Just Go Grind

Deon is the Founder of Forethought . Previously, Deon built products and infrastructure at Facebook, Palantir, Dropbox, and Pure Storage. He has ML publications and infrastructure patents, was a World Finalist at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, and was named to Forbes 30 under 30. Originally from Canada, Deon enjoys spending time with his wife and son, playing basketball, and...

Emily Best is the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark , a platform that makes entertainment more diverse, inclusive, connected, and essential. Seed&Spark's platform and national education program have helped thousands of bold storytellers raise millions to bring to life entirely new stories, and Seed&Spark delivers those stories into workplaces for employee training, engagement, and intellig...

Andrew Kline brings a broad background of professional sports experience, investment banking expertise, and industry knowledge to Park Lane . Kline has advised on M&A transactions in all of the major sports and also been fundamental in obtaining financing for many early-stage sports-based businesses. Kline is currently a member of the Stanford Executive Circle, Young Presidents Organization (Y...

Kalyan Varma is a co-founder and CEO at Almabase , a company that helps universities and high schools build lifelong relationships with their alumni and drive higher donations. Educational institutions do a poor job of maintaining a good relationship with their alumni after they graduate. Typically the only time alumni hear from their alma mater is when they are being asked to donate. This broken...

Melanie Stricklan is the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Slingshot Aerospace , which applies advanced analytics, computer vision, and collaborative tools to data from earth and space, providing customers with clarity in complex situations. Melanie is a retired US Air Force Officer and combat-tested executive leader with expertise across battle management, space operations, and advanced te...

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner at Precursor Ventures , a classic seed-stage investment firm based out of San Francisco, CA. Precursor seeks to invest in a company's first round of institutional investment and focuses on investments in B2B software applications, B2C software and services, and connected hardware. Prior to launching Precursor, Charles Hudson was a Partner with SoftTech VC, on...

Lori Shao is a financial services veteran with deep expertise in payment technology and innovation. In April 2019, she walked away from her 17-year career in banking to build Finli , a vertical payment solution to power neighborhood schools and freelance instructors. Finli stands for financial lift and operates with the clear mission to financially lift communities through innovation and narrow th...

Josh Itano is the CEO and Co-Founder of CareCar , a supplemental benefit manager and market network platform for home care and medical transport. From his early career working on US Defense contracts to his work with healthcare startups, he's had one driving mantra: "Do well by doing good." That mantra has led him and his team at CareCar to grow 3x every year since inception, creating improved acc...

Gregory Ugwi is the cofounder & CEO of Thinknum , KGBase and the Business of Business . Thinknum Inc has raised $12.6 million to date. Prior to founding Thinknum, Greg graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and worked at Goldman Sachs. Greg was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Greg enjoys playing soccer and is an investor in New Amsterdam FC . You can fin...

Gale Wilkinson is the Founder & Managing Partner of Vitalize Venture Group , a seed-stage fund and angel group based in Chicago and San Francisco. Gale previously started two businesses, both of which failed, teaching her valuable lessons about what does not work at the early stage. She loves helping founders with startup strategy and is currently conducting research on how to innovate on the...

Josh Clemente , Founder of Levels , is a mechanical engineer and CrossFit-L2 trainer. At SpaceX, he led a team to develop life support systems that sustained astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on their May 2020 trip to the International Space Station aboard Dragon Endeavor: the first new crew-carrying spacecraft since 1980. Josh has also spent time designing and building Hyperloop technology a...

Ranbir Arora is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dorm , a hypercasual learning app that aggregates and curates the world's audio content to provide a seamless learning experience that fits into your day and makes your downtime more gratifying. Previously, Ranbir was the Chief Growth Officer at Sweatcoin, which he grew to 50M users. Some of the Topics Covered by Ranbir Arora in this Episode What Dorm is a...

Chris Bennett is the Co-Founder & CEO of Wonderschool . Wonderschool's mission is to ensure every child has access to early education that helps them realize their potential. Wonderschool programs are diverse in structure and approach, but they all combine engaged teachers, thoughtful education design, and the warmth of an in-home program. So far, Wonderschool has helped thousands of parents f...

