Flagship Podcast

On this week’s show, we spoke with Naomi Goldapple, Head of Alayalabs @ Alayacare.

An entrepreneur and digital strategist, Naomi is passionate about how new technologies and AI can build communities, commercialize products and solve real business challenges. With over 20 years of experience she has a reputation for being an innovator, corporate strategist and strong supporter of mentorship programs and the Montreal tech community.

Naomi leads AlayaLabs, the innovation backbone of AlayaCare, where she applies research in machine learning and optimization applications to elevate the AlayaCare client experience and drive business results.

Prior to AlayaCare, Naomi was one of the first employees at the dynamic start-up, Element AI. As one of its first employees she took a number of different roles and led the product and business development for AI products in the transportation and logistics vertical.

Demystifying the application of AI technologies is a topic Naomi speaks to regularly at conferences around the globe. That straight-talk approach is also what makes her an in-demand mentor and contributor to organizations like TechStars and Founder Fuel.

Building community is very important to Naomi and that can be seen in her volunteer and entrepreneurial endeavours. She founded and ran the award-winning Maman, bébé et café inc., a centre for young families where the adults could get fit, socialize, shop or get pampered while their children played in the state-of-the-art play area.

On the show, we spoke about:

• The importance of both technology and a robust business model
• Alayacare’s mission and how they help home care workers
• Providing workflows for the public and private sector
• Creating new opportunities with data.

Naomi is one of the sharpest executives I know. It was a real pleasure to reconnect with you despite everything going on. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Andrew Boch, COO @ Busbud. Andrew Boch is an accomplished senior executive with more than 15 years of success in technology and high growth startups. Leveraging extensive experience in driving product development, optimizing financial systems, and constructing efficient teams, he is a valuable asset for startups navigating stages of growth and organizations seeking to more broadly scale their products. His broad areas of expertise include business development and growth, operational excellence, team development, internal structuring and leadership. He has previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Hopper and LevelUp which was acquired by GrubHub in 2018, in their largest public acquisition to date. Andrew received his A.B., or Bachelor of Arts, in History and Science from Harvard University.

On the show, we spoke about:

• The nature of knowledge
• Working at tech startups
• The importance of OKRs
• The challenges of working remotely

Andrew has a calm & cool demeanour that makes you just listen to what he says. He was generous with his time & insights. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Zackary Lewis, Founder & CEO @ Say Allo.

Upon completing a successful tour in the United States Marine Corps as a Heavy Machine Gunner in the renowned “Walking Dead” battalion of the Infantry, Zackary utilized his leadership skills to launch Genesis Marketing Group, a company focused on building successful branding campaigns for companies throughout the United States. While simultaneously attending the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Zackary grew Genesis Marketing Group to over 130 employees with locations in Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. After a successful exit of Genesis Marketing, Zackary founded GlobalTRACK Technologies, an asset tracking technology company allowing consumers to detect lost or stolen equipment utilizing the latest in GPS technologies.

In 2001 Zackary founded Liquid Compass, a premier Streaming Delivery Network to the radio industry. Focused on the streaming radio industry, Liquid Compass provided streaming services to thousands of broadcasters around the world to include Absolute Radio, Bonneville, Clear Channel (iHeartRadio), CBS, Entercom, Greater Media, Hubbard Radio, Lincoln Financial Media, Saga Communications and Salem Communications, to name a few. As Liquid Compass evaluated potential pathways to growth and innovation, Zackary spearheaded an important merger for the radio industry by combining its business and operations with another leader in the space, Triton Digital.

Following the acquisition of Liquid Compass, recent accolades include being selected as one of ten CEOs to successfully complete 101010.net's inaugural launch, and also being awarded as a Top 25 Young Professional in Colorado by Colorado Biz Magazine.

Zackary is frequently asked to speak and moderate panel discussions on topics pertaining to streaming technologies, digital advertising, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship.

Currently Zackary is evolving how people meet with Say Allo, an intelligent relationship discovery app.

On the show, we spoke about:

• How he left the Marines to become a serial entrepreneur
• Lessons he took from the army
• Traveling to Vietnam and the insight he had on that trip
• What’s wrong with online dating today and his personal story
• His plans to compete with Say Allo in a crowded space
• Raising money and attacking a big market

Zackary often travels to Montreal and I was happy that he took the time to sit down with me. He’s humble despite many past successes and I took away a lot from this interview. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Stephan Morency, Head of Investments @ Fondaction. Stéphan Morency has more than 15 years of experience as a private equity fund manager and entrepreneur specializing in enterprise corporate strategy consulting.

He founded 2 companies and managed them from inception to divestiture.

He currently works at Fondaction, a 2B+$ fund dedicated to sustainable development, as Chief Investment Officer.

He is primarily active in the impact investment sectors targeted by Fondaction and related to climate change, sustainable agro food transition and land revitalization. He is also serving as board member for several organizations including Transition Energetique Quebec. 

On the show, we spoke about:

• Finding purpose in his work 
• How he decided to focus on sustainability
• The importance of impact investing
• Fondaction’s mission, vision and investment thesis
• Thinking beyond the crisis  

I learned a lot about impact investing, sustainability and the post-Covid-19 world by talking with Stephan. He was very generous with his insights. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Alexandre de Brébisson, Founder @ Lyrebird.ai and PhD student at MILA. Alexandre is one of the founders of lyrebird.ai, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, RedPoint Ventures and YCombinator (S17). He is also a fourth-year PhD student at the MILA lab in Montréal under the joint supervision of Professors Pascal Vincent and Yoshua Bengio (my interest in neural nets started back in 2008 when he coded LeNet-5 in Maple (!)). Before his PhD, he studied at Imperial College under the supervisions of Professors Murray Shanahan, Giovanni Montana and Mauricio Barahona.

