Operate Podcast

Doug Wilson is the founder, and currently the Chairman, of the CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County , formed as a group of CEOs from some of the biggest companies here, working together to “build a thriving Orange County for all.” We talked a lot about the formation and work of CLA (as it’s known today).  Doug is also an Executive Fellow at The Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, an honor h...

Toby Corey joined me on Accelerate OC and we explored so many areas - his time working with Elon Musk, his passion for working on critical climate change issues, how to build a thriving startup ecosystem and inspiring people to be bold and excellent.  It was a fun conversation with so much wisdom packed into it! Toby is the Former President of Tesla, Former President of Global Field Operations, an...

Marinela Gombosev is currently President and CEO of Evoke Neuroscience , a medical diagnostic technology company focused on memory loss and other cognitive disorders.  They have twice been ranked in the Inc. 500|5000 fastest growing private companies. I was excited to talk with her about it and it's exciting prospects.  She described the company's initiative to create the equivalent of a "blood pr...

I was happy to have Sergey Sundukovskiy on Accelerate OC.  Sergey is currently founding CTO and Chief Product Officer of Certemy , a startup here building a software platform for professional certification, licensing & compliance. Prior to Certemy he was CTO and CPO of Raken, a software company in the construction industry.  He also was CTO of a company acquired by Capital One about 5 years ago. S...

Andy Fathollahi joined me on the show and immediately delved into the reality of being a founder and longtime entrepreneur. He’s a serial one and done it here in Orange County. He founded Incipio here over 20 years ago and is still Chairman of its Board. He’s also founder and CEO of his latest venture, The Kanvas Company . He is currently the founder and CEO of the Kanvas Company, a cannabis techn...

Tom Baine joined me on the show to talk about the homebuilding industry, which he's been in for 30 years in Southern California.  That’s a lot of change he's seen in both our area and his industry!  I looked up before the show the population change over those 30 years here in Orange County - 2.4MM in 1990 vs. 3.2MM in 2020 (a nearly 33% increase in people here) Tom is currently the division presid...

It was so fun to have my friend, Nick Smoot, join me while traveling in from Coeur d'Alene, ID.  We discussed his amazing initiative,  Innovation Collective (IC) , the education and human development company he started there and is expanding to communities around the country. We also did it in front of a live audience of some of OC's most active and committed innovation community builders and ever...

Sue Parks became the President and CEO of Orange County United Way in 2017, after a 15 year history of volunteering and working with the organization, including being the Chair of its Board.  Before she signed on as CEO of United Way, she was an entrepreneur and business executive.  She co-founded and was CEO of a corporate wellness company, iCount Wellness.  She also held senior roles in innovati...

I was super excited to have Reynolds Bish on Accelerate OC. He’s had an illustrious career in the technology industry, mainly here in Southern California, and we had a lot to discuss. He is currently the CEO and a Member of the Board of Directors of Kofax , one of the largest software companies in Orange County, and he also has employees in 35 countries and over 25,000 customers.  He’s on his seco...

Charles Antis possesses energy and passion like few people I've ever met. It just makes me want to hang out with him more. We spoke about his leadership and life philosophies, his company and its mission and purpose, and the amazing other work he’s doing in Orange County. He is the founder and CEO of Antis Roofing and Waterproofing , a company he founded here in Orange County over 30 years ago.  C...

Ike Kavas joined me on Accelerate OC to share his story, leadership philosophy and current company, Ephesoft , where he is the founder and CEO.  It's a company he founded here in Orange County nearly 10 years ago.  They have built the first document capture platform for the cloud and serve global customers in areas of automated data entry, compliance and document processing.   Before Ephesoft he w...

Peter Polydor is the founder of Eureka Building and Eureka Hub, a 3-acre event, office and creative campus that many of our community has enjoyed and visited in the last 6 years since it opened.  Peter’s vision was to support the startup community here with it, and it has. Eurekafest is an annual celebration of entrepreneurship that is one of the few can’t miss events in Orange County. Peter joine...

