The VentureFizz Podcast

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...

There is a tremendous amount of information that has been written about the process of raising funding for startups, but for some reason, you don’t see nearly as much information about the acquisition process. What are the good, the bad, or the ugly experiences? How does one get on the radar for a potential acquirer? What are the common pitfalls, etc., etc.? It seems like there are so many things...

The shift of founders building startups in other regions outside of Silicon Valley is an interesting trend that has been taking shape especially since the pandemic hit and working with remote employees really hit its stride. So, what does it take to build a thriving tech ecosystem in a city or region? Well, it takes a lot of different components plus you need the people who can execute on a vision...

Episode 257 features a discussion from a recent webinar we hosted with OpenView Venture Partners around hiring and competing for talent in this competitive market. Since most companies are hiring, we thought this topic would be incredibly beneficial. For this discussion, I was joined by Steve Melia, Talent Partner, and Maggie Crean, Talent Manager from OpenView and we cover a lot of ground. We dis...

I was excited to interview Rahul for our podcast since his background before starting Clora is very deep in the life sciences industry as the head of clinical development at several biopharma companies. It was an opportunity to explore this industry, as I haven’t interviewed anyone who has the same depth of experience, so we talk about the drug discovery and clinical trials process. It was this in...

I feel like this interview was long overdue, as I’ve know Rob for a long time. I probably first met him at one of the tech events in Boston… maybe Web Innovators Group or something like that. It was during a resurgence of the tech industry in that region where a new crop of entrepreneurs were building companies and Rob’s company, Backupify, was one of the hot companies in the Boston tech scene. Ba...

Entrepreneurship… is it something that is taught or is it just engrained into some people? Personally, I think the answer is both but in the case of Ritik, it is deeply rooted in his DNA. His journey into entrepreneurship started in middle school when he built a successful web development & hosting business. He’s now a successful serial entrepreneur, as his last two companies were acquired by Box...

It’s not every day that you get to interview someone who launched four product lines with Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple exec team, so as a fan of all things Apple, lets just say I was a little excited for this interview. Calin’s career has always been at the forefront of emerging technologies and trends. From his first stint at Apple working on software for the iMac and iBook (yes, the shel...

Real estate is the largest asset class in the world, so it’s surprising that this industry has been slow to change, but this is not the case anymore. The proptech industry is on fire. According to the Wall Street Journal, last year over $9.5B was invested into the proptech industry from VC firms and other investors. It’s proof that there is a tremendous amount of disruption happening in this secto...

I’m always amazed when I talk to an entrepreneur who starts a company while in college. There’s a lot going on during those college years in terms of the academic and social experience, so it’s impressive when they have the vision and maturity to embark on the adventure of building a business. I find it even more impressive when the entrepreneur's company is working on hard tech and has legs beyon...

This is an extra special episode of The VentureFizz Podcast as it is a milestone episode - welcome to Episode 250! This means we have over 10 days worth of entrepreneurial and investor interviews! For Episode 250, I couldn’t think of a better guest than Jonathan Bush, Founder & CEO of Zus Health. Yes, his last name is Bush, as in the same Bush family where his uncle and cousin were both president...

One of the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make is failing to discovery the true market need for an idea by talking to potential customers. Entrepreneurs sometimes fall in love with their idea and go off to build it but to only find out that it’s not a pain point for customer who are willing to pay money to solve. This was definitely not the case for Shensi and Gil Feig, the Co-Founders of Merg...