Syncro is an all-in-one professional services automation (PSA) and remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform for managed service providers (MSPs). The company is backed by Mainsail Partners, a growth equity firm.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* How having a broad range of experience across different functional areas helped position Emily into a CEO role.
* Emily’s background story and the details on her career path across Product Management, Customer Experience, and more.
* What is an MSP (Managed Service Provider)?
* All the details on Syncro and how they are helping their customers run a profitable business.
* Advice on building a diverse workforce.
* Some of the challenges she has tackled as the company’s CEO.
* And so much more.

Is your company hiring? If yes, then you might want to add a VentureFizz subscription. It is our employment branding and hiring solution that helps to keep your company top of mind for our targeted audience of professionals in the tech industry. A VentureFizz subscription includes an employment branding page, unlimited postings to our Job Board, access to our exclusive content series, and more. Send an email to info@venturefizz.com for more details.

Episode 306: Emily Glass - CEO, Syncro

It’s nice to get paid, but what happens behind the scenes for each payroll cycle is actually very complex. There’s a plethora of different tax calculations, remittance, filling, plus the movement of money between companies and employees. Yet, it would probably make sense for lots of companies to offer payroll as an add on service to their existing business.

That’s where Check comes in. Check is a payroll-as-a-service API that allows companies like Homebase, Bambee, & 7Shifts, an easy way to integrate a payroll product which creates new sources of revenue and the ability to better service the needs of their customers. The company is backed by Stripe, Index Ventures, Bedrock, and Thrive Capital.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* The difference between building and scaling a B2B versus a B2C business.
* Andrew’s background story, the difficulty of getting Duke / UNC basketball tickets, and starting his career at Google.
* The inspiration behind Oyster, which was like a Netflix for books and how they scaled the company to an exit to Google.
* All the details about Check and why this market was so interesting for building another company.
* Advice for founders on building a platform of platforms company.
* And so much more.

This week’s episode is sponsored by MarketMuse, a content intelligence platform that sets the standard for content quality.  Their AI-powered software enables companies to create predictably better content at scale that increases traffic and engagement, improves productivity, and drives revenue. Get more out of your content with packages starting at $0/month, plus you can get 20% off the MarketMuse Standard plan by using our code "FIZZ20" at checkout. Go to marketmuse.com to get started!

Episode 307: Andrew Brown - CEO & Co-Founder, Check

Steve is an operator turned venture capitalist. After a very successful run at General Catalyst, he joined Juxtapose earlier this year as a Partner to focus on building innovative B2B companies.

Juxtapose is an investment firm that partners with experienced entrepreneurs to build category-defining technology companies. The firm has developed over twenty companies over the last 25 years including Tend, Great Jones, Earned, and others.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* How to make big bets and recognize shifts in the tech industry as an investor.
* Steve’s background from academia to how he got his career started in the tech industry.
* The story of VMware and how he learned how to scale an engineering organization to over 3,000 people.
* His experience as an investor at General Catalyst and his thesis around making investments in cybersecurity, along with portfolio companies that have scaled like Illumio and Datto.
* What he is up to now at Juxtapose and how the firm is unique in terms of investing and company creation.
* And so much more.

If you are listening to this podcast, then it is highly likely that you are interested in the founder journey and lessons learned around building companies. Please make sure you don’t miss any episodes by subscribing to The VentureFizz Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or Soundcloud. Oh, don’t forget to leave us a review. It will really help us out!

Episode 308: Steve Herrod - Partner, Juxtapose

This is episode #320 and today’s guest is Mike Duda, Managing Partner at Bullish.

Peloton, Harry’s, Warby Parker, Casper, Birchbox… these are all iconic direct-to-consumer brands that have all disrupted various categories that were ripe for disruption. Take Warby Parker, the eyewear company that disrupted Luxottica’s business which pretty much owned the whole market from eyewear brands to storefronts. Or Casper, the company that made the process of purchasing a mattress much more enjoyable.

