Fortune's Path Podcast

Greg Ceccarelli is Chief Product Officer at Spec Story, an AI-first startup building tools to make AI coding easier and safer. Before Spec Story, Greg held product leadership roles at Pluralsight (CPO), GitHub, Dropbox, and Google, and earlier spent years as a consultant at Alixpartners and IBM. In this conversation, Greg and Tom cover: Moving fast vs. planning — Greg's "cut twice, measure once" p...

Oliver Dauert is the founder of Wildya, a consultancy helping nature NGOs and nature businesses grow their impact by getting better at marketing, sales, and personal branding. A Berlin native who wanted to be an elephant seal at age five, Oliver studied business specifically to understand how to change the systems driving the biodiversity crisis. After two years of pivots — from eco-anxiety coachi...

Episode Description AI is fundamentally changing how SaaS companies should think about pricing. When your software makes teams 70% more efficient, charging per seat means you're literally shrinking your own market. In this conversation, product management veteran Lee Bridges explains why seat-based pricing is a burning platform and what comes next. Lee, returning to the podcast after five years, r...

[00:01:00] Kerry's journey from personal adversity to leadership expertise [00:04:00] The book's target audience: new managers and struggling leaders [00:08:00] Growing up with six brothers and two sisters across blended families [00:09:00] The pivotal moment: losing her mother at 16 and moving in with her father [00:12:00] Good bosses vs. bad bosses: more than just opposites [00:15:00] Leading wi...

Ashley Kent - Founder & CEO of Clear Star Creative, a boutique marketing growth agency specializing in venture-backed health tech companies Key Topics Discussed Building a Sustainable Business and Life Balance Managing a 15-employee company while raising two young children (ages 4 and 6) Finding joy in simple pleasures: working out, good food, and family time The reality of being a working mom in...

In this episode of the Fortune's Path podcast, Tom Noser interviews Anderson Williams, Principal for Talent Development at Shore Capital Partners, a private equity firm that partners with entrepreneurs and industry executives to drive growth in micro-cap businesses. Anderson brings a unique perspective from his diverse background as a classroom teacher, entrepreneur, sculptor, painter, writer, and...

[00:00:00] - Introduction Tom: Setting up today's discussion points: establishing new standards in software, using tech for effective learning, and the possible conflict between educational system administrators and students. Guest: David Ells, Managing Director of Open LMS, an open-source learning management system provider. Overview of David's background in online learning with over 15 years of...

JJ: "My my dad was in the music business. He did this thing called mobile recording, where he had this 18 Wheeler truck, in the back of it was a recording studio. And so he would go around the country recording, you know, all kinds of live concerts and albums. And so by the time I got to maybe, I guess, seventh grade, my summers, I was a roadie. So I did that for my summers. And that was really fu...

"8% of the male population is colorblind, especially to red and green. And so think about the stock market and how that reads, or any kind of financial or big data company and their prevalent uses of green and red.  People see those colors in shades of yellows and beige. ...I think accessibility design is still up and coming.  I think user experience as an industry is still in its infancy... incor...

On the risk of AI programing leading to crummy software: "At the end of the day AI is just a tool, right? And so it's how we choose to use it that could have impacts there. If we allow AI usage to be an excuse to move quickly [when developing software], but sloppily, then yeah, we're going to build more and more software that is is tenuous and has the potential of falling over." On the idea of AI...

Key Takeaways “Applying to college is a series of tasks where you need information, guidance, and you need support through your own discernment process. It doesn’t have to be terrible. It doesn’t have to be scary.” “I use the word discern a lot. And I do that intentionally to discern who they are. Because when you start a college as a freshman, you're not the same person you are when you finish as...

2:12 - Why she became a self-pay patient after two medical bankruptcies.  9:22 - How to navigate self-pay by removing fear-based thinking (I must have health insurance) and negotiate with every single healthcare service you pay for.  11:02 - The freedom that comes with leaving health insurance behind and embracing self pay. 11:58 - How hospital foundations and patient pay advocates have emerged to...

