Startup Grind

Hey There and welcome to Monday's episode of the startup grind podcast. This week we have a truly awesome interview with one of Silicon Valley’s biggest personalities. Chamath Palihapitiya. Chamath is the founder and managing partner of the Social Capital Partnership, a venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CA that incubates and invests in breakthrough companies in Healthcare, Education, Fincan...

Today we have an episode with Bill Clerico the founder of WePay. WePay is a payment’s platform with a built in fraud analyzer that powers some of the worlds best known marketplaces including Care.com, Constant Contact, Freshbooks, GoFundMe and Meetup.  WePay protects its partners from risk and regulatory exposure, while supporting a great experience for their end-users. Prior to WePay, Bill was a...

Hey there and welcome’s to Monday's episode of the startup Grind podcast! Today we have the founder of the virally popular live streaming app Meerkat. Ben Rubin is the Israeli born founder of Life on Air whose primary product is Meerkat, a real time streaming application that grew to over 700k users in just 8 weeks after blowing up at the SXSW festival last year. Prior to founding Meerkat Ben was...

Today we have a chat with David Zhu the co-founder of Divide which is a mobile enterprise company that made it possible for employees to separate their work and personal life on 1 device. Prior to founding Divide with partners Andrew and Alexander, David was the 1 employee at smule the company responsible for #1 apps like Ocarina, sonic lighter, and I am T-Pain. After graduating from Stanford Univ...

Today we have a chat with one of the co-founders of the innovative sister led dating app Coffee Meets Bagel.    Dawoon Kang and her two sisters Arum and Soo, founded Coffee Meets Bagel as an answer to many of the prevailing male centric, image overloaded apps that weren’t addressing the unique ways in which women prefer to date. Dawoon and her sisters became famous last year for rejecting the larg...

Hey there and welcome to wednesday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. today we have a chat with Paddy cosgrave co-founder of the Web Summit conference. Web Summit attracts thousands of attendees from dozens of countries to dublin ireland for its annual gathering of the technology industries greats. Paddy graduated from trinity college with a BA  in Political Science and economics and worked i...

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have something a bit different. our founder Derek andersen who is also our Silicon Valley chapter director is used to asking the questions at his events; is in this episode he is the featured guest at our chapter in phoenix Arizona. Director Christie Kerner goes over Derek’s early life, professional experience and the...

Today we have an amazing chat with the founder of 500 Startups Dave McClure, interviewed by our chapter director in Gaza Palestine. The audio quality is slightly reduced and the power goes out at 1 point during the interview but it is a great opportunity to hear advice from a silicon valley entrepreneur/venture capitalist given to the community in palestine.  Dave  is the founding partner of  500...

Today we have a great conversation with the co-founder and CEO of Distil networks Rami Essaid. Rami was born in syria to a family known for their engineering talent. He later moved the united states and started working in sales and business. After realizing what a challenge spam and malware bots were posing to corporations rami decided to create a product that would protect against attacks. Rami t...

Today we have a great chat with the co-founder and CEO of Postmates. Bastian Lehmann. Bastian is originally from Munich and graduate of the AngelPad Accelerator in San Francisco. He originally founded Postmates in 2011 and has seen incredible growth fueled by revolutionary partnerships with companies like Chipotle, Starbucks. and 7-Eleven. Postmates now operates the largest on-demand delivery flee...

  Today we have a chat between our seattle chapter director mike grabham and the CEO of RedFin Glenn Kelman. Glen started his career at the stanford technogloy group after graduating from UC berekely. STG was then acquired by IBM which spurred glenn to co-found his own company Plumtree. Plumb tree  then became a large publicly traded company in which glenn held various roles as an engineering lead...

Today we have a chat with SoftLayer’s chief startup evangelist Joshua Krammes. As Softlayers startup evangelist Joshua creates awareness for soft layers efforts towards fostering innovation and investment in the global startup ecosystem. Specifically he serves as an advisor, mentor, friend and liaison for early stage startups.     He has partnered and mentored with several globally recognized star...

