Podcasts about startup capital

In this episode of Zero to CEO, I speak to SME Funding Champion Ciaran Burke, COO and Co-Founder of Swoop, about how his fintech platform has transformed access to capital for over 250,000 businesses. Ciaran shares how Swoop helped unlock more than $2 billion in funding, and explains the biggest mistakes founders make when raising capital, what alternative funding really looks like, and why traditional banks are failing small businesses. Whether you're just starting out or scaling fast, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you make smarter funding decisions and grow with confidence.

Navigating Startup Funding: Insights from Denise Edwards of SaaS LaunchIn this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, host Josh Elledge sits down with Denise Edwards, the dynamic founder and CEO of SaaS Launch. With over a decade of experience in the tech world and a global footprint, Denise brings a wealth of expertise in helping early-stage SaaS founders secure funding, craft compelling pitches, and connect with ideal investors. This conversation uncovers key strategies and actionable tips for founders seeking capital and clarity in today's competitive startup environment.Startup Capital and SaaS Growth: How Denise Edwards Helps Founders Fund Their VisionDenise's passion lies in helping tech entrepreneurs—especially SaaS founders—navigate the complex journey of fundraising. SaaS Launch supports pre-seed to Series A startups with value proposition refinement, pitch deck development, and investor matchmaking. For founders unsure if they're ready to raise, Denise recommends starting with bootstrapping to demonstrate traction and keep ownership intact.Her global perspective—born in Curaçao and now operating from Amsterdam—adds depth to her consulting. She understands the nuances of international entrepreneurship and believes in empowering underrepresented founders, particularly women, in tech.Key milestones in the funding process include market validation, a clear business plan, and a minimum viable product. Denise stresses that investors look for more than a great idea—they want a strong, coachable founder with a solid team, industry insight, and measurable traction. For founders who lack a vast network, SaaS Launch opens doors through its investor partnerships and educational content.Whether you're considering traditional financing, venture capital, or angel investors, Denise helps clients explore the right fit. She also advocates for non-dilutive funding, especially when the goal is growth without giving up equity. Through strategic marketing, social media, and a YouTube channel packed with fundraising insights, Denise and her team continue to educate and support founders from around the globe.About Denise EdwardsDenise Edwards is a fundraising and growth expert and the founder of SaaS Launch. A speaker, consultant, and international businesswoman, she works with early-stage SaaS startups to secure funding and scale effectively. Denise is also a champion for diversity in tech, committed to helping women and underrepresented founders build investor-ready businesses.About SaaS LaunchSaaS Launch is a boutique consultancy based in Amsterdam that helps SaaS and tech founders raise early-stage capital, build powerful value propositions, and connect with aligned investors. Through coaching, investor matchmaking, and fundraising education, SaaS Launch empowers founders to confidently pitch and grow their businesses.Links Mentioned in This EpisodeSaaS Launch WebsiteDenise Edwards on LinkedInSaaS Launch YouTube ChannelKey Episode HighlightsBootstrapping before raising capital helps retain equity and validate the marketStrong pitch decks must combine vision, traction, and financial clarityNon-dilutive funding is a viable option for growth-minded SaaS startupsInvestors seek teams with deep market knowledge and coachabilityFundraising is a numbers...

Learn More About Attending the Highest Rated and Most Reviewed Business Workshops On the Planet Hosted by Clay Clark In Tulsa, Oklahoma HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/business-conferences/   See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/   Clay Clark Testimonials | "Clay Clark Has Helped Us to Grow from 2 Locations to Now 6 Locations. Clay Has Done a Great Job Helping Us to Navigate Anything That Has to Do with Running the Business, Building the System, the Workflows, to Buy Property." - Charles Colaw (Learn More Charles Colaw and Colaw Fitness Today HERE: www.ColawFitness.com)   Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire   See Thousands of Actual Client Success Stories from Real Clay Clark Clients Today HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/   See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE:  www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/  

Today's guest Andy Merritt is the Managing Director and Chief Strategy Officer at One Funds, a Colorado-based startup supporting organization. Mr. Merritt provides our listeners with some exciting news about several alignments in the local community which are the realization of numerous years of planning. New technology support for government-aligned industries has been the focus of the Catalyst Campus and One Funds. The synergies of start-up support from Federal, State, and local investors to provide not only funding for growth but also business resources, alignment with potential government customers, and know-how for achieving government funding grants. It is exciting to see some of the components we explored in very early episodes of New Cyber Frontier mature into what is available today. Tune in to see how you can get involved.  Check out our website! New Cyber Frontier Podcast (logiccentralonline.com) Visit our sponsors: BlockFrame Inc.

This is Derek Miller, Speaking on Business. Did you know that Utah is home to over 300,000 small businesses? This achievement is thanks to our state's premier business resources, including the new Startup State Initiative. Ryan Starks, Executive Director at the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, joins us with more. Ryan Starks: With a young and educated workforce, low corporate tax rate, high government support for startups, and a thriving economy, Utah is the perfect place to start a business. At the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, we know our state has a strong entrepreneurial community. However, we also know starting a business can be challenging. That's why our office — in conjunction with Governor Cox's economic vision for Utah — has launched the Startup State Initiative. As part of this initiative, we've developed a website that unifies the state's business resources into one place. The step-by-step entrepreneur journey guide, business plan generator, and comprehensive list of resources will support you in every step of the business journey. We want to make it easier for anyone to start a business here. Visit startup.utah.gov today and get ready to Start Something Here! Derek Miller: Utah is called the Startup Capital of the World for a reason! If you're a small business owner or soon-to-be entrepreneur, check out startup.utah.gov for resources tailored to your needs. I'm Derek Miller with the Salt Lake Chamber, Speaking on Business. Originally aired: 4/15/24

Podcast: Financial Advisor Success (LS 55 · TOP 0.5% what is this?)Episode: Ep 373: Transitioning To Launch A New RIA By Taking On Passive Investors For Startup Capital With Ben HockemaPub date: 2024-02-20Ben Hockema is the Founder of Illuminate Wealth Management, an RIA based out of Illinois that oversees $100 million in assets under management for 55 households. Ben's unique journey in the advisory world saw him rise from intern to partner over 13 years at a growing firm, only to discover a cultural mismatch. He navigated this challenge by engaging passive equity investors for his new startup RIA, enabling him to acquire a portion of his client base and establish the business he truly envisioned. Listen in as Ben shares his strategic journey in the financial advisory world and details his rapid growth from $16M to $100M in assets under management in three years. You'll also hear about his evolution from intern to partner, his realization of a misalignment with his firm's vision, and how he navigated the emotional challenges of leaving long-standing business relationships, finding invaluable support in a peer advisor study group and learning the power of asking 'dumb' questions for career growth. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/373The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Kitces, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Podcast: Financial Advisor Success (LS 56 · TOP 0.5% what is this?)Episode: Ep 373: Transitioning To Launch A New RIA By Taking On Passive Investors For Startup Capital With Ben HockemaPub date: 2024-02-20Ben Hockema is the Founder of Illuminate Wealth Management, an RIA based out of Illinois that oversees $100 million in assets under management for 55 households. Ben's unique journey in the advisory world saw him rise from intern to partner over 13 years at a growing firm, only to discover a cultural mismatch. He navigated this challenge by engaging passive equity investors for his new startup RIA, enabling him to acquire a portion of his client base and establish the business he truly envisioned. Listen in as Ben shares his strategic journey in the financial advisory world and details his rapid growth from $16M to $100M in assets under management in three years. You'll also hear about his evolution from intern to partner, his realization of a misalignment with his firm's vision, and how he navigated the emotional challenges of leaving long-standing business relationships, finding invaluable support in a peer advisor study group and learning the power of asking 'dumb' questions for career growth. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/373The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Kitces, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

Ben Hockema is the Founder of Illuminate Wealth Management, an RIA based out of Illinois that oversees $100 million in assets under management for 55 households. Ben's unique journey in the advisory world saw him rise from intern to partner over 13 years at a growing firm, only to discover a cultural mismatch. He navigated this challenge by engaging passive equity investors for his new startup RIA, enabling him to acquire a portion of his client base and establish the business he truly envisioned. Listen in as Ben shares his strategic journey in the financial advisory world and details his rapid growth from $16M to $100M in assets under management in three years. You'll also hear about his evolution from intern to partner, his realization of a misalignment with his firm's vision, and how he navigated the emotional challenges of leaving long-standing business relationships, finding invaluable support in a peer advisor study group and learning the power of asking 'dumb' questions for career growth. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/373

Welcome to this special episode where we sit down with Ido Neeman, the CEO of Firefly, to delve into the events of October 7th. In this candid conversation, Ido shares the harrowing details of that day, recounting his efforts to rescue his co-founder and friend, Sefi Genis. Join us as we explore the profound impact of losing such a crucial figure, both personally and for the company. Amidst the grief, we also discuss the resilience of Firefly and how it will continue to grow in the face of adversity. This episode pays tribute to Sefi's memory and offers insights into the strength and determination that propels Firefly forward.This conversation is in honor of Sefi Genis, Co-founder of Firefly, who was horrendously murdered by Hamas on OCT 7th, at the Supernova festival in Israel.

Dieter Kondek, a tech enthusiast turned entrepreneur, has left indelible marks in the high-tech industry. Dieter is Founder at Transatlantic Capital Partners, an Atlantic Family Office Investment Alliance, connecting Family Offices & UHNWI on both sides of the Atlantic. Dieter is Co-Founder @ Global Blockchain Ventures, a $50m Venture Fund invested in 43 blockchain companies including Inveniam Capital, Kraken, Coinbase, Google Quantum. He was executive with some of the most well-known tech companies in the industry, including IBM, Dell, Computer 2000 (TechData). Dieter is a serial entrepreneur with 4 exits and has successfully raised capital for over $150m in private equity and venture capital. Dieter has moved to the US 20 years ago and is connecting the D.A.CH. and US technology ecosystems since 20 years.In this episode you'll learn:- It's important to have Product Market Fit and first revenues in home market before considering to enter US market.- Raising from US based Super Angels does not only help raising money in the US, but manoevring cultural differences.- Don't underestimate Corporate VC arms in the US.

Here's what you need to know for today in the business of podcasting. People are watching longer TikToks. What does that mean for competition with YouTube? by Sara LebowA look at holding company 2024 ad spending forecasts by Antoinette SiuFrom Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money by Erin GriffithWhat creator Anna Kai looks for in a brand partner by Katie Hicks…as for the rest of the news: Livewire has published an update to their tracking of iOS 17 auto-download changes in Apple Podcasts, and Spotify's CFO Paul Vogel is now slated to leave the company in March (a decision made shortly after Vogel sold over $9 million in Spotify shares on the same day as the layoff news last week).

Here's what you need to know for today in the business of podcasting. People are watching longer TikToks. What does that mean for competition with YouTube? by Sara LebowA look at holding company 2024 ad spending forecasts by Antoinette SiuFrom Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money by Erin GriffithWhat creator Anna Kai looks for in a brand partner by Katie Hicks…as for the rest of the news: Livewire has published an update to their tracking of iOS 17 auto-download changes in Apple Podcasts, and Spotify's CFO Paul Vogel is now slated to leave the company in March (a decision made shortly after Vogel sold over $9 million in Spotify shares on the same day as the layoff news last week).

“We're Momming Today” with Sara Forhetz with Convoy of Hope, a non-profit that's just released a holiday gift catalog which includes sewing machines, restaurant equipment, even personal hygiene kits to help women in the developed world start their own businesses and support their families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Product Thinking, Jag Duggal, Chief Product Officer at Nubank, joins Melissa Perri to unravel the process of building a strong global product management team in a fast-growing business. They also dive into the importance of customer obsession, challenges in talent acquisition, and the power of documented principles in scaling businesses.

In this episode of Product Thinking, Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, joins Melissa Perri to dive into "Why Startups Fail," his transformative book. Specifically, they dive into the inspiration of the book, six unique types of startup failures and how to avoid them, as well as strategies for hiring your first product manager.

Joining us for this episode of Living Off Rentals is Garr Russell. Prior to venturing into the rental space, he was a long-time FICO-certified credit counselor who founded his own business.  In 2015, having already owned a significant real estate portfolio, Garr began his journey in a unique, charming niche—RV rental management, Fireside RV Rental. After buying an RV for his and his wife's 10-year anniversary, they rented it out, eventually snowballing into the country's largest RV rental management franchise. Tune in and hear more about Garr's “wheel estate” venture and his insights into the industry, as well as how you can get involved in creating cash flow through RV rentals as well. Key Takeaways: [00:00] Introducing Garr Russell [04:36] Renting his first RV to growing it into Fireside RV Rental [09:08] Scaling his RV rental business with an arbitrage strategy [14:05] Running the numbers in Fireside RV Rental [22:04] Renting out RVs [26:13] How Garr finds owners to work with [29:51] Fireside RV Rental as a franchise [35:23] Profits from being in the RV rental space [37:14] Garr's advice for people who want to get into the RV rental space [41:03] Connect with Garr   Guest Links: Website: https://firesidervrental.com/   Show Links: Living Off Rentals YouTube Channel -https://www.youtube.com/c/LivingOffRentals Living Off Rentals Facebook Group -www.facebook.com/groups/livingoffrentals Living Off Rentals Website -www.livingoffrentals.com Living Off Rentals Instagram -www.instagram.com/livingoffrentals Living Off Rentals TikTok - www.tiktok.com/@livingoffrentals  

Less than 1 percent of startups in the world are funded by venture capital, yet venture remains the focus for many seeking to advance innovation. Today's guest is a veteran of the venture capital community and is here to shed more light on the role of venture and share a few tips for startups and big companies alike. Ting Gootee, CEO of TechPoint, joins us to talk capital connectivity in startups, big companies investing to create strategic product consolidation and how the venture community is evolving in the Midwest at large.   Ting also talks about investor interest in agbioscience and driving momentum using the customer voice. As the past Chief Investment Officer at Elevate Ventures, she lays out quick tips for entrepreneurs getting ready to make their first pitch including and how to create an “aha” moment rather than a “so what” moment. Ting also lays out for big companies the benefits of working with startups and entrepreneurs to expand their portfolio of solutions and looks ahead at agtech and its acceleration in Indiana. 

Until recently there wasn't a single Australian venture capital firm focussed on agritech. Today, there are multiple players.  In this episode we explore two very different experiences -  an Australian company that has leveraged government incentives and local funding, and an international company seeking local backing to enter the Australian and New Zealand marketplace.Justin Webb, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, of AgriWebb facilitated this conversation and was joined by Phil Morle,  Partner in Main Sequence Ventures, Kristi Riordan, the Co-founder & CEO of Harvest B, Saar Safra, Founder and CEO of Beewise and Robert Williams, Director, Artesian. evokeAG 2023 examined how global agrifood innovation and tech intersect to drive change for our food, farmers, and the natural resources which sustain them.Catch up on the other conversations about sustainability, climate resilience and the role of agtech in meeting those challenges from evokeAG 2023 here.

Just 1.2% of the record $137 billion invested in US startups in the first half of 2021 went to Black entrepreneurs, and only 2% went to women-founded companies, according to a blog post from Crunchbase. If you aren't familiar with the challenges non-white, non-male founders of startups face getting capital in the United States, these numbers are actually better than they have been in the past. There was a great wakeup call in 2020 to the barriers to capital diverse founder face. Zane Ventures is not new to the party, but they are using this new found corporate and traditional investor consciousnes and awareness momentum to be a disrupter in the capital market place. Through their long-standing Zane Access program they have mentored 1200 startups with diverse founders.  With the launch of their venture fund they are able to invest in bold founders who have innovative business models and are building early-stage technology solutions with early traction, whether in dollars or data. Shila Nieves Burney is the Founding & Managing Partner of Zane Venture Fund.  Zane mentors and invests EARLY, reducing barriers for diverse founders to reveal their talents and reshape our communities. With the participation of Sig Moseley, considered a preeminent angel investor in the Southeast, and notable African-American successful entrepreneurs, Tope Awotona Zane of Calendly, George Azih of LeaseQuery, and Sjegun Otulana of Harmony Venture Labs, Zane is on their way to be a true catalyst for change for diverse founders in the Southeast Capital Community. Visit: www.zane.vc Karen Rands, is the leader of the Compassionate Capitalist Movement and author of Inside Secrets to Angel Investing.  She is an authority on creating wealth through investing and building successful businesses that can scale and exit rich. Visit http://Kugarand.com to learn more WATCH: https://youtu.be/w_NTQfTxVYc

What is startup capital? And why is it so hard for minorities and African Americans to get access to it?

