The Pittsburgh Startup Pod

The ocean is constantly moving, and most of that energy goes unused. In this episode of the Pittsburgh Startup Podcast, I sit down with Priscilla Prem , Co-Founder and CEO of Pittsburgh Coastal Energy, to talk about building technology that can harness underutilized wave energy and turn it into power for underwater systems. Pittsburgh Coastal Energy is developing a new way to capture energy from o...

Episode Description: In this episode of the Pittsburgh Startup Podcast, we sit down with the team behind PGH Social Club —a group tackling one of the most overlooked challenges facing cities today: connection. For a lot of young people, making friends, finding community, and feeling plugged into a city isn’t easy. Traditional paths—school, work, even social media—aren’t doing the job the way they...

Emergency care still relies on tools that haven’t meaningfully evolved in decades. Mary Squire , co-founder of HeadStrait Labs , is working to change that. In this episode, we cover the origin of HeadStrait Labs—from a Carnegie Mellon University classroom to a venture-backed medtech startup—and what it takes to design hardware that actually works in the field. Mary shares insights on working with...

Episode Description: Manufacturing innovation often happens where the physical world meets the digital one—and few places reveal that intersection better than the surfaces we design around us. In this episode of the Pittsburgh Startup Podcast, Charles Mansfield sits down with Tevis Jacobs , founder of Surface Design Solutions , to explore the surprisingly complex world of surface design and its ro...

What actually makes a startup ecosystem work—and what does it take to sustain one over time? In this episode, I’m joined by YJ Lin , a longtime builder and connector in the startup world, to unpack the invisible infrastructure behind strong founder communities. We dig into what separates transactional ecosystems from truly durable ones, the role of trust and long-term stewardship, and how communit...

In this episode of The Pittsburgh Startup Pod, we sit down with Becca Segel, PhD , founder and CEO of FlowCellutions , a startup on a mission to transform grid-scale energy storage with next-generation diagnostics technology. Becca shares her unconventional path — from cutting-edge lab research at the University of Pittsburgh to launching a hard-tech venture based in Pittsburgh — and she opens up...