  Today we have a great chat between 5 different tech stars partners including co-founder david cohen. The guests include David Cohen, Ari Newman, Jason Seats, Mark Solon, Nicole Glaros. Tech stars is one the worlds top accelerators with locations in over a dozen cities. It also powers vertical focused programs with partners like Disney, Qualcomm, Mike, Ford, and many more. Lets listen into this g...

Today we have an enlightening conversation with the Editor at Large of TechCrunch which is the biggest breaking news sites about the hottest tech companies.    Mike has been named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. As well as being a long-time Writer, Broadcaster and Editor Mike is also co-founder of TechHub (@TechHub), a project to merge a thriving co...

Today we have a conversation between Kevin Gibbon the co-founder of shyp and seed investor Hunter Walk. Kevin co-founded shyp in attempt to revolutionize the shipping industry by making shipping any item as easy as snapping a picture of it. They raised over 60 million dollars from firms like sherpa ventures, home-brew vc and, and Kleiner Perkins. With markets in a few cities in the us they are qui...

Today we have a great presentation from our 2015 Global Conference. Paul Ahlstrom is an entrepreneur and investor who has focused his carreer on understanding the inner workings of early stage startups. He’s founded multiple high-technology startups and investment funds in the United States and Mexico.    Paul’s current focus is opening up capital sources to Mexican entrepreneurs and supporting Me...

Today we have the Managing Director of the female centric crowdfunding site, Plum Alley. Plum Alley is a site specifically made for women consumers and women looking to crowdfund from other women. It further differentiates itself by offering expert help to crowdfunders which has created a funding success rate of near double kickstarter and quadruple that seen on indiegogo. Jan has also held high l...

Today we have a chat with a canadian based founder Ethan Song. Ethan is the co-founder of the popular menswear club Frank & Oak. Frank & Oak is a mens lifestyle brand that makes it easy for men to receive the latest fashions and trends right to their door. They also have a few retail locations which Ethan touches on as a core element of their brand as it bridges the gap between online and offline...

Today we have a really interesting fireside chat with a great arizona based entrepreneur. Hamid Shojaee is the iranian born founder of axosoft which makes the successful live chat software pure chat. Hamid is an ASU graduate and former microsoft employee. He’s very passionate about supporting the entrepreneurial community in Arizona and started the website aztechbeat and even an arizona based incu...

Today we have one of my favorite startup grind fireside chats. We recently had the honor of hosting Brad Feld of tech stars and the foundry group at our chapter in denver colorado.    Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding the foundry group he co-founded mobius venture capital. Brad has been active with several nonprofit organizations and is current...

Today we have bryan johnson the co-founder of braintree.  Braintree is an online and mobile payments provider that prides itself on allowing it’s merchants to accept more payment types than anyone else.  Bryan co-founded and helped Braintree work with some of the best customers in the world such as uber, github, opentable, airbnb, and opentable.  in this interview Bryan discusses his goal of retir...

Today we have the 2nd part of our podcast with the Co-founder of VaynerMedia and venture capitalist Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary's  first step as an entrepreneur was when he helped grow his family liquor store into a multimillion dollar enterprise and then launching winelibrary.com , one of America’s first wine e-commerce sites. After wine library, Gary founded VaynerMedia with his brother which today is...

Today we have Co-founder of VaynerMedia and venture capitalist Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary first step as an entrepreneur was when he helped grow his family liquor store into a multimillion dollar enterprise and launching winelibrary.com, one of America’s first wine e-commerce sites. Gary then went on to found VaynerMedia with his brother which today is one of the biggest social media focused digital sho...

Today we have the CEO and co-founder of OfferUp Nick Huzar. OfferUp is a platform that aims to create the simplest and safest marketplace to buy and sell locally. OfferUp has grown rapidly to become the largest peer to peer mobile marketplace in the country. Previously, Nick was co-founder and CTO of Konnects, Inc, an early social networking startup where he raised $6M in capital and scaled to ove...

Today we have the CEO of Spirit Airlines Ben Baldanza. Spirit Airlines is the largest Ultra Low Cost Carrier in the western hemisphere. Prior to joining Spirit, Baldanza held executive positions at other airlines including US Airways, Continental Airlines and American Airlines. Baldanza earned his BA in economics from Syracuse and an MA in transportation and economics from Princeton. In the interv...