What Fuels You

Clayton Lewis was one of the youngest Chiefs of Staff on Capitol Hill before he pivoted to the private sector at age 30. Since then, he’s helped take two companies public and was General Partner at Maveron for over a decade. His most recent company, Arivale, had several successful years and raised over $50 million before it closed down earlier this year. Clayton discusses his path into polit...

Ben Gilbert’s had the entrepreneurial bug since he was young, starting with building his high school website and developing apps in his college dorm room. Since then, Ben has worked at several incredible startups, become Co-founder of Pioneer Square Labs, Co-host for popular venture capital podcast, Acquired, and was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017. Ben attributes much of his su...

Henry Albrecht, CEO of Limeade, founded the software company that elevates the employee experience and helps build great places to work in 2006. His time at Intuit ignited the idea that if they could build a system that helps you measurably improve your financial well-being, then there should be a software system that can measurably improve your overall well-being. On this episode, Henry discusses...

Mia Lewin, three-time founder, started Spruce Up in 2018 to provide a new personalized way to shop for home furnishings and decor and spruce up any space in your home. Mia had previous success in the design space with another startup, Design Story, as well as experience in venture capital and investment banking. Mia shares details on her experience growing up in Finland, her passion for Scandinavi...

After a decade in security engineering, Bill Shihara co-founded the premier U.S.-based blockchain platform, Bittrex, in 2014. In this episode, Bill reflects on his time at Microsoft and Blackberry and the impact each of those companies have had on his career. He discusses the importance of recognizing when you’re no longer growing at a company, making security a priority from the start of bu...

Jeremy Lott talks about his experience growing up in a family-owned business since birth. SanMar, the largest supplier of apparel to the imprinted sportswear and promotional products market, was started by his dad back in 1971. Jeremy, now President, always wanted to work in the business, but wanted to prove himself successful first. He did just that through his career in investment banking and by...

Tim Porter, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, discusses how the venture capital firm operates, what a day in the life of a VC looks like, what he looks for in a founder, and funding female founders. Prior to joining Madrona in 2006, Tim attended MIT and Stanford Business School and worked at Teledesic and Microsoft. His passion about very early stage companies makes him a perfect fit for...

Karl Siebrecht, Co-founder and CEO of FLEXE, shares how he went from being a Diving Officer in the U.S. Navy to becoming a serial entrepreneur. Prior to co-founding FLEXE, Karl was the President at aQuantive and the President and CEO of AdReady. Following a tenure in Ad Tech, a discussion among friends sparked the idea for creating FLEXE, the on-demand warehousing, fulfillment and logistics compan...

Daniela Luzi Tudor co-founded WEconnect Health Management in 2014 to help support those in recovery from substance use disorder (addiction). Daniela was born in Romania and lived in Germany and Portugal before coming to the United States. As a child, she always excelled academically and went on to University of Washington before starting another company, SoundStrokes Art, in Los Angeles. Daniela t...

Michael is the CEO of Gen Next, an eclectic community of influential and purposeful leaders committed to addressing the most critical issues facing future generations. He pioneered a high impact venture philanthropy model to counter domestic terrorism, which has been featured at the White House and across Wired, Bloomberg, Axios, ABC News and more. Michael talks about a childhood visit t...

Mitch Gold, Co-founder, Executive Chairman and CEO of Alpine Immune Sciences and Managing Partner of Alpine BioVentures, talks about his lifelong commitment to helping patients with cancer, which stems from the loss of his mother when he was just four years old. Prior to his work at Alpine where they’re creating therapies to treat cancer and autoimmune disease, Mitch was the CEO of Dendreon,...

Heather Rogers, co-owner of Modern Dermatology and the Founder of Doctor Rogers RESTORE shares everything from her childhood days of getting bullied to what products everyone should be using on their skin. Heather’s knowledge on dermatology is unmatched. She opened Modern Dermatology in 2015 and has dedicated her work life to making sure she provides the best care to her patients. While...