Takeaways:  Selling into healthcare takes a long time - for good reason. Having worked in both the education and healthcare market selling software, both are difficult markets. While healthcare has more budget than education, both take forever to make a decision. Young entrepreneurs should think about getting some enterprise-level experience before starting a company. How entrepreneurship is like...

Takeaways:  Why it's not so much that Eric is a believer in alternative assets, but that he believes in a diversification of investment portfolios.  That illiquidity of alternative assets is a feature, not a bug.  The legal challenges of getting Alto started took longer than the anticipated technical challenges of simplifying the workflow processes of alternative investments. The 'greater fool' th...

Takeaways Understanding the basics of circuits and quantum computing is essential in comprehending the potential of AI. Transparency and explainability are crucial in AI decision-making to ensure accountability and mitigate bias. Data curation is a critical step in developing AI models to avoid unintended biases and improve accuracy. The application of AI in mortgage and loan decisions requires ca...

Norbert talks about how Adidas starts its shoe manufacturing process, beginning with a business unit who outlines the market need in a comprehensive brief. Then, a designer group begins experimenting with colors, materials and textures. "There's 250-350 operations that need to happen to put one pair of footwear together, so it's a long process... taking up to 16 months," says Norbert. Every new ma...

How can a dog get you through bad times? How does selling door to door to non-English speakers prepare you for a career in finance? What should you look for when investing in real estate? These are some of the questions we ask Rich Boucher, veteran real estate investor, dog lover, and sales expert. Rich is the Senior Director, Capital Markets for Alpha Investing, a private equity real estate firm...

Tom talks with Chris Boyd, former VP of Product at Nashville unicorn Built Technologies and now head of product for Trunk Tools, a construction fintech startup. At Built and now at Trunk Tools , Chris is focused on solving the skilled labor shortage by enabling project leaders to increase workforce productivity, safety, and profitability by aligning incentives from top to bottom. Chris joined the...

Ray Guzman, CEO of Switchpoint Ventures, talks about how he joined the military at 17 years old, met his wife shortly after joining the military, and life got really real, really fast. Ray got involved in computer training with a focus on automation. Ray and his wife invested in a commuter in 1995 and became early adopters of technology. Ray tells Tom what non-technical people should know about AI...

Andrew tells Tom about his book The Humility Imperative . Andrew tells how he likes speaking  about and teaching on leadership, and how the book came from requests from students to write down his message. Andrew describes how Jim Collin's Good to Great influenced his thinking on humility in business. Andrew tells how ambition directed on behalf of a cause is much more powerful than personal ambiti...

Luther Cale, Vice President of Clinical Programs at Healthstream, the leading healthcare talent management and clinical readiness solution, talks with Tom about how he enjoys living in Ecuador and raising his daughter there. Luther has been working from other countries for over 15 years. He tells us when it's important to be back in the office and when it's better to be remote. Tom talks about the...

Long time designer, distance runner, and product leader Chris Bradle tells Tom about how his career as an athlete has effected his work in business. Chris suggested that the difference between winning new business and losing is being genuine. Tom asks if it's even a good idea to be authentic at work. Tom tells a story about getting laid off and asks if professionalism is like putting on a mask. Ch...

Nigel tells Tom about his company Foresight and how it helps other B2B SaaS companies make their customers successful. Nigel didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. He worked at DealCloud with his co-founder when DealCloud went from series A through acquisition and finally to IPO. Nigel worked in sales there but found that unfulfilling. He moved to account management and focused on giving clients mo...

How do you manage and measure product managers? What is the Shape Up methodology and why should you care about it? How do you build a process that creates great products? These are some of the question Tom asks sales and product management veteran Amin Haidar, a six year veteran of Asurion, one of the largest and most profitable private tech companies in America. Tom first met Amin while he was st...

26 year old Walter Hindman tells Tom how he became CEO after losing his job during COVID when his offer was rescinded. Walter tells Tom about Junkdrop Nashville, his junk removal business that gives reusable material to charities. Walter explains why integrity is important to his differentiation. Walter does not give his donors a tax break, but he does show them where their reusable items end up a...