Binary to Billions

David’s story starts with a discarded 486 computer his dad brought home from work. Where most people saw junk, he saw possibility. While teaching himself to code, David discovered something that still drives him today: with software, you can take an idea in your head and make it real within hours.  In his early 20s, he co-founded what became Answers.com - a company that would eventually sell for n...

In this conversation, Vlad reflects on his early life growing up in Odessa during the Soviet era, and how emigrating to the United States as a teenager fundamentally reshaped his worldview. He shares what it was like arriving in California with engineering parents, navigating a new culture, and gradually discovering a passion for computers at a time when computer science was anything but fashionab...

In this conversation, Craig reflects on his unconventional path from law to venture capital, before being dropped into his first CEO role during the depths of the dot-com crash. Tasked with effectively shutting down a failing VoIP company, he instead rebuilt it from the ground up - cutting costs, reinventing the business model, and ultimately selling the company to Yahoo. That hard-won experience...

Join host Rob Scott as he sits down with Vasili Triant , CEO of UJET and a long-time builder at the intersection of cloud communications, contact centers, and customer experience. From the early days of IP telephony to today’s rapidly converging CX, CRM, and AI landscapes, Vasili’s career offers a front-row seat to multiple technology inflection points. In this wide-ranging conversation, Vasili re...

Join host Rob Scott as he sits down with Michael Walrath , pioneering digital advertising entrepreneur and current CEO of Yext . Their sweeping conversation spans the dot-com boom, the rise of programmatic advertising, and the tectonic shifts reshaping marketing in the AI era. From selling banner ads in the 1990s to building the world’s first at-scale ad exchange, Michael’s story is one of vision,...

Join host Rob Scott as he sits down with Kirin Sinha,founder of Illuminix - the company behind the perception stack powering the next generation of XR, wearables, and physical AI. From entering MIT at 16 to building one of the world’s most advanced computer vision startups, Kirin’s journey is a masterclass in intellectual curiosity and fearless innovation. In this far-ranging conversation, she ref...

Welcome to Binary to Billions, where we explore the human stories behind technology's greatest success stories. In this episode, host Rob Scott sits down with Danny Jenkins, co-founder and CEO of ThreatLocker, whose extraordinary journey from bullied school dropout to cybersecurity pioneer embodies the power of turning adversity into innovation. Danny's story begins in Telford, where he...

Join host Rob Scott for an inspiring conversation with Ifty Nasir, the visionary founder and CEO of Vestd who literally created an entire industry category. Born in Bradford to immigrant parents in a cramped terrace house with nine siblings, Ifty's remarkable journey took him from teenage hustler selling refurbished sewing machines to becoming one of the youngest Vice Presidents at BP, before...

In this episode, host Rob Scott sits down with Ray Nolan, the Irish tech legend who turned college dropout into billion-pound business builder—all without venture capital. Ray's story demolishes Silicon Valley mythology with cold, hard pragmatism and customer-funded growth. Starting as a self-taught programmer who abandoned electrical engineering, Ray stumbled from telephone billing software...

What does it take to transform from a young immigrant surviving on dollars a day to building one of America's most successful unified communications companies? In this powerful episode of Binary to Billions, we sit down with Tomas Gorny , founder and CEO of Nextiva , whose extraordinary journey embodies the American entrepreneurial dream. Born in communist Poland where his village had just on...

Join host Rob Scott as he sits down with Mark Bunnell, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Nuwave Communications Inc., for an inside look at building and scaling a telecommunications company in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. Mark shares his entrepreneurial journey from the early vision that sparked Nuwave Communications to the operational challenges of growing a telecom bus...

Join host Rob Scott for an extraordinary conversation with Michael Tessler , the visionary co-founder and former CEO of BroadSoft who literally created the Unified Communications-as-a-Service industry. In 1998, while others focused on hardware, Michael saw the future: enterprise communications would shift to software delivered over the internet. Discover how he and co-founder Scott Hoffpauir grew...