This week in Indian startup news, Delhi becomes India's new startup capital, Ashneer Grover probed for financial fraud, Budget 2022: startup tax holiday extended and LTCG surcharge capped at 15%, Ola rebrands quick grocery delivery business as Ola Dash, and Curefoods acquires Maverix. In funding news, Dealshare raises $165 million to become a unicorn, Moglix raises $250 million, Chargebee raises $250 million and Scaler Academy raises $55 million. Delhi becomes India's new startup capital: According to the Economic Survey 2021-22, Delhi is now the new startup capital of India - taking the title away from Bengaluru. Between April 2019 and December 2021 - while Bengaluru added 4,514 new startups, Delhi on the other hand added over 5,000 startups. Ashneer Grover probed for financial fraud: Days after BharatPe's Ashneer Grover went on a ‘voluntary leave', not only did his wife Madhuri Jain Grover (who also works at BharatPe) also went on a leave and BharatPe also announced an independent audit of the company's internal processes and systems. According to media reports, both Ashneer and his wife are being investigated for financial fraud at BharatPe. Ashneer is already facing a hard time in the media for the leaked audio clip controversy, but allegations of financial fraud could have serious consequences for not just Ashneer but for India's startup ecosystem. Ashneer has hired a legal firm and is looking to safeguard his reputation and interests at BharatPe. Budget 2022: Startup tax holiday extended and LTCG surcharge capped at 15%: While there wasn't much talk about startups in general in the latest budget, there are a few positives for Indian startups. First of all, startups that were incorporated between 1st April 2016 and 31st March 2022 - were eligible for a tax holiday - meaning they don't have to pay any tax on profits for three consecutive years out of the first ten years of their operations. Due to the whole covid situation, this period has been increased by one more year until 31st March 2023. Secondly - investors, startup founders and employees will now have to pay less tax on their startup investments as the long-term capital gain (LTCG) surcharge is now capped at 15%. Ola rebrands quick grocery delivery business as Ola Dash: Just like Gofers rebranded themselves as Blinkit to focus on instant grocery delivery, Ola's latest grocery delivery business called Ola Store is now renamed as Ola Dash to focus on instant grocery as well. They already have a presence in nine cities with a network of 200 dark stores – which they are now planning to increase to 500 across 20 cities in the next six months. Curefoods acquires Maverix: Cloud kitchen startup Curefoods has acquired another cloud kitchen startup called Maverix Platforms - making Curefoods the second-largest cloud kitchen in the country with 125 kitchens across 12 cities. Dealshare raises $165 million to become a unicorn: Social commerce platform Dealshare has raised $165 million in a round led by Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global at a $1.4 billion valuation – making them India's fifth unicorn of 2022. Moglix raises $250 million: Moglix, which is a B2B marketplace for industrial products, has raised $250 million in a round led by Alpha Wave Global – more than doubling their valuation from $1 billion to $2.6 billion in just eight months. Chargebee raises $250 million: SaaS-based subscription management platform Chargebee has raised $250 million in a round led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital – raising their valuation from $1.4 billion to $3.5 billion in nine months. Scaler Academy raises $55 million: Upskilling platform for college students and working professionals Scaler Academy has raised $55 million in a round led by Lightrock India at a $710 million valuation.

According to 2021-22 Economic Survey, Delhi added more startups than any other city from 2019 to 2021. But Bengaluru investors and policymakers say this metric doesn't count for much. ----more---- https://theprint.in/economy/why-bengaluru-isnt-losing-any-sleep-over-delhi-becoming-indias-startup-capital/819792/

Retargeting abandoned carts from your website is one of the most profitable things that you can do when you are looking to generate more sales within your online store. Here's a few ways to do it!   Learn the sales process: https://clicksandbricksacademy.com/  Today is the 130th episode of Clicks and Bricks we do appreciate all of you continuing to come back and watching! Today we speak to Ata Gur about His brand FrizBit see more about the brand below. He has an interesting story and has a belief that every business owner needs to put their business online. He has a great strategy for online marketing if you want to save money when marketing or buying things online and it has a lot to do with leaving a website. A lot of business owners quit too soon. As a business owner we have to keep getting up! You cannot quit or else you can miss the big opportunities that are possibly coming to you in the future! 00:50 Your story   04:00 Businesses need to be online  04:45 What can people do to get the most value  05:45 Abandon your cart  10:00 Text marketing tip  11:00 Tips for success  14:00 Patience is essential  17:00 How the future of technology will change our future  22:30 Facebook Pixel / Meta Pixel About Frizbit: We are a marketing tech startup that offers digital marketers an all-in-one ad-free retargeting platform combining web push notifications, email and SMS. Over 50 companies worldwide trust us to send automated and hyper-personalized messages that engage customers and drive sales.  2020 Selected as one of the top 20 tech startups in Catalonia and granted a Startup Capital by ACCIO. Published its new dashboard.  2021 Reached 40 clients from 10 countries with our all-in-one digital marketing solution for retargeting without ads.  Contact Frizbit Team: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frizbitpush/ Twitter https://twitter.com/frizbitpush LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/frizbit Email contact@frizbit.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/clicksandbricks/support (https://anchor.fm/clicksandbricks/support) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Retargeting abandoned carts from your website is one of the most profitable things that you can do when you are looking to generate more sales within your online store. Here's a few ways to do it!   Learn the sales process: https://clicksandbricksacademy.com/  Today is the 130th episode of Clicks and Bricks we do appreciate all of you continuing to come back and watching! Today we speak to Ata Gur about His brand FrizBit see more about the brand below. He has an interesting story and has a belief that every business owner needs to put their business online. He has a great strategy for online marketing if you want to save money when marketing or buying things online and it has a lot to do with leaving a website. A lot of business owners quit too soon. As a business owner we have to keep getting up! You cannot quit or else you can miss the big opportunities that are possibly coming to you in the future! 00:50 Your story   04:00 Businesses need to be online  04:45 What can people do to get the most value  05:45 Abandon your cart  10:00 Text marketing tip  11:00 Tips for success  14:00 Patience is essential  17:00 How the future of technology will change our future  22:30 Facebook Pixel / Meta Pixel About Frizbit: We are a marketing tech startup that offers digital marketers an all-in-one ad-free retargeting platform combining web push notifications, email and SMS. Over 50 companies worldwide trust us to send automated and hyper-personalized messages that engage customers and drive sales.  2020 Selected as one of the top 20 tech startups in Catalonia and granted a Startup Capital by ACCIO. Published its new dashboard.  2021 Reached 40 clients from 10 countries with our all-in-one digital marketing solution for retargeting without ads.  Contact Frizbit Team: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frizbitpush/ Twitter https://twitter.com/frizbitpush LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/frizbit Email contact@frizbit.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/clicksandbricks/support (https://anchor.fm/clicksandbricks/support) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of The Compassionate Capitalist Show, Nathan Beckord, Founder and CEO of Founder Suite, and Karen Rands will talk about what steps a founder needs to take to increase the odds of seed round and subsequent  funding rounds successful. The steps to complete a successful capital raise are predictable, yet most entrepreneurs make the same common mistakes.  Even with all the free resources available through economic development organizations, incubators and accellerators, and an abundance of entrepreneur programs in colleges and universities, Nathan estimates that 98% of the startup founders have no idea about how to raise capital.  And as Karen has often stated, there is a science to the art of raising capital. With over a decade of experience working with 150 startups as Interim CFO, business development, and many advisory roles, and deep experience with financial equity markets, Nathan Beckord started his own startup FounderSuite.com to provide software tools and formulized guidance to entrepreneurs seeking to raise seed stage and growth stage capital. With access to the investing preferences of over 200,000 investors, nearly a 1/4 of the entrepreneurs using the research and relationship tools on this SaaS platform have successfully raised nearly $3 Billion in capital in just 5 years since inception. Karen Rands, the leader of the Compassionate Capitalist Movement and author of the best selling 'primer' for angel investors "Inside Secrets to Angel Investing", is an authority on creating wealth through investing and building successful businesses that can scale and exit rich. Visit http://KarenRands.co to sign up for her tips email and learn why her firm is hired to identify the red flags of deal before you invest or try to raise capital. VIDEO: https://youtu.be/uqFVe9y-ZaI

“We're Momming Today” with Sara Forhetz with Convoy of Hope, a non-profit that's just released a holiday gift catalog which includes sewing machines, restaurant equipment, even personal hygiene kits to help women in the developed world start their own businesses and support their families.

In this afikra FWD, Madison forwards the article "Breaking the Mold: Can the MENA Region Be a Leader in Inclusive Capital?" published by Middle East Institute. The article starts out by setting the stage of what has been happening in the Middle East region over the last decade when it comes to unicorns, a privately-held company that is valued at $1 billion or more. Note: Madison is not an expert on this subject but is sharing information in the hopes of spurring interest in the subject.Hosted by: Mikey Muhanna, afikra Edited by: Ramzi RammanTheme music by The Brooklyn Nomads https://www.instagram.com/thebrooklynnomads/About the afikra Community Presentations:A community member delivers an in-depth presentation on a ‎topic related to the Arab world's history and culture during a one-hour online event. The presentation is the ‎culmination of a month-long afikra coaching process to help identify a topic, find research, and develop the ‎presentation. The goal is to showcase the presenter's curiosity, research, and share some knowledge. Each ‎presentation is followed by a moderated Q&A with questions coming from the live virtual audience on Zoom.  ‎Join the live audience: https://www.afikra.com/rsvp Follow Youtube - Instagram (@afikra_) - Facebook - Twitter Supportwww.afikra.com/supportAbout afikra:‎afikra is a movement to convert passive interest in the Arab world to active intellectual curiosity. We aim to collectively reframe the dominant narrative of the region by exploring the histories and cultures of the region- past, present, and future - through conversations driven by curiosity.Read more about us on afikra.com

In this episode of The Idealists. (formerly Grit & Grace), host and entrepreneur Melissa Kiguwa interviews Dawn Dickson, a serial entrepreneur and inventor with over 20 years of experience in technology entrepreneurship, marketing and business development. She has founded five successful companies and since 2017, Dawn has raised over $1M from venture capital and angel investors and she has raised over $4.5M via equity crowdfunding. In this episode, she shares why she believes equity crowdfunding is a better alternative to venture capital. . . . . In the episode: - Dawn begins the episode describing the difference between institutional investors and equity crowdfunding. - She describes her experience raising $1M through venture capital and why she decided VC money does not work for her. - She then shares how she built her current business (valued at $32m) and how she has leveraged her network and community to grow the business. - Dawn ends the episode with practical advice for listeners who may be interested in launching their own equity crowdfund campaign. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theidealists/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theidealists/support

In this episode In today's video, we're reviewing time-sensitive grants for black owned businesses. Don't delay!!

A formidable alliance of tech industry heavyweights including Google, Atlassian and Afterpay has joined forces to help position Australia as the startup capital of the world within 10 years. A Melbourne IT entrepreneur has splashed out more than six million frequent flyer points to buy two items in Qantas's inaugural Points Auction.   Graphic road deaths of native wildlife have prompted an urgent plea for more people to call Wildlife Victoria about injured animals on the road.   Melburnians can explore their city like never before in a new augmented reality tour. For updates and breaking news throughout the day, take out a subscription at heraldsun.com.au  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Giovanni Lauricella is a connector of MedTech professionals to insights, people, and startup capital. He has travelled to over 43 different countries and is currently based in the USA working at the Mullings Group within global MedTech talent acquisition. On this episode he shares his journey, the evolution of technology within the industry, the move towards predictive rather than reactive treatment and the differences in growth within other countries. Get in touch with Giovanni - https://www.linkedin.com/in/giovannilauricella/ or https://mistermedtech.com/ Looking for your next MedTech role? get in touch with the Mullings Group team - https://mullingsgroup.com/ Get in touch with me - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karandeepbadwal/ Subscribe to the Podcast

El president del Col

In this episode, I interview Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet, a Fashion Designer and Co-Founder of fashion label WORLD - one of the leading fashion houses in New Zealand. WORLD was best known and admired by people after they won the Avant-Garde section of the 1995 Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards with their 21st Century Origami Outfit. Shortly after, the Auckland Museum bought the piece because of its unique design that got the attention of many. The Fashion Label WORLD was founded by Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet and her ex-husband Francis Hooper in 1989 in Auckland, New Zealand. They started in a 100 square foot shop, a tiny shop at the back of an arcade. Dramatically, due to their hard work and passion, they managed to increase their work and now have 4 large stores and 40 FTE in 32 years of innovation. Dame Denise says in order for the business to be recognized, having your own signature is very important so people will know immediately. By doing so, you’re doing a smart move to run your business for a long time. “Always think of your business as an extension of your personality, don’t copy or look at other people for inspiration.”- Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet. This Cast Covers: How her passion for business is a key to her success. The importance of focusing on quality over quantity. How leadership without hierarchy improves management and methodology in business. Formulating a brand that stands out on its own. Making brands of the greatest value, how people see it and perceive it. Recognizing the efforts of the staff is vital for their own growth and for them to feel they have achieved something. Seeing the growth of a business by opening a new branch. How good customer service helps in development and maintenance. Involvement of the staff in every discussion results in well-constructed planning. Embracing change and being innovative for growth and development. Additional Resources: WORLD Brand Management and Strategies by William D’ Arienzo Building A Story Brand by Donald Miller Shopify Blog by Dayna Winter  ………………………………………… Quotes:  “Always think of your business as an extension of your personality, don’t copy or look at other people for inspiration.” - Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet  “The greatest value is obtained if you are passionate in everything you do.” - Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet “Be true to yourself and to your service.” - Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet “I always treat the business as a child, it needs to be fed, it needs to be watered, it needs to have daily contact, it needs to be looked after. Otherwise, it won't perform for you.” - Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet “As long as you keep growing, you've got to make sure that your business keeps growing, otherwise you stagnate.” - Dame Denise L'Estrange-Corbet  ………………………………………… Music from https://filmmusic.io “Cold Funk” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Vint is an upcoming fractional wine investment platform. Nick King is the company's founder and CEO. On this week's episode, Nick and I talked about his plans for Vint, investing in the wine space, being an entrepreneur, raising capital for a startup, and conducting market research. This was a cool conversation and provided some valuable insight into launching a product as a small business owner. Also, LeBron's rookie patch auto sets a record, lumber is mooning, and my reaction to the latest personal saving rate print. Plus, why the Nasdaq is due for a pullback. You can get on the Vint waiting list by going here: https://vint.co/ If you enjoyed the podcast, please like, share, and subscribe! You can also get new content delivered straight to your inbox in weekly newsletter. Signup here: https://faybomb.com/special-delivery/ Support the podcast by getting yourself some financial literacy merch https://financial-literacy-threads.creator-spring.com/? or by becoming a premium member of my website https://faybomb.com/subscribe/ - you'll get access to trade ideas and exclusive content depending on which tier you pick. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/faybomb/support

