Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Jeni Barcelos is the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvelous, the world's most beautiful all-in-one teaching platform. Chad talks with Jeni about what makes Marvelous different from other teaching platforms out there, the importance of elevating women to leadership positions, and why applying for and getting accepted into an accelerator program was the right path for the company. Marvelous Follow Marvelou...

Owen McGab Enaohwo is the CEO and Co-Founder of SweetProcess, a business process management software that helps management teams and employees easily document procedures, implement processes, and manage tasks. Chad talks with Owen about taking specific root issues and building software around them, overcoming resistance to the core idea of documenting processes, and the importance of having the fr...

Matt Danna is the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, which powers next-gen salons and spas. Its mission is to modernize the technology while improving the daily lives of professionals and the clients they serve. Chad talks with Matt about discovering a problem and then making the jump to working on it, overcoming hurdles in terms of continued growth, and deciding to invest in building their own hard...

Monique Idlett is the Founder of Reign Ventures, a seed-stage investment firm, and previously the Co-Founder and CEO of Mosley Brands and Mosley Music Group, home to a multiplatinum roster of artists. Chad talks with Monique about how the music industry is like the startup venture capital industry, understanding that representation matters, having a data-forward approach, and appearing on the TV s...

Joseph Mocanu is Co-founder and Managing Director of Verge HealthTech Fund, which invests globally in seed-stage healthcare technology startups relevant to emerging Asia that focus on disease prevention and management, digital therapies, and health system efficiency. Chad talks with Joseph about the healthcare landscape in different places of the world, funding criteria for companies, and how the...

Carlos F. Gaitan Ospina is the Founder and CEO of Benchmark Labs, which provides IoT-based weather forecasting solutions for the agriculture, energy, and insurance sectors worldwide using proprietary machine-learning software. Chad talks with Carlos about creating the company, the hardware they're producing and what it is doing, and where the machine learning comes into play. Benchmark Labs Follow...

Dize Hacioglu is the CTO of Chicago’s mRelief, which offers an easy-to-use platform that helps families connect to SNAP food benefits. Since it was founded in 2014, the non-profit mRelief has helped 2.8 million Americans unlock $1 billion in food stamp benefits. Chad talks with Dize about how the platform helps people navigate the often complicated food stamp benefits system, what her role as CTO...

Michael Benezra is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the GK Fund: a nonprofit social impact fund to support BIPOC-owned companies in Greater Boston. Michael also serves as the COO of Colette Phillips Communications, helping to lead the All Inclusive Boston tourism campaign, among other projects. Chad talks with Michael about being a BIPOC ally, disparities amongst the VC world, and how the...

Christopher Nguyen is the CEO of Aitomatic, which provides knowledge-first AI for industrial automation. Chad talks with Christopher about why having a physical sciences background matters for this work, if we have artificial intelligence, why we still need people, and working in knowledge-first AI instead of knowledge-second, knowledge-third, or no knowledge at all. Data reflects the world. Aitom...

Dr. Alan Cowen is the Executive Director of The Hume Initiative , a non-profit dedicated to the responsible advancement of AI with empathy, and CEO of Hume AI , an AI research lab and empathetic AI company that is hoping to pave the way for AI that improves our emotional well-being. Chad talks with Alan about forming clear ethical guidelines around how this technology should be used because there...

James Oliver Jr. is the Founder and CEO of The ParentPreneur Foundation, which empowers Black ParentPreneurs so they can leave a legacy for their beautiful Black children. Chad talks with James about inspiring, encouraging, and supporting ParentPreneurs to lobby to try to close wealth inequality gaps, shoot their shot and send cold emails, and engage in a community that supports one another. Paren...

JT Lidell is the Founder of Promenade, which seamlessly matches and connects military veterans to the resources, people, and organizations that matter to them. Chad talks with JT about being a mission-driven, bootstrapped organization, the problems that he's encountered and hopes that Promenade solves, and aggregating people, tools, resources, and funding to make it happen. Promenade Follow JT on...

Sam Zimmerman is CEO and Co-founder of Sagewell Financial. Sagewell is building a banking platform for the needs of folks who are trying to retire and live off their savings and income as intelligently and as well as possible. Chad talks with Sam about deciding what their first product should be and what they would be bringing to market, finding the right partners, and minimizing risk to make a bu...

