Taking Notes with NextGen

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Diane Strutner, Founder and CEO of one of NextGen's portfolio companies. When someone streaming a video on the internet experiences a failure, the provider of that video often doesn't know that the failure has happened, how often, or if the viewer is leaving because of this issue. Datazoom provides tools for companies...

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with David Sullivan, Founder and CEO of Till, one of NextGen's portfolio companies. To date, the home rental space has been poor in data, analytics and tools to help renters pay rent, stay in their homes and create value for landlords. David discusses how Till is addressing all of these problems, creating a win-win scenari...

In this special episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Taylor Graff, Head of Asset Allocation Research at Brown Advisory. NextGen combined with Brown Advisory two years ago. Dan and Taylor discuss the impact of the novel coronavirus on economic trends and financial markets, and how this relates to investing.

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Joe Saunders, Founder and CEO of RunSafe Security. NextGen recently invested in RunSafe, which sells a patented “cyberhardening” tool that is designed to help immunize software that runs on embedded systems and devices. RunSafe focuses on protecting technology across critical infrastructure, including automotive, data...

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Tessa Lau, Co-Founder and CEO of Dusty Robotics. NextGen recently invested in Dusty Robotics which is building robots to help bring digital transformation of the construction industry. The company's first product automates the high-value and currently manual task of layout.

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Vinayak Ranade, CEO of Drafted. NextGen recently invested in Drafted which offers software to human resources departments to help them fill open positions by empowering their employee base to find referrals via their own networks. NextGen is excited about the good Drafted can do under Vinayak's leadership including he...

Dan Mindus (Managing Partner at NextGen) and Immad Akhund (Co-Founder and CEO of Mercury) discuss building a bank from scratch that is specifically built for tech startup entrepreneurs. Immad shares why he started Mercury, and how it is benefitting his large and growing client base.

In this episode of Taking Notes, Dan Mindus (co-founder and managing partner of NGVP) speaks with Venture Partner John Duncan (Principal at Meridian Research Group and Capital Point). Capital Point provides analysis to institutional investors and corporate executives with a heavy focus on the technology industry. The two discuss the potential impact of new policies out of Washington, D.C. on big t...

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Carter McJunkin. Carter is a Venture Partner with NextGen and was the COO at Grindr for nearly 8 years, from employee # 1 to exit. Grindr describes itself as the largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people. Dan and Carter discuss growth at Grindr to millions of daily active users, and the company...

In this episode, Dan Mindus (managing partner at Nextgen) chats with Jason Yeh (co-founder at Tape - video tool for sales/NextGen portfolio company) about pursuing the opportunity to productize innovations in mobile video for the enterprise. "Mobile video has given the consumer world a lot in terms of a natural way to communicate, a way to present human contact between friends and family, and we s...

In this episode of Taking notes, Dan Mindus (managing partner at NextGen) and Ajay Kori (co-founder and chairman at UrbanStems) discuss the broken flower industry and Ajay's motivations for entering the space, why Amazon is unlikely to compete here and why he handed off his position as UrbanStems' chief executive officer.

In this episode of Taking Notes, NextGen Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Andrew Yang. Andrew founded Venture for America (VFA), a fellowship program for recent college graduates who want to become entrepreneurs. VFA trains its fellows then sends them to work at early-stage growth companies and startups in Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland and other cities with the goal of generating job growth...

In this episode, product guru Ben Foster shares the (sometimes counterintuitive) lessons he has learned. Ben was the vice president of marketing at Opower, now a publicly traded company. He has also advised over 50 startups on product over the years, including four currently. Today, Ben is the chief product officer of GoCanvas, a startup with a team of over 200.

Cherian Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of NextGen portfolio company Play Octopus, the premiere rideshare entertainment platform. Cherian discusses the company's value proposition to its three key stakeholders, fostering team buy-in after a major pivot, and its traction to date.

Ben Sardella is the co-founder & Chief Revenue Officer of OutboundWorks, which is an automated sales development platform that deliver customers ~1.5x the average output of the best performing sales development reps at ~65% of the cost. Ben shares how his experience as a sales leader as VP of Sales at Kissmetrics and co-founder of Datanyze helped him build OutboundWorks, a NextGen portfolio compan...

In this week's episode of Taking Notes with NextGen, Managing Partner Dan Mindus speaks with Venture Partners Angela Han and Jamey Jeff in a conversation surrounding Customer Success. Both Angela and Jamey have deep customer success experience. Angela held customer success roles in a number of different technology companies prior to her most recent position as the Vice President of Customer Succes...

Christy Wyskiel discusses her efforts to drive the startup ecosystem at Johns Hopkins, from encouraging student education about entrepreneurship to getting funding for tech companies founded by academics.

Max Wessel, former VC at Sapphire Ventures, leads the effort to create new startups from within the ranks of SAP employees. Max discusses how SAP creates startups from scratch, and compares and contrasts the startup studio model to traditional venture capital.

Fran Hauser, angel investor in 20 companies, and recent author of the book, The Myth of the Nice Girl, discusses what she sees as the false tradeoff between kindness and strength in the workplace, and how she incorporates her background from book keeper for her immigrant parents' businesses at age six to President of Time Digital into her startup investing.

Ray Pawlikowski is the CEO of OPTii Solutions. In this podcast, Ray shares how OPTii Solutions is revolutionizing housekeeping functions across global hotels and resort, delivering greater profitability and enhanced guest experience. Ray explains how his experience founding and leading HotSchedules led him to see a big opportunity for OPTii, and discusses how he transitioned to the role of CEO for...

Matt Alexander is the founder and CEO of Neighborhood Goods. In this podcast, Matt shares his vision for Neighborhood Goods, what he describes the "App Store for retail," which is creating a compelling offline shopping experience. Matt explains why digitally native brands are investing in offline channels and shares why, despite the headlines, he believes there's a future for physical retail in th...

Randy Altschuler is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded three successful companies, including Office Tiger in 1999, CloudBlue in 2001, and mostly recently Xometry in 2013. Randy is currently CEO of Xometry, an advanced manufacturing company with investors including Highland Capital Partners. In this episode, Randy discusses how he transitioned from a traditional finance background to entrepre...

Christian Seale is the Founder and GP of Startupbootcamp Miami. In this episode, Christian discusses the opportunities presented by the US healthcare industry for startups leveraging emerging technology from other industries to shift the paradigm in how we deal with care. He also explores how Startupbootcamp positions itself to provide value to its companies.

Ken Nguyen is the co-Founder and CEO of Republic. In this podcast, Ken discusses how Republic is at the center of emerging trends around inclusive innovation and startup funding, and the company's vision for a more mission-driven and people-driven economy. Ken explains the benefits for an early stage company to leverage the crowdfunding model. He also shares his view on how blockchain is moving cr...

Michael B. Horn, a thought leader in education, discusses the future of the edtech space and how emerging trends and existing realities are shaping the potential impact that companies can have.