Neel Grover is currently the founder and CEO of Indi , a software as a service video platform to help brands engage their customers and enable "individual commerce" (where the name Indi comes from).  He shared more about Indi and how the opportunity came to him in our conversation.  Before Indi he was CEO for a couple well-known e-commerce companies, Bluefly and Buy.com, and he’s been a board memb...

It was a lot of fun to welcome Lori Torres to Accelerate OC to share her amazing journey with Parcel Pending , a company she founded in 2013.  She was the founding CEO and remains in the role today, and I could hardly imagine anyone else ever replacing her! Lori grew the company to over 150 people and thousands of customers around North America. She sold the company in January of this year to Neop...

Dan Heinfeld is currently the President of LPA , a leading national architecture firm, and he has been there for over 30 years.  He leads their design and sustainability initiatives as well.  LPA has more than 400 people in 6 offices in California and Texas.  Their Orange County office, in Irvine, is right in the middle of one of the "innovation" areas here - University Research Park - and right n...

Kurt Johnson is currently the founder and CEO of FreightPop , a cloud-based software that makes logistics simple. They give one login for all transportation management, including inbound and outbound freight management across all different freight types. Kurt is a grizzled startup veteran, with six startups. He’s gone from his garage to $100M in revenue.  He’s had 2 two exits and two acquisitions....

Scott Duffy is driven by one simple idea: helping people live their dreams through entrepreneurship.  He uses his media channels, speaking and best-selling books, to help people breakthrough in their lives and businesses. He’s worked with many of the world’s top entrepreneurs and innovators, and he lives in our back yard here in Orange County. Scott started his career working for Tony Robbins, and...

Dawn Reese joined me for a great Accelerate OC conversation, and we explored her early career in the technology industry and then her transition to helping establish the Software Council of Southern California (now Technology Council Southern California) and eventually joining amazing non-profit, The Wooden Floor  in Santa Ana. She is an author, consultant, mentor, and national speaker in the area...

Mike is the Regional Director of the Orange County and Inland Empire Small Business Development Center Network, which assists aspiring entrepreneurs and current business owners throughout Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.  Before this role he was the director of an SBDC office in Long Beach for 5 years. He has been and is a business owner and entrepreneur himself. He started with a Ro...

Lawrence Greaves is both an entrepreneur and investor, as well as a board advisor. Prior to being an entrepreneur he had roles in boutique advisory firms and large national consulting firms, advising on a number of large international M&A transactions. Lawrence invested in and co-founded OPKIX in 2016. He is the CEO and on the Board today.  OPKIX makes the smartest, smallest, simplest, and most po...

Don DiCostanzo has a really cool current company, Pedego, which is also his passion. That's clear in how he talks about it.  Don is the co-founder and CEO of Pedego® Electric Bikes , the number 1 electric bike brand in the United States, according to Navigant Research. They are sold at more than 100 Pedego-branded stores in the United States, plus in Canada and Europe. The bikes have electric moto...

Nick Kovacevich is the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of KushCo Holdings , a publicly-traded company providing ancillary products and services to businesses operating in various industries, including legal cannabis and CBD. It was formerly known as Kush Bottles. Nick became CEO 5 years ago and has grown the business dramatically – from under $2M to nearly $150M in sales and the team from less than...

Peter Nguyen is the founder and CEO of Ad Exchange Group , based in Irvine. It is a leading direct-to-consumer digital performance-based agency, reaching $100M in revenue in less than 2 years in business.  Both Peter and the company have received many awards for growth and entrepreneurship from people like Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Ernst & Young, and the Orange County Business Journal....

Lori Seal has an amazing story, incredible leadership philosophies and such thoughtful perspectives on life, business and people. She is currently CEO of Blytheco , a leading national reseller of software that she took over from the founder, Steve Blythe, at the beginning of this year.  He had been CEO for almost 40 years, and he hand-picked Lori! Prior to that she was the company’s COO for 6 ½ ye...

On this episode of Accelerate OC, we get to hear from Cary Breese and his journey from software engineer to insurance company executive to tech startup CEO, and his current venture, NowRx . Cary is currently the co-founder and CEO of NowRx, a tech startup in the pharmacy experience industry.  Using improved logistics, intelligence and analytics, the company is saving the health care industry cost...