Tales From The Sky Lounge-A Business Podcast

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Jennifer Bonnett — a longtime Atlanta tech entrepreneur who coded a search engine called eTour.com in 1997, five years before Google existed, and rode it to one of the most-trafficked websites in the world. After years building Georgia's startup ecosystem at ATDC, the Savannah Economic Development Authority, and Invest Atlanta's Women's Entrepreneurship In...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Kumar Amapathini, fractional CFO and Tech CXO partner with over 25 years spanning Cisco engineering, Merrill Lynch investment banking, JP Morgan, and Guggenheim Partners. Kumar started as a software developer watching Cisco make billion-dollar acquisitions he couldn't fully decode — not because the technology was over his head, but because the business...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Karen Rands, founder of the Compassionate Capitalist Movement and author of Inside Secrets to Angel Investing and Inside Secrets to Crowdfund Investing. Karen spent years at IBM navigating the transition from mainframe dominance to distributed computing — watching Dell, Compaq, and Apple take market share from a company that assumed loyalty was permanent....

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Rachel Zeller, Managing Director and Integrator at Kitces.com, the leading education and resource platform for financial advisors. Rachel started as a virtual bookkeeper doing five hours a month for founder Michael Kitces in 2006 — before remote work was a thing anyone took seriously. Nine years later, he asked her to drop every other client and come run t...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by John Church, lead product manager at Nethermind and adjunct professor at Duke University. John has been deep in the blockchain world since 2017 — from speculative ICOs to running treasury management for a 20,000-person decentralized autonomous organization, to now working on zero-knowledge cryptography and AI agent infrastructure. In this conversation, Joh...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Niral Shah — trauma surgeon, serial entrepreneur, and one of the more unusual career arcs you're likely to hear about. Niral started medical school at 19, paused to build a search engine in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, went back to finish his MD, became a trauma surgeon, and then in 2018 decided healthcare was headed for a reckoning and he neede...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by John Yates and Gregg Bedol. John has spent 44 years representing tech companies in Atlanta, starting in 1981 when IBM opened up the PC architecture—literally the beginning of time for the tech community. Gregg has been in consulting since the Arthur Andersen days and is now a serial entrepreneur on his latest venture. The conversation centers on their coll...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Chris Thomajan, a CFO who's spent 35 years with startups and has worked with over 100 companies—mostly in biotech, mostly venture-backed, always as the steady hand while everyone else loses their minds. Chris didn't start in finance. English major, disco worker in London, law firm (hated it), Columbia Business School, then three decades of pattern recognit...

Today in the Sky Lounge, Todd is joined by Bryan Dennstedt for the second year running to review how their 2025 AI predictions played out and forecast what's coming in 2026. They tackle the AI trough of disillusionment head-on—turns out they nailed it, though some people are well up the other side, while others are still stuck at the bottom. The conversation moves from commercial real estate's ong...

What a year of incredible journeys and unexpected connections! As 2025 comes to a close, we're bringing you our most memorable travel stories from the Sky Lounge—those moments when business trips turned into adventures and chance encounters became game-changing partnerships. These stories capture what really happens when entrepreneurs, consultants, and investors step out of their comfort zones...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Steve Subar, a COO/CEO with 30+ years of building and exiting companies who's now tackling an altogether different problem with his new company MatFresher: dirty yoga mats. Steve shares how he validated his latest venture, not by building a machine first, but by setting up a folding table at yoga studios with rubber gloves and antiseptic spray. Would anyon...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Neal Miller, partner emeritus at TechCXO and one of the firm's earliest members. Neal shares stories from 19 years working with over 70 companies, including the legendary Cloud Sherpas journey that started with a Monday morning Starbucks meeting in 2008 and ended with an Accenture acquisition. He reveals the simple napkin drawing that transformed Boomtown...

" Louis Gump joins us in the Sky Lounge to explore a question every founder and executive faces eventually: what happens after the acquisition? In this candid conversation, Louis shares how he helped build the mobile business at CNN.com, led digital transformation at The Weather Channel, and became the steady hand guiding post-acquisition innovation at startups and growth-stage companies alike. We...

