The VentureFizz Podcast

Episode 373 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Jeff Bussgang, General Partner at Flybridge. Jeff has accomplished so much throughout his career. I’m sure lots of people probably know him best as a Venture Capitalist and Professor at Harvard Business School. But... you might not know the details about his startup career prior to Flybridge which I was really excited to dig into because he played a...

Episode 372 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Florian Hillen, CEO & Founder of VideaHealth. It goes without saying that AI is going to transform pretty much every industry, but I think there is such a unique opportunity in healthcare as the benefits are hopefully going to be extraordinary. The tricky thing about building a company in healthcare is that it’s heavily regulated industry, so you nee...

Episode 371 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Melissa Withers, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of RevUp Capital. As an entrepreneur, are you thinking about your capital stack? Meaning, how are you going about funding your company? There are lots of options… you could bootstrap, raise money from friends & family, grants, and of course, raise venture capital which is the most discussed option in the...

Episode 370 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Toshit Panigrahi, Co-Founder & CEO and Olivia Joslin, Co-Founder & COO of TollBit. There are going to be so many amazing benefits and advancements that are a result of the platform shift to AI. However, in this new world, many industries will need to go through radical transformation and the publishing industry is right in that mix. We even see some...

Episode 369 of The @Venturefizz Podcast features Krenar Komoni, CEO & Founder of Tive. The question: “What led you down the path to start this company?” is always interesting, as you never know what ultimately inspired the entrepreneur. It could be years of experience working in an industry, maybe it is a personal experience, or it could be a tremendous amount of research to find a problem that’s...

Episode 368 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Matthias Hofmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Eyebot. I met Matthias and Jack, Eyebot’s Co-Founder & CTO at a pre-party for TechCrunch’s Early Stage event in Boston a couple of years ago. It was one of those meetings that when someone describes their product - an AI powered kiosk that could conduct vision tests in 90 seconds… it sounded like something out of...

Episode 367 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Vivjan Myrto, Founder & Managing Partner at Hyperplane. Why Boston Be The Star of the AI Revolution - this is the title of an article that Zach Winn wrote for VentureFizz seven years ago. It talks about the history of AI in the Boston area including Marvin Minksy’s first neural net machine back in 1951, the amazing academic institutions, plus the sta...

Episode #366 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Graham Brooks, Partner at .406 Ventures. “Data is the new oil” - it’s a slogan that you hear everywhere these days… it’s on TV commercials, print ads, LinkedIn posts… but this is not a new trend or revelation for Graham. His interest in data goes back to his first job out of college and his passion for data has followed him throughout his career, in...

Episode 365 of The VentureFizz Podcast features John Harthorne, Founder & Managing Director of Two Lanterns Venture Capital and Founder and decade-long CEO of MassChallenge. A career is a body of work. It doesn’t have to be a straight line… it can take twists and turns… yon can switch industries… you can reinvent yourself… and it should be fulfilling. As you’ll learn from John’s background, he had...

Episode #364 of The VentureFizz Podcast features John Andrews, Co-Founder & CEO of Cimulate. There is a wave of entrepreneurs who are uniquely qualified to build a pillar tech company in the Boston tech ecosystem while leveraging the platform shift to AI. Not only is John one of them, but he is also an alum of the very successful crew from Endeca. John and his co-founder, Vivek Farias, are tacklin...

Episode 363 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Jay Batson, Acquia Co-Founder & Founding CEO, serial entrepreneur, investor, and mentor. Lots of people like to make predictions, especially around this time of the year. Few are right. Jay on the other hand made some bold predictions about the future in a Forrester report that he published back in 1995 called Beyond Internet Gaga and it is pretty re...

Episode 362 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Alice Pomponio, Managing Director at BrightEdge, the investing arm of the American Cancer Society. Venture capital and private equity investors are all working on meaningful initiatives in terms of building great companies with the hope of gaining a meaningful return for investors. However, the role that Alice plays in the world of investing into sta...

