The VentureFizz Podcast

For non-technical founders, the thought of building a tech startup might seem very intimidating and downright impossible. But for Jordan, what started out as a blog with editorial recommendations evolved to something much greater and to kickstart her product, she kept it simple. She thought through how the product might work by drawing rectangles of each screen. Later, she would learn that she was...

One piece of advice that many successful entrepreneurs share with other founders is to wait as long as possible before you raise outside funding. The longer you can stay as a successful bootstrapped company, the more leverage you will have when you are finally ready to raise capital and negative the company’s valuation. For Oisin and his Co-Founder, Mike Flynn, they took a very smart approach to b...

Unless you were already in the sector, topics within the manufacturing and supply chain industry were probably not on the radar for most people. As consumers, when you went to the store, you bought what you needed and that was that. However, people became very aware of the importance that these industries play in our lives during the pandemic when everything changed. Supply chain and manufacturing...

Many entrepreneurs have aspirations to make an impact and change the world, which is admirable. However, building a company that impacts billions is obviously very hard and very rare. In the case of Rich Miner, his professional career has been very successful on several levels including the change the world category. As a co-founder of Wildfire, he was part of the team that built the world’s first...

I first met Sravish about 10 years ago. It was an era where there was a resurgence in the Boston tech scene. A new level of excitement that was fueled by a crop of young entrepreneurs who were building companies that were powered by accelerators or incubators like Techstars, Dogpatch Labs, Bolt, and others. What is great about this era in the Boston tech scene is that many of these entrepreneurs,...

Building a startup is tough in any industry, but for a healthcare startup, there is a whole different level of complexity. It is a heavily regulated industry that has been slow to change in terms of digital transformation. As you’ll hear from Troy, the majority of healthcare records are transmitted via a fax machine. How is that possible in our modern world of technology? But, it is opportunities...

I was excited to interview Rick for The VentureFizz Podcast, as he has a very unique background in terms of scaling great retail and restaurant brands like Borders, Panera Bread, and Wahlburgers, which was a startup at the time when he joined as CEO. Sure in the case of Wahlburgers, it is helpful when the owners are celebrities and you have an A&E reality show to support the company, but regardles...

Who are the tech companies in the Boston tech scene that are going to scale and become the next anchor companies like Rapid7, CarGurus, Amwell, or DraftKings? If I was pulling together a list of companies, I would definitely add Fairmarkit to the short-list. The company is revolutionizing the way organizations buy and sell through automated sourcing. It is a massive market in a sector that has bee...

You likely know these companies: Eventbrite, Canva, Houzz - so, what do all of these companies have in common other than being incredibly successful? All of the companies were founded by a married couple. Most of the interviews that I’ve had for the podcastare one on one with a few exceptions of talking to a couple of co-founders at once or even a founder and their investor for the podcast, but th...

Are we entering the primetime era for venture capital investments into Artificial Intelligence or AI startups? It at least seems that way, as things have cooled off with Web 3 and crypto. There is a ton of momentum in this space with lots of use cases including Jasper, an AI copywriting and content platform that recently announced $125M in funding. Or, it will be interesting to see what companies...

There is a growing number of VC firms that are focused on investing in diverse founders. It’s a very important trend, as I believe these firms will continue to build a foundation that leads to more investing in great companies regardless of the founder’s gender or ethnic background. VamosVentures is one of these firms that is focused on changing the dynamic. 100% of the firm’s portfolio is diverse...

For this podcast, I typically interview founders and investors, but there are times that I like to switch things up and get a different perspective about startups and entrepreneurship. Thus, I was excited to interview Jorge, as he teaches Entrepreneurial Strategy at Columbia Business School and his research has been focused on entrepreneurship policy, regional entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial...

