The Top Entrepreneurs In Money, Marketing, Business And Life

Martin Garcia. He’s the CEO and founder of FLYX.Systems. He’s also a mechatronics engineer and co-founder of Ilumexico, a solar power lighting company for rural communities in Mexico. He’s got an MSc in drone design at University of Southampton and is an alumni of Singularity University at NASA Ames California, USA and later, a teaching fellow for space and robotics. FLYX.Systems is a company that develops technology for industrial UAVs that aim to improve the productivity of many industries. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Noun Project How many hours of sleep do you get? — About 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Martin would tell himself to finish every project he started, then move on to the next one   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Martin to the show 02:17 – FLYX.Systems develops technology that encompasses both hardware and software algorithms 02:33 – There are 3 UA

Eric Min. He’s the CEO and founder of a company called Zwift.com. Eric is a tech entrepreneur, a lifelong cyclist and is now spreading fitness through virtualization and gamification. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Max Levchin Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Taking risks earlier”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:47 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show 02:11 – Zwift is creating a virtual space where cyclists can interact with each other in real time 02:31 – Eric is trying to solve one of the most common problems of cyclists 03:26 – Zwift is a pure SaaS company 03:29 – Zwift charges $10 a month 03:36 – “We’re an asset-like company” 03:38 – Zwift works with partners who have all the different equipment available in the market 04:08 – The most basic setup to use Zwift is an iPad; a trainer that can be attached to your traditional bike to make it statio

BJ Lackland. He has spent over 15 years as an investor in startups. As an investor, he’s been in VC and Angel and is now the CEO of Lighter Capital, where he oversees over 200 alternative investments in early stage tech companies. As an executive, he’s been on the executive team of 3 companies including CFO of a public tech company called Power Efficiency Corp. He’s raised and uploaded over $150M worth of capital. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Cirrus How many hours of sleep do you get? — 4-5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Just keep seeking”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:20 – Nathan introduces BJ to the show 02:05 – BJ was at VC in the early 2000s for 5 years and focused on energy technology 02:58 – Lighter Capital is a fintech company that revolutionized as a startup finance 03:06 – They are using technology to improve entrepreneurs’ access to capital 03:14 – Lighter Capital’s model 03

Khaled Naim. He’s the CEO and co-founder of the company called Onfleet, a software company that makes it easy for businesses to manage local delivery operations. He holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and studied computer engineering at The University of Michigan. He grew up between London and Dubai. He’s currently residing in San Francisco. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Venture Deals What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Gusto How many hours of sleep do you get? — 7-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Khaled would tell himself to do something that he’s really passionate about   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:14 – Nathan introduces Khaled to the show 01:47 – Onfleet is a B2B software product that helps delivery companies manage and analyze their local delivery operations 02:18 – Onfleet provides apps for drivers, dispatching dashboards for the dispatchers, analytics and write-up optimizations and algorithms 02:29 – Onfleet ch

Peter Kortenhoeven. He’s a creative person with a great deal of experience in the gaming industry. He started after graduation at the Academy of Arts as an animator at Coded Illusions. He became a lead animator at Triumph Studios shortly afterwards. One of his key successes has been the successful Overlord series. As lead artist, he worked on many different, yet, unreleased games. From a need to gain more business experience, he decided to focus on applied games. He became an art director at Bright Alley and later on at Ranj. During his period within the serious gaming industry, Peter kept working on small game projects during his spare time. One of those projects, Pillow Willow, helped him start his first company, Pillow Willow VR Studios. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Story of Whole Disney What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Trello How many hours of sleep do you get? — 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take it easy and make sure you focus o

David Barrett. He started programming at the early age of 6 and has been inspired to become an expense reporter ever since. He attended the University of Michigan where he worked in a virtual reality lab before moving to Texas to write a 3D graphic engine for the industry. Then, he moved to California to join a name that is probably familiar to many of you, Travis Kalanick, in building a peer-to-peer file transport technology called, Red Swoosh, which was acquired by Akamai in 2007. In 2008, David left that company to start Expensify—where he is today—and he’s trying to figure out the world’s frustrations, one expense report at a time. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Innovator’s Dilemma What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick Favorite online tool? — G Suite How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I had dropped out of college”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:13 – Nathan introduces David to the show 02:36 – David was worki

Dale Beaumont. He’s an award winning technology entrepreneur, international speaker and author of 16 best-selling books. He started his first business at age 19 and has been building companies ever since. One of those companies is now a multi-million dollar enterprise which enabled Dale to become an investor, philanthropist, and has given him the opportunity to set foot in over 70 countries. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Seven-Day Weekend What CEO do you follow? – Mark Zuckerberg Favorite online tool? — Voxer How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Dale would tell himself to really have fun and just enjoy the journey   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Dale to the show 02:00 – Dale’s first book was published in 2001 02:23 – Dale published a total of 16 books and sold 250K copies 02:26 – All of the books that Dale published were on best-seller list in Australia 02:42 – A best-seller book in Australia sells 5K co