On the show, we spoke about:

• How he started building websites at a young age
• His interest in speech synthesis and the ethical impact
• Optimization speeds with natural language processing
• Going viral around the world

Alexandre is a brilliant and super humble entrepreneur. The technology he is developing is literally stuff from science fiction. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Pascal Pilon, CEO @ Landr. Pascal Pilon is a veteran tech entrepreneur, CEO and investor, is currently running LANDR, the world's leader in music post-production and digital content management. He actively supports new entrepreneurs in Quebec through YUL Ventures, a fund he created and manages since 2013, investing in great founders leading technology companies that are in the early days of their commercialization effort. Pascal is a software engineer by trade with an MBA from HEC Montreal, and is the recipient of several awards, including CNBC’s Upstart 25 (in 2017), Deloitte's Fast 50 (2018 and 6 times over the last decade), Entrepreneur of the Year Ernst & Young (Quebec, 2009), Investissement Québec’s CEO of the Year Award (2009) and Réseau Capital’s CEO of the Year Award (2011).

On the show, we spoke about:

• How Pascal got interested in entrepreneurship
• Launching and his exit from Averna
• Investing in MixGenius and the opportunity he saw
• Landr’s growth, strategy and diversified revenue streams
• Their ambition to help artists succeed

Pascal is one of the most successful Canadian technology entrepreneurs. He was generous with his time and insights, I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Hector Pantazopoulos, CRO & Cofounder @ SourceKnowledge and Deborah Kilpatrick, VP Marketing & Cofounder @ SourceKnowledge.

Deborah Kilpatrick is the co-founder and VP of Marketing at SourceKnowledge. SourceKnowledge helps e-commerce brands ignite sales by advertising their products on premium digital channels. The company uses proprietary algorithms and machine learning software to traffic campaigns, with the resulting data made transparent and available to its customers through online analytics and order ID reporting. Because of this data driven audience segmentation process, SourceKnowledge can target and constantly refine the most effective ad delivery for its customers.

Hector Pantazopoulos is the CRO & Cofounder @ SourceKnowledge. Hector has over ten years of experience in the online advertising and marketing industry in a business development role. He has deep expertise in video advertising, affiliate marketing, and online retail.

Founded in 2009, SourceKnowledge is headquartered in Montreal with offices in Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles and clients around the world. Deloitte ranked SourceKnowledge as one of the fastest growing companies in the North America Technology Fast 500 in 2014 and 2015.

On the show, we spoke about:

• How they launched Source Knowledge and the drive behind it
• The evolution of their business model
• Importance of the open web
• Moving to a cookie less world
• Eschewing venture capital funding

I learned a ton from talking with Hector and Deborah. They shared some great insights into building a business and about the Adtech industry.  

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Marine Thomas, Editor in Chief @ Les Affaires

She has been working in writing since 2016 as an editor in chief in various media organizations.

Marine is driven by a desire to offer our readers relevant and high-quality content, whether in paper or digital form. In addition, she acts on the Board of Directors of the Montreal Women's Y - YWCA Montreal since 2014. She is currently Vice-Chair of the Board.

Previously, she was editor-in-chief at Revue Gestion - HEC Montréal, editor-in-chief of Inspiro Media and deputy editor-in-chief of Premieres en Affaires. Marine has a Masters in Culture and Media Management (Press and Publishing Specialty) from Sciences Po (Paris).

On the show, we spoke about:

• The acquisition of Les Affaires
• The importance of diversifying revenue sources as well as quality journalism
• Putting the client at the center of a transformation
• Where media is headed

Marine leads the most prestigious business publication in the province. She shared some great insights on the future of media and leadership. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Joe Meadows, Co-Founder & CEO @ Opslock.

Joe is a worksite safety entrepreneur. He started his career as a mariner and quickly moved up the ranks to become Chief Mate at McDermott International. He saw an entrepreneurial opportunity to help prevent workplace incidents and decided to launch his own startup.

He co-founded Opslock which builds tools to save lives at work.

Opslock is empowering employers to proactively avoid disasters by revolutionizing the way activities are planned, monitored, and controlled. Their platform allows even the harshest and most remote operations to go completely paperless, ensures OSHA compliance, while machine-learning and predictive analytics get the right information to employees at the right time - enabling smarter, safer operations.

They raised financing from world class investors and are growing quickly.

On the show, we spoke about:

• How he became a master mariner
• Moving up the ranks and eventually became second in command upon a large ship
• Starting Opslock and seeing the opportunity in worker’s safety
• How he met his co-founder in unusual circumstances
• The massive global market for their product
• Raising funding from the world’s top investors

Joe is on the verge of building a truly global business. He’s deeply passionate about his industry and shared some great insights. I hope that you enjoy the conversation!

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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On this week’s show, we spoke with Martin Enault, COO @ Felix & Paul Studios.  

Martin has over 16 years of experience between executive roles and being an entrepreneur, and is now COO for Felix & Paul Studios. He also wants to change how the world sees social issues, and particularly around mental health.

Previously, he was part of C2.biz for five years, and it truly changed his perspective on the world. He hopes to help inspire others in seeing that we can, and should, reshape the future. He has been blessed with dyslexia, anxiety and depression, and it’s changed the way he sees the world. He sees it these as a positive force, as they make him a better person, and enables him to see the world from a different perspective.

On the show, we spoke about:

• How he got started in entertainment
• Growing C2 from a startup to a global phenomenon
• Where he sees the future of VR
• The issues of mental health and what people can do it
• Practical advice for those affected by depression or anxiety

Today’s episode has been a long time coming. I look up to Martin and admire him tremendously. He has the courage to tackle a massively important issue.

Let us know what you think. What types of guests would like to see on the show? What topics interest you the most? Send me your thoughts at [email protected]

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