Paparelli Podcast

Karim Abouelnaga, founder and CEO of Practice Makes Perfect in NYC. He is a successful social entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He grew up poor in the inner city of New York to immigrant parents with little education.  After his dad died when he was fifteen years old, a mentor came into his life that raised his expectations. Then he attended Cornell on a full scholarship and decided to pay it for...

Terry Brown is the Country Director of Leader Impact for Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). He is born and raised in Arkansas, and has been serving in the Czech Republic for the last 25 years. He is a true missionary.  He is a true entrepreneur.  The parallels between these two vocations are striking.  Committing your life to serve others Motivated by the positive impact on people’s lives C...

Robin Gregg was an experienced FinTech executive when she was asked to be CEO of MyLumper. Today she is an experienced FinTec entrepreneur and CEO of RoadSync.  She told me, “This was the hardest challenge I ever had in my life.”  This is a great story of a woman with no family business background becoming a business person. She was her high school’s valedictorian, who received a full scholarship...

Blake Patton is the VC, and Dan Ciprari is the entrepreneur and CEO. Two different jobs, two different responsibilities, and yet they have one mission. That mission is to build a valuable company for themselves, their employees, and their investors. There are good times and challenging times on the way to building a startup. Most discussions focus on the exit. These two men are looking to exit one...

Bryan Wish is the Founder and CEO of BW Missions. He turns experts into thought leaders. He developed a proven process that creates content which builds communities that creates content. BW Missions has launched many successful first act entrepreneurs and CEO’s into thought leaders by creating a firm brand foundation they can build on. But getting to BW Missions was a ten-year life journey. Bryan...

The last VC round was $100 million at a $1 Billion dollar valuation. All based on continued hockey stick growth in a vibrant, new, and ever-increasing market. How do you build the management to hit these goals? This is the question Rob and I aim to answer. Rob Forman is the Co-Founder, President & Chief Strategy Officer at SalesLoft. Our discussion is wide-ranging and informative. Our topics i...

He started a business at 19 while still at the University of Alabama. He quit school and went all in.  Simple idea.  Instant traction.  Multiple pivots.  Lots of learning.  And forty years later the business was sold.  Marty Tighe is an authentic entrepreneur who shares his greatest secret of success. He loves people and respects people.  Listen to how Marty created a great business, built a great...

Chip Patterson built AmeriPark starting with one parking lot at one restaurant in Buckhead, Atlanta. He was going to Georgia State and took a job parking cars because it paid better than pumping gas. Thirty-years later he sold his nation-wide car parking business to a private equity firm.  Chip’s story is the American dream. He shares his secret of success which, like all secrets, is amazingly sim...

Jim Porter has a 50-year tech executive management career. His focus is people. In particular, great performers who are also great leaders who are capable of building great companies.  In this episode, we drill down into what corporate execs look for in their acquisition strategy focused on small to mid-sized companies.   You’ll learn the two “must haves” your company must have to be interesting t...

Dave Moeller is a successful serial entrepreneur. An inventor at heart, Dave assigns a high value to the intellectual property he creates. His last deal was sold to a multi-billion dollar company. The sale provided a 10x return to his investors. During his earn-out, he created a new company by working nights and weekends on an integrated hardware-software idea for consumers. Dave raised money from...

Sig Mosley is a great friend to the Atlanta technology community. Working with John Imlay, the former CEO of MSA, he led a movement that resulted in an economically vibrant Atlanta technology community. There was little in Atlanta when he started his angel investing career in 1992. And now Sig is the Godfather of Angel Investing. In this conversation, you’ll learn what it takes to be a successful...

Bill Nussey is CEO and Co-Founder of Solar Inventions.  You know you want your life to count for helping millions, if not billions of people. This is Bill. He had a brilliant executive career, including as COO of a billion-dollar public company. But even that was not enough. It was a building block to ever-increasing higher impact companies. And now he has given it all up for clean and renewable e...