Today in the Sky Lounge we are joined by Mike Martin, fractional CMO at TechCXO and creative veteran behind some of advertising's most impactful campaigns. Mike shares the inside story of creating the legendary Truth anti-smoking campaign, producing million-dollar Super Bowl spots that ran only once, and why he believes vanilla content is the biggest risk brands can take. From dealing with man...

Today in the Sky Lounge we are joined by Ted Stone, a 72-year-old fractional CFO at TechCXO who's living proof that experience beats age in the business world. Ted shares insights from four decades of private equity deals, including rollups, spinoffs, and integrations that taught him every strategy in the playbook. He explains how the ""silver tsunami"" of baby boomer business exits is creating un...

Today in the Sky Lounge we are joined by Virginie Glaenzer, fractional CMO at TechCXO and author of ""The Economy of Abundance."" From landing in Silicon Valley with four suitcases during the height of the dot-com boom to building community-driven marketing strategies that outperform traditional branding, Virginie shares insights from 25 years of digital transformation. She explains why the AI rev...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Brantley Fry, Partner at TechCXO, specializing in human capital management. Brantley shares her remarkable journey from environmental lawyer working on the largest spills in US history to political service as state director for a US Senator, and eventually to the startup world, where she helped navigate a successful acquisition by Quest Diagnostics. Her ph...

Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Alex Gafford from BlueStreet Capital, who's living proof that working smarter beats working harder every single time. Nine years ago, Alex's company discovered an asset that boosted their KPIs by 24% and revenue by 30% without spending a dime. That asset? Time itself. Through their five-hour workday experiment, they cracked the code on peak performance - t...

Today in the Sky Lounge we are joined by Joe Gruca, Partner in Revenue Growth at TechCXO. Joe shares his remarkable journey from getting laid off during the 2008 financial crisis to helping grow Hire iQ, a pioneering automated interview platform, into a successful predictive hiring platform used by global giants like Delta Airlines. Now helping early-stage tech CEOs accelerate growth, Joe offers h...

" Today in the Sky Lounge, Todd Merrill interviews Mike Biwer, CEO of Cavallo, discussing his journey to the company, the importance of distribution in the economy, and the challenges and strategies in the software and ERP space. They explore the origin of Cavallo's name, the company's growth, customer satisfaction, and the significance of profitability in distribution. Mike shares insights on nav...

" Bob Brogan joins us in the Sky Lounge to share his journey as Managing Partner at TechCXO for the Great Lakes Region. He pulls back the curtain on four decades in operations, IT, consulting, and strategy—including the story behind an incredible $100 million exit. From his family's surprising connection to the Chicago Bears to what really makes a business investable, this conversation delivers wi...

" Joining us today in the Sky Lounge is Teja Yenamandra, founder of Gun.io — the dev marketplace built for engineers who don’t belong on job boards. From martial arts to macro trends, Teja breaks down why great hiring is about rhythm, not resumes; how AI is reshaping the shape of work itself; and what most startups forget after the match is made. This is a founder story built on cold calls, precis...

" Joining us today in the Sky Lounge is Michael Weinstein — fractional CFO, economic strategist, and finance veteran — who brings his hard-won insights and wit to an time of financial uncertainty in the current economic climate. From early days at Anheuser-Busch (yes, there was free beer) to senior roles in asset management, Michael has seen more business cycles than most of us have had iPhones. W...

Jeff Haynie joins us in the Sky Lounge to talk scaling Appcelerator, why JavaScript won, the soul of Silicon Valley, and how AI agents are reshaping everything. From early days coding for iPhones to launching Agentuity—his latest startup focused on cloud-native agentic systems—Jeff shares a founder’s-eye view of what’s next for AI, startups, and software infrastructure. ABOUT OUR GUEST Jeff Haynie...

<p>Joining us today in the Sky Lounge is Matt Oess, a seasoned leader in sales, marketing, and executive coaching at TechCXO. With over a decade of experience guiding C-suite executives, Matt shares invaluable insights on leadership coaching, AI-driven business transformation, and navigating the complexities of high-stakes decision-making.</p> <p>We dive deep into AI’s game-chang...