The Startup Junkies Podcast

Billions are pouring into warehouse robotics. So why do so many automation projects fall short? The answer starts with the people working the floor. In this entrepreneur interview, Tanner Green, co-founder and CEO of Ox, a Bentonville-based warehouse AI platform serving billion-dollar enterprises, shares how a wearable headset startup evolved into a warehouse operating system and digital twin plat...

Every business worth building starts with a problem you've felt yourself. This high school senior turned his into an app. In this entrepreneur interview, Kanishk Sasikumar, a Bentonville High School senior and co-founder of Investo, shares how a DECA competition project became a gamified financial literacy app now live on the App Store and Google Play. Whether you're a teen with a business idea or...

Insurers have thousands of engineers building systems to deny claims. Most healthcare providers have no one on the other side of the table. In this entrepreneur interview, Dmitry Karpov — serial founder and CEO of Adentris — explains how AI can audit medical records in real time, why behavioral health documentation draws so much payer scrutiny, and what rural hospitals stand to lose as value-based...

Toothaches are one of the top reasons people end up in the emergency room, where there’s no dentist to treat them. In this entrepreneur interview, Dr. Maria Kunstadter, dentist and founder of The TeleDentists, shares how a national conference on the opioid crisis sparked the idea for virtual dentists. She also explains how COVID drove 1,200% growth in a single year, and why she’s now taking telede...

Starting a small business is full of unknowns. Fayetteville's mayor says City Hall should be the one predictable part.  In this entrepreneur interview, Molly Rawn, Mayor of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and part of the founding team behind the Scott Family Amazeum, talks about leading a city with a founder's mindset, why government shouldn't be a barrier to small business, and what most people get wrong...

Small businesses, not the big defense primes, are where the Department of Defense is looking for its next breakthrough. Here's how to get noticed, and how to be ready when you do. In this entrepreneur interview, Chip Laingen breaks down what it really takes for a small business or startup to sell to the government. Chip is executive director of the Defense Alliance, a 21-year Navy veteran, and has...

What does it take for a startup from Korea to break into the US market? Four founders share how they're doing it. Recorded live at Startup Crawl in Fayetteville, Arkansas, this episode features founders from the Korea Global Expansion Accelerator. They build AI companion robots for isolated seniors, AI-powered lead generation, classroom analytics for early childhood education, and hotel operations...

Denied insurance claims cost clinics money, staff time, and patient care, and AI agents are starting to change that. In this entrepreneur interview, Shahbaz Virk (co-founder of Cair Health) explains how AI agents can handle medical billing from start to finish. That covers checking eligibility, reworking denied claims, and even waiting on hold with insurance companies. He shares why so many claims...

On this episode of the Startup Junkies Podcast, hosts Daniel Koontz and Caleb Talley sit down with Carl Maloney, founder of FloX, a technology consulting firm helping mid-sized companies replace spreadsheet chaos with AI-driven systems.  Carl shares his journey from a decade-plus corporate career and burnout to a six-month sabbatical, and ultimately launching his own consulting business. Plus how...

Quinn Childress, owner of Willow Street Lawns and founder of the digital lawn care marketplace Lawnly, joins the Startup Junkies Podcast to talk about the first-ever Lawn Care Olympics coming to Fayetteville, Arkansas on September 20th. Quinn shares how he went from experiencing homelessness as a teenager to building a lawn care business, and now a platform designed to funnel local dollars toward...

Employer health care costs have risen 70% over the last decade while wages have grown just 30%. Kirat Kharode, CEO and Founder of HealCo, joins the Startup Junkies Podcast's Fuel Accelerator health tech series to break down why self-funded employer health plans are becoming unsustainable, and how HealCo's governance layer helps route employees to lower-cost, high-quality care before costs spiral....

In this episode of the Startup Junkies Podcast, host Caleb Talley sits down with Permjot Valia, founder of Mentor Camp, and Ross Webb, a longtime AI product manager and returning Mentor Camp mentor, to unpack the philosophy behind one of the most unusual mentorship models in the startup world. This is a masterclass for founders on how to actually get value out of mentorship, and for mentors on how...

Most founders think you need a $250,000 VC check to get funded, but angel investors will write you a check for $5,000, actually get to know you, and stick around as a mentor long after the money lands. In this episode, Chris, the new director of 412 Angels, explains the real difference between angel investors and VCs, why founders should start building investor relationships long before they need...

