One the Come Up

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Hristo Tenchev. Tenchev, for my international listeners, is the CEO and founder of the company that probably makes your favorite video game - XS Software. Tenchev began his career when he was 18, creating a web-based video game that quickly went viral in Bulgaria. Pursuing his education at the Technical University of Sofia, Tenchev wanted to study computer...

I’m starting to lose count of the episodes, so I’ll ditch the tradition of saying it’s such and such number of episodes, and instead I’ll resort to saying it’s n and n+1 episodes. But then I’ll exhaust n and lose track of counting again, so I think I’ll just stop counting altogether ;) I was honored to be joined by Matthew Simmonds. Simmonds' career began at the University of Oxford, where he grad...

I was honored to be joined by Teasha Feldman-Fitzhum. Feldman-Fitzthum’s career began at MIT as a physics major. Originally intending to pursue graduate school, she pivoted to entrepreneurship after enrolling in MIT’s 13.366 entrepreneurship class, where she and her cofounder successfully launched EverVest. Originally known as Cardinal Winds, and a company a little bit beyond my understanding to e...

Kostapanos Miliaresis and I covered a lot of ground, so I suppose I’ll go in chronological order. Miliaresis' journey began in the Boy Scouts, where he first discovered a passion for volunteering. The idea of volunteering continued with him to Athens University of Economics and Business, where he was involved with AIESEC (an opportunity that brought him to Taiwan to teach for three months) and ser...

It was my fortune to be joined by Anton Toll Håkanson, the CEO and founder of DayCape. Toll Håkanson’s career began somewhere far away from entrepreneurship or user experience: scuba diving. After being a scuba diving instructor for a year, he decided to head off to Hyper Island, where he got his first taste of entrepreneurship, and where he developed his idea for DayCape. After completing his tim...

The first Dutchman on the Podcast!, Ferdinand Grapperhaus is the CEO of Nextsense, a company aimed at decarbonizing real estate. Grapperhaus’ career began at Delft University of Technology, where, when pursuing his MSc, he made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: a substance to be used in windows to convert natural light into energy. Recognizing the potential of this innovation, Grapperhaus and a co-f...

I was fortunate to share the time with Mr Matthew Rastovac. The former CEO of Respell (now acquired by Salesforce), his career began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Here, Mr Rastovac was co-president of Founders, the university’s entrepreneurship club, where he doubled the group’s budget and grew from 5 to 60 members. During this time, he also landed internships at NASA and Faceboo...

I was honored to be joined by Ms. Milagros Barsallo, who currently serves as the Outreach Director for the Denver Mayor’s Office. Her career began at Cornell University, where she studied Government and International Relations. After college, her first role was as a bilingual third and fourth grade teacher through Teach For America in Colorado, working to support underserved students. Afterwards,...

I was fortunate to be joined by Mr Peter Hazlehurst. The CEO and founder of Synctera, a platform that provides the technology infrastructure, compliance tools, and banking partner connections to enable FinTech companies and other businesses to build and launch financial products like bank accounts, debit cards, and lending services. Originally from Australia, Mr Hazlehurst landed in North Carolina...

I had the fortune of speaking with Mrs Karoliina Kauhanen – twice. Unfortunately (or, maybe, fortunately) the first go around had issues with the recording (and prompted new measures on my part), so I had the pleasure of a second interview. Mrs Kauhanen joined me all the way from Finland, where her career began at Humak University of Applied Sciences and the University of the Arts Helsinki, where...

The Podcast is back!! After a little hiatus (Thank you AP Exams ;), I was excited to debut the podcast again with Mr Steel! Starting his career at UCLA, where he majored in Sociology, Mr Steel started his first company (GoGuardian) in a different direction. After his friend’s backpack was stolen (and in it was his personal computer), Mr Steel decided to create a Chromebook tracker to recover the d...

Joining me all the way from Hong Kong, as my first guest from Asia Forbes, I was excited to have Mr Youssef El Kaddioui as my guest. The CEO and Founder of Scalelab, a venture-building studio and lead generation agency based out of Hong Kong, Mr Youssef began his career at Rouen Business School. Here he acquired his Masters degree, before going to Zhejiang University and Wharton to further his stu...

