Technori Podcast With Scott Kitun

It's said these days that the pandemic moved the world forward five years in five minutes, and companies like CASHDROP are the ones leading the charge by rapidly adapting to people's needs. CASHDROP helps you create custom, shareable store links that link to your store and can create "drops" by revealing new products, foods, courses etc without paying commission fees. Ruben wants to democratize small business and makes money by passing on a small convenience fee to the customer. Ruben and Scott get into critical conversations on the shortcomings of e-commerce, the problem with Midwest VCs, how to actually support minority founders, Ruben's dreams to rename Sears/Willis Tower "Immigrant Tower" and more.

Quevos co-founder Nick Hamburger has taken his company he started out of his college class and kitchen to the stage of Shark Tank in a few short years. And won! Nick comes back on the show to talk about what's changed with Quevos, leadership lessons that no one prepares you for, how he got a guest Shark to say yes and the challenges of running your own company.

Label Insight co-founder Dagan Xavier joins the show to talk with Scott about the how his company is providing better, clearer information to consumers to find products that match what they need (or eliminate what they can't have) while also empowering brands with better data on their customers. Dagan shares how he initially came up with the idea helping his dad sort through different foods and pastas to figure out what he could eat with dietary restrictions from his doctor. Made a spreadsheet and realized there was some real insights that other people should have and be able to use for similar needs and general transparency.

Darren Rovell was always pushing into business when sports coverage was focused the other way. Now after a career working the sports business beat, he runs a passion project of his own: acquiring and selling collectibles. Game tickets, space ship parts, the largest Warren Buffet signature - anything goes for Darren as long as it has an interesting story. Darren joins the show to talk with Scott about his process for collecting, how he measures value and lessons he's learned over the years. He also talks about things he won't buy, why he's not into crypto or NFTs (yet) and why the next generation might have high demand for physical memorabilia.

Emergency podcast with CoinDesk's managing editor Zack Seward back on the show to dig in on just what the heck a NFT is, why is it so popular all of a sudden and what's the broader use case for them? These non-fungible tokens are a special token that is what Zack says makes a piece of the internet ownable. Protected by blockchain, a lot of NFTs that have gone popular like the Nyan cat and Zion Williamson's highlight clip are considered digital art being sold for the equivalent of tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Zack also chats what's good at CoinDesk, the explosion of laser eyes in profile pics and pining for the day transacting with cryptocurrencies becomes far more accessible for the average person.

WHOOP is not like any wearable you've had before, in fact on its face it doesn't tell you anything. But the technology behind it collects some of the most accurate health monitoring data on the market, including daily personalized fitness, sleep, and recovery data delivered to you in real timet's what differentiates from any other watch (Apple anyone?) and why real athletes like LeBron James and Michael Phelps were some of the first adopters without ever taking a sponsorship deal. WHOOP founder and CEO Will Ahmed joins the show to talk about how from the onset, WHOOP was laser focused on actionable data, built its tech from the ground up based on that data, and has built a loyal following and outlasted the competition.

Ron "Boss" Everline is best known for his intensive workout style training celebrities such as Kevin Hart. But he wants you to know he's so much more than a coach. That training is the thing that gets him to the thing - a process we like to call entrepreneurship. Boss, the CEO and founder of Just Train and a partner with Nutra Bolt's C4, has built his brand around authenticity and showing people he's the same person with his same truth whether he's in the gym or the board room. Boss joins the show to talk with Scott about differentiating himself as 1 of 9 kids growing up, pursuing financial freedom, the path he saw for himself after his first client meeting and becoming a truly self-made entrepreneur.

Robinhood may have taken center stage in the GameStop/WallStreetBets bonanza, but plenty of finance apps like M1 Finance were impacted by the freeze on certain stocks because of clearing firms. M1's founder and CEO Brian Barnes comes back on the show to discuss the the $GME fall out, why the situation was handled so poorly, why Apex Clearing prevented stock buys on M1's platform and how the fast-paced exchange of wealth reinforces M1's mission for long-term investing. Brian also shares with Scott what will have to happen to get cryptocurrencies as the next asset class onto the platform.

Anthony Scaramucci is name that rings a lot of different bells to a lot of different people. But a lot has changed for The Mooch since his brief stint in Trump's White House back in 2017, and he's quick to admit letting his ego get in the way of his life, marriage and business. Today, he's on a mission to right the wrongs of the Republican Party and getting back to his bread and butter: investing and creating value for his clients. Anthony talks to Scott about his experiences with Donald Trump, how he almost lost his marriage and what it took to put his life back together, the state of cryptocurrency and how his firm SkyBridge focuses on alternative assets and his thoughts on the $GME mania.

Zack Seward, Managing Editor of Coindesk joins the show to talk about covering cryptocurrencies over the long haul and what the latest Bitcoin surge in the $30-40k range means for valuing the currency as an asset and what that means for the other cryptocurrencies. They also talk about cutting through the noise, what's fake and what's real in the crypto world and running Coindesk.

