Technori Podcast

John Pompliano , co-host of the The Best Business Show on YouTube with his brothers Anthony and Joe, joins the pod with Scott Kitun. They dive into the new media landscape, finding the right balance between newsletters, video and social posting. John and Scott riff on the  pros and cons of sponsorship, advertising and subscription models for digital media businesses, and how market appetites favor...

Andrew Gluck , GP at irrvrntVC , joins the show with Scott Kitun. Andrew runs through his career from working with name brands, cofounding his own agency to getting into venture capital and how he fell in love with startups. Scott and Andrew trade stories and ideas about working with founders and other VCs, the pros/cons of rolling funds, why founders should know their numbers and be good at sales...

Phil Libin, founder of video communications app mmhmm,  joins the show with Scott Kitun. Previously the founder of Evernote, Phil shares his thoughts on how timing is everything in entrepreneurship - it certainly was the case with Evernote (the iPhone changed the game for digital note-taking) and has taken hold with mmhmm. After mmhmm's $5 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital early on in the...

Alex Wilhelm, Senior Editor at TechCrunch and well-known as @alex on Twitter, joins the show with Scott Kitun. Scott and Alex share their feels being able to talk to so many founders and struggles keeping up on email. They run through Alex's Chicago roots and Technori nostalgia - Alex talks about how Technori events helped familiarize him with the tech scene during his college years and early prof...

Matt Fairhurst, co-founder and CEO of Skedulo, joins the show with host Scott Kitun. Skedulo is a project management and productivity platform that is geared towards the majority of the workforce (up to 80% globally according to Skedulo) that doesn't work behind a desk. Matt talks about how they started with four clients in four different industries that needed better management on their core phys...

Indiegogo CEO Andy Yang joins the show to talk crowdfunding shop with Scott. They kick off with some banter about all things Indiegogo (having just had former Indiegogo CEO David Mandelbrot on now at Reverb) and how much things have changed since it launched in 2008. Andy also shares how the platform has grown through the pandemic and general upward trends in the crowdfunding space as a result. Sc...

Steven Salz, co-founder and CEO of Rivalry joins Scott to talk about the wide world of esports, video games and building the ability to bet on those games with the Rivalry platform (18:35). In the intro Scott talks about his experience at the National Sports Collector's Convention, how tech founders like Steven are finding ways to disrupt an old way of doing things in the collecting/betting busine...

Mike Doyle, co-founder of new glamping resort Off Map, joins the show with Scott Kitun. Fresh off his previous business Rent Like A Champion, Mike took his expertise from the rental markets and got right to work on a new company focused on the outdoorsy, increasingly popular glamping experience. Mike shares his honest thoughts on what it takes to start a glamping business, why these glamping sight...

Kim-Mai Cutler, a longtime tech journalist and currently a partner at Initialized Capital, joins the show with Scott Kitun. Kim-Mai has spent most of her life around Silicon Valley and knows from her experiences and studies just what the problems tech faces and its impact on California and the world as a whole. She dives into her journey, how she got interested in journalism, and how building thos...

Sara Mauskopf, founder and CEO of Winnie, joins the show to talk with Scott about finding access to childcare and the challenges millennial parents face. Sara goes into her origin story how she never intended to be a founder, but after experiencing difficulties finding childcare solutions for her own child, she decided to create Winnie, a one-stop marketplace for childcare providers and parents to...

David Mandelbrot, CEO of Reverb.com, joins the show to talk to Scott about how Reverb has grown since their acquisition from Etsy, taking over for founder David Kalt, and how they continue to differentiate from every other marketplace. David and Scott talk about their shared affinity to building strong digital infrastructure for musicians and music fans alike. David, formerly the CEO of Indiegogo,...

Mike Gioseffi, host of The Ringer's Sports Cards Nonsense podcast, joins the show to walk Scott through the business of trading cards. Mike isn't your typical sports-media jock, grew up in the construction industry before he started a sports card business in 2016. He talks to Scott about building the podcast off a experimental Facebook Live event, the story behind getting bought by The Ringer and...

