Startup to Storefront

Today's guest is Allen Maldonado, star of the new Netflix show Sneakerheads. But to say he's an actor is only telling a small part of his story. He's also the founder of an app and film festival aimed at connecting short films with consumers, he's the co-founder of a music label that provides music for movies and television shows, and he's the founder of a running coalition that promotes a healthy...

Today's guest is Tim Kendall, former director of monetization at Facebook, former president of Pinterest, and the current CEO of Moment, an app designed to help you develop a healthier relationship with your phone and the amount of time you spend on it. And in case you're wondering, he's all too aware of the irony. It's this kind of resume that also made Tim stand out to the producers of the much...

Today's guests are Matt Lombardi and Kevin Moran, co-founders of Beam, a line of THC-free CBD products. Beam was born from the aches and pains of athletic competition. You see, both Matt and Kevin were professional athletes, and though there many rewarding aspects to that achievement, it is not without its drawbacks; namely the physical toll it takes on one's body. When the two of them concluded t...

Today's guest is Matthias Metternich, co-founder of the skincare brand Art of Sport. This isn't Matthias' first rodeo. He's been creating companies since his teenage years, and with that comes the kind of insight and knowledge that you can't put a price on. Art of Sport came about as a collaboration between himself and Honest Company co-founder Brian Lee, and they set about to approach skincare fr...

Hello and welcome to the Launchpad! Over the past year of doing this podcast, we've grown, and so have our guests. We have always strived to cover every aspect of the entrepreneurial journey, from the ideation to the product launch and possibly even the exit. Most of our guests have been in the game for a while, but we know that those aren't the only stories worthy of telling. Therefore, we create...

Today's guest is Kristi Knowles, CEO of the plant-based product line, Mother Raw. Kristi initially joined the company in an advisory role. The founder, Michelle Kopman, had already shaped what was then known as Michelle's RawFoodz into a successful company with VC-backers. Kristi's role was to help better define the company's business strategy and take their products to the next level of appeal an...

Today's guest is Geoffrey Woo, co-founder of Health Via Modern Nutrition, or HVMN for short. And what you just heard is uncomfortable, but true. America's obesity epidemic may be even worse than we thought, with the CDC releasing data earlier this year that showed the country's obesity rate reaching 42.4% in 2017 and 2018. There are a lot of causes for this statistic, and so solving it will not be...

Today's guest is Sergey Young, founder of Longevity Vision Fund and author of the upcoming book Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan. Sergey's mission is to make 1 billion people live to be 100 years old. And we're not talking about achieving the century mark while immobilized in a hospital bed while having seen the last of your healthy...

Today's guest is Moshe Cohen. He's the founder of The Negotiating Table, Senior Lecturer at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, and author of the book Collywobbles: How to Negotiate When Negotiating Makes you Nervous. And if you've been paying attention, it should be no surprise that he's here to talk about negotiation. It's an art form that all are familiar with yet it still evo...

Today's guest is Tarin Calmeyer, founder of Remote Team Wellness, a company that strives to reduce stress in the workplace. In what is truly a sign of the times, they offer their wellness and meditation classes through video conferences. While we've talked a lot about how companies have had to pivot to a post-Covid environment, this is the first company we've featured to have been born out of the...

Today's guest is Orlando Soria, the designer, author, and the host of HGTV's Build Me Up. Build Me Up is feel-good television at its finest, as the show features Orlando renovating homes for people going through major life changes. Some of the episodes also feature our very own host, Natalya Cappellini! The show stands out for Orlando's ability to listen and add his expertise to his client's taste...

Today's guests are Gloria Lu and Victoria Fu, co-founders of Chemist Confessions, the skincare brand that started as an attempt to break down the overly complicated and purposefully confusing world of beauty products. They were industry insiders working at L'Oréal, and they were fed up with the lack of transparency in how the Big Brands marketed to consumers. Since they're both actually chemists (...

