Somewhat Frank

Frank Gruber and co-host John Guidos talk about whether they could live without email and how society is changing with the elimination of the landline and a "home phone." The discussion was loosely based on the  latest newsletter  which is shared below. I saw a story recently about Away Luggage and how they recently  ousted their co-founder and CEO Steph Korey  over her use of the communication to...

Frank Gruber catches up with John Guidos and the two discuss Frank's recent trip to Chicago where he was the keynote speaker at the NASA iTech event and his reconnecting with Jonathan Ozeran at Tempus. There's a lot to celebrate this time around, so they discuss some of those latest happenings. The discussion was loosely based on the  latest newsletter  which is shared below.  I was in sweet home...

On this episode of the Somewhat Frank Podcast, Frank Gruber and John "Johnny Goodtimes" Guidos discuss the Washington Nationals historic World Series victory and a brief recap of the 2019 Startup of the Year Summit which was held in Memphis, Tennessee. The discussion was loosely based on the latest newsletter which is shared below. This past week I was in Washington, D.C. to take in their first Wo...

Over the past year, electric scooter startups have erupted as the next set of startups with billion-dollar valuations and unicorn status. Companies like Bird, Spin, Lime, and others have taken on large investments from Alphabet, Uber, Lyft and more. The problem that electric scooters are solving is very clear, they are helping ridesharing companies to cut down on the short two to three block trips...

Accomplishing the things you want to in life and ultimately being happy can sometimes seem overwhelming. Many people overcomplicate things and end up chasing the wrong things. How do you simplify the pursuit to make sure you accomplish your goals? How do you know you're taking the right approach? Serial entrepreneur and author Miki Agrawal has a few tips and ideas on how accomplishing your goals a...

Innovating at a large corporation or at a government agency can be difficult. It means doing things differently, introducing new concepts and embracing failure. The larger you are, the harder it can be to change the way you do things – even if it's for the better. To combat that, the U.S. Air Force decided to create a new program dedicated to solving some of the toughest problems it faces via coll...

When you travel, especially by air, you have to make some tough packing choices. Usually, my hardest decisions come down to which shoes I'll bring – because you can't bring them all, and they take up a ton of space in my carry on bag. When picking the perfect shoe (or shoes) for travel you have to weigh such factors as weather, length of trip, the purpose of the trip, and travel destination. Not t...

Over the past couple weeks (and I'm sure many others) I have had to fight the urge to send out tweets expressing my opinions on the latest happenings. While I support "freedom of speech" some of these tweets may have been offensive, so I went with the age-old saying: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." I'll be sure to make an impact in other ways (e.g., November el...

As a kid growing up in the rural Midwest surrounded by cornfields, I was well supplied with lumber and the tools necessary to create things with that lumber. So, as soon as I saw Marty McFly in Back to the Future turn a handmade wooden scooter into a skateboard, I was hell-bent on creating my own skateboard by hand. I spent countless weekends carving a 1×6 board into the right shape for a skateboa...

Sometimes I feel like we are living in a Neal Stephenson novel with companies like Amazon making it's so darn easy to flip through their app on your phone, ordering whatever you need and having it arrive almost instantly (or at least within a few hours). It's amazing. Remember, it was not too long ago that you'd have to run from store to store searching for an item! Now your "wild goose chases" ca...

Sunshine and beaches might be first thing you think of when you think of the Tampa Bay, Florida region. And rightly so, it's gorgeous and has a handful of the top beaches in the country if not the world. But there's more than crystal clear ocean water in the upcoming startup community. Tampa is a rising city for starting and running a business but is coupled with a solid work, live, and play lifes...

Have you ever asked Apple's Siri for a hand with something only to find yourself doing more work to try to get what you're looking for? We've all have been there. Artificial intelligence is not quite as intelligent as a scene from the popular HBO series Westworld yet. I recently had a situation where I asked Siri to call my "Gym" via my Apple Watch and AirPods. Siri kept trying to call "Jim Bankof...