Podcasts about SMB

Less than 1% of U.S. businesses that ever raise outside money end up raising venture capital, and most founders chasing it don't actually need it.In this entrepreneur interview, Jeff Amerine — a venture capital investor and longtime advisor in the startup ecosystem — breaks down the real landscape of startup funding: when to bootstrap, when to raise, and why most companies burn time chasing the wrong kind of capital. He and co-hosts Daniel Koonce and Grace Gill also dig into what VCs actually look for, the most common fundraising mistakes founders make, and the difference between convertible notes and SAFEs.Whether you're bootstrapping your first idea or getting ready to pitch investors, this conversation will change how you think about who to raise from and when.What you'll learn:The three main ways founders fund a business and how to know which one fitsWhy raising venture capital has only gotten harder, and what VCs are really evaluatingThe most common fundraising mistakes founders make (and how to avoid them)Convertible notes vs. SAFEs, explained in plain EnglishWhat a strategic investor actually offers and when it's worth taking their money⏱️Chapters 1:26 Welcome to the Startup Junkies Podcast 2:03 The Three Ways to Fund a Small Business 3:43 What Is Bootstrapping? 5:33 Does Venture Capital Only Fund Tech Companies? 6:46 The Truth: Less Than 1% of Businesses Raise VC 7:33 When Is a Founder Ready to Raise Money? 9:59 Why Raising Venture Capital Has Gotten Harder 11:15 Inside a VC Firm: From 1,000 Deals to 3 or 4 12:43 How to Actually Find Investors 14:19 Common Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make 16:43 Convertible Notes vs. SAFEs, Explained 21:27 Why Startups Actually Need Money 23:35 What Are Strategic Investors — And Are They Worth It? 27:16 The Deal Jeff Wishes He'd Invested In

Brian Jungles bought a $400k direct mail business in Atlanta and skipped SBA by pledging his portfolio as collateral.Register for the webinars:Don't Rush: How to Prepare for a Quality of Earnings Report - TOMORROW! - https://bit.ly/3T4OQOJWorking Capital: One of ETA's Most Expensive Mistakes - Thu, Jul 23 - https://bit.ly/3T1aELeTopics in Brian's interview:Leaving his corporate career at AdobeFinding a business through his networkAcquiring for $400k cashGetting a personal line of credit through his bankDirect mail is still effectiveGrowth is a lot of workHumbling experience of learning QuickbooksPicture-perfect transition of ownershipLearning to translate “corporate speak”“The entrepreneur community all wants to help each other.”References and how to contact Brian:LinkedInCity Publications AtlantaGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamGet a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsThe ecosystem for serious acquisition entrepreneurs—education, capital, community, and post-close support to buy and grow a business:The Acquisition LabConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

A student's zip code should not decide their future. Penelope Barton built a school in 70 countries to prove it.Penelope is the CEO of Crimson Global Academy and co-founder of Crimson Academies, a group of five schools serving students from age five through eighteen, online and in person. Last year her team ran 144,000 classes. Some of her students learn from boats, connected by satellite internet.She grew up in rural New Zealand before the internet, where one teacher covered English, math, and science, and you got whoever you got. That is the problem she has spent six years dismantling.We talk about how she scaled it: starting with two years of high school and one curriculum, then adding learning modes, ages, and countries as students asked for them. She places kids by ability, not age. Seven-year-olds are building apps. A venture capital firm is funding five of her seniors to launch real businesses before graduation. And she just opened a tuition-free school funded directly by the New Zealand government, which took three years of proving results first.She also says something most founders will recognize: the hardest thing she manages is not scale or regulation. It is her own impatience.Chapters:

"Employers have the right to expect much more from their benefit consultants than ever before. This isn't just about managing the fully insured renewal anymore."In this week's special bonus episode, I'm joined by Dr. Dena Bravata, physician, healthcare entrepreneur, and Clinical Advisor for ParetoHealth, to break down the findings from Pareto's inaugural 2026 State of Healthcare Spend Report.Based on responses from nearly 1,600 CEOs, finance, and HR leaders, Dena and I unpacked why employers have finally reached their "damn it" moment. We discussed the massive unpredictability of fully insured renewals, why 80% of employers are actively considering alternative funding mechanisms, and the real reason half of the market is ready to fire their current broker.We also dove into the clinical side of the data. We looked at top cost drivers like cancer, MSK, and GLP-1s, and explored why treating mental health and substance use as a core component of your medical plan is non-negotiable for cost containment.If you advise SMB employers or manage a health plan yourself, the era of the broker "apology tour" and basic renewal management is over. This episode is a reality check on exactly what clients are expecting right now. Tune in!Visit 2026 State of Healthcare Spencer Self Funding Podcast to review the report. Thank you to ParetoHealth for sponsoring this episode!ParetoHealth: ParetoHealth empowers midsize employers with a long-term solution to reduce volatility and lower overall health benefits costs. Visit https://www.paretohealth.com/events/ to learn more.Episode Chapters(00:00:00) Intro: Dr. Dena Bravata & The 2026 Healthcare Spend Report (00:01:05) Why Small & Midsize Employers Are Ignored in Healthcare Data (00:02:37) The "Damn It" Moment: Approaching $20,000 Per Employee (00:04:09) Survey Demographics: 1,600 Leaders Across 14 Industries (00:05:44) 80% of Employers Saw Double-Digit Healthcare Increases (00:07:28) Why Half of the Market is Ready to Fire Their Broker (00:10:59) Top Medical Cost Drivers: Cancer, MSK, and GLP-1s (00:15:01) The Amplifier Effect of Mental Health & Substance Use (00:18:38) Pharmacy Spend & Why Primary Care Can't Manage Obesity (00:21:14) Price Variance and the Need for Care Navigation (00:22:18) The Era of the "Apology Tour" and Renewal Management is Over (00:24:37) Closing Thoughts: Demand More From Your ConsultantKey Links for Social:@SelfFunded on YouTube for video versions of the podcast and much more - https://www.youtube.com/@SelfFundedListen/watch on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1TjmrMrkIj0qSmlwAIevKA?si=068a389925474f02Listen on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/self-funded-with-spencer/id1566182286Follow Spencer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencer-smith-self-funded/Follow Spencer on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/selffundedwithspencer/

"Employers have the right to expect much more from their benefit consultants than ever before. This isn't just about managing the fully insured renewal anymore."In this week's special bonus episode, I'm joined by Dr. Dena Bravata, physician, healthcare entrepreneur, and Clinical Advisor for ParetoHealth, to break down the findings from Pareto's inaugural 2026 State of Healthcare Spend Report.Based on responses from nearly 1,600 CEOs, finance, and HR leaders, Dena and I unpacked why employers have finally reached their "damn it" moment. We discussed the massive unpredictability of fully insured renewals, why 80% of employers are actively considering alternative funding mechanisms, and the real reason half of the market is ready to fire their current broker.We also dove into the clinical side of the data. We looked at top cost drivers like cancer, MSK, and GLP-1s, and explored why treating mental health and substance use as a core component of your medical plan is non-negotiable for cost containment.If you advise SMB employers or manage a health plan yourself, the era of the broker "apology tour" and basic renewal management is over. This episode is a reality check on exactly what clients are expecting right now. Tune in!Visit 2026 State of Healthcare Spencer Self Funding Podcast to review the report. Thank you to ParetoHealth for sponsoring this episode!ParetoHealth: ParetoHealth empowers midsize employers with a long-term solution to reduce volatility and lower overall health benefits costs. Visit https://www.paretohealth.com/events/ to learn more.Episode Chapters(00:00:00) Intro: Dr. Dena Bravata & The 2026 Healthcare Spend Report (00:01:05) Why Small & Midsize Employers Are Ignored in Healthcare Data (00:02:37) The "Damn It" Moment: Approaching $20,000 Per Employee (00:04:09) Survey Demographics: 1,600 Leaders Across 14 Industries (00:05:44) 80% of Employers Saw Double-Digit Healthcare Increases (00:07:28) Why Half of the Market is Ready to Fire Their Broker (00:10:59) Top Medical Cost Drivers: Cancer, MSK, and GLP-1s (00:15:01) The Amplifier Effect of Mental Health & Substance Use (00:18:38) Pharmacy Spend & Why Primary Care Can't Manage Obesity (00:21:14) Price Variance and the Need for Care Navigation (00:22:18) The Era of the "Apology Tour" and Renewal Management is Over (00:24:37) Closing Thoughts: Demand More From Your ConsultantKey Links for Social:@SelfFunded on YouTube for video versions of the podcast and much more - https://www.youtube.com/@SelfFundedListen/watch on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1TjmrMrkIj0qSmlwAIevKA?si=068a389925474f02Listen on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/self-funded-with-spencer/id1566182286Follow Spencer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencer-smith-self-funded/Follow Spencer on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/selffundedwithspencer/

Rob Belk networked his way to "the most caffeinated guy in town" searching for a local business — then found it online. Register for the webinars:From Working IN the Business to ON the Business: How Owners Make the Transition - TODAY!! - https://bit.ly/4aKP3fYDon't Rush: How to Prepare for a Quality of Earnings Report - Tue, Jul 21 - https://bit.ly/4feY1DPTopics in Rob's interview:Geographic search in the Triad of North CarolinaNetworking with local business ownersFinding a business through AxialBuying a marketing and consumer research agencyHis choice to stay out of the weedsBringing in a consultant (maybe too) earlyHow his agency intersects with the tradesStructuring a 50% earnoutConsensus-based leadership styleFinding clients through SubstackReferences and how to contact Rob:LinkedInSales FactoryAdam Duggins on Acquiring Minds: How to Build a Holdco of 4 Blue Collar Businesses in 10 YearsJoe Soelberg on Acquiring Minds: Buying Small to Then Buy Larger $1m SDEBryan Houck on Acquiring Minds: 4th Time's the Charm: 3 Broken Deals to Buy a Great BusinessScott Alexander on Acquiring Minds: Rebuilding from 80% Collapse to Mid 7 Figures Revenue Rob's 10-page Search LearningsGet a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsDownload the New CEO's Guide to Human Resources from Aspen HR:From this page or contact jenny@aspenhr.comGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost DTC brands put the bulk of their paid budget where attention is thinnest. Viewers spend about 99 minutes per session on Connected TV and 8 minutes per session on social, yet only 9% of standard marketing budgets go to CTV. This episode is about closing that gap on CTV with the same measurement & targeting you get on social (starting at $7 CPMs!)Emily Huo built ad businesses at X (Twitter), Reddit, and Spotify, and now runs SMB advertising at Paramount. She walks through how a DTC brand actually gets onto Survivor, Landman, or RuPaul's Drag Race, what to spend, and how to know if it worked.Sign up for Paramount Ads Manager today. Get your brand on TV tomorrow.This episode, we get into:The seasonal play: build awareness over the summer, retarget in the fall, convert in Q4Why you start broad on targeting and let the data tell you who is really watching, not the persona you imported from MetaThe pixel setup that ties a TV impression to a site visit, a lead, or a purchaseThe geo holdout test for measuring halo effect with no third-party toolsWhy a 30-second unskippable spot changes how you tell a brand story when you are not a household name yetBudgeting: carve out 10% as experimental, expect a three-month ramp, scale from thereWho this is for: DTC founders and growth marketers who have maxed out social, anyone planning Q4 now, and operators curious whether CTV is real or just a hot label.What to steal: the install-pixel-now, build-in-summer, convert-in-Q4 sequence, and the broad-then-narrow targeting approach.Timestamps:0:00 Emily Huo's Journey to Paramount3:10 Why CTV Is Growing So Fast8:07 CTV Targeting vs Meta Ads12:14 CTV Budget & Testing Strategy23:18 Measuring the Halo EffectSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Welcome back to the Fintech Takes podcast. I'm your host, Alex Johnson, and today one of our favorite guests is back: Frank Rotman, founding partner of 37Maru and co-founder and partner emeritus at QED Investors. First, we chat about what happens to an entire industry once its customers have concluded the game is rigged, which is why financial nihilism now shows up everywhere from ETFs built on sports bets to DeFi products costumed as savings accounts. Frank has a theory he calls p(win)=0; once someone concludes their probability of winning is zero, walking away from the game is rational.  From there, we separate the AI use cases ready for prime time from the ones that aren't. Back office work like AML documentation and exception processing is ripe for automation. A bank chatbot delivering flawless, compliant financial advice is a different proposition. In financial services, 98% accuracy can still equal zero. Finally, we close on student lending, an area where Frank has firsthand experience (having built a student lending company before QED), and firsthand ideas (having spent the better part of a year making the case for reform to the Department of Education and the IRS). His proposal for how the government could build a “truth file" on which degrees pay off is one of the more concrete policy ideas we discuss. Expect a wide-ranging conversation. Frank has a gift for making financial nihilism, AI, and student loan policy sound like one continuous argument, and by the end, I'm convinced that it is. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit ⁠https://www.ocrolus.com/⁠ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex's Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday:⁠ https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/⁠ And for more exclusive insider content, don't forget to check out my⁠ YouTube page⁠. --- Follow Frank: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-rotman/⁠ X: ⁠https://x.com/fintechjunkie⁠   Follow Alex:  YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@FintechTakes⁠ LinkedIn:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson⁠ X:⁠ https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson⁠

