Paparelli Podcast

Christian Ries pivoted Zeto eight times before he achieved product-market fit. He said, “The key to finally getting there is to avoid falling in love with your business model or solution.” Christian is the co-founder and CEO of Zeto, a home management service. It shifts the burden of home maintenance from the owner to Zeto and their team of vetted suppliers. This is a high-value solution in our bu...

Scott Lopano is the first contact at Tech Square Ventures. TSV is a Southeast-focused venture fund investing in early-stage technology companies. They are looking for opportunities to achieve the returns their limited partners expect. Finding those right investment opportunities takes an experienced VC, and that’s Scott. Scott sees over one thousand business plans a year for TSV. He told me in thi...

Yvonne Bryant Johnson , the founder of Bryant and Associates , is a close friend and a leader. A leader in her home, her community, and in business. She is also a self-proclaimed militant.  She is a seeker of justice. If it is right, it needs to be right for everyone.  I was always impressed with Yvonne. She seeks social change by trusting God and getting involved in organizations with community i...

This is an interview with Mike Dickerson, CEO of ClickDimensions. Mike Dickerson is an entrepreneur turned corporate executive. In every company he led, he demonstrated the heart of a general manager—a talented operator with the gift of superb execution and people skills.  These leadership skills were developed by interacting with the most outstanding leaders in the world.  He grew up in Washingto...

This is Frank Bell’s formula for success as an entrepreneur. In this interview, it became clear that people consistently brought Frank the idea for his next company. They saw the problem in the marketplace. Frank’s gift was that he was standing in front of them when they told him about it, and he listened. Then Frank would take the time to research the idea. And he would do it by talking to the pe...

Joel Neeb told me he was coasting on his success and reputation. Then Stage IV cancer hit. He was told he had eighteen months to live. He was thirty-three, a fighter pilot, husband, and father of two boys, three and one. And that’s when he began to move his life from success to significance. Joel is an Air Force Academy graduate where he was one of thirty people in his class of seven hundred who b...

The two big questions that must be answered by an entrepreneur 1. What is the purpose of your business? 2. What is God’s purpose for your business? These are the questions a prayer partner asked Bob Lewis the day he founded LewisLeadership. Bob is a coach and consultant to the most famous current generation of entrepreneurs in the Southeast. These are people who have built technology companies fro...

Bird Blitch built a healthcare and payments company from scratch. Thirteen years later he sold PatientCo for over $450mm to Waystar Health. His first company sold too, but for the equivalent of one year’s living expenses, and that’s what he used to create PatientCo. In this conversation, Bird shares his secret of building big companies. And it isn’t about the idea, it is all about the problem. He...

Jim was an entrepreneur from birth. He just didn’t know it. But when he joined our startup as a twenty-two-year-old and saw it modeled. Bang! He was a co-founder of his first company. Then he founded four others. His life is the entrepreneur's life.  Jim has been in search of the big problem in the market that deserved a big company to solve it. He found it while at the Flashpoint accelerator...

It took twenty years for Rob Kischuk to reconcile his interests and talents with a business model that works. At forty-three he arrived.  Rob is the founder and CEO of Dellwood Labs. His mission is to build the code that captures your vision. His talent is to attract, assemble and motivate the technical teams to build and deliver the desired product. And he is doing it every day with bigger and bi...

"Selling. No Problem. If you dropped in the middle of downtown with nothing but my phone, I would sell my way to prosperity," said Clint Emerson. Early in Clint's career, he was a sales executive for Lanier/Harris Corp. He used his success as a springboard into the executive ranks. He became the turnaround country manager for the Caribbean, then Australia, and finally South America....

"It is all about the people," said Charlie Paparelli.  That's right. In this 20 minute video, I'm being interviewed. Brendan Tolleson asks me the questions.  Brendan is the CEO and co-founder of RevPartners. I've watched Brendan over the years building his career. (https://revpartners.io/) He started as a leader on the soccer field and, over time, became a successful sales...