Episode 361 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Phil Pergola, CEO at CloudZero. Phil has a tremendous track record and we talk about a lot of great companies that he’s helped build throughout his career, but I need to highlight one of these companies in this intro and that is BladeLogic and the lasting impact the company has made. If you’ve ever read the famous startup book by Ben Horowitz called...

Episode 360 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Mike Troiano, Partner at G20 Ventures. When I think of Mike, I think of a master marketer, a branding guru, and an amazing storyteller. As we start our conversation we discuss the importance of these traits as it relates to entrepreneurs. The importance of storytelling and brand building is often overlooked by entrepreneurs. Yet, it is such a critica...

Episode 359 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO of Sincere. Boston has this legacy reputation that you can’t build consumer companies in the area, yet there are so many great companies that have scaled like Wayfair, DraftKings, iRobot, SimpliSafe, and so… so… many more. Plus, don’t get me started on how many brands, especially footwear, are located here. Anyway, Sincere...

Episode 358 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Simon Taylor, Founder & CEO of HYCU. One of the things that I love about this podcast is hearing the stories of entrepreneurs and the ambitious moves they make to build their companies. For example, last week’s interview with Brian Liu was a great example where he and his Co-Founder cold called and got the most recognizable lawyer on the planet - tha...

Episode 357 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Brian Liu, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of companies like LegalZoom, BizCounsel, & Overture. Lots of the best ideas come from experience within your own industry and it was Brian and his co-founder, Brian Lee (who has since gone on to be a co-founder of ShoeDazzle and The Honest Company) who both had experience in the law industry and saw an in...

Episode 356 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Erika Ebbel Angle and Colin Angle. I’ve had co-founders on my podcast in the past but it is very rare that I have a married couple and it is very hard not to use the phrase power-couple of this one. Having both Erika and Colin on the podcast was awesome, as we were able to dig into both of their background stories and professional journeys. If you ar...

Episode 355 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Maitland-Lewis, Director of Startup Banking & Founder Success at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and yes, this episode is also sponsored by SVB. Ben and I go way back. His previous company, Pretty Instant, had a long-standing relationship with VentureFizz. This Y-Combinator company was an on-demand photography marketplace that did all of our office tou...

Episode 354 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Paul Morville, Co-Founder & CEO of Parrot AI. This episode was recorded live at Startup Boston Week at Suffolk University. I recorded two episodes at this year’s event, so stay tuned for the second episode in a couple of weeks. Paul is a serial entrepreneur and as you’ll hear from our podcast, he is very successful but likes to fly under the radar. C...

Episode 353 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Giuseppe Stuto, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of 186 Ventures. Did you know that the venture capital industry originated in Boston back in 1946 with the founding of American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) which backed Digital Equipment Corporation and saw a 1200X return when the company went public. Since then, Boston has been very fortu...

Episode 352 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Mark Ghermezian and Manisha Shah, Founder of Tildei. Mark is the Founder and General Partner of m]x[v Capital and he’s also the CEO of two companies that have spun out of his firm, that being Tildei and Gynger. Mark has been an entrepreneur pretty much his entire life and he shares lots of fun and interesting stories of these ventures, including the...

Episode 351 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Meredith McPherron, CEO & Managing Partner at Drive by DraftKings. Legalized sports betting, NIL, transfer portals, college conference re-alignment, streaming, pitch clocks, new kickoffs, the explosion of pickelball, and so much more, there is no denying it, the sports industry is going through a rapid amount of transformation. But the number one are...

Episode 350 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Steve Papa, serial entrepreneur, mentor, and investor. It is time for another milestone episode and I couldn’t be more excited about this interview. Steve has accomplished so much throughout his career, so let’s just dive in. In this interview you are going to hear lots of amazing stories like: * Steve’s background and how he got his career started i...

Episode 349 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Chris Gardner, Partner at Underscore VC. One time, could be luck. Two times, ok… maybe you are on to something… but in the case of Chris, he has been part of several acquisitions, so there is something deeply there in terms of his ability to pick the right company to join or company to help co-found. There is no denying it, based on his track record...