Being an AT in Florida offers many opportunities. Dr. Pradeep Vanguri joins Ben Stephenson and Jeremy Jackson to share what being an AT in Florida is like. Leadership in the Sunshine State: Dr. Pradeep Vanguri on the Future of Athletic Training in Florida Jeremy Jackson and Ben Stevenson welcome Dr. Pradeep Vanguri, President of the Athletic Trainers Association of Florida (ATAF), to the Sports Medicine broadcast podcast to discuss the professional landscape in Florida. Dr. Vanguri shares his personal journey and outlines the crucial initiatives shaping athletic training across the 67 counties of Florida. Dr. Vanguri’s interest in sports medicine began in high school in North Carolina, but his decision to become an athletic trainer was cemented in college at East Carolina University after realizing he preferred being on the sideline with teams over working in a clinic or hospital setting. He eventually moved to the state of Florida, where his focus on service led him to the ATAF. His leadership journey within the Athletic Trainers Association of Florida includes: Serving as the Education Committee Chair for approximately six years. Serving as Secretary for three years. Serving as Vice President and then President-Elect. Currently, he is in his third year of a three-year term as ATAF President, guiding the profession in Florida. The Athletic Trainer Landscape in Florida Dr. Vanguri emphasizes that the core strength of athletic training in Florida is its people—the dedicated clinicians and the close-knit professional community. The state offers numerous settings for athletic trainers, including industrial, college/university, secondary school, and professional teams like the Miami Dolphins, Panthers, and Inter Miami. The state also provides excellent opportunities for new and seasoned athletic trainers to continue their practice through collaboration, mentorship, and access to research from academic programs. A common issue is the lack of full-time coverage and a high rate of turnover for athletic trainers across the 67 counties. The ATAF’s goal is to recruit talent to Florida and work to ensure they stay by focusing on appropriate coverage, quality of life, and compensatory salary and benefits. Medical systems across major regions of Florida, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, and the Panhandle, are supporting these efforts. Dr. Vanguri detailed three major initiatives he is championing during his tenure as President in Florida: Loan Reimbursement Inclusion: Working to include athletic trainers in an existing state loan reimbursement program for rural assistance, which is centered within the Florida Department of Health, without asking for an increase in overall program funding. Third-Party Reimbursement: A critical effort to quantify the value of athletic trainers and establish them as licensed medical professionals who deserve a “seat at the table” in the broader medical community. The ATAF is focused on supporting entities with a strong medical system infrastructure in Florida that can handle the billing. CPR and AED Initiative: Working to help the general public understand the importance of layperson CPR and addressing the lack of interest in helping a victim due to the fear of legal retribution. Why Athletic Trainers Should Choose Florida Dr. Vanguri's sales pitch for the state of Florida centers on its people. He urges athletic trainers to move to Florida for the opportunity to connect with individuals making a difference, as well as for the mentorship, research opportunities, and clinical growth provided by the state's top-notch athletic trainers and supportive medical systems. While the sunshine and alligators are a perk, the central reason to come and stay in Florida is the robust professional community and the emphasis on work-life balance. The Athletic Trainers Association of Florida annual meeting is scheduled for July 10th to 12th in Orlando, Florida. To connect with Dr. Vanguri or the ATAF: Email: president@ataf.org Website and Social Media: ataf.org These people LOVE Athletic Trainers and help support the podcast: Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products. Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school) HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration DRINK HOIST MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast. Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better. Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: Barracuda acquires Evo Security: Barracuda is integrating Evo Security‘s IAM and PAM tools into BarracudaONE, giving MSPs more ways to build identity security services beyond MFA. ChannelE2E reports that the move unifies email, network, and identity protection under one stack, which matters for Canadian technicians already managing multiple dashboards. The deal size was not disclosed. Rewst rebuilds its platform around MCP and AI agents: Rewst is rebuilding its automation engine around the Model Context Protocol so technicians can describe a business process and have an AI agent custom-build it, even without deep scripting skills. ChannelE2E says the update turns automation from an internal efficiency play into a billable managed service. The rollout is expected through the third quarter. Microsoft opens its July 2026 partner playbook: Microsoft released July partner announcements covering FY27 planning resources, updated Azure IP co-sell incentives, and refreshed Microsoft 365 Copilot specialization requirements. The company is positioning the Copilot specialization as a prerequisite for AI deployment referrals, raising the bar from general cloud competency to specific AI delivery capability. A new End of Sale Software pricelist is also live in Partner Center as of July 1. CompassMSP acquires Logic Group: ChannelE2E reports the acquisition adds to CompassMSP’s portfolio as the consolidator continues its North American expansion. The 20 MSP acquires Sundance Networks, reaching 49 acquisitions: The rollup hits another milestone with the Sundance Networks deal, according to ChannelE2E. ManageEngine launches marketplace for partner-built IT extensions and AI agents: ChannelE2E says Zoho’s IT management arm is opening a marketplace where partners can build and sell extensions. Dell partners remain optimistic amid supply chain concerns: ChannelE2E reports that Dell is working to keep supply chains flowing for partners as data center growth puts pressure on memory supplies. Guardz adds agentic reporting for MSP client reviews: ChannelE2E says the new feature turns blocked threats and security activity into reports that SMB customers can understand. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Tuesday, July 14, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. Barracuda is buying Evo Security to expand its identity security capabilities for MSPs. In a deal announced last week, Barracuda said it will integrate Evo Security’s IAM and PAM tools into BarracudaONE, giving partners more ways to build identity security services beyond MFA. The move comes as identity attacks continue to outpace traditional perimeter defenses and MSPs are being asked to manage privileged access for customers with limited security staff. Barracuda is positioning the acquisition as a way to unify email, network, and identity protection under one stack. Canadian partners who have already standardized on BarracudaONE will see the new tools appear as integrated modules rather than a separate console, which matters for technicians who are already managing multiple dashboards. The channel has been waiting for Barracuda to deepen its identity story after years of speculation, and this appears to be the answer. Identity and access management has become one of the fastest-growing service lines for Canadian MSPs, but many have cobbled together solutions from multiple vendors. Barracuda’s bet is that MSPs will pay for a unified platform rather than stitching together point products. The deal size was not disclosed. Rewst is rebuilding its automation platform from the ground up around MCP and AI agents, and the timing is notable. The company announced today that MSPs will be able to describe a business process they want to automate and have an AI agent custom-build the workflow, even if the technician lacks deep scripting expertise. Rewst is leaning on the Model Context Protocol to connect its automation engine to third-party tools in a standardized way, which reduces the integration maintenance that typically consumes MSP engineering hours. The rebuild is a direct response to the skills gap that has kept many mid-market providers from offering automation as a managed service. For Canadian MSPs struggling to hire and retain technicians who can write PowerShell or Python, this could lower the barrier to entry for workflow automation and make it a billable service rather than an internal efficiency play. Rewst says the new architecture will also allow partners to sell automation to their own customers as a white-label managed service, which turns a cost center into a revenue line. The platform update is expected to roll out to existing partners in phases through the third quarter. Microsoft rolled out its July partner announcements on Thursday, and the bundle includes several items that will shape Canadian partner planning for the second half of the calendar year. The company opened FY27 planning resources, updated Azure IP co-sell incentives, and refreshed Microsoft 365 Copilot specialization requirements. A new End of Sale Software pricelist is also live in Partner Center as of July 1. Microsoft is positioning the Copilot specialization as a prerequisite for partners who want to be referred for AI deployment opportunities, which means the bar for entry is moving from general cloud competency to specific AI delivery capability. The FY27 planning materials emphasize recurring revenue and attached services, a message that aligns with what Canadian distributors have been telling partners for the last two quarters. Canadian CSPs will also want to note the pricing and packaging changes for Microsoft 365 Business plans that took effect July 1, which include additional mailbox storage and enhanced Copilot Chat experiences. The net effect is that Microsoft is tightening the link between partner program tiering and AI service delivery, something that will require training investments for smaller partners. In Brief – CompassMSP acquires Logic Group. The 20 MSP acquires Sundance Networks, reaching 49 acquisitions. ManageEngine launches a marketplace for partner-built IT extensions and AI agents. Dell partners remain optimistic amid IT component supply chain concerns. Guardz adds agentic reporting to help MSPs turn security activity into client-ready reviews. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. And if you haven‘t heard it yet, my conversation with Curtis Dery from Xerox IT Solutions on what HPE’s financing moves, the channel-only expansion of Private Cloud and Zerto, and why AI is a digital goldmine. That’s on In The Channel now. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.

Chris Farkas endured a 7-week fetal position moment when he finally found a website bug that had cost him $500k in sales.Register for the webinar:From Working IN the Business to ON the Business: How Owners Make the Transition - Thu, Jul 16 - https://bit.ly/4vRBhk8Topics in Chris's interview: Going through Acquisition LabFirst deal fell through on Christmas EveAcquiring an ecommerce business with a warehouseBuying inventory he didn't wantThe marketing agencies that hurt his businessBusiness almost tanked due to website glitchDoing $10k in sales per dayHardship of traveling every other weekWhy he stays off AmazonMake only one change at a timeReferences and how to contact Chris:LinkedInEmergencyKits.comRuss Hadlock on Acquiring Minds: The Front Lines of a CrisisDave Richards of Keystone Business AdvisorsKalen Foster of Live Oak BankGet a complimentary IT audit for acquisition diligence or post-close transition.Visit inzotechnologies.com/eta.The ecosystem for serious acquisition entrepreneurs—education, capital, community, and post-close support to buy and grow a business:The Acquisition LabWork with an SBA loan team focused exclusively on helping entrepreneurs buy businesses:Pioneer Capital AdvisoryConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

Insurance paperwork is delaying treatment for patients who don't have time to wait. One founder built a company to fix it.In this entrepreneur interview, Dr. Joshua Upshaw — founder and CEO of Hidalgo Technologies and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience — shares how a family health crisis pushed him from academic research into healthcare entrepreneurship, why he trusts his gut more than any spreadsheet, and how he built his team around mission alignment instead of resumes.Whether you're still validating your first idea or figuring out who belongs on your founding team, this conversation will change how you think about intuition, feedback, and timing.Chapters: 0:00 Cold Open: Trust Your Gut 0:22 Welcome to the Startup Junkies Podcast 1:02 What Is Hidalgo Technologies? Fixing Insurance Prior Authorization 1:54 From Neuroscience to Health Tech: Josh's Origin Story 2:59 The Family Story That Sparked Hidalgo Tech 5:35 Why Josh Calls Himself a Problem Solver, Not a Scientist 8:57 Validating the Problem Through Customer Discovery 11:36 Building the Team: Finding the Right Technical Lead 14:55 Why Mission Alignment Matters More Than Skill 16:10 Handling Feedback, Ego, and Doubt as a Founder 19:00 Following Your Gut: Sifting Signal From Noise 21:09 Who Hidalgo Tech's Ideal Customer Is 21:56 Funding the Company: NSF Grants & Raising Capital 25:32 The Next Five Years for Hidalgo Tech 26:23 Advice to His Younger SelfAbout Joshua Upshaw: Founder and CEO of Hidalgo Technologies, reducing administrative overhead in insurance prior authorization so patients get treatment sooner. PhD in cognitive neuroscience and an alum of the University of Arkansas's New Venture Development program and Health Tech Arkansas. Connect with Joshua: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-upshaw-ph-d/Website: https://hidalgatech.com/

In this episode, we break down how B2B marketers can identify and reach the key decision makers that actually influence purchase decisions.We cover how buying committees work, why messaging should be tailored by role, when to use CRM-built audiences versus native platform targeting, and what high-performing companies do to generate quality pipeline from paid media.If you're trying to improve targeting, alignment, and pipeline outcomes, this session gives you a practical framework to start with.00:00 Intro04:29 Buying Roles07:55 SMB's vs Enterprise10:50 Messaging by Role13:58 Audience Targeting & ICP Lists20:39 Pipeline, Alignment, & Takeaways

After 25 years in corporate, Gina Rosen bought a jewelry wholesaling business with $635k in sales — now on track to $1m.Register for the webinar: Finance Essentials Before You Close - TODAY!! - https://bit.ly/4fcxTdKTopics in Gina's interview:Leaving corporate for more family timeDecoupling her salary from her valueAcquiring the supplier for her side gigHer mistake with buying inventoryKeeping her corporate job the first yearGoing full time in the business to focus on salesStanding out by making sales calls in-personOperating a highly seasonal businessHow tariffs have affected her businessAcquiring without the SBA References and how to contact Gina:LinkedInSeasons JewelryThe ecosystem for serious acquisition entrepreneurs—education, capital, community, and post-close support to buy and grow a business:The Acquisition LabGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamDownload the New CEO's Guide to Human Resources from Aspen HR:From this page or contact jenny@aspenhr.comConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

The dominant structural shift examined is the erosion of channel-driven value creation in AI offerings, marked by the rapid commoditization of resold AI technologies and a pivot toward consumption-based pricing models. Microsoft Copilot is cited as the most commonly resold AI product by MSPs, with market data showing that 84% of productized AI services among “AI forward” firms rely on this single vendor. The resulting model accelerates value capture at the vendor level, narrowing room for differentiated service or margin at the partner level. This consolidation pressures MSPs to shift from traditional product resale to enablement and operational integration or risk disintermediation. The primary development highlighted is the widespread lack of substantive AI go-to-market offerings among MSPs. According to analyzed web positioning data, 61% of MSPs do not mention AI offerings on their sites, and among those that do, the majority use vague or unscoped “AI solutions” language without concrete services behind them. Only a small subset offers named, productized AI services. Of these, the overwhelming reliance on Microsoft Copilot underscores a lack of channel-developed solutions and points to a market structure where vendors, rather than partners, capture much of the economic value. Supporting developments reinforce both the risk and inertia present within the channel. Ryan Morris outlines that true differentiation will require MSPs to develop packaged offerings around governance, financial controls, and vertical-specific business outcomes, yet early market activity shows little movement in these directions. The discussion emphasizes the potential for cost overrun through uncontrolled AI consumption, echoing past cycles from telecommunications to cloud. Efforts by large vendors to staff direct AI engineering resources are framed as a threat only to the top enterprise tier, with the bulk of SMB delivery left to service providers—albeit within a model now driven heavily by consumption volume and efficiency calculations. Operational implications for MSPs and IT leaders include increased pricing pressure and possible margin erosion as customers optimize consumption and as vendors streamline direct monetization of AI. There is a growing need for internal and customer-facing governance structures to manage data use, financial exposure, and compliance. Channel partners that limit themselves to product resale risk commoditization, while those able to package and deliver business-integrated AI services may find more durable value. The episode underscores the urgency for MSPs to clarify and productize their AI engagement—not simply as a differentiator, but as a defensive strategy against margin compression and vendor dependency.

Welcome back to Not Fintech Investment Advice, where Simon Taylor and I do what we do best: talk about companies we're absolutely not giving investment advice on. First up is Primitive, an agent control plane for large financial institutions trying to figure out what to do with AI agents. We get into why regulated institutions need infrastructure that sits above any one model provider, token budgets, and why AI labs deploying engineers into financial institutions should be treated less like a gift and more like a Trojan horse. Next is Exponent, a finance platform for franchisees. Franchises are one of the most reliable (and overlooked) paths to wealth building. We talk about why franchisees are hard to underwrite, how SBA lending fits in, and why a platform that helps both the borrower and lender could become the financial operating system for multi-location franchise entrepreneurs. Then there's Prime Intellect, which helps companies train, deploy, evaluate, and improve their own models. This leads us into one of our favorite nerd corridors: what happens when you train transformer models on financial events instead of language? Financial data may have its own syntax, and the models that understand it may be far more useful than the ones that chat well. We close with Covered, a gamified credit card that uses variable rewards and sweepstakes to make cash back feel like a chance to win big. Customer acquisition is brutal, top-of-wallet even harder, and in a casino economy, nudging people toward something marginally better is at least honest about the stakes. Plus, the most important question in the episode: is Anna or Elsa the real protagonist of Frozen? --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more.  --- Sign up for Alex's Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/ And for more exclusive insider content, don't forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson Follow Simon: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sytaylor/ Substack: https://sytaylor.substack.com --- Companies featured: https://primitive.com/ https://exponentfi.com/ https://www.primeintellect.ai/ https://www.coverd.us/

AI's all-you-can-eat era is ending.

