Operate Podcast

I was super excited to have my friend Grant Van Cleve join the conversation on Accelerate OC. We got to hear about his amazing journey and he shared his wisdom about both investing in startups and leading one, as well as his thoughts on Orange County as an innovation community.  Grant is currently the CEO of Buy It Installed , an exciting and fast-growing company that automates the process of gett...

Beckham Thomas is the Founder and CEO of Dealer Credit Resources , a Software as a Service business in the commercial equipment financing industry.  Think about a small business buying a truck or piece of equipment for their office, that they’d like to get payment terms to break up the cost, usually from the dealer or manufacturer.  It's a trillion dollar per year market in the US - yes, it's that...

Fauad was most recently the CEO of Bonti , a biotech startup that he co-founded in 2015 in an area of biologics where he saw a key need.  He was right, as the company had great success and was acquired by Allergan about a year ago.  Before Bonti, he was an executive at Allergan in biologics development and manufacturing. He’s had a very successful career in biopharmaceuticals, and was at both Baxt...

Travis Lindsay is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Cal State Fullerton, manager of the CSUF Startup Incubator , and the co-founder of Titan Angels , an angel and seed investment fund based here in Orange County.  He also has multiple degrees from Cal State Fullerton in areas of business and entrepreneurship. Travis serves the community of students and entrepreneurs around CSUF to mentor...

Richard Sudek is the Chief Innovation Officer at UC Irvine, and Executive Director of UCI Beall Applied Innovation .  Over the last 5 years there, he’s firmly established the center as a key part of the innovation ecosystem here, connected it to the OC community and what he calls an “innovation district”, and accelerated UC Irvine’s efforts in commercialization of its research and IP, and created...

Dick Gochnauer is an amazingly busy guy. He is the co-founder of the CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County , which he and Doug Wilson created to become the clear venue for leaders of Orange County’s largest companies to collaborate on the most strategic issues facing the county.  They are working together with the goals to build both a competitive ecosystem and higher quality of life for this r...

  Tony is the co-founder and CEO of Restaurant365 , which he started in Orange County in 2011 and over the last 8 years has built the company into a leading back-office solution provider to restaurants.  Earlier this year the company raised $88 million in a series C funding round.  His world class investors include ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management and Bessemer Venture Partners. The company...

Scott Hamilton is the President and CEO of Executive Next Practices Institute , which he started here and over the last 10 years has provided advisory and thought leadership to thousands of senior executives around the globe. ENPI is a partner with universities such at UC Beall Applied Innovation, Pepperdine, and ASU, research organization Gallup, and corporate members in over 2000 companies.  Sco...

Sean is the CEO of the Internet Marketing Association or IMA, which since 2001 has been one of the largest organizations for professionals across business disciplines in marketing, creative and development, and has been an active network, with over 1 million members! Sean is also a principal at Epic Insurance Brokers, where he provides business insurance products and consulting, while also helping...

Shawn was one of my most energetic guests. He is the co-counder and CEO of Givsum , a startup helping charities and service clubs to embrace the digital age.  He’s getting good traction and has an ambitious vision for the company, which we talked about in this episode. Prior to Givsum, Shawn co-founded Future Leaders of Our Community here in Orange County, which he built into an organization that...

Dalip was a fun and energetic guest on Accelerate OC.  He is a super active and busy guy, with a full-time job as head of business development at Vincit, a contract software development firm, as well as a startup, Eva Smart Shower, and several other volunteer efforts at OC Tech Happy Hour , Tech Coast Venture Network, YEC and Forge 54.  Dalip is also involved with a new group here, Coded in OC , w...

One of the leading cheerleaders for the innovation ecosystem in Orange County is Bill Carpou. He is CEO of OCTANe , the leading organization in Orange County for the technology and medical technology business ecosystems, by connecting people, resources and capital.  During Bill’s 4½ year tenure at OCTANe, I’ve had the pleasure of serving with him on OCTANe's Board and seeing his great leadership p...

  Dan Rodrigues brought so much wisdom and perspective to our discussion today.  I loved how reflective he was on his entrepreneurial journey.  To share a bit about Dan – He founded and is the CEO of Kareo , a SaaS company here in Irvine in the health care industry. Kareo is providing a kind of "medical office in the cloud" for independent physician practices.  He and his team have over 50,000 cus...

Andrew Lyon joined the Accelerate OC show and was a great guest and fun conversation. He is the founding Dean of the new Dale & Sarah Ann Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University here in Orange County.  It’s super exciting to add a new engineering school here in Orange County, and especially at Chapman, which does everything in such a world class way. Andrew had been the Dean of the Coll...

It was a great pleasure to welcome Ray Grainger to Accelerate OC. He is the co-founder and CEO of Mavenlink , a fast-growing software company in the services business management and collaboration space.   He’s also a graduate of highly distinguished school, Harvey Mudd College, where he’s been a trustee now for many years. He was a Managing Partner at Accenture for nearly 20 years before starting...

Michael has been an active member of the tech community here for many years as an investors, advisor, mentor, coach, cheerleader and entrepreneur.  He has been one of the most active and available people to startup entrepreneurs in Orange County.  He started the business incubator Fast Start Studio in 2012, which we talk a lot about on this episode. He’s active with Tech Coast Venture Network , TI...

Scott has a huge heart for entrepreneurs and the Orange County tech startup community.  In 2018 he founded the Orange County Startup Council to provide a resource for the various pillars of the community - startup entrepreneurs, investors, partners and potential customers - with the goal to help startups thrive and grow here.  He is building momentum with it and helping to Accelerate OC startups!...

Kyle is one of the most accomplished professionals in the mortgage industry, even at his young age, and he shares his experience and learning from starting Cloudvirga and growing it rapidly over the last few years.  He is absolutely one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative entrepreneurs in Orange County! What's the biggest lesson Kyle has learned so far in this Cloudvirga adventure? "The peo...