Evolving Your Workplace

Jagadish Gattu (Jag) came to the US from India to get his master's and stayed here ever since. After working at many companies, he realized that many customer needs could be better fulfilled through AI.  In 2019 he founded UptimeAI, an artificial intelligence-based predictive maintenance software provider for companies in heavy industries. Since its start, the company has grown to 24 employee...

“I’m sorry– there is no balance. Some people can separate the two, you know, but overall it’s integrating and how do you bring it all together and make it work harmoniously together,” Dan LaBroad says.  Dan’s company, Ovation Health and Life Services, is an employee benefits firm aimed at helping employers create better health plans.  Dan began his career in the restaurant industry, comp...

“We made a big mistake. We configured the platform where—luckily it never saw production because it was caught in testing– but we had where we pointed the system to the wrong logo,” Brent Williams tells Carol, “We owned it. We said ‘This is us, we did this.’”  Brent founded Benekiva, a SaaS technology platform that aims to transform the end-to-end insurance claims and servicing experience. Fo...

“You get this feeling of happiness when you do this,” Jitesh Shetty tells founders, “If that’s not happening, it’s almost like your system internally telling you: change something! Maybe that’s not the right idea for you, the right problem space…I think if that is not happening it will be very hard to succeed.”  Jitesh, a three-time founder, most recently co-founded Credible, a SaaS company t...

“You’ve got to cast a long shadow,” Eric Miller tells Carol. “We look a lot bigger than we are to our clients. They are always a little surprised that we are less than 100 people because we pack a bigger punch than these 4,5,600-person companies that we compete with.”  Eric is a co-owner and Principal at PADT, a provider of tools and services that help companies design and manufacture their p...

Calvin Goforth founded VIC Tech in order to help commercialize new technologies invented by university researchers.  VIC Tech began as a consulting firm for tech startups. After noticing that many professors with new technologies didn’t want to quit their roles to develop them, Calvin decided to shift.  The company screens new technologies brought to them from various universities and an...

“There is a financial responsibility that exists in every organization. Traditionally HR is not a part of those conversations. They’re the conversation that happens after that decision has been made, and they’re left to reconcile the reality that’s been created when they weren’t in the room.” - Matt Burns Matt founded BentoHR, an HR operations consulting firm. After working as an HR executive for...

“Sometimes when people spend too much time in corporate life, they kind of are taught to not think. Don’t think just do. And that is really like the opposite of what we want people to think,” Ozan Bilgen says, “We want people to be critical about the process and come up with their solutions as well, if possible.” Ozan founded Base64.ai, an artificial intelligence service that works as a one-stop-s...

“She (Shahed’s wife) would go to a stakeholder meeting and tell me that ‘You haven’t done that properly…”” CEO Shahed Islam tells Carol. “Our team members have learned that. We have become a good example. Now they are arguing.” Shahed co-founded SJ Innovation, an IT solutions company, with his wife almost two decades ago when they were two traveling freelancers. The business has now grown to 170 e...

“I learned over time the value of just getting everyone to get on the same page and move in a direction, albeit imperfect– because you can course correct. You can inspect and adapt as you go,” Phil Reynolds says, “It wasn’t about me being right, it was more about building alignment in the team.” Phil first founded BriteCore, a cloud-native platform for P&C insurers, and almost two decades late...

“You manage engineers in a completely different way to how you manage salespeople, in a completely different way to how you manage finance people, and so on and so forth. And you have to be able to shapeshift your management personality into a context that is relevant to that point in time.” - Phil Tee Phil has founded several successful software companies, his latest: Moogsoft, an AIOps incident...

“I’ve asked people to stop doing any multitasking— because this is a freaking illusion. It doesn’t work,” Vadim Peskov tells Carol.  Vadim co-founded Diffco, an app development company.  Diffco helps tech startups build their software and, in some cases, also build out their business model.  In order to make his days as CEO as efficient as possible, Vadim has learned to structure hi...

