Techiebytes

Episode 68: Today I’m speaking with Jonathan Skogmo, Founder  & CEO at Jukin Media, the company that buys up viral videos. We discuss the why Jonathan decided to start the company, how Jukin Media decides which videos it wants to purchase, and what he thinks of TikTok and Quibi. Enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 67: Welcome back! Today I’m speaking with Jorge Perdomo, co-founder at goTenna and also the designer behind the art installation The Fluffy Cloud which has made appearances at multiple festivals including Burning Man. We discuss the challenges surrounding starting a hardware company, what people can do to increase their marketability in the workforce, and what it’s like to attend Burning Man. Enjoy! More information about Jorge As the Inventor, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of  goTenna  - the world’s leading mobile decentralized off-grid communications system for smartphones - Jorge knows the entrepreneurial journey well. Jorge brought the project from concept to market in six years, during the course of which, he designed and released 10 different critically-acclaimed hardware and software products. The uniquely broad experience Jorge gained at goTenna allows him the ability to speak on just about every class of tech company; from mobile apps to servers and of course, the unique

Episode 66: We spoke with Mike Morris, CEO at Topcoder, a crowdsourcing company with a global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. We discuss how to cultivate a community, the benefits of crowdsourcing, how soon until we see quantum computing at scale, and why Mike believes the gig/passion economy is the future of work. Enjoy! Also, a quick programming note: We’ll be taking a few weeks off from TechieBytes, but fear not, we’ll be back soon with more awesome interviews. So stay tuned and stay safe out there! We’re looking for new podcast sponsors, if you’re interested in sponsoring TechieBytes, please get in touch. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 65: We spoke with Mike Cessario, Co-founder & CEO at Liquid Death, a company that helps you murder your thirst and save the environment with its canned mountain water at the same time. We discuss how important marketing is for companies selling commodities, why plastic is even more terrible for the environment than you may have realized, and how he plans to ramp up distribution. Enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 64: We spoke with Mada Seghete, co-founder and Head of Market Development at Branch, a company that helps app developers increase customer acquisition, revenue, and engagement. We discuss the best ways to promote your app, whether or not  you should spend time on App Store optimization, and how to be a good corporate data citizen. Enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 63: We spoke with Karim Lakhani, Professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the new book: Competing In The Age of AI. We discuss how AI is disrupting all kinds of businesses, how companies should think about implementing AI, and the rise of the AI factory. Enjoy! More about Karim Karim Lakhani is the Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Fellow at the Harvard Business School.  He is the founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the faculty co-founder of the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. He specializes in technology management and innovation. His research examines crowd-based innovation models and the digital transformation of companies and industries. Lakhani is known for his pioneering scholarship on how communities and contests can be designed and managed t

Episode 62: We spoke with Eyal Feldman, co-founder & CEO of Stampli, a company that makes it easier and faster to get your invoices paid. We discuss how Stampli can benefit your business, how Eyal is managing his team during the Coronavirus outbreak, and why startups should focus on the mid-market before the enterprise. Enjoy! More about Eyal Eyal Feldman, founder and CEO of Stampli, an AI-based platform that streamlines the accounts payable process and reduces the time spent chasing invoice approvals by 5X. Stampli, whose customers include Revolve, Purple Mattress, GrubHub and TechStars, processes more than $13B in invoices annually. Eyal has had an interesting global tech path – from getting his MBA at Solvay Brussels to working at Colgate-Palmolive uniting all subsidiaries under one SAP ERP to building the Documentum business in Israel for Ness. He is now CEO of Stampli. He has a lot to say about a non-traditional path and some great advice. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.

