Category: Podcasts

Brian Price leads Kion and the strategy to achieve the company’s mission to make people’s lives easier in the cloud. Before co-founding the company, Brian built software and led software teams at several industry leaders, including Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Jacobs Engineering to name a few.

This software helped these companies transform their internal processes and deliver advanced analytics capabilities to customers. One of these applications launched the first self-service internal cloud platform provisioning service, using AWS and VMware vSphere, for Booz Allen Hamilton. These leadership experiences paved the way for Brian in his current role at Kion to help organizations of all sizes realize success using the cloud.

Vi Friebertshauser went from ESL to becoming valedictorian. She made her first dollar in first grade by trading in soda cans he found. She then made his second dollar by convincing the principal to let her trade the school’s soda cans for cash. Vi got a full ride to the University of Texas at Austin and went on to spend most of her twenties living a 4-hour work week as a digital nomad until she got tired of beaches. Without the technical know-how, she assembled a team, brought in expert advisors, and launched a tech startup.

Vi stumbled upon no-code when she needed to build faster. She fell in love with no-code when she discovered its capabilities! Currently Vi is working on a stealth startup and loves learning about new technologies.

Vikram Chalana is an engineer turned serial entrepreneur. He is currently building Pictory to enable anyone to turn their message into engaging videos quickly & easily. He previously created and scaled Winshuttle, an enterprise software in the data management space, to over 300 global employees.

Vikram holds engineering degrees from Indian Institute of Technology and from University of Washington.

Tom Livne is the CEO & Founder of Verbit, the world’s leading AI-based transcription and captioning platform. Tom formerly served as a board member and investor in Convexum, which was acquired by NSO for $60M. He is an active investor in promising tech companies, including IronSource, Outbrain, Roundforest, Datadog (IPO stage), Snowflake (IPO stage), Jfrog (IPO stage) and Ncino (IPO stage).

Tom holds a LL.B. & B.A. (Cum Laude) from IDC Herzliya and an MBA from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Tom served in the Israel Defence Forces as a warrior and paramedic for the special forces unit of the paratroopers.

Karan Talati is the CEO and co-founder of First Resonance. Their Factory OS, ION, is used by over 30 companies building products in aerospace, automotive, robotics and more. Prior to starting First Resonance, Karan built machine automation and data systems at SpaceX, where he got to see the shift in manufacturing patterns and the enabling technology first hand.

After spending a few years building data and ML pipelines at a startup in LA, Karan started First Resonance with his co-founder and COO, Neal Sarraf. First Resonance is now 25+ people and recently closed its Series A round of funding. This year, they are expanding their customer base and accelerating product development to help more manufacturers meet increasingly dynamic and competitive demands across air travel, space exploration, autonomous vehicles, and more.

Cenk Sidar is the founder and CEO of Enquire AI, an insights software company that leverages artificial intelligence in a tool for businesses to find global subject-matter expertise in real time, from both internal and external resources. Sidar has written for, been interviewed by, and worked with the world’s leading newspapers and media organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNBC, Bloomberg, Foreign Policy, CCTV and Al Jazeera. Sidar has also addressed audiences around the world, including at UK House of Commons, Cornell, Tufts, Johns Hopkins (SAIS) and CFR.

Sidar holds an MA degree in international economics and international relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, a postgraduate degree in European studies from SAIS’s Bologna Center in Italy, and a BA degree in business administration and international relations from the Istanbul Bilgi University.

Yadhu Gopalan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Esper, the industry’s leading solution for Android DevOps. Yadhu has over 25 years of experience and 35 patents in embedded systems and security. His career includes past engineering leadership roles such as Chief Architect of the Windows CE and Windows Phone.

At Amazon, Yadhu designed back-end solutions for the FireOS, and AWS before he owned Systems Engineering for Amazon Go. Today, Yadhu is leading Esper to enable developers and organizations of all sizes to ship software updates without worry.

John Geary is the Co-Founder and CEO of Abodu, the ADU company. Abodu builds no-compromise backyard homes (also called Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs) that expand a property’s livable space. John and Co-Founder Eric McInerney founded Abodu to streamline the process of installing an ADU. Together they have created an innovative concierge service that project manages the entire process of building an ADU from permitting to installation, in under six months.

Prior to founding Abodu, John spent over three years at Bain and Company, a global management consulting firm, where he worked as a real estate strategist to Fortune 500 company executives, and a consumer products consultant advising large utilities and tech companies to develop new products and services. John graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Industrial Engineering.

Jason Marsh is the founder of Flow Immersive, a 3D data storytelling tools company. Starting his career in Speech Recognition at Apple Computer in the 90s, he has been a serial entrepreneur and product creator. His interest in tools to help improve mental models of complex information led him through enterprise applications such as patient safety and quality, financial services, and public policy. He founded a K-8 charter Montessori school, writing curriculum and raising money to build out a 35-acre site.

Flow is a web-based 3D environment for data visualization and storytelling enabling collaboration on flat screens and in AR/VR headsets.

Daniel Choi is the CEO of Sequoia Games, Inc., a ground-breaking game development studio that fuses the physical and digital worlds. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, he spent 20 years as a regional executive for Fortune 300 companies, where he led teams of up to 200 employees.

Then in 2017, as a world-ranked gamer, he took a bold step: he saw an opportunity in the gaming space, left his successful career, and built Sequoia Games to take the technology of today and apply it to the explosive re-birth of old-school collectible gaming.  It’s a decision he appreciates every day.  Now, he lives his dream, leading a company with the vision to infuse more fun into the world.

Daniel is married to Diana, and they have two sons: Carter and Brayden.  He enjoys fine dining, cooking, and of course… sports!

Podcast

Dan Gusz is a co-founder of Lloyd, a startup that supports working professionals advance towards meaningful, gainful careers. Prior to Lloyd, Dan was Head of Product at an early-stage digital health startup. Originally from the Midwest, Dan now lives in NYC with his wife and son.

Basil Elotol is the cofounder and CEO of Triphop, a leading Online Travel company, which gives travelers the freedom to reward themselves by providing a simple, immediate, and extremely generous cash rewards program. Triphop has grown to become the most rewarding online travel website in the hotel booking marketplace.

With over 15 years in the Travel and Technology industry, Basil has become a leading expert in the space. Prior to founding Triphop, Basil was part of the executive team of a Travel and Roaming Technology startup and played an instrumental role in successfully growing the company until it’s successful acquisition. Basil started his career working for Fortune 500 companies such as Accenture and SAP.

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. His new book for Viking/Penguin is called The Inevitable, which is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

He is also founding editor and co-publisher of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily since 2003. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news.

Matthew Bellows is Founder and Board Chair of Yesware. He was CEO for the first eight years of the company’s life. Yesware is the leader in sales productivity, serving over 60,000 salespeople at companies like Box, Salesforce.com, Twilio and Yelp.

Prior to Yesware, Matthew was the Vice President of Sales at Vivox. Before that, he served as General Manager at Floodgate (acquired by Zynga), as Founder/CEO of WGR Media (acquired by CNET Networks), and as VP Sales and Marketing of Interstep (acquired by Flycast/CMGI). He earned his B.A from Naropa University and his M.B.A. magna cum laude from The Olin School for Business at Babson College.

Simon Peyton Jones is a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England, where he started in Sept 1998. He is also an Honorary Professor of the Computing Science Department at Glasgow University.

He is a chair of Computing at School, the group at the epicentre of the reform of the national curriculum for Computing in England. Simon is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, of the ACM, and of BCS.