In this episode, I interview Laura Bell, the Founder, and CEO of SafeStack Academy, a boutique cybersecurity company with a team that now stretches across New Zealand and Australia. With over a decade of experience in software development and information security, Laura specializes in bringing security survival skills, practices, and culture into fast-paced businesses and organizations of every shape and size.  An experienced conference speaker, trainer, and regular panel member, Laura has spoken at a range of events such as BlackHat USA, Velocity, OSCON, Kiwicon, Linux Conf AU, and Microsoft TechEd on the subjects of privacy, covert communications, agile security, and security mindset. Laura started SafeStack from a shared workspace back in 2015, aged 30 and with just $300 in startup capital. The business is currently focused on its online educational platform, which they launched in July 2020. Five months in, they had about 4,000 learners and were generating $280,000 in annual revenue with expectations to reach $1 Million within a year.  She was the sole full-time employee when she started the business and now has 8 full-time employees after peaking to seventeen a while back. Laura says the hardest thing in growing a small business for her has been trusting their journey to be different from other companies without focusing on what the other companies were doing. The one thing she says she would tell herself on day one of starting out is, “Believe in yourself more, be confident, don’t sweat the small stuff, and don’t let your anxiety get the best of you” Prepare to be blown away by Laura’s small business growth wisdom. This Cast Covers: Cybersecurity consulting for growing businesses and those that may not have their own internal security team. Generating revenue from the consultancy services and online educational platform. Rate quitting her job to go out on her own and fix everything she couldn’t fix before. Focusing on the online educational platform that they launched in 2020. From 0 to 4,000 learners within 5 months of being in operation and currently generating $280,000 a year in revenue which is projected to reach $1 Million. Giving time to ideas and opportunities that may not seem worthy in the present. Bootstrapping the business from the beginning and their current funding round. The valuable hiring lessons that Laura has learned over time and how it has positively impacted her business. Discovering that sales in cybersecurity are based on emotion and shared values. The power of being authentic to herself and finding confidence in her style of management. Navigating the roller coaster that is fast growth in small business. Overcoming challenges, continuous learning, and enjoying the flexibility that comes with being a small business owner. Scheduling your fitness time and health activities as if they are your most important client. Having success with hiring people who are outside her bubble and hiring through a recruiter. How she struggled with work-life balance in the beginning. Reading a lot on management, communication, and habits for her professional development. Additional Resources:   SafeStack Academy Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman Atomic Habits By James Clear The Gift of Imperfection By Brené Brown   Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Gretta Cohn is the founder and CEO of Transmitter Media. Gretta's experience runs the gamut of all things audio, from public radio and ringtones, to producing chart-topping podcasts. We discuss her time touring with the band Bright Eyes, being hired as the first production executive at Midroll Media and Earwolf, and starting her own podcast company with only $7,000 of savings. Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com--EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up, a podcast that interviews entrepreneurs and leaders. Gretta Cohn:I thought I would take the more productive path, the one where I didn't leave podcasting and I made this decision in December of 2016 to myself and then spent the next couple of months just tucking away money. And when I say I saved money before starting the business, I saved $7,000. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Gretta Cohn, the founder and CEO of Transmitter Media. Now, Gretta's experience runs the gamut of all things audio. From being a touring cellist with the band, Cursive, to teaching radio workshops at NYU, to working in audiobooks, ringtones, and most recently podcasts. And Gretta's done some groundbreaking work along the way like turning Freakonomics Radio into an omni channel media brand, launching the number one podcast show, Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People and helping build Howl, which eventually became part of Stitcher. But Gretta's career transformed in 2017 when she decided to do podcasting on her own terms. So with only $7000 of savings, Gretta founded Transmitter Media and quickly began producing premium podcasts for clients like, TED, Spotify, and Walmart. Today, Gretta is focused on scaling her Brooklyn based team and creating more, as she describes, beautiful things. Chris Erwin:Gretta's love for her craft and team is so genuine and her story is a great example of how sheer will and passion are the ultimate enablers. All right, let's get into it. Chris Erwin:Tell me a little bit about where you grew up. I believe that you grew up in New York City. Is that right? Gretta Cohn:Well, I grew up in the suburbs, so I grew up on Long Island. My mom is from Queens and my dad is from Brooklyn and there is a sort of mythology of their meeting. My mom's dad was a butcher in Queens and my dad would always tell us that they didn't have toothpaste growing up and he'd go over to my mom's house and just eat. Yeah, they moved out to Long Island after they got married. Chris Erwin:Nice. And what part of Long Island? Gretta Cohn:Initially I grew up on the eastern end in the town called Mount Sinai and then when I was 13 in a very traumatic move at that age we moved to Huntington, which was more like smack in the middle of the island. Chris Erwin:My cousins are from Huntington. That's where they grew up, but then I think they moved to Lloyd's Neck shortly after. Why was that move so traumatic at 13? Gretta Cohn:I think it's that really formative age where you are sort of coming into yourself as a human, as a teenager and I remember writing my name on the wall in the closet because I wanted to leave my mark on that particular house that we grew up in. But then we moved and I made new friends and it was fine. Chris Erwin:Everything is scary at that age. It's like, "Oh, I have my friends and if I move to a new high school or middle school, I'll never have the same friends again." Gretta Cohn:My best friend at the time, Alessandra, never to be talked to or seen again. Chris Erwin:What was the household like growing up? Was there interesting audio from your parents? I mean, I think you mentioned, remind me, your father was a butcher and your mother was... Gretta Cohn:No, no. Those are my grandparents. Chris Erwin:Those are your grandparents. Got it. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. No. My parents were both teachers in the education system. My dad was a teacher his whole career life. He taught shop and psychology classes and computer classes. And my mom ended up being a superintendent of the school district on Long Island. She got her start as a Phys Ed teacher and then became an English teacher and worked her way up to superintendent. The sort of interest in audio they instilled in me and my two brothers extremely early. We all started learning to play string instruments at the age of three through the Suzuki method. Chris Erwin:The Suzuki method? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Which is like an ear training style of learning music. So you essentially at three years old, you cannot possibly understand how to physically play an instrument and I remember a lot of time spent in those early group lessons just hugging the cello and singing this song, I love my cello very much, I play it every day and crawling up and down the bow with spider fingers, that's what they called it because your fingers kind of looked like spiders crawling up and down the bow and we all started playing string instruments at that age. I played cello and then the brother who came after me played violin, and the brother who came after him also played cello. Chris Erwin:Wow. And did you parents play instruments as well, string instruments? Gretta Cohn:No. My dad loves to say he can play the radio. Chris Erwin:I respect that. Gretta Cohn:I think they are educators, they are really invested in the full education of a person and so I think that they thought it was a good teaching discipline and it certainly required a kind of discipline. I can recall really fighting against practicing because I had to practice probably every day and I would rebel and not want to do it, but it was not really an option and I'm glad that ultimately I was pressed to continue to play because playing music has played such a huge part of my life. Chris Erwin:Clearly. It led you, which we'll get to, into founding a podcast production company and network and so much more. So very big impact. But, I get it. I began playing the alto saxophone in fourth grade and my twin brother was playing the clarinet and it was lessons with Mr. Slonum every week, an hour of practice every day and it was, when you're putting it on top of sports and homework and academics, it's a lot and it's intense and there's moments where you really don't want to do it and it's not fun and then there's moments where you're very thankful for it. And I think a lot of the more thankful moments came later in my life, but if you can get some of those early on, it's meaningful. When you first started playing, did you really enjoy it or was it just like, uh this is what I'm just supposed to do? Gretta Cohn:I remember enjoying it. I remember in particular being able to do little recitals every so often and I know there are photographs of myself in recital that I've seen even recently and there is such a joy in that and I think that showing off something that you've done and your family claps for you, it's a good job. Ultimately, what it feels like to play in a group, in an ensemble, it's pretty magical. I played in orchestras starting in grade school all the way up through college and there is something really amazing about the collective and your part and you can't mess up because it's glaringly obvious if you're the one out of the section of 12 cellists whose got their bow going the wrong direction or the wrong note playing. But it's also really beautiful to play in a group like that. Chris Erwin:Yeah. It's a special team sport, right? You rely on other people and people rely on you. When it comes together, it's an absolutely beautiful event, for you and the audience. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. I also played soccer growing up, speaking of team sports. Chris Erwin:Okay. What position? Gretta Cohn:I was defense. They would enlist me to run around and shadow the most powerful player on the other team. I don't know why, but I remember that. Chris Erwin:I was very similar. I started out as a recreation all-star like a forward and then got moved to right fullback, which is defense. That was my soccer career. All right. So interesting. So yeah, speaking of studying music, I think that when you went to university, you almost went to study music at a conservatory but you ended up going to Brown instead. What were you thinking, because were you going down a path where it's like, "I want to be in audio, I want to create music." What was your head space there as you started to go through advanced education, beginnings of your career? Gretta Cohn:I remember collecting fliers for conservatories. I was interested in conservatory, I think though that as I began to really think about what that would mean, I don't know that I was thinking really broadly, like oh... No one at 17 or whatever really has a full picture of what those choices ultimately mean but I'm glad that I didn't go to music school. I was always the worst player in the best section. So I remember I was in the New York Youth Symphony and I was definitely not the best player in that section, but it was really hard to get in. One summer I went and studied at the Tanglewood Institute in Boston, which is, again, extremely competitive and hard to get into but I was definitely not the best player there. Gretta Cohn:And I think that thinking about what it would mean to devote oneself entirely to that, I had other interests. I wasn't so completely focused on being a performer that it didn't ultimately feel like it would make a lot of sense because I wanted to study history, I wanted... And obviously, you go to conservatory, you have a well-rounded education ultimately, I would imagine, but it's not where I think I ultimately wanted to go. That was not the direction I ultimately wanted to go. Chris Erwin:Yeah. It's a really big commitment going from good to great, but I mean, you are great. You are getting into these elite orchestras but to be the first chair, that's a level of dedication practice that's really tough. It's funny, I actually read a David Foster Wallace article about the sport of tennis and he played and he was very good and I think he could have even gone pro, but he's like, "I'm good, I put in enough hours and I have fun with it, but for me to go to the next level..." He's like, "It's not fun to me and I don't want to do that." It's not for him. So you make a decision and you go to Brown. What's your study focus at Brown? Gretta Cohn:I ultimately was in the American Studies Department, but I had a special sort of crossover with the music department so I took a lot of music classes, I took a lot of American Studies classes which is basically like cultural history, social history, history through the lens of various social movements or pop culture, which I think is really fascinating and I wound everything together so that my senior thesis was about cover songs and the history of sort of copying and the idea of creating various versions of any original work and the sort of cultural history and critical theory lens of it, but also just I selected three songs and I traced their history over time from a performance perspective but also from like, how does this song fit into the narrative of music history? Chris Erwin:Do you remember the three songs? Gretta Cohn:I think I did Twist and Shout. Chris Erwin:Okay. Gretta Cohn:I Shall Be Released and I can't remember the third one. But I had a lot of fun writing it and I really liked the bridging between the music department and the American Studies department. And strangely, there are so many journalists who came up through American Studies. There are several producers on my staff who were American Studies students in college. I think it just gives you this permission to think about story telling in the world from just this very unique cultural vantage points. Chris Erwin:Did you have a certain expectation where you had an idea of what that story was going to be over time or were you surprised and as you saw how the narrative played out with the original song and recording and production and then the covers, anything that stands out of like, "Oh, I did not expect this, but I found this very fascinating."? Gretta Cohn:I don't really remember at this point. Chris Erwin:Sorry for putting you on the spot, it's such a long time ago. Gretta Cohn:The thing was like more than 100 pages and it's probably a door stopper now at my parents house. I remember that I put a big picture of a mushroom on the last page. John Cage wrote a lot about mushrooms and so I wove some of his work into the thesis but this idea that the mushroom takes the dirt and crap and stuff that's on the forest floor and turns it into this organic material, the mushroom. So yeah, I don't remember the specifics. Chris Erwin:Yeah, no. All good. My thesis was on the Banana Wars and that is... It's not even worthy of being a door stopper. That's just straight to the trash. But I did, for a music class, I think I did break down a song by the Sex Pistols. Gretta Cohn:Cool. Chris Erwin:I can't remember specifically which one, but I think I dove deep into the lyrics and I think I was pretty disappointed. I expected to find more meaning and have more fun with it, and I think it was maybe my young mind, I couldn't go deeper than I thought I could. Anyway... So fast forward to 2001 and as I was going through your bio, this really stood out and it hits close to home. You become a cellist for some alternative rock bands including Cursive, The Faint, and Bright Eyes. And I just remember The Faint, I think a song from 2008, The Geeks Were Right. I remember listening to that shortly after college. So tell me, what was that transition going from university to then moving, I think you moved to Omaha out of New York to play in these rock bands? Gretta Cohn:So when I was in college, I continued to play in the school orchestra, but I also met some friends who became collaborators and we would just improvise in the lounge like, bass drums, guitar and cello. And that was really freeing for me. Growing up on Long Island, I had such easy access to New York City and for whatever reason, I was really given a lot of freedom to... I would take the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan and go to concerts all through high school, like rock concerts. Chris Erwin:What was some of your earliest concert memories? Gretta Cohn:Purposely getting to an Afghan Whigs show and planting myself in the front row because I wanted to be as close as possible to the stage. So I used to go to concerts all the time and I was really, really interested in... I wasn't only a person who thought about classical music at all and so I met this group of people and formed this little group together and so I was playing music in college, eventually joining a band mostly with locals in Providence and we became the opening act for a lot of bands that were coming through. Chris Erwin:And what type of music were you playing, Gretta? Gretta Cohn:It was arty rock. Chris Erwin:Arty rock. Okay. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Some of it was instrumental, but then some of it was like pop. I think one of the bands that I was in was called The Beauty Industry and it was probably a little bit reminiscent of Built to Spill and The Magnetic Fields and a little bit like Poppy. So in that band we would serve as the opening act for a lot of artists that were coming through and through that I was able to meet the folks from Saddle Creek from Omaha, Nebraska. And I didn't know that I made an impression on them, but I did and after I graduated I moved to New York. I didn't really know exactly where I was headed. I got a job working in the development office at Carnegie Hall and I didn't love it. We had to wear suits. And one day the folks from Omaha called my parents home phone and left a message and asked if I would come out and play on a record with them and I did. Chris Erwin:When you got that message, were you ecstatic, were you super excited or were you just confused, like, "Hey, is this real? What's going on here?" Gretta Cohn:Yeah. I think I was like, "Huh, well, that's interesting." Like, "I didn't expect this." So Cursive is the group that invited me out to record. Just sort of like come out and record on our album. And I didn't actually know Cursive. I had met Bright Eyes and Lullaby for the Working Class when I was at Brown, but I hadn't met Cursive and my best friend, who is still one of my best friends was a Cursive fan and dumped all of their CDs and seven inches in my lap and was like, "You need to listen to them, they are so good." So I did and I sort of gave myself a little Cursive education and then I started to get really excited because I felt like there was a lot of interesting potential. Yeah. Gretta Cohn:Moving out there was not an easy decision. It was very unknown for me. I love New York City and I always imagined myself here and I had never been to the Midwest so I didn't know what my expectations were and I didn't... Also at that time Cursive was a fairly well-known band but it wasn't understood that I would move out there and that would be my job, right? I was moving out there to join this community and play in Cursive and do Cursive stuff, go on tour, record records, but at that point there was no promise like, "Oh, I'm going to live off of this." And so I went to a temp agency and I did paperwork in an accountant's office and- Chris Erwin:While also performing with Cursive? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Yeah. I will also say though, after the first year, things really took off after The Ugly Organ and I would say at that point I was no longer working in the temp office and we were going on long tours and when I came home in between stretches on tour, I was recovering from tour because it's quite exhausting and working on the next thing with the bands. Chris Erwin:Were you touring around nationally? Any international touring? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. National and international. We went all over the States, Canada and then European tour is like often... Cursive was very big in Germany so we would spend a lot of time in Germany, Scandinavia. We went to Japan once. Chris Erwin:What an incredible post university experience! Gretta Cohn:It really, really was incredible. Chris Erwin:Playing music because of a skill that you formed very early on and then working in New York at Carnegie Hall and a job that you weren't too excited about and then you just get this serendipitous phone call. And you started listening to Cursive records in seven inches and you're getting more and more excited and all of a sudden you're traveling the world. That's like a dream scenario. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. It was pretty dreamy. And I think I recognized at the time. I mean, those first tours, we were sleeping on... I had my sleeping bag and we would be sleeping on hardwood floors, end up in like a row and someone's apartment in like Arlington. And I remember some of those first tours internationally, like in Germany, you would play the show and then everyone would leave and they would shut the lights off and we would just sleep on the stage. And in the morning the promoter, like the booker would come back and they would have bread and cheese and fruit and coffee. And it was just this beautiful... But we were sleeping on the stage. Chris Erwin:I mean, you're all doing it together. So it was cool. Right. You just were a crew. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, yeah. It was great. I loved it. I really, really loved it. Chris Erwin:I look at your work timeline between 2001 to 2010, which includes, you're a touring international artist, but then you do a lot of other things in audio. Like you study with Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute, do some time in Studio 360, and then you go to radio and then audio books. So what are the next few years? How does this audio adventure start to transform for you? Gretta Cohn:While I was in Cursive, there were other parts of me that I felt needed feeding and so I started writing for the local alternative weekly in Omaha. And I was doing like book reviews and reviewing art shows and doing little pieces, which sort of opened up to me, this understanding that journalism was something that I was really interested in. And while I was still essentially based in Omaha and still, essentially based out of Saddle Creek, I came back to New York for a few months and did an internship at The Village Voice because I just really wanted to sort of start exploring these paths of what would potentially come next. I didn't necessarily think that I was meant to stay in Omaha like for the rest of my life. When I first moved out there, I thought, "Oh, I'll give it a few years. See how it goes and then probably come back home to New York." Gretta Cohn:And then things really took off and so I didn't want to leave. And I was really having a great time and loved it and loved everything that I was doing. And I think that at the time that chapter was coming to a close, it was sort of like naturally coming to a close and I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do next. I was interested in journalism, I was interested obviously in... still thinking about music and audio although I think I needed a break from music after that time. Like when you're so intensively working on something like that, you just need a minute to let everything kind of settle. Chris Erwin:Yeah. It's all encompassing. Right. You're just living, breathing, eating music and the band. It's a lot. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. So I took a couple of years and started to figure it out. Actually, something that's not on your list is I worked at a ringtone company for a bit. Chris Erwin:It is audio based. So I'm not surprised. So yeah, tell me about that. Gretta Cohn:It was just a job that I got. Actually, looking back now, I think that it was a company that was founded by two classical musicians. They mostly had contracts with major record labels and I remember turning Sean Paul's Temperature into a ringtone in particular. It was just like chopping things into little eight seconds and looping them and mastering them and- Chris Erwin:Were you doing the technical work as well? Gretta Cohn:Not really, you spend time in the studio and so you learn and you pick up things. I wasn't recording the band, but that was the first time that I got my own pro tools set up and so I had my own pro tool setup, like was using it for my own little projects at home, but I was not technically involved with the making of any of the records that was on now, except for playing on them. Chris Erwin:Yeah, you were dabbling in pro tools then pretty early on. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, yeah. I had the original Mbox, which is like this big plastic, weird alien looking object with just like a couple of little knobs on it. I finally got rid of it a couple of years ago. I held onto it for a long time and now you don't even need it. Chris Erwin:So you're dabbling and then I know that you spend time as a producer at The Story with Dick Gordon, North Carolina, and then you went to audio books. Is that when things started to take shape for you of knowing kind of what you wanted to do? Gretta Cohn:I think as soon as I went to Salt to study with Rob Rosenthal is when I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I took a few years after Cursive to kind of reset a little bit and then I started working at the ringtone company and began to have conversations with people about where all my interests collided. Like I loved working in sound, storytelling and journalism were really important to me. I don't think at that point that... There was a whole lot that I was exposed to apart from NPR, This American Life and Studio 360 were sort of the major outlets for audio storytelling that I understood and spent time with. And I just remember having a meal with someone who I don't recall his name, but he's done a lot of illustrations for This American Life and public radio outlets and he was like, "There's this place, it's called salt. You can learn how to do this there." And so I just decided that I was going to step down this path. Right. Chris Erwin:Yeah. And Salt is based in Maine, is that right? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. So I moved to Maine for six months. I was very excited. I got a merit scholarship to go there. Chris Erwin:Oh wow. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, and I basically... There's so many fundamentals that I learned there that I use every single day now still. I think Rob Rosenthal is absolutely brilliant and he has trained so many radio producers. It's insane. Chris Erwin:Of all the learnings from Rob, just like what's one that comes to mind quickly that you use everyday? Gretta Cohn:I don't know that this is one I use every day, but it's one that's really stuck with me, is he really counseled to be really mindful when thinking about adding music to a story. He used the phrase, emotional fascism. Essentially, if you need to rely on the music to tell the listener how to feel, then you haven't done your job in sort of crafting a good story. So like the bones of the story, like the structure, the content, the sort of stakes intention and the character you've chosen, like all of that have to clear a certain hurdle and then you can start thinking about adding music, but if you're relying on the music to sort of create tension or drama or emotion, then you've kind of missed something. Chris Erwin:Yeah. That's very interesting. What a great insight! I like that. Emotional fascism. Gretta Cohn:I'll never forget. Chris Erwin:So after the Salt Institute, what's next? Gretta Cohn:I got an internship at WNYC at Studio 360. At that time the internship system at New York Public Radio was like largely unpaid. I think I got $12 a day. So I interned I think three or four days a week and then I had like two other jobs. Chris Erwin:Just to make ends meet, to make it work. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. I worked at a coffee shop, like most mornings. And then I worked at a Pilates studio many afternoons and on the weekends. So it was like a lot, I was really running at full steam, but I really enjoyed the internship there. And then that was my first real glimpse into what it was like to work in a team to make impactful audio storytelling and I learned a lot there too. The team there was really amazing. Yeah. So Studio 360 was fantastic. And then a friend of mine had found out about this gig at The Story with Dick Gordon. It was a short term contract producer role, like filling in for someone who was out on leave. And I got the job and I moved down to Durham, North Carolina, and found an apartment, brought my cat and worked on that show for a few months, which I think was a pretty crucial experience to have had, which helped open the door into WNYC. Chris Erwin:Why's that? Gretta Cohn:So this was in like 2008, 9 and there weren't like a whole lot of opportunities in the audio storytelling space. Like your major opportunities were at public radio stations and public radio stations were highly competitive. It didn't have a lot of turnover. They understood that they were the only game in town if this was the career path that you were interested in going down. So having had a job at a radio station on staff on a show was such a huge opportunity. I don't know that I was like chomping at the bit to leave New York or move to Carolina, although I loved it there. And I had friends who lived there that I knew from the Saddle Creek community. So it was really great. I moved down there and I didn't have to... I can't recall ever feeling lonely. Right. Like I immediately had this community of people, which was amazing, but that gig was only three months. Gretta Cohn:And so I came back to New York and basically spent the next couple of years banging on the door to get back into WNYC, which is when I went to the audio books company where quite a few radio producers worked. Like that's how I found out about it. There were folks who had passed through Studio 360 or elsewhere. And my boss at the audio books company is David Markowitz, who is now currently working in the podcasting department at Netflix. And he previously was at Pushkin and at Headspace and he... So he and I, although our paths crossed at that moment, because our paths have continued to cross over and over again since that time working together with the audio books company. Audio books wasn't my passion, but while I was there I got the idea to pitch the podcast to the audio books company, which they agreed to let me do. And so I had this outlet to just do a little bit of experimenting and to grow some skills and also have just like an outlet to doing this kind of work that I wanted to be doing. Chris Erwin:Had you ever pitched a project or an idea before to any place that you worked at? Gretta Cohn:I pitched stories to Studio 360, but to pitch an idea for something that had not existed before, no. Chris Erwin:It becomes, I believe, The Modern Scholar podcast, is that right? Gretta Cohn:Yeah. You've done like a really deep research. Chris Erwin:Look, it helps to tell your story. Right. So you pitch, and then you get the green light, which must feel validating. It's like, okay, this is a good idea, but now it's got to be more than a pitch, you had to execute. Was that intimidating or were you like, "No, I'm ready to go I got it." Gretta Cohn:I was ready to go. They had an audio book series called The Modern Scholar. Professors would come in and record like 10 hours worth of like Italian history. And so what I did was just have a one hour interview with the professor who was the author of this series and talk about their work, go into detail on something really specific. I will say at that time that like I applied for a mentorship with AIR, the Association of Independence Radio, they gave me a mentor and I had like a few sessions with him and it was great. Like I had someone... I had an editor, right. I wasn't totally on my own kind of like muscling through. And so he really sort of helped refine the ideas for that show and that was a great help. So I'm lucky that I was able to get that. Chris Erwin:What I'm really hearing Gretta is that you moved around a lot and participated in and developed all these different music and audio communities around the US and even the world from like Omaha and international touring and Scandinavia and Europe, and then the Salt and Maine and North Carolina and New York and more, and I'm sure, as you said, with David Markowitz, that these relationships are now serving you in your current business. So it feels like that was like a really good investment of your time where the networking was great, but you also learned a lot and were exposed to a lot of different thinking and ideas. Is that right? Gretta Cohn:Absolutely. Definitely. Yeah. Chris Erwin:After dabbling around a bit for the first decade of the 2000s, you then go to WNYC and you're there for around six years, I think 2008 to 2014. And you work on some cool projects. You're the associate producer at Freakonomics and you also work on Soundcheck. So tell me about what made you commit to WNYC and what were you working on when you first got there? Gretta Cohn:At the time there weren't a lot of options for people doing this work. And WNYC obviously is an incredible place where really amazing work is done, really talented people. It basically was like the game in town, right? Like there weren't a lot of other places where you could do audio storytelling work in this way. There was a pivotal moment that I think could have gone in a different direction, but I had applied for a job at StoryCorps and I applied for the job at Soundcheck. Chris Erwin:What is StoryCorps? Gretta Cohn:They have a story every Friday on NPR that's like a little three minute edited story and it's usually like two people in conversation with each other. It's highly personal. And they're very well known for these human connection stories. It's I think influenced in part by oral history and anthropology, but it's basically this intimate storytelling. And I did not get that job, although I was a runner up and the person who did get the job is now one of my closest friends. But at the same time was an applicant for Soundcheck and I did get that job. And I think it was... That was the right path for me because I have such a passion for music. Right. My background kind of really led me to have an understanding of how to tell those stories. Chris Erwin:What is the Soundcheck format? Gretta Cohn:It changed over time. But when I joined Soundcheck, it was a live daily show about music and really open, like wide open as far as what it covered. So in any given episode, you could have like Yoko Ono there for an interview, you could have the author of a book about musicals from the 1920s, and then you could have like a live performance from Parquet Courts. So it was really wide ranging and varied and super interesting. And there's so much about working on a daily show that's I think extremely crucial to building up chops as a producer because every single day you have a brand new blank slate, you have to work extremely quickly and efficiently. Working in the live setting can create so much pressure because not only are you keeping to a clock, like the show went from like 2:01 to like 2:50 every day, and there had to be certain breaks and you have an engineer and you need the music to cue in a certain place. Gretta Cohn:And so you're like, "Cue the music." And you're whispering to the host like, "Move on to the next question." You're like this master puppeteer with all these marionettes and it's pretty wild. It's really fun, super stressful. You go off stage and it's like- Chris Erwin:It sounds stressful. Gretta Cohn:You can't fix it. You just have to move on and you learn a lot. Chris Erwin:It feels like something, you do that for maybe a couple of years or a few years and then it's like, ah you need a break from that. It's amazing that people who work in like live video or live radio for decades, like kudos to the stamina that they build up. Gretta Cohn:And that's exactly what happened is I needed a break from it. And that's when I went to Freakonomics. Chris Erwin:Got it. Before we go into Freakonomics, you also helped create Soundcheck into an omni-channel media brand where you were launching video and live events and interactive series. Was that something that had been happening in the audio industry or were you kind of setting a new precedent? Gretta Cohn:Our team was tapped to reinvent Soundcheck. So it had been this live daily show for quite some time and I think that WNYC wanted to reshape it for a variety of reasons. So we were sort of tasked, like we pulled the show off the air and kind of went through this like sprint of re-imagining, what the show could be, how it would sound, what it would do. And actually, I remember that I pitched this video series that was a lot of fun. I can't remember the name of it now, but we worked with a local elementary school and we would have three kids sitting behind desks and we would play them clips from pop songs- Chris Erwin:Whoa. Gretta Cohn:... and they would review them and- Chris Erwin:That's a really cool idea. Gretta Cohn:... it was awesome. It was so much fun. We did a lot of live performances and I started producing sort of like more highly produced segments and storytelling for Soundcheck at that time, because there was more space to try and figure that out. Ultimately, what it turned into was like a daily delivery of a show that I think ultimately resembled the old show in many ways, but it was not live anymore. And there were all these other tasks. I also created a first lesson type series for Soundcheck at that time where we would like stream a new album before it came out and I would write a little review. It was really fun. When we pulled the show off the air and we were tasked with re-imagining it was like a sandbox that you just kind of could plan, which was great. Chris Erwin:It's a wide open canvas that you can paint to how you desire. I get that why you were burnt out after that. So then you change it up and you become an associate producer at Freakonomics and you work with the fame, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. How has that experience? Gretta Cohn:It was great. It was challenging. I think that show has incredibly high standards and there's a particular kind of brain that I think works extremely well at that show. At the time, there were two of us who were the producers of the show, myself, who has this background in music and in production. And then the other producer was an economist who had been freshly graduated from economics school. And so we were this pair and I think what ultimately happened was that where I shown where these like human stories and where he shown was like distilling econ papers into sort of understandable stories. And so I think the two of us together really complimented each other. One of my favorite episodes that I worked on was about the Nathan's hotdog contest and one of the sort of like champs who had come up with a particular system for how to win- Chris Erwin:Dunking them in water and all that stuff. Yeah. I remember watching some of those segments online. In a minute they put back like 47 hotdogs. It was something crazy. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, it's wild. Chris Erwin:After Freakonomics, you decided to depart for Midroll and Earwolf. What was the impetus for that? Gretta Cohn:My time at Freakonomics was sort of like naturally coming to a close. I think that while my strength was in this sort of human sort of storytelling, I think the show needed someone who had a little bit more of that like econ background. And so I started to look around the station at WNYC, of other places where I could land, right? Like I'd moved from Soundcheck to Freakonomics, like what would be the next place for me to go? And I couldn't find it. I spent a little bit of time in the newsroom helping to look for a host for a new health podcast and I had conversations with people around the station about various other shows. I think I talked to the folks on the media and this producer, Emily Botein, who ultimately founded the Alec Baldwin podcast and a host of other really great shows there, but it didn't seem like there was space or a role that really made sense for me as far as like the next step is concerned. Gretta Cohn:At that time, Erik Diehn who's now the CEO of the Stitcher empire was in the finance office, I think at WNYC and he left to go to Midroll/Earwolf. Chris Erwin:I didn't realize he was also WNYC. Bannon was also WNYC who's now the chief content officer over there? Gretta Cohn:Mm-hmm (affirmative). Chris Erwin:Wow. It was a feeder to that company. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. So Erik Diehn left WNYC and I remember the note that went around, he's going to this company, Earwolf/Midroll. And I was like, kind of filed that away. And then it was probably a few months later that they put a position, they were hiring for a producer. And I sort of leapt at the opportunity. I thought that the shows on Earwolf were awesome. I had not worked really in comedy. Although I think that there's so much crossover in Soundcheck. We really had a lot of license to have basically like whoever on the show, like I booked comedians, I booked authors. Like I booked anyone who had a passion to talk about music, which is like 90% of the world. And so I think that that was really of interest to them. And I had a couple of conversations with Erik and the job was mine. I mean, I went through- Chris Erwin:You make it sound very easy. Gretta Cohn:... a proper vetting and interview process. And there were other candidates, but they gave it to me. And I was really, really excited because I think I was ready for a fresh start and I was ready for something new, something a little bit unknown. I think that I tend to find... Typically, I think if you look over the course of my life, like every few years, I'm like, "Okay, what's the next thing?" And I think that I still feel that way except now I have this entity of Transmitter in which to keep iterating and playing, but I was just ready for the next thing. And it was at that time, a really small company, I was the first New York based employee, like Eric was living in New Jersey. So it doesn't count as a New York employee. There was no office. Chris Erwin:I remember that Jeff Ullrich was the founder and it was bootstrap, didn't raise any venture capital and started I think in the early 2000s, if I remember correctly. Is that right? Gretta Cohn:I don't know the dates, but that sounds right. Chris Erwin:Okay. A little context for the listeners. And Earwolf is a comedy podcast network. So there's a slate of comedy shows and Midroll was the advertising arm of the business that would connect advertisers with the podcasters. But no, please continue. So you're the first New York hire. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Which was really exciting to me. I was the first producer hired by the company. They had a few really amazing audio engineers out in LA who ran the recordings and they did editing, but there had never been a producer on staff. So it was really this like wide open field. And Jeff at that time, I think had taken a step back from the company, but the moment that I was brought in is when the idea for Howl came into the picture and Howl was a membership subscription-based app that has now turned into Stitcher and Stitcher Premium, it was folded in, into Stitcher and Stitcher Premium. But at the time there was like this real push to create a subscription-based app with like a ton of new material. And one of my first jobs was to work extremely closely with Jeff to figure out what was going to be on this app, who were we going to hire to make material? What producers, what comedians, what actors? There was an enormous spreadsheet, like one of the most enormous spreadsheets that I've ever spent time with. Gretta Cohn:So that was my first task and alongside, which was to sort of from a producer's perspective look at this later shows on Earwolf and start to think about what would a producer bring to the network? What would a producer bring to the hosts, to the way that things were made, to new ideas to bring to the network? And so those two things were sort of happening concurrently. Chris Erwin:The producer role was not defined. You're the first producer there. So it's you coming in saying, "Here's how I can enhance the slate. Here's how I can enhance the content strategy of where we're headed concurrently with we're launching Howl, which needs a lot of content, both from partner podcasters and probably owned and operated and then filling..." So creating a new slate, that's going to fill that. That's going to make people want to buy the membership product or subscription product, which are big questions that Spotify and Netflix and the biggest subscription platforms in the world have huge teams to figure out. And it's like you and Jeff, and maybe a couple more people? Gretta Cohn:There was one developer. Chris Erwin:Wow. Gretta Cohn:It was intense. It was a lot of work. I remember because at that time too, I was the only New York based person. Eric was in New Jersey. I think Lex Friedman came along. He was either already there or came along shortly thereafter, also based in New Jersey. Chris Erwin:And Lex was running sales? Gretta Cohn:Yes. And he's now with ART19, but there was no office. I was working from my kitchen table, much like I do now. It was great. I think what really excited me was like the open field of really sort of figuring out what everything was going to be and it was like off to the races. Chris Erwin:So I actually reached out to a few people that we mutually know to just get like, oh, what are some stories I can have Gretta talk about from the early Midroll/Earwolf days. So I reached out to Adam Sachs who was also on this podcast earlier. He's a childhood friend of mine that was also the CEO of the company when it sold the scripts, as well as Chris Bannon, who I consider one of the most like delightful humans on the planet. I think he was the chief content officer while you were there and he still is now under Eric as part of this new Stitcher Midroll combined empire. And what Chris said is that, like you mentioned Gretta, no office for the first six months and that you were taking meetings, I think in sound booths as well. And that when you finally did get an office, it was so small that you were taking turns sitting down. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Well, we put our own furniture together. I learned so much from my years at Earwolf that have completely guided and shaped a lot of how Transmitter kind of came into being. Yeah, we put all of our furniture together ourselves in this first office. Chris Erwin:That's good training for you launching Transmitter where it's lean budgets, you're funding from your savings. You probably had to set up your own furniture yourself too. So that DIY attitude persists. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, yeah. And it was exciting. Whereas a place like WNYC is this like well oiled machine, it's also like a big ship that in order to turn 30 people have to be sort of moving things around and like, is the sky clear? There are just like so many little tiny steps that have to be taken to make a decision. Whereas what working at that early stage at Earwolf meant was like you can just make decisions, you just do it. Eric and I went around to see like five different offices. We decided together, "Oh, let's take this one on Eighth Avenue." This is the furniture. All right, let's put it together. I remember walking into the office when the furniture was first delivered and it was extremely dusty and we were wearing dust masks and trying to figure out where's the studio going to go? And it was just really exciting. It's really exciting to sort of pave your way and build something from the ground up. Chris Erwin:I like what you're saying too, is that you can just get things done very quickly. And that's actually one of the things that Bannon brought up about working with you is you guys launched good shows I think in just a matter of a few months or less, like Bitch, Sash and Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People, which was a number one hit on iTunes. And that now making shows like that, if you're at a bigger company with all the bureaucracy and the approvals can take over a year, but you guys were getting stuff done fast, there was no alternative choice. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, we were working very quickly. Chris Erwin:So I'm curious to hear like Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People. That's like an iTunes topper. Was that the first big podcast hit that you had in your career? Gretta Cohn:I would say so. Yeah. I'm trying to remember what if anything came ahead of it, but I'm fairly certain that some of my first meetings after joining the team at Earwolf were with Chris Gethard and working with him on sort of early prototypes of Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People. And he's a remarkable person. He's a brilliant comedian. He's such a good human being. He's an amazing collaborator. And yeah, it was the two of us for a while just, I think the first call that we took, which was sort of just the prototype, the pilot for the show. We're like, "We don't know what's going to happen. Is anyone going to call?" And yeah, I mean, it was really awesome working on that show. And also it was such a departure from the kinds of projects that I had worked on previously, which were extremely buttoned up like very highly produced in the sense that every single step that you took in the process was regimented, right? Like making a Freakonomics episode, making an hour of Soundcheck, thinking about that live daily experience. Gretta Cohn:Like you can't have a minute on the clock that's not accounted for in making those things. And here's a show where we just open a phone line and see what happens for an hour. And it's so freeing to be sort of separated from that regimentation and working with Chris Gethard, I think taught me that you can make something that's really compelling and that's really good. And it was highly produced. Like a lot of thought went into it. There's a lot of post-production, but it didn't need to be the kind of thing where like every single minute of that hour was a line on a spreadsheet. And I love that show. I think that we're all like voyeurs of other people's experiences. Right. And I think it's super interesting the way that people are willing to call and sort of like bare their souls to Chris and working on that show was fantastic. Gretta Cohn:And it was really gratifying and really rewarding when we realized that people were paying attention and they were going to listen. And for that to be one of the first projects of my tenure at Earwolf was great. It was great. Chris Erwin:That's awesome. What a cool story! Bannon even mentioned you work on, I think Casey Holford's Heaven's Gate, which is now an HBO Max series. I think that just came out this week or something, some big projects. All right. So look, in 2015, Midroll/Earwolf sells to Scripps, EW Scripps. Then I think in 2017 is when you start Transmitter Media. I'm curious to hear that after this fun sprint at Midroll and the sale and launching the shows and launching Howl and Wolfpop and all the things, what got you thinking about becoming a founder, which is a very different experience than what you had done for the first 10, 15 years of your career? Gretta Cohn:So after the sale, I think that Adam Sachs kind of offered me the opportunity to reshape my role a little bit. So I had been overseeing the Earwolf shows, developing and producing brand new shows and Howl was in the rear view at that point for me, I believe. I think this is like a classic situation. They're like, "We're going to split your job into two, which half do you want?" And I was like, "This is great." Because it had been a lot to be developing new shows, to have this sort of slate of shows at Earwolf requiring my attention. And I picked the path of new development and that's when they went out and found someone to executive produce the Earwolf network. And in my new role, I needed to build a team and a division. Gretta Cohn:So I had to hire really quickly about six producers to form a team. And there wasn't really a human resources and so it really fell on me to read every application that came in and kind of vet all of the candidates and begin that process of selecting who to talk to. And I probably spent about six months just interviewing. I think that I learned a lot from that process and I think it developed in me like a little bit of an eye for how to spot talent and people that I want to work with, but it also was like supremely exhausting. And at the same time, I think that the company was in a real state of renewal and flux and change following the sale to Scripps, which I think is probably common in any situation where a company is acquired by a company that has a different POV, like maybe doesn't understand podcasting, has its own goals that are separate from what the goals had been at Earwolf. Gretta Cohn:So there were just a lot of strategy shifts that I did my best to kind of keep up with, but ultimately found myself thinking like, "Well, if I were setting the strategy, what would I do? If I were re-imagining sort of the direction that this company was going in, what would I do?" And I looked around and Pineapple Street had been around for a few months, maybe six months. And I went and had some chats with them about sort of like what they were doing and what they wanted to do. And I went over and had a chat with the folks at Gimlet thinking like maybe there would be a place for me there, but ultimately out of my conversations with all of those people, was this kind of clarifying feeling that there was something that I wanted to do and that I wanted to do it differently. I would say it was definitely like burnout that kind of led me to thinking about what I wanted to do next, because it felt like where I was at was like a little bit unsustainable. It was scary. Gretta Cohn:I definitely spent a month sort of quaking with fear on the couch. Like, is this something that I'm going to do? What does it take and what do I need and are there like, long-term consequences that I can't really think of yet? Because I'd always had a job, right? Like I always worked for someone else and enjoyed the freedom, frankly, that that gives you, right? Like you show up, you do the work and then you leave and you can go and take care of whatever. So I just spent a lot of time thinking about it and talking to friends, my close friend who gave me the Cursive records back in the day has run a press, a small press for nearly as long as I've known him. And it's a small non-profit, but it requires the same levels of sort of like entrepreneurship and sort of like- Chris Erwin:Discipline in a way. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Discipline. That's exactly the word. And so I talked to him a lot about he figured out what he was doing. My brother has had his own post-production business for film for more than five years, so I went for dinner with him and talked about... His business relies on film clients who come to him with a movie that needs mixing and sound effects and sound design. So we talked about that and my husband was acquiring a business. He purchased a retail shop in our neighborhood around the same time too. So there was like a lot of this around me where I had just a lot of conversations about this and I decided to do it. I decided that like the fear was not a good enough reason to not do it. And my alternate path to be quite frank was to leave podcasting because I just couldn't see where my next step was going to be. Gretta Cohn:And so I thought I would take the more productive path, the one where I didn't leave podcasting and I made this decision in December of 2016 to myself and then spent the next couple of months just tucking away money. When I say that I saved money before starting the business, I saved $7,000. Like this is not an enormous coffer of like startup money, but it was enough to pay for an office space and to pay for myself for a couple of months to just see what would happen. And I gave extremely early notice at Midroll and I started to look for clients before I left. So I set it up so that by the time I finally left Midroll in the end of March of 2017 and walked into my office, my new office for Transmitter Media, on the 3rd of April of 2017, I already had clients. So this also gave me that added security of like, "I'm not just walking into this empty pit of like who knows what? Like I have work to do." Chris Erwin:Look, that's just like an amazing transition story, but a couple of things stand out. One it's like double entrepreneur household. A lot of couples that I talk to will say, one will start a new venture business that's risky while other has like W2 salaried income. But your husband had just bought a local retail shop in the neighborhood. You were launching Transmitter Media. So you were smart about mitigating risk of landing of clients in advance. Yeah, it's a lot to take on. And the second thing I heard that I think is really interesting is you felt that there was no path for you to stay in podcasting unless you started your own business. So it's either get out and do- Gretta Cohn:It felt that way. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Get out and do something totally different or commit and go deeper with this incredible network and skillset that you've built up for a decade and a half and start your own thing. You committed to it. And yeah, whether it was meager savings of $7,000, it was enough. And you had the confidence. And I think in the early days, confidence is everything that you need. Tell us about what is Transmitter Media or what was it at that point? Gretta Cohn:Transmitter Media was born as a full service creative podcast company, meaning primarily working for clients who needed podcasts production. And it's really 360 ideation. There's like a paragraph that explains what they want the podcast to be and then we figure it out from there. Like it's quite rare that someone comes in the door and they have like a fully fleshed out idea for a show that has all the episodes outlined and the guests and then this and then that. So it's really starting with a kernel of an idea, figuring out how to make it, what it needs, what's the format and executing it all the way up to launch and continued production. And I think that I saw what Pineapple Street was doing. I respect Jenna and Max from Pineapple Street so much. Gretta Cohn:And it felt like the right model, essentially doing what film production companies do or in a way kind of like what advertising agencies do. You have clients, your clients have a story that they want to tell and as a production company, you figure out how to tell it and how to tell it really well. And I think that for me, having a focus on craft was really important quality over quantity and taking the time to really figure out creatively, what does something need was how I stepped into it. Chris Erwin:Clearly as the industry is growing, in terms of more audio listenership, more brands wanting to figure out the space and still early, I think in 2019, the ad market for audio was like 750 million. So you started the company is like two to three years before that, when you look at the total advertising landscape, which is like over, I think, 600 billion globally. But brands are leaning in, they want to figure it out and you have a knack for audio storytelling, and then you commit. And so who are some of the early clients you work with? I think they were Walmart and Spotify. And what did those first early projects look like and had you had experience working with brands before? Or was it like, "All right, I have a skillset, but I kind of got to figure this out on the fly too."? Gretta Cohn:So it was Walmart, Spotify and TED I think were the three sort of major clients at the very beginning. I hadn't worked directly with brands. I understood working with other media institutions. I understood working with hosts. I also understood developing new shows because that's what my team did at Midroll, Stitcher, Earwolf. Before I left, an entire year of just coming up with ideas and piloting them and throwing them at the wall and kind of running them through PNLs and doing all of that. And so I understood all of that. So we have worked directly with brands, but with Walmart, it was running through an advertising agency full of really great creative people and so we were interfacing more with them. And I think that I learned through them a little bit more about how to work with a client like Walmart. Gretta Cohn:But I think also that everyone we were working with at that time was also trying to figure it out for themselves in a brand new way. So we've now been working with TED for over three and a half years, but at the time the show that we developed with them, WorkLife with Adam Grant, I think was their first sort of step into the sort of slate of podcasts that they have now. They had TED talks daily. It was sort of concurrently like I know what the steps to take and the people that I am making these podcasts for don't, they've never done it. And so I think I learned a lot in those first few projects about how to deliver, how to communicate what we're doing clearly. But it's not like I hadn't already done that before. Like I had the skills, it's just was like refining them and putting them into this really particular box. Chris Erwin:Yeah, just a little bit of a different application. Makes sense. Gretta Cohn:Yeah, exactly. Chris Erwin:When we were talking about having to build a development team at Midroll and Earwolf that you said that you had like a unique sense of how to identify good people. So then you start building your own team at Transmitter and it seems that you've built a pretty special team there. So what was your, like when you think about, if I need great people to make Transmitter a success, what type of people were you looking for and what has like your culture become at your company? Gretta Cohn:I love my team so much. I agree. I agree I think they're really special. I think independent thinkers, people who have a really unique creative spark, people who surprise me. Right. I think that what I learned in doing all this interviews at Midroll was like, I prepare a lot for interviews, kind of much like you prepared for this. I would do deep dives. I would listen to a lot of work from the people who were coming into... had applied for the roles. I also like over the years, there are certain producers who I'll just kind of keep in touch with, or follow their work and be excited by their work and hope that one day they might like to come work at Transmitter. And so I also am really keen on people who have a collaborative spirit. So an independent thinker who's down to collaborate, who doesn't necessarily need to put their fingerprints all over everything and it's like cool if their fingerprints kind of merge with other people's fingerprints and we've got this really sort of group dynamic where we're really, everyone is contributing towards something. Gretta Cohn:And people own projects, people own stories, people own episodes, but ultimately, I think that we have a very collaborative team environment. And we're also a group of people who like to celebrate our successes, even like the teeniest tiniest ones. And so we spend a lot of time like talking about the things that go well and I think that creates a lot of pride in work. And I'm interested in working with people who have that same sense of craft as I do. It's not necessarily about perfection, but it's about doing really good work, making something sound as good as it can possibly be. We have an episode that on Monday I got an email about, saying, "This is in its final edit. I'm not looking for any big edit changes. I'm only looking for a notes on music." And I listened to it and I was like, "Ah." Chris Erwin:Is this from a client? Gretta Cohn:"How did they get editorial note?" Chris Erwin:Yeah, was this a client email or internal? Gretta Cohn:No, it's internal. I have a big editorial note and here's why, and I know that you thought you were almost done, but it's going to be so much better because of this. And typically as a group, we come to that agreement very quickly that it's going to be better and our goal is to make work that sounds very, very good. Chris Erwin:I think that's how you build a great company and also become successful and are fulfilled in that. Like yesterday's win or yesterday's excellence is today's baseline and you just keep upping the threshold. My team calls me out for doing that all the time, but I always say, "Yeah, I hired you guys because men and women, you're incredible and I'm going to hold you big." And that makes for a fun work environment. And it's all in our mutual best interests. So I like hearing you say that Gretta and you just talked about celebrating wins often. What is like a recent win that you guys celebrated, big or small? Gretta Cohn:I mean, earlier today we recorded an interview where the host was in a studio in DC, our guests was in her home under a blanket fort in New Jersey. We had a little bit of a technical mishap before it started. One of the newer producers on our team was managing that. And I know that that could have been a situation where she got so stressed out that she could have been paralyzed by the overwhelming sort of urgency of overcoming this technical mishap, but she was calm and she kept us informed of what she was doing and she figured it out and the interview started late and it went long, but that was fine. And you got to give someone a thumbs up for that. Like that was hard and you figured it out. Gretta Cohn:And another recent win is we are about to launch season two of our podcast, Rebel Eaters Club and we have a promotions team working for us this time, we're making new artwork and we've got the episodes of the season in production. It's just exciting for me when all the pieces start to come together and we're like a month away from launch and it's not done and it will get done. But right now it's just this like ball of energy and that feels very exciting. Chris Erwin:This is your first owned and operated podcast where- Gretta Cohn:Yes. Chris Erwin:... your business has helped create audio stories for a variety of different brands and marketers and publishers and now you're investing in your own IP, which is really exciting. And so what is the general concept of Rebel Eaters Club for people who want to check it out? Gretta Cohn:Rebel Eaters Club is a podcast about breaking up with diet culture. Chris Erwin:Ooh. Gretta Cohn:Yeah. Our host is, her name is Virgie Tovar, and she's sort of one of the leading voices on breaking up with diet culture because it's extremely harmful. It is a huge industry. It's a debilitating thing that is, fat discrimination is something that's like not very often discussed, but such a huge sort of point of discrimination in our culture. And I have learned so much from this podcast, it's funny, it's a weird,