A common thread for all of these companies is Bullish. One-part consumer investment firm, one-part strategic agency, Bullish blends capital, consulting and creation to design the most remarkable businesses in the world.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* A discussion on the state of the state of the consumer market and a dive into Function of Beauty, a personalized shampoo DTC company.
* Mike’s background story and initial career through the ranks in the agency world.
* A sincere nod of appreciation to First Round Capital for starting office hours for startups and how they were helpful to both of us starting our own businesses.
* The story of Bullish and how they set out to build a different firm through its project based work and investments.
* What it’s like building a Super Bowl commercial for a brand.
* The investment criteria for Bullish and what he means by a “chip on the shoulder” entrepreneur.
* And so much more.

Episode 320: Mike Duda - Managing Partner, Bullish

Episode #321 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Gabi Steele, Co-Founder & CEO at Preql.

Building a company is hard and there is no “one right way” to go about getting started, especially when you are creating a new category. But, when I talk to founders like Gabi, there was always an emphasis on generating revenue from the start.

It’s a smart move, as you can obviously control your own destiny through any customer work that might seem more like a services play. But, in addition to being able to pay the bills by bootstrapping, you are also getting a tremendous amount of market research and exposure to the real world problems that your customers are trying to solve.

It was this approach that allowed Gabi and her Co-Founder, Leah Weiss, the ability to spin off and launch Preql as a stand alone product company and raise capital to grow it.

Preql is a no-code data transformation solution built for business users. Their technology’s core solutions help companies with data access, metric management, and data governance. The company has raised $7M from Bessemer Venture Partners.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* A deep dive into the world of data visualization and the career path into this field.
* Gabi background story including how her career got started at The Washington Post.
* Her experience at WeWork, where she met her co-founder, and the creation of the company’s Data Cult program… plus, how the portrayal in the WeCrashed series may have been under-dramatized.
* The founding of Raw Haus, a community connecting emerging talent across the art, design, technology, and entrepreneurial spaces.
* The background story of Preql and how they built revenue from its consultancy and spun out a product.
* The challenges of building a new category in tech and selling it to a business user.
* Hiring the company’s first sales leader.
* Lessons learned while building a product company.
* And so much more.

Episode 321: Gabi Steele - Co-Founder & CEO, Preql

Episode 322 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ryan Shank, CEO & Founder of ShareWillow.

Finding the right idea for building a company that will scale is hard. It’s even harder when you get influenced by all the news about the trends in tech like AI, Web 3, crypto, or whatever is the latest trend.

Yet, there are still some very large industries that are still operating with very old tech and are still ripe for disruption.

Case in point is Ryan’s latest company, ShareWillow, which is a modern platform that enables businesses to design, launch, and manage profit-sharing plans.

It makes me think of Gusto, which modernized payroll or Stripe, that modernized payments with tech that just worked.

As Ryan was looking under the hood of this industry, it became very obvious that there was a massive opportunity. Instead of stock options, lots of companies issue profit-sharing plans and come to find out businesses that have a profit-sharing plan tend to be more profitable over the long term and get more output from employees.

Yet, there really isn’t an easy way for creating a profit-sharing plan on a modern tech stack that does everything from getting started to ongoing management of the plan. Bingo! Here is a massive market opportunity to build a category defining company which is in desperate need of a modern tech stack and user experience.

Investors have noticed too as the company has raised $6.5m from top-tier software investors in what ended up being an over-subscribed round.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* The importance of learning sales as an entrepreneur.
* Ryan’s background story growing up in Ocean City, Maryland and his early entrepreneurial roots.
* A rant / business idea about how the experience of college tours is broken.
* The story of mHelpDesk and its acquisition by HomeAdvisor.
* The details and lessons learned about his next startup, PhoneWagon, which was a TechStars company that went on to get acquired by CallRail.
* The state of the state with ShareWillow 
* Things to think about during the acquisition process, including how an escrow factors in.
* And so much more.