Scott Melker isn't your conventional trader. With a decades long career as a musician/DJ, he isn't what you'd expect to be an investor, crypto enthusiast and "Influencer of the Year" according to Binance (a major crypto trading platform). Scott shares his story how he transitioned from music to finance, how he caught onto the crypto movement, becoming the 'Wolf of All Streets' and how to drive you...

Kayla Kilbride aka 'Robinhoodkid' on Twitter and 'girlstalkstocks' on Tik Tok is part of the new wave of influencers talking about investing and making finance a mainstream conversation for regular people. Kayla shares her story quitting her job to focus on her influencing career, why increasing financial literacy can address the wealth gap, joining the Fintwit community, why she'll never be 'Robi...

Stonks, Davey Day Trader, Roaring Kitty, Wall Street Bets - you've heard the names and the meme stock trades going to the moon. While the groundswell of retail investors piling into $GME may seem like a one-time deal, the rise of retail investor influencers is here to stay. Iris Finance sees this moment as pivotal for changing the narrative around investing, and its platform is geared towards empo...

If you live your life on Twitter or pay attention to any social media platform for long, you're bound to see more than a few people saying they're starting a podcast! A couple weeks go by, their episodes start out hot but immediately dwindle and within 60 days they are out of the podcast game altogether without saying a word to anyone. Podcasting is a lot of work, and Austin Petersmith's Racket is...

Jimmy Odom, co-founder of Bit Capital Group, longtime friend of the program, entrepreneur, crypto-expert and business leader joins the show to catch up with Scott on everything from business to babies (and having the right mindset for adoption). They dive into tendencies of VC to play kingmaker on founders in the trenches, working inside and outside of the financial institutions, why he got out of...

Who said brushing your teeth doesn't come with benefits? Beam Dental CEO Alex Frommeyer joins the show to talk about how his company is taking a different approach to dental insurance by incorporating user behavior, AI-underwriting and using the Beam-connected electric toothbrush for consumer wellness. Alex talks about how they increased their user base with strong retention and why your hygiene i...

Former NBA basketball player turned investor C.J. Watson joins the show to talk to Scott about his business pursuits after basketball. C.J. talks about how his parents were entrepreneurs and having the "entrepreneur gene" was always interested in things outside of sports and started getting into angel investing halfway through his playing career. C.J. shares insights on his first investment, a sho...

Shayna Harris from Supply Change Capital, a fund focused on the future of food, culture and sustainability, joins the show. Shayna shares how by 2045 when the "minority" becomes the "majority", food choices will change and the founders that serve minority communities in the food industry today will be incredibly successful then. She also talks to Scott about her first experiences becoming interest...

ActiveCampaign CEO and founder Jason VandeBoom joins Scott back on the pod to talk about the latest news - announcing a whopper $240 million Series C round led by Tiger Global to scale up its operations and continued growth with customers (up to 145,000 active customers). As an 18-year old business, ActiveCampaign is hardly an overnight success story, but has gradually built up a strong user base...

For many of us, it's been a long long time since we experienced the office setting. The pandemic has pushed large swaths of the labor force into work from home settings, some permanent and some companies promising flexible policies. So just what is the return to the office going to look like? We dive into that question with our longtime friends Brad Serot and Tony Coglianese from CBRE. The answers...

Andrew Degenholtz joins the show to talk about his company eMags. eMags Newstand provides a seamless digital experience for magazine readers to consume their favorite subscriptions enjoyably from their phones. Scott catches up with Andrew to talk about the state of journalism, fixing broken media business models, how eMags can inject new life into the writer/creator economy and how they've built a...

Scott talks to Alda Leu Dennis, general partner at Initialized Capital. Started by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanion and Garry Tan, Initialized was borne out of their early Y Combinator days and has become the "honeybadger" of venture with an emphasis on changemaking ideas with over 200 companies in their portfolio. Alda shares her journey from Texas to Stanford, getting the venture bug after meeti...

Lisa Carmen Wang has learned a lot as an accomplished gymnast, founder and investor. And after getting her first company SheWorx acquired by our friends at equity crowdfunding platform Republic, she's on a mission to democratize investing and financial freedom to those typically kept outside of start up investing. Besides her current role as Head of Brand and Communications at Republic, she's the...