Startup Ignition Podcast

Peter Harris had the chance to invest in SpaceX at a $20 billion valuation, and passed. One of his students was the team lead on that deal, pounding the table ("it is Elon effing Musk"), and was the first person to text him the day SpaceX went public. Today SpaceX is worth about $2 trillion. Peter is the co-founder and partner of University Growth Fund, the largest student-run venture capital fund...

Bubba Page borrowed $5,000 from his parents to join a six-founder BYU startup, sold his stake two years later for a 10x return, and got paid half of it in office chairs (everyone in his family got one for Christmas). From there he bootstrapped LaunchLeads, a tech-enabled sales company, to multiple millions and the Inc. 5000, won Utah's Google Startup Weekend, went through Techstars Boulder, and ra...

Arian Lewis grew up in Provo watching his single mom turn a 12-kid daycare into a 320-kid childcare center with 50 employees. Today he's the co-founder and CEO of Kiln, the hospitality-driven coworking and flex-office company with 24 locations (37 by end of 2027), 150 team members, and 3,500+ companies working out of its spaces every day, from day-one founders to Mastercard, Intuit and Siemens. He...

Sterling Jones was a BYU sophomore with no major when his mom, Jody "JoJo" Jones, started making protein-packed dark chocolate bark on a cookie sheet while fighting cancer. Twelve years later, JoJo's Chocolate has done over $100 million in revenue in the last three years alone and sits in every Costco in the country. The co-founder (former CEO, now Chief Growth Officer) tells John and Tyler how it...

Adam Sidwell spent nine years inside Hollywood visual effects — ILM, Weta Digital, Digital Domain, Sony Pictures Imageworks — working on King Kong, Pirates of the Caribbean, iRobot, and Transformers, starting at $13.64 an hour writing code for blockbusters. Then he walked away to scratch a creative itch of his own. The founder of Future House Studios tells John and Tyler how a Random House book de...