Episode 322: Ryan Shank - Founder & CEO, ShareWillow

Episode 323 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Elizabeth Lawler, Founder & CEO of AppMap.

A question that I ask every guest at the end of every interview is - “What do you like to do for fun outside of work?” Oftentimes, I get common answers like - hiking, traveling, etc. 

But, Elizabeth’s answer has by far been the best one yet and it is proof that she is not only a great entrepreneur but also a maker at heart.

Elizabeth is building with her husband & Co-Founder, Kevin, and their kids, a two seater RV-12 airplane. They previously built a car together when the kids were 6 & 8 years old, so this is their next challenge. So cool!

AppMap is a leading developer of code visualization and runtime code review analysis technology. Its platform is redefining how developers improve their software and has become one of the fastest-growing tools for software visualization and runtime analysis. The company has raised $10 million in funding.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* A deep conversation around community building and the importance of authenticity.
* Elizabeth’s background story and how she learned entrepreneurship from her parents.
* Getting her career started in public health research and epidemiology after receiving her PhD.
* The background story of Conjur, which was bootstrapped initially and raised a minimal amount of capital and had a successful exit to CyberArk.
* Preferred versus common stock and how that affects the payout post-acquisition.
* All the details about AppMap and how they built traction and got developers to engage with their product.
* How Elizabeth is supporting women entrepreneurs and the role that Andy Palmer is playing, as well.
* And so much more.

Episode 323: Elizabeth Lawler - Founder & CEO, AppMap

Episode #324 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Sameer Gulati, Founder & CEO of Ordway.

Sameer loves SaaS and it’s for good reason… it is expected that the size of the SaaS market may hit almost $1 trillion by 2030! Yes, the tech industry is having some challenges, but did you know that… even though the evolution to SaaS started 20 something years ago… the adoption of SaaS still only sits at a 36% adoption rate versus traditional on-premise software.  There is still such a massive opportunity for growth.

Ordway is a billing and revenue automation platform that is specifically designed for today’s innovative, technology-centric business models. With Ordway you can automate billing, revenue recognition, and investor KPIs for recurring revenue from subscriptions or usage-based pricing models.  The company is venture backed by leading VC firms like CRV, Clocktower Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and others.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* A deep conversation around the current state of the SaaS industry and the evolution of pricing models.
* Sameer’s background story and how he joined one of the first SaaS companies called Intacct which exited for a billion dollars.
* Working as part of the early stage team at Workday, Zuora, Zynga, GrubBeat, and Spree Commerce.
* How he leveraged his experience in finance and billing software to disrupt the industry and build Ordway, plus all the details on the company.
* Why it is a bad idea to over-capitalize your startup.
* The importance of being a mission critical application versus a nice-to-have solution.
* And so much more.

Episode 324: Sameer Gulati - Founder & CEO, Ordway

Episode 325 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Alex Shashou, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of 10Beauty.

About 10 years ago, Peter Thiel is credited for saying “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

True, Twitter or X certainly was not in the same frame of mind as to what we saw on The Jetsons, but are we finally starting to get there? The Roomba was a step in the right direction in terms of a consumer robot success story. 

But… the future just might be closer than you think in terms of the possibilities of robotics and automation? 

Behold… I share with you 10Beauty! The world’s first and only autonomous manicure machine.  

I might not be the target market for this robotics company, but my wife and two daughters are definitely in the strike zone and when I told them about it… their immediate response was "WHEN AND WHERE CAN I GET ONE!" 10Beauty is not going to be available for consumers to purchase (at least not initially), as they are taking a B2B approach in terms of their go-to-market strategy.

For me, it’s less about the tasks that this robot is performing and more about a team that is thinking bigger and ultimately delivering on something that is incredibly difficult. 

