Mission Daily

Throughout the last few decades, the amount of data that has accumulated on the internet and in our systems has grown by orders of magnitude. Most believe that much of this data is useless. Logs, miscellaneous accounts and lines of code were just floating in the ether, and to many people, that was just fine. But Doug Merritt was not one of those people. Doug is the CEO of Splunk , which is helping...

“The big focus is driving transformation.” — Susan St. Ledger Susan St. Ledger , President of Worldwide Field Operations for Splunk , started her career as a major in computer science at the University of Scranton. From there, she was recruited to become a computer scientist at the National Security Agency, where she spent more than 6 years of her career. While at the NSA, Susan learned about Sun...

“The heart of all great stories is people.” — Steve Clayton Steve Clayton grew up in Liverpool, England and fell in love with stories early on while observing people. He recalls being a child and watching his parents interact with gregarious friends and strangers, and Steve always wondered, what makes that person attract such attention?” Steve took a “weaving path” through his career before landin...

Gay Gaddis is Founder and CEO of T3 , an advertising agency dedicated to helping clients build useful brands and create meaningful relationships with their customers. T3 is now one of the largest, female owned advertising agencies serving the Fortune 200, but it wasn’t always this way... In the late 1980’s when the economy was suffering badly, Gay was working for an advertising agency and saw that...

Nitin Pachisia is a Founding Partner at Unshackled Ventures , a venture capital firm investing in and helping immigrant founders to succeed faster. After Nitin moved to the U.S. in 2005, he was ready to make the leap and create his own company but was faced with confusion and uncertainty. He was determined to find the answers to starting his new company and so he sought out advice from over two do...

“New rules, create new opportunities” - Austin Craig Austin Craig is a video producer, storyteller, and Bitcoin enthusiast focused on emerging technologies and finding loopholes in systems. Ten years ago, when Youtube was just becoming the go-to place for video ads, Austin was helping build a multi-million dollar business with the team at Orabrush by using fun, entertaining videos to sell their or...

“Our ultimate goal is not to solve crime, it’s to eradicate it.” That mission sounds like something from Minority Report, but it’s the mission Garrett Langley has set for his latest business venture, Flock Safety. Flock Safety is Garrett's third company and one that is working to provide advanced security services to police departments and homeowners associations in over 30 states. Unlike other se...

On today’s episode, Chad and Stephanie share two mental models for capitalizing on opportunities in your life. These two models are just the start of a ten model series we shared in our newsletter last week. Catch all ten here . You won’t have the ideas, the ideas will have you. The right ideas will attach themselves to and around you, and they’ll be impossible to shake off. “I did not have the ce...

“A synchronicity is a meaningful event that leads to a set of experiences we want to have.” - Sky Nelson Isaacs Synchronicity: noun. The simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. Sky Nelson Isaacs is a physics educator, speaker, and author of Living in Flow: The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World , wh...

Nathan Resnick is currently the CEO of Sourcify , a job he’s been unknowingly working toward since his first day in middle school when he resold Livestrong bracelets at a margin. At Sourcify, Nathan helps companies manage and organize their entire production process within a single platform, helping them to say aligned and efficient. “Growing up, I was always entrepreneurial,” Nathan says. “I don'...

“If we all started to serve on a more micro level, it would change a lot of things on a macro level.” – Ben Greenfield Ben Greenfield is many things including a biohacker, an athlete, an entrepreneur, and an author. He has found success thanks to a lifetime of building healthy habits that work for him, many of which he now teaches to others through coaching, podcasts, and his writing. Whether he’s...

“The biggest secret going on in Silicon Valley right now is how much people are compensated for their capital allocation skills.” — Chad Grills As a follow up to last Monday’s episode, Communism, Capitalism and Technology , Chad and Stephanie dive deeper into capital allocation and the importance of capital hoarding, i.e. saving money. Learning how to save money first, before you start to allocate...

"We want to be exemplars of humanity at the end of the time." - Terence McKenna Erik Davis looks at the world in a different way. He’s a novelist, writer, podcaster, and speaker, and his writings have covered everything from rock criticism to cultural analysis to creative explorations of esoteric mysticism. His most recent book, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Sev...