No guest this week — John and Tyler take on the question every founder is asking in 2026: how do you know if your startup idea is actually good, now that AI can build almost anything in a weekend? They start with Steve Blank's Lean LaunchPad 2026 write-up — his Stanford teams talked to 978 customers, and his verdict is that AI is making builders lazier about lean startup right when its principles...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John and Tyler sit down with Clint Betts, CEO of Silicon Slopes — the nonprofit at the heart of Utah's tech ecosystem. His path is one of the most unlikely in Utah tech: foster care and adoption in Spanish Fork, a journalism degree from UVU, and a blog inside a Provo dev shop (Beehive Startups) that became the storytelling engine of Utah tech — unti...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John and Tyler sit down with Brock Blake, co-founder and CEO of Lendio — the small-business lending marketplace that has facilitated more than $17 billion in funding and is now originating roughly $150 million a month across 6,000–7,000 loans with 75+ lending partners. Brock traces the whole journey: getting his start in the Junto Partners bootcamp...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John and Tyler sit down with Brian Murphy, co-founder and former managing partner of Portfolio Advisors — the private-markets firm he helped build from a single contract into a global alternatives platform that raised roughly $25 billion across 44 funds, invested more than $90 billion, and served 2,500+ limited partners before merging with FS Invest...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John and Tyler sit down with Joseph Woodbury, founder and CEO of Neighbor — the "Airbnb of storage" that has raised over $75 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Pelion, and Album to build a nationwide marketplace across all 50 states. Joseph breaks down why marketplaces are the hardest businesses to build and the best ones to own, how Neighbor turns e...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John and Tyler sit down with repeat founder Morgan Lynch. Morgan shares his extensive and impressive entrepreneurial journey, starting from his early days working at a small software startup in a basement to founding groundbreaking companies like LogoWorks, Needle, and his newest venture, Build Angel. Morgan dives deep into the realities of startup...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John pulls off a massive surprise on Tyler by bringing in his former DevMountain co-founders, Cahlan Sharp and Colt Henrie, for a special 10-year reunion of their company's acquisition. They dive deep into the origins of the legendary coding bootcamp that completely transformed the tech scene in Utah. The founders share their raw and unfiltered best...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John Richards sit down with Carine Clark, a four-time president and CEO of high-growth companies and the current CEO of First Colony Mortgage. Carine shares her incredible journey from an extreme introvert raised in a military family in Germany to a powerhouse leader in the Utah tech scene, with pivotal roles at Novell, Altiris, and Symant...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John are joined by Matty Gay, Co-founder and CEO of Primo Golf Apparel. Matty shares his incredible entrepreneurial journey, from working at a local country club for free golf to climbing the ranks as a product manager at foreUP. He reveals how a simple idea for golf joggers launched during the COVID-19 pandemic turned into one of the fast...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John welcome Blake Modersitzki, Managing Partner at Pelion Venture Partners and a foundational figure in the Utah tech ecosystem. Blake shares his incredible journey—from working as a security guard at WordPerfect, to running Novell Ventures alongside Eric Schmidt, and eventually helping scale Pelion to a massive $500M fund. He provides in...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John Richards go solo — no guest, no fluff — just a father-son tag team sharing the startup truths they're seeing every day in the trenches. They kick things off with a Masters Sunday recap (congrats Rory on the back-to-back green jackets) before diving headfirst into the conversation everyone's having in 2026: is AI actually killing SaaS?...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John Richards sit down with Matt Holman, co-founder of Q Pilot and Commerce Catalyst. Matt shares his incredible life journey, from a 15-year incarceration to becoming a highly respected entrepreneur and e-commerce community builder in Utah. The trio dives deep into the "rules" of e-commerce, unpacking the unit economics of consumer packag...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John Richards are joined by Jon Richards, co-founder of Nomadic (Nomatic). Jon shares the incredible journey of taking a simple minimalist wallet on Kickstarter and transforming it into a $30+ million travel gear and bag empire. He dives deep into navigating early entrepreneurial hustles, running highly successful crowdfunding campaigns, f...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, John and Tyler sit down with Jeremy Andrus, the visionary serial entrepreneur behind the explosive growth of Skullcandy and Traeger Grills. Jeremy shares his gritty journey from a middle-class paperboy to Harvard Business School, navigating the highs and lows of day-trading millions, and eventually discovering his true passion as a builder. He unpac...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, hosts Tyler and John Richards dive into a special Q&A session to answer the most pressing questions from their community of founders. Before getting into the startup advice, they celebrate a recent Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl victory and play a fun venture capital game called "Invest, Pass, or Instantly Dead." The duo then tackles critical topic...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John sit down with Dan Caffee, a veteran entrepreneur, investor, and the current CEO of Voiso. Dan shares his incredible journey through the Utah tech scene, from his early days bootstrapping companies to the massive success of Teem, a conference room scheduling platform he sold to WeWork for over $100 million in an all-cash deal. Beyond t...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, we sit down with Sam Stoddard, the co-founder and CEO of Simple Citizen—a platform often described as "TurboTax for immigration." Sam shares his journey from an accounting student at BYU to navigating the complex US immigration system for his wife, which sparked the idea for his startup. We dive into his unique path of raising venture capital before...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, we sit down with Matt Stapleton, a multi-time founder who recently exited Spiff to Salesforce for nearly $480 million. Matt shares his journey from "dialing for dollars" as a commission-only rep to building and exiting two successful FinTech companies: Capshare and Spiff. We dive deep into the importance of clean cap tables (including a horror story...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John sit down with Dave Bateman, the co-founder and former CEO of Entrata, one of Utah’s most successful SaaS unicorns. Dave shares his incredible journey from running a letter-delivery service for missionaries to bootstrapping a multi-billion dollar property management platform. They dive deep into his philosophy of "building it right" ve...

In this episode of the Startup Ignition Podcast, Tyler and John are joined by Cydni Tetro, a serial entrepreneur, tech executive, and absolute legend in the Utah tech scene. Cydni takes us through her remarkable career journey, from balancing a computer science degree while hex editing networks at Novell, to leading innovation at Disney Imagineering’s Blue Sky Group. She shares fascinating stories...