The VentureFuel Visionaries

Can you eat water lilies? Are brussels sprouts the next pop chip? Want to discover what’s next in snacking and surprise and delight your family? Erica Wagner, the Chief Snack Officer, and Arielle Diskin, The Chief Social Snacker, are the Co-Founders of SnackRiot. SnackRiot is a monthly snack subscription service that introduces busy families to new brands, ingredients and flavors with the goal of...

Russell Barnett is a master marketer of category-creating food and beverage items. Mike’s Hard Lemonade – inception to $150m. Gardein - $30m to $90m before purchase by Pinnacle Foods. Kevita –sold to Pepsi. PopChips – created the entire “popped” category. Now he is the CMO at My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream and recently named to Forbes’ CMO Next List of Game-Changing Marketing Leaders. Russell shares how to...

Almost 50% of all K-12 public school students are "attending" schools that only offer virtual learning, which is changing consumer spending, family life and work for tens of millions of Americans. Burbio, a data service that measures community life, has built a School Opening Tracker providing daily updates across all 3,000 U.S. counties by school district learning plans: virtual, hybrid, and trad...

How Chobani has remained a “Spiritual Startup” with Peter McGuinness, the President and Chief Operating Officer at Chobani. Chobani is America’s #1-selling Yogurt brand with eyes on becoming “tomorrow’s food company” by providing better food for more people. Peter shares how they have broken down silos to shift towards a nimbler, team-centric way of organizing; why they embrace a “Warrior Shepherd...

As a fan, when you interact with tech at a stadium you expect it to be intelligent and responsive to who you are. Realife Tech creates personalized fan experiences at live events. They sit atop of all of the data sources at a live venue (ticketing, wifi) to create a unified view of customers for clients like AEG, O2, Live Nation. Today Adam Goodyer, the founder and CEO of Realife Tech, talks about...

Ila Byrne, Principal at Ila Byrne Consulting, led innovation and ideation for Diageo North America. She is an intrapreneur, a proven creator of multi-million dollar breakthrough ideas and Forbes named her one of the “women running the liquor world.” She is the architect of the innovation strategy which led to the most successful new innovation in Vodka in the US (Ketel One Botanicals) and her inno...

George began his career as a project manager for Google before cofounding the first on-demand mobile transportation booking technology, Taxi Magic (now known as Curb), two years before Uber was even created. His new company, Shift, is an online marketplace disrupting the car industry and going public via a SPAC. We talk about the journey of this $100M Founder from Immigrant to Entrepreneur, what a...

Wilson founded and leads Cyber NYC, an initiative by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, to strengthen the cyber-security innovation + investment ecosystem in New York. We talk about leveraging the intersection of startups, government, VCs, and academia to create thousands of jobs and why that strong “New Yorker” personality is perfect for a founder (resiliency to meet any challeng...

We have taken insights from past guests to help you understand how and why to build an innovation mindset at your company. Featuring Comcast NBC Universal, Mondelez, Patron, AFVentures, NBA2k, Rogue Women’s Fund and Twitch.

We have taken insights from past guests to answer why established business and large industries should partner with startups. Featuring Mastercard, The Clorox Company, CMAB, Microsoft, Paramount Pictures, Learfield IMG College, Next Ventures, and The Estee Lauder Companies.

Popspots operates Grocery TV, The largest digital advertising network in U.S. grocery. Their tech delivers AI enabled in-store advertising, out-of-stock management, and planogram compliance. What’s unique about Popspots is their use of AI to measure their audience and the value they add to the physical grocery stores, and grocery stores are not only an essential service but the center of our commu...

Jason Rathje, Major in the Air Force, aeronautical engineer and Director of AFVentures spent 3 years researching the intersection of entrepreneurship, innovation, and national security at Stanford. Now he is part of the team that implements novel initiatives to accelerate product-market fit between companies passionate about national security and Air Force users who need their revolutionary techno...

Holler is on a mission to make your texts, posts, and DMs more expressive by creating original content meant for messaging (think GIFs/fun animated stickers in places like LinkedIn and Venmo) and then recommending the most relevant ones at just the right moment. 2020 Most Innovative Company (Fast Co), Entrepreneur Magazine’s Most Daring Entrepreneur, Forbes 30 Under 30 -- Founder & CEO Travis...

