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Introduction: Welcome to Five & Thrive: a weekly podcast highlighting the Southeast's most interesting news, entrepreneurs, and information of the week, all under 5 minutes. My name is Jon Birdsong and I'm with Atlanta Ventures. Announcement of the Week: Neighborhood Studios was recently launched by Dave Payne - Former Managing Director at TechStars and Co-founder of ScoutMob. Neighborhood Studios is a hyper-local venture studio with the thesis that starting hyper-local is the best way to build something users love and then expand it nation and world wide. If you listened to last week's Youtube Video of the Week with Brian Chesky of AirBnB and how earning a 100 users that love your product is the best approach, well it just validates it's a damn good thesis. Dave has built a passionate and very talented team around him including Tapan Patel to validate ideas, execute on customer discovery, and then recruit a CEO to run the business. Their first company has already been spawned called Homegrown. Homegrown is the best way to finance your next brick & mortar location. The best SMB businesses face limited access to growth capital. Homegrown creates opportunities between local wealthy investors and best-in-class businesses that are ready to expand. Keep an eye on Neighborhood Studios and the idea generation occurring – oh and they are also looking for a CEO. Community of the Week: This week I had a wonderful meeting with CodePath CEO Michael Ellison who is expanding their reach to Atlanta. CodePath is reprogramming higher education to create the most diverse generation of engineers, CTOs, and founders. There are over 20,000 students and alumni from 500 colleges now working at 2,000 companies that have learned how to build through CodePath. CodePath is supported by Google, JP Morgan, Andreessen Horowitz, and several other prominent companies. Whether you're a CS student today or moonlighting at night, joining CodePath provides the programming, mentorship, and community to accelerate your career and learning. New Meetup of the Week: This week, Atlanta Ventures launched Atlanta AI Meetup. Artificial Intelligence is moving quickly. Applications are built every day that will lead to thousands of use cases in our work, art, science, life, and leisure. This Meetup group is for the curious ones who want to explore the rabbit hole of applications and deciphering what is valuable and what is not and the larger impact on society as a whole. The pace of advancement is so rapid this will be a great force function for those looking to learn the most important and latest innovations in the AI space. Whether you are an engineer on the OpenAI team or taking your first prompt, this Meetup is for you. At our events, we'll be experimenting with the most interesting applications and discussing ways this changes society through a respectful, supportive, and engaging environment. We're ironing out the date of the first meeting but join the Atlanta AI Meetup to get notified of the date which we'll cement soon. Product of the Week: The product of the week is led by founder and CEO, Astrid Androsch called AlpStoriesTech out of Atlanta. They provide mass-customization at scale to the beauty, nutrition and health industry while making the world cleaner. They focus on influencers and entrepreneurs between 1M-20M followers who want to sell their own product but don't want to go through the pain of finding a manufacturer, sourcing the material, navigating packaging and design. AlpStoriesTech handles all of it, including the customization. How do they do it? As an influencer and entrepreneur you have 60 ingredients to create your customized product and they take care of the rest with their end-to-end supply chain technology solution with robotic on-demand manufacturing. If you want to create your own beauty product, AlpStoriesTech is one of the best avenues to design, manufacture, and build without the headaches and hassle with zero waste. Level Up with Coaching: Atlanta entrepreneur and co-founder of Terminus, Eric Spett is ramping up his coaching services. If you're an entrepreneur looking to accelerate value creation while minimizing pain, Eric is your coach. Having an objective sounding board removed from the inner circle of a business (co-founders, employees, investors, and Board members) is a huge asset while building in the trenches. If you're interested, reach out to Eric Spett on LinkedIn. Annnnnnnd that's 5 minutes! Announcement of the Week: Neighborhood Studios and Homegrown Community of the Week: CodePath New MeetUp of the Week: Atlanta AI Meetup Product of the Week: MyAlpStory Level Up with Coaching: Eric Spett
Emory Innovators, brought to you by The Hatchery, Emory Center for Innovation, showcases conversations with Emory alumni and staff who work in innovation and entrepreneurship, or have taken innovative approaches to designing their careers and disrupting their industries. This week we will be speaking with Brian McGrath Davis (PhD, Laney).Brian has been a researcher at Harvard, managed the sandbox of a billionaire, cofounded two startups, and run a 100-mile ultramarathon (twice, in two months). Brian began his career in academia, where he earned five degrees, including his PhD from Laney Graduate School (Institute of the Liberal Arts, 2013). That academic curiosity translated into a unique approach to building businesses. As an entrepreneur, Brian has spent the last 14 years working in consumer startups. He was part of the early teams at Smilebooth and Scoutmob, managed Blakely Ventures for Sara Blakely, sat on the Leadership Team at Spanx, and cofounded biotech startup Supersapiens. He is currently building a consumer wellness startup in stealth. He thinks in terms of brand and strategy, but at the core, he's a deep generalist who is most alive in the middle of a problem, connecting the dots and finding the best way out. Brian lives in Atlanta with his partner Cam and his beloved dog, Paul.
To celebrate our 20th episode we are releasing the first installment of our "Best Of" series. Occasionally, we will spotlight an earlier episode that resonated with the audience. Today, we're circling back to Michael Tavani from Switchyards. The company is growing and recently announced big plans to expand its concept all over Atlanta. As for Tavani, he’s now been a part of building a few businesses, most notably Scoutmob, a daily-deals site that launched in 2010, and Switchyards Downtown Club, an incubator and co-working space focused on helping turn Atlanta into a hotbed for B to C startups. You can find out more about Switchyards at their website www.switchyards.com or follow them on social media @switchyards.
Liza Dunning is a founding member and the brand creator of Scoutmob, a mobile app and e-commerce platform aimed to connect locals to the best of independent makers and local businesses. She developed everything from the name and company mission to launch campaigns and content strategy, as well as new product launches like Hand-Picked and Shoppe. She currently works as the brand writer and marketing content lead at Airbnb where she is proud to be a part of the mission to create the world’s first community-driven Superbrand. Liza acted as a panelist, speaker, mentor, guest columnist, and is an advocate for all things creative, entrepreneurial, local, and edible. In this session, Liza talks to us about the essentials of how to develop the right brand voice. Original Video Presentation: https://www.stukent.com/expert-sessions/developing-your-brand-voice/ Liza's Website: http://www.lizadunning.com/ Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/
On today’s episode we sit down with Michael Tavani. He’s now been a part of building a few businesses, most notably Scoutmob, a daily-deals site that launched in 2010, and Switchyards Downtown Club, an incubator and co-working space focused on helping turn Atlanta into a hotbed for B to C startups.
Michael Tavani is one of the few entrepreneurs to successfully build a start-up company (Scoutmob) from the ground up to viral success and he shares all his tricks of the trade in this exclusive interview. Enjoy! Click below to support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/HotBreathPod Joel's Website: http://www.JoelByarsComedy.com/ Link to Joel's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JoelByarsComedy Join the Joel Byars E-mail List: http://eepurl.com/bRcmHr