Everyone says they need Capital to get started. Dr. Foster tells the truth on what's needed to start your business.

Does Fort Worth have a tech scene? Where are all the startups?Do you have an idea and want to learn how to tap into the entrepreneurship ecosystem here in Fort Worth?In this episode, we sit down with Cameron Cushman, Director of Innovation Systems at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. His job is to curate, connect, and grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Fort Worth. Today starts Global Entrepreneurship Week, which is the world’s largest celebration of entrepreneurs & innovators, and Cameron's team is bringing that celebration to Fort Worth, TX from November 16th to the 20th.Sign up for some amazing sessions at www.GEWFortWorth.com to really get some insights into Fort Worth's startup scene.If you’re interested in Fort Worth entrepreneurial data that we discuss on this show, check out this post to learn more. Lastly, Cameron is the host of Innovate Fort Worth, UNTHSC’s podcast that highlights the people on the leading edge of Fort Worth’s startup community. Check out the podcast on all platforms. Enjoy!

On this episode of Kopi Konversations, we have Dzuleira Abu Bakar, the CEO of MAGIC. MAGIC a.k.a Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre . MAGIC supports the creativity and innovation development in Malaysia through dynamic programmes and capacity-building initiatives. With her we spoke about Malaysia's start-up ecosystem, the National Sandbox initiatives and how she sees Malaysia competing with their peers in South East Asia to incubate start-ups. Join us on this week's Kopi Konversation!

Crowdfunding and capital raising consultant; and Founder of Drakoln Capital Partners.

How to Fundraise and Use Your Startup Capital for Growth In this episode, Roy Stein, the CEO and Co-Founder of Babelbark shares how to set a healthy foundational spend culture for early-stage startups, and how to secure your first stage of VC funding - and spend it wisely to grow effectively and efficiently. Speakers: Roy Stein, CEO & Founder, Babelbark Roy Stein is the founder and CEO of Babelbark - BabelBark is a comprehensive software platform with mobile applications, intelligent cloud analytics, and marketing tools that connects owners, their dogs, veterinarians, and vendors in a comprehensive and completely integrated solution.  Roy is a serial entrepreneur and former executive in companies ranging in size from public corporations with thousands of employees to idea & seed-stage startups, with a proven track record in building businesses and turning a problem or company around.

Michael Massad is a software investor at Elsewhere Partners where he co-leads sourcing efforts and conducts operational / financial due diligence. Previously, Michael was a product marketing manager at Microsoft and an investor at Stonelake Capital Partners. Michael strives to connect capital and operational expertise with growing software companies across industries – most recently in infrastructure and cybersecurity – that are located outside of traditional VC hubs.

We're back with episode guest Marcus Howard. Hear about what it feels like to be in a startup pitch competition and cause a double-take when you're not part of the wait staff - and then win that competition. Then years and countless investor meetings without investment - in a hot market like gaming and esports. Marcus talks about the challenges of being a black male startup founder trying to raise venture/angel capital and the rarely discussed issues of race in gaming and esports.01:05 Introduction, husband, father of two, full-stack, full-time developer for Gerdau Steel. Side projects and startups include, many with his identical twin brother Malcolm - ProjectMQ, IdeaGist, Blockchain Game Alliance, GameCredits, and TAG.03:48 Why should corporate support employee-preneurship? Gerdau Steel is a great example of how this can benefit the company while also supporting the employee’s entrepreneurial spirit.06:35 What is the difference between employee-preneurship and intra-preneurship?08:35 Allen talks about his own departure from a large company to pursue a startup and how the CEO personally supported him before and after.12:10 SPONSOR: SecureStartup (https://www.securestartup.com) - Securely managing the important documents between startup founders and investors.13:04 Marcus talks about how he and his brother went to Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA, studying Information Technology (Malcolm, Computer Science). Allen’s grandmother lived in Statesboro so he spent time there as a kid, has family there today.15:35 Marcus talks about how he and his brother were obsessed with gaming since childhood. During college he and his brother did everything together, lived together, same job, same fraternity.16:57 Marcus’ uncle marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his grandmother’s house was firebombed - the fire department didn’t immediately come.17:32 Marcus grew up in the Atlanta area, in a mostly all-black neighborhood then later moved to a mostly all-white neighborhood. He and his brother were in accelerated academic school programs and were picked on for being ‘smart’.23:07 Marcus and his brother once took a week off to beat the game Halo 2.25:12 Is our brain muscle being strengthened through gaming to prepare us for competing with computers in the future, i.e. artificial intelligence?26:27 Marcus says he learned more about business in gaming than he ever learned in college. Decision-making, solving complex problems, and working together multi-player.27:20 Esport athletes show the same degree of brain engagement and stress levels as physical sports players.30:35 Marcus talks about ‘trash talk’ in online gaming that goes too far (racial and sexist slurs, with anonymity) and the lack of diversity in the industry executive ranks.35:15 Gaming industry executives are overwhelmingly white males. Only 2% of the professional players are black, 12% of our population is black, but 20% of the esport fans are black. And that’s before you add-in brown players and fans. All together at least 40% of players and fans are brown or black. 39:23 After trying to raise investor capital for 7 years and only raising a ridiculous $5k, Marcus says he stopped being filtered on the topic - outspoken, but with respect.40:19 Marcus and Allen talk about how women led startups seem to be making progress but black male founders it’s not so clear.44:37 We talk about how we don’t think investors are inherently racist or sexist but we do think that investing in people that look like you (and maybe a younger version of yourself) feels safer and easier to assess, more comfortable and familiar.48:05 The data says that women and minorities produce better results - and investors should understand that minorities approach and solve problems differently, and can open bigger doors on a worldwide scale.49:30 Diverse teams can better deliver value to a diverse customer base.50:10 Investors should see that the future is very diverse so betting on diversity is smart.51:15 It’s interesting that investors are committed to diverse portfolios (varied types of companies and sectors) but not yet to diverse teams and founders.54:20 Race aside, Marcus and Allen touch on ‘success bias’ and the mental game of entrepreneurship - and that everyone in entrepreneurship is struggling more than they are letting on. Marcus is committed to transparency on this.57:15 Where is Marcus in 5 years? He’d like to have a financial exit and then start a fund for gaming, esports, and indie games.59:00 And there’s another issue with minorities and gaming - it’s that serious gaming requires about $3k in PC hardware to really compete. That is beyond the realm for most low income families.1:09:30 Closing - the Tampa Bay community is lucky to have Marcus as a tech leader and advocate for esports, gaming, diversity, and change.Marcus on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3i0vW4tAllen's book: https://www.quittostart.com

Many venture investors have never seen a global crisis and are shocked and paralyzed in our post Covid-19 era. Not so with Hugh Bickerstaff, a seasoned early stage investor three unicorns and a significant track record under his belt.For more investing and wealth management information and advice from top experts, visit https://obrisinvest.com.

