Founder Vision with Clearview

Founder Vision with Clearview

By ClearviewBusinessEntrepreneurshipManagement
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Founder Vision with Clearview episodes

  • 045 Overcoming friction: how to shake up an established company

    When a business has been trucking along nicely for (30+) years, it can be tempting to avoid rocking the boat. But in today's rapidly-changing world, not only does that boat need to be rocked, sometimes it's time to replace the sails with a jet motor! When Patricia Hume joined Canvas, she was up for the challenge. She brought 20 years of C-level experience to her new role as CEO, ready to lead Canvas's strategic vision into the future. She joins Brian Gupton on the show to talk about her experience, including the challenges of moving from a perpetual license model to subscription software while retaining clients, managing internal resistance to change and maintaining team rapport, securing funding for new ventures while supporting legacy products, and more. With Patricia at the helm, Canvas has big things ahead, and we're so glad she shared her insights with us.

    40 min
  • 044 How are Ukrainian tech startups navigating the chaos of war?
    On a very special episode of Founder Vision, Yurii Filipchuk joins Brian Gupton from his home in Kyiv, mere kilometers from the active warzone, on the 8th day of the Russian invasion. Yurii and two cofounders (who were themselves displaced by conflict in 2014 and now again in 2022), formed Party.Space as a way to create virtual “microverses” - VR environments for events, conferences, and parties. When your real world is under pressing threat, what is the creator of a virtual world to do? 

Yurii shares so much with us in this powerful interview.
    Topics include:
    - Day to day life under the shadow of war
    - How tech companies and everyday people can support the Ukrainian resistance, both virtually and physically
    - How the Ukrainian tech community is fighting - and winning - a “meme war” to destabilize critical Russian IT infrastructure and get real information to the Russian people.
    - How Ukrainian businesses are surviving, and how to support them
    - Differing responses within the Ukrainian workforce; ranging from crippling fear to “work therapy”
    All this and more. We hope you’ll give it a listen, and continue to listen to the people of Ukraine.
    Interview recorded 5:30pm Ukrainian time on Thursday, March 3.
    28 min
  • 043 Leveraging tech debt and embracing leadership
    Technical debt is the source of a lot of confusion, concern, and negative stigma in the startup world. It's the idea that taking a coding shortcut now - to meet a deadline, push an iteration, or for some other goal - will lead to more development work needed in the future. Non-technical founders may fear it, have trouble recognizing it, try avoid it, and unknowingly accrue it. Nael El Shawwa, Head of Engineering at Perpetua.io, has a different perspective. He joins Brian Gupton on the podcast to discuss how founders can thoughtfully - not recklessly - leverage technical debt to help move their vision forward. This thought-provoking conversation also digs into topics such as leadership - how to embrace it for yourself and how to identify and foster it in others; the current state of tech recruitment; and what can be gained and lost as we are siloed away from the office in remote work. We really enjoyed this conversation and think you will too.
    46 min
  • 042 How can we prioritize our energy in a startup?
    Beginning and growing a startup is a resource-intensive process. It demands time, money, attention, and energy. In a world where all these resources are finite, how can founders prioritize their efforts for maximum results? Dennis Kelly from Postalytics has some ideas. He joins Brian Gupton to discuss strategies such as building a sales pipeline, identifying your core demographic, optimizing content, the benefits of releasing free software, and more.
    42 min
  • 041 What are some hallmarks of successful startups?
    Ciprian Spiridon knows a thing or two about startups. After all, in his role at AW Rostamani Group, he's responsible for the internal software house that serves the companies that make up AWR Group, from ecommerce retail to automobile services and beyond. Both as part of AWR Group and in his prior career as a software developer, he's had the chance to interact with startups and scaling companies from a vast variety of industries, and he joins Brian Gupton on the podcast to share some of what he's learned. Listen in to hear about the most important skill a founder can have, the value of "controlled chaos" in a growing company, his "golden rule" for nontechnical founders, and more.
    38 min
  • 040 How can technology help support addiction recovery?
    When Daniela Tudor set out to create WEconnect, it was personal. As someone who is in long-term recovery herself, she saw the major barriers that people in recovery face as they try to change self-destructive behaviors. It can be difficult to stay accountable, find connection, and even to afford access to ongoing recovery support. She and her team at WEconnect are disrupting that pattern with their powerful mobile tool that challenges and rewards participants for creating healthier habits, provides one-on-one peer support, and serves as a safety net for members in crisis. She joins Brett and Brian on the podcast to discuss her journey in building a platform that has helped people from around the world with recovery from addiction.
    https://www.weconnectrecovery.com/free
    34 min
  • 039 How can founders utilize qualitative data to resist their own biases?
    In founding a business, improving a product, and generally keeping up with the fast pace of innovation in today's startup landscape, it's important to make the right decisions the first time around. For years, businesses have relied on quantitative (numbers-based) data to help them understand what's happened and try to guess where to go next. But so much information comes to us in shapes that are hard to punch into a spreadsheet. From phone and video conversations to open-field survey questions, a wealth of data gets overlooked because it can't be easily analyzed, which leaves leaders trying to make decisions from their inherently-biased personal judgment. Michael Bamberger and his team at Tetra Insights are tackling this problem with their powerful qualitative data mining tool. He joins Brett and Brian on the podcast to share some of the insights his team has unearthed and how doing the right research ahead of time can empower business leaders to stay ahead of the curve in today's demanding market.
    https://www.tetrainsights.com/
    32 min
  • 038 How can we choose the right startup mentors?
    When Dr. Matt Wilson decided to leave a burgeoning career in clinical medicine to found medical research technology platform uMed, it was a leap of faith. All the moreso because his first attempt at a medical startup failed to take off. So what does it take to brush the dust off and try again? A heap of inspiration, a bit of luck, and the right mentors and partners around you. Matt and uMed's Head of Product Patti Ward join Brett and Brian on the podcast to share uMed's story. They dig into the need to fail gracefully, how to know when to pivot and when to stay the course, the importance of finding the right mentors on a startup journey, and more.
    48 min
  • 037 How can we identify the next great opportunity?

    Ethan Glass's parking management service Ocra came from humble roots. As a parking operator managing spaces near the LA Coliseum, he saw firsthand just how fragmented, inefficient, and disorganized the industry was; every vendor had different methods for tracking inventory, adjusting pricing, and accepting payments.  Not content with the status quo, Ethan began incorporating automations and technology to reduce slippage and operating costs. Then, like so many other startups, COVID-19 disrupted the industry. With in-person events (and thus, event parking) coming to a screeching halt overnight, Ethan and his team could have rolled over and quit. Or, they could get creative. Listen in as he shares the story of Ocra's pivot to build the world's first omni-channel management platform for parking operators, designed around real client needs from the ground up.

    getocra.com

    31 min
  • 036 In a data-driven world, how can we keep ethics at the forefront?
    The Team W understands how human psychology drives UX. After all, founder and CEO Susan Weinschenk holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin. This makes The Team W's expertise uniquely valuable to their clients, who are trying to optimize their offerings to guide customer behavior and interactions. But how do we know when we're nearing an ethical boundary, where optimization approaches manipulation? Susan joins Brett Kistler and Brian Gupton on the podcast to talk about The Team W's approach to ethics. She shares the ethical calculator that her son Guthrie Weinschenk created, and gets real about what it means to manage and grow a business as a parent-child team.
    theteamw.com
    ethicalformula.com
    34 min

About Founder Vision with Clearview

From the publisher's feed

What does it take to found a globally important company in these times? We’re interested in what happens before universally-acknowledged success.