You might have heard the oxygen versus aspirin analogy for finding product market fit for a company. For Matt, he likes to use the burnt pizza analogy. Most people don’t like burnt pizza, but if you are solving a problem that has a very high degree of importance, they will eat the burnt pizza when the product is at an early stage no matter how bad it tastes. Obviously, as the product evolves it wi...

Most companies in the tech industry that scale aggressively and create a category leading company usually raise a significant amount of venture capital funding. In the case of LinkSquares, the company has raised over $161M in funding which includes a $100M Series C round of funding that was announced in April. The funding has come along at a very steady clip with its Series B round in 2021 and Ser...

It’s always great to speak with a fellow podcaster, as Nathan is the host of How I Raised It. He interviews founders of startups and dissects the details on how they raised each round of funding. It’s a great podcast that I recommend, but as I dug into his archives, I realized that we’ve been podcasting for about the same length of time and almost the same number of episodes, which I thought was p...

Did you know that: * Supermarkets waste $25B of food every year * 63 million tons of food is wasted every year in the U.S. * ⅓ of all food produced in the U.S. ends up in a landfill * It’s a $400B problem That’s some staggering statistics and obviously a massive problem that needs to be solved. Luckily, this world has brilliant entrepreneurs who think differently and are able to address these comp...

This is episode #268 and today’s guest is Jeffrey L. Bowman, CEO & Co-Founder of Reframe, the first tech enabled change management platform that helps build inclusive employee and customer experiences at scale. From what I’ve noticed by working with hundreds of tech startups through the years, is that the companies that are the most successful at building a diverse and inclusive workforce start fr...

Market timing. It can destroy a business or it can be the greatest gift and the launchpad to massive scale and adoption. For Dan and the team at Donut, it was the latter. While some companies saw an uptick over the past couple of years, the real challenge has been maintaining that growth when the tide changes. The good news for Donut, is that remote and hybrid work are not going away anytime soon...

I’m sure most of our listeners remember or even still use Mint.com. I have vivid memories of the company as it basically kicked off a Fintech revolution and it was such a major success story. In the span of two years, it launched at a TechCrunch event and was acquired by Intuit for $170M. This was back in 2009, about a year after Sequoia Capital published its famous RIP good times presentation. Lo...

Whether it was being a member of an advanced studies program as a child, to moving to Los Angeles from Israel as a teenager, or his experience as part of an elite team called Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces, Udi has always been up for a challenge and has a passion for solving hard problems. This passion has continued throughout his career as he took the leap of faith into entrepreneurship t...

Typically, you don’t hear many venture capital backed companies get mentioned during daytime talkshows, but did you know that SevenRooms is one of Drew Barrymore’s favorite companies. At least that is what she said during her show. She highlighted the company’s Fresh Start policy which gives new hires their first two weeks of employment as paid time off as a chance to recharge before they get goin...

Through the years, many successful businesses have been born from unbundling CraigsList with stand alone companies from different categories across the site. I’ve recently read articles about how the same could be said for Google and internet search with more of a curated web approach which makes me wonder if the same opportunity exists to unbundle YouTube into different streaming platforms for a...

Healthcare is the biggest labor sector in the country and the demand for healthcare workers continues to grow as the population is aging. The challenge is that the number of healthcare workers has certainly not kept up with demand, as we are on track to be short 1 million nurses by the end of next year. Any solid entrepreneur would hear that number and think of one word and that is opportunity. Ho...

How many times a week does someone ping you with a question about how to do something? You could respond by explaining it over email, jumping on Zoom to show them to give the visual, detail it with step by step instructions in a doc… or you could just make a Scribe in seconds. Lots of products help solve pain points, but very few really nail the user experience to the point where you pause with a...

Pop quiz… what do you think would be the most detrimental to your health… lack of food, water, or sleep? Well, you’ll have to listen to this episode to find out, as Joe shares the answer and it may surprise you. Not only is Joe a successful startup CEO, but he is also an endurance athlete. I’m talking about someone who is pushing their body to the ultimate limits… things like running a marathon a...