I was honored to have Mr Ernest Owens as my guest. What’s to say about him – what’s not to say about him? –  where to even start – where will it end? – fortunately the story’s been given to me, for I’m no writer, myself. A Renaissance Man is the only character in my story, but I have quite the story to tell. I suppose the best way to tell a story is to tell it from the beginning – for that’s how i...

For episode number 20 – wow! That’s a lot of episodes – I was honored to have Ms. Tsolova as my guest – the CEO and Founder of JAMBA, a company that provides educational and employment opportunities for those with disabilities in Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Starting in high school where she volunteered at an orphanage, Ms Tsolova has always had a passion for meaningful causes. She obtained her...

I was joined by Ms Stephanie Michelsen – the CEO and Founder of Jellatech, a biotechnology company based out of Raleigh, North Carolina that seeks to create highly valuable proteins in a scalable, efficient, and sustainable way. Her career began in Denmark, where she attended the University of Copenhagen, and then the University of Denmark. It was also during this time that she partook in a schola...

For the 18th – or maybe 17th, it’s starting to get hard to count – episode, I was fortunate to have Professor Amaury Hayat as my guest. A researcher in mathematics at Ecole de Pont, I’m sure he could help me keep track of my episode numbers – that, and a little bit more. His academic career began in Classe Preparatoire at Lycée Sainte-Geneviève, before he continued on to obtain his PHD from Sorb...

I was excited to have Ms Chloë Downes as my guest. The CEO and Founder of SHFT, an influencer talent management agency based in the UK, she seeks to bring genuine inclusivity to an industry of smoke and mirrors. While many companies have an inclusive work culture on paper, Ms Chloe has seen firsthand that doesn’t always translate to the real world. After graduating from Bournemouth University, she...

It was a pleasure to have Mr Richman Neumann as my guest. An architect, a businessman, an acapella singer, a mathematician, a man of many hats – some have been led to call him a human podcast. Mr Neumann got his start at Carnegie Mellon University where he studied architecture – the art of “frozen music” that perfectly blended his interests in math and design. Upon graduating in 2013, he worked fo...

I was excited to have Mr Valentin Meaux as my guest, for his first podcast experience!! The Co-Founder and Managing partner of Raisers Partners, a Fundraising/M&A advisory firm for African startups, they’re based out of Paris, France. Mr Meaux started his career in a program called Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles, where students go through 2 years of intense preparatory school, until...

I was honored to have Ms Alexia Cooper as my guest. The Senior VP of One Solar, she used to be the CEO of Bell Solar until it was acquired. Starting her career at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, she started in air conditioning before moving to Bell Electrical. Initially a sales representative, before buying the owner out, she quickly grew the company and pivoted to residential solar installat...

Unlucky 13 wasn’t unlucky at all – I was fortunate to have Mr Liam White as my guest. CEO and Co-Founder of Dr Will’s, a condiment and beverage brand centered in the UK that focuses on a healthier – but still great tasting – alternative to traditional condiment brands such as Heinz, Hellman’s, etc. Starting his career at the University of Bristol, and landing a job at Morgan Stanley as an investme...

I was excited to have as my guest Mr Alexander Harmsen. The CEO and Founder of Global Predictions, their flagship model is portfolio pilot, your personal AI financial advisor. A Loran Scholar, Mr Harsem decided to attend University of British Columbia for his degree in engineering physics. After graduating in 2015, he started his first company Iris Automation, an AI tech company that specialized i...

Entering into the double digits now, a big milestone for the podcast, what better way to celebrate than to have a big man with an even bigger dream: Mr Vitels, with Earth Brands, and his goal to take down the plastic, red solo cup that plagues college campuses across the nation. Mr Vitels and his Co-Founder started this company in 2021 in his junior year at Williams College, where they were star v...

Joining me all the way from Paris, for the eleventh episode, is Mr Oscar Walter. The co-founder and CTO of Stockly, a retail technology company that creates a network of shared inventories for partners to sell items they don’t have in stock. The company was conceived in 2016, albeit slightly differently, and officially launched in 2018, a time in which they were a part of the Techstars accelerator...

I was honored to have Ms Banerjee as my guest. The CEO and Founder of Clear: Social Skincare –  a free skin care routine tracking app – Ms Banerjee has always had one goal in mind: to bring a positive value to the world. A never ending pursuit, it started from the culture shock she experienced moving to India from the UK. There, she saw the dual realities of life: luxury and poverty. Questioning w...