Ashish Mistry and BLM Ventures started with a $500k investment in a startup and never looked back. He and his co-investor met at Emory’s MBA program. Neither one of them was in a tech career, but both decided that’s where the action will be. Ashish Mistry may not have a technology industry background, but he does have one amazing skill. He understands the value of volunteering to build a meaningfu...

“If I should be given credit for one thing, it is this. I remained true to my calling for over forty years," said Bill Bolling.  I've never had anyone who accomplished so much in their life tell me this.  Forty-two years ago, Bill founded the Atlanta Community Food Bank. But even more impressive, he is the creator of the community food bank concept.  The idea is simple: eliminate hunger...

As an entrepreneur, you will be well served to listen to David Friedman of Tech Coast Angels. David is the chapter director of TCA of Orange County.  In this discussion, David shares: The angel groups process for investing Deals they’ve done and are interested in doing Terms and Exits  Partnerships with other angels and angel groups The heart of a true angel Lots to be learned from this west coast...

Blake started life in Jamestown, North Carolina. He is the son of a career army non-com and the first in his family to go to college. From there it was all upside. D1 Swimming Scholarship President’s Advisory Council at Georgia Tech Wallstreet Startup entrepreneur Successful exit Led international expansion for a public company at 28 And this story ends with Blake becoming a successful VC. He is j...

David is my son. He is also the 2021 London School of Economics Entrepreneur of the year. I wanted to know, “How did you do that?” In this interview, I learned:  Why as a newly married man, he chose to quit his job, sell everything and move to London to pursue his Executive MBA. Why he felt called to be a social entrepreneur right out of undergrad. Why it took ten years to start his first business...

Merrick Furst is a distinguished professor of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.  Impressive, but wait.  He started nine companies.  But wait.  He started an accelerator that launched dozens of startups with values exceeding $1b.  But wait.  He shares the secret to making your startup a long-term success.  This is my friend, Merrick.  He is a friend of mine, but more importantly, a friend t...

Karen Houghton set the culture at Atlanta Tech Village. She was there right after David Cummings bought the building and had the vision for a startup community. Karen, working with David Lightburn, set a culture of innovation and community service.  Karen is a great leader! She supported hundreds of entrepreneurs who started and built big businesses at the Village. She recruited them, found them j...

I never heard such a clear calling to serve Jesus as I did in this interview.  Doug Ammar is the Director of the Georgia Justice Project in downtown Atlanta. He has served in this capacity for over twenty-five years.  Doug is a recognized expert in criminal justice. He not only changes the lives of the poor accused of crimes, but also changes the laws.  Doug became the director after the founder o...

“People support what they help create,” said Michael Arrietta, Founder, and CEO of Garden City.  Michael lives this every day. He started a holding company with the goal to be the next Berkshire Hathaway. His model is focused on acquiring service companies with between $2-4mm in free cash flow. These businesses are all over America and most of them are owned by baby boomers. Every 57 seconds a bab...

Bobby John believes he and his Band of Coders can take your dreams, desires, and vision and convert them into reality using software. He is a coder at heart with the soul of a serial entrepreneur.  In this interview, Bobby shares how he started a company while in college and became a millionaire at twenty six years old. He saw the first version of Netscape, the window to the internet, and said, “T...

I developed these five criteria based on my 25+ years of angel investing. During that time, I spoke with hundreds of entrepreneurs and synthesized these success criteria. Every startup has to have these criteria present. Every new corporate idea must have these criteria present.  Then there is the secret sauce that makes it all work. Give it a listen. It will make a difference in your startup and...

David Nour is an expert in relationship economics. In fact, that’s the name of his first book. He just released his eleventh book, Curve Benders. It is an even deeper dive into the fulfillment and personal advancement that comes from curve benders in your life. David is an immigrant from Iran. His parents sent him to America to live with his aunt and uncle. All opportunity was evaporating with the...

In this show, Chris Dardaman and I discuss the book, Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. This book caught me while I am in a transition phase of my life. I asked Chris Dardaman, a friend and private investor, to give it a read and then discuss it with me.  I chose Chris because he was the founder of Brightworth, a wealth management firm with $4.5B under management. Five years ago, he decided to leave t...