The VentureFizz Podcast

Episode 348 of The VentureFizz Podcast, sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank, features Jonathan Bensamoun, Founder & CEO of Fi. It’s crazy to think that The VentureFizz Podcast has been around since 2018 and I believe that I’ve only had one repeat guest and that founder was talking about a new company. Thus, this is the first time I am doing a follow up episode and Jonathan was my guest for Episode 11...

Episode 347 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Joe Caruso, Investor & Mentor. Lots of people know of Joe as an angel investor, but when I think of Joe… I think of a mentor to so many entrepreneurs and a major supporter of the Boston startup ecosystem. If you go through Joe’s portfolio of investments from his Bantam Group website, it will give a strong perspective to the depth of his connection to...

Episode 346 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Scott Weller, CTO & Co-Founder at EnFi. The formula for a thriving tech ecosystem ideally looks something like this: * Entrepreneurial-minded person works for startups and learns a ton. Perhaps they even witness success at scale to an exit. * Said person takes lessons learned and builds their own company to an exit. * Said person then starts to mento...

Episode 345 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Laura Teicher, Executive Director at FORGE. Did you know that there are over 7,000 manufacturers in the state of Massachusetts? I certainly didn’t. My gut is that most entrepreneurs think that they need to go overseas for manufacturing versus leveraging local resources. And, let’s face it, building a startup is hard but when it is a physical product…...

Episode 344 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Wardah Inam, Founder & CEO of Overjet. Building a company in an underserved industry has its pros and cons. Yes, it’s nice to have less competition and a head start, but on the flip side… it might be harder to raise funding if it isn’t a sector of interest for investors or it might even tougher to acquire customers because you have to educate the mar...

Episode 343 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Jonathan Corbin, Co-Founder & CEO of Maven AGI and our first sponsored podcast episode! Yes, please welcome Silicon Valley Bank (more info about SVB below) as a supporter of The VentureFizz Podcast. Any time I see a funding announcement for a new company, I get excited, as I’m an optimist and I hope that every company will scale and reach great miles...

Episode 342 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Matt Weinberg, Partner at Max Ventures. Did you know that there are a ton of resources available for startups from the government including non-dilutive funding? I’m talking billions of dollars are allocated to hundreds of startups every year. This is a topic that has never been discussed on The VentureFizz Podcast and Matt is uniquely qualified to s...

Episode 341 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Somak Chattopadhyay, Managing Partner at Armory Square Ventures. Yes, markets like the Bay Area, NYC, and Boston get a lot of attention when it comes to building startups and having the ability to raise capital, but there are lots of other places to build a successful company. This has always been the case, but the pandemic definitely pushed this rea...

Episode 340 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Steph Johnson, Co-Founder & CEO at Multiplayer. Steph is an inspiration. As discussed in this interview, her background might not be the prototypical tech CEO profile for a few reasons. First, she came up through the agency world and then ran comms in-house for major tech companies like DigitalOcean and MongoDB. Second, she is a female founder of a d...

Episode 339 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Andy Palmer, serial entrepreneur, seed investor, and now author. Andy is one of my OG’s, that being original guests. If you go way back into the archives of The VentureFizz Podcast, you’ll find my first interview with him for Episode #22 back in 2018. In that interview, we talk about his full background story, his career building companies like Tamr...

Episode #338 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Tasneem Dohadwala, Founding Partner at Excelestar Ventures. It’s a lot more common to find VC firms that are investing into deep tech or hard tech, but when Tasneem started Excelestar Ventures in 2010, it was far from the norm. Not only was it abnormal to invest in companies building highly advanced engineering products, but it was also a very chall...

Episode 337 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Gloria Hwang, Founder & CEO of Thousand. Gloria’s career has centered around mission oriented initiatives and companies. Starting at Habitat for Humanity… then to TOMS, which is the gold standard in terms of businesses with a social mission based on their One for One model. She joined the company in its early years and played several key roles while...

