Before Santi Jaramillo was an executive coach, he was an entrepreneur that started, or was a key player in several companies now worth almost $100M. Drawing on years of doing the work himself, he now helps founders navigate the complexities of growing their businesses. He's also the co-author of "Agile Engagement" and was recognized as Indiana's Latino Businessman of the Year in 2016, among other accolades.

Meet Ryan Vaughn - coach, CEO at Inside-Out Leadership. Over 15 years, he founded and led three companies. His last venture, VNN, became the largest and fastest-growing high school sports marketing platform in the US. He raised $20M from leading VCs, building a team of over 100 employees and scaling VNN to capture nearly 20% of the US market. From pitching to scaling and managing hyper-growth, Ryan's lived the full startup lifecycle.

This episode is a bit different from our usual format. Instead of hosting a guest, Joshua Eidelman, CEO at NeoWork, is taking the hot seat to address the questions that have been hitting my DMs.

Starting as a writer, Rob Hoffman’s career took a turn when he jumped into sales at a startup, closing $500,000 in his first year and doubling that the next. This was the foundation for co-founding Contact Studios, where Rob serves as CEO and leverages his blend of content expertise and sales acumen to help marketers scale their content production without increasing headcount.

This week's episode features Tyler Denk, the brilliant mind behind beehiiv. If you aren’t familiar, Tyler's journey is one that's sure to inspire - from teaching himself how to code and founding his first company, VentureStorm, to playing an instrumental role in Morning Brew's incredible growth and $75 million exit. Now, as the CEO and Co-Founder of beehiiv, Tyler is empowering creators and publishers to engage with their audiences like never before.

In this very special first episode of Founders & Empanadas, I had the pleasure of chatting with Mark Pecota, the CEO and Co-Founder of LaunchBoom. Mark's journey in crowdfunding started back in 2013 with the EcoQube campaign on Kickstarter and he has since helped clients raise over $100 million across 40+ countries. He also wrote the best-selling book Crowdfunded (seriously, just search "crowdfunding" on Amazon).