What Fuels You

Krish Ramineni is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes meetings. Named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Krish graduated from UPenn. He was one of the youngest Product Managers at Microsoft, leading projects in customer voice and growth. He has guest lectured at Stanford on machine learning and holds patents in workflow automation...

Raquel Barrett is a dynamic entrepreneur and leader known for her expertise in e-commerce, technology, and operations. As one of the co-founders of FUNBOY, a leading leisure and lifestyle brand, Raquel has played a pivotal role in shaping the brand's success. Driven by an innate passion for problem solving and a keen understanding of consumer behavior, Raquel has always been at the forefront of ad...

Alessya Visnjic is the CEO of  WhyLabs , the AI Observability company building tools that power robust and responsible AI deployment. Prior to WhyLabs, Alessya was a CTO-in-residence at the Allen Institute for AI, where she evaluated commercial potential for the latest AI research. Earlier, Alessya spent 9 years at Amazon leading ML initiatives, including forecasting and data science platforms. Al...

Gaurav Oberoi is the CEO and co-founder of Lexion. He started his career as an engineer at Amazon, before moving on to found and sell two startups (BillMonk, and Precision Polling), and build a $20M+ ARR business from $0 as a VP of Product at SurveyMonkey. Gaurav co-founded Lexion as the first EIR at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He thrives on building products that customers lo...

John Case brings nearly three decades of industry leadership in cloud services, software product management, marketing, partner sales, digital promotion, and brand development to his role as CEO of Acumatica. Before joining Acumatica, John served as president and CEO of Unify Square, a leading provider of operations and performance management software and cloud-managed services. He also spent 16 y...

Walter Berger currently serves as President and Co-CEO as well as a director of Kymeta Corporation. Under his leadership, the company successfully released its second-generation product and broadband service, improving performance through an integrated WAN device providing seamless satellite and cellular communications, accelerating Kymeta's global market penetration. Walter has served on several...

Hope Cochran is currently a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. Previously, she served as the CFO of King Digital, the creators of Candy Crush. At King, she not only led the company through an IPO and acquisition to Activision but also became a rockstar Candy Crush player. Prior to that she was the CFO of Clearwire through its sale to Sprint in 2013 and was the founder of her own company,...

Derek Streat is the Co-founder and CEO of DexCare, a data-driven intelligence company that makes healthcare access better for everyone. He is an accomplished healthcare technology entrepreneur and executive, having co-founded and/or led six venture-backed companies including three in health tech and four acquired by public companies. Prior to joining Providence as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence to c...

Kris Engskov is the Co-Founder & CEO of Rippl, a venture-backed start-up redefining the next generation of mental health for seniors. Leveraging a value-based approach, disruptive technology, and a relentless focus on empowering its clinicians, Rippl is pioneering a new care model to dramatically expand access to high-quality, wrap-around mental and behavioral healthcare for seniors, their fam...

Mo Afshar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pipe17 - Bringing the power of modern enterprise software to the e-commerce marketplace. Previously, he was CEO of Spoken Communications which was acquired by Avaya and served in various positions at Oracle. Over his fourteen years at Oracle, he built and managed multi-billion-dollar businesses. Mo is an advisor to several venture and private equity firms. He...

Grant Ries is the CEO of Deep Sync, a leading data and technology company in the marketing industry. Before Deep Sync, Grant was a member of the executive leadership team at Liveramp, where he continues serving as a strategic advisor. During his time at the company, he held several roles, including CEO of Liveramp B2B, as well as running the following businesses: Data, Marketplace, Advanced TV, an...

In this episode of the What Fuels You Podcast, Shauna talks with T.A. McCann, managing director at Pioneer Square Labs, a startup studio and venture capital firm. They discuss T.A.'s background in sailing, winning the America’s Cup , swimming, his successful career in startups, and his tips for staying healthy and productive. This episode covers topics such as entrepreneurship, validation of start...

Craig Unger is the Founder and CEO of Hyperproof, a security assurance and compliance operations platform transforming the way you manage and do the work. Craig is an expert in building technology businesses and teams. Prior to founding Hyperproof, Craig founded Azuqua and was a leader at Microsoft where he led the development of Microsoft Dynamics and Access. He has 30 years of experience buildin...