Most sales onboarding plans are slow, academic, and completely distract sellers from actually selling. In this episode, Armand and Nick break down their exact playbook, including:

Most founders obsess over their product. The real skill is knowing which problem to fall in love with instead.In this entrepreneur interview, Nyamitse-Calvin Mihanda — founder of Vital Audio and a Techstars and Fuel Accelerator alum — shares how his company extracts heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure from ordinary conversation, why he walked away from a "perfect" product mindset, and how his path from hospital billing collector to healthcare founder shaped the way he builds teams today.Whether you're building your first startup or trying to close the access-to-care gap in your own community, this conversation will change how you think about resilience, timing, and what it actually takes to launch.What you'll learn:How signal processing and machine learning pull vital signs straight from a voice recordingWhy clinical partnerships with NYU Langone and Mayo Clinic came before scale, not afterThe "fall in love with the problem, not the product" principle that keeps founders from chasing dead endsWhy soft skills — not technical skills — are the hardest thing to teach a teamHow rural and underserved communities stand to benefit most from voice-based vital tracking⏱️ Chapters:0:53 Welcome to the Startup Junkies Podcast1:16 How Vital Audio Reads Vitals From Your Voice2:21 The Science Behind Extracting Vitals From Speech3:09 Landing Clinical Partners: NYU Langone, Mayo Clinic & More4:16 From Hospital Billing to Healthcare Entrepreneur6:13 Techstars vs. The Fuel Accelerator: What's Different8:55 An Immigrant's Resilience: Lessons From Tanzania to NYC11:03 Why Soft Skills Matter More Than Technical Skills12:25 The Best Advice: Fall In Love With The Problem14:18 Overcoming Fear When You Start a Company14:47 What Nyamitse-Calvin Mihanda Loves About the Arkansas Ecosystem17:06 Closing the Rural Healthcare Access Gap19:47 Where to Find Nyamitse-Calvin & Vital Audio

Heather asks and helps answer “How do you create a point of view about your solution in a way that will talk to Salesforce about how it works together for that specific customer?” For ISVs so they can take a strong point of view about a specific customer vs. approaching with just questions. “It's easier to find this information than it's ever been. Don't be lazy and use the tools and you will have much better conversations.”This episode of How We Got There features a conversation with Heather Mason, Founder of ISV Accelerators. Heather brings their clients her knowledge forged by experiences at an ISV (Insight Squared) and Salesforce themselves, 5.5 years at each company. Her company works with “high potential” Salesforce partners to assist their GTM motions in the ecosystem - Salesforce, other ISVs, and SIs - so the ISV can help make it easier for the customer to buy the solution.We talked a bit about the challenges her team faced at Salesforce within her focus on the Pharma vertical, which had a strong publicly traded OEM of Salesforce in Veeva to contend/cooperate with and the new-normal of fewer people at Salesforce focused on ISVs. Partners need to adapt to how Salesforce is changing their selling motion, aligning to Salesforce AEs with modern better together messaging. The challenge is Salesforce is still figuring it (it being Agentforce) out too. Heather shares insights around traffic on the AppExchange listing by most common personas and what it means to ISVs through the lens of who buys their solution. At the level, the Salesforce sales team aligned to a specific account can be over 20 people but at the SMB level it might just be an AE and their RVP, who will be VERY hands on with the deal alongside their AE.We touch on big strategy but also tactics around things like when is the right moment to reach out to the Salesforce account team in an opportunity cycle. It all starts with you having a unique value to share and if you do, you should expect an 85% positive response rate. If you are lower than that, I would challenge you to harden your messaging.Heather loves to connect with people in the ecosystem and takes pride in making herself available to meeting new people. I learned a ton from my conversation with Heather and am grateful she is actively helping ISVs and OEMs in the ecosystem. Connect with Heather at the Arcadia leadership experience in Montana run by the Yarboroughs.This episode is brought to you by ISVApp. ISVapp the usage analytics platform built specifically for Salesforce ISV and OEM applications. ISVapp is your central toolbox for reducing churn, increasing renewals, uncovering upsell opportunities, and closing more deals. #salesforce #isv #gtm #salesforcepartners #appexchange

Buying a metal fabricator with $1m in earnings pivoted Paul Callahan into the new entrepreneurial chapter of his career.Register for the webinar: Finance Essentials Before You Close - Thu, Jul 9 - https://bit.ly/4eMaUowTopics in Paul's interview:M&A, integrations, and private equity experienceCOVID Zoom fatigue sparked career pivotAtlanta's crowded deal market challengesHiring buy-side help while still workingPursuing full ownership without outside investorsNavigating two simultaneous LOIs carefullyChoosing SBA 504 over 7(a) financing for the real estateAcquiring a high capex businessReplacing Ferrari equipment with Toyota reliabilityWhy consultants make strong ETA operatorsReferences and how to contact Paul:LinkedInMetro Metal WorksWork with an SBA loan team focused exclusively on helping entrepreneurs buy businesses:Pioneer Capital AdvisoryGet a complimentary IT audit for acquisition diligence or post-close transition.Visit inzotechnologies.com/eta.Get a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