Ted Schilowitz is the Futurist in Residence at Paramount Pictures/Viacom CBS, where he works with studio leadership and tech teams exploring new and emerging technologies. We explore XR, the acceleration caused by the pandemic and why large companies need to get curious about tomorrow. How do we consume content in 2030? Take a listen...

Amper is an artificial intelligence composer that allows you to create your own unique music instantly, tailored to any content, without any musical experience required. In fact, I used it to create our new podcast music. CEO Drew Silverstein and I talk about the fusion of music theory and AI. We discuss how you can unlock emotional intent through sonic branding and how to find your sound whether...

How can the tech tools of the most elite athletes help us perform better in our daily lives? Why should large companies partner with startups? Can sports transform culture? Mel Strong is the Managing Partner at Next Ventures, a VC fund investing in human performance via innovative health, sports and wellness companies. Mel began her investing career after 17 years at Nike where she held senior rol...

Normal Ain’t Working. CFO – Chief Failure Officer. Unrealistic Leaders Move Irreversibly. Storytelling Through Technology. These were just a few of the titles we considered after talking with Adrian Parker – Global VP of Patron, where he oversees all things marketing across 100 countries for the company Bacardi bought for $5b. Learn how Adrian leads and makes decision amidst ambiguity and an ever-...

When an Olympic Gold Medalist + Former UNICEF Chairman + Pediatric Nutritionist + VC with 3 Stanford Degrees get together to create a delicious kids nutritional shake. Winner of the Real California Milk Accelerator, Bears Nutrition, is supercharged milk to provide essential nutrients to help active kids grow. We welcome Adam Kreek: Olympic Gold Medalist and member of the Canadian Hall of Fame; Kev...

Why did Amazon buy Twitch for $970M in 2014, and why are the NFL, the Premier League and the biggest stars in music flocking to the platform today? Walker Jacobs, Chief Revenue Office of Twitch, tells us about the passion economy and why live, interactive and community-based content is the future. We also chat about selling new and different, why gaming is no longer niche, brand love, embracing in...

What’s next in food, grocery and beverages? Who are the next wave of makers and how Mark Johnson is building a community to give them the insights and services they need to thrive. Foodboro’s passionate micro-community of food and beverage innovators are connecting with each other to overcome challenges of scaling up and looking to disrupt yesterday’s CPG giants.

From immersive ocean worlds for adidas in Paris, to AR Home Shopping Experiences with LG in Korea, to slime dripping from YOUR ceiling during a Nickelodeon broadcast - Eyecandylab is augmenting our experiences for the better, and doing it in a way that is both accessible and scalable with our current devices. We talk about the metaverse, why we can’t Shazam our way to the second screen and what’s...

How do you launch 4 startups, amidst a global pandemic? How can a $26B business innovate, disrupt and find new ways to serve their consumers? Brigette Wolf, the Global Head of SnackFutures at Mondelez, talks with us about finding your pivot, doubling down on the distinct customer need that you want to fight for and how to cut through processes and layers with small experiments.

If you open your fridge, chances are you’ve Got Milk. No other product has the same level of mass acceptance - yet, there is a need to innovate to stay close with the ever-changing consumer. CMAB is one of the largest agricultural marketing boards in the US and we chat about their new startup competition The Real California Milk Snackcelerator and the value of new ideas, outside perspectives and t...

Erika has 10+ years of experience working in entrepreneurial new business and corporate innovation divisions for leading global media, beauty and CPG firms. As the Head of Strategic Partnerships for the Digital Technology and Innovation Group at Estee Lauder Companies Online, she fosters collaboration between emerging enterprises and large corporations, matching startup agility with corporate abil...

The storage industry was a real estate game, slicing up units like apartments and renting them – that is, until MakeSpace disrupted it with a customer-first convenience strategy. Now, after raising $150m and expanding to 31 markets, Co-Founder Rahul Gandhi is still flexing his innovation mindset to ensure they are the disruptors. We talk about risk-taking, the importance of convenience and re-imag...