The VentureFizz Podcast

Episode 384 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Thomas “TK” Kinsella, Co-Founder & Chief Customer Officer of Tines. The success of Tines is not based on luck. The company’s co-founders experienced a major problem that wasn’t being being solved by existing platforms and after talking to peers who were also dealing with the same problem, they decided to do something about it. But, it wasn’t just an...

Episode 383: Rob Biederman - Managing Partner, Asymmetric Capital Partners by VentureFizz

Episode 382 of The @Venturefizz Podcast features Abe Murray, General Partner at AlleyCorp. I recently had Matthias Hofmann, the Co-Founder & CEO of Eyebot on the podcast and when I was doing my research on the company, I realized that their recent investment from AlleyCorp was led by one of their partners who was located in the Boston area. It made me pause, as I didn’t realize that AlleyCorp had...

Episode 381 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire, a global payments enablement and software company. This is the full lifecycle story of an idea to a pillar publicly traded tech company in the Boston tech scene and it has it all. An international founder who discovered a major problem while trying to pay his tuition at MIT, to Mike joining the company after its Series A...

Episode 380 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Eduardo Torrealba, CEO & Co-Founder of Lumafield. As part of my conversation with Eduardo, we talk about the importance of working on hard things. Yes, it’s hard to build things that seem impossible at the time but it is that level of difficulty that attracts the top talent across engineering and other functional areas to join the company. And, it is...

Episode 379 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Graham Brown, Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau. It seems like just yesterday when I first interviewed Graham seven years ago back for Episode 32 (https://soundcloud.com/venturefizz/episode-32-graham-brown-partner-at-lerer-hippeau) when Lerer Hippeau was announcing its sixth fund. This puts Graham in elite company as one of the very few people who ha...

Episode 378 of The VentureFizz Podcast features two of the Co-Founders of Copley - David Henriquez, CEO and Sean Marshall, Chief Operating Officer. It is just a necessity for any thriving tech ecosystem. You need companies that scale and people from those companies take their learnings and go off to start their own company. HubSpot has been a big feeder of alumni who have gone off to start compani...

Episode #377 of The VentureFizz Podcast is Victor D. Lombard (aka DIVINE), CEO & Co-Founder of Notes. As the host of this podcast, I have the honor of being able to help tell the story of so many founders and investors and each story is unique. But this one is a whole new level. DIVINE’s full story is probably the most unique entrepreneurial story that has been told on our podcast.  From the stree...

Episode #376 features Prem Sharma, Founder & CEO of Tandem. When you are a serial entrepreneur like Prem, you are probably coming up with lots of ideas but how do you decide which one is viable to focus on and actually build a company around? For Prem, it comes down to recognizing an experience that is broken and lots of market research. And this is not light market research, this is total submers...

Episode 375 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Becca Xiong, Managing Director of Programs & Engagement at Harvard Innovation Labs. Becca is a serial entrepreneur with the rare experience of having success in both consumer and B2B products. She was a Co-Founder of an early social networking startup called Going.com which was acquired by AOL and then she went with her fellow Co-Founder, Roy Rodenst...

Episode 374 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Dave Blundin, serial entrepreneur & investor. Dave’s track record is legendary as one of the top entrepreneurs and investors in the Boston tech scene. He’s co-founded 23 companies… and many have been incredibly successful: * DataSage - acquired by Vignette for over $1B in today’s dollars * EverQuote - which went public * Vestmark - manages over $2 tr...

Episode 373 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Jeff Bussgang, General Partner at Flybridge. Jeff has accomplished so much throughout his career. I’m sure lots of people probably know him best as a Venture Capitalist and Professor at Harvard Business School. But... you might not know the details about his startup career prior to Flybridge which I was really excited to dig into because he played a...

Episode 372 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Florian Hillen, CEO & Founder of VideaHealth. It goes without saying that AI is going to transform pretty much every industry, but I think there is such a unique opportunity in healthcare as the benefits are hopefully going to be extraordinary. The tricky thing about building a company in healthcare is that it’s heavily regulated industry, so you nee...