Ari Paparo sits down with Todd Parsons, President of Performance Media and Chief Product Officer at Criteo, to discuss the launch of Criteo GO, an AI-powered performance platform that unifies cross-channel advertising across the open web, Meta, TikTok, and OpenAI. They explore AI-driven campaign automation, commerce data, retail media, agentic AI, GEO, and what the future of digital advertising looks like. Takeaways Criteo GO simplifies cross-channel performance marketing with AI. Commerce intelligence powers better campaign optimization and outcomes. AI reduces onboarding from weeks to just hours. Agentic AI is beginning to automate media planning and execution. GEO could reshape how brands compete for AI-driven discovery. Chapters00:00 Introduction to Todd Parsons and Criteo00:50 What is Criteo GO?02:05 Who is Criteo GO built for?03:12 Cross-channel performance marketing explained04:00 Commerce data and retail media strategy06:00 Measuring real performance outcomes09:20 How AI powers Criteo GO11:45 Agentic AI and the future of media buying13:05 Self-service advertising and SMB growth15:38 Lightning round: competition, roadmap, and GEO18:08 Closing thoughts Guests: Ari Paparo, Todd Parsons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlocking billions in cloud marketplace revenue. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ This powerful panel discussion featuring leaders from Google, Tackle, and dbt Labs dives deep into the explosive growth of cloud marketplaces and the radical shift toward AI-driven go-to-market strategies. With hyperscaler backlogs nearing half a trillion dollars, the conversation unpacks how top-tier organizations are transforming their compensation models, aligning executive buy-in, and navigating the complexities of co-selling to capture committed customer budgets. From the rise of AI agents acting as metered SaaS to the essential operational investments required to scale marketplace revenue from 10% to over 50%, this session provides an actionable roadmap for software companies ready to dominate the 2026 partner ecosystem. https://youtu.be/LSj49f5FEII Key Takeaways Hyperscaler backlog commitments represent a massive, nearly half-trillion-dollar addressable market that completely changes the budgeting conversation. Successful marketplace selling requires complete executive alignment, right down to the CFO, and strategic adjustments like spiffing sales teams for marketplace transactions. The AI category is experiencing staggering 18x year-over-year growth, forcing companies to pivot toward an “agent-first” go-to-market model. Shifting from traditional channels to cloud go-to-market demands a multi-year, intentional investment in operations, people, and technology. System integrators are evolving into software companies as they build orchestration agents to manage fragmented, end-to-end workflows. Leveraging cloud commitments bypasses standard 12-15 month budget cycles, allowing for significantly faster deal closures and larger initial lands. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Google Cloud Marketplace, hyperscaler backlog, cloud commitments, co-selling strategies, AI agents, metered SaaS, product-led growth, rev ops, B2B sales transformation, ecosystem shift, channel strategy, system integrators, Deal registration, private offer APIs, digital transformation, software procurement. Transcript: Insight to Revenue- The State of Cloud GTM [00:00:00] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that first five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through Marketplace. [00:00:09] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology. Partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes [00:00:46] John Janke: everything. Let’s start. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: And we have an incredible session. The way that we wanted today to, to, to start the day up was like, let’s talk about what’s happening right now and let’s get three leaders in this space to come up and talk about the world and how it’s a rapidly evolving. So I want to invite to the stage dvu from Google is a great friend of Ultimate Partner. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: Are you guys ready? Are you guys micd up already? Okay, good. Good. John Yanke, the CEO and Founder of Tackle, and Sean Todo, who is an incredible leader with DBT, but also an old friend of mine. We worked together on Microsoft Days. Good to see you gentlemen. Thanks Sean. Great to have you with us. [00:01:37] John Janke: They stuck me on the side ’cause they said I’d block the screen if I sat in the middle. [00:01:41] Shawn Toldo: You still block it a little bit. [00:01:42] John Janke: And that picture’s from like 1985. I, I, we do have to get that. I had way darker hair. It was, uh, 10 year, 10 years at a startup. Makes you turn white. [00:01:52] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s the exact same right now. So it’s all good. [00:01:55] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s AI generated. Yeah. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Well, you know, guys, I just took it all off at that point, you know, it’s like good. Yeah, but you lose enough of it. You pull it out over the years. Yeah. So, uh, some really exciting times. Uh, you, we gotta spend some time at you at our breakfast. That’s right. A couple weeks ago. [00:02:13] Dai Vu: A lot of folks here, too. [00:02:14] Vince Menzione: A lot of folks that are here were at that breakfast, and I thought we’d spend a few moments with you talking about all the exciting things that have been happening at, at Google. I mean the, yeah, the businesses just to, first of all, the numbers were house. Outstanding. Congratulations. [00:02:28] Dai Vu: That’s right. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Really, some really great numbers. Commitments are off the charts. [00:02:32] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Crazy off the charts. [00:02:33] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:34] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, and then there’s a lot happening in this little world called ai, which makes a ton of sense. Yep. I was critical about Google in the beginning because you had all the assets, but Microsoft leaned in first. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: Uh, but now it’s like things have evolved, uh, quite a bit since those first days. Absolutely. In, in November of 2022. So, uh, take us through a little bit. Let’s, let’s go through [00:02:56] Dai Vu: it. Yeah. I could talk for quite a bit of time because obviously we came out next, yeah. At the end of April, and then we had our earnings announced, but shortly thereafter. [00:03:03] Dai Vu: But, but real quick on next, uh, for folks who attended, uh, you know, the way they framed, uh, the discussion was they showed this AI integrated stack, and that’s how they frame the keynote because we position ourselves as being the only vendor that provides this. Fully integrated stack from custom silicon all the way to the apps and agents. [00:03:23] Dai Vu: And a lot of the announcements were, were focused in those areas. Um, uh, I won’t go through the, the long list, but I think the big ones coming out of next were, uh, certainly the eighth generation TPU we announced, so we actually split this into two specialized chips for training and inference. Uh, so that’s, uh, that was a big piece. [00:03:41] Dai Vu: Uh, but the big one that we announced was this, uh, Gemini Enterprise. Uh, agent platform. So think of it as the comprehensive platform for companies to basically build scale, govern and optimize their agents. And of course, once they have that, they can bring that into, uh, what we call a Gen Gemini enterprise app, which is really the front door for AI for. [00:04:03] Dai Vu: All customers and all employees to manage a mix of agents, um, as part of their daily workflow. And, uh, and a big part of it is, you know, certainly they’ll have some custom agents, but we think a lot of the agents will come from the ecosystem. And obviously there was a big announcement around what we’re doing there. [00:04:21] Dai Vu: Um, and in fact, one of the things that’s interesting is this shows the evolution of, of marketplace in our, in our partnership, which is we’ve taken a lot of the marketplace experience. And brought it into Gemini exp uh, Gemini Enterprise app, right? So search, discovery, uh, the ability to invoke agents, uh, in context. [00:04:39] Dai Vu: I think that’s gonna be very powerful as we think about the evolution, uh, of, of go to market. And then the last thing maybe I’ll highlight is this, um, is. 750 million, uh, investment fund that we’re gonna drive with the broad partnership. So this cuts across all partner types, global system integrators, uh, uh, you know, AI, pure plays, uh, ISVs, uh, the big management consultants as well, uh, because we recognize that partners are gonna be critical to drive business transformation with our end customers. [00:05:08] Dai Vu: So we’re investing around things like. Technical enablement, access to our product teams, access to our FDE for deployment engineers, and then a lot of incentives to drive usage and deployment. So, um, so a lot of, a lot of activity and obviously the ecosystem’s gonna be very critical for us to drive that impact’s. [00:05:25] Dai Vu: Fine. And the last thing, I know we’ve going on and on fine, but the last thing I’ll just mention is just on the earnings announcement, uh, Vince touched on the backlog, so people have been tracking Yeah. Two quarters ago. We were 155 billion on the backlog, and then a quarter later we were 240 billion. And then in the last quarter, just recently, 462 billion. [00:05:46] Dai Vu: So obviously that’s a, a massive signal of customer intent, but more importantly, it’s a, it’s, it’s a addressable market for this ecosystem to go after as well. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Almost a half a trillion dollars. Yes. In commitment. So a lot, a lot of reason why we should be on the marketplace. [00:06:01] Dai Vu: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: Um, each of these gentlemen have some things to talk about as well, about their companies and the exciting things that have been happening. [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna start, John, I’m gonna start with you because Tackle has, has transformed quite a bit since the last time you were on stage with us. I thought maybe introduce the company. Take us through the transformation and then we’re gonna do the same thing with Sean with his organization. [00:06:21] John Janke: Yeah. Thanks. Uh, thanks Vince. [00:06:23] John Janke: Great to see everybody. Uh, John Yanke, GM of Tackle at App Direct. So the big news there is Tackle was acquired in Q4 by a company called App Direct, and I think the why behind this app, direct Powers, marketplaces, they run 400 marketplaces around the world for telcos, for ISVs, for system integrators, channel partners. [00:06:42] John Janke: And we were talk like, when you build a marketplace and diagnose this, stocking the shelves is actually really hard. Uh, and we were talking to them about how could we connect the dots between the hyperscaler marketplaces, the iscs we support, and these additional routes to market. Uh, and that became more strategic and we ended up joining forces in December. [00:07:00] John Janke: And since then, the other part that’s really hard when you build a marketplace is how do you generate demand? Uh, so four weeks ago we acquired a company called Partner Stack. And Partner Stack does affiliate content. They have an affiliate content platform that allows you to connect with 150,000 content providers to be able to start to tell your story to drive leads to. [00:07:23] John Janke: Marketplace. So we think there is a tremendous opportunity to continue. We’re in the earliest days. I think the, you know, Jay, I was with Jay at Channel Partners a few weeks ago and he is like, we under called it, he didn’t say this on stage yesterday, but he is like, uh, the 82% growth. He’s like, we totally under called it. [00:07:40] John Janke: Uh, and I think just listening to dies commit level increase mm-hmm. Reinforces the fact that we’ve under called it. But I also think we’re at this tipping point in the market where all of the new capabilities coming out, we have to all rethink our better together stories. So I think the challenge to all partner leaders, it’s like, how do we. [00:07:58] John Janke: Figure that out. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a fun time. As we transform the way we worked. We wrote the first helping people kind of list, launch and sell through the marketplaces. And now to be able to take that to the next level to hopefully unlock the next a hundred billion of marketplace throughput. [00:08:13] Vince Menzione: And are we at a hundred billion? [00:08:15] Vince Menzione: ’cause that was the number, right? [00:08:16] John Janke: I mean that’s, that’s, that’s the number that’s talked about. I mean, we’re seeing the data signals we see, I mean, we will process 20 billion plus this year. Uh, and that number’s growing faster than Jay’s stated number. So I think we’re excited to see where this year lands. [00:08:30] Vince Menzione: We’ve come a long way from three years ago and we all got on stage and talked about marketplaces together. Right. It’s been, it’s been amazing. And then Sean, let’s talk about DBT. You’ve had some excitement. I know some things maybe we can’t even talk about yet on stage. [00:08:43] Shawn Toldo: Uh, yeah, go ahead. [00:08:44] Vince Menzione: No, I was saying I, I could, I’ll pre-announce things, but No, I’m just, uh, tell, tell us about DBT for those who don’t know in the room, sure. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: Mean Yeah, that might help. [00:08:51] Shawn Toldo: So, uh, Sean Todo, I lead the partner business at DBT. I’ve been here about 18 months. Um, DBT really started as an open source tool. That help data engineers be successful in SQL transformation with cloud data warehouses? Right. And so back even to the Redshift days now into what I would call more the BigQuery, snowflake, Databricks fabric led days, um, DBT is the tool of choice amongst the data engineering community in terms of how they wanna drive SQL transformation. [00:09:21] Shawn Toldo: And so more recently, we kind of jumped into this kind of paid world. Which is why we needed to bring in additional experience leadership around go to market product, sales, et cetera. And so when I walked in the door, one of the things I noticed really quickly was we were running on AWS, which was great. [00:09:40] Shawn Toldo: We were doing some AWS marketplace stuff. We were running on Azure in Europe only. And one of my first strategies was we have to be everywhere, right customer. We have to meet customers where they are. And so we, uh, made some major investments to be on Google Cloud platform to then be able to really take advantage of marketplace, to then really be able to take advantage of the co-sell opportunities that exist in the field from a day, day-to-day AI perspective with Google. [00:10:07] Shawn Toldo: And it has been a hell of a ride. We launched on, uh, Google Marketplace in July of last year. We went to Google next and we were Google Partner of the Year. Wow. For data and analytics in a very rapid way. We’re now in three, uh, data centers around the, the world. So we’re here in the us, we’re in Frankfurt, we’re in uh, uh, UK as well. [00:10:30] Shawn Toldo: And so it’s been a pleasure to work with D and the broader team. Because the enablement we’ve had and the support we’ve had from that group has really helped our growth be up and to the right. The data point I would give is that when I walked in the door, we were 10% of our business from an A RR perspective was transacting through marketplace. [00:10:48] Shawn Toldo: Last quarter we cracked 40%. Whoa. We will be at north of 50, uh, next quarter. [00:10:53] Dai Vu: Wow. [00:10:54] Shawn Toldo: The other piece that Vince was talking about is we’re getting ready to merge with a company called Five Tran. And so there will be a new company name at some point down the road. Uh, pay attention on June 1st for a public announcement around that merger. [00:11:06] Shawn Toldo: Uh, but we’re really looking forward to what we’re gonna be able to do with folks like DI and the Google team as well as others in the ecosystem. Um, ’cause I think in this data world that we’ve played for so long. This trusted foundational element of data and what it’s gonna mean to context in the AI world. [00:11:23] Shawn Toldo: We’re in a very interesting place to really continue our growth rate at a high level. [00:11:28] John Janke: Yeah, that maybe just a comment something there. Start there. I think we, we used to hear people say we wanted to be strategic with cloud, go to market and get to say 10 or 20% of revenue. I think this like 40, 50%. Yeah. Th that’s where people are setting the bar these days. [00:11:43] John Janke: Yeah. So the numbers are getting really crazy. Yeah. Uh, and people are showing up and being like, I have to go big. Mm-hmm. So a huge change over the last few years. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Yep. What’s the experience you’re seeing as well? I mean, it, it was a huge amount of buzz at next. [00:11:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. I mean, so interestingly, um, you know, typically when, when people get started on the, on the marketplace in Cosal journey, I always try to caution them and say, this is, uh, this is like a multi-year. [00:12:07] Dai Vu: Yeah. Uh, process. You have to be very intentional. You have to invest. It’s not gonna be a thing where you just list and, and, and, and, and, and sort of this channel opens up. So in some ways, Sean is describing an acceleration that is not common, right? Uh, so they’ve done, we’ve done some amazing things together and we hope to keep that acceleration going. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: What does that require, by the way? Is it engineering resource? I mean, there’s, I talk about executive commitment and maniacal focus. Yeah. But it’s all those things, right? [00:12:29] Shawn Toldo: Well, all of it. But we went to a QBR in Austin, and I put up a slide and I said, we have to do this. And everybody in our ETE agreed. So when you have a chief financial officer that’s bought into the partner business. [00:12:43] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. And I guess qualifying coming into this role at this company, I qualified the C-level staff. Uh, like are they really serious about partner or not? And it’s one of the reasons I took the role. So I think executive commitment was one thing. I think the second thing is we were really well supported, um, by the Google team across the board, right? [00:13:02] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So folks, Indy’s team that we would work with regularly on, these are the things you need to do to have an effective marketplace offering. Here’s what you need to do operationally with folks like John and team and others that are in the market, right? That helped us a ton to be able to scale. And then the other thing that we did is we changed comp. [00:13:20] Shawn Toldo: So from our VP of sales levels down, we have a 5% kicker for everything that goes through marketplace. [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Hear [00:13:26] Shawn Toldo: that everyone. So as soon as we incented the sales team, I love that, right? We, we created the foundation on the partner side, but then from top down on the sales side, they were all in. And as a result of that, the question would become, okay, which marketplace stage two sales cycle are we gonna go use? [00:13:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:43] Shawn Toldo: Who’s the right partner to go partner with? And then my team is reaching out to make sure that co-sell connection happens. [00:13:48] Vince Menzione: That is such a best practice, Sean, to, because there is, as a seller out in the field and we talk about, you talk to John, talks about rev ops all the time. But getting rev ops eng getting the field engaged in the right way. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: ’cause it feels like it’s more work for them. ’cause they have to think, they have to have more conversations with their customer about their cloud commitments and things like that. Mm-hmm. And then getting them incentive to do the right things. The right behavior. [00:14:12] John Janke: Yeah. It’s a strategy process. People, technology problem. [00:14:17] John Janke: Yeah. It’s not just some flip API automation, go list something if you don’t like that top down view. I think the other thing. Like there’s a, there’s a theme in startups where VCs fund second time founders. I think Sean and team have done this before and they took a lot of learnings over the years and reapplied them, which I think helps them go faster. [00:14:36] John Janke: It’s like that second time. Yeah. Second time cloud go to market Founder theme. [00:14:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we could talk about the platform and all the changes there on the. The, the commitments and everything. Mm-hmm. Uh, what separates ISPs generating real incremental revenue on your, in your marketplace? What, what do you see? [00:14:58] Dai Vu: Yeah, so I mean, I, I think there are a couple things. Number one is, uh, the, the foundation has to be, uh, this better together story, uh, with Google Cloud. Um, so this idea that what, you know, what do you bring, what does the Google platform bring and how does that drive impact with customers? And I think this is the reason why Sean and DBT Labs has been very effective. [00:15:16] Dai Vu: ’cause our field recognized they, they can recognize that better together story and communicate it to their customers. So I think that’s the foundation. For everything. Right. And I think as you get started, uh, you know, we do tell partners that they probably need to lean in a little bit, uh, in terms of focus, uh, you know, pick a vertical, a customer segment, um, you know, a geography where they’re particularly strong and, you know, get that momentum going. [00:15:39] Dai Vu: And once you do that, the field knows about it and starts to pull you into deals. Um, so I think that’s the other big opportunity. And then the other thing I just mentioned. Which, uh, the panel already touched on, which is be very intentional around all the things you need to do to invest. Whether it’s like, uh, you know, the business functional alignment, uh, the policies around like, uh, pricing and, and comp, uh, making sure you have the operational capabilities. [00:16:02] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that. First five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through marketplace. And not to, not to top you Sean, but our very top partners are driving 80 to 90% of their business on marketplace. And in fact, some of these partners are actually only marketplace first, uh, uh, because they started out that way. [00:16:21] Dai Vu: Obviously it’s the bigger challenge if you have an existing channel, you’re trying to shift that. But, uh, the aspiration to be more marketplace focus, uh, is up there. [00:16:28] Shawn Toldo: So I just set a new goal for the business plan for me. So that’s exciting. I love it. Looking forward to seeing you in six months on that. [00:16:35] Shawn Toldo: It’s good. [00:16:36] Vince Menzione: I love [00:16:37] Dai Vu: it. Work together on that. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: Well, di I’m just gonna add, add this because I, I got to see operationally with some of the things you do. Mm-hmm. You, you have an overlay organization. [00:16:45] Dai Vu: Yes. Yes. [00:16:46] Vince Menzione: And so you put accelerants in place within your own organization Yeah. To drive the ISVs into the, into the lines of business. [00:16:54] Vince Menzione: Right. You have, you, you do some of that to accelerate. [00:16:57] Dai Vu: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think this is somewhat unique. I don’t, I don’t wanna speak to the other [00:17:00] Shawn Toldo: hyperscalers, [00:17:01] Dai Vu: but we do have, um, uh, you gotta know the field roles, right? [00:17:04] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So [00:17:04] Dai Vu: obviously at Google Cloud in the regions, we have, uh, ISV sales specialists who are effectively quoted on marketplace revenue, right? [00:17:12] Dai Vu: So they’re a hundred percent focused on that. And, uh, in addition to that, uh, we also have these, uh, co-sell teams, partner teams where, you know, opportunistically if there’s an opportunity, uh, in a, in a, in a particular area. This team is responsible for connecting the regional sales leadership, uh, the regional, uh, sales teams with, with the partner on the opportunity. [00:17:32] Dai Vu: So there’s a lot of things we’re doing to sort of accelerate that. And of course, the foundation for all this is, you know, our, our, you know, registering deals. And as you definitely get started on that, it’s very important to be very mindful around when you register deals. Uh, be very clear around what the ask and the engagement is with the field reps. [00:17:51] Dai Vu: But once you have that going and get the right rhythm, it becomes sort of a natural way to sort of register all your deals and get that engagement. And then, um, and then maybe the last thing I would say is it isn’t always the sales specialists. It’s, you know, the FSR, our field sales rep as well as our customer engineers are also very motivated. [00:18:08] Dai Vu: To work, uh, with, uh, with our partners because they know that this, you know, whether it be solution completeness or it’s part of a bigger workload or helps unlock greenfield opportunity, they really are motivated to engage with the partners. [00:18:21] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:18:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. I’ll just add, I’ll just add to that statement too. I think, um, it’s one thing to have a story as it relates to. [00:18:30] Shawn Toldo: Google Cloud and what you do with marketplace. It’s another thing to have a story in terms of how you impact data and analytics in our world. And there’s a set of specialist sellers inside of Google mm-hmm. That really care about us because we drive a lot faster consumption of big query. And our ability to tell that story across the world effectively has really created a pull now. [00:18:54] Shawn Toldo: And so I, I would say it’s almost, you know, back to, you know, being 12 years at Microsoft and watching kind of that. Phase and how that went. As we went to the cloud and we picked specialty areas, um, Google is doing that as well and they’re doing it extremely fast in a very, very productive way with partners. [00:19:12] Shawn Toldo: And so, you know, I’ll get comments from like Levi who runs west in north region for us, and he’s a, he was at Google next and he was like, I, I gotta, I, I just gotta go to bed. I’m tired. Like we wore him out over two days with their sales team and gave him a host of follow ups and actions related to specific sales areas as well as specific accounts. [00:19:34] Shawn Toldo: And I think that’s the other thing that, um, Google’s done a good job of, but we’ve pushed and we’ve had to work really hard to earn that seat at the table. To help make those people successful from a comp perspective inside of Google as well. [00:19:45] John Janke: Yeah, and this is a huge failure zone for partners with the clouds because they think enablement’s a one and done thing. [00:19:51] John Janke: Like I did a training for the field and I told them the better together story. That doesn’t work. Like you have to literally. Have consistency around this message every day. Oftentimes you need experts who can partner with your reps to give them the confidence. ’cause they may be able to ask the first line question, but someone asks a follow up and they fold up ’cause they know your product. [00:20:11] John Janke: That’s right. They don’s don’t understand all of the nuances of Google and the clouds and the questions that may come back. But if you do that well, it is a huge unlock. [00:20:20] Vince Menzione: Talk about the coaching you provided on the tackle side of that as well and kind of helping. Through this maturity model? [00:20:26] John Janke: Yeah. I mean we, we, over the years, I mean we started as a pure SaaS company and over the years our customers would consistently ask us for more help and we would struggle to figure out how to do that, and we had to invest in services and we actually acquired a company. [00:20:42] John Janke: Five years ago now, that was the foundation. Aaron Feiger, who’s in the room. The core consulting was the foundation of our services business. And that continues to evolve with us. And you know, we see customers at scale saying, I wanna operate my cloud, go-to market really consistently, and I want you to do all the backend operations so my teams can be outselling our products, selling the better together value with Google and others, and not have to figure out how to run the machinery. [00:21:09] John Janke: So we’ve invested a lot there. We have services around strategy, like how to help people think about their business strategy and translate it into a better together story and able to get executive buy-in. And then we have coaching, which is really a phone, a friend, because I think these things get complicated. [00:21:24] John Janke: And I had a customer who was doing the largest deal in their company history. It was the end of the quarter and it was Friday, and they’re like, this is going to be the most complex transaction we’ve ever done and we have no idea how to do it. Our team gets on the phone with them, they work through, what are you selling? [00:21:40] John Janke: How are you selling it? Is your listing set up the right way? Can we actually create all the offers? In a way you have confidence to execute. ’cause those are failure modes. You try to build a cloud, go to market business, and you mess up the largest deal in the company. On the last day of the quarter, uh, that’s something you can’t recover from. [00:21:55] John Janke: So we try to really wrap support around our customers to help them have the confidence to grow. [00:22:02] Vince Menzione: Di you’ve seen tremendous growth in marketplace. Mm-hmm. We don’t publish the numbers specifically. Yeah. We kind of try to figure it out on the back end, but [00:22:09] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:22:09] Vince Menzione: I know you’re accelerated. Your, your marketplace numbers are astounding. [00:22:13] Dai Vu: Yes. I can share some numbers, if that’s [00:22:15] Vince Menzione: okay. Please. Yeah, let’s go. [00:22:18] Dai Vu: So, um. I would say that for a few years now, we’ve been talking about growth. So we’ve been consistently, uh, you know, north of a hundred percent year over year growth. Uh, for the last few years we’ve been processing, uh, what I say, uh, billions of dollars, uh, annually and, uh, uh, millions of transactions. [00:22:36] Dai Vu: And again, that’s for a few years now. Now for 24 to 25, that full year we also doubled. Wow. Uh, which is, uh, which is amazing when you think about the scale in which we operate. But more importantly, if you look at specific category areas, right? So, you know, historically, marketplace has always cater to, uh, those solution pillars that are tied to cloud migrations, like, uh, like security and data and analytics. [00:22:59] Dai Vu: And those continue to be very strong areas for us. But the biggest growth area is, uh, is in the areas of business app. So obviously, you know, the, the ServiceNow workday, uh, Salesforce of the world, as well as the AI category. So one number that we threw out next was 18 x. Year over year growth for the AI category. [00:23:17] Dai Vu: Wow. So in one year now, a lot of it is models, right? So foundational models with our, with our ecosystem. But a lot of that is around agents. So this whole agent go to market model is gonna be, continue to grow and it’s gonna be a huge focus area for, for the coming years. [00:23:32] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic growth. [00:23:34] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, and, and I’ll add, Diane and I talked about this at Google next. This is a. Very complex thing for DBT, where today we sell seats. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:23:43] Shawn Toldo: To data engineers. [00:23:44] Yeah. [00:23:44] Shawn Toldo: And now we have all these agentic things that are hitting our engine. And di and I are talking and we’re like, okay, so how does this work in an ag agentic marketplace? [00:23:54] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Kind of a scenario. And what should we build? Where should we play it? ’cause we’re gonna spin the meter in a different way, so to speak. [00:24:01] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:24:01] Shawn Toldo: And so candidly, we got stuff to figure out related to that. Um, I think what’s been fascinating for DBT is our partner ecosystem changed overnight. So now it’s like I talked to x.ai on Monday. [00:24:15] Shawn Toldo: Mm-hmm. We got time with open AI on Thursday and we have a call with Anthropic and our, uh, CEO and co-founder and uh, chief Product Officer next week. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Mm. [00:24:27] Shawn Toldo: We don’t have anybody managing those partners. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:24:30] Shawn Toldo: Today our focus is on managing the large, uh, hyperscalers plus Snowflake and, uh, Databricks. [00:24:36] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:24:36] Shawn Toldo: And then the SI ecosystem and some tech partners. So we’re having to like, to your point on Agile yesterday. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like we’re having to change our strategy, operating model and organizational model to support that. And candidly, we don’t have all the answers yet, so we have a lot of things to figure out fast, which is a little bit scary. [00:24:54] Shawn Toldo: And challenging, but it’s also a huge opportunity we have to kind of embrace and get into. Yeah. [00:24:59] Vince Menzione: And they’re figuring out as well. ’cause they’re, they’re new to partnering as well. Yeah. As organizations [00:25:03] John Janke: and these AI agents. I think to demystify for a lot of people, and what Sean said is totally right. [00:25:08] John Janke: They’re disrupting everyone’s business model. But in reality from a marketplace standpoint, they’re metered SaaS. This is a thing that’s existed for a long time. Yeah. They look like product-led growth products. There is a lot of patterns around how product-led growth products work in marketplace. Mm-hmm. [00:25:24] John Janke: But you have to bring your business strategy, your product and pricing strategy to those two categories. Metered SaaS and product-led growth. Put that all together to get cross-functional alignment. So we are seeing like. A lot of people get tripped up here and it really does go back to more of the company strategy, product strategy questions, and a lot of partner leaders are not in the room for those conversations. [00:25:48] John Janke: So I think at, at this point in time, as you see big pivots with the partners to go all in on agents, you have to go elevate. Those discussions to be like, what is our plan here? ’cause I, I mean, pricing and packaging will be the thing that trips almost everyone up. [00:26:02] Dai Vu: If I could, if I just build on what John John mentioned, um, so I do agree. [00:26:06] Dai Vu: P it looks a lot like POG, but, uh, but the difference I think is POG has. More historically been in like the data and developer space, now it’s like the general business user, right? So this idea that you want a business user to be able to search and discover, um, agents that could actually be part of their like everyday workflow is going to be very critical. [00:26:26] Dai Vu: And uh, you know, I do think that when we think about the ecosystem building agents. Uh, you know, a lot of the ISV partners aren’t necessarily gonna own end-to-end workflows, right? They’ll, they’ll have a very specific, uh, domain and scope area, but you have to enable yourself to be orchestrated and managed by, you know, orchestration agents or, or, or meta agents that are gonna span end, end workflows. [00:26:49] Dai Vu: And sometimes that includes system integrators and, and others who can stitch that, that automation. So I think, I think that’s, that’s one piece of it. But the other area that I think is gonna be different is, um. There’s going to be a lot of agents. I mean, literally you’re gonna have a very fragmented set of, uh, uh, of players, right? [00:27:07] Dai Vu: It’s not just gonna be the incumbents, it’s gonna be a lot of disruptors and, and, and, and startups. And so the, uh, for the incumbents in the room, it is a mandate that you need to, to innovate because if you do not identify and go to like an agent first, go to market model. Uh, you’re gonna be, you know, disintermediated. [00:27:25] Dai Vu: Somebody’s gonna go build an agent that’s going to leverage you as a dumb database. Um, and they’re gonna own the workflow. So you have to, you have to push the, the, the, the limits here. And I think it’s creates a big opportunity for everyone in this room. [00:27:39] John Janke: I’m going off script. I’m curious. Let’s do it. I’m curious on your take on the system integrators. [00:27:44] John Janke: ’cause I think this, this puts like they’re all, a lot of them are creating agents for people and I think that’s turning them almost more into software companies than they’ve ever been. [00:27:53] Dai Vu: They are, and I think they’re, you know, obviously they’re being, uh, impacted from like, you know, typical like, you know, SOW you know, time and materials type type business models. [00:28:02] Dai Vu: But I do think they play a big role because a lot of the system integrators are bringing, um, you know, vertical and business process expertise. And, um, like I said, I said before, a lot of the ISVs are not gonna necessarily have big enough scope in their area to own end-to-end workflows. And that’s really the promise of agents, right? [00:28:20] Dai Vu: You really need. This cognitive, you know, reasoning, planning, executing across end to end workflows. And I think, you know, the system integrators are gonna bring that capability either, either through, you know, these custom, uh, orchestration or meta agents or if they’re able to productize that and bring that to a model, they can also sort of go through the marketplace model as well. [00:28:41] Dai Vu: So who knows is how it’s gonna evolve. But you know, we’ve always been talking about. Marketplace being a broader opportunity for all partner business models. And I think that will extend to not only, uh, you know, traditional sort of, uh, sell and services partners, but also some of these system integrators as well. [00:28:58] Shawn Toldo: If I could comment on that, please. Yeah. I, I was in London two weeks ago and we did an SI partner day. Mm-hmm. We had 25 sis in a room, probably about 50 people. We had no, um, hyperscalers or cloud data warehouse providers. And when we started talking about open data infrastructure. The role that they can play. [00:29:17] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:29:18] Shawn Toldo: Cross platform in a cost efficient manner for customers and the advisory orientation of that. They all leaned in and we, we stopped talking and they started talking. [00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:29:28] Shawn Toldo: So they’re all facing this kind of same problem, which is actually causing a little bit of a shift, I think, in how they think about, I’m a Databricks partner. [00:29:38] Shawn Toldo: Uh, you sure you wanna do that? [00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:40] Shawn Toldo: So this, this whole thing that’s kind of evolved in the last six to 12 months, when you kind of pick one horse to ride, I, I would tell you be cautious about what that means. You may pick a horse to lead with mm-hmm. But you’re gonna have to flank yourself a bit in terms of other providers that can help you be successful with that, that that partner you’re gonna roll with. [00:30:00] Vince Menzione: So you’re suggesting data vendor agnostic. [00:30:04] Shawn Toldo: I’m suggesting you really have to think about your strategy. Yeah. Because I think the AI, AI disruption is gonna make you think about that strategy. [00:30:13] John Janke: Yeah, I mean there’s, someone mentioned anthropics First Partner Summit. I was not there, but I’ve heard from a bunch of people were there. [00:30:20] John Janke: You know, they had a hundred partners in the room. 95 of them were system integrators. Five were technology companies, the three Clouds, Databricks and Snowflake. Like if you just think about the, the one of the major disruptors in ai, ISVs, were not in the mix. So I, I think, are they trying to disrupt all of us? [00:30:40] John Janke: Uh, do they need us? And they haven’t figured out how to work with us. I, I think. It’s, it’s, [00:30:44] Vince Menzione: and I’ve heard they only have five people in their partner organization, so I just, it’s, [00:30:49] Shawn Toldo: it’s 11 now, but it’s 11, [00:30:51] Vince Menzione: so it was five [00:30:51] Shawn Toldo: last growing fast in the, in the new company I have 50. So like, to put it in perspective, they have to make some pretty big priority. [00:30:59] John Janke: Yeah. And everyone’s been there a hot second, [00:31:00] Vince Menzione: like, right, exactly. Yeah, they, well, we will talk about the learnings we’ve had over the years, getting to where they need to get to. It’s exciting times. We got a lot to talk about here. Um, I, you know, we have about 15 minutes. I I, I want to kind of gauge, ’cause we could talk, we, we have a few things we could talk about, I could ask about, but I want to see if there’s an, like, an interest in opening up to the room for questions. [00:31:25] Vince Menzione: ’cause I feel like we’ve got a very interesting group here. [00:31:28] Shawn Toldo: You got a hand here? [00:31:29] Vince Menzione: Uh, are there hands that wanna Yeah, there’s some people that wanna ask some questions. So Yeah. We have a mic? Yeah, [00:31:37] Dai Vu: we have [00:31:37] Shawn Toldo: a mic. We, [00:31:37] Vince Menzione: we [00:31:38] Shawn Toldo: got one here. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: We got one here. One here. Thank you. Sorry we went off script, but [00:31:44] Shawn Toldo: that’s fine. [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: It’s fine. [00:31:45] Dai Vu: Off [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: script. Better is good. [00:31:46] Shawn Toldo: I’m sure you planted the questions outta anyway. It’s okay. We [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: did, we did. [00:31:55] Audience Guest: Okay. All Eva, Sean Lightner, quick question to your, uh, increase on the marketplace, and you said you spiff the salespeople by fifth percent. 5%. Mm-hmm. So, and that obviously drives a very large adoption of, uh, marketplace transactions. How are you accounting for the margin you’re losing on, uh, you know, going through the marketplace? [00:32:14] Audience Guest: And also have you done analysis? I’m sure you have, how much is, uh, shape shifting or shifting from existing versus incremental? [00:32:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, um, lemme make three points. Number one, the backlog statement makes the margin statement not matter. So do you wanna play in that space where a customer’s already bought or not? [00:32:36] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Or do you wanna force a budget conversation that you have to drive on your own in a direct model? That to me, I think it was 484 4 62 [00:32:43] Dai Vu: 4 6 [00:32:44] Shawn Toldo: 2. [00:32:44] Vince Menzione: That’s new Tam available to you? [00:32:46] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. That, that’s just with one. Right. And we are, we are, uh, running on four marketplaces. So that just increases our tam and makes our, our sellers lives easier. [00:32:55] Shawn Toldo: So on that piece, yes, there’s an expense, but we believe it’s right for growth. So there’s a balance there. Um, I think the, and then the second part of your question again. Sorry, [00:33:05] Vince Menzione: shapeshift. [00:33:05] Shawn Toldo: Oh, shift. We, we actually don’t think we would’ve won the business. So if I go back to our Q4 and I can probably point to three or four deals that went, um, Google Marketplace, we would not have won those deals because we couldn’t have created the budget cycle and that quarter. [00:33:23] Shawn Toldo: To make it happen. Generally a budget cycle is gonna take anywhere from 12 to 15 months. Bingo. Because of the spend that was available to us, we were able to close it in that quarter, and we had the largest Q4 in company history. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That is such an important point. I’m sorry. [00:33:37] Dai Vu: Okay. [00:33:38] Vince Menzione: But I, I just wanna, that is such an important point of the budget cycle. [00:33:42] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:33:43] Vince Menzione: Being a year to a year and a half versus being able to tap into a commitment that’s already been made. Yeah, so I just emphasize that [00:33:51] Dai Vu: I was, I was just gonna add real quick, even, even when we see sort of a, uh, a channel shift renewal, which is, you know, it’s on partner paper and it moves to marketplace as part of the renewals, we do consistently see that the, uh, renewal rates on marketplace and the incremental a CB on the expansion and new opportunities tend to be better when it’s on the platform marketplace than than offline. [00:34:12] Dai Vu: And that’s why partners choose to continue to drive renewals on marketplace at a reduced to rev share. But uh, because they see that that growth, [00:34:20] John Janke: we, we, sorry. [00:34:22] Shawn Toldo: We see that as well. Yeah. And I would also make the statement on our land business, when we go through marketplace, we are two x higher across marketplaces. [00:34:30] Shawn Toldo: We’re three x higher with them. [00:34:32] John Janke: Yeah, I think separate new from renewals and then instrument deeply. [00:34:37] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, [00:34:38] John Janke: go proactively talk to your CFO and your head of rev ops to understand their mindset. Because I was with a billion dollar seller a couple weeks ago, their CFO still creates friction in the process, even though they’re selling a billion dollars through these channels. [00:34:52] John Janke: But when they broke it down, their deals are three times bigger. They do them faster. They use more components of the product, which I thought was a really cool one. So customers who buy this platform, many component platforms through a marketplace, end up using six components of the product. Versus a normal land customer who uses two increases gross in net retention. [00:35:12] John Janke: So you have to get to the point where you have the data and you can tell that story real really clearly to your finance team to get support ’cause that they will trip you up if you don’t get them on board. [00:35:23] Vince Menzione: And you’re saying there’s friction in that company. I’m just kind of curious ’cause a billion dollar company. [00:35:27] John Janke: There’s a billion dollar marketplace seller [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: market marketplace company. That’s what I meant. Yeah. But, but the fact that this, their CFO friction, like, is it, is it because they’re not doing a good enough job or? [00:35:37] John Janke: Uh, in, of educating, I, the root of the question is from this person is, would they win without it? [00:35:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:45] Shawn Toldo: Oh, and is it worth the three points? [00:35:46] John Janke: Right. It’s, it is And, and I think some pe like to me, it’s the cheapest channel in the world. Yeah. Like with committed budget and people to support you winning. Like the, that formula, the math is so simple. [00:35:57] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. For, for a company of our size to go to like the classic resell ecosystem, I gotta walk in with 30 points. [00:36:02] John Janke: Yeah. [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:03] Shawn Toldo: It, it’s an illogical conversation. Outside of public sector and growth, you know, geos around the world. And so I, I’ve been lucky to have a CFO that I haven’t had that challenge with, at least at DBTI should say. [00:36:19] Vince Menzione: Really great insights. I think we have, we have another hand up here. [00:36:28] Audience Guest: Yeah. Thanks Susan. The question is for Dai. Uh, my name is Latif Hamani. I’m the founder of Partner System ai. Um, so what we’ve done is we’ve built a, a co-sell AI agent mm-hmm. That your partners can use to Yeah. Reduce all the friction in the co-sell with you. Uh, the questions that I have is, I guess I should back up, so XAWS Madison with a very large alliances, and then I worked, went on the other side. [00:36:55] Audience Guest: For software companies, and even though I had an operational team, I was spending two to three hours on on the keyboard, right? Mm-hmm. Deal registration, emails that can’t be automated, et cetera. So the question that I have for you is, I’d love for you to validate that. You know, unless you are one of the big companies, one of the big enterprises, if you go to the lower end of the enterprise or the mid market, uh, would you validate that there is a challenge? [00:37:20] Audience Guest: There’s a lot of friction for a smaller company. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause these marketplaces are complex. Yeah. The cosell is complex. Uh, that there’s an opportunity to really break down that friction with some automation and ai. [00:37:33] Dai Vu: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we have already been, uh, part of the journey to remove some of the, uh, the friction as part of that selling and purchasing journey. [00:37:43] Dai Vu: Uh. We’re not quite there yet. But, uh, we’ve done things like we have, uh, you know, private offer APIs. We, uh, we have co-sell, uh, registration automation. Um, you know, we have tools like, uh, propensity to buy, tooling to help, uh, partners do, uh, more targeted efforts. Um, but the a i piece is still coming. Um, so I think, uh, the idea here is that we have launched a number of agents as part of our, um. [00:38:08] Dai Vu: Uh, part of our, uh, Google Cloud Partner network, partner hub. Uh, so these are, uh, agents that are gonna do a bunch of things to help partners as part of their workflow, but we’re gonna extend this to the marketplace and ISV area as well. Uh, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity. So, uh, I know there’s probably a lot of feedback in friction, uh, in, in certain parts. [00:38:29] Dai Vu: So we can, we can go tackle together. [00:38:32] Vince Menzione: Hey. There you go. There was a little [00:38:34] Dai Vu: plug [00:38:34] Shawn Toldo: there for tackle. Exactly. [00:38:37] Dai Vu: Uh, and I wanted, and just to be clear, I want to take a look at it from the end to end, uh, uh, flow, right? It shouldn’t just be just marketplace. It should be all the way from like, you know, top of the funnel, demand generation, all the way to like post transaction follow up. [00:38:51] Dai Vu: So we really need to take a look at, at the, the end, end flows and figure out a way we can remove some of that friction [00:38:56] Vince Menzione: three sense. [00:38:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: Any more questions [00:39:00] Audience Guest: back here? Hey. Hey guys. This, this is a really good discussion. Uh, di this question’s primarily, uh, from, I’m interested in the hyperscaler response. [00:39:09] Audience Guest: Yep. Uh, but all of you, uh, can you talk about the patterns or say more about the patterns between. Um, the consumption of just platform capabilities versus industry workflows. Mm-hmm. And how industry where I, I mean, I, I, my sense is that industry workflows are becoming more [00:39:27] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:39:28] Audience Guest: Uh, the easier thing for enterprises and SMBs to buy. [00:39:33] Audience Guest: Yeah. Especially SMBs, I think. Um, but say more about those patterns that you’re seeing develop and kind of what is. Uh, who are, where, where are those kind of, where is the demand being driven? Is it, is it, yeah. The search and discover in the marketplace, or is it being led by field sales of mm-hmm. Either GCP or partners? [00:39:55] Dai Vu: Yeah, so let me, I’ll mention a couple, a couple areas where, where it’s growing. So I think number one I mentioned before about some of these large horizontal business apps that we’re partnering with, right? Um, and, uh, and of course the fact that we’re, we’re, we’re transacting them through marketplace is, is a huge. [00:40:14] Dai Vu: Evolution from a few years ago. So who would’ve thought you would be buying like, you know, a hundred million dollars a CB deals, uh, through, through marketplace with like a Salesforce or a ServiceNow workday. But it’s happening now. And to be clear, all these. Horizontal business app. They’re not doing this in a very, you know, opportunistic, transactional way. [00:40:32] Dai Vu: They basically see marketplace and cloud go to market as a strategic growth lever for them. So that’s one big area. So from just a pure large deal perspective. Okay. Then you mentioned before around sort of corporate and SMB. Well, we find that a lot of the big opportunities are mostly around as they scale their business, uh, they’re not necessarily looking for things in the traditional sort of infrastructure space, but they’re looking for, you know, full SaaS applications to help scale their business, right? [00:40:58] Dai Vu: So it would be CRM, finance, hr, these types of solutions to become very attractive for some of this, uh, downstream market. And then lastly, as I mentioned before, which is, uh, when we think about this gentrification and owning, um. Uh, driving, uh, this business process and vertical, the ISVs become very important along with the services partners who bring that domain expertise to drive the end to end workflow. [00:41:25] Dai Vu: So I think that’s gonna be increasingly important. So those are three areas I think we need to watch out for. We. Okay. [00:41:30] John Janke: Maybe one thing, like as the cloud commit grows inside of companies, it’s shifted from being an engineering department, IT department budget line item to a corporate finance budget line item. [00:41:40] John Janke: Typically one of the top five to 10 expenses in a company. So that has shifted. Who is thinking about optimizing? The cloud commit with marketplace contracts. And that opens, that’s really opened up the avenue in addition to like these biz apps, vertical apps players. Yeah. Like having success. So I, I do think even inside your own company, evaluating where your cloud commits are, who owns them and are they thinking about the intersection of marketplace? [00:42:06] John Janke: ’cause I, I think it’s smaller companies, they’re still figuring it out. I run into engineering leaders who still own the commits, uh, but in medium to large companies. Very different. [00:42:16] Vince Menzione: Really good point. Because it, you know this, the optics change dramatically, right? This large commitment is now at the board level, [00:42:23] John Janke: right? [00:42:23] John Janke: And then you do have to teach your sellers as a vertical or business application player how to ask that question. ’cause the first resistance everybody says is, oh my, my person, my stakeholder, we. Manufacturing vertical application provider talking at an event last week, and they’re like, the shop floor manufacturing owner doesn’t know anything about the cloud commit. [00:42:43] John Janke: But if they ask the question, be like, Hey, do you guys have a strategic relationship with Google? Would it be easier to buy our product on the bill? Eight out of 10 times they get a yes. So [00:42:52] Vince Menzione: which is why the 5% comes in And that really accelerates the conversation happening. Yeah. We’ve got three more minutes. [00:43:01] Vince Menzione: Um, if we don’t have any other questions, I ha I have one for each of you really about the maturity model and partners are in the room that are not committed yet, right? We’ve talked about some very significant DBTs doing some incredible things, right? So we, there’s maybe a sense that like we, you, you are working with the be the biggest and the best out there, but what about everyone else that’s in the room that maybe isn’t committed yet? [00:43:23] Vince Menzione: And maybe they’re in motion, but they need some help and advice on what to go do next. What? What would you say die first? [00:43:30] Dai Vu: So they’re early stage, [00:43:31] Vince Menzione: early, early stage or not, they’re not on board yet. They’re not, yeah. They’re not with you yet. [00:43:35] Dai Vu: Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll go back to my earlier comment, which is that as you go into the journey, just be very intentional about what you need to do from an operational, investment people, uh, technology perspective. [00:43:47] Dai Vu: Uh, because it could be, it could be a multi-year journey. Um, uh, so I’d say go into it with the right expectations as opposed to thinking it’s going to be some accelerated six month thing that Sean has been driving here. It’s, he’s the outlier. [00:43:59] Shawn Toldo: But, but the reason for the outlier, [00:44:00] Dai Vu: yeah. [00:44:01] Shawn Toldo: And just to add to the intentional point Yeah. [00:44:02] Shawn Toldo: Is, you know, hire the right people. Right. So, somebody told me a long time ago, uh, hire slow, fire fast. That’s a really, really, really good principle that I take. Mm-hmm. I don’t like the fire part, obviously, but just for context, I, I am very lucky to have a great set of leaders that we were able to add people in. [00:44:24] Shawn Toldo: When I walked in the door, we had a person that was leading the Snowflake and AWS partnership. I had nobody on GCPI had nobody on Microsoft. I had nobody on Databricks. And then we made prioritization decisions on where we’re gonna go next. And so we hired people that had the experience and could drive the outcome in the right way. [00:44:43] Shawn Toldo: But we were very thoughtful about when we made those decisions on a quarterly basis, not a daily basis. So who you’re gonna bet on and then who you’re gonna put in the seat to make that bet come to life, I think is a really important thing as well. [00:44:58] John Janke: Yeah. [00:44:58] Vince Menzione: John, you worked with the be biggest and the best out there, so Yeah, sorry. [00:45:01] John Janke: Well, I think there’s the, like there’s the bottoms up and the tops down. Like seven years ago, this was all bottoms up. It was a partner leader who thought launching a marketplace would be good and they would go figure out how to do some deals and then sell their way up. Today there’s a lot more top down where people get it. [00:45:17] John Janke: But you can evaluate top down pretty fast. ’cause if you go talk to your CEO, you talk to your head of product, you talk to your CFO, and they have an allergic reaction to these concepts. You know, you have to go bottoms up. But there also are success story examples in every single ISV category that exists. [00:45:33] John Janke: Like this is not just security and data and DevOp like the, I think the ServiceNow. Salesforce workday. Examples are really great, like the marketing tech examples, more and more business of vertical apps every day. So I do think you can look at those people who’ve been successful. Maybe they’re your competitors, maybe they’re people you aspire to be and reference them as you’re trying to figure out how to do top down. [00:45:55] John Janke: But like you need both. You can’t win long term unless you get top down and bottom up aligned. [00:46:01] Shawn Toldo: And, and when I, when I would go ask for resourcing, I would always get the question, do, could you go faster with more? And I’d say, no. Gimme the one or two humans here, let me go prove it out and I’ll come back. [00:46:13] Shawn Toldo: So there’s a little bit of a strategy in doing that, that you’re gonna get more over time when you’re, you know, very measured in how you go ask for investment and resource. And so I would just add that point also. [00:46:27] Vince Menzione: Was, was hiring a significant component of your executive commitment, Sean? I mean, [00:46:33] Shawn Toldo: yes. So when I walked in the door at DBT, we had eight people in the partner organization. [00:46:38] Shawn Toldo: Today we have 25, and that was 18 months ago. But that did not happen. I didn’t go in and ask for, you know, that 16 people. Right. I asked over time in a very measured way with, you know, the programs and strategy team, like, what can we also support? You don’t want to bring somebody in to go do something and you don’t have the programs and operations side to support it ’cause they’ll fail. [00:47:01] Shawn Toldo: So we’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve done that as well. [00:47:04] Vince Menzione: Die from you. I know you had something. [00:47:06] Dai Vu: No, no, no. I, I was good. [00:47:08] Vince Menzione: What is the one thing that people in this room need to go better and differently? Is there one, is there one specific thing other than what we’ve already discussed, did we miss anything? [00:47:16] Dai Vu: No, I would just, the whole identification. So obviously, uh, identifying this is not just like slapping a chat bot, but more around thinking all the things we talked about, product commercials, but also go to market where it’s agent first, where you can surface your agent in a workflow like Gemini Enterprise app. [00:47:34] Dai Vu: That’s gonna drive high alignment with how we work and go to market with Google. [00:47:38] Vince Menzione: Awesome. [00:47:38] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:47:40] Vince Menzione: Wow. Good stuff. Yeah. Very good session. [00:47:44] Dai Vu: Thank [00:47:44] Vince Menzione: you guys. What do you think? Everyone? Thank you very much. [00:47:47] Shawn Toldo: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. [00:47:50] Vince Menzione: If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:47:55] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, [00:48:11] John Janke: October 26th through October 28th. [00:48:14] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything [00:48:22] I.

