Experienced Voices

Trevor Laudate heads the award-winning startup Ecodrive, a B2B climate tech platform connecting companies to measurable sustainability projects such as tree planting and harvesting plastic from the ocean. Customers find these environmental and social activities appealing which companies see as strengthening loyalty and yielding other desired customer outcomes. Trevor shares how they developed thei...

CEO Stacey Yudin has experienced the full arc of digital technology, leading NEP Services' Union and Non-profit clients from legacy processes and structure to specialized digital technology platforms. Stacey shares how NEP learned about their customers' pain points and established collaborative working relationships---that is ongoing with new technology such as AI. Stacey also delves int...

Patricia Lizarraga is the Founder and Managing Partner of Hypatia Capital Management.  Leveraging her 30+ years of experience on Wall Street, she and her co-founder launched in 2023 an ETF comprised solely of female-led publicly traded companies, WCEO.   Hear how she navigated the launch of this unique financial model that highlights the performance of women executives and increases their prominen...

Daniel Daoura, founder and CTO of Pebblebee , is a serial entrepreneur and visionary leader in the trackables industry. Daniel began his career at Boeing, where he spent over 10 years in lead engineering roles developing global software and hardware systems for military asset-tracking communication systems. Leveraging this experience, Daniel ventured into the finder space, creating Pebblebee to he...

First-time entrepreneurs often have great business ideas that provoke their passion to start a business.  Our guests, Stacy Pena and Brian Engleman, are Fund Managers for the San Diego Angel Conference and they will share their experience as to how angel investors view founding entrepreneurs and the business ideas they pitch for funding.  Don't miss this chance to gain insight into how to bes...

Join author Mark Atkeson on his 30-plus year journey of living and working in China, an eyewitness to China's great transformation into a superpower.  As both an entrepreneur and investor, Mark shares his firsthand experiences in a country that lifted 800 million people out of poverty over that period, spurred in large part by innovating Chinese entrepreneurs. In his book "Risky Business...

Not many college students can claim that their startup won $100,000 at a pitch competition held at the San Diego Angel Conference and then also gained seed funding.  Student athlete Dominyck Bullard, now student entrepreneur, accomplished both soon after launching his digital media startup Athletiverse. His company manages the digital assets of colleges, universities, and collectives, supporting s...

Hear Ardy Arianpour, CEO & Co-Founder of SEQSTER, a healthcare technology startup.  Ardy shares his journey to solve a giant pain point in the healthcare industry, achieving funding and his one-on-one meeting with Bill Gates to discuss his disruptive model. SEQSTER is on the frontline of healthcare innovation, breaking down health data silos, using an enterprise operating system which aggregat...

Sri Solur, CEO of Kenmore Brands at Transformco, takes listeners through his journey of transforming the Kenmore brand in today’s digital world, leaving behind its one-hundred-year history as a top Sears appliance brand. Hear how through his leadership he changed the company’s "retail-captive" culture to embrace innovation, while also applying his 25+ years of experience as a Chief Produ...

Finding investor funding for a startup is an enormous challenge, William Santana Li, an intrapreneur at Ford Motor and its youngest senior executive at the age of 28 provides frank insight about startup funding—having raised over $120 million for his robots venture Knightscope.  He shares the unconventional and visionary mindset that enabled him to move his startup forward despite great obstacles.

Funding a life science or medtech startup is uniquely challenging due to the extended time required for product development, and if applicable, product approval. Patrik Schmidle​, Founder and CEO of CARI Health shares how he navigated funding for his medtech startup that brought in millions of dollars in funding from a range of funding sources.

Susan Newman, SVP of Conferences at the National Retail Federation, and Rob Grimes, Founder and CEO of the International Food & Beverage  Technology Association discuss the latest innovations impacting the retail industry and how they will be showcased at the upcoming Retail Big Show in January. They share the excitement of the Food Service Innovation Zone, a dedicated area for 50 exhibitors,...

Serial entrepreneur Steve Visconti is co-founder and CEO of Xiid, a cyber security startup providing a proprietary architecture to protect enterprise networks and assets. Steve discusses cyber security in terms of both large companies and startups, sharing insight about cyber threats dominating our news. He also gives his view as to how a tech startup can be scaled, the role of funding, and the mi...