15-20 ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಹಿಂದೆ ಸ್ಟಾರ್ಟ್-ಅಪ್ ಎಂಬ ಪದ ಬಳಕೆಯಲ್ಲೇ ಇರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಇವತ್ತು ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು ಸ್ಟಾರ್ಟ್-ಅಪ್ಪ್ ಗಳ ರಾಜಧಾನಿಯೇ ಆಗಿದೆ. ಸಾವಿರಾರು ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳು, ಕೊಟ್ಯಾನ್ತರ ರೂಪಾಯಿಗಳನ್ನು ಹೂಡಿವೆ. ಸಾವಿರಾರು ಜನರು ಸ್ಟಾರ್ಟ್-ಅಪ್ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ತಮ್ಮ ವೃತ್ತಿಯನ್ನು ನಡೆಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ.ಈ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆಗೆ ಕಾರಣಗಳೇನು? ಈ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳನ್ನು ಸ್ಥಾಪಿಸುವ ದಾರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಎಂತಹ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಗಳಿವೆ? ನಮ್ಮ 70ನೇ ಸಂಚಿಕೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಉದ್ಯಮಿಗಳು ನಿಖಿಲ್ ಜೋಯಿಸ್ ಮತ್ತು ಗೀತಾ ಪ್ರಭು ಅವರು ಸ್ಟಾರ್ಟ್-ಅಪ್ ಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಚರ್ಚೆ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾರೆ.15 years ago, few people in Bangalore would have heard of a 'startup'. Today, Bengaluru has become the startup capital of India, with thousands of startup companies, billions of dollars in investment, and a growing workforce of people now choosing to create or work in startups instead of joining more established companies.How did this transformation take place? What are the challenges that startups and people face even today? Entrepreneurs & startup founders Nikhil Jois and Geetha Prabhu join host Pavan Srinath on Episode 70 of the Thale-Harate Kannada Podcast.Geetha Prabhu (@geetu11) is the Founder and COO of https://workflexi.in/ which she started 5 years ago, after 19 years of working with top companies in market research.Nikhil Jois (@NikhilJoisR) has started multiple companies in India and one in the US, including Eventosaur, which was later acquired by Bharat Matrimony. Currently, Nikhil works out of Bangalore at a fintech company that is based in Singapore.

This Blacks In Technology NYC webinar was recorded 5/26/20 As business slows across multiple industries, tech startups have unique challenges to maintain positive cash flow amidst the pandemic. Founders have to be flexible and creative to survive. Our panel of experts from Shark Tank, AWSM, and Republic, provided essential tips on raising capital, pivoting your business model, and if you're interested, what it takes to land a spot on the hit show Shark Tank. If you are a startup founder in the Angel or Seed stages of funding, you can't afford to miss this discussion. Panelists: Tunde Kelani - Senior Associate, Republic Fritz Desir - Associate Partner Design, Boston Consulting Group | Founder & Exec. Dir. AWSM Brandon Andrews - Casting Consultant, Shark Tank | Co-Founder of GAUGE --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/bitnyc/support

In this special two-part episode of She Starts Up, I'm sharing a startup story and interviewing two women on opposite sides of the narrative, Chrissy Cowdrey and Lolita Taub. More about Lolita Lolita Taub is a first-generation Latinx operator and investor pushing for diversity in tech. She's acting Chief of Staff and interim head of sales at Catalyte; a scout at Indie.vc, Venture Partner at NextGen Venture Partners, and an LP at Operators Collective and Portfolia's Enterprise Fund; and a mom to the cutest Dachshund mix. More about Chrissy Chrissy Cowdrey is CEO & Founder of Stagger. Chrissy's career has been rooted in leading creative teams through the human centered design process. She's designed digital experiences for startups and large companies ranging from Disney, USAA, Logitech and frog design. As an avid traveler and addicted to seeing the way other parts of the world works, she designed Stagger to solve a problem of visual storytelling for herself that has grown into a business focused on visual storytelling and brand building for businesses. When she's not working, she spends her time staying active and planning for her next travel adventure. Listen for... Part 1 An announcement some exciting news: I've made my first investment in Stagger, an app for visual storytelling for your brand. The tweet from Lolita Taub that got me over 30 pitch decks for review, sparking the investment in Stagger. Lolita Taub's story and background, including how she became involved in the startup world. How working with an executive coach allowed Lolita to find her purpose and magic sauce: connecting people to resources to achieve goals and produce results for all. Lolita's involvement in the startup community and the projects she is currently working on, including an investor and startup matching tool. The importance of diversity in startups, teams, and investment. Lolita is helping to create a world where technology is led by the diversity of our population Part 2 What it was like for me, a former founder raising capital, being on the other side of fundraising as an investor. How Chrissy stumbled upon Janine's tweet expressing she was looking to invest and how the conversation continued from there. The story of how Chrissy came up with the idea for Stagger, and how she turned her idea into a widely-used app by influencers and small businesses. Chrissy's experience with fundraising and what it was like to raise money during COVID-19. The evolution of Stagger's product and ways it will help small businesses and businesses with storytelling and building their brand. Behind the scenes of Stagger, including user testing, building the product, and juggling fundraising and product management. Listen Now on iTunes, Spotify and Google Play! ∙∙∙ Connect with Lolita Taub Online Lolita's Twitter Lolita's Newsletter Schedule a Call with Lolita Connect with Chrissy Cowdrey Online Chrissy's Email Chrissy's Twitter Mentioned in this Episode Startup Investor Matching Raising During COVID - Virtual Demo Day Startup Investment Consideration Form Fundraise from Scratch Course (if you use the link + promo code TeamLolita, you'll get 10% off) Arlan Hamilton's Book Stagger.it

In this episode of the #ShontaviaShow, host Shontavia Johnson interviews Harold Hughes, the Founder and CEO of Bandwagon Fanclub, Inc., about raising money in the twenty-first century startup world. Harold, a first-generation Jamaican-American, provides some incredible insights about starting from ground zero after being fired from his six-figure job while his wife was pregnant with their first child. To date, Bandwagon has raised more than $2 million dollars and participated in prestigious programs like Google for Startups, IBM Blockchain Accelerator, and The Founder Institute. In this episode, Harold talks about landing his first investor, finding investors on Twitter, and why mentoring women and black founders is so important to him. // Show Notes Harold Hughes on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OneBandwagonFan/ Bandwagon: https://bandwagonfanclub.com/ Harold's Medium page: https://medium.com/@OneBandwagonFanHere's Your Chance to Invest in the Blockchain Technology Curbing Ticket Fraud: https://www.blackenterprise.com/blockchain-bandwagon-equity-crowdfunding-ticket-fraud/ Bandwagon Aims to Solve Ticket Fraud With The Blockchain: https://cryptobriefing.com/bandwagon-ticket-fraud-blockchain/ Ticket Scalpers, Beware! Blockchain Is Coming for You (#50, Bandwagon): https://gimletmedia.com/shows/the-pitch/kwhaw8‘We Had An Acquisition Offer. We Turned It Down': Bandwagon Founder Harold Hughes On Mogul Watch: https://moguldom.com/157548/bandwagon-blockchain-sports-fan-analytics-company/ The Venture Capital Fundraising Landscape: https://www.siskar.co/blog/2019/11/1/the-venture-capital-fundraising-landscape For Communities Of Color, Startup Funding Efforts Can Hold Promise And Pitfalls: https://www.fastcompany.com/40512319/backing-startups-outside-of-silicon-valley-dont-overlook-families-of-color //Show Outline00:03:34: Harold's childhood in the U.S. and Jamaica 00:06:10: Harold's experience with the "black tax" (income black professionals give to their families to support them) 00:12:44: How Harold originally funded his startup with his own money and an Indiegogo campaign 00:14:04: How getting fired from a six-figure job led to Harold working on his startup full-time 00:20:19: How Harold landed his first 6-figure investor 00:23:54: Using Twitter to land high-profile investors 00:25:57: How Harold used creative recruiting (and a creative salary structure) to hire his first software developer 00:27:05: How to set a valuation for your new startup 00:30:26: How doing a podcast interview landed Bandwagon a new investor 00:32:02: The one service you must use if you're raising money for your startup 00:32:28: How Bandwagon has raised $2 million and its financial philosophy 00:33:30: How Harold built Bandwagon's very diverse team00:37:14: Why Bandwagon turned down an acquisition offer 00:40:15: The mentors who have helped Harold and Bandwagon succeed 00:41:59: Why Harold says his best mentors have been his peers and other startup founders of color 00:43:30: What's next for Bandwagon 00:44:17:&

My wonderful guest this week is Caroline Hughes, Founder of Lifetise and finanical feminist. In this episode Caroline tells us about starting her business Lifetise, the financial modelling platform helping us to take big life actions like buying a house and starting a family. Caroline’s approach to building her tech business with such a strong social mission is truly inspiring. We talk about the reality for female founders in the UK in terms of raising capital, seeking the right investors and what we can do to improve it. Plus, Caroline shares some advice for all the perfectionists out there… Enjoy! Join in the conversation online using #THEWOTPOD on Twitter https://twitter.com/TheWotPod and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thewotpod/. Chapters: 00:00 Episode Taster 00:32 Chapter 1: There’s no blueprint for our financial lives 09:11 Chapter 2: The product was 2% done 16:29 Chapter 3: I’m in a spin cycle 23:26 Chapter 4: My fundraising opportunity is slightly bigger because I have a man alongside me 37:49 Chapter 5: I want women to be treated as fairly financially as men are 43:39 Chapter 6: Just start Episode resources: https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/services/financial-services/fintech-innovation-lab https://www.hivefounders.net https://www.techhub.com https://2019.stateofeuropeantech.com https://www.ted.com/talks/dana_kanze_the_real_reason_female_entrepreneurs_get_less_funding https://sheeo.world Find out more about Caroline Hughes and Lifetise: https://lifetise.com https://lifetise.com/podcast https://twitter.com/lifetise https://www.instagram.com/lifetise/ https://twitter.com/Caz_Lifetise Connect with your host, Frankie Cotton: https://frankiecotton.com https://twitter.com/FrankieCotton_ https://www.instagram.com/frankiecotton_/

One of the biggest hurdles among entrepreneurs in starting a business is finding the financial startup capital. In this episode, host, Anthony Frischknecht, talks about this hurdle and gives understanding about the finances needed to build your business. While sharing his own experience, he taps into the overhead expenses entrepreneurs also need to consider along […]

One of the biggest hurdles among entrepreneurs in starting a business is finding the financial startup capital. In this episode, host, Anthony Frischknecht, talks about this hurdle and gives understanding about the finances needed to build your business. While sharing his own experience, he taps into the overhead expenses entrepreneurs also need to consider along with their own personal finances that might be affected in the process. What is more, Anthony then gives some tips on how to look for the startup capital you need.

This week, we have another exciting segment of AFTER HOURS for all of you!Pat & Posh discuss PayPal’s massive $4 billion acquisition of Honey (we had the founder, Ryan Hudson, on the show last year!), the future of USC football amid its current state of operational chaos and how it ties with business in general, Posh’s crazy dream about Scooter Braun, and some thought-provoking questions submitted by listeners such as the distinction between purpose in life vs. purpose in your occupation as well as how to raise funding for a new business.They also dive into a deep question, inspired by The Deep (started by a previous guest on the show, Ashley Merrill) about what the biggest waste of human potential is.Tune in and send us your thoughts on some of these topics (email is hello@thefounderhour.com and our IG is @thefounderhour) - we’d love to hear from you!SUBSCRIBE TO TFH NEWSLETTER & STAY UPDATED > http://bit.ly/tfh-newsletterFOLLOW TFH ON INSTAGRAM > http://www.instagram.com/thefounderhourFOLLOW TFH ON TWITTER > http://www.twitter.com/thefounderhourINTERESTED IN BECOMING A SPONSOR? EMAIL US > partnerships@thefounderhour.com

Tune in as we have Dallas-based private Chef Erik Hernandez pull the curtain back of:      ** Facebook & Instagram ** Hiring a private chef to WOW your Business-2-Business clients ** Initial capital investment of $100 ** His inspiring portfolio of services        

You've heard of crowdfunding to get a product or service off the ground. But what if you actually want to crowdfund VC or Angel Funding? Can you truly bring startup funding to the masses? Kendrick Nguyen is doing just that through his company Republic. Getting into the world of VC or Angel Funding as an investor can be hard to do. It's often limited to accredited investors who are millionaires and billionaires. That's changing through Republic. They are helping worthy startups find the funding they need to get their dreams and ideas off the ground through investments from every day people. In today's episode we discuss: Crowdfunding, VC and Angel Funding, Capital for Business, Mission Driven Entrepreneurship, Blockchain and Crypto / Cryptocurrency, Entrepreneurship, and funding startups.Today's Episode is sponsored by: Mighty Travels, OpportunityInChina.com, and Flocksy.About Kendrick Nguyen:Kendrick Nguyen is CEO and co-founder of Republic, an investment platform that provides both accredited and non-accredited investors around the world with curated startup investment opportunities. Republic also facilitates compliant investing in blockchain-enabled projects under the brand Republic Crypto. Republic is an affiliate of AngelList and CoinList, the latter of which he is a founding adviser. Prior to Republic, Kendrick served as General Counsel and Venture Hacker at AngelList and, before that, Fellow of Stanford Law School and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University. Formerly a securities attorney, Kendrick has been working on several initiatives aimed at defining a compliant but pragmatic protocol for conducting compliant coin offerings and has briefed the SEC, Congress, and foreign regulators on this issue. He frequently lectures on the topics of the intersection of law and entrepreneurship, and his views have been cited in a number of court decisions and publications. An immigrant from Vietnam, Kendrick has a strong interest in improving access to capital for underserved entrepreneurs in the US and beyond. About Republic:Republic is an investment platform for startups to raise capital and for everyone to invest in startups. Our highly curated platform hosts a diverse set of equity and crypto-focused offerings, with minimum investment amounts as little as $50. Anyone can invest in the startups they believe in for the chance to earn a return. Republic operates under U.S. equity crowdfunding regulations and is under the supervision of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. To date, the acceptance rate of companies applying to fundraise on Republic is well below 10%, while funding success rate exceeds 90%. For additional information, please visit: www.republic.co @joinrepublic www.facebook.com/joinrepublic

Alex Blumenstein, CEO of Leaf Forward talks about his company's system of identifying intelligent start ups, then backing them financially. Leaf Forward wants to find the next cannabis space entrepreneur to invest capital into. Could it be you?

Erin Horne McKinney is Managing Partner for Inclusion at Jumpstart, an accelerator and venture capital firm in Ohio, and she's Co-Founder at Black Female Founders. She previously served as Senior Advisor on Innovation and Entrepreneurship to the mayoral administration in DC. Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willlucas Learn more about OF10podcast at: https://willlucas.co

Do You Have Startup Capital (LA 807) Transcript: Steven Butala:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit:                            Hello. Steven Butala:                   Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit:                            And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala:                   Today Jill and I talk about, do you have enough startup capital? This is frequently asked question week.

Do You Have Startup Capital (LA 807) Transcript: Steven Butala:                   Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit:                            Hello. Steven Butala:                   Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit:                            And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny southern California. Steven Butala:                   Today Jill and I talk about, do you have enough startup capital? This is frequently asked question week.

Whether it’s the quintessential morning brew or a late afternoon pick-me-up, coffee is what fuels many an entrepreneurial dream. We brew it, drink it, crave it, and many of us can’t live without it. For some local entrepreneurs, the dream is powered by one brewhouse in particular: Catalina Café. Founded in 2010 by a couple of local entrepreneurs, Catalina Café is a gourmet coffee shop that’s grown quickly from their first location on Capital Circle. Patrons of Catalina know that they can depend on a consistent experience that the owners, Maurice Moulton and Trish Allaire, have worked hard to create. Their coffee is locally-roasted and fresh-ground, and their menu features a list of sandwiches, baked goods and other delicacies that pair nicely with any of Catalina’s signature drinks. Soon, they’ll be opening a large scale roasting operation and tasting room in Tallahassee’s up-and-coming south side, where they will expand their production volume and also begin offering coffee roasting and tasting classes for locals. Startup Capital host Alissa McShane spoke to co-founder and coffee expert Maurice Moulton to find out the secret behind Catalina’s consistently delicious coffee, and their rapid growth.

Founded in 2017, The Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University is part of an ongoing effort to bring entrepreneurship to the forefront of undergrad education at the institution. The School is home to the new entrepreneurship majors at Florida State, as well entrepreneurship programs for non-majors and university faculty. Dr. Susan Fiorito, the Jim Moran School’s director, is in charge of sustaining and scaling the school’s growth and finding new opportunities for its students. A lifelong entrepreneur herself, Fiorito has been teaching entrepreneurship and advocating for entrepreneurial education for nearly the past decade. For season 3, episode 6 of the Startup Capital podcast, host Alissa McShane sat down with Fiorito to learn more about her story, and to chat entrepreneurship and education in the capital city. To hear Dr. Fiorito’s advice for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and find out how “saying yes and figuring it out later” can pay off, listen-in this episode of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft.

Most people would say that the best part about a good night's sleep is waking up feeling refreshed, energized, and ready to meet the challenges of the day. A good night's sleep can set you up for success, while waking up on the wrong side of the bed can set you up for, well, a different result. If you're using sub-par sleeping gear, that well-rested feeling in the morning might be overshadowed by an acute pain in the neck. According to today's guests, a lumpy old pillow is one big cause of poor sleep, and plenty of other health complaints as well. Founded by Tallahassee locals Adrianne and Aaron Kautz, One Fresh Pillow is a local startup that designs and manufactures what they're calling the last brand of pillow you'll ever buy. Host Alissa McShane sat down with the Kautzes to talk branding, marketing, product development, and more during this episode of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft.

The post How to Get Startup Capital for a Business: An Unconventional Way appeared first on Romance Your Tribe.