Jeff Homer bought a small local music school as a fun side hustle. It turned out to be the opportunity of a lifetime.Topics in Jeff interview:Switching from high finance to music schoolsBuying his first music school as a side projectRaising growth equity after first 2 acquisitionsAcquiring a music school every monthArtists' negative predisposition toward sellingComparing profitability of music vs. danceImportance of general managers in scalingImplementing apps to streamline operationsOther industries with roll-up potentialRolling up 60+ music/dance schools nationwideReferences and how to contact Jeff:LinkedInEnsemble Performing ArtsDownload the New CEO's Guide to Human Resources from Aspen HR:From this page or contact jenny@aspenhr.comWork with an SBA loan team focused exclusively on helping entrepreneurs buy businesses:Pioneer Capital AdvisoryThe ecosystem for serious acquisition entrepreneurs—education, capital, community, and post-close support to buy and grow a business:The Acquisition LabConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

Resilience is one of the most common words in conversations about leadership, wellbeing, and life. We celebrate resilient people. We encourage one another to be more resilient. But what if we've unintentionally reduced resilience to simply "bouncing back"? In this Walk with SMB episode, I share a question that's been following me as I prepare a workshop on mental reset and resilience: What story are we telling ourselves about resilience? Drawing on my background in environmental science and organizational wellbeing, I explore what happens when we look at resilience through the lens of nature. Living systems don't avoid challenge—they adapt, recover, reorganize, and continue changing. What might we learn if we viewed our own resilience the same way? Along the way, I introduce six conditions I'm beginning to notice that seem to support resilience and thriving: environment, relationships, rhythms, recovery, meaning, and mind. This isn't a finished framework—it's an exploration. Together, we'll consider how mental resets create space to notice our stories, respond rather than react, and become more aware of the conditions that help us adapt and thrive. I'll leave you with two questions I'm still carrying: What story are you telling yourself about resilience? And perhaps an even more useful one... What conditions help you thrive? Connect with Susan Website: https://susanmorganbailey.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanmorganbailey/ ROOTED Podcast: https://www.rootedsoulliving.com/rooted-podcast If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear what stayed with you. Share your reflections on LinkedIn or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Your stories help shape future conversations.

In this episode of Future Finance, Paul Barnhurst and Glenn Hopper sit down with Nick Jain and Daniel Settel, co-founders of Eagle Rock CFO, to discuss how AI is reshaping FP&A and fractional CFO services. Nick and Dan explain how their AI-powered system combines structured data processing, automation, and financial expertise to help companies analyze complex financial data faster, reduce manual workload, and uncover hidden value in their operations.Dan and Nick are co-founders of Eagle Rock CFO, a financial advisory firm helping mid-size businesses grow faster and improve profitability. They combine AI and technology to deliver operational finance insights at a fraction of traditional consulting costs. Both are Harvard Business School graduates, with undergraduate degrees from Stanford and Dartmouth. Dan previously co-founded FinTech company Zanbato and worked as a professional investor at PrimeCap, while Nick has experience in private equity investing and scaling companies across SaaS, footwear, and trucking.In this episode, you will discover:AI works best when paired with structured financial data, not raw inputsWhy deterministic systems still matter alongside AI in finance workflowsHow Eagle Rock's 5-step system improves financial analysis accuracyWhy human oversight is still needed in AI-powered FP&A systemsHow fractional CFOs can save 20–50 hours per month using AI toolsNick and Daniel demonstrate how AI is transforming finance by automating analysis while still relying on structured systems and human judgment. Their approach shows that the future of FP&A is not fully autonomous AI, but a hybrid model where AI enhances decision-making, improves efficiency, and strengthens financial visibility.Follow Nick:Website: https://www.eaglerockcfo.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmjain/Follow Dan:Website: https://www.eaglerockcfo.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsettel/Follow Glenn:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbhopperiiiFollow Paul:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefpandaguyFollow QFlow.AI:Website - https://bit.ly/4i1EkjgFuture Finance is sponsored by QFlow.ai, the strategic finance platform solving the toughest part of planning and analysis: B2B revenue. Align sales, marketing, and finance, speed up decision-making, and lock in accountability with QFlow.ai. Stay tuned for a deeper understanding of how AI is shaping the future of finance and what it means for businesses and individuals alike.In Today's Episode:[00:00] – Trailer[04:10] – Founding Eagle Rock CFO[06:21] – Deterministic vs probabilistic systems[07:22] – Why agents are not enough[09:13] – Data compression and structuring[10:13] – Human oversight in AI workflows[14:51] – Data mess in SMB finance[18:38] – White-label and consulting model[22:18] – How to start using AI safely[29:36] – CFO vs CEO vs CIO experience[33:45] – Closing thoughts

In this episode, Alex and I had the chance to discuss:* What industry stakeholders — fintechs, banks, and debt capital providers — can learn from the abrupt collapse of SMB credit card startup Parker card* Prediction market grab bag: Polymarket allegedly ran fake ads, Meta plans to launch “Arena,” the CFTC proposes a rule* The debanking debate just won't go away* And, as always, what Alex and I just can't let go ofAnd a reminder, if you're enjoying this show, please follow, rate & review on your preferred podcast platform, as it really helps others to find the show.And if you want to help support Fintech Business Weekly and independent journalism, upgrade to a paid subscription or reach more than 92,000+ listeners by sponsoring an episode. Get full access to Fintech Business Weekly at fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to Fintech Recap. I'm Alex Johnson, joined as always by my partner in recapping, Jason Mikula. We start with Parker Card, an SMB charge card startup that abruptly shut down in early May. The failure itself wasn't the story. The SVB lawsuit against issuing partner Patriot Bank is, and what it reveals about $21 million in receivables that fell into contested no-man's-land when Parker's acquisition talks collapsed. If Synapse taught us anything, we apparently didn't learn it. Then prediction markets, a topic Jason forced me to cover. Fake Polymarket videos, Zuckerberg's play-money prediction app called Arena, and the CFTC's proposed rule, which would give the industry nearly everything it wants (while drawing the line at contracts on assassination). We examine a specific loophole in that last point very carefully … From there, we get into debanking. A cluster of recent developments (from the DOJ investigating big banks and reputation risk being formally eliminated as a supervision tool to Lead Bank CEO Jackie Reses calling the whole narrative an absolute crock of shit) gave us enough to work with. Jason and I have both written extensively on this topic, and we land somewhere that might surprise some listeners. Finally, in our Can't Let It Gos: incomplete charter applications and a credit card pulled directly from my fintech nightmares. --- This episode is brought to you by Ocrolus.  Every small business is different — but most lenders only see a snapshot. Ocrolus gives SMB lenders the cash flow analytics, borrower behavior and peer context to fund more, faster, with confidence. Visit https://www.ocrolus.com/ for more. Sign up for Alex's Fintech Takes newsletter for the latest insightful analysis on fintech trends, along with a heaping pile of pop culture references and copious footnotes. Every Monday and Thursday: https://workweek.com/brand/fintech-takes/  And for more exclusive insider content, don't forget to check out my YouTube page. Follow Jason: Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/   Follow Alex:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgfH47QEwbQmkQlz1V9rQA/videos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhjohnson Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AlexH_Johnson