On yesterday’s episode of Mission Daily , we introduced you to Andrew Goldner , the co-founder of GrowthX , and we learned about his journey from lawyer to tech entrepreneur.  Today, we have Part 2 of Andrew’s interview, in which he discusses some advice he gave to Mission co-founder, Ian , about being “coin-operated,” and his strategy when it comes to investing in new companies. He believes that...

Andrew Goldner is the co-founder of GrowthX , and while he had a passion for technology very early on in life, it wasn’t until later in his career that he decided to pursue his first love.  After initially studying law with the idea of going into politics, Andrew was able to use his technical knowledge to his advantage and build a brand for himself in Internet-based law. Eventually, Andrew gave up...

“I think at an early age while some people dream of being Superman or Wonder Woman or a fireman or whatever it might be, I really dreamt of running a business.” Brian Scudamore started 1-800-GOT-JUNK more than 30 years ago with a single truck and a simple business plan. Today, he’s built his business into more than just a successful company. Rather, he’s created an entrepreneurial and franchise em...

“While communism and capitalism have been ostensibly battling for the last century or more, technology came along and ate everyone’s lunch.” —Chad Grills Today’s episode dives into economics and the philosophies behind them. If you are signed up for our newsletter, you know that we recently introduced this topic and are using today’s episode to dive deeper. (Psssst if haven’t signed up for our new...

“Don’t take any wooden nickels.” A depression-era saying that encourages people not to be cheated or duped, it was a phrase that Kmele Foster’s father told him a lot as a child - and one he never quite understood. But in today’s world of media overload, it can be hard to find the truth in the noise and even harder to tell when you’ve been misled.  Having worked as co-host of The Independents , a d...

Sean Whiteley has been in the tech business since the internet was first taking off back in the 1990s. In fact, he was early enough to the party to snag the sean@aol.com email address. But a lot has changed since those early days, and Sean has been through plenty of highs and lows along the way. He’s loved his time in Silicon Valley, but he recognizes that life in the Bay Area isn’t all that the w...

“I think we are standing on the cusp of an explosion in creativity around media.” —Yves Bergquist As the Director of AI & Neuroscience in Media at the Entertainment Technology Center of the University of Southern California, Yves Bergquist is leading the charge to connect the fields of neuroscience and entertainment. At ETC, Yves and his team are pioneering a new way to test an entertainment proje...

Can you imagine growing up with 30 fish tanks in your room? That’s 30 tanks stock full of fish that each needed their own special care. Seems a bit excessive, maybe even a little weird, but that’s exactly the environment Brian Linton, CEO of United by Blue, chose to grow up in.  Since Brian was a little boy, he’s engaged with the world in his own, unique way.  “My parents allowed me to be a little...

“You have to pick and get to the core of what makes you the most uncomfortable, what makes you cringe when you are sharing it, what makes your palms sweat - that is what you have to work on.” - Chad Grills Our greatest fears can become our greatest sources of strength if we are willing to face them… and facing them with friends by your side makes that transformation a lot easier. Unfourtantly, as...

“I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I’ve always had a side hustle no matter what it was.” –Steven Galanis  Steven Galanis’s career has spanned from options trader, to film producer, to now CEO and Co-Founder of Cameo , a platform where fans can book personalized video shout outs from their favorite celebrities. Founded on the idea that “selfies are the new autograph,” Cameo has more than 15,000 not...

“Comedians build up the tension so that you can release it.” — Hannah Gadsby After leaving her promising career in the tech industry, first at Yahoo then Google, Sarah Cooper realized she needed something more. Sarah wrote 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings , while at Google and when it went viral, it gave her the confidence to leave the corporate world and break into comedy.  She quickly real...

“We’re living in a story-based world. We’re hard-wired to process things through the lens of stories which are linear narratives.” - Neal Stephenson Writer and futurist Neal Stephenson sees mythology everywhere; from the stories we tell ourselves, to the stories the media tells the masses, to the stories about the future of humanity. These “myths” define our past, outline our present, and will bui...