Product brands surround our everyday lives, but few truly understand what is required to create a brand that is preeminent and enduring. Udaiyan Jatar (UJ) held prominent positions in both P&G and Coca Cola. In the latter he was one of the youngest Global Vice-Presidents where he led the strategy, innovation, and marketing for Global R&D. Now UJ is the co-founder and president of Tecton ,...

Dr. Peter Bonuitti is a renowned orthopedic surgeon who pioneered Minimally Invasive Surgery and has over 500 patents and applications. In a discussion of his two most recently launched products, the world’s smartest mobile UV light sanitizer and a medical device to counter severe headaches, Dr. Bonutti shares insight about the challenges and the rewards of medical device innovation. 

Carol Craig began her career as a Naval Flight Officer flying P3 Orion Aircraft, serving as a trailblazer for women in the military.  Today she is the CEO of Sidus Space, a public company listed on the NASDAQ Exchange.  Hear her story of her first aerospace startup, Craig Technologies, that benefited from SBA programs for women, veterans and minorities that led to her great success as an aerospace...

From his time-consuming experience of preparing options data, fintech entrepreneur David Hait saw an unmet need for it to be better organized, cleaned, and made easier to use by portfolio managers, investors, and academic researchers worldwide. In 1999 he founded New York-based OptionMetrics when options trading was less common than it is today, with a record 10.38B U.S. option contracts cleared i...

Tom Frazier is the co-founder and CEO of Redivider, which follows his 25-year corporate career in technology to become a visionary entrepreneur driving transformational initiatives in future tech, B2B, and public sectors. Tom's latest venture is building greener data centers in Opportunity Zones across the U.S.  He shares how he pulled together the resources for his startup, the elements nece...

If you are an entrepreneur with a growing company, having access to capital is at the top of your list. Hear Robyn Barrett explain the fundamentals of factoring, a finance vehicle that gets cash into the hands of entrepreneurs based on their accounts receivables.  Robyn built her own factoring company, so she knows what entrepreneurs need. Factoring is a great financial tool to have when your sale...

Amy Addington is the co-founder of Woofie’s Pet Ventures, LLC, a multi-million dollar animal services company.  Starting in 2018, Woofies awarded its first three franchises in Northern Virginia in 2019 and launched its in-house professional grooming school, Woofie’s Accelerated Grooming School (WAGS). Woofie’s has been recognized locally, regionally and nationally for their innovation, customer se...

Andy Voggenthaler is  CEO and Co-Founder of Nonaste, a complete line of scientifically advanced products to keep active people clean and odor-free. His prior business success prepared him to undertake a product launch in a highly competitive arena. Andy shares how he navigated past development and marketing challenges, sometimes relying upon the endurance of the Ironman competitions he has run. 

Jose Gomez, CEO and Co-Founder of Fluid Power AI, is a first-time entrepreneur. Jose offers a great narrative of his funding experiences. He shares the ins and outs of pitching and how he engaged with the angel network as well as tapping into the resources of the southern California entrepreneurial ecosystem including the San Diego Angel Conference.

Mysty Rusk is the founder of the San Diego Angel Conference and the Executive Director of the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business’ Free Enterprise Institute. Mysty discusses how the San Diego Angel Conference has grown since its founding five years ago that includes annually awarding a sizeable investment of hundreds of thousands to the top selected venture. She describes the exper...

Jeff Wesley is the executive director of Spartan Innovations and Red Cedar Ventures, two subsidiaries of the Michigan State University Research Foundation where he oversees venture ideation, creation, business planning, and investment. He’s also the executive director of Michigan Rise, which partners with Michigan’s tech entrepreneurs to help commercialize innovative technologies. Jeff discusses t...

Harvey Homan, CEO of MetasTx, LLC  Harvey Homan has been active in the entrepreneurial arena as both an entrepreneur and angel investor for many years, following a successful corporate career in which he had leadership in the development of OTC brands. He draws on his breadth of experience in biotech, medical device, digital health and pharmaceutical to provide important insight to entrepreneurs w...