The VentureFizz Podcast

If you are a Venture Capitalist, you are most likely looking for entrepreneurs who can identify problems ahead of the market, but of course not too-too early. And, you’re looking for founders who are uniquely qualified to solve those problems, plus build a world class company at scale. It’s a tall ask, but entrepreneurs like Andres are made for this. He’s a serial entrepreneur who loves hard tech....

Landing a job in venture capital is challenging and one of the main reasons why is based on the scarcity of positions available. This stat might be a bit old, but at one point, the number of professional athletes in the US was about equal to the number of VC positions. Pretty crazy when you paint the picture that way. To top it off, there’s no defined career path on how to get there and oftentimes...

Successful serial entrepreneurs are unique in their ability to see transformational shifts before they happen and then they ultimately build a company to meet this future demand. In Jon’s case, it started during his time at MIT when he saw an opportunity in the CAD industry to automate an engineer’s sketchbook. It led him to start his first company called Premise which was later acquired. The next...

2016 was a pivotal moment for VentureFizz and it was Greenhouse that helped us get to where we are today. We saw lots of companies adopting its ATS to help out with their recruiting initiatives and it was their open APIs which allowed us to scale our job board by pulling in jobs automatically through a feed. It was game changing for us. Historically, companies had to manually add their jobs to our...

The world of medical billing is incredibly complex and let’s face it, most times it’s a mystery from the consumer’s point of view. The descriptions of service provided are in codes and how to make payment is not simple. It was through a challenging medical billing experience with his wife where Florian saw firsthand how the process was broken. As a serial entrepreneur and former physician, the lig...

It was time. The insurance industry had been lagging in terms of its digital transformation. But, in recent years, lots of startups have accelerated a change in this market through the use of technology and innovative business models. Investors have certainly noticed the opportunity, as well. Crunchbase recently reported that VC firms have invested over $20B in Insurtech companies over the last th...

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but for some people… they were just born with the ability to recognize opportunities in the market that are ripe for disruption and let’s face it, some were just born with that plain old hustle and desire to succeed. Take Ryan, a successful 3X entrepreneur who started his first company at the age of 17, an action sports video production company that was acquir...

Ahhh… this episode takes me back. It takes me back to my childhood years in Hooksett, New Hampshire, hanging out with my buddies in the neighborhood trading baseball cards. I was a Red Sox fan and would collect cards of Jim Rice, Carl Yastremski, Dwight Evans, and lots of other Boston greats. I also collected baseball cards and memorabilia for Steve Garvey, the first baseman for the Los Angeles Do...

You hear about lots of venture firms who are working hard to build a strategy and network that will yield more investments with diverse founders. But for a firm like Mendoza Ventures, it’s rooted in their DNA… like literally, as it is both minority & woman owned and it’s the first LatinX founded venture fund on the east coast. As you would think, their portfolio has impressive diversity numbers. A...

Early to market… it can sometimes mean the kiss of death for a company. However, if you get it the timing right, it’s a competitive advantage and an opportunity to build a massive company. In this episode, we’ve got a great story about a company that was in this exact scenario, yet they executed, scaled and remain a pillar tech company in the industry. The company I’m talking about is Brightcove a...

Corey has an impressive background in terms of his career path and his many accomplishments as a leader, which we discuss in detail. But that is only part of the story. I was also very excited to talk with Corey about Rapid7’s Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiatives. The company has been very open about their goals and progress. In 2018, Rapid7 set a goal to have 50% of their workforce to be wo...

Much like cloud computing, open source technologies have changed the game. When I think about it, it’s unlikely that VentureFizz would exist if it wasn’t for open source software. There’s no way I could have gotten it off the ground if I had to purchase an expensive content management system. It took many years for open source to become commonplace and especially to the point where you could build...

When you think of the greatest athletes, like Serena Williams or Tom Brady, you are in awe of their success and the number of championships that they have won. In the business world, success is often measured by an exit - either an acquisition or an IPO and one could also argue that the IPO is many times the harder hill to climb. Well… when you look at Carol’s track record, it is extraordinary. Sh...

