Experienced Voices

Daniel Daoura, founder and CTO of Pebblebee, is a serial entrepreneur and visionary leader in the trackables industry. Daniel began his career at Boeing, where he spent over 10 years in lead engineering roles developing global software and hardware systems for military asset-tracking communication systems. Leveraging this experience, Daniel ventured into the finder space, creating Pebblebee to help people track what matters most to them. To date, Daniel has more than 30 patents in the trackable and finder market. He holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, as well as an MBA in Finance from Seattle University.

First-time entrepreneurs often have great business ideas that provoke their passion to start a business.  Our guests, Stacy Pena and Brian Engleman, are Fund Managers for the San Diego Angel Conference and they will share their experience as to how angel investors view founding entrepreneurs and the business ideas they pitch for funding.  Don't miss this chance to gain insight into how to best position your startup to gain the support of investors.

Join author Mark Atkeson on his 30-plus year journey of living and working in China, an eyewitness to China's great transformation into a superpower.  As both an entrepreneur and investor, Mark shares his firsthand experiences in a country that lifted 800 million people out of poverty over that period, spurred in large part by innovating Chinese entrepreneurs. In his book "Risky Business in Rising China" Mark offers why the U.S. will remain competitive with China, identifying both the country's strengths and challenges. 

Not many college students can claim that their startup won $100,000 at a pitch competition held at the San Diego Angel Conference and then also gained seed funding.  Student athlete Dominyck Bullard, now student entrepreneur, accomplished both soon after launching his digital media startup Athletiverse. His company manages the digital assets of colleges, universities, and collectives, supporting student-athletes and athletic departments. Dominyck shares how he navigated from the initial business concept through key milestones that landed him the support of outside investors---positioning his startup to scale.

Hear Ardy Arianpour, CEO & Co-Founder of SEQSTER, a healthcare technology startup.  Ardy shares his journey to solve a giant pain point in the healthcare industry, achieving funding and his one-on-one meeting with Bill Gates to discuss his disruptive model. SEQSTER is on the frontline of healthcare innovation, breaking down health data silos, using an enterprise operating system which aggregates disparate health data from a range of sources to provide a single, 360-degree view of a patient in real-time. 

Sri Solur, CEO of Kenmore Brands at Transformco, takes listeners through his journey of transforming the Kenmore brand in today’s digital world, leaving behind its one-hundred-year history as a top Sears appliance brand. Hear how through his leadership he changed the company’s "retail-captive" culture to embrace innovation, while also applying his 25+ years of experience as a Chief Product Officer at top product-based high-tech companies such as Hewlett Packard and Berkshire Grey.

Finding investor funding for a startup is an enormous challenge, William Santana Li, an intrapreneur at Ford Motor and its youngest senior executive at the age of 28 provides frank insight about startup funding—having raised over $120 million for his robots venture Knightscope.  He shares the unconventional and visionary mindset that enabled him to move his startup forward despite great obstacles.

Funding a life science or medtech startup is uniquely challenging due to the extended time required for product development, and if applicable, product approval. Patrik Schmidle​, Founder and CEO of CARI Health shares how he navigated funding for his medtech startup that brought in millions of dollars in funding from a range of funding sources.

Susan Newman, SVP of Conferences at the National Retail Federation, and Rob Grimes, Founder and CEO of the International Food & Beverage  Technology Association discuss the latest innovations impacting the retail industry and how they will be showcased at the upcoming Retail Big Show in January. They share the excitement of the Food Service Innovation Zone, a dedicated area for 50 exhibitors, that will provide attendees with immersive experiences of the coolest technologies now being introduced into a full range of retail stores.

Serial entrepreneur Steve Visconti is co-founder and CEO of Xiid, a cyber security startup providing a proprietary architecture to protect enterprise networks and assets. Steve discusses cyber security in terms of both large companies and startups, sharing insight about cyber threats dominating our news. He also gives his view as to how a tech startup can be scaled, the role of funding, and the mindset that it takes to make it all happen.