He slept on the floor of a radio station he couldn't afford to staff, got told by the local coffee shop crowd he'd be out of business in six months, and ran that station for 45 years. Before he was a U.S. Congressman, Steve Womack was a Startup Junkie: a broadcaster's son who talked his way into a shoestring AM station in Rogers, Arkansas, and built it into an institution. In this episode, he sits...

Most restaurants don't survive their first year. This one won five awards in it. Including back-to-back People's Choice titles and a top finish for Best Asian Business in the entire state of Arkansas. Maria Smith left a long corporate career (including years at Sam's Club) to open Lasang Pinoy with her brother, bringing Filipino cuisine, and Filipino karaoke culture, to Northwest Arkansas.  In thi...

Everyone's racing to bolt AI onto everything, but Foreko co-founders Homero Ruiz and Alexis Rodas found the biggest opportunity in something almost boring: 76% of procurement teams are still running on spreadsheets.  In this episode, they break down why they deliberately avoided fully automating decisions with AI, how a food truck's stock-out problem turned into a company, and why they think the r...

Less than 1% of U.S. businesses that ever raise outside money end up raising venture capital, and most founders chasing it don't actually need it. In this entrepreneur interview, Jeff Amerine — a venture capital investor and longtime advisor in the startup ecosystem — breaks down the real landscape of startup funding: when to bootstrap, when to raise, and why most companies burn time chasing the w...

Insurance paperwork is delaying treatment for patients who don't have time to wait. One founder built a company to fix it. In this entrepreneur interview, Dr. Joshua Upshaw — founder and CEO of Hidalgo Technologies and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience — shares how a family health crisis pushed him from academic research into healthcare entrepreneurship, why he trusts his gut more than any spreadshe...

Most founders obsess over their product. The real skill is knowing which problem to fall in love with instead. In this entrepreneur interview, Nyamitse-Calvin Mihanda — founder of Vital Audio and a Techstars and Fuel Accelerator alum — shares how his company extracts heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure from ordinary conversation, why he walked away from a "perfect" product mindset, an...

What happens when a mentor gets more out of an accelerator than the founders do? Zak Morris joined the Fuel accelerator as a subject matter expert in AI — but quickly realized he was learning just as much as the companies he was advising. In this episode, Zak breaks down how working with startups across cybersecurity, AML, and healthcare sharpened his own thinking, why Bentonville's density of wor...

What does affirmative consent law reform, university sex education, and AI-powered law enforcement tools have in common? They're all part of Stefanie Hammett's ambitious startup, HMS. HMS (Have More Safety · Have More Sex · Have More Space) is a consent education company with a bold 2036 goal: insert affirmative consent into all 50 state criminal codes. But getting there means building a real busi...

Summary Innovation isn’t a lightning bolt, it's a process. That’s the message threaded throughout the latest episode of the Startup Junkies podcast, where Eva Fast, director of the University of Arkansas MSPI program, joined hosts Daniel Koonce and Caleb Talley for a deep dive into product innovation, entrepreneurial mindsets, and the realities behind those famed “aha” moments. Drawing from her up...

Summary What happens when passion for storytelling meets the entrepreneurial spirit? In this episode of the Startup Junkies podcast, Danielle Keller, media entrepreneur, award-winning podcaster, and editor-in-chief of Northwest Arkansas’s beloved Peekaboo magazine, joins Daniel Koonce, Caleb Talley, and Ty Steele for a conversation packed with inspiration, nostalgia, and the realities of building...

Summary What does it take to build a thriving running community from scratch—and keep it going year after year? In this episode of the Startup Junkies podcast, Daniel Koonce, Ty Steele, and their guests dig into the passion, patience, and persistence behind the Arkansas Track Club’s rise and evolution. Founder, Shawn Wierick, never imagined trading in med school dreams for youth coaching and ultra...

Summary Ever thought about what’s missing from your community—and what could happen if you decided to fill that gap yourself? That question is at the heart of Ozark Float Park, the innovative family-friendly business featured in the latest episode of the Startup Junkies podcast. In a region known for its outdoor spirit, Michael Barron saw an opportunity: despite Northwest Arkansas’s wealth of natu...