The Profit or Pivot Podcast

Should you leave your steady corporate job to start a business? In this episode of The Profit or Pivot Podcast I speak with Talia Abramowitz, a partner at Deloitte, the largest professional services firm in the world ($70B in revenues) and the founder of Deloitte Ventures, a $150 million corporate venture capital fund. Talia shares how she carved out entrepreneurial opportunities within the corpor...

Mark Nashman shares his journey from successful entrepreneur to successful venture capital investor. We learn about Mark's incredible story building Clarity Systems, a financial software business that he grew to over $50 million in revenues before selling to IBM. We also discuss Mark's perspective on investing in startups, what he looks for, red flags and some advice for entrepreneurs. Mark is a r...

In this episode of The Profit or Pivot Podcast, I sit down with Sonya Meloff, co-founder of one of Canada’s most successful sales recruitment agencies. She helped thousands of companies, from startups to enterprises, hire top-performing salespeople and scaled her business to 8-figure revenues before exiting. If you're a founder hiring your first sales rep, scaling your go-to-market team, or just w...

In summer of 2020, at the peak of chaos in the healthcare industry, Michael raised a venture capital "Seed" round for his healthcare software startup. How did Michael turn a crisis into an opportunity, grow his business, and set himself on the path to success? Some of the topics covered: Michael's background, how and why he started Verto How he developed an innovative solution in healthcare that f...

In this episode of The Profit or Pivot Podcast, host Matan Hazanov interviews Brice Scheschuk, a trailblazing entrepreneur who co-founded Wind Mobile and sold it for $1.6 billion. Bryce takes us behind the scenes of his journey, from his early days in Saskatchewan and the naval reserve to disrupting Canada’s telecom oligopoly with Wind Mobile. He shares heart-pounding moments, like securing a $200...

Avi Abrams shares his journey from aspiring VC to one of the 1st hires in a high growth startup raising $50 million, and how he eventually leaves to pursue his goal of building a business from 0 to 1. We dive into Avi's time at Humi, a high growth SaaS startup, where he led product development during the company's incredible growth. He shares his lessons for building and selling products, understa...

In this episode, Matan Hazanov sits down with Igor Sorokin, the marketing mastermind behind One Core Media, an 8-figure boutique marketing firm driving results for global giants like Canadian Tire, Kijiji, Cisco, and even Floyd Mayweather. With over 25 years in the game, Igor shares battle-tested strategies for startups and growing businesses to stand out, scale smart, and avoid common marketing p...

Chris Carder shares his incredible journey as an aspiring journalist to successful entrepreneur, academic, and builder of startups at scale. He is currently the Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Schulich School of Business, often ranked the #1 business school in Canada. The position is one he created as a result of building a startup community at Schulich from the ground up, tapping...

Join host Matan Hazanov for an incredible discussion with Allen Lau, co-founder of Wattpad, the global storytelling platform that sold for an astounding $660M USD. From his roots as a software engineer to scaling Wattpad to 100M users, Allen shares hard-earned lessons on finding product-market fit, navigating startup challenges, and the critical role of timing in building a powerhouse business. No...

On October 7, 2023, Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas terrorists resulting in the worst single day massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. With the country now at war, how does civil society cope with 10-15% of its labour force being called up to military reserve duty? David Shore, a Partner at OurCrowd, the most active venture capital investor in Israel joins me to discuss the situatio...

Neil Nisker is a legendary Canadian entrepreneur who built and sold three wealth management businesses. Now running "Our Family Office" managing $800M for Canada’s wealthiest families, Neil shares his incredible journey, from his early days as a “gopher” on the Toronto Stock Exchange to cold-calling Sir John Templeton, sparking a 35-year mentorship. He dives into contrarian investing principles, h...

Tamar Lyons quit her "dream job" in media making $40k/year to build a social media marketing agency and is now doing over $500k in revenues in just a couple of years and growing rapidly. By her mid 20s, Tamar was married, depressed, and living a life that she didn't want. She was not living authentically. After realizing how much money she was leaving on the table, and some tough love from her men...

The stark reality for building a startup: the unexpected can happen at any moment. Just 3 months after closing a $1M Seed round, COVID restrictions hit, resulting in a fast growing business reduced to $0 revenues. Eropa's strategic pivot with a very low cash burn while increasing the team & revenues was nothing short of a miracle. It's a lesson in resilience and the power of quick, decisive ac...