Navigating Cancer’s Founder and President, Gena Cook, has nearly 30 years of experience directly working to help cancer patients. Gena first got started in the healthcare industry in pharmaceutical sales and took increasing roles until she became an accidental entrepreneur in 2008. Her company, Navigating Cancer, now supports over a million patients and thousands of cancer care providers nat...

Ian Morris, the CEO of Likewise, talks about the exciting things that he and his team are building at Likewise to help all of us get better recommendations about what to watch, read, and experience next. Before Likewise, Ian spent 7 years at Microsoft where he helped create and went on to lead Microsoft HomeAdvisor. He then served 10 years as the CEO of Market Leader, the real estate software lead...

Colette Courtion has founded three venture-backed consumer health and beauty related startups. During this episode, Colette takes us through her journey from a quiet child to a leader and innovator. She shares the lessons she learned while working at Starbucks for eight years, how she started Calidora Skin Clinics, and what ultimately made her decide to sell it. In the midst of growing her second...

Xiao Wang talks about his own family’s process of immigrating to the United States from China and how it influenced him to start his company, Boundless Immigration. Before Boundless, Xiao received degrees from both Stanford and Harvard Universities and worked for McKinsey, the New York City Department of Education, and Amazon. With the help of Pioneer Square Labs, Xiao decided to l...

Adina Mangubat co-founded her company at age 22. Spiral Genetics, a leader in the genomics analysis industry, makes software to compare large populations of whole human genomes. They closed a multi-million-dollar funding round in 2013 and were acquired in 2017. Earlier this year, Spiral Genetics left their parent company and re-launched by partnering with Microsoft to analyze the genomes of people...

Co-founder of Maveron, Dan Levitan, discusses his extensive careers in both investment banking and venture capital. At age 40, Dan pivoted his career by uprooting his life in New York City, moving to Seattle, and starting Maveron with former Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz. Through his venture capital firm, Dan is focused on helping build and monetize consumer brands. Some of the companies in his po...

Heather Redman, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Flying Fish Ventures, shares her expertise on early stage startups and investing. Heather admittedly has been affected by imposter syndrome and is inherently an introvert. She reflects on growing up in communes, how her childhood has influenced her to be an out of the box thinker, and her experience attending Reed College and Stanford Law School....

Four-time Founder, CEO and investor, Dan Shapiro, shares the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial journey thus far. Though he humbly attributes much of his success to privilege, Dan has worked hard, taken risks and followed an unconventional career path that has led him to become a board game inventor, author and record holder for the most backed 30-day crowdfunding campaign. Today, Dan is focused...

Executive performance coach, Teri Citterman interviewed Fuel Talent’s CEO for the first episode of the What Fuels You podcast. Now, Shauna turns the tables and interviews Teri. Teri is the author of From the CEO’s Perspective . During this episode, Teri shares valuable information on the type of leaders who work with her. She talks about the one trait she believes every leader must hav...

Sharelle Klaus founded DRY Soda Co. in 2005 from her kitchen, noting she’s had an entrepreneurial curiosity from the time she was little. While nursing her fourth child, she was frustrated that there wasn’t a sophisticated non-alcoholic beverage that wasn’t overly sweet or made with artificial flavors, so she decided to create her own. DRY is now in over 9,000 stores and is one o...

Andy Liu, Partner at Unlock Venture Partners, knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age. Andy started two companies with his Co-Founder David Niu, who he met while getting his MBA at Wharton. Always intrigued by angel investing, Andy decided to dip his toes in after both NetConversions and BuddyTV.com had successful exits. Today, Andy is an investor in nearly 100 companies. He started...

Rahul Sood started his first company when he was just 17 years old. VoodooPC went on to sell to HP in 2006, where he spent four years as their CTO. Rahul then spent a few years at Microsoft, where he says he “learned everything and got a crash course in how the best leaders are created.” In 2014, he started his current company, Unikrn, an esports betting and news company that’s b...

Liz Dunn started Dunn & Hobbes, her real estate development company, in 1998 after pivoting from her career as a Software Engineer at Microsoft. Over the last 20 years, she’s created several developments that push the envelope of design while maintaining the character and uniqueness of the buildings and neighborhoods where she works. Much of Liz’s inspiration comes from the time sh...