Adam Wexler's PrizePicks was growing revenue at 100% quarter on quarter, and generating lots of cash. Then, in April of 2020, sports world-wide went dark.  His revenue hit zero.  Thirty days later, corn hole championships started PrizePicks back to revenue, then the NBA, and MLB started back, and he was back in business. Revenue began to skyrocket.  It was time to pour money into marketing. T...

What’s the best market for your technology? This is a tough question to answer.  Dan Ciprari partnered with a brilliant Georgia Tech PhD researcher and formed Pointivo. They secured the tech IP from the university, raised venture capital, and were off and running.  But wait.  Since everyone could use the technology they had a dilemma. You can’t sell to everyone. You have to pick one or two and spe...

This new generation of entrepreneurs is steeped in industry experience. They are identifying real industry and social problems. They envision the solution but lack the skill to create the product. I interview two founders at opposite ends of the process. David is currently looking for a tech co-founder. Michael found his tech co-founder. Listen to these two founders tell you what they learned in s...

Learn what a real angel investor looks like and what a real angel wants in this conversation with Bill Midgette.  Today, Bill leads Fairburn Equity Partners, and is an active angel investor focused primarily in the southeastern United States. He is also an active mentor of early-stage technology companies through Georgia Research Alliance and Georgia Tech, with the Advanced Technology Development...

I found out I was wrong, again. I believed people knew​ ​​early in life that they were going to create something​ from scratch and do their own thing​. All of the entrepreneurs I talked to over the years confirmed this. Then I met Frank and he proved me wrong. After 25 years of working for others, he became an entrepreneur. Frank became an entrepreneur at the encouragement of his clients and suppl...

Wells Burke is a serial technology entrepreneur. His recent venture, Rocket Partners, is a cloud-focused enterprise software development services company. Over the last 3 years, Rocket has grown to nearly 50 developers in 3 countries focusing on retail and healthcare Azure and AWS custom critical projects.  In 2010, Wells founded LIFT Retail , a point of sale (POS) connected digital shopper market...

I’m very pleased to bring you this conversation with my son, Nick Paparelli. Nick is on the path to becoming a software sales rep. I've watched him learn how to target a prospect, cold-call, qualify, and move the prospect along. He is not yet an entrepreneur like my other guests. Instead, I thought it would be beneficial for entrepreneurs to hear lessons learned from the trenches.  No theory...

Gregg Hinthorn is the President of Hinthorn Media. He helps people of influence, with a desire to write, tell their story.  Gregg is also a TikTok star with over 400,000 followers.  In this episode we talk about social media, building a channel, and loving your audience as your primary motivation. If you are a person of influence interested in telling your story through writing you can reach Gregg...

My guest is Karim Abouelnaga, the founder, and CEO of Practice Makes Perfect. PMP is eliminating the achievement gap for low-income students in NYC. His organization has 180 employees who serve 67 schools, and 7,500 students. After 10 years, he is ready to begin rolling out nationally. A great entrepreneur who understands the poor and education.

My guest is Louise Wasilewski, the founder and CEO of Acivilate. Louise is an accomplished entrepreneur. She has taken on the challenge of introducing a new product into a mature market, state governments. But she knows her purpose is to serve the forgotten people in our society, seeking a second chance. She can't give up. Come and see what she learned in achieving product-market fit.

My guest is Jack Griffin, the founder, and CEO of Foodfinder.us. When he was 16 years old he watched a 60 Minutes segment that changed his life. He gained a purpose and conviction to help people in need. Now at 22, his impact on this community is incredible. In this interview, Jack takes us on his journey from start to sustainability.

Jason Moore, co-founder and CEO of Stratasan in Nashville, is my guest. He grew his healthcare analytics company to $4.8mm and profitable on an initial investment of $1.5mm. But he decided he needed new investors with operating experience to get him to the promised land. Watch how he raised $24mm to do it.

Rusty Gordon, co-founder, and Chairman of Speedtacs is my special guest. When Anne, his wife, heard Rusty was scheduled to be on this chat, she said, "Why is Charlie talking to you about quitting? You never quit anything in your life." This interview on perseverance will open your eyes to a topic rarely discussed.