Stephanie Sprangers is the Founder and CEO of Glamhive, the online personal styling service that brings expert personal stylists and makeup artists - recruited directly from Hollywood and Instagram - to everyone. Stephanie is a lifetime style-seeker and tech executive turned entrepreneur. With vast experience in the affiliate marketing and digital rewards space, she launched Glamhive as a place fo...

Nicole Alvino is the Founder and CEO of Firstup, a leading enterprise SaaS company in workforce engagement and intelligence. She is a passionate entrepreneur making millions of global employees more supported and productive and enterprise customers – including 40 of the Fortune 100 – more agile with workforce intelligence. Previously, was the Founder and CEO of Dermalounge and started her career a...

Dave Cole is the CEO and Co-Founder of Open Raven, a Kleiner Perkins-backed post-series B company focused on reimagining data security for the modern era. He also started the Security Voices podcast as a sponsorless show focused on highlighting the diverse people and perspectives in cybersecurity. Dave’s fingerprints are visible across the cybersecurity industry from his 26 years of working as a l...

Katherine Sizov is the CEO and Co-Founder of Strella, a biosensing hardware and software company that provides data to optimize the produce supply chain and decrease losses due to food waste. She started the company when she read that 40% of food was wasted before being consumed. Now, Strella has helped Washington state apple and pear growers organize their inventory based on shelf life to reduce...

Dr. Grin Lord is a clinical psychologist and AI empathy innovator. She is the founder/CEO of mpathic.ai - AI empathy at scale -  and of Therapists in Tech, a collaborative of 3k+ digital mental health experts who are defining the digital mental health revolution together. Grin was previously the Chief Clinical Officer of Lyssn.io, a Clinical Product Psychologist at Youper.ai, and a Research Scient...

Dr. Daniela Braga is the Founder and CEO of Defined.ai, one of the fastest-growing startups in the AI space. She has been the recipient of several awards, including the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Pacific Northwest 2020 Award, #27 Deloitte Fast 500 2020 (#1 in the Pacific Northwest region); #27 in Inc.5000 in 2020, and Goldman Sachs Most Intriguing 100 Entrepreneurs in 2021. She is a member o...

John DeFeo is the President and CEO of Rapid NanoSensor, Inc and President of Venture Advisors, LLC. Previously, he served as the Chairman, President, and CEO of CoCo Communications. John is a seven-time CEO with more than 40 years of leadership experience in strategic planning, marketing and sales, customer care, six-sigma, lean manufacturing, and product & business development. His experienc...

Vishal Sunak is the Founder and CEO of LinkSquares, the company behind the fastest-growing AI-powered contracting platform for legal teams. LinkSquares is trusted by more than 800 legal teams at mid-to-large companies, including Commvault, Fitbit, and Wayfair, to move their businesses forward faster. Vishal was named to Boston Business Journal’s 2022 40 Under 40 list, honoring the Boston area’s yo...

Allison Arzeno is the CEO of Assurance, which helps people choose the best insurance products for themselves. As CEO, Allison leads the company’s strategy to scale and drive growth while staying true to its original mission of building a better insurance solution for the mass market. Allison joined Assurance in 2017 as a chief data scientist, then became president in 2020 and CEO in 2021. She is p...

Manik Suri is the Founder and CEO of Therma, a technology startup whose mission is to help protect our food, health, and planet. Therma builds smart cooling technologies to reduce emissions and improve grid resilience of distributed energy resources through refrigeration to help power the grid across food and healthcare industries. Manik is an expert on climate and refrigeration and has been speak...

Kristen Bauer is the CEO of Laird Norton Wealth Management (LNWM) and has more than two decades of experience in private wealth management, financial services, and business management. Before joining LNWM, Kristen was a senior leader at Tiedemann Advisors serving as Managing Director for the Pacific Northwest. She also served as CFO, Chief Business Development Officer, Chief Client Service Officer...

Kirill Makharinsky is the Founder and CEO of Enki, the company that helps teams with adoption of business intelligence and data tools. Previously, he co-founded Emerging Travel Group (including the brands RateHawk & ZenHotels) a profitable OTA with net annual revenues of over $100M, and Quid, a leading research and analysis tool for strategy teams with revenues of over $50M. In addition to his...