Big Easy Ideas

Gil Hildebrand, CEO and founder of Gilded Finance , gives you an introduction to the world of Web3 . Gilded has an extensive background in Web3, specifically cryptocurrency. You'll also hear about how his company, Gilded Finance, allows businesses to accept crypto payments, pay members in crypto, and deliver on financial reporting requirements with ease. 

Learn about how online market research was spearheaded with the help of Lucid and Cint, a global software leader in technology and digital insights. The companies combined in December 2021 and have since contributed largely to the birth of “ResTech,” a new industry centered around the potential of tapping into consumer insights at scale . The conversations on this episode are focused around two su...

On this episode of #BigEasyIdeas, Bobby Savoie, founder of Geocent, one of nine New Orleans startup companies that were acquired and achieved the critical "exit" milestone in 2021, shares his advice about how to build a scalable company. Bobby draws on his experience and journey building Geocent, a dynamic company whose technology powers key systems for NASA and other similar organizatio...

Presented at NOEW 2022 by Ochsner Ventures, the team at Ochsner Ventures hosted a panel of local entrepreneurs and funders on how to create successful enterprise and startup partnerships, lessons learned, and how investing locally is a win-win for all. Enterprise funders that invest capital on behalf of large community institutions and companies have a unique offering for entrepreneurs as they can...

Local founders who have recently completed $1 million or more financing rounds discuss what it means to build a company for exponential growth in Louisiana. What changes as you grow, how do you surround yourself with the right resources and community, and what are the pitfalls on the road ahead? Collectively, how do we design the system to make $1M+ funding events the rule rather than the exceptio...

The United States’ large and persistent racial wealth gap flows from centuries of government policies that have systematically disadvantaged BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Americans’ ability to build, maintain, and pass on wealth to the next generation. Anchor institutions can be important levers of change and drivers of equitable and inclusive economic growth through their spending, i...

On this episode of Big Easy Ideas, investors share about their early investment(s) in the NOLA tech companies that realized significant liquidity events in 2021, and tell the story from the "other side of the table" -- giving the investor point of view on what they saw early on in these companies, their vision, the founders behind them, and their teams. In sharing the journey from their...

New Orleans startups continue to innovate with an increasing number of high growth potential companies being started every year. The Idea Village 's later staged accelerator programs have supported over 298 early stage companies to date that have cumulatively raised over $500M in outside capital and are currently generating over $530M in recurring revenue in the last fiscal year. Meet members...

Finance New Orleans presents the Resilient New Orleans Finance Plan and Resilient New Orleans Innovation Fund that will spur entrepreneurial growth by providing pre-development capital to startups and developers for sustainable and eco-friendly projects.

Louisiana has struggled to keep pace with the modern economy. While the state is blessed with an abundance of natural resources and creative people, its adherence to tradition has held it back from growth in new sectors of the economy, especially cutting edge technology. But due to the nature of new innovation in technology, Louisiana now has an opportunity to seize the opportunity and become a te...

Welcome to the Big Easy Ideas podcast, recorded live at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (NOEW) , Big Easy Ideas is a thought leadership podcast focused on startups, innovation, entrepreneurship,  technology, and culture . You’ll hear from a diverse range of successful business leaders, startup founders,  investors, culture bearers ….and more! Big Easy Ideas features a host of industry-specific exper...

The first turn of the flywheel takes the most effort. When Lucid exited to Cint in late 2021 for $1.1 billion, it became New Orleans’ first ‘unicorn’ startup – but founder Patrick Comer is determined that it won’t be the last. The New Orleans startup community is starting to gain momentum, however, Comer argues that the hardest part of entrepreneurship isn’t the business idea, or raising capital,...