In this episode, your host Carol Schultz talks to Co-founder & CEO of HazardHub, Bob Frady, about being acquired by Guidewire Software. We spoke to Bob in the spring of 2021 and wanted to talk about the acquisition, why it made sense, and what HazardHub will look like moving forward.

The common denominator with HazardHub, as with so many successful startups, is the customer-centric nature of their business model and truly solving a painful problem.

Learn more at hazardhub.com

You can find more information for all our episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcasts, and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/.

In this episode, Carol speaks with Daniel Freedman, Co-founder & Co-CEO of Burnalong, an online video and social motivation platform that helps people achieve their health goals and overcome health and wellness challenges. Daniel and his Co-founder Mike Kott are building something that is actually working in an industry where most people who start a fitness program rarely or never stay consistent with it.

Getting people engaged in fitness and keeping them motivated to continue is a big challenge and Daniel and Mike think they've cracked the code. Listen in to learn the impetus behind starting this business and their commitment to making a difference in people's lives.

Learn more about them at burnalong.com

You can find more information for all our episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcasts, and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/.

In this episode, Carol speaks with David Insdursky, President of ENCON. Founded in 1968, ENCON is a commercial HVAC full-service self-performing contractor. David began interning with the company while in high school and learned how to best run the company by working his way up and learning the different parts of the organization and how to do many of them. He took the business over from his father Marty in 2000 and has grown the business to $35M.

Commercial HVAC is super complicated, not something most of us realize. "Defining comfort is so unique to the individual, the space, or the process." For example, what's needed in a surgical center is distinctly different from what's needed in a laboratory. ENCON's customers have been very loyal because they are clearly a customer-centric organization and David is clear in the importance of this vision.

One of the really great things about David is his clarity about where his genius is and is not. He makes sure to surround himself with employees who are experts at what they do and lets them work in their genius too.

You can learn about them at https://www.enconmech.com/

You can find more information for all our episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcasts, and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/.

In this episode, Carol speaks with Steven Hoffman, Founder & CEO of Founders Space, a global startup accelerator. Founded in San Francisco in 2010, Founders Space now has 50 partners worldwide who came to Steve to learn how to build incubators. Steve is a long-time entrepreneur who has founded four startups and found himself being a "go-to" guy for entrepreneurs who wanted to know how to build a startup.

Companies overseas began to look toward Silicon Valley to learn how to build successful startups. They realized that most founders couldn't afford to go to California and stay for three months or more, so Founders Space became a gateway that built shorter, intense, customized programs for these overseas founders. Listen to Steve talk about this and the other startups he founded, where he succeeded and failed, and his challenges in landing institutional capital.

You can learn more about them at foundersspace.com

You can find more information for all our episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcasts, and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbschultz/.

Carol Schultz speaks with Dave Milliken, Founder & CEO of Greetly, about the critical need and benefit of visitor management systems. Dave saw a need for this when he was a customer going into buildings for meetings and experienced the poor "reception" experience. As it happens with so many founders, it was how he came up with the idea for Greetly and figured out a much-needed solution to a problem that needed to be solved.

Founded in 2014, Greetly has been helping enterprise and SMB companies manage many administrative tasks so that their staff is freed up to do the things that are more important to their business. The VMS business has an $8B market cap and Dave has built a lifestyle business with some amazing logos and continues to have a very bright future.

Learn more about them at https://www.greetly.com/

You can find more information and all episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcast and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz.

In this episode, your host Carol Schultz talks with Brandon Weber, Co-founder & CEO of Nava, a benefits brokerage on a mission to disrupt and transform how healthcare is found and purchased by businesses. A great number of Americans receive healthcare insurance through their employers (about 168M people) and Nava is navigating how to bring the benefits that a F500 employer can provide its employees into the SMB market.

Though it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that our healthcare system is broken, Brandon and his Co-founder, Donald DeSantis, realized the inefficiencies of how this is currently accomplished. There is a lack of transparency for employers putting together benefits plans and a lack of support for employees trying to navigate the system, so Nava is using tech to help employers and employees be smarter shoppers and users of healthcare.