Joel is a serial technology entrepreneur, with a love for building consumer-facing products. Joel previously co/founded four venture-backed technology startups and brings a lifetime of experience building and operating technology companies to RepairSmith . As a technical founder, Joel has served as CEO, COO, and CTO for his previous companies, having raised over $100M in venture financing and scal...

Santi Bibiloni is a Silicon Valley-based technology entrepreneur and co-founder & CEO at COR , an AI Management Software that serves Worldwide top Agencies and Consultants. Prior to COR he founded Balloon Group , one of Argentina's fastest-growing digital agencies, among other businesses. Today he also mentors on Sales & Fundraising in 500 Startups. Some of the Topics Covered by Santi Bibi...

Amit Mishra is the Co-Founder and CEO of iMocha, a company providing AI-powered digital skills assessments. iMocha enables tech hiring managers and learning and development professionals with the ready-to-use, latest, and most comprehensive online skills assessment solution, offering 2000+ skills tests. About Our Partner This episode is also brought to you by Hawke Media . Hawke Media is a full-se...

Harsh Vathsangam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Moving Analytics, Inc. ( https://www.movinganalytics.com/ ) He is driven by a passion for taking technological solutions and applying them to benefit people's lives. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California working at the intersection of big data and mobile health. He holds an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Tech...

Myles Hunter is the Co-Founder & CEO of TutorMe . TutorMe ( https://tutorme.com/ ) is a revolutionary online education platform that provides on-demand tutoring and online courses. They believe there are more teachers in the world than are actually teaching so they want to empower more people to learn from each other. Their platform enables thousands of tutors to share their knowledge with stu...

Magnus is CEO and co-founder of Sanity.io , the American-Norwegian Content Platform company that is reinventing the content space with its unique customizable and collaborative approach. Having worked in investment banking and private equity, Magnus started coding at age 35 and left his finance career, and later joining Sanity.io as co-founder. Sanity now has almost 40 employees and serves more th...

Eytan deeply believes that the success of the small business sector is one of the most important causes of our time. It has the potential to reduce income inequality, empower immigrants, and provide disproportionate leadership opportunities for female and minority businesspeople. Creating a banking service that is as modern as these companies is why Eytan started NorthOne . Prior to NorthOne, Eyta...

Jeff Annison and Paul Scanlan are Co-Founders of Legion M. Founded by serial entrepreneurs with an Emmy Award for Innovation, Legion M is a first-of-its-kind entertainment company built from the ground up to be owned by fans. Legion M is uniting fans together to invest in and/or produce a diverse slate of original projects in various stages of development, including the critically acclaimed Coloss...

Passionate about mobile and technology, Vivek leads the Marketing and Customer Operations at Datability. At Datability, they are building iZooto - an owned audience marketing platform that helps publishers build, engage, and retain their owned audience using web push notifications. iZooto is the World's First Owned Audience Marketing Platform that helps media publishers and retailers to own, build...

Danny Shader founded PayNearMe , Inc. in 2009 and currently serves as CEO. PayNearMe processes billions of dollars annually for over 5,000 clients in lending, property management, and more. PayNearMe originated as a real-time electronic cash transaction network, and today supports every form of payment – cards, ACH and mobile-first payment systems including Google Pay and Apple Pay, in addition to...

​​Chai Mishra is the Founder & CEO of Move , which is based on a simple idea — modern commerce is not as good as it can be. They work directly with award-winning producers to make their own brand of products. And they deliver these products straight to their members. By cutting out the middlemen, they're making a retailer that's more efficient, ethical, and enjoyable. Invest in Move: https://w...

Gary Skulnik is a senior executive and strategic thinker who has been a leader in developing the clean energy market in Maryland and Washington, DC, through innovative marketing and sales, partnerships, community building, business management, and legislative advocacy. Founder of two entities focused exclusively on marketing clean energy, a for-profit and a non-profit, which collectively helped mo...