On today's podcast, we'll hear from Donavan Kealoha, a Director at Startup Capital Ventures and Founder of Purple Mai'a. Find out how Donavan, proud local boy and Native Hawaiian, translated his humble beginnings on the island of Lānaʻi into a successful career in the venture capital industry, while providing technical education to disadvantaged children in Hawaii. He'll give us his take on the importance of inclusivity within the tech and venture capital industries, and discuss some of the challenges (and blessings) he has faced as a Native Hawaiian in these fields. We'll also hear two critical pieces of advice for individuals to promote inclusivity in the business realm and most importantly, the need to focus on positive strength rather than negative obstacles to achieve success in a competitive world. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/startup-catalyst-podcast/support

It’s no secret that Tallahassee has become a destination for craft beer lovers. While Florida's coasts may have a greater volume of breweries, the 850 region has produced an impressive number of award-winning beers recently, and the scene has grown rapidly over the past decade. There are now five commercial-scale brewing operations in Tallahassee, with several more on the way. For local residents, it’s easier than ever to stop by their favorite tasting room for a pint, or pick up a six-pack of local beer at a grocery store. This wasn’t always the case, and for a long time the closest craft breweries were in cities like Apalachicola and Gainesville. That changed with the opening of Proof Brewing Co’s original location in 2012. Since then, four new tasting rooms have opened and the market for locally-brewed craft beer in Tallahassee has exploded. Proponents of craft beer say that breweries aid local growth by creating jobs and bringing tourism dollars into the city. As we found out, they also bring the different parts of Tallahassee together, creating a unifying effect for local neighborhoods. Together, these breweries contribute to a craft beer community here in Tallahassee, that’s been deemed Florida’s “Craft Capital.” To hear from Proof, Grasslands, Ology, Lake Tribe, and Deep Brewing, listen-in to Season 3, Episode 4 of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft.

To start a business, you will need money to start and keep things moving. Justin looks at the 12 most common means of financing a start-up business, giving a brief overview of each method and its respective benefits and limitations. Don't forget to subscribe, and let us know how we are doing by leaving a review. Thanks for listening!  ARTICLE TRANSCRIPT:  BLOG: Investor vs. Bank Loan - Which is the Best Source of Startup Capital?   TIME INDEX: 00:30 - How to Find Money When Starting a Business 03:28 - How Can We Raise Money to Start a Business? 04:07 - Crowd-Funding 04:43 - Angel Investors 06:16 - Venture Capitalists 07:53 - Small Business Administration 09:29 - Micro Loans 10:17 - Personal Financing 11:34 - Purchase Order Financing 14:23 - Vendor Financing 16:17 - Friends & Family Loans 18:18 - Contests 20:26 - Product Pre-Sales 21:29 - Alternative Lending Sources 22:33 - Sign Off   USEFUL LINKS: Financially Simple Financially Simple on YouTube Financially Simple on Facebook Financially Simple on Twitter _________ BIO: Justin A. Goodbread, CFP®, CEPA, CVGA, is a nationally recognized financial planner, business educator, wealth manager, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has 20+ years of experience teaching small business owners how to start, buy, grow, and sell businesses. He is a multi-year recipient of the Investopedia Top 100 Advisor and 2018 Exit Planning Institute's Exit Planner Leader of the Year.DISCLOSURES:This podcast is distributed for informational purposes only. Statements made in the podcast are not to be construed as personalized investment or financial planning advice, may not be suitable for everyone, and should not be considered a solicitation to engage in any particular investment or planning strategy. Listeners should conduct their own review and exercise judgment or consult with their own professional financial advisor to see how the information contained in this podcast may apply to their own individual circumstances. All investing involves the risk of loss, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results and nothing in this podcast should be construed as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. All market indices discussed are unmanaged, do not incur management fees, costs and expenses, and cannot be invested into directly. Investment advisory services offered by WealthSource Partners, LLC. Neither WealthSource Partners, LLC nor its representatives provide legal or accounting advice. The content of this podcast represents the views and opinions of Justin Goodbread and/or the podcast's guests and do not necessarily represent the views and/or opinions of WealthSource Partners, LLC. Statements made in this podcast are subject to change without notice. Neither WealthSource Partners, LLC nor its representatives, the podcast's hosts, or its guests have an obligation to provide revised statements in the event of changed circumstances. Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) owns the CFP® certification mark, the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification mark, and the CFP® certification mark (with plaque design) logo in the United States, which it authorizes the use of by individuals who successfully complete CFP Board's initial and ongoing certification requirements.   Advisors who wished to be ranked in Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors list either self-submitted answers to questions compiled by Investopedia or were nominated by peers.  Rankings were determined based on the number of followers and engagement on social media, primary contribution to professional industry websites, and their focus on financial literacy.  Neither performance nor client experience, however, were considered.  No compensation was paid by WealthSource Partners, LLC or Justin Goodbread to secure placement on Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors List.   The Exit Planning Institute's Leader of the Year is awarded to a nominee who is a CEPA credential holder who has made a significant impact or contribution to the exit planning profession or overall community through innovation and influence and is viewed by the Exit Planning Institute as a thought leader, risk-taker and specialist while showing characteristics of collaboration.   This podcast might recommend products or services that offer Financially Simple compensation when you use them. This compensation is used to help offset the cost of creating the content. We will, however, never suggest products/services solely for the compensation we receive.  

  High-tech startups get all the attention here in the U.S., but the fact remains that many new businesses aren’t related to technology at all. Thousands of companies open up shop each year in America ranging from law firms to barbershops to martini bars. And let’s not forget the food industry. Here in Tallahassee, one local organization helps food-related businesses get started by providing space, advice, and networks to “micro-businesses” from around the 850. Focused on aiding businesses from the surrounding Frenchtown neighborhood, The KitchenShare Incubator at the Frenchtown Heritage Hub Farmer’s Market has been giving food startups a healthy push since 2014. By providing resources and expertise to local food and agriculture businesses, they're helping revitalize a historic Tallahassee neighborhood. Season 3 host Alissa McShane spoke with Interim Director Samahdi Jones and Market Manager Lauren Chappel to find out how KitchenShare is making an impact locally. To learn more about the KitchenShare Incubator, and to find out how you can get involved in local food entrepreneurship, tune in to Season 3, Episode 3 of the Startup Capital Podcast by Cuttlesoft. Support for Startup Capital comes from WFSU Public Media. Season 3, Episode 3 Links: KitchenShare Incubator Frenchtown Heritage Hub Olio Food Sharing App Red Hills Online Market Food Not Bombs Tallahassee Oasis Center for Women and Girls Living Classroom

In this episode, Justin interviews Johnathan Mills Patrick, a former banking executive, financial advisor, and 3x startup founder Jonathan Mills Patrick has worked in many fields pertaining to Business development, from banking to finance, consultant to mentor. He has had three startup businesses of his own and has learned from each experience and written several books on the subjects of his expertise. Justin chats with Jonathan about what it takes to start a business, how to get funding, and shares some of his experiences. Don't forget to subscribe, and let us know how we are doing by leaving a review. Thanks for listening!   ARTICLE TRANSCRIPT:  BLOG: Investor vs. Bank Loan... Which is the Best Source of Startup Capital?   00:30 - Jonathan Mills Patrick 02:29 - How Can Startups Find Funding? 07:49 - How to Make a Business Come to Fruition? 09:04 - How to Get Lending for a Lifestyle Business? 11:22 - Autonomous Businesses and Investors 13:43 - How Important are Projections & Can Bankers Identify Legitimate Projections? 16:42 - How to Build Up Bankability? 19:08 - What Is the SPA & How Can it Be Beneficial to Business Owners? 21:19 - When Shouldn't a Business Owner Use the SPA? 23:00 - Should I Go into Business for Myself in the First Place? 29:05 - How to Self Assess 31:30 - Case Example 33:41 - Wrap Up   USEFUL LINKS: Financially Simple Financially Simple on YouTube Financially Simple on Facebook Financially Simple on Twitter JohnathanMillsPatrick.com JMP eBooks _________ BIO: Justin A. Goodbread, CFP®, CEPA, CVGA, is a nationally recognized financial planner, business educator, wealth manager, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He has 20+ years of experience teaching small business owners how to start, buy, grow, and sell businesses. He is a multi-year recipient of the Investopedia Top 100 Advisor and 2018 Exit Planning Institute's Exit Planner Leader of the Year.DISCLOSURES:This podcast is distributed for informational purposes only. Statements made in the podcast are not to be construed as personalized investment or financial planning advice, may not be suitable for everyone, and should not be considered a solicitation to engage in any particular investment or planning strategy. Listeners should conduct their own review and exercise judgment or consult with their own professional financial advisor to see how the information contained in this podcast may apply to their own individual circumstances. All investing involves the risk of loss, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results and nothing in this podcast should be construed as a guarantee of any specific outcome or profit. All market indices discussed are unmanaged, do not incur management fees, costs and expenses, and cannot be invested into directly. Investment advisory services offered by WealthSource Partners, LLC. Neither WealthSource Partners, LLC nor its representatives provide legal or accounting advice. The content of this podcast represents the views and opinions of Justin Goodbread and/or the podcast's guests and do not necessarily represent the views and/or opinions of WealthSource Partners, LLC. Statements made in this podcast are subject to change without notice. Neither WealthSource Partners, LLC nor its representatives, the podcast's hosts, or its guests have an obligation to provide revised statements in the event of changed circumstances. Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) owns the CFP® certification mark, the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification mark, and the CFP® certification mark (with plaque design) logo in the United States, which it authorizes the use of by individuals who successfully complete CFP Board's initial and ongoing certification requirements.   Advisors who wished to be ranked in Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors list either self-submitted answers to questions compiled by Investopedia or were nominated by peers.  Rankings were determined based on the number of followers and engagement on social media, primary contribution to professional industry websites, and their focus on financial literacy.  Neither performance nor client experience, however, were considered.  No compensation was paid by WealthSource Partners, LLC or Justin Goodbread to secure placement on Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors List.   The Exit Planning Institute's Leader of the Year is awarded to a nominee who is a CEPA credential holder who has made a significant impact or contribution to the exit planning profession or overall community through innovation and influence and is viewed by the Exit Planning Institute as a thought leader, risk-taker and specialist while showing characteristics of collaboration.   This podcast might recommend products or services that offer Financially Simple compensation when you use them. This compensation is used to help offset the cost of creating the content. We will, however, never suggest products/services solely for the compensation we receive.

For Season 3, Episode 2 of the Startup Capital podcast, we interviewed two founders poised to disrupt a product that’s been all but stagnant for years: mouthwash. Anyone who drinks as much coffee as your average entrepreneur knows that mouthwash is essential for getting that minty-fresh feel, but what about when you’re on the go? Once you leave the house, your options for freshening your breath are far more limited. That’s where our guests for this episode come in. Founded by FSU graduates Nick Telford and Michael Bracciale, Fly Mouthwash is a concentrated solution that lets you rinse and clean out your mouth without having to lug around an entire bottle of mouthwash.  The pair has been working hard to bring their product idea to market for the past few years, and in 2017, they secured a seed investment which allowed them to complete their first manufacturing run. Now, Fly Mouthwash can be found in stores locally and online on Amazon.com. Fast forward to 2018, and they've sold over 1,200 bottles and received more than 80 five-star reviews. But as you'll find out, it took luck, years of hard work, and a healthy dose of persistence for them to get where they are today. Season three host Alissa McShane sat down with Telford and Bracciale to learn what it took to get their idea off the ground, and what they plan to do next. To hear from Fly Mouthwash’s founders, and to find out the story behind the success, tune in to Season 3, Episode 2 of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft. Support for Startup Capital comes from WFSU Public Media.

"Hey babe, can I buy a drone?" Alex and Chelsea Workman have been living here in Tallahassee for just over four years. In that short time, their work has made them "Tallahassee's famous." As digital media storytellers, the Workmans help people tell their stories. Alex does this through photography and video. Chelsea prefers to work behind the scenes - producing content and putting together the final product. Together, their expertise culminates in The Workmans, the family's own brand and creative production agency. Along with their son, Keegan (the "unofficial junior mayor of Tallahassee") they work to help Tallahassee businesses and individuals tell their stories. On top of that, their viral Aerial Tallahassee series has given Tallahassee the identity residents were craving. "There was this mental transition that happened from 'I want to learn to love where I live,' to 'I want to create a place that I want to live.'" To learn about how this dynamic young couple has made such a big impact in Tallahassee in a such a short time, tune in to Season 3, Episode 1 of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft. Stay tuned after the show for a short announcement about the prizes coming to a few lucky Startup Capital fans! We're holding a drawing for Startup Capital newsletter subscribers featuring prizes from Startup Capital and the Workmans. Visit startupcapital.cuttlesoft.com/subscribe to enter to win!

Discover more tech podcasts like this: Tech Podcast Asia. Produced by Pikkal & Co - Award Winning Podcast Agency. - Why and how Graham got his Linkedin account suspended not once, but twice this week - How we got over 400 comments and 100,000 views on 1 Linkedin status update about the Asia Matters Report - What's inside part 2 of the Asia Matters report? - The Startup City Matrix and the 4 stages of market development in Asia - What's happening to Startup Capital in Asia? - Why is Risk Capital leaving China and heading into Southeast Asia?

- Why and how Graham got his Linkedin account suspended not once, but twice this week - How we got over 400 comments and 100,000 views on 1 Linkedin status update about the Asia Matters Report - What’s inside part 2 of the Asia Matters report? - The Startup City Matrix and the 4 stages of market development in Asia - What’s happening to Startup Capital in Asia? - Why is Risk Capital leaving China and heading into Southeast Asia?

- Why and how Graham got his Linkedin account suspended not once, but twice this week - How we got over 400 comments and 100,000 views on 1 Linkedin status update about the Asia Matters Report - What’s inside part 2 of the Asia Matters report? - The Startup City Matrix and the 4 stages of market development in Asia - What’s happening to Startup Capital in Asia? - Why is Risk Capital leaving China and heading into Southeast Asia?

Food Innovators from Food-X: Pow Cow's Niall Moloney speaks with Food-X MD Andrew D. Ive http://www.Pow-Cow.com/ Andrew Interviews Niall Moloney, founder of Pow Cow. Niall is a registered dietitian with a postgraduate in sports and exercise nutrition. He has worked with clients from all walks of life, including professional athletes and from across the world at the 2012 London Olympic Games. Pow-Cow is a company that seeks to serve high protein, low sugar frozen yogurt to those desiring the indulgent taste of ice cream as well as the health benefits that Greek yogurt can provide. Interview by Andrew D. Ive - Managing Director, Food-X http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewive Interview with Pow-Cow Founder / Niall Moloney: http://www.Pow-Cow.com/ Food Innovators by Food-X, the #1 Food Innovation Accelerator in the World. We help food entrepreneurs bring their products and services to market at super speed. Food-X partners with early stage companies from across the food supply chain, from agriculture through consumer packaged goods, and helps these companies grow fast through Startup Capital, Mentorship and Access to a world class network of leading food companies, investors and press. Apply to Food-X: food-x.com/apply/ http://www.food-x.com/about/ http://www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator http://www.twitter.com/foodxhealth http://www.facebook.com/foodxhealth/ Subscribe to the Food-X channel. www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator

How will the 2018 Tax bill affect new and small businesses? Back in December, the GOP-sponsored tax bill titled the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017" was signed into law after a relatively quick journey through both houses of Congress. The bill, containing long-awaited tax cuts and reform, has several stipulations which will affect small businesses and startups during the 2018 tax season. This bill, while the subject of intense debate, is going to affect next year's taxes, and there are ways businesses should prepare. To find out which aspects of this bill are relevant for startups and small businesses, we brought in David White, CPA and Partner with Carr, Riggs and Ingram. In this 10-minute bonus episode of Startup Capital, we asked David how this bill will affect startups, and how the playing field for all businesses will be shifting in 2018.

Food Innovators from Food-X: InDemand Cofounders talking about empowering local retailers http://www.StayInDemand.com Interview with InDemand cofounders - they have a cool goal - to help local retailers, small neighborhood food and grocery stores to get online. InDemand does EVERYTHING to help small grocery retailers service their customers online - from the online website, product set up, inventory management, ordering and even delivery. That way the local store can focus on doing what they've been doing and service their local communities. http://www.StayInDemand.com - Interview by Andrew D. Ive - Managing Director, Food-X - http://www.www.linkedin.com/in/andrewive Food Innovators by Food-X, the #1 Food Innovation Accelerator in the World. We help food entrepreneurs bring their products and services to market at super speed. Food-X partners with early stage companies from across the food supply chain, from agriculture through consumer packaged goods, and helps these companies grow fast through Startup Capital, Mentorship and Access to a world class network of leading food companies, investors and press. Apply to Food-X: food-x.com/apply/ http://www.food-x.com/about/ http://www.www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator http://www.twitter.com/foodxhealth www.facebook.com/foodxhealth/ Subscribe to the Food-X channel. https://www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator Andrew - https://twitter.com/TheFundingGuru - https://www.facebook.com/thefundingguru - https://www.instagram.com/andrewdive

Food Innovators from Food-X: Hello Peanut by Assured Bites speaks with Food-X https://www.hello-peanut.com/ Andrew Interviews Dr David Evans, AKA Dr Peanut. Dr Evans is a top allergist who has set out to eradicate allergies in children globally. His first product is the Hello Peanut system to help parents ensure their babies and children do not become allergic to peanuts. https://www.hello-peanut.com/ Interview by Andrew D. Ive - Managing Director, Food-X http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewive Interview with Assured Bites / Hello Peanut: https://www.hello-peanut.com/ Food Innovators by Food-X, the #1 Food Innovation Accelerator in the World. We help food entrepreneurs bring their products and services to market at super speed. Food-X partners with early stage companies from across the food supply chain, from agriculture through consumer packaged goods, and helps these companies grow fast through Startup Capital, Mentorship and Access to a world class network of leading food companies, investors and press. Apply to Food-X: food-x.com/apply/ http://food-x.com/about/ http://www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator http://twitter.com/foodxhealth http://www.facebook.com/foodxhealth/ Subscribe to the Food-X channel. https://www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator

Welcome to the Startup Capital Season 2 finale! This is our Season 2 capstone episode, which means that instead of interviewing individual founders and leaders, we’ll be closely examining one company in particular: UberOps. UberOps is a healthcare IT firm that’s been growing steadily since its debut in 2004. From helping share data between hospitals, to tracking diseases for the federal government, to creating new tools to tackle newborn health, UberOps has its hands on important work that spans the globe – and they do it all from right here in Tallahassee. For Season 2, Episode 9 of the Startup Capital podcast, we decided to take a close look at this rapidly growing company. We spoke to the team to discover how their human approach to technology has helped them build a reputation as a global leader in healthcare IT. To find out the UberOps recipe for success, and their model for growth in Tallahassee, tune-in to Season 2, Episode 9 of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft.  