Dr. Robert Fullick joins Ben Stephenson and Amari Mercadel at the Sports Medicine Update to discuss shoulder evaluations in the athletic shoulder. Run down of extra tests, such as bear hug. You learn more as time goes on, good training and fine-tuning over the years. A bear hug assesses a specific part of the subscapular tendon. Other testing may be normal with an upper subscapular tendon injury.   How can I do all the tests? Do I skip some? We go from doing all the tests to gaining the confidence to know what the athlete is telling me to help figure out what tests to use. I would recommend doing all the tests until you gain enough knowledge to be able to skip around. You’re gonna get better as you go. I used to have doubts about the shoulder early in my career but look at me now. I see every MRI of every patient that I see, and I see every surgical evaluation that might need it. So I would say I’m pretty good at what I do. I've gotta be the best I can so that I’m not the guy saying that we're gonna do physical therapy because I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, they’re gonna go see another guy.  Tell us more about your background, especially with the shoulder. My sports background put me in a unique situation where I was comfortable in the locker room. My mentor in Boston worked for pro teams and I got into being on pro sidelines and sitting with different people. Being a young resident covering high-level sports on my own. Foster relationships when I moved to Baltimore got my sports fellowship.  I don’t wanna be wrong, I hate being wrong. When you see someone do an eval, is there something that you are like “Oh, I wouldn’t do that”? I would say the biggest thing that I see missed is not disrobing the shoulder to see the skin, posterior shoulder, etc. Then you’re looking at the testing and trying to discern between a cuff strain versus labral. Thats not your fault. Based on the findings, timing, MOI, you can determine whether the patient needs imaging or do they just need physical therapy and some rehab. I would not be hard on yourself. Everyone is going to be in a different spot.  What are your recs for prehab? Complex scenario but I tell everyone the stronger the rotator cuff and the more motion going into surgery the better the recovery is going to be. Pre-op motion strongly indicates early post-op motion in my opinion. Reducing shoulder injuries; how do we know if the humeral head is fractured? It’s an impossibility; I might have the luxury to know what a fractured arm looks like, but you might not. If a bone looks crooked, if a shoulder is out of palace then you try to make it look normal. If you go to reduce and you feel movement of the patient feels pain or a clunk or the humeral head doesn’t feel 100% out, then maybe you might think a fracture. You’ll never be able to know in that split second. I still see in the ER that they miss posterior dislocations. If you don’t get an axillary view, you don’t get the full workup. You gotta find a way to get that view, if not, get a CT scan. If you miss a posterior dislocation on the field, that’s okay, you’re doing the best that you can do with what you have.  Relocations on the sideline: tips and tricksMilch maneuver? For the anterior, the external rotation and abduction should be able to relocate. I had a patient just walk his fingers up his head, didn’t even have to touch the patient to relocate the shoulder (patient had hsitory of numerous dislocations), just know the basics and principles. You can prevent labral damage by getting the head in quicker What about those with repeated dislocations? If you encounter those with dislocations with sneezing and sleeping, typically they need intervention and surgery for the labrum and bone loss. Patients have more motion post-surgery because trust is restored within the joint. Contact Us Jeremy Jackson Benjamin Stephenson Layci Harrison Mark Knoblauch Ashlyne Elliott Leslie Bennett Sponsor List Frio Hydration – Superior Hydration products. Xothrm – Best heating pad available – Use “SMB” or email info@xothrm.com and mention the Sports Medicine Broadcast. Donate and get some swag (like Patreon but for the school) HOIST – No matter your reason for dehydration, DRINK HOIST MedBridge Education – Use “TheSMB” to save some money, be entered in a drawing for a second year free, and support the podcast. Marc Pro – Use “THESMB” to recover better. Athletic Dry Needling – Save up to $100 when registering through our link.

Caleb Standafer believed in manufacturing and wanted to spend his career there. A multi-year pivot and ETA got him in.Topics in Caleb's interview:Moving from tech to manufacturingManufacturing is important for our country7 years operating before searchingThe manufacturing concept of “going to Gemba”His 4-year part-time searchTaking time weekly to develop his leaders Partnering with his dadModernizing 1970s technologyManaging 75% customer concentrationRenegotiating payment terms with his largest customerReferences and how to contact Caleb:LinkedInSpringfield Tool & DieGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamGet a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsGet a complimentary IT audit for acquisition diligence or post-close transition.Visit inzotechnologies.com/eta.Connect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

What happens when a mentor gets more out of an accelerator than the founders do?Zak Morris joined the Fuel accelerator as a subject matter expert in AI — but quickly realized he was learning just as much as the companies he was advising. In this episode, Zak breaks down how working with startups across cybersecurity, AML, and healthcare sharpened his own thinking, why Bentonville's density of world-class talent is an underrated advantage, and how one early conversation with a founder led to a permanent board seat.Whether you're a founder, a seasoned professional sitting on the sidelines, or someone who's never thought of themselves as a mentor — this one's for you.

Leah Lykins thinks college isn't the only path to a good career, and she's built worker-first tools that prove it. Leah is the co-founder of Where We Go, a public benefit corporation connecting people who are ready to work with the programs ready to train them, and the co-founder of Camp Chateau, an adult women's sleepaway camp in a French château.In this episode, Leah explains why the infrastructure that keeps a country running, from clean energy to advanced manufacturing to the electrical grid, needs people desperately, and how the right framing turns a career nobody has heard of into one worth getting out of bed for. She also shares how she and her mother bought a château for the price of a San Francisco apartment, funded the first location with 150 women, and filled the second in seven days.If you are rethinking your next move, or want to build a business that actually fits your life, this one is worth your time.Chapters:

Introduction Most carriers are still running underwriting on policy admin systems built three decades ago — stitched together through a hundred acquisitions and never designed to work with AI. Federato is betting the only way to fix that is to replace it entirely. William Steenbergen is the co-founder and CTO of Federato, the first AI-native platform built to cover the full commercial insurance policy lifecycle. He started in reinforcement learning research before spending five months in a cabin in Idaho interviewing underwriters until he understood the problem well enough to build a solution. Federato has since raised $100 million from Goldman Sachs and is now live across commercial lines from SMB to large enterprise. In this conversation, Josh Hollander and Steenbergen dig into why bolting AI onto legacy systems keeps failing, what the underwriting workflow looks like inside an AI-native platform, and why Federato has started turning away customers who aren't ready to make the full switch. Guest Bio William Steenbergen is the Co-Founder and CTO of Federato, an AI-native platform covering the full commercial policy lifecycle — from email submission through rating, quoting, binding, issuance, endorsements, and renewal. He conducted reinforcement learning research at Stanford before co-founding Federato in 2020, spending over a thousand hours interviewing underwriters before writing a line of code. Federato raised $100 million from Goldman Sachs in 2024. Key Topics Why legacy systems can't run AI agents — Old core policy admin systems have been stitched together through 100+ acquisitions. The data and tools don't live in a standardized way, making it nearly impossible for AI agents to access the context they need to act — not just summarize. The three things an AI agent needs — An LLM, context (submission data, product definitions, claims history, forms), and tools it can interact with to take real action. Most incumbents can't provide all three in an AI-native way. What underwriting looks like now — Ten minutes after an email submission arrives, the underwriter logs in to find it already quoted. They review the AI agent's reasoning, citations, and assumptions, then approve, adjust, or ask follow-up questions in plain text — structurally identical to reviewing a referral. 95% accuracy vs. a room full of humans — Federato ran a study comparing AI agent outputs to human underwriter decisions on the same policies. The agent matched humans 95% of the time and showed less variance than ten humans working the same policy independently. Turning away the wrong customers — Federato now declines prospects who want to use the platform as a workbench on top of a legacy policy admin system. The only configuration that works is replacing the policy admin system entirely. AI regulation and accountability — Underwriters still review and approve every AI-generated quote. The AI runs deterministic tools — the rater, the filed forms — it can only make mistakes on the inputs it sends, not the outputs those tools generate. Notable Quotes "We're not trying to tack on AI onto an existing process. We're re-envisioning what a good insurance and underwriting process actually looks like." "When an AI agent interacts with the rater, it doesn't make up the premium. It still runs a deterministic rater. The tool is deterministic." "If you're not subscribed to doing a full policy lifecycle in Federato and actually replacing your policy admin system, you're probably not the right customer for us." Resources Guest: Federato: https://www.federato.ai William Steenbergen on LinkedIn: (verify and add URL) Host & Organization: Joshua R. Hollander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarhollander/ Horton International (USA): https://www.horton-usa.com/ Insurtech Leadership Podcast: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insurtech-leadership-show Subscribe & Review If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. The Insurtech Leadership Podcast is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Enrico Palmerino is the Founder and CEO of Botkeeper, an AI-powered bookkeeping automation platform that helps accounting firms streamline and scale client accounting services. Under his leadership, Botkeeper developed Infinite, its core AI-powered platform for accounting firms, which was later acquired by Xendoo. Enrico leads Botkeeper's mission to help accounting professionals automate manual tasks, improve accuracy, and build more scalable practices. He previously co-owned SmartBooks and co-founded ThinkLite, and he also serves on the board of Fidelity Bank, has advised Geisel Software, and is an investor and advisor to several tech companies.  In this episode… AI is transforming accounting, but the biggest shift is not just faster software — it is a new way for firms to serve clients, manage capacity, and stay competitive. As demand for bookkeeping rises and accounting talent becomes harder to find, how can firms use automation without sacrificing trust, accuracy, or control? Enrico Palmerino, a serial entrepreneur and accounting technology innovator, believes AI should help firms scale their expertise rather than replace it. He highlights how Botkeeper evolved from solving his own bookkeeping pain points into a platform that helps accounting firms automate categorizations, reconciliations, journal entries, document workflows, and practice visibility. By moving from direct SMB services to a firm-focused model, Botkeeper gave accountants a way to improve margins, reduce manual work, and support more clients without overloading their teams. Enrico also explains why adoption depends on trust, showing firms that AI can strengthen client service while preserving ownership of the relationship. In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Enrico Palmerino, Founder and CEO of Botkeeper, to discuss AI, automation, and the shift in accounting firms. Enrico explains Botkeeper's move from SMBs to firms, how AI improves bookkeeping workflows, and why the Xendoo acquisition accelerated its roadmap. He also shares advice on pricing, profitability, and entrepreneurship.

Ned Tomasevic navigated an early crisis then grew EBITDA to $6m and exited at over 8x, four turns higher than he'd paid.Register for the webinar: Transferable Skills: Crafting Your Resume for SBA Lenders - TODAY!! - https://bit.ly/4v3KOnfTopics in Ned's interview:Being the first American in his familyUtilizing 20 interns for outreachAcquiring with help from a search fundPost-closing discovery led to lawsuitStress shows up in your body firstGetting guidance from his coach and mentorsReducing shrink from 20% to 3%Quadrupling EBITDA in 3 yearsTaking a year off after exitingHis new role as investor, coach and mentorReferences and how to contact Ned:LinkedInSearchers FundJason Jackson on Acquiring Minds: How to Recover from a Fraudulent SellerGet a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsDownload the New CEO's Guide to Human Resources from Aspen HR:From this page or contact jenny@aspenhr.comGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

Welcome to Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, sponsored by Duvo and Mirakl.In today's Retail Daily Minute, Omni Talk's Chris Walton discusses:Walmart moves deeper into connected TV advertising by acquiring Vibe.co, a self-serve CTV platform, to make streaming ad buying more accessible and measurable for SMB and mid-market brands through Walmart Connect.Bath & Body Works enters Ulta Beauty, bringing a curated selection of its most-loved products to more than 600 Ulta stores and Ulta.com starting July 12th, as the brand accelerates its push beyond its own retail walls.Instacart pilots "Immersive Feed," a short-form vertical video experience embedded within retail storefronts on its site, letting shoppers move seamlessly from recipe inspiration to adding items to their cart.The Retail Daily Minute has been rocketing up the Feedspot charts, so stay informed with Omni Talk's Retail Daily Minute, your source for the latest and most important retail insights.

- Der Preis ist heiß: Apple-Chef Tim Cook stellt Preiserhöhungen in Aussicht - Beta 2 erschienen: Erstes Update für iOS-27-Testversionen - Mach mal schöner: Stuft John Ternus die Design-Abteilung wieder hoch? - Lebensverlängernd: Open-Source-Projekt hält Time Capsule am Leben - Ein Tipp für Apple: Wo im App Store besonders genau hingeschaut wird - Umfrage der Woche - Zuschriften unserer Hörer === Anzeige / Sponsorenhinweis === Erhalte einen exklusiven Rabatt von 15% auf Saily Datentarife! Benutze den Code apfelfunk beim Bezahlen. Lade die Saily-App herunter oder gehe auf https://saily.com/apfelfunk === Anzeige / Sponsorenhinweis Ende === Links zur Sendung: - Apfelfunk News: Zweite Entwickler-Betas von iOS 27, macOS 27 und weiteren OS veröffentlicht - https://apfelfunk.com/zweite-entwickler-betas-von-ios-27-macos-27-und-weiteren-os-veroeffentlicht/ - Apfelfunk News: Apple schließt Siri AI-Wartelisten-Lücke in macOS 27 Beta 2 - https://apfelfunk.com/apple-schliesst-siri-ai-wartelisten-luecke-in-macos-27-beta-2/ - Apfelfunk News: John Ternus plant Stärkung des Apple-Designteams als neuer CEO - https://apfelfunk.com/john-ternus-plant-staerkung-des-apple-designteams-als-neuer-ceo/ - Mac & i: Open-Source-Projekt hält Time Capsule am Leben - https://www.heise.de/news/Nachruestung-fuer-Apples-Time-Capsule-Open-Source-Projekt-haelt-SMB-am-Leben-11339611.html - Apfelfunk News: Apple zeichnet jede App Store-Interaktion für Personalisierung auf - https://apfelfunk.com/apple-zeichnet-jede-app-store-interaktion-fuer-personalisierung-auf/ Kapitelmarken: (00:00:00) Begrüßung (00:18:49) Werbung (00:23:30) Themen (00:24:36) Der Preis ist heiß: Apple-Chef Tim Cook stellt Preiserhöhungen in Aussicht (00:35:54) Beta 2 erschienen: Erstes Update für iOS-27-Testversionen (00:58:20) Mach mal schöner: Stuft John Ternus die Design-Abteilung wieder hoch? (01:11:32) Lebensverlängernd: Open-Source-Projekt hält Time Capsule am Leben (01:21:13) Ein Tipp für Apple: Wo im App Store besonders genau hingeschaut wird (01:34:55) Umfrage der Woche (01:41:56) Zuschriften unserer Hörer

Dominick Smith left a lucrative track in PE to pursue a path that offered more meaning. Buying a business has delivered.Register for the webinars: Overcoming Common Deal Sticking Points - TOMORROW!! - https://bit.ly/3Qx1g0WTransferable Skills: Crafting Your Resume for SBA Lenders - Thu, Jun 25 - https://bit.ly/4uOEqQDTopics in Dominick's interview:Leaving a lucrative job in his late 20'sDodging bullets with due diligenceRenegotiating purchase priceManaging white collar vs blue collar employeesWasting money on ineffective marketingLearning budgeting and frugalityAdvantages of staying in the weedsAggressively pursuing new businessDiscovering and fixing poor website speedsHis intent to sell the businessReferences and how to contact Dominick:LinkedInPrintmoz.comHeather Endresen at Viso Business CapitalBrendan O'Brien at Huntington BankAizik Zimmerman on Acquiring Minds: Founder Mode for ETA: $6m to $25m in 3 YearsGet a complimentary IT audit for acquisition diligence or post-close transition.Visit inzotechnologies.com/eta.The ecosystem for serious acquisition entrepreneurs—education, capital, community, and post-close support to buy and grow a business:The Acquisition LabWork with an SBA loan team focused exclusively on helping entrepreneurs buy businesses:Pioneer Capital AdvisoryConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

In this episode, Jason and Adam Block from Motive, talk about why they made the move up market, how they protected the mid-market and SMB business that was already working, how they rewired the culture for outbound, and the talent and metrics that matter when you're leading a 3,000-plus revenue org. Check out more free content and get help with outbound at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com.⁠