10Beauty has raised $38M in funding from Shine Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Imaginary Ventures, and Red Sea Ventures. And, they already have serious traction as they already sold out of their entire first run of machines which means they have over $13M in annual manicure subscription revenue ahead.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* A deep dive into the challenges and the complexity of building a robotics startup.
* Alex’s background story and how Alex met his co-founder, Justin Effron, the first day of school at the University of Pennsylvania.
* The story of their first company, Alice, a task management platform for the hospitality industry that was acquired by Expedia, plus how they connected with their technical co-founder, Dmitry Koltunov.
* The definition of a good partnership between co-founders and how they divvy up roles & responsibilities.
* All the details on 10Beauty… from meeting Chris Casey (one of the original Roomba engineers) to building out the initial prototype to raising funding to the company’s business model and projected launch.
* And so much more.

Episode 325: Alex Shashou - Co-CEO & Co-Founder, 10Beauty

Episode 326 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead of Drupal and Co-Founder, CTO, and Chief Strategy Officer of Acquia.

Many of the most successful companies in tech were created by founders who built something that was to fill their own need. This was certainly the case for Dries, who back in 2000, started an internal online message board for his friends from his dorm room in Belgium which turned into Drupal. 

Fast forward to today, Drupal powers 2% of all websites in the world and over 10,000 people contribute to the Drupal open source project every year. 

In addition to running one of the most successful open source projects, Dries went on to build Acquia, along with his Co-Founder & the company’s first CEO, Jay Batson and early investor - Michael Skok. Acquia’s innovative business model has been a blueprint for other open source companies.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* The details of the Drupal community and what are the right ingredients for building a successful community.
* Dries’ background story growing up in Belgium, how he developed a passion for technology, and the full story of how Drupal came to fruition.
* Drupal’s growth and momentum, plus a great story of how the community stepped in to help fund this open source initiative.
* The early days of Acquia in terms of figuring out the business model and then scaling the company under Tom Erickson’s leadership.
* The current state of the state of Acquia as a Digital Experience Platform.
* Why entrepreneurship is 80% sales and marketing, even as an engineer.
* And so much more.

Episode 326: Dries Buytaert - Drupal & Acquia

Episode #338 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Tasneem Dohadwala, Founding Partner at Excelestar Ventures.

It’s a lot more common to find VC firms that are investing into deep tech or hard tech, but when Tasneem started Excelestar Ventures in 2010, it was far from the norm. Not only was it abnormal to invest in companies building highly advanced engineering products, but it was also a very challenging time in the tech industry in general. So, to start a new VC firm was very rare.

Excelestar Ventures is a bit different than most VC firms as they operate an evergreen fund which gives them flexibility, especially during different economic cycles, in terms of the types of investments they can make versus having to raise a new fund every 2-3 years.  The firm is also passionate about funding disruptive businesses led by under-represented founders. Across Excelestar’s entire portfolio, 61% of their companies are minority-led and 50% are female-led.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* Fundraising advice for women or minority founders and why you should always be thinking about asking for introductions.
* Tasneem’s background story and how she got her career starting in finance at Goldman Sachs, plus her decision to go back to B-school at HBS.
* All the details about Excelestar Ventures in terms of the companies they are targeting, including her interest in personalized medical devices, as well as how their due diligence process works.
* Tasneem’s involvement with Golden Seeds, a firm focused on investing in women-led companies.
* Advice for pitching your company and the importance of being able to properly articulate the value proposition of your company, having the right market size for that investor, and another factor that she calls the confirmatory mindset.
* And so much more.

Episdode 338: Tasneem Dohadwala - Founding Partner, Excelestar Ventures

The VentureFizz Podcast is the flagship podcast of VentureFizz.com, the leading authority for jobs & careers in tech. In this podcast, VentureFizz Founder Keith Cline interviews the top founders and investors in the tech industry.

Episdode 338: Tasneem Dohadwala - Founding Partner, Excelestar Ventures

The VentureFizz Podcast

Related tracks