Listen as Brandon describes his shift from commercial real estate to healthcare and the mistakes he made hiring employees in his first startup and the lessons he learned and has implemented at Nava. A couple of these lessons learned are the value of outside advisors, the impact of hiring the wrong people, and the impact of hiring the right people and putting them in the wrong place in the organization. He also discusses "chasing shiny objects" and the damage this can do to a startup, a mistake many first-time founders make.

You can find them at: https://www.nava.io/

You can find more information and all episodes at Vertical Elevation and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz.

In this episode, your host Carol Schultz speaks with Gaurav Bhattacharya, Co-founder & CEO of involve.ai. involve.ai is solving the problem of customer churn while accelerating customer growth for their clients. It is 25 times cheaper to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new customer, so this platform is a big money saver to companies that are at scale.

Gaurav founded the company in 2020 as a pivot from his startup InvoleSoft, because they were having a bug problem with churn. They built the product for their own use and realized this was where the company needed to go. In their first year, involve.ai has already received $18.5M in venture capital. This is one company to keep an eye on.

Check them out at: https://www.involve.ai/

You can find more information and all episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcast and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz.

In this episode, your host Carol Schultz speaks with Kevin Stein, co-founder & CEO of Delos Insurance. Delos is an Insurtech startup focused on providing insurance for low-risk homes in wildfire areas. This is a critical and complex segment of the insurance market. As wildfires become more destructive and are damaging homes in geographies insurance companies were not expecting -referred to as unknown exposure- carriers are having greater challenges accurately underwriting in these areas because of inaccurate risk models. Because of this portfolio exposure insurance companies have started pulling out of the market leaving little or no way for a homeowner in any wildfire region to get fire insurance. When this occurs the homeowner's mortgage company considers them in default leading to a terrible situation for the homeowner that is totally out of their control.

Check them out at: https://getdelos.com/

You can find more information and all episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcast and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz.

“At 11, I got hooked on an Apple 2 and just thought it was the most amazing device I’d ever seen. And from there really I like to think that’s all I’ve done.” - Joe Kinsella

Joe founded CloudHealth Technologies, a provider of multi-cloud services, which was eventually acquired by VMware.

He walks us through his reasoning for making a rare decision among founders: to find a CEO rather than assuming the position himself. And how his relationship with his CEO organically led to the company culture at CloudHealth.

In this episode, Carol and Joe discuss the difficulties of hypergrowth, knowing where to invest and scale, starting with a big market and 'telescoping' your way down into a niche. And last but not least— how to preserve your culture when growing offices in multiple cities.

CloudHealth had a pure commitment to being a talent-centric organization and they hit the mark! Joe, to this day, is an extraordinary human being and an authentic leader.

You can find Joe at joekinsella.me and CloudHeath Technology by VMWare at https://www.cloudhealthtech.com/

You can find more information and all episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcast and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz.

“We don’t have to do it just the way it’s been done for the last 50 and 60 years. That we can tweak some stuff and try some new stuff and we might fail, but let’s fail forward. Let’s fail fast, let’s fail often, and then let’s learn from that and pivot.” -Jennifer Kenning

Jennifer founded Align Impact, an impact investment advisory firm. It is women-owned and women also make up the majority of the staff.

Jennifer sees Align Impact as just one piece of an ecosystem she’s building. You’ll hear her talk about issues she encounters in the financial services industry, such as a lack of diversity.

In this episode, Carol and Jennifer discuss helping people derive strategies that positively impact society, being a disrupter, getting the best investors behind your vision, the idea that competition makes you better, and more.

Jenn walks the walk when it comes to supporting both her clients and employees. She also speaks about her daily routines and monthly breaks to unplug as a leader.

Check out Align Impact at https://www.alignimpact.com/

You can find more information and all episodes at verticalelevation.com/podcast and you can find Carol on Twitter @carolbschultz.