Interview with Ankita Gupta, CEO of Akto How to Navigate Shadow AI Risk in the enterprise This week, we discuss AI governance in the enterprise, starting with the nuts and bolts of how to discover and understand shadow AI. Following that, we dive into what security and tech leaders should do next with this information: apply guardrails? Limit vendor options? Ankita has a wealth of experience and anecdotes to share here, from years of working with customers and seeing all the unexpected things that happen with AI in today's workplace. Segment Resources: Website: https://www.akto.io Book a Free Demo: https://www.akto.io/agentic-security-demo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akto-io YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aktodotio This segment is sponsored by Akto. Visit https://securityweekly.com/akto to secure your AI agents before attackers do. Topic Segment: Verizon's Breach Impact Study The same team that delivers the DBIR every year gave us a bonus, based on over 70,000 insurance claims! Some of my favorite insights: Cost of breaches, broken out by SMB, mid-sized enterprise, and large The claim amount as a percentage of the company's revenue Losses broken down by loss TYPE This data validates something I think everyone in cyber needs to understand: cyber events are rarely business-ending events. Every cybersecurity professional and vendor, frustrated by companies "not taking security seriously enough" now have data explaining why: breaches don't hurt as much as you thought they did. Maybe you think they should hurt more? Push for regulation/fines/etc. With that said, the report also shows breach costs increasing significantly over the past 6 years and the quantity of incidents shooting up. Specifically, the median impact has almost doubled. Security failures aren't getting any cheaper. Weekly Enterprise News Finally, in the enterprise security news, A $100M seed round! Accenture acquires 3 security vendors Some thoughts on the government takedown of Fable and Mythos One of the craziest security mistakes I've ever seen, in the software FIFA uses to manage World Cup streams! A Critical Copilot vulnerability 75,000 Fortinet Firewalls get compromised Remediation is broken Using guardrails to evade detection All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-464

Interview with Ankita Gupta, CEO of Akto How to Navigate Shadow AI Risk in the enterprise This week, we discuss AI governance in the enterprise, starting with the nuts and bolts of how to discover and understand shadow AI. Following that, we dive into what security and tech leaders should do next with this information: apply guardrails? Limit vendor options? Ankita has a wealth of experience and anecdotes to share here, from years of working with customers and seeing all the unexpected things that happen with AI in today's workplace. Segment Resources: Website: https://www.akto.io Book a Free Demo: https://www.akto.io/agentic-security-demo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akto-io YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aktodotio This segment is sponsored by Akto. Visit https://securityweekly.com/akto to secure your AI agents before attackers do. Topic Segment: Verizon's Breach Impact Study The same team that delivers the DBIR every year gave us a bonus, based on over 70,000 insurance claims! Some of my favorite insights: Cost of breaches, broken out by SMB, mid-sized enterprise, and large The claim amount as a percentage of the company's revenue Losses broken down by loss TYPE This data validates something I think everyone in cyber needs to understand: cyber events are rarely business-ending events. Every cybersecurity professional and vendor, frustrated by companies "not taking security seriously enough" now have data explaining why: breaches don't hurt as much as you thought they did. Maybe you think they should hurt more? Push for regulation/fines/etc. With that said, the report also shows breach costs increasing significantly over the past 6 years and the quantity of incidents shooting up. Specifically, the median impact has almost doubled. Security failures aren't getting any cheaper. Weekly Enterprise News Finally, in the enterprise security news, A $100M seed round! Accenture acquires 3 security vendors Some thoughts on the government takedown of Fable and Mythos One of the craziest security mistakes I've ever seen, in the software FIFA uses to manage World Cup streams! A Critical Copilot vulnerability 75,000 Fortinet Firewalls get compromised Remediation is broken Using guardrails to evade detection All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-464

Interview with Ankita Gupta, CEO of Akto How to Navigate Shadow AI Risk in the enterprise This week, we discuss AI governance in the enterprise, starting with the nuts and bolts of how to discover and understand shadow AI. Following that, we dive into what security and tech leaders should do next with this information: apply guardrails? Limit vendor options? Ankita has a wealth of experience and anecdotes to share here, from years of working with customers and seeing all the unexpected things that happen with AI in today's workplace. Segment Resources: Website: https://www.akto.io Book a Free Demo: https://www.akto.io/agentic-security-demo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akto-io YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aktodotio This segment is sponsored by Akto. Visit https://securityweekly.com/akto to secure your AI agents before attackers do. Topic Segment: Verizon's Breach Impact Study The same team that delivers the DBIR every year gave us a bonus, based on over 70,000 insurance claims! Some of my favorite insights: Cost of breaches, broken out by SMB, mid-sized enterprise, and large The claim amount as a percentage of the company's revenue Losses broken down by loss TYPE This data validates something I think everyone in cyber needs to understand: cyber events are rarely business-ending events. Every cybersecurity professional and vendor, frustrated by companies "not taking security seriously enough" now have data explaining why: breaches don't hurt as much as you thought they did. Maybe you think they should hurt more? Push for regulation/fines/etc. With that said, the report also shows breach costs increasing significantly over the past 6 years and the quantity of incidents shooting up. Specifically, the median impact has almost doubled. Security failures aren't getting any cheaper. Weekly Enterprise News Finally, in the enterprise security news, A $100M seed round! Accenture acquires 3 security vendors Some thoughts on the government takedown of Fable and Mythos One of the craziest security mistakes I've ever seen, in the software FIFA uses to manage World Cup streams! A Critical Copilot vulnerability 75,000 Fortinet Firewalls get compromised Remediation is broken Using guardrails to evade detection All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-464

Most women founders never sell the business they built. Alisha Pennington wants to change that, and she says the block is not financial literacy. It is identity.In this episode, I sit down with Alisha Pennington, founder of Exette and a consultant who scaled and sold her own multi-seven-figure staffing agency. Only about 1% of female founders ever exit, and Alisha breaks down why: a lack of women we can point to who have done it, and the emotional attachment that keeps us holding on long after the business stops serving us.We get into the idea that your business is an asset, not your baby. We talk about building for optionality from day one, what "be ready so you don't have to get ready" actually looks like, and her vision for women buying and selling businesses to each other instead of letting them quietly disappear.If you are building toward a million and wondering what comes after, this one is worth your time.Chapters:

When the owner refused a seller note in the $6m transaction to sell his business, Tom McCormick had to get creative.Register for the webinar: Understanding a Quality of Earnings Analysis: What's Included and Why - TODAY!! - https://bit.ly/43sZcKnTopics in Tom's interview:From IBM executive to acquisition entrepreneurBuilding banker relationships to source better dealsClosing on his first LOIConsulting agreement replaced traditional seller note “I wish I would've started this path 15 years ago.”Winning seller's trust through shared valuesUsing ROBS to buy a larger companyA costly lesson about accounts receivable valuationPrioritizing keeping the blue collar workforce happy“I am so much happier now.”References and how to contact Tom:LinkedInQuality Cutting & CoringThe ecosystem for serious acquisition entrepreneurs—education, capital, community, and post-close support to buy and grow a business:The Acquisition LabGet a complimentary IT audit for acquisition diligence or post-close transition.Visit inzotechnologies.com/eta.Download the New CEO's Guide to Human Resources from Aspen HR:From this page or contact jenny@aspenhr.comConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

The core structural shift highlighted in this episode is the commoditization of AI model platforms and concurrent consolidation at the vendor and platform layer, forcing Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to move their value proposition above reselling models to orchestrating, governing, and verifying AI outputs. The discussion references the rising concentration and valuation of platforms such as NinjaOne—a founder-led, profitable RMM platform with a $12.3 billion valuation and 70% year-over-year growth—and Pax8 building business toolkits that draw more operational functions onto their rails. At the same time, major AI developers like OpenAI are entering the channel more directly by launching partner programs aimed at MSPs and consultants. The most consequential development is the confirmed shift from reselling AI models to managing their outputs and risks. Glean surveyed 6,000 digital workers and found that while AI delivers approximately 11 hours of weekly time savings, nearly 6.4 hours are reclaimed by “bot sitting”—the human intervention required to supply context, verify, and correct AI outputs. This hidden labor raises a risk scenario: two-thirds of workers admit to releasing unchecked AI outputs, and Ivanti found that only 42% of IT environments actually have a named owner for each AI agent, despite 85% claiming so—a 43-point gap in accountability. Asana and Deloitte further reinforce the issue, reporting frequent cost overruns and unmanaged autonomous AI deployments among enterprise and SMB environments. Supporting developments underscore this governance and accountability gap. TechCrunch cited that ChatGPT's AI market share has dropped below 50% as the field becomes more interchangeable and less differentiated by underlying model. Vendors such as Anthropic and OpenAI, recognizing model commoditization, are seeking revenue through high-volume partner channels, blurring the lines between vendor and channel competitor. According to Asana, more than 80% of UK IT leaders encountered unplanned AI costs, and over half reported business harm from autonomous AI actions, shifting operational and liability risks squarely onto MSPs and IT service providers. Operationally, these trends compel MSPs to take explicit ownership of the orchestration and governance layer, rather than relying on tool reselling. The transcript advises mapping every AI-driven decision or output that reaches client endpoints and identifying who verifies these outputs before customer exposure. Failing to address these governance blanks does not avoid work but shifts it to unbilled, post-incident cleanup, often with financial, legal, or compliance consequences. Effective MSPs will need to price, document, and regularly review their verification, orchestration, and risk assumption, positioning these as standalone, billable services to manage risk and maintain margin as AI platforms commoditize and vendor dependencies rise. 00:00 Bigger Platforms, Unwatched AI 03:44 The Vendor Walks Into the Channel 05:56 Govern It or Absorb It 08:52 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  ScalePad  Sign up for the SMB Online Conference: www.smbonlineconference.com

Despite his love of operations, Himmat Singh intended to own his acquisition passively. Then the lead sales guy quit.Register for the webinar: Understanding a Quality of Earnings Analysis: What's Included and Why - Thu, Jun 18 - https://bit.ly/4vhhY3tTopics in Himmat's interview:Operating a business for a billionaire in IndiaRan traditional search, closed zero acquisitionsTargeted recession-proof home care opportunitiesBecame CEO of elder care company he couldn't acquireGrew EBITDA 4x through operational cleanup and systemsSold company to private equity, remaining CEOLife-changing exit from elder care companyLanded printing acquisition through relationshipsPrefers operating to financial modelingStructuring a screaming deal on a printing businessReferences and how to contact Himmat:LinkedInEPI-ColorspaceCircle of LifeWork with an SBA loan team focused exclusively on helping entrepreneurs buy businesses:Pioneer Capital AdvisoryGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamGet a free review of your books & financial ops from System Six (a $500 value):Book a call with Tim or hello@systemsix.com and mention Acquiring MindsConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

What does affirmative consent law reform, university sex education, and AI-powered law enforcement tools have in common? They're all part of Stefanie Hammett's ambitious startup, HMS.HMS (Have More Safety · Have More Sex · Have More Space) is a consent education company with a bold 2036 goal: insert affirmative consent into all 50 state criminal codes. But getting there means building a real business — with a direct-to-consumer product line, a university B2B pilot program, and a law enforcement tech partnership with Clipper AI.Stefanie breaks down:The "drip effect" strategy for getting consent education into university campusesWhy selling to law enforcement requires showing up 17 times before they trust youHow she balances a world-changing mission with the mechanics of actually building a startupHer advice to founders: presence, biohacking, and trusting your own clarityAnd more!

When Alan Turkus found a business with a mission, he knew he'd found the right fit for the final chapter of his career.Topics in Alan's interview:Background in book publishingPost-MBA career in techTaking a career break to raise his sonFrom co-op cashier to co-CEOSeeking security through business ownershipAcquiring a home health and hospice franchiseRaising equity from search investorsRetaining a little over 50% ownershipStructuring with 2 forgivable seller notesThe advantage of buying a bigger businessReferences and how to contact Alan:LinkedInInterim Healthcare of Twin CitiesElliott Edge on Acquiring Minds: 1 Business vs Many: Deciding to Roll UpGrant Hensel of Entrepreneurial CapitalJacob Hall of Kando CapitalPROX Capital GroupConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton Rohozov and produced by Pam Cameron

What if the biggest risk of AI in marketing isn't about job replacement, but about creating more fragmented, siloed work?Agility requires more than just adopting new tools; it demands a fundamental rethinking of how teams collaborate and orchestrate work. When a technology like AI promises to accelerate individual tasks, true agility means ensuring that acceleration translates into collective momentum, not organizational friction.Today, we're going to talk about moving beyond the hype of AI experimentation and into the reality of its operational impact on marketing teams. We'll explore what happens when AI graduates from being a personal productivity tool to becoming an integrated part of a team's workflow, and how that shift changes everything from campaign execution to the very structure of marketing itself.To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome, Prachi Gore, CMO at Asana. About Prachi Gore Prachi Gore is the Chief Marketing Officer at Asana, where she leads the company's global marketing strategy and brand development. Prachi brings extensive experience scaling product-led B2B organizations, having previously served as SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Checkr, where she built the company's demand engine, elevated its brand, and launched its product-led growth business. Prior to Checkr, Prachi led Marketing at SmartRecruiters, guiding the company's evolution from an SMB-focused product to a leading enterprise talent acquisition suite. This diverse background across consumer, SMB, and enterprise markets gives her deep expertise in demand generation, brand strategy, and AI-enabled go-to-market innovation. Prachi is passionate about creating marketing that combines human creativity with rigorous, data-driven execution, and is committed to helping teams work more effectively and tell clearer stories. Prachi Gore on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prachigore/ ---------- Resources ---------- Asana: asana.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://aglbrnd.co/r/2868abd8085a9703 We're proud to be a media partner for #MAICON26 - Oct. 13-15! Learn how AI can power your marketing and business and help you grow smarter. Use code AGILE150 to save! https://aglbrnd.co/r/7fe458ced0f04658Reach your customers with Reddit. Spend $500 in ad spend, get $500 back in ad credit! Learn more: https://advertalize.com/r/491818c79fb1873fDon't miss We Make Future - the International Festival of Innovation in AI, Tech, and Digital Marketing, June 24-26 in Bologna. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/c80991afff416bb2The most influential minds in software, AI, and engineering leadership will be at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, September 23-25 in San Jose. Learn more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/60a7299222a7bcf1 Enjoyed the show? Tell us more at and give us a rating so others can find the show at: https://aglbrnd.co/r/faaed112fc9887f3 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstromDon't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://aglbrnd.co/r/35ded3ccfb6716ba Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O'Malley take a deep dive into Wix.com — the Israeli website-building platform whose investment case now turns on two of the most debated questions in the stock today: whether the generative-AI wave that lets anyone spin up a site from a text prompt is the end of Wix or whether Wix is too sticky, and whether the Base 44 acquisition — Wix's bet on AI-powered app generation — is the next leg of the story or a distraction from the SMB infrastructure business the company already dominates. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:32) How Wix was founded (00:21:35) Why clients keep using Wix (00:28:05) How much of WIX is actually vulnerable to AI (00:37:07) Why Wix is more sticky than it seems (00:38:24) Whether vibecoding is likely to disrupt drag-and-drop website building (00:46:54) Why Base44 could change the entire investment case (01:06:24) How Wix could survive and turn into a multibagger (01:09:21) Valuation discussion of Wix (01:13:26) Whether Shawn and Daniel add Wix to the Intrinsic Value Portfolio BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Track ⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Portfolio⁠⁠⁠⁠. Portfolio Review Submit Tool. Value Investor Club Article. Chit Chat Stocks w/ Manuel Cunha. Future Investing Interview w/ Manuel Cunha. Rene Sellman Substack Article. Manuel Cunha Substack Article. Previous Intrinsic Value breakdowns: Figma, Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe. Follow Shawn on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow Daniel on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Related ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mentioned in the podcast. Ad-free episodes on our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses through ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Investor's Podcast Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠sponsors⁠: Plus500 Netsuite Shopify Vanta References to any third-party products, services, or advertisers do not constitute endorsements, and The Investor's Podcast Network is not responsible for any claims made by them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm