The MikeyG Podcast Experience

Andrés Soltermann, Co-Founder & CEO of Edel Finance, came on to talk about DeFi, tokenized equities, and the future of financial access. But the real conversation started before the product. We talked about childhood instability, moving schools at 15, reinventing himself, losing his self-worth after a breakup, and the repeated listening that helped him rebuild how he saw himself. That story ma...

Mark Vos failed school and hacked its network. Today he's the Big 4 cybersecurity veteran whose article about Claude threatening to kill went viral around the world. This is his human story. Chapter 1: a Commodore 64, a $1,000 phone bill, and a silver-spoon childhood that almost made him a narcissist. Chapter 2: the teachers who called him a failure, the help desk job that put him on a plane t...

When Sway was 4 years old, a clown handed him a microphone at the retirement home where his mom worked, and he heard his own voice for the very first time. Today, he's an AI artist, the founder of Absrrd, and one of the people behind the first AI feature film , a Terminator 2 reinterpretation covered by Variety and IndieWire. This is his human story. Chapter 1, he's born in LA to immigrant...

What up folks! Liviu Arsene grew up in northern Romania, less than 100 miles from the Ukraine border, with parents who didn't speak a word of English. Today he's spent two decades in cybersecurity, has more thoughts on AI than most people in San Francisco, and just announced he wants to get his pilot's license. This is his human story. Chapter 1, Liviu learns English from movie subtitl...

Doc spent 7 years as a Navy Corpsman, lived homeless in East Hastings Vancouver as a kid, and now runs Blue Box Gaming where every NFT ships with a physical comic to your door. This conversation runs through his framework for learning anything (start with the misunderstood words, go to the Greek and Latin roots), the Navy humbling moment where a petty officer told him "you might be the smarte...

JT grew up in tiny Tasmanian towns, bounced through gap years in Europe and Canada, and spent 25 years building Mitchell Lake, one of Australia's first internet-focused executive search firms, surviving the dot-com bust and every hype cycle since. Now living in Spain, he's building socialmedium.ai, an agentic matchmaking platform that connects professionals without public profiles, adverti...

Alfredo Borodowski grew up in Argentina, wished for a new life, came to America at 20 without a word of English, and built a career as an executive director, philosopher, and educator. Then on June 19th, 2013, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer during a manic episode he didn't know he was having. Lost his job, his friends, his consulting work, everything. A positive psychology...

Chris Byrne spent 15 years inside the ad agency machine, grinding teeth so hard his doctor diagnosed the industry before he did. He shared his founder journey as walked away to build Winston, an AI-native creative agency delivering work 30-80% faster, and he's betting the entire future of creative work collapses into a single role: "creative with a specialty." We get into farm-kid-to...

Igor Van Gemert has been taking things apart since he was a kid. TVs. Systems. His own life. Multiple times. He moved constantly as a child, joined the military at 18 because he had no idea what to do, got funded at 27, ended up at a VIP table in Miami feeling completely empty, and started over from scratch. This conversation covers the full arc, from building analog image synthesizers as a 12-yea...

Tess James on why AI isn't just threatening your job. It's threatening your identity. After 20 years in occupational psychology and corporate talent across three continents, Tess saw the fractional work revolution coming in 2019. Now she's building the platform to make it real: connecting domain experts into AI companies before those experts become obsolete. In this conversation: why s...

Justin Cram's founder story starts with a parody post that went viral and ended with real clients like the George Romero Foundation and Spotify. After 20 years in advertising and a nervous breakdown, this entrepreneur posted a fake agency launch on LinkedIn to make two friends laugh. Hollywood called. Strangers volunteered. It became Shit Show Creative. In this conversation, Justin shares the...

Jay Latta’s founder story is one of resilience and innovation, shaped by his early life in communist Czechoslovakia where art was the secret language of truth. After escaping to Germany and navigating diverse careers, Jay embodies the authentic leadership and founder mindset essential to building groundbreaking ventures. In this episode, we explore startup struggles through his creation of Future...

Danilo spent multiple years in Swiss banking, surviving the 2008 financial crisis at age 18 by fielding calls from furious clients. Then his wife said four words that changed everything: "We will not starve." In this conversation, the CEO of The Miracle breaks down how he pivoted twice before landing integrations with MetaMask and Solflare wallets. He shares the journaling framework that...

In this episode of The MikeyG Podcast Experience, entrepreneur and enterprise architect Joe Kristiansen shares his unique journey from 13 years in Canadian military search and rescue to creating CMEF, a model-agnostic measurement layer designed for large language models. Joe dives deep into the challenges startups face when implementing AI, emphasizing why founders need transparency and audit trai...

Matt Williams, the former CEO behind GEICO's iconic campaigns and so many more explains why most advertising is cultural pollution, why the best brands focus on keeping promises instead of making them, and what happens when you let a job define who you are. Strap in, this convo is absolutely fantastic!

One month before competing for a USA World Qualifier, AJ Green couldn't move. The paralysis lasted a month. What he built next—AI Collective—now runs 120-150 free events monthly across 50+ countries with partners including Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft. Learn why he chose AI specifically because it terrified him, the "1% daily improvement" equation he swears by, and why community is...

Join us for an inspiring founder story featuring Toufic, whose journey from seeking conditional love to authentic leadership shapes his mission to transform the world through DAOs, AI, and blockchain. This episode dives deep into the founder mindset—how personal experiences and societal challenges intersect with entrepreneurial drive. Toufic’s story highlights how dystopia is a current reality, an...

In this episode, discover powerful founder stories through Austin's journey from a lower middle-class upbringing to pioneering authentic leadership in Web3. Austin challenges traditional extractive patterns, showcasing a founder mindset focused on community impact and innovative AI-driven creative studios. He shares insights from his experience at UNC, Amazon, and Doodles, revealing strategies...

In this insightful episode, Shannon Smith, former Microsoft and entrepreneur, shares her founder story and reveals how authentic leadership can transform sales success for founders and entrepreneurs. Drawing from her extensive research on the neuroscience of trust and rejection, she explains why mastering your mindset is crucial for thriving in today’s competitive landscape. Listen in to learn how...

Kevin Denman is building Agent Graph, a marketplace connecting AI engineers with enterprises that know they need AI but have no clue where to start. In this conversation, he shares lessons from Deloitte to bootstrapped startups, the co-founder dynamics that make or break companies (Jobs/Wozniak vs co-CEO models), and why the fastest-growing AI role is the forward deployed engineer. Plus: the beaut...

In this compelling episode of The MikeyG Podcast Experience, we dive into founder stories with Andrea De'Marsi, a visionary entrepreneur who transformed his telecom engineering background into successful podcast ventures. From growing up in Ravenna, Italy's historical capital, to co-founding Spreaker and later PodSEO, Andrea exemplifies authentic leadership and the founder mindset. We expl...

Discover the inspiring founder story of Jonny Ashcroft, a resilient entrepreneur leading the charge in augmented imagination and AI-driven creativity. In this episode, we delve into authentic leadership, exploring Jonny's journey from personal tragedy to founding his third creative agency, building AI tools that amplify human creativity, not replace it. Join us for an in-depth conversation on...

Explore an inspiring founder story as Jesse shares his incredible journey from a dyslexic kid in special education to directing the world's biggest bands and leading creative ventures. This episode reveals Jesse's authentic leadership style and founder mindset that powered his rise from a camera operator to Red Bull Creative Director by 23, founder of an award-winning branding agency, and...

Dive into this authentic founder story with Dru, whose journey exemplifies the founder mindset and authentic leadership in the emerging Web3 space. From growing up in split-family poverty eating mac and brown gravy to navigating the challenges of losing $5.6 million, Dru's resilience shines through. He transformed setbacks into a powerful vision, building Ultra Kingdoms, Web3's only grandf...

Brian grew up in suburban Maryland obsessed with Math and Science and learning that cold 6 AM swim practices taught grit more than competition ever could. After MIT's collaborative culture shock and a brief stint as a bond trader at Morgan Stanley, he spent years in high-frequency trading before co-founding Glider. A DeFi infrastructure he describes as "React for DeFi." In this conve...