Episode 61: We spoke with Chrys Bader, co-founder of Ikaria, a company focused on building the next generation of social apps. Chrys was also a co-founder at Secret, a social app that encouraged anonymity which ended up shutting down in 2015 despite raising $36 million in funding. We discuss Chrys’ time at Secret and what he learned from it, what the next generation of social apps needs to consider, whether or not he would sell to Facebook, and more. Enjoy! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 60: We spoke with Bill Demas, CEO of Conviva, a company that offers streaming media intelligence and analytics. We discuss the ongoing streaming wars playing out amongst Netflix, Disney, Amazon, WarnerMedia, and others and what it means for consumers, his views on when it’s time for a startup to hire a professional CEO, and more. Enjoy! Bill Demas, CEO of Conviva, a company that provides media industry giants, including CBS, HBO, Hulu and WarnerMedia, streaming media intelligence and analytics. Conviva has a global footprint of more than 150 billion streams per year across three billion applications streaming on devices.   Bill is a four-time CEO, startup mentor and angel investor. In the past, Bill was CEO of Shopkick as well as Turn and held executive roles at Yahoo!, Overture and Microsoft. Throughout his 25-year career, Bill has successfully scaled dozens of software companies – usually while simultaneously serving as a mentor, coach, board member, board director and venture partner. He has

Episode 59: We spoke with Terry Jones, founder of Travelocity.com and founding chairman at Kayak.com. We discuss the early days of Travelocity, why Terry got back into travel tech with Kayak, and how traditional companies can compete with newer, more agile startups. Enjoy! Terry Jones was the founder of Travelocity.com and founding chairman of Kayak.com, is author of the new book Disruption OFF: The Technological Disruption Coming for Your Company and What to Do About It. For the last 15 years he’s been speaking and consulting with companies on innovation and disruption. Jones began his career as a travel agent, jumped to two startups and then spent 20 years at American Airlines, serving in a variety of management positions including Chief Information Officer. While at American he led the team that created Travelocity.com, served as CEO for six years, and took the company public. After Travelocity he served as Chairman of Kayak for seven years until it was sold to Priceline for $1.8 billion. --- Support t

Episode 58: We spoke with Peter Pezaris, co-founder and CEO of CodeStream. We discuss the process behind selling a company, including how to know when it's time to sell as well as when to leave, the time he and his team spent as part of Y Combinator's Winter 2018 class, and how Peter has kept his founding team intact through four startups. Enjoy! Peter Pezaris, co-founder and CEO of CodeStream, a company helping development teams communicate more efficiently. Peter is a serial entrepreneur with three successful exits under his belt (including Glip, sold to RingCentral and Commissioner.com, sold to CBS), with CodeStream being his fourth startup. Interestingly, Peter has kept his executive/founding team intact throughout the four startups and over two decades (they met as undergrads at Carnegie Mellon). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 57: We spoke with Pedro David Espinoza, internet entrepreneur, angel investor, and co-author of Differences That Make A Difference. We discuss diversity and inclusion in the workplace, including in-depth conversations about the gender pay gap, implementing policies such as blind interviews, and how diversity helps your bottom line. Enjoy! Pedro David Espinoza is an internet entrepreneur, angel investor, TED speaker, and author. At the age of 19, Pedro became the founder & CEO of SmileyGo, a platform that helps companies give smarter. Pedro is also the CEO of Alpaca Pan Peru, a social venture that empowers women to become entrepreneurs. Educated at Stanford and Berkeley, Pedro began his career as a car mechanic at Toyota. He has been profiled in Univision, Telemundo, Hispanic Shark Tank, Fox News, and Forbes. The leaders -- 80 male, 80 female -- include Reed Hastings (CEO, Netflix), Michelle Lee (Former Under Secretary of Commerce), Eric Schmidt (Google) and Judith Estrin (Internet pioneer). Span

Episode 56: We spoke with Eric Shoup, CEO at Peerspace, a marketplace for meetings, co-working, events, and more. We discuss the explosion of the sharing economy, the recent troubles at WeWork and how Peerspace has avoided falling into the same trap, as well as Eric's experience as a first-time CEO. Enjoy! Eric Shoup, CEO of Peerspace, a Google Venture-backed marketplace for meetings, co-working, events, and more. This year Peerspace has pursued an aggressive national expansion - and their business model is working and is sustainable. Peerspace specializes in allowing people to find underutilized, inspiring existing spaces – while allowing property owners (mostly small business owners) to generate more income from their spaces to support their artistic endeavors, business and more. Of note, companies including Tesla, AirBnb, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, AT&T, Apple, and even WeWork have booked using Peerspace. Peerspace Stats October 2019: 1000’s of bookings from companies including T