Episode 371 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Melissa Withers, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of RevUp Capital. As an entrepreneur, are you thinking about your capital stack? Meaning, how are you going about funding your company? There are lots of options… you could bootstrap, raise money from friends & family, grants, and of course, raise venture capital which is the most discussed option in the...

Episode 370 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Toshit Panigrahi, Co-Founder & CEO and Olivia Joslin, Co-Founder & COO of TollBit. There are going to be so many amazing benefits and advancements that are a result of the platform shift to AI. However, in this new world, many industries will need to go through radical transformation and the publishing industry is right in that mix. We even see some...

Episode 369 of The @Venturefizz Podcast features Krenar Komoni, CEO & Founder of Tive. The question: “What led you down the path to start this company?” is always interesting, as you never know what ultimately inspired the entrepreneur. It could be years of experience working in an industry, maybe it is a personal experience, or it could be a tremendous amount of research to find a problem that’s...

Episode 368 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Matthias Hofmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Eyebot. I met Matthias and Jack, Eyebot’s Co-Founder & CTO at a pre-party for TechCrunch’s Early Stage event in Boston a couple of years ago. It was one of those meetings that when someone describes their product - an AI powered kiosk that could conduct vision tests in 90 seconds… it sounded like something out of...

Episode 367 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Vivjan Myrto, Founder & Managing Partner at Hyperplane. Why Boston Be The Star of the AI Revolution - this is the title of an article that Zach Winn wrote for VentureFizz seven years ago. It talks about the history of AI in the Boston area including Marvin Minksy’s first neural net machine back in 1951, the amazing academic institutions, plus the sta...

Episode #366 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Graham Brooks, Partner at .406 Ventures. “Data is the new oil” - it’s a slogan that you hear everywhere these days… it’s on TV commercials, print ads, LinkedIn posts… but this is not a new trend or revelation for Graham. His interest in data goes back to his first job out of college and his passion for data has followed him throughout his career, in...

Episode 365 of The VentureFizz Podcast features John Harthorne, Founder & Managing Director of Two Lanterns Venture Capital and Founder and decade-long CEO of MassChallenge. A career is a body of work. It doesn’t have to be a straight line… it can take twists and turns… yon can switch industries… you can reinvent yourself… and it should be fulfilling. As you’ll learn from John’s background, he had...

Episode #364 of The VentureFizz Podcast features John Andrews, Co-Founder & CEO of Cimulate. There is a wave of entrepreneurs who are uniquely qualified to build a pillar tech company in the Boston tech ecosystem while leveraging the platform shift to AI. Not only is John one of them, but he is also an alum of the very successful crew from Endeca. John and his co-founder, Vivek Farias, are tacklin...

Episode 363 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Jay Batson, Acquia Co-Founder & Founding CEO, serial entrepreneur, investor, and mentor. Lots of people like to make predictions, especially around this time of the year. Few are right. Jay on the other hand made some bold predictions about the future in a Forrester report that he published back in 1995 called Beyond Internet Gaga and it is pretty re...

Episode 362 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Alice Pomponio, Managing Director at BrightEdge, the investing arm of the American Cancer Society. Venture capital and private equity investors are all working on meaningful initiatives in terms of building great companies with the hope of gaining a meaningful return for investors. However, the role that Alice plays in the world of investing into sta...

Episode 361 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Phil Pergola, CEO at CloudZero. Phil has a tremendous track record and we talk about a lot of great companies that he’s helped build throughout his career, but I need to highlight one of these companies in this intro and that is BladeLogic and the lasting impact the company has made. If you’ve ever read the famous startup book by Ben Horowitz called...

Episode 360 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Mike Troiano, Partner at G20 Ventures. When I think of Mike, I think of a master marketer, a branding guru, and an amazing storyteller. As we start our conversation we discuss the importance of these traits as it relates to entrepreneurs. The importance of storytelling and brand building is often overlooked by entrepreneurs. Yet, it is such a critica...