Paparelli Podcast

Blake started life in Jamestown, North Carolina. He is the son of a career army non-com and the first in his family to go to college.

From there it was all upside.

D1 Swimming Scholarship
President’s Advisory Council at Georgia Tech
Wallstreet
Startup entrepreneur
Successful exit
Led international expansion for a public company at 28

And this story ends with Blake becoming a successful VC. He is just about to close Tech Square Venture’s Fund II.

What blew me away was how his life-long relationships carried him from one opportunity to the next. But there was a break in his career where he chose family first.

Give this conversation a listen and learn the secrets of a successful life, even in technology.

David is my son. He is also the 2021 London School of Economics Entrepreneur of the year.

I wanted to know, “How did you do that?”

In this interview, I learned: 

1. Why as a newly married man, he chose to quit his job, sell everything and move to London to pursue his Executive MBA.
2. Why he felt called to be a social entrepreneur right out of undergrad.
3. Why it took ten years to start his first business.
4. How he came to the business idea that won the LSE startup competition.
5. How he was awarded LSE’s Entrepreneur of the Year.

Along the way, you’ll learn the importance of relationship building. 

It is his secret sauce!

Merrick Furst is a distinguished professor of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. 

Impressive, but wait. 

He started nine companies. 

But wait. 

He started an accelerator that launched dozens of startups with values exceeding $1b. 

But wait. 

He shares the secret to making your startup a long-term success. 

This is my friend, Merrick. 

He is a friend of mine, but more importantly, a friend to entrepreneurs. His amazing reputation and network were developed at Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkely, and now Georgia Tech. 

He is so focused on startup opportunities that he walked away from tenure at the first two prestigious universities. Merrick is all about making sure entrepreneurs and their ideas succeed. 

He will accept nothing less than success and sustainability. Merrick is in relentless pursuit of authentic demand. 

Join our conversation. I recommend you take notes!

Karen Houghton set the culture at Atlanta Tech Village. She was there right after David Cummings bought the building and had the vision for a startup community. Karen, working with David Lightburn, set a culture of innovation and community service. 

Karen is a great leader!

She supported hundreds of entrepreneurs who started and built big businesses at the Village. She recruited them, found them just the right space, promoted them, and connected them. Now it is her turn.

Karen is now an entrepreneur. She is the founder of Infinite Giving. They help nonprofits invest, endow, and liquidate stocks easily with software that automates their investment strategy and grows their giving.

She’s attracted great investors and an amazing co-founder. And now the fun begins.

In this conversation, Karen shares how she moved from a career in industrial psychology to being at the crossroads of Atlanta tech startups. And now, she is an entrepreneur. 

I never heard such a clear calling to serve Jesus as I did in this interview. 

Doug Ammar is the Director of the Georgia Justice Project in downtown Atlanta. He has served in this capacity for over twenty-five years. 

Doug is a recognized expert in criminal justice. He not only changes the lives of the poor accused of crimes, but also changes the laws. 

Doug became the director after the founder of GJP unexpectedly quit. 

• No money. 
• No donor prospects. 
• No network. 

Doug leaned into God and said, “If you want me here, you’ll have to make this ministry viable.”

 Six months later, GJP was more financially stable than in its entire existence. 

This man’s story shows the power of God and the grace of God. Doug came from less than nothing as a child to becoming a leader of the criminal justice movement nationwide. 

One of the best (and longest) interviews I ever did. I’ll be listening to this one again, myself.

“People support what they help create,” said Michael Arrietta, Founder, and CEO of Garden City. 

Michael lives this every day. He started a holding company with the goal to be the next Berkshire Hathaway. His model is focused on acquiring service companies with between $2-4mm in free cash flow. These businesses are all over America and most of them are owned by baby boomers. Every 57 seconds a baby boomer owner reaches retirement age. 

To achieve his goal, Michael has a war chest of $50mm in committed capital from a who’s who in technology and business internationally. These leaders invested in a fund that promises NO exit. 

They are buying into what they hope will be a continuous cash income stream. In addition, these leaders pledge to help the portfolio companies with a caring culture, tech enablement, and a modern sales approach. In this interview, Michael tells his story. 

At 16 years old he was selling Cutco and making over $100k/year. He almost doubled this while attending the University of Alabama. Then, as he told me, “I took two steps back to then take five steps forward.” He headed to Silicon Valley. 

There are amazing lessons to be learned here in selling, serving, and leading. 

Bobby John believes he and his Band of Coders can take your dreams, desires, and vision and convert them into reality using software. He is a coder at heart with the soul of a serial entrepreneur. 

In this interview, Bobby shares how he started a company while in college and became a millionaire at twenty six years old. He saw the first version of Netscape, the window to the internet, and said, “This is the future.” 

He started a company with three friends that grew so quickly they had to hire the past President of Apple Canada to run it. 

And then came the trading platform startup in NYC while his wife was in completing her residency. Five years later he and his partner created a company that was trading millions in loans. 

He sold again. 

Bobby is still starting new software companies that solve real problems. He has a nose for problems and the talent to solve them. And his companies always, and seemingly every time, create cash-flow quickly.

He is an entrepreneur with a hot hand. Listen to how he does it.

I developed these five criteria based on my 25+ years of angel investing. During that time, I spoke with hundreds of entrepreneurs and synthesized these success criteria. Every startup has to have these criteria present. Every new corporate idea must have these criteria present. 

Then there is the secret sauce that makes it all work.

Give it a listen. It will make a difference in your startup and your current venture.

Presentation slides (PDF): https://bit.ly/3whBWMS

David Nour is an expert in relationship economics. In fact, that’s the name of his first book. He just released his eleventh book, Curve Benders. It is an even deeper dive into the fulfillment and personal advancement that comes from curve benders in your life.

David is an immigrant from Iran. His parents sent him to America to live with his aunt and uncle. All opportunity was evaporating with the fall of the Shah of Iran in the early 1980’s. David was fourteen years old and spoke no English. 

Today David is the founder and President of the Nour Group. He serves CEOs of the F100 as a personal advisor and coach. In addition, he is an international speaker, consultant, advisor, coach, author, husband, and father. 

In this in-depth interview, he tells his story of how he decided to make the best of his situation. Imagine being fourteen years old, and your mother tells you, “You can never come home. America is now your home.” They even gave him up for adoption to his aunt and uncle. 

In this interview, David speaks to his accomplishments and the lives he changed. His story is filled with life and business lessons. It is an amazing entrepreneurial journey. Really amazing!

In this show, Chris Dardaman and I discuss the book, Die with Zero by Bill Perkins.

This book caught me while I am in a transition phase of my life. I asked Chris Dardaman, a friend and private investor, to give it a read and then discuss it with me. 

I chose Chris because he was the founder of Brightworth, a wealth management firm with $4.5B under management. Five years ago, he decided to leave the firm after his wife, Laura, told him, “Your creativity and energy is no longer in the company you founded.”

This put Chris on a transition path much like mine. Chris is ten years my junior, but he dealt with many people like me in his wealth management practice. 

This segment is an opportunity for you to sit in on a revealing conversation. In this conversation, Chris and I share our struggles with transition, using the book’s ideas on how to live rich versus die rich.

I hope you enjoy this transparent conversation.