Episode 55: We spoke with Tiffany Rose, Co-founder at Lux Life Now (formerly Big Crowd Media), an influencer firm which specializes in loop marketing campaigns for big names including Amber Rose and Kyle Richards. We discuss how to build and measure successful influencer campaigns, the importance of Instagram Stories for brands, and how to best utilize hashtags. Enjoy! READ MORE: Lux Life Now co-founder Jonathan Rose talks about how to measure influencer campaign ROI. Tiffany Rose, Co-Founder of Lux Life Now (formerly Big Crowd Media), is a former actress and model who has graced the front covers of MAXIM and FHM worldwide, and shot to fame in the UK on the TV show HollyOaks. Through Tiffany's hollywood contacts, she was able to create a network of A list celebrities that shared her vision of driving celebrities Instagram traffic to corporate sponsors’ Instagram accounts. Lux Life Now was born and has resulted in clients gaining tens of thousands of new customers with reported spikes in sales and engagement

Episode 54: We spoke with RJ Talyor, Founder & CEO at Pattern89. We discuss how RJ helped pioneer the concept of SMS marketing in 2002, his time as VP of Messaging Products at Salesforce, and how what he's building at Pattern89 is changing marketing for brands like Fabletics, LIDS, Finish Line, and more! Enjoy! R.J.’s career started at ExactTarget, where he was the mastermind behind the company’s mobile strategy. He would eventually create the concept of SMS marketing in 2002, leading to Bank of America to sending its first SMS text. His leadership was instrumental when Salesforce later acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion in 2013, where he would become the vice president of mobile products for the company. A couple years later, he wanted to take his knowledge on marketing, social media and analytics to create a company that would easily integrate Artificial Intelligence with social media marketing, and launched Pattern89. Since its founding in 2018, the company already has more than 700 customers, speci

Episode 53: Yes, good news! We're back after a little break. I graduated from the Harvard Business Analytics Program in September and have been working on new episodes which will be released every Tuesday! Today we're speaking with Oren Zaslansky, CEO at Flock Freight. We discuss why the shipping industry is ripe for disruption, tips for outsiders of Silicon Valley to raise capital, and what to look for when selecting a Board of Directors. Oren Zaslansky is a shipping industry veteran and CEO of San Diego-based Flock Freight, a company working to modernize the $40B LTL (less than a truckload) freight industry leveraging algorithms and logistics automation to carpool freight. Oren was born both into freight and entrepreneurship. His parents worked for a mover before they started their own freight brokerage. At 21 he started a trucking company and soon after a freight brokerage. Realizing he wanted to work ON the industry not just IN the industry, he started Flock Freight to sidestep common shipping problems.

Episode 52: We spoke with Mitch Grasso, CEO at Beautiful.AI, a company creating a newer and smarter way to design your presentations. Prior to Beautiful.AI, Mitch founded SlideRocket which was acquired by VMWare. We discuss raising venture funding, his approach to customer acquisition, important design rules, and more. Mitch is a serial entrepreneur with strong technology, design and product skills. Prior to Beautiful.AI, he founded SlideRocket, cloud-based presentation productivity software focused on team collaboration and co-founded AdSpace Networks, a digital signage network deployed to over 200 malls and reaching over 48M unique viewers/month. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 51: We spoke with Sujan Patel, co-founder at Ramp Ventures, the firm behind products like Mailshake and RightInbox. We discuss building web-based businesses, how to generate leads and interest for new businesses, enhancing your SEO, and what it means to take risk. Sujan is the co-founder of Ramp Ventures, a firm that helps companies leverage the latest and greatest marketing strategy to fuel their businesses. Sujan has over 13 years of internet marketing experience and has led the digital marketing strategy for companies like Sales Force, Mint, Intuit and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 50: We spoke with Bryan Ciambella, Principal at B Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in the next generation of groundbreaking tech. We discuss Bryan's background as a serial entrepreneur, what he looks for when investing, what industry verticals he's currently interested in, and what it's like working with Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support

Episode 49: We spoke with Larry O'Connor, Founder at OWC, a computer hardware company known for its Mac-based upgrade kits. We discuss how Larry started OWC 30+ years ago, the company's relationship with Apple, what Larry thinks Apple should do with the MacBook Pro, and why Apple's RAM is so expensive. Also, a quick programming note—we're going to off for a couple weeks but fear not, we'll be back soon with new episodes! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/besttechie/support