Technori Podcast With Scott Kitun

Mike Doyle, co-founder of new glamping resort Off Map, joins the show with Scott Kitun. Fresh off his previous business Rent Like A Champion, Mike took his expertise from the rental markets and got right to work on a new company focused on the outdoorsy, increasingly popular glamping experience. Mike shares his honest thoughts on what it takes to start a glamping business, why these glamping sights are more common abroad than in the US, finding the right locations and navigating permits. Mike and Scott talk about what Off Map is building right now (first location in South Haven, Michigan) and exploring how you would scale a a hospitality business from scratch.

Kim-Mai Cutler, a longtime tech journalist and currently a partner at Initialized Capital, joins the show with Scott Kitun. Kim-Mai has spent most of her life around Silicon Valley and knows from her experiences and studies just what the problems tech faces and its impact on California and the world as a whole. She dives into her journey, how she got interested in journalism, and how building those relationships in tech got her interested in the venture, how venture has grown and helping founders turn their great ideas into real businesses. She also talks about her interest in real estate and proptech companies, her work studying the ongoing California housing crisis and finding viable paths forward for better policy and innovation.

Sara Mauskopf, founder and CEO of Winnie, joins the show to talk with Scott about finding access to childcare and the challenges millennial parents face. Sara goes into her origin story how she never intended to be a founder, but after experiencing difficulties finding childcare solutions for her own child, she decided to create Winnie, a one-stop marketplace for childcare providers and parents to contact and transact. Parents can see vetted information on childcare options all across the US. Sara and Scott talk about the unique circumstances the pandemic brought on parents, especially working moms, and how it shined a glaring light on opportunities to address childcare through public policy and the private sector. They also talk tech and why Winnie is able to attract talent from some of the best tech companies around and make a impact on people's daily lives.

David Mandelbrot, CEO of Reverb.com, joins the show to talk to Scott about how Reverb has grown since their acquisition from Etsy, taking over for founder David Kalt, and how they continue to differentiate from every other marketplace. David and Scott talk about their shared affinity to building strong digital infrastructure for musicians and music fans alike. David, formerly the CEO of Indiegogo, gets nerdy with Scott on the concept of equity crowdfunding and all of its potential to transform consumer participation and engagement. He also touches on how his thinking towards work in office/work remote has changed and what's next for the company.

Mike Gioseffi, host of The Ringer's Sports Cards Nonsense podcast, joins the show to walk Scott through the business of trading cards. Mike isn't your typical sports-media jock, grew up in the construction industry before he started a sports card business in 2016. He talks to Scott about building the podcast off a experimental Facebook Live event, the story behind getting bought by The Ringer and jumping out of the shower to take a call from Bill Simmons. They also dive into looking at sports cards and collectibles as an underserved part of a portfolio as well as what you keep personally. If you're a sports nut, this is a show for you.

Scott Melker isn't your conventional trader. With a decades long career as a musician/DJ, he isn't what you'd expect to be an investor, crypto enthusiast and "Influencer of the Year" according to Binance (a major crypto trading platform). Scott shares his story how he transitioned from music to finance, how he caught onto the crypto movement, becoming the 'Wolf of All Streets' and how to drive yourself forward with conviction in anything that you do.

Kayla Kilbride aka 'Robinhoodkid' on Twitter and 'girlstalkstocks' on Tik Tok is part of the new wave of influencers talking about investing and making finance a mainstream conversation for regular people. Kayla shares her story quitting her job to focus on her influencing career, why increasing financial literacy can address the wealth gap, joining the Fintwit community, why she'll never be 'Robinhoodmom' and how the retail investor has the opportunity to change how money is made in this country for the better.

Stonks, Davey Day Trader, Roaring Kitty, Wall Street Bets - you've heard the names and the meme stock trades going to the moon. While the groundswell of retail investors piling into $GME may seem like a one-time deal, the rise of retail investor influencers is here to stay. Iris Finance sees this moment as pivotal for changing the narrative around investing, and its platform is geared towards empowering individuals to showcase their investments and have people follow their activity passively. Iris founder Chris Josephs talks to Scott about enabling the average consumer and easy way to immerse themselves in trades and participate in the financial system like we've never seen before.

If you live your life on Twitter or pay attention to any social media platform for long, you're bound to see more than a few people saying they're starting a podcast! A couple weeks go by, their episodes start out hot but immediately dwindle and within 60 days they are out of the podcast game altogether without saying a word to anyone. Podcasting is a lot of work, and Austin Petersmith's Racket is here to ease that war of attrition when it comes to audio content. Racket is an audio-only platform designed to cut the fat on pod conversations with a 9-minute timer and steer you to quick episodes that are fun and get done quickly. Scott compares Racket to audio what TikTok did for video. Austin shares how he got audiophile bug, his inspiration for creating Racket, how the content/media landscape is changing, its many usecases (anyone want shorter team meetings?) and how essential audio is to our lives. Still in beta, Technori followers can get early access by DMing us anywhere @technori.

Jimmy Odom, co-founder of Bit Capital Group, longtime friend of the program, entrepreneur, crypto-expert and business leader joins the show to catch up with Scott on everything from business to babies (and having the right mindset for adoption). They dive into tendencies of VC to play kingmaker on founders in the trenches, working inside and outside of the financial institutions, why he got out of the spotlight and doing what AWS did for cloud storage but for actual computing.