Brian Hollins is the Founder of the Takeoff Institute and Founding Managing Partner of Collide Capital. The Takeoff Institute is focused on equipping Black undergrads with the resources and mentorship they need to build a young professional career. Chad talks with Brian about providing students with necessary skills like etiquette and polish to break into Tesla and McKinsey-level companies and fac...

Kevin Withane is the founder of Diversity-X: a community to help underrepresented founders who are trying to make a positive impact in the world thrive, scale, and grow. Chad talks with Kevin about giving underestimated founders connections and access, creating a venture fund, and creating a platform via DiversityX. Follow City DiversityX on Twitter . Follow Kevin on Twitter or LinkedIn . Follow t...

Jay Nath is the Co-CEO of City Innovate, a govtech company streamlining procurement through enterprise software and innovative frameworks. He talks with Chad about how he focuses on helping governments be more effective, responsive, and zeroed in on helping their constituents whether on a small city or a big state scale. City Innovate Follow City Innovate on Twitter or LinkedIn Follow Jay on Twitt...

Alexandra Holien is the Vice President of Revenue and Strategy and Deputy Director of Ada Developers Academy. She talks with Chad about working for a nonprofit that prioritizes teaching Black, Brown, Latinx, Indigenous, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and low-income folks software development for free. Ada Developers Academy Follow Alexandra on Twitter or LinkedIn . Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or Lin...

Dagna Bieda is an engineer, career coach, and founder of theMindfulDev.com. She talks with Chad about being a software engineer first and then becoming a career coach who has helped a big range of clients with communication and marketing themselves successfully. theMindfulDev Follow Dagna on Twitter or LinkedIn . Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn . Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcri...

Chad talks to Benjie De Groot, co-founder, and CEO of Shipyard. Shipyard manages, creates, builds, and deploys ephemeral environments. Benjie talks about how Shipyard became a funded company, discovering who their ideal customers are, and building out the core team so Shipyard can accelerate and figure out their next steps in how to bring it to the masses. Ephemeral Environments Shipyard Follow Be...

Chad talks to Tiffany Shubert, Senior Product Manager at Relias Healthcare. Relias is an online healthcare education company. They develop and create education and clinical content for anything from physicians to nurses, physical therapists, to in-home care aides in multiple healthcare settings. They span the entire range from acute care hospital settings to in-home care to hospice. Tiffany talks...

Chad talks to the CEO of thoughtbot, Diana Bald, about 2021 in retrospect. thoughtbot, as a company, has settled into a new structure that contains different teams and committed to becoming a fully remote organization. Last year, Diana successfully transitioned into taking over the company's CEO role. She and Chad talk about the improvements the company made in 2021, including DEI (diversity, equi...

Chad talks to Rob Hirschfeld, the Founder and CEO of RackN, which develops software to help automate data centers, which they call Digital Rebar. RackN is focused on helping customers automate infrastructure. They focus on customer autonomy and self-management, and that's why they're a software company, not a services or as-a-service platform company. Digital Rebar is a platform that helps connect...

Neal Amrhein is the founder and CEO and Matt Erickson is the CTO of My Goat. My Goat is a subscription mowing service for commercial properties. They use robotic mowers and elegant software tools to make turf care easy, convenient, and affordable. Follow Neal on LinkedIn . Follow Erik on LinkedIn . My Goat Follow MyGoat on Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn , YouTube , or Instagram . Follow thoughtbot...

Joe Ferris is thoughtbot's CTO and Managing Director of the thoughtbot DevOps and maintenance team known as Mission Control. Mission Control is our newest team doing DevOps Support, Maintenance, and SRE (Site Reliability Engineering). The goal of Mission Control, rather than building products or pairing with team members to improve their team like the rest of thoughtbot, is to support those teams...

Emily Bahna a Managing Director at thoughtbot who leads the Lift Off team, where they focus on really leaning into the core of the company. The team works with new founders to launch new products or they work with existing companies that want to build out a new service or open up a new area to generate revenue for their business. But, the thing that ties Lift Off together, is that they start at gr...