The Established Podcast

On this very special 100th episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Mike Evans, the Co-Founder of GrubHub and the Founder of his new company, Fixer, which is a Chicago company building the "right now" handyman service.    Mike talks about his journey as an entrepreneur and his new book ""Hangry: A Startup Journey" which is his memoir about co-founding GrubHub that was just publishe...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Kurt Wilkin, who is the CEO at HireBetter (HireBetter.com), which is a national recruiting firm working directly with leaders of high-growth companies to build game-changing teams. He is also the Founder and a Partner at Bee Cave Capital, a Texas-based early-stage venture group that invests in Texas companies who are making a differe...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Nate Andorsky, who is the founder of Effectual Ventures, a company that helps startups find and accelerate product market fit. Prior to that, he spent the last decade building an Inc. 5000 company and he was working with everyone from early stage startups to Fortune 500 companies such as Johnson and Johnson, CVS Health, Quicken Loans...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from a very special guest, Steve Case, who is currently the Chairman and CEO of Revolution and the Chairman of The Case Foundation. Most notably, he was also the Co-Founder of America Online or AOL.   In 2014, Steve also launched Revolution's Rise of the Rest, an initiative to accelerate the growth of tech startups across the country. Ste...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Touraj Parang, the President and COO at Serve Robotics and an Operating Advisor at Pear VC. Previously, he built and sold his own company Jaxtr, and helped with the acquisition of webs.com to Vistaprint. He also spent time as an acquirer at GoDaddy where he acquired dozens of businesses.    Touraj is also the author of the book "Exit...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Mike Asem, who is the founding partner at M25 ( https://m25vc.com ), which is a venture capital investment firm targeting early-stage, tech-enabled startups in the Midwest. Mike also created a new board game called, "Unicorns To The Moon" and you can find out more about that game at: www.unicornstothemoon.com . Our listeners can get...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Susan McPherson, who is a serial connector, angel investor, and corporate responsibility expert.    Susan is also the founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, and the author of "The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships." Find more about the book at: https://www.thelostartofconnectin...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Chris Deutsch, who is the Founder of Lofty Ventures ( loftyventures.com ) and the Re-Founder at teaBOT ( teabot.com ). Chris has spent over 20 years starting up, investing in and working with early-stage, venture-backed startups in ecommerce, web and mobile applications, enterprise software, and consumer products. Chris is the Founde...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, Erica Duignan Minnihan Returns! Erica is a long-time community member and the Founder and General Partner at Reign Ventures. She was at our 9th Annual Summit and talked with Matt Hunckler from Powderkeg about investment strategies and her interest in the new "We-Economy." We are again continuing our segment where we highlight one startup from our...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, I talk with my long-time friend, Nick O'Neill, the Co-Founder and CEO of The Nifty (www.thenifty.com). The Nifty is a Web3 metaverse company with an audience of aspiring and existing NFT collectors and creators. They host daily shows, provide NFT market monitoring software, and are building an NFT ecosystem. We are again continuing our segment wh...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a panel discussion from our last Summit with Courtney Caldwell and Dr. Tye Caldwell from ShearShare, who both talk about navigating a startup during a pandemic, and more. ShearShare (shearshare.com) is an Established Ventures portfolio company and they are the #1 salon and barbershop booth rental app that creates customized, all-inclusive...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a panel discussion from our last Summit called "Startup Lessons from Accelerating Startups" with Travis Holoway and Rodney Williams of the Established Ventures portfolio company, SoLo Funds ( solofunds.com ), and Lesa Mitchell, formerly of Techstars and now with HighAlpha Innovation. The crew talk about helping people and their "fastest g...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a conversation between our long-time friend Jenn Lim from Delivering Happiness and the author of Beyond Happiness and our Co-CEO, Jen Consalvo, when the two talk about leadership and building a company culture, amongst interesting topics. Also, we are continuing our segment where we highlight one startup from our community during every ep...

In this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a conversation between NFL Hall of Famer Derrick Brooks and Lakshmi Shenoy, the CEO of Embarc Collective, the two will chat about grit, passion, leadership, and legacy at the 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit. Derrick played 14 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Coll...

In this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a conversation between Nick Outman of the law firm Hill Ward Henderson (www.hwhlaw.com) and Lauren Coffey from Tampa Bay Inno and Tampa Bay Business Journal. The two talk about funding and setting up a startup for success from a legal perspective at the 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit. Also, we are continuing our new segment where w...

In this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a conversation between Andrew Nguyen from BARK and Matt Hunckler of Powderkeg, when they talked about product strategy and the "product mindset" at our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit. Andrew is a customer obsessed product leader who builds and grows consumer products. He's a human centered problem solver with over a decade of exper...

In this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a conversation between Jesse Middleton, who is the General Partner at Flybridge and Co-Founder at The Community Fund and Matt Hunckler of Powderkeg, which is a long time partner of Established and Startup of the Year. Flybridge is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on supporting ambitious founders leveraging the power of community....

In this episode you're going to hear a Funding Panel discussion that took place as part of our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit. The panel consisted of Julia Taxin from Grotech, Sherman Williams from AIN Ventures and Scout Ventures, and Heather Buffo from Republic along with Saxon Baum from Florida Funders. We live streamed our Summit, so if you were not able to attend in-person, make sure to...

In this episode you're going to hear an interview with Jenny Fielding from our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit. who is a General Manager at The Fund. During the interview, Jenny talks about building one of the first corporate accelerators and her career as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. We live streamed our Summit, so if you were not able to attend in-person, make sure to watch it o...

In this episode you're going to hear a conversation that I had with Anna Mason from the Rise of the Rest Fund and Revolution about investing between the coasts and investment themes. The conversation took place during our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit presented by ReliaQuest, hosted by Embarc Collective, and powered by Established. We also want to again mention that we live streamed the ev...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear an interview that our Team did with author-extraordinaire, Mert Iseri, at our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit, which we hosted with Embarc Collective in Tampa, Florida. Mert is from MATH Venture Partners and he talks about how a startup can "Exit Right," which is also the name of his new book that came out on February 15, 2022. The...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear an interview that Frank Gruber did with Blake Hall, the Founder and CEO of ID.me, at our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit, which we hosted with Embarc Collective in Tampa, Florida. Over the last decade, Blake and his team turned their startup into a unicorn business, while developing a way to simplify and share your identity online s...

On this episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear a fireside chat that Frank Gruber did with Jeff Vinik at our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit, which we hosted with Embarc Collective in Tampa, Florida. Aside from standing up Embarc Collective, Jeff is the owner of the back-to-back Stanley Cup Champion, Tampa Bay Lightning. He is also an incredibly accomplished entrepreneur, investo...

On this special episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, we hear from Eric Ingram, the founder and CEO of SCOUT, which was the big winner of the 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit, which just took place in Tampa Florida. Scout is an amazing company that is developing orbital products and services to enable a new era of space safety and transparency – adding eyes to space and spacecraft. Duri...

On this special episode of the Startup of the Year Podcast, our team provides a preview of what will be going on during our 9th Annual Startup of the Year Summit, which will take place in-person down in warm Tampa, Florida, from January 25th - 27th with our local host and partner Embrac Collective and our title sponsor, ReliaQuest, who is also sponsoring the People's Choice Award. Listeners can fi...