Joining the podcast this week is John Cimperman, founder of the 42North Brewery and the incredibly popular Borderland Music Festival in East Aurora. We chat with John about his time with the Buffalo Sabres, staring a brewery and how Borderland could be the next big festival in the northeast.

This week on the Latitude Podcast host Nate Benson is joined by royalty, well, chicken wing royalty. Drew Cerza, aka "The Wing King", joins the podcast to talk about the early days of the International Chicken Wing Festival, how he became a king, the best and worst wing he’s ever had and how he found his passion in chicken wing entrepreneurship.

This week on Latitude we chat with John Hill, VP of Network at Techstars. John talks about his background in journalism and how that led him to a career of connecting people, why networking is so vital to the health of an emerging startup community, and how to actually network.

Barb Stegemann’s entrepreneurial vision was formed after her best friend—a soldier—was severely wounded in Afghanistan. Understanding that supporting Afghanistan’s economy was key to building stability for its people, Stegemann created The 7 Virtues, a company that sources organic, fair trade essential oils from countries experiencing turmoil (such as Afghanistan, Haiti the Middle East and Rwanda). Despite addressing complex global matters in her talks, Stegemann uses humor to explain how individuals can use business for good and effect change, both at home and worlds away. 

This week on the podcast, presented by the UB School Of Management Center for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness, Barb talks about starting her company, the passion involved in mission-driven entrepreneurship and the impact the company has had on war-torn farmers.

This week on the podcast we go live again from the inaugural Code Buffalo hackathon presented by 43North, Techstars, ACV Auctions, BNMC and more. 

We chat with Apollo GraphQL founder Geoff Schmidt about GraphQL, how it's becoming an important tool for developers, starting multiple companies in the valley, and the pressures after raising $22M in capital.

This week we take Latitude on the road for another live edition featuring 2018 43North winner Nadia Hamilton, founder of Magnusmode. 

Magnusmode is creating digital decks that guide those living with Autism through daily life. Nadia talks about the origins of Magnusmode, why it's so personal for her, why brands are creating MagnusCards, growing in Buffalo and the zombie apocalypse.

How do you do some good? There are many ways, and good comes in all shapes and sizes. For Kate and Joe Vacanti, their calling was to help people access water. One in seven people in the world lack access to clean water and 3.5 million people die from water-borne illnesses each year. On the continent of Africa, 40 billion hours are spent each year walking to sources of clean water. 

 

Something had to be done. 

 

This week on the podcast hosts Nate Benson and Darren Treadway talk with Kate and Joe about Let Them LOL, their nonprofit initiative that is building water wells in Sierra Leone. To date, Let Them LOL has built 105 wells, bringing clean water to more than 42,000 people. Why did they choose Sierra Leone? How difficult was digging the first well? Was entrepreneurship always the plan? 

This episode of Latitude is presented by the University at Buffalo School of Management Center for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness, in collaboration with 43North, and with support from the UB School of Management Alumni Association.

One of our most downloaded guests on the show returns to talk about all things upstate on this episode of Latitude. Noa Simons, Executive Director of the Upstate Capital Association, joins host Nate Benson to talk about all the various types of capital being deployed in New York since the last time she was on the show.

43North has kicked off the sixth year of the $5,000,000 startup competition and is now accepting applications. 

But should your startup apply? How long is it going to take? Why are you seeing 43North staff on the road at demo days? Is your startup ready for 43North? 

These are all great questions and we brought the man behind that works in the shadows to effectively execute the 43North application every year, 43North staffer, Brian Straka. 

Brian talks about how five months of prep are done before the application goes live, why the staff travel across the country to connect with investors and startups, the types of startups we look for and more.

It's finally here, episode 100 of Latitude - The 43North Podcast. It's been a remarkable journey for this show and what better way to celebrate than with a live (to tape) edition of the podcast!? 

For Latitude 100 we were joined by 100(ish) of our closest friends, community supporters, staff and former guests. All coming together to celebrate this milestone. 

Joining host Nate Benson on the show was two of the three co-founders of ACV Auctions to talk about their recent growth, how they're continuing to innovate, what they'd do over and more. 

Settle in for this one, it's just over an hour of incredible insight into a startup that hasn't even begun to reach the limits of what they're capable of.