Language learning doesn't have to be intensive or cumbersome! What if you could learn by simply browsing the web? Toucan does this with a browser extension that lets you read whatever site you're and pick up words in another language - using context clues - to learn over time. Taylor Nieman, founder and CEO of Toucan joins the show to talk with Scott about the lessons she learned from Headspace to overlay Toucan on top of user experience as opposed to a standalone app, what they've learned from user behavior before and during the pandemic, why Baron Davis wanted to be on the cap table and using apps like Twitter to get constructive criticism for your ideas.

Erik Young, founder and CEO of Audios joins the show to talk with Scott about transforming live events with cable-less speakers that speak to each other reliably over their own network instead of Bluetooth. Audios speakers save 80% set up time and thousands a year in costs for DJs and event companies. Saving time, money, a series of patents and with backing from the likes of the co-creator of Guitar Hero and the founder of Benchmark, Erik dives into his plans to put Audios as a main player in pro audio space, vision for jumping into the consumer market and netting big returns for its investors.

Longtime tech journo Eric Newcomer, formerly of The Information and Bloomberg and now writes his own Substack newsletter (aptly named Newcomer) joins the show. Eric and Scott talk about the a16z's (VC firm Andreesson Horowitz) foray into growing its media presence by hiring a large editorial staff to cover stories about crypto, fintech, etc with a "pro-tech" angle, why it matters and how it matches up with the tech sectors testy relationsihp with journalism. Eric dives into his own experiences covering venture firms and founders, what news orgs miss on tech and what to make of audio app Clubhouse.

Life's gone full digital, and the race is on to capture the world's attention in new and exciting ways. On this special episode of the Technori podcast, we catch up with a couple media-forward founders that placed first and second in the recent Sava360 & NAMIC "Startup Pitch" competition that showcases disruptive companies in tech, sports and entertainment. First place: FutureStream - a streaming performance that allows you to pay to watch live concerts, giving 90% revenue to the artist. Second place: FanUp (app is live) - an interactive interactive platform for fantasy contests with no salary caps, real-money, and brand prizes that you can play with friends and influencers. Tejas Bodiwala (FanUp) and Javier Laval (FutureStream) join the show to talk with Scott about competing in the Startup Pitch, what seeded their company ideas, how they'll monetize and respective visions and plans going forward.

Newsletters have taken on new life in recent years, with incredible growth particularly in the tech and business sectors. Chief among them is Morning Brew, an all-encompassing business newsletter (among other things) that was recently acquired by Business Insider at a reported valuation of $75 million. Co-founder Austin Rief joins the show to talk about the their development, seamless transition with BI, smarts+ niche as the future of digital and how to consume the internet.

Scott Kitun talks to self-made hedge fun manager, Emmet Peppers. The founder of the firm Good Soil Investment, Emmet grew his money from investing $30,000 including a massive bet on Tesla - into $70 million. Emmet talks about jumping from the mail room into investing without day trading experience, how buying a Tesla got him down the hedge fund path and why he believes anyone can build wealth with the right investing strategy.

The Internet of Things, or IoT, is often trotted out without much explanation much like "AI" or "machine learning". But if you take IoT as the the ability for your devices or your company's devices to communicate with each other - Hologram is the SIM card that allows that connectivity to occur efficiently. Hologram.io uses cellular connectivity to power up almost any kind of hardware with the ability to scale globally with carrier-switching. Founder and CEO Ben Forgan joins the show to catch up with Scott from when he presented on the Technori stage back in 2017, how the company has changed, evolved and growing in an increaasingly IoT-driven world.

Ever grappled with the lack of financial literacy in this country? Or are tired of wasting money on toys that your kid or someone else's kid will use for 5 minutes? EarlyBird lets you accomplish it all by essentially being the Acorns for kids. You start an account, put in a set amount of money to invest (others can contribute gifts of money to the portfolio as well) and can grow that money for years and years until the child turns 18 and gains control of their account. Co-founder and CEO Jordan Wexler talks about how these investing on EarlyBird - with relatively small amounts of money - can help children understand the world of money gradually through exposure, and become readied participants in the financial system faster than any generation before now.

When we think cybersecurity, we tend to think big data breaches like Target or your parents setting their passwords as "password". We skip over the the prime target for many attacks - small businesses. Attacks against SMBs make up almost half of all cyber crime, and has seen gigantic spikes with the pandemic in 2020. These attacks, successful or not, can lead to exorbitant costs on small companies in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. CEO Brian Fritton co-founded Havoc Shield with these climbing cyber crime rates in mind as a vulnerability small businesses have to plan and budget for and not just react to. Brian joins the show to talk about how Havoc Shield protects businesses, raising a recent round of funding, working on security for political campaigns and taking our digital lives as seriously as attackers do.

Beer delivery is its infancy, which is to say it's often expensive and lacks selection. Enter TapRm, an ecommerce platform and marketplace to find and purchase your favorite brews delivered right to your door. By cutting out the costs of middlemen, TapRm is able to save money that doesn't get passed onto the customer while also taking bigger margins than some competitors. CEO Jason Sherman joins the show to talk about their the incredible growth they've experienced during the pandemic, why they believe the momentum won't level off, why Prohibition's impact still lingers in the market and how beer/seltzer is the new celebrity tequila.