Maria Gotsch. She’s the president and CEO at the Partnership Fund for New York City, which is the investment arm of the Partnership for New York City. In addition to leading the funds operations, Maria has spearheaded the creation and operation of a number of fund strategic initiatives including The Fintech Innovation Lab. Prior to joining the fund in 1999, Maria was a managing director at a company that is now part of Deutsche Bank, providing strategic and financial advice related to mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and the development of business strategies. Maria worked for LaSalle Partners in the New York area and Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, in both New York and London. She graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Wellesley College. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – “A book on the Iranian negotiations with the US around the treaty” What CEO do you follow? – Henry Kravis Favorite online tool? — MyCity Bike app How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 and a half If y

Gaurav Dhillon. He’s an early investor in a company called SnapLogic. He joined in 2009, when he saw the potential of how companies integrate applications data and devices for digital business. He spearheaded SnapLogic’s rapid growth and overseas strategies, products, and operations. He’s previously the co-founder and CEO of Informatica. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Power of Habit What CEO do you follow? – Andy Grove Favorite online tool? — Gmail How many hours of sleep do you get? — Close to 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish he knew more that opportunity knocks often”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Gaurav to the show 02:04 – Gaurav and his co-founder had a $75K SBA grant when they built Informatica 02:25 – They have raised a total of $13.5M 02:57 – “11-12 years is a long time and it’s time to go” 03:32 – Gaurav is a company builder 03:47 – When Gaurav did an IPO, he sold some of his shares in a secondary public offering 03:

Garth Moulton. He’s invested and has advised a number of technology startups and was responsible for revenue growth for the channel for Pipl Inc.  After 11 years of sales experience in the Bay area, Mr. Moulton had the perfect startup journey with Jigsaw, which was drawn up from 2 guys with a whiteboard to a $175M exit, in 2010, to Salesforce. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Speed of Trust What CEO do you follow? – Tim Ferris Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “That time is not boundless”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Garth to the show 01:58 – Garth didn’t get depressed after Jigsaw’s exit 02:23 – Garth and Jim stayed at Salesforce for a year and a half, after the acquisition 02:43 – Pipl was running together with Jigsaw 02:48 – Garth met Pipl’s CEO during the early days of Jigsaw and they partnered together 03:03 – Pipl would drive traffic to Jigsaw 03:51 – Pipl was

Benjamin Cohen. He’s the CEO and leading T-REX, with a strong vision for the future of enterprise financial technology and its impact on marketing and making markets more transparent and efficient. He’s built the T-REX team and the T-REX software platform by combining the most sustainable elements of finance with modern SaaS technology. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Influence What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— Between 6 and 7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished that I knew that not everything was of the utmost consequence for my entire life”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:24 – Nathan introduces Benjamin to the show 02:55 – T-REX is a fintech company that makes complex capital markets more liquid by making them more transparent and efficient 04:04 – T-REX provides a familiar framework where their clients can slice and dice everything 04:15 – “We’re just making the risks more transparent

Pablo Estevez. He’s a Mexican entrepreneur who co-founded HolaGus, an artificial intelligence company that focuses on automating customer service and sales via chat for Spanish speaking countries. Since founding his company, he has been distinguished for receiving awards like The Diamond Winner by MassChallenge. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – A lot Favorite online tool? — N/A How many hours of sleep do you get?— Usually 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “That this is going to be really, really hard, I was going to work a lot of hours”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:14 – Nathan introduces Pablo to the show 02:00 – HolaGus develops AI to automate customer service and sales via any chat channel 02:11 – HolaGus charges businesses for every assisted conversation 02:39 – HolaGus’s standard fee is 1-2 Mexican pesos 02:47 – HolaGus has a pay-as-you-go model 03:20 – HolaGus is a B2C business and is similar to GoB

Peter Aronson. He’s an award-winning journalist who’s has been featured on NPR and Marketplace. He’s also been a vice president in the corporate world. Now, his startup helps Mexico transform that notorious Mexican tap water into perfectly drinkable clean-tasting purified water. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Founder’s Dilemma What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — HubSpot CRM Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Peter wished he took business courses and knew about the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:12 – Nathan introduces Peter to the show 01:33 – People aren’t supposed to drink the water in Mexico 01:41 – Mexico became the No. 1 consumer per capita in the world 02:08 – 70% of the consumed bottled water in Mexico is 5-gallon jug 02:21 – An average Mexican family is spending more for their water than on their broadband or landline 02:48 – Peter’s company is Biluu 03:07 – Peter had