“I think most lawyers, they go for comfort. Maybe not comfort in the subject matter of what they’re doing, but comfort in their repeatable patterns. They go to the office, they do the same type of work each day. The cannabis industry was anything but that,” Bob Hoban tells Carol. Bob founded Hoban Law Group, which Clark Hill’s Cannabis Industry Group later acquired. His firm notably paved the way...

“I was laying there so uncomfortable, afraid, anxious, confused, just clamoring for information to understand what all of these crazy acronyms were,” Michael O’Neil tells Carol about the genesis of his idea.  After being treated for Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Michael founded Get Well, an organization that aims to empower patients to take an active role in their health journey.  Get Well uti...

“People think once you raise money, that it gets easier. No. You only have more to prove.” - Sofiat Abdulrazaaq Years ago, Sofiat wanted to check out a food truck a friend had recommended and was unable to find it. This catapulted her and her friends into a journey to create GoodFynd, a way to connect customers to mobile businesses, helping food trucks to be more visible and profitable. Sofiat is...

“If you’re just promoting yourself, you’ve lost people right there. You have to give back. The more you give back, the more people are going to be receptive to you and know that you are an industry leader.“ - Brandon Leibowitz Brandon founded SEO Optimizers, a digital marketing agency that helps companies gain online traffic through search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM),...

“The future of work is changing, but also the future of travel,” Andrew says, “People are staying gone longer, they’re seeing that things are actually better in another place potentially for them, they don’t have to wait until they retire.” Andrew co-founded Insured Nomads, an insurtech and travel-tech platform aimed at helping travelers, ex-pats, and digital nomads explore and live with their wel...

Chad Pytel began freelancing as a developer in high school and continued throughout college to make ends meet. Later he joined a startup that failed quickly and led him to form a new company with the team he built.  He founded thoughtbot, an end-to-end product development and design consultancy. thoughtbot aims to bring a company’s idea to life and eventually give them the tools to have their...

When Ravi Maddimsetty began his start-up he had a vision of connecting the physical with the digital to help businesses engage with customers – not necessarily through QR code technology. But after trial and error, Ravi and his co-founder Sharat knew QR codes were the technology they had been looking for.  Today their company, “Beaconstac” employs over 60 people and has worked with brands suc...

Scott Snider began his entrepreneurship journey in high school when he started mowing lawns. His side gig quickly turned into a full-blown operation with several employees. With mentorship from his dad, he grew the business and strategically sold it seven years later.  Scott now uses his dad’s same methodology to help other businesses. As the president of the Exit Planning Institute (EPI), Sc...

In an effort to solve the growing issue of service technicians leaving the field, Aaron Salow co-founded XOi Technologies to help the workforce by providing much-needed data.  XOi Technologies is an all-in-one communication tool connecting field service technicians, offices, and customers. His company now has over 90 employees. Aaron says a large part of the product's success comes from the f...

Yotam Segev aims to lead the way in the new and expanding cloud data security market. The space is part of the larger cyber security market and is growing quickly as data security becomes more and more complicated, Yotam says.  Yotam’s company, Cyera, is a cloud data security firm that, while only being a year-and-a-half old, has already raised a large sum of capital. Carol presses Yotam on w...

Years ago, Shane Foss had a back issue and checked into a nearby urgent care facility to get help. After getting services, he was billed $800. Fortunately, Shane had worked in the healthcare space and knew how to negotiate it down to $75.  That’s when he got the idea to start Hooray Health, a company aimed at providing limited healthcare benefits to hourly workers that won’t break the bank. S...

Meet Jaci Russo: a mother of four and the founder and CEO of BrandRUSSO, a strategic branding agency. Beyond that, she also wrote a book on branding and created courses for people to learn how to brand their companies independently.  “To me, it’s just about saying yes. That seems like a good idea. Sure I’ll try that! That seems like an awesome opportunity, yes let’s do that!” Jaci tells Carol...

One value Guillermo Elizondo looks for in his employees is a “force of spirit” which he refers to as the spirit within someone that pushes them to meet a goal despite obstacles. With globalization and facing worldwide problems, Elizondo believes it’s our force of spirit that will help change the world.  Elizondo co-founded Territorium, a global education technology leader providing an educati...