Who said brushing your teeth doesn't come with benefits? Beam Dental CEO Alex Frommeyer joins the show to talk about how his company is taking a different approach to dental insurance by incorporating user behavior, AI-underwriting and using the Beam-connected electric toothbrush for consumer wellness. Alex talks about how they increased their user base with strong retention and why your hygiene is worth your time! Since this episode recording, Beam has raised an additional $80 million in a Series E as they have continued to grow.

Former NBA basketball player turned investor C.J. Watson joins the show to talk to Scott about his business pursuits after basketball. C.J. talks about how his parents were entrepreneurs and having the "entrepreneur gene" was always interested in things outside of sports and started getting into angel investing halfway through his playing career. C.J. shares insights on his first investment, a short trip down basketball memory lane, investing in people more than their ideas and why athletes have the mindset to assess and invest in teams from any industry.

Shayna Harris from Supply Change Capital, a fund focused on the future of food, culture and sustainability, joins the show. Shayna shares how by 2045 when the "minority" becomes the "majority", food choices will change and the founders that serve minority communities in the food industry today will be incredibly successful then. She also talks to Scott about her first experiences becoming interested in the board room, how diversity can transform venture capital, how her time at Farmer's Fridge and in the coffee industry instilled her passion for operations, forming her premise for launching Supply Change.

ActiveCampaign CEO and founder Jason VandeBoom joins Scott back on the pod to talk about the latest news - announcing a whopper $240 million Series C round led by Tiger Global to scale up its operations and continued growth with customers (up to 145,000 active customers). As an 18-year old business, ActiveCampaign is hardly an overnight success story, but has gradually built up a strong user base that has skyrocketed in recent years fueling the strategic investment rounds after years of bootstrapping. On this episode you'll hear Jason talk about AC's journey, helping business make decisions closer to who they are and serving the customer a better experience and building towards the future of marketing.

For many of us, it's been a long long time since we experienced the office setting. The pandemic has pushed large swaths of the labor force into work from home settings, some permanent and some companies promising flexible policies. So just what is the return to the office going to look like? We dive into that question with our longtime friends Brad Serot and Tony Coglianese from CBRE. The answers may surprise you, studies suggest a partial return to the office - a couple days a week - is a popular preference that gives workers a mix of in-person community building with the flexible, remote lives the other days. Brad and Tony share the insights they've learned about how tech companies are officing, investing in startups through LongJump, how they've managed their personal lives through the pandemic among other things on this fun catch up episode.

Andrew Degenholtz joins the show to talk about his company eMags. eMags Newstand provides a seamless digital experience for magazine readers to consume their favorite subscriptions enjoyably from their phones. Scott catches up with Andrew to talk about the state of journalism, fixing broken media business models, how eMags can inject new life into the writer/creator economy and how they've built a legit subscriber base.

Scott talks to Alda Leu Dennis, general partner at Initialized Capital. Started by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanion and Garry Tan, Initialized was borne out of their early Y Combinator days and has become the "honeybadger" of venture with an emphasis on changemaking ideas with over 200 companies in their portfolio. Alda shares her journey from Texas to Stanford, getting the venture bug after meeting Peter Thiel and becoming a GP at Initialized. Alda and Scott also dive into coastal vs midwest VC comparisons, the impact of COVID-19 and making funding more remote-and accessible- as ever, building your brand in public vs privately and what she looks for in a founder and company idea that can impact the world at scale.

Lisa Carmen Wang has learned a lot as an accomplished gymnast, founder and investor. And after getting her first company SheWorx acquired by our friends at equity crowdfunding platform Republic, she's on a mission to democratize investing and financial freedom to those typically kept outside of start up investing. Besides her current role as Head of Brand and Communications at Republic, she's the host of The Confident Investor podcast where she seeks to educate the next generation of female & diverse business leaders. Lisa joins Scott on the show to talk about financial confidence, empowerment and how to give people the tools to gain their financial freedom.

When gyms big and small closed down over the past year, most people are confined to continuing their exercise routines with body weight workouts and name-your-stationary-bike routines. But finding a place to exercise with all the standard gear and weights you could rely on at your local gym are basically impossible to find or sold out. This sparked and an idea for Jake Goldstein, a Chicago-local entrepreneur saw an opportunity to get people back in the gym with modern equipment, privacy, cleanliness and even personal training - all within a shipping container. His company BOLD builds out shipping containers with all the gear, amenities like Wi-Fi and screens that you can hook up to have a personal trainer engage with you during your workout remotely. Based in Chicago for now, these containers are portable and can be placed in new locations as needed. Jake comes on the show to talk about how BOLD is working, making money without costly big box gym membership fees and condensing the gym experience to modern de

When David McFarland got a job as an actuary out of college, he was working at an insurance firm where he first saw how data wasn't being optimized. Later after working alongside Kyle Nakatsuji at auto insurtech company ClearCover, he saw how Kyle's model could apply to all of small businesses and more importantly, saw how small businesses were overlooked. David joins the show to talk to Scott about why big firms overlook small business owners and self-proprietors, how Coterie tailors to them, being a recovering actuary and tips on getting a firm response the right way.