Alex Mehr. He’s the founder of Zoosk, which filed to go public in 2014. His current venture is MentorBox, a unique and new self-help concept. Before that, he was an aerospace scientist at NASA. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Trello Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— I try at least 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To take more risks”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show 01:43 – Zoosk announced to go public for $200M 02:24 – Zoosk decided to stay independent, so they didn’t pursue going public 02:44 – When you go public, you make projections about the growth rate and what you want to do financially 03:05 – The expectations from the public market for tech companies who go public are different than those who do not 03:14 – Alex and the team didn’t want the company to push hard for a quarter by quarter growth 03::50 – Zoosk was launched

Sean Ellis. He’s the founder and CEO of GrowthHackers.com, he coined the term “growth hacking” in 2010 after using it to ignite growth for Dropbox, Eventbrite, LogMeIn and Lookout. He also founded and sold customer insights company Qualaroo, growing it to millions of dollars in recurring revenue. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Peep Laja Favorite online tool? — The Calm App Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished my 20-year old self knew things are going to be pretty good”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:25 – Nathan introduces Sean to the show 02:03 – Sean speaks at The Capital Factory in Austin, Texas 02:07 – Sean’s talk was about viral coefficients and why it’s important to decrease the time of the original share to really drive growth 02:50 – If you don’t have a lot value at the foundation of the growth, it’s hard to make your business sustainable 02:56 – Sean tries

Kenny Ewan. He is in charge of the overall strategic direction for WeFarm where he oversees the day-to-day activities of the business. After graduating, he spent 7 years in Peru running an international NGO, specializing in work with indigenous communities. Kenny played the lead role in developing WeFarm, before launching it as a startup in 2015. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Chaos Monkeys What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I’m happy to let him make mistakes”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Kenny to the show 01:49 – WeFarm is a growth focus model 02:29 – WeFarm offers their services to farmers 02:37 – WeFarm leads farmers to the sellers and WeFarm will take a small transaction commission 03:00 – WeFarm offers information in the space 03:08 – A farmer in Kenya who has no internet access can ask WeFarm a question, through SMS, for free 03:30 – 10

Tyler Tate. He’s the CEO of Crema.co, the coffee market place. Previously, he co-founded TwigKit, which is an enterprise search software and was the first design lead at Nutshell, which is a SaaS CRM platform. In each case, he used product strategy and design thinking to play its part in envisioning, designing and building products from the ground up. He’s also co-authored the book called Designing the Search Experience which Morgan Kaufmann published in 2013. He’s spoken at numerous conferences. While at TwigKit, he consulted for organizations such as The Financial Times, Thomson-Reuters, Qualcomm, Vodafone, ITV, Rolls-Royce, BASF and Gemalto, helping them design search-driven applications. He’s originally from Alabama, went to University of Kentucky, and spent 7 years in UK. He’s also lived in Seattle and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay area. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Tyler prefers reading blogs at the moment What CEO do you follow? – Michael Dubin Favorite online tool? — Trello Do you get 8

Jon Ferrara. He’s in CRM—a relationship management entrepreneur and noted speaker about social media’s effects on sales marketing. He’s reimagined the CRM by building a simply smarter social sales and marketing platform. His most recent venture is called Nimble.com. It’s the first CRM that works for you by building the updated contact data for you and then works with you everywhere you work. He’s best known as the co-founder of GoldMine Software, one of the early pioneers in the Salesforce automation and customer relationship management in software categories for SMBs. He’s recently been recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 10 Social CEOs and Top 10 Social Sales people in the world. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich What CEO do you follow? –  Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Buffer Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — 7-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Not to sweat shit so much”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:17 – Nathan introduces Jon to the sho

Ben Cantey. He’s a San Francisco entrepreneur and has a passion about solving problems and changing lives through technology. He teaches entrepreneurship and lean methodology at universities and high schools on his free time. He’s launching some bad-ass technology with a handful of math geniuses in a parking space. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Rough Riders What CEO do you follow? –  Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Yesware Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 8 1/2 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Execute faster”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Ben to the show 01:51 – Park Evergreen revolutionizes the way parking is sold and managed at airports 01:55 – Airports currently use a whole stack of services, suppliers and contractors that are outdated 02:15 – Park Evergreen uses geolocation technology to bring physical parking online 02:25 – Travelers can find a reserve pay per parking through Park Evergreen’s app 02:35 – Park Evergreen is so

Jim Sweeney. He’s the CEO and one of the founders of Clarify Medical. He began his entrepreneurial journey at Sharp Hospital where he worked full-time delivering hospital supplies while still in high school. He then spent 3 years in the US Army Medical Corps where he ran a remote, medical service dispensary serving 2500 families in Germany. He received a degree in business from San Diego State University. James has founded 12 medical companies including Caremark, Caps, Corum, Bridge Medical, CardioNet and co-founded Owned Outcomes. He’s also led a successful leveraged buyout or LBO with McGaw Labs which he took public and is now owned by BBraun. His financing history includes raising venture capital and expansion capital for his ideas leading to over $25B in exit values of companies he founded. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? –  David Hale Favorite online tool? — N/A Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Between 4-6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would