Episode 336 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Julia Rodgers, Esq., CEO & Co-Founder of HelloPrenup, a platform that takes the awkwardness out of discussing and creating prenuptial agreements. This is the 3rd and final podcast interview from my live sessions at Suffolk University with 3 alums that being Don Bulens, Ernesto DiGiambattista, and Julia Rodgers. Some of the best entrepreneurs that I h...

Episode 335 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ernesto DiGiambattista, entrepreneur and investor. This episode is the 2nd of three interviews that were recorded live at Suffolk University with Suffolk alums. Ernesto has a unique background that hits the trifecta of experience. He spent time in senior roles with larger enterprise corporations, then he founded a venture backed company called ZeroNo...

Episode #334 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Don Bulens, 5 time Startup CEO and Executive Chair at CloudZero. This episode was recorded live at Suffolk University which was so much fun! We recorded 3 interviews with Suffolk alums on April 2nd, so this is the first conversation and we’ll have two more coming in the following weeks. And just a side note about Suffolk, the entrepreneurial spirit...

Episode 333 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Geri Kirilova, Managing Partner at Laconia. From what I’ve seen, it is very rare for someone to start their career in venture and continue to progress up the ranks. Usually, an Associate or Senior Associate will do a rotation for 2-3 years and then move on to a portfolio company, maybe start a company, or do something else. For Geri, outside of a sto...

Episode 332 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Lerer, Managing Partner of Lerer Hippeau. The tech scene in New York City has come a very, very long way over the past 14 or 15 years. A lot of that transformation and growth was due to access to early-stage capital which wasn’t prevalent back then, but Lerer Hippeau was a key element to the foundation of its success as a seed stage investor. The...

Episode 331 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Rob Go, Co-Founder & Partner at NextView Ventures. I’ve been fortunate to have many people support my journey with building VentureFizz through the years and Rob was one of the earliest. Shortly after I launched the site, he reached out looking to meet up and needless to say, I jumped at the chance. Through the years, Rob has always been incredibly h...

Episode 330 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Harman Singh Narula, Co-Founder & CEO of Canary Technologies. “Are these entrepreneurs uniquely qualified to build an industry leading company?” - this is one of the many questions that most (if not all) VCs ask themselves when deciding to make an investment into a company. When you look at Harman’s background, it is obvious that his “Founder Fit” is...

Episode 329 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Pano Anthos, Founder & Managing Director of XRC Ventures. I always love it when things come full circle. I first met Pano back in, what I believe was 2008 when he was building Hangout Industries. I was running a recruiting firm at the time and I stopped into their offices to discuss some of their hiring plans. Hangout was early to market as the compa...

Episode #328 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ellen Chisa, Partner at boldstart ventures. Back in 2016, we wrote a profile about Ellen on VentureFizz when she was leading product management at Lola.com. The profile was part of a series that we called Driven, which I think is a very fitting word to describe Ellen… and ironically, the discussion around considering a role in venture capital actual...

Episode #327 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures. This is exciting! Why? Because this episode is longer than my normal interviews, as Reed and I cover his career that spans multiple decades across major technological platform shifts. This means that based on his career, he has so many great stories to share. It is like a historical walkthrough of...

Episode 326 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead of Drupal and Co-Founder, CTO, and Chief Strategy Officer of Acquia. Many of the most successful companies in tech were created by founders who built something that was to fill their own need. This was certainly the case for Dries, who back in 2000, started an internal online message board for his friends from...

Episode 325 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Alex Shashou, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of 10Beauty. About 10 years ago, Peter Thiel is credited for saying “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” True, Twitter or X certainly was not in the same frame of mind as to what we saw on The Jetsons, but are we finally starting to get there? The Roomba was a step in the right direction in terms o...

Episode #324 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Sameer Gulati, Founder & CEO of Ordway. Sameer loves SaaS and it’s for good reason… it is expected that the size of the SaaS market may hit almost $1 trillion by 2030! Yes, the tech industry is having some challenges, but did you know that… even though the evolution to SaaS started 20 something years ago… the adoption of SaaS still only sits at a 36...