Payal is a Partner at .406 Ventures. She joined the firm almost 6 years ago and co-leads the digital health practice. Karthyn joined .406 Ventures this year as a Vice President and she is also aligned with the digital health sector. Needless to say, the healthcare industry has gone through radical transformation due to the pandemic and a lot of the technologies that support the industry have been...

Many successful entrepreneurs disrupt industries with innovative ideas, but how many can say their disruption actually helped create and jumpstart a whole industry that is massive. Chris has been involved in the cybersecurity industry since the beginning as a member of the elite hacker think tank in the 90’s called the L0pht, which went on to testify before the U.S. Senate about cybersecurity and...

A sign of a great entrepreneur is someone who has the drive, the hustle, and that unique ability to not only recognize opportunities where things can improve, but also the ability to follow through and take action to create something. This entrepreneurial trait for Shanel started at a young age, as she remembers selling her art work at family BBQs and it only continued to build from there. She lat...

What do these three things have in common: ESPN, the Olympics, and ABC News? Rob was an on-air contributor for all three. As you’ll learn from our interview, he has a very unique background in the media industry. Not only was he on-air, but he also worked in business development and in the investment arm of media companies as well, which is very rare in terms of working on both sides of the equati...

Peter has a tremendous track record of success as a CEO for fast growing tech companies and scaling them to a successful exit. He’s done it several times and Snyk is on pace to become another anchor tech company in the area. What’s interesting to note about Peter is the fact that it was a career pivot from a role as a Controller into tech sales that helped catapult his career into an executive lea...

Grant’s entrepreneurial experience started as a paperboy. He noticed that the real business model of newspaper companies was the ads. This triggered an idea that he could help small businesses with advertising too. Through the encouragement of his dad, Grant started cold calling and learned the great business lesson of what it’s like to get a bunch of “no’s” but when you finally land on that “yes”...

Imagine that you’ve worked your way into an executive leadership position with one of the top insurance companies where you are overseeing an organization of hundreds of people generating billions of dollars, yet you realize that you are a builder and there’s an opportunity to build a company around an idea. So what do you do? Do you stay at the safety net of the Fortune 500 company or do you take...

This is an exciting episode because Paul is my first repeat guest on the podcast! I interviewed him about 2.5 years ago for Episode 37 where we spent a lot of time talking about his background and all the details around KAYAK and Lola.com. This time around, we took a slightly different approach. We of course caught up on Lola.com, which as you may remember is focused on helping companies with busi...

Did you know that rowing works 86% of your muscles? It provides a full-body workout that puts less stress on your joints, yet it’s been an under-rated exercise in terms of popularity. Maybe that’s because of accessibility, as rowing on the water is not as easy to pull off as it is to run and cycle outside and let’s face it, the old style rowing machines in gyms were never really that appealing. Te...

It’s 2021 - Happy New Year to everyone! We are kicking off the new year with an amazing episode, as my guest is Paul Liberman, President, Global Technology and Products & Co-Founder of DraftKings. The story of DraftKings has all the twists and turns of a Hollywood movie. It has the classic beginning of three co-founders looking to radically transform an industry, but this story is not a linear pat...

This is episode #200...yes, we are at another milestone episode! Three years ago we kicked off The VentureFizz Podcast to bring you the amazing stories from leading entrepreneurs and investors. It’s been a blast and I want to say thank you to Alex, who made it happen initially, Dan, who is our podcast editor, and of course a special shout-out to all of our amazing guests! For Episode 200, I’m real...

"Let’s schedule some time to meet” is a common phrase that you’ll hear multiple times a day. Sounds simple, but it’s not, especially the more people who are involved. It starts an endless amount of back & forth to coordinate schedules. It’s a problem that affects everyone and there have been attempts to solve this problem with things like online scheduling tools, but no one has gotten it right. Th...