Today's guest is Jason Richardson, founder of golf apparel company Bad Birdie. Golf can be an electrifying sport; look no further than how many people tuned in to watch Tiger Woods in his prime, or just listen to how loud the average player gets when they sink a long putt. But if you ask most people, when they think of golf, they think of stale country clubs where a bunch of old guys putz around i...

Today's guests are Kim and Tim Lewis, co-founders of CurlMix, a brand focused on clean beauty hair products for —you guessed it—curly hair. This is the second company that they've started together, but they'll be the first to tell you that their first was a failure. Still, they grew from the experience and attribute the success of CurlMix to the lessons learned from that first failed business. As...

Today's guests are sisters Chrystle and Cat Cu, co-founders of the hottest thing in the floss market since…well…ever. Imagine the last time you bought floss, or for some of you, imagine that you've ever bought floss. You walk down the aisle in the store and you see a bunch of companies basically selling the same thing. It might have different packaging or flavor, but the product itself might as we...

Today's guests are Kendall Bird and Sage Grazer, co-founders of Frame, a mental wellness network that is a one-stop-shop for therapy. On the user end, you can search around and connect with therapists, and on the back end it allows the therapists access to the tools they need to run their practice. This is therapy for modern times. The stigma around therapy has been eroding for a while now, and I...

Today's guest is Dr. Jason Wersland, founder of Therabody. The journey in creating Therabody has been a very personal one for Dr. J. In 2007 he was cruising around LA on his motorcycle when a car cut him off and sent him flying. The recovery from that crash was long and frustrating, prompting Dr. J to invent the first iteration of Theragun, an instrument that helped his body heal through percussiv...

Today's guest is George Gascón, a candidate running for the office of Los Angeles District Attorney. To quote an editorial from the L.A. Times from October of last year, "There is a strong case to be made that aside from the presidential race, the most important item before voters in 2020 will be the race for L.A. County D.A." The reasoning behind such a bold prediction is centered on the relative...

Today we've got a two-for-one special. Our guests are Mark McTavish and Brendan Brazier. Together the two of them are revolutionizing the American cider industry by sitting back and letting Mother Nature do its thing. While that might seem a bit simplistic, they realized that there's no need to add any extra sugar, water, or substances to their cider. They literally juice the apples and let them s...

Today's guests are Noam and Irene from Bambooee. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you'll know that we've had a couple of guests on the show who were contestants on Shark Tank. As avid fans of the show, the Bambooee episode was one of the most lively! Noam and Irene burst on to the stage and within seconds, they had all the sharks eating out of the palms of their hands and exclaimi...

Today's guests are Jai Kim and John Sherwin of Hydrant, a company that makes a powdered electrolyte mix that helps you rehydrate your body quicker and more efficiently than just water, and without all the sugar that comes in traditional sports drinks. It's not like electrolytes are new science. We can basically assume that we've all seen plenty of drinks advertising electrolytes in the grocery sto...

Today's guest is Aman Advani, co-founder of Ministry of Supply. If you've ever worn a traditional suit, you've experienced the problem that Aman and his co-founder Gihan wanted to solve: they're stiff, uncomfortable, and they let the entire world know just how much you sweat. At first, they stitched fabric from their favorite athletic brands into acceptable office wear before developing their own...

Today's guests are Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen, co-founders of Neuro. The two met in college and were friends for a few years before putting their minds together to create a product that would allow them to get a clean boost of energy throughout the day. Originally that energy came in pill form, but they thought it looked a little weird to be popping pills in public. So they pivoted into a much m...

This is a very different episode from what we normally cover. On this show, we've covered the highs and lows of dozens of entrepreneurs' journeys. And part of every one of those journeys takes them down the path of self-discovery. A path that challenges them and expands their worldview before transforming them into the successful business owners and operators they are today. But what happens if th...

Today's guest is Corbett Drummey, founder of Popular Pays, a platform that enables brands to easily connect with creators and influencers and vice versa all in the name of generating sponsored social media posts. Corbett started out in traditional advertising and noticed the inefficiencies rife within an aging structure. As he puts it, the past 100 years were the century of the agency, but the nex...