is the founder and CEO of Big Fish Presentations, a company whose mantra is “turning presentations into experiences.” Kenny and his team work daily with clients nationwide, from startups to Fortune 100 companies, providing high-quality presentation design, presentation training, and creative video production. He was named the 2012 CEO Student Entrepreneur of the Year by Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO). Under his leadership, Big Fish Presentations was recognized as one of the top 50 student-led startups in the world by the Kairos Society and one of Inc. Magazine’s “Coolest College Start-Ups of 2012.” Kenny has been featured in popular news outlets, such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Yahoo, Business Insider, Mashable, the Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. He has spoken at TEDxLSU and HubSpot Inbound and has taught presentation workshops at General Assembly. He is also a co-author of the McGraw-Hill published book The Big Fish Experience: Create Memorable Presentations That Reel In Your Audience. You can follow his endeavors on Twitter at @bigfishkenny.

Passionate about inspiring and guiding Millennials and teens/Generation Z for success, Jason L. Ma is the author of Young Leaders 3.0: Stories, Insights, and Tips for Next-Generation Achievers and is the founder, CEO, and chief mentor of ThreeEQ, Inc., a premier college counseling, life and career coaching, and global business consulting firm. Jason has mentored hundreds of high achievers, including his two teenage daughters. He frequently speaks at influential CEO summits, universities (e.g. UC Berkeley and Stanford), high school districts, and education and business events in the world theatre. Forbes recognizes Jason as a standout contributor and thought leader on education, college admissions, leadership, and entrepreneurship. He has appeared on CNBC Asia (including its top-rated shows, Squawk Box and Managing Asia), Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Yahoo! News, Business Journals nationwide, Core of Education, and various other leading media. LinkedIn recognizes Jason as one of the nation’s top career experts. Business Rockstars has invited Jason to be a live guest on October 16, 2015. As a global business leader with over two million miles of travels across North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe and Israel, Jason also influences our world as a Forbes Global CEO Conference delegate for eight years, APEC CEO Summit delegate, B20 Employment Taskforce member (the B20 leads engagement with G20 governments on behalf of the international business community), angel investor, Audvisor expert, Kairos Society mentor, and Thiel Fellowship mentor. Jason holds a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley and attended Santa Clara University’s Leavey Graduate School of Business.

Passionate about inspiring and guiding Millennials and teens/Generation Z for success, Jason L. Ma is the author of Young Leaders 3.0: Stories, Insights, and Tips for Next-Generation Achievers and is the founder, CEO, and chief mentor of ThreeEQ, Inc., a premier college counseling, life and career coaching, and global business consulting firm. Jason has mentored hundreds of high achievers, including his two teenage daughters. He frequently speaks at influential CEO summits, universities (e.g. UC Berkeley and Stanford), high school districts, and education and business events in the world theatre. Forbes recognizes Jason as a standout contributor and thought leader on education, college admissions, leadership, and entrepreneurship. He has appeared on CNBC Asia (including its top-rated shows, Squawk Box and Managing Asia), Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Yahoo! News, Business Journals nationwide, Core of Education, and various other leading media. LinkedIn recognizes Jason as one of the nation’s top career experts. Business Rockstars has invited Jason to be a live guest on October 16, 2015. As a global business leader with over two million miles of travels across North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe and Israel, Jason also influences our world as a Forbes Global CEO Conference delegate for eight years, APEC CEO Summit delegate, B20 Employment Taskforce member (the B20 leads engagement with G20 governments on behalf of the international business community), angel investor, Audvisor expert, Kairos Society mentor, and Thiel Fellowship mentor. Jason holds a B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley and attended Santa Clara University’s Leavey Graduate School of Business.