Technori Podcast

The popularity of organic produce is matched by question marks around its sustainability. Edible Garden's blend of emerging tech, locally grown food and state-of-the-art greenhouses across the country have positioned it well to meet demand and create less waste for grocery stores losing money on expired products. CEO Jim Kras joins the show to talk with Scott how he "refounded' Edible Garden, the...

Whether you are a rabid anime fan or never seen a show (you should!), the art form has indisputably risen in popularity globally and in the US. Netflix, Hulu and HBO have all pumped up their animation offerings (exclusives and syndication) the past few years, elevating top-tier anime shows like Evangelion: Neon Genesis, Avatar and Funimation's Attack on Titan to the mainstream. Colin Decker, CEO o...

Megan Blu joins the podcast to talk with Scott about her American Dreamhouse property, Boeing Ave, that's an investable property that has already sold out on Republic Real Estate. Originally a designer, Megan began fixing up and selling homes in California 6 years ago and has made a career out of flipping. She talks about how flipping homes is nothing like what you see on HGTV, but lots of negotia...

When you look around the wellness industry, there are a lot of well-intentioned and thought out products covering physical and mental needs. However, when it comes vaginal health and feminine sexuality, many products lacked this thoughtfulness and usefulness, sorely underserving a $181 billion addressable market. Quim provides a line of proactive, plant-based, and sustainable products for the full...

Scott talks with the Co-Founder and CEO of Upshift, Ezra Goldman. Upshift is a fractional car subscription service that is a smart alternative to owning a car for people who don’t drive every day. In short, They have eliminated all the hassles of owning a car. With Upshift, whenever you need a car, just send them a text and they’ll deliver you a new, clean Toyota Prius or RAV4 hybrid SUV in under...

VC firms are known for catapulting some of the most iconic tech companies into unicorn status and their founders into stardom. They're not known for looking at founders outside the tech bubbles, much less founders that don't come from money. That's where Mac Conwell wanted to step in. A founder in his own right (one success, one flop) Mac has seen the how hard it is to start a business and get the...

Intellivision is one of those OG gamer console brands that had its initial run through the 70s, 80s and 90s. Now in 2020, the brand is revived and humming with the upcoming launch of their new console, Amico. Led by CEO Tommy Tellarco, the Intellivision Amico is a simplistic and largely offline gaming experience geared towards playing with the whole family at home. With a basic controller scheme,...

Brynn Michelich, Chief of Staff at Chicago-based Jellyvision, joins Scott to talk about the panic surrounding COVID-19's impact on businesses everywhere, what Jellyvision has had to change and what they haven't, how to maintain and improve team culture and keeping the team productive in our new normal.

John Green and the team at Nada wants to make you CEO of your largest asset: your home. Nada simplifies the home ownership buying and selling process by handling mortgage, title and insurance services while eliminating realtor fees. John joins Scott on the show to talk about how his background as punk rock musician helped shape his career as a strategist, understanding the problems in the real est...

Jason Fried, founder and CEO of Basecamp and HEY Email, joins the show to talk with Scott about the future of email, why it's gotten mucked up and why bringing privacy back into our lives is a correction long overdue.

Albert Baez, co-founder of Blended Sense, joins the show to talk with Scott about the missing infrastructure small businesses need to succeed digitally and drive revenue. Blended Sense is a platform and content management system for production communication, project management, and delivery of high quality assets. Using a subscription model, Albert and his cofounder, Abigail, provide a centralized...

Gaming has been a part of Ben Goldhaber's life since he started as a competitive player in his teens. He's stayed in the industry ever since, and after his experience as part of the founding team at Twitch through the Amazon acquisition, he saw firsthand the broad market opportunity, exponential growth in the gaming industry and most importantly saw what was missing: a centralized platform to get...

You've heard the stories about WeWork. The private jet parties, the billions of investment and unfathomable $47 billion valuation. What you don't hear is the the back story behind the man that started it all, Adam Neumann. Reeves Wiedeman, NY Mag writer who penned their feature article detailing the behind the scenes work of Adam, goes into full detail in his biography "Billion Dollar Loser: The E...

Securities aren't as dependable as they used to be, and with alternative assets like crypto, crowdfunding, PE, etc growing in popularity, future retirees aren't reaping the benefits like previous generations could from stocks. Eric Satz, founder and CEO of AltoIRA, joins the show to talk about retirement investing, why it's changing and what individuals need to do to diversify their investments an...

Pillar Booth creates ventilated, soundproof desk spaces that give you a safe space to avoid distraction. Ryan Leavitt, a repeat founder previously of LearnCore (acquired by Showpad) and Catapult Chicago, shares his long entrepreneurial journey and how the shift towards open office spaces leaves employees with no place to take a phone call in private and generally diminishes productivity. The booth...

Whether you work remotely or in an office, you're no stranger to the overload of project management apps your company has you use in the name of productivity. Slack, Asana, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Notion- all have their pros and cons, but how do they all work togethers across different company departments? That's the question Jonathan Friedman set out to solve when he founded TrueNxus, a pl...

When COVID-19 put the office workers at home indefinitely, Thru Shivakumar thought her company would be dead in the water. However as the dust began to clear (working professionals and parents struggling to work from home),it's evident offices have a place in the current work environment. Cohesion empowers real estate owners to maximize asset and portfolio value with all building systems, workflow...

Buying a home is one of the most symbolic ways we have to establishing the "American Dream". However, the process by which we do by and sell via listings, real estate agents and brokers, is too often a struggle and leaving you with less money than you deserve. Danyal Ali has found a way to make real estate transacting equitable for all with his platform AnyCurb. AnyCurb helps home buyers find home...

The last time we had John Roa on the show, he was dressed for success and brimming with confidence. He had recently sold Akta to Saleforce, was launching his VC firm Roa Ventures and appeared living what universally could only be considered "the good life." Turns out, the reality was far from the perception. John catches up with Scott to talk about his new book "A Practical Way to Get Rich … and D...

Fast has swept through the tech ecosystem at a speed befitting its name. And thus far it has been able to do so effectively because of a few factors, addresses an obvious need -no need to type in your address, payment info, log in info into a million different sites- and because the company needs lots and lots of consumers to use the product to net Fast sustainability. Fast co-founder and CEO Domm...

It's 2020, everything is supposed to be online..and you'll still be surprised how many functions of our society are still on the outside looking in at E-commerce. Construction, an essential business these days, is no exception and Ben Preston and his cofounder Luke Powers saw a huge opportunity to address a major problem for contractors all over. His company, Gearflow, is an online marketplace for...

Lockdowns, shrinking economy, closed gyms and offices have left people to get creative on maintaining their core business or building a new one altogether. It's part of the reason individuals, small businesses and "solopreneurs" are flocking to Podia, a platform provides a digital storefront to maintain memberships, online courses and transactions. In its own way, Podia is stabilizing the idea of...

Insurance tech has been an industry ripe for disruption with a slew of companies like ClearCover, CoverWallet, Kin and Vouch making waves recently. Obie, a combo insurance brokerage and risk management platform is geared to join the fray by focusing on serving real estate investors from multiunit to single family residences (SFRs). Aaron Letzeiser, founder and CEO of Obie, joins the show to share...

Proxfinity, like almost all companies in the event space, got slammed by the consequences of the COVID-19 spread. However unlike most other event companies, Proxfinity had an existing product, their wearable tech badge that lights up when around people with like-minded interests at networking events, that they could reimagine to help achieve contact tracing and warnings for social distancing. As c...

Bryce Conlan and Scott share something of a kindred spirit, cleverly termed the "unemployable". That's not to say anyone is actually unemployable, but there's a certain type of a person that naturally gravitates towards new ideas, better ways to perform a service and work independently to do so that doesn't always jive with a corporate structures. Namely, this is their definition of an entrepreneu...