Food Innovators from Food-X: Caro from Agron Solutions, Revolutionary Portable Precision Sensors http://www.AgronSolutions.com Interview with Caro, co-founder of Agron Solutions. With the Agron AgTech solution, Agron help farmers, growers, environmentalists and others to monitor how their soil dynamics are changing through every crop. A correct treatment to maintain soil health, despite the constant production, can only be achieved with the right information and consistent, trackable data. http://www.AgronSolutions.com - Interview by Andrew D. Ive - Managing Director, Food-X - http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewive Interview with Caro: http://www.agronsolutions.com/why Food Innovators by Food-X, the #1 Food Innovation Accelerator in the World. We help food entrepreneurs bring their products and services to market at super speed. Food-X partners with early stage companies from across the food supply chain, from agriculture through consumer packaged goods, and helps these companies grow fast through Startup Capital, Mentorship and Access to a world class network of leading food companies, investors and press. Apply to Food-X: food-x.com/apply/ http://www.food-x.com/about/ http://www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator http://www.twitter.com/foodxhealth http://www.www.facebook.com/foodxhealth/ Subscribe to the Food-X channel - https://www.youtube.com/foodxaccelerator

Engineering Agility in K-12 Every parent wants their child to succeed. That means making sure they’re equipped with the right skills and the right attitudes for the modern world. For parents looking to nurture an interest in technology and in-demand STEM careers, it’s hard to know where to start.   K-12 schools recognize the importance of STEM skills, and they certainly want to modernize their curricula. The problem is that institutional boundaries and lack of funding make change difficult and slow. It’s clear that to stay competitive, our education system needs to pivot, and fast.   “We need to change the way we teach teachers how to teach.”   For Season 2, Episode 8, of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft, we spoke with two people working to turn things around locally.   Miranda Manning is the Recruitment Coordinator for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Meagan Bonnell is the Tallahassee Director of CodeCraft Works, a K-12 coding program. Together, they’re working on local initiatives to make sure that local students don’t get left behind.   To get the full scoop on K-12 STEM education in Tallahassee, and what’s being done to help our educational system adapt to the 21st century, tune-in to Season 2, Episode 8 of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft.   Support for Cuttlesoft comes from WFSU Public Media.     S2E8 Links CodeCraft Works FAMU-FSU College of Engineering  Steamhack Tallahassee Startup Week Raspberry Pi Arduino

Daniel Walter Scott is a certified Adobe instructor (ICE) in Ireland, an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) and he completed the Adobe Certified Associate training (ACA). He has been teaching for more than 14 years and is the founder of Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL), an Adobe Certified Training Centre in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and online. He has over 16,000 students on the Udemy platform with over 1,000 reviews and over 16 courses. Period in full-time business He had always been doing little businesses on the side in his evenings and weekends, but he went into it full-time business in 2009. Core revenue streams He has two main streams that are both based on training. One is a sit-down classroom where people book a course, come in and learn from an instructor. He has such training centres in Australia and Ireland. His other stream is online video training on Udemy and other platforms. Starting out in business Daniel used to work for other people but he was always curious about doing it for himself and when he decided to move from the UK to New Zealand, he also decided to start an online business. He started by building a sit-down classroom courses website and promoting it through SEO. He had to borrow some money from his grandmother to cater for his personal expenses so he could focus on building the website and getting customers. Getting the first set of clients He got his first customers through search engine optimization (SEO). He learnt everything he could about SEO because he wasn't a good salesman so he needed the website to do the selling for him. Through that, his website ranked well and because there were people looking for courses, he was able to get customers. Working with zero budget Daniel says the one crucial thing he did that can work for anyone now, is content marketing. He says content marketing offers the best value for money. He makes his content in form of videos and in the beginning he used to write a lot of blog posts about his work. It was easy and free for him to do it because he wrote them himself. Number of videos At the beginning, he used to write a lot of blog posts and then he did one or two videos a month as a test. When the videos started doing well, he narrowed his content marketing down to videos. He says if he could get a do-over, he would have focused on videos from the very beginning, because progress on getting the website ranked would have taken place ten times faster. He says the content marketing through blog posts was very slow. Growth strategy at the beginning The sit-down classroom courses were more locally targeted so he worked with local businesses like blogs that existed around what he did. He also used to reach out to companies that complimented his work, to see whether he could do free stuff with them. That was the easiest way for him to market the business since it was targeting the local market. Tip: If you have something local, you have to focus your marketing (including SEO) on the local market The fundamentals that worked He says some of the things that really worked for him that can work for a local business include Google local listings (now known as Google Places, Goog Business, or Google Local) which get a business on a map that easily puts a business on top of searches for local products. The other thing, he says, is finding other websites that are linked to the business one is doing (these are mostly professional listings) Other things that may take some time and effort include relationship building with other businesses, going to conferences and meet-ups organized by businesses that are related to what one does. That way, one gets clients through word of mouth and referrals. Adobe certification He says being Adobe certified and having his training centre certified by Adobe, is very helpful. That's because as part of certification, he gets Adobe.com linked to his website, and it helps a lot, because Google likes to see...

What are the building blocks of a startup community? Beyond infrastructure (coworking, incubators, accelerators, VC funds, etc.), a community needs people. Without passionate entrepreneurs and talented people, infrastructure can go so far. Many cities around the U.S., Tallahassee included, face steep talent shortages in tech. According to the TechHire website, hundreds of IT jobs currently sit vacant in Leon County. So how can Tallahassee build up its IT workforce? For season 2, episode 7 of the Startup Capital Podcast, host Lucas Lindsey spoke with a couple people working towards an answer. Ryan Kopinsky is a local developer, tech advocate, and director of I/O Avenue, Tallahassee's newest coding bootcamp. I/O Avenue is a partnership between Domi Station, FAMU, and the Office of Mayor Andrew Gillum. The program seeks to provide an alternative option for residents looking to learn IT skills and even start new careers in tech. Joining Ryan was Jim McShane, executive director of CareerSource Capital Region. CareerSource collects data on local hiring demand, and uses it to connect local businesses with qualified candidates. To learn more about I/O Avenue, and to hear Kopinsky and McShane's thoughts on the local IT workforce, listen in to season 2, episode 7 of the Startup Capital podcast by Cuttlesoft.

Life after revenue How do you know when your startup is working? Is it when you start making money? Is it when someone tells you that it's working? Is it when you believe that it's working? Most people would choose option "A" - a business is working when it's making money. That's why for Episode 5 of Season 2 of Startup Capital, we spoke with two Tallahassee startups who've discovered how to go from idea to revenue. Both of the businesses featured in this episode have made it past the early stages of starting up, and now, they're looking to scale.   Our first guest is an apparel company with a socially-impactful mission. DivvyUp Socks manufactures custom-designed socks and donates a pair for each sale. Founded as an FSU class project by Mitch Nelson and Jason McIntosh, DivvyUp now sells custom socks all over the world. FullScaleNano is another mid-stage startup founded right here in Tallahassee. This team of scientists and business leaders creates quality assurance software for companies who work with nanomaterials. The process of analyzing electron microscope images of nanomaterials used to take dozens of hours. Now, their NanoMet software does it automatically. For Episode 5 of Season 2 of Startup Capital, our host Lucas Lindsey talked with DivvyUp's Jason McIntosh and Mitch Nelson, and FullScaleNano CEO Jodi Chase about the decisions and strategies that put them on the road to success. Episode Five Links FullScaleNano NanoMet DivvyUp Socks The Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship InNOLEvation® Challenge  

Tallahassee has three centers of higher learning within its limits: FSU, FAMU, and TCC. Based on the number of students who live here, one would think that local businesses would be flush with young graduates. The reality is a bit more complicated. In spite of such a large talent pool, many companies can't find the talent they need. For businesses in science and technology, this is especially damaging. If a technology company can't recruit a technically-proficient workforce, how can it thrive? Like many small cities, Tallahassee is pushing to become more tech-focused and entrepreneurial. If this is ever going to happen, local businesses need a steady stream of candidates to recruit from. Since many students view Tallahassee as simply a stepping-stone to larger cities, this is a challenge. For Episode 4 of Startup Capital, Season 2, our host Lucas Lindsey spoke with local leaders Ebrahim Randeree and Jay Revell to try to understand the challenges facing local recruiters. Ebrahim Randeree (or Ebe, as he's known around campus) is an Associate Dean of FSU's College of Communication and Information. An advocate for local business, Randeree is behind many of the university's talent-focused initiatives. Jay Revell is Vice President of the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce. Through this role, Revell works to make sure that students see a side of the city that they would otherwise never be exposed to. To find out how local businesses can better position themselves to hire recent grads and improve Tallahassee's reputation among students, listen in. This podcast was brought to you by Cuttlesoft, the idea-driven developers. Episode 4 Links Florida State University's School of Communication and Information The Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce RMS HWind Tallahassee Job Hop Knight Creative Communities Institute Launch Florida Ebe Randeree on Twitter Jay Revell on Twitter  

When a company's culture makes the news, it usually isn't because its employees are happy, healthy, and hard-working. More often, you hear about crushing corporate offices or "bro-centric" startups. That doesn't mean that workplace culture sucks everywhere -- it just means that examples of bad culture garner more press. Most companies strive for a healthy culture, and those who do see higher performance and better employee retention. For Episode 3 of Startup Capital, Season 2, we interviewed two growing local companies who've made culture a priority. Mindy Perkins is CEO and President of VR Systems, an employee-owned elections technology firm that prides itself on employee unity and buy-in. Tom Derzypolski is President of BowStern Marketing Communications, whose "culture of leading with kindness" has been a focus from day one. To find out how these two business leaders empower employees and keep them engaged, listen in. Episode Three Links VR Systems Bow Stern Marketing Communications

For Episode 2 of Startup Capital, Season 2, we reached out to someone who knows the intricacies of Tallahassee's ecosystem better than anyone: Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Elected to the mayor's office in April, 2013, Gillum has been the driving force behind a number of local initiatives, both civic and economic. Most recently, Gillum began a community-wide initiative called the Tallahassee Innovation Partnership (TIP). Spearheaded by Gillum's office, the TIP seeks to connect the city's different institutions with innovative new businesses in town. Kicking off the TIP was an innovation pitch night, which gave local entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their startups to the community. This is a step towards solving one issue that we've identified here through Startup Capital: a disconnect between the local startup scene and many of the city's economic players in government and higher education. Two weeks after that Pitch Night, our host Lucas Lindsey sat down with Mayor Gillum for an honest conversation about Tallahassee's past, present, and future as a home for startups and entrepreneurship. Listen in to learn more about Gillum's plans for infusing the local tech scene with life, building innovation locally, and bringing new opportunity to the Startup Capital. This podcast was brought to you by Cuttlesoft, the idea-driven developers. Follow us on Twitter: Mayor Andrew Gillum Lucas Lindsey Cuttlesoft   Episode One Links: Tallahassee's Innovation Pitch Night Kicking-Off the Tallahassee Innovation Partnership From Government Town to Innovation Capital  

*Disclaimer: This podcast was recorded via live webcam, and the audio does suffer from some interference. We apologize for any distraction that this may cause.* Reflection and planning are deeply intertwined — in order to move forward, you have to know where you’re coming from. That was the premise behind the first ever podcast episode of the Startup Capital series. Startup Capital TLH, founded mid 2016, began as an interview series focused on spotlighting and supporting Tallahassee startups and entrepreneurs. Now, it’s coming to your ears in podcast form. In this introductory episode, Lucas Lindsay, executive director at Domi Station and the host of Startup Capital Season 2, speaks with Cuttlesoft’s Frank Valcarcel, Emily Morehouse-Valcarcel, and Nick Farrell about the origin, goals, and outcomes of the series. Before jumping in, each participant took time to study the interviews of Season 1 to determine the major themes of the Season 1 interviews. Those themes include: Startup culture Entrepreneurial ecosystems Talent acquisition and retention Tech education Diversity & inclusion In this cross-country conversation between Lindsey and Farrell in Tallahassee and the Valcarcels in Denver, CO, these themes are discussed and dissected. How are entrepreneurs making the most of Tallahassee’s business resources? How can universities better adapt to the changing demands of the workplace? Tune in to learn the answers to these questions and others during Startup Capital: Season 2, Episode 1. Follow us on Twitter: Cuttlesoft Lucas Lindsey Nick Farrell Frank Valcarcel Emily Morehouse-Valcarcel   Episode One Links: Interviews: Jessica Lowe-Minor with INIE Dr. Gary Ostrander Keith Bowers with the SBDC Matt O’Hagan and Christian Pelaez Espinosa Mark Powell with Hwind Dustin Daniels with the Mayor’s Office   Resources: The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Florida A&M University (FAMU) The Entrepreneurial Excellence Program Domi Station’s Get Started Program Florida State University’s (fantastic) CS department The Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce Workforce Development at Tallahassee Community College HackFSU TechNole Florida Hackers The Institute for Nonprofit Innovation and Excellence

We gaan het hebben over het bereiken van meerdere doelen, ondernemen wanneer je een gebrek aan geld hebt en tot slot de relatie tussen innerlijke rust en spiritualiteit.

The venture capital world is growing by leaps and bounds and companies like Flybridge Capital Partners are fueling the tech and innovation behind many of the things that are transforming the world. In this conversation, I talk with Jeff Bussgang, general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners about a variety of things surrounding the venture capital space, including how he got started, what his company looks for in a startup company, and how they assess the leadership and team to make a wise early stage investment. What IS an early stage investment company? Early stage investments are nothing more than the money provided to promising companies that are not yet producing their products or services but have made significant headway toward the development or distribution of it. The money they receive is often referred to as “seed money” - the money used to enable the development, marketing, and progress of the company to move it toward profitability and sustainability. On this episode, Jeff Bussgang shares how his interest in the entrepreneurial world led him to become general partner of an early stage venture capital firm, and why startup funding is so exciting. What is a venture capital investment firm looking for in a startup? When I asked Jeff Bussgang what the team at Flybridge Capital Partners is looking for in an early stage company he gave me a number of criteria they look at to show them there is promise in the company: Innovative potential, leadership and team, the Pied Piper effect, and more. If those sound a bit vague, don’t worry. As you listen to this episode you’ll get a very clear understanding of what each of those things is and why Jeff and his team consider them vital to discerning a good investment from a bad one. It’s all on this episode of the Capital Gains podcast. The Pied Piper effect is something startup founders need - at least in this case. If the team at Flybridge Capital Partners is going to get behind a startup financially they want to see that the primary leader of the startup company possesses what they call a “pied piper” quality. That means he/she is a person who is a natural leader and attracts the interest of people to the projects they are working on. Jeff Bussgang points to the fact that we all know people whose ventures and projects are naturally of interest to us - and it’s because of who the person is and how they are wired that we are attracted. You can almost smell the excitement and potential because they are a person who tends to make things happen. Find out more about this elusive but tangible leadership quality, on this episode. If you can’t connect with me through a mutual connection, I’m not that interested. Jeff Bussgang understands that networking and connections are a huge advantage when it comes to making a company or cause successful. So much so that he’s generally unwilling to have serious conversations about funding a startup if their team did not approach him through some kind of mutual connection. He’s convinced that people who know how to make and utilize connections are also the people who will be able to build the relationships that will equip their company for future success. You can hear Jeff make the case himself on this episode. Outline of This Episode [1:04] Introduction of this week’s guest, Jeff Buskin. [1:54] The types of companies Jeff’s group invests in and what they look for in a winner. [6:50] The “winnowing” process Flybridge uses when evaluating potential companies. [10:50] Signals that a founder or leader is a “Pied Piper” who can build the company. [13:18] What does it mean to be an “early stage” investor? [18:54] Niches Flybridge tends to invest in. [21:58] Sectors on the horizon that Jeff and his team are watching carefully. [24:00] Why Flybridge has a geographic bias toward Boston and New York. [25:23] Why relationships matter so much to Flybridge. [31:23] Jeff’s path to Flybridge. [36:58] The tendency toward entrepreneurism: Is it innate? [39:03] Successes the company has had and what they have learned. Resources Mentioned Flybridge Capital Partners - Jeff’s investment company. On LinkedIn On Facebook On Twitter On Pinterest Code Academy Bitsight DataXu MongoDB Jibo Robotics Zest Finance Omni Physical Storage Upromise http://TwoBridgesMgmt.com www.TheMortarBlog.com   Connect With Capitalism.com Website: http://capitalism.com/ On Youtube On Facebook On Twitter On LinkedIn

In this great episode, John Livesay dives into the complexities of raising capital, how to impress potential investors, and 3 things you better be able to answer!

Presented by: Small Business Expo Writing a business plan for your startup is one critical piece that most small business owners fail to take. In this interview, we talk with Bill Bartmann about his thoughts on how to raise startup funds for a new business in a recession, why he doesn't ever recommend friends and family for startup up capital, and some of the things he feels helped him start several profitable companies. Find out more about Bill Bartmann at BillBartmann.com and BillionaireU.com Read the transcript here. Play in Windows Media Play in RealPlayer Play mp3 stream Direct link to mp3 file