This week on the podcast, we listen in to part two of “An Evening with the Founders of DoApp” straight from Rochester’s Global Entrepreneurship Week. In part one founders Wade Beavers, Joe Sriver, and David Borrillo spoke about the early stages of DoApp, a mobile app development company, and the risks of taking outside funding when building a startup. To wrap the story up today, the team talked about the importance of hiring great talent, life after your company is acquired, and how to work through hardship- professional and personal- within a business. To date, DoApp serves as one of Rochester’s largest startup success stories; insight from these founders are invaluable to anyone looking to start something in this city.

“As you scale up as an organization, as you’re building your organization, you want to build great people, who can build great people, who can build great products that people can’t live without.” –Joe Sriver, Founder at DoApp

Previous stories about DoApp:

One Of The Biggest Rochester Startup Stories That You Don’t Know: Meet DoApp

After Exits, DoApp Founder Looking To Give Back To The Rochester Entrepreneurial Community

This week on the podcast we listen in to some audio straight from Rochester’s Global Entrepreneurship Week. On the show today we listen in to part one of “A Night with the Founders of DoApp” where DoApp founders Wade Beavers, Joe Sriver, and David Borrillo along with key individuals- John Roberts with New Counsel and David Olson with Blackridge Financial- talk about the growth and exits of this mobile application development company. Today on the podcast, we hear about the very beginnings of DoApp, how they developed three of the very first apps for the Apple App Store, and the reality of starting a business and taking outside funding.

“Whether it’s luck, calculated risk, whatever it is, you have those moments where you have to recognize it’s a failure and you have to adjust.” –Wade Beavers, former CEO of DoApp

This week on the podcast we chat with Rochester resident and longtime entrepreneur PJ Calkins. PJ began his entrepreneurial career at the age of eleven, where he and his siblings manufactured and sold pin-back buttons door to door. A few years later, the family took the business online, becoming the first pin-back button company selling on the internet. On the show today we talk about PJ’s involvement with his family’s business, how digital marketing can help your company, and what the temperature of the entrepreneurial climate is like right now for young professionals.

This week on the podcast we listen in to the full interview with Becky Montpetit, Founder of Rochester MN Moms Blog, in our Diverge series. This is the final piece of our multi-part series where we explore the stories of four Rochester entrepreneurs who left long careers to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

“I think it’s really important to look at where your passions are and where your passions lie. Sometimes, we sit in a job or a career and we realize that we really love it and love what you’re doing, but there is that missing piece of fulfillment.” –Becky Montpetit

This week on the podcast we take a trip to Lincoln K-8 Public School to speak with the Integrated Science Education Outreach Program, or InSciEd Out. Today we’re joined by Chris Pierret, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Mayo Clinic and InSciEd Out organizer, and Lincoln teachers Liz Koehler and Kyle Casper. On the podcast today we talk about InSciEd Out, an innovative collaborative partnership that is redefining today’s science curriculum, discuss specific science education modules that the program has implemented in Lincoln classrooms, and take a peek at the future of the program.

“InSciEd Out was a great way for us to learn as teachers that it’s ok, we can be scientists too and we learn right along with the students.” –Liz Koehler, Lincoln K-8 Public School science educator

This week we listen in to the latest story in our Diverge series, where we explore the journeys of four Rochester entrepreneurs who left long careers to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Today we listen in to the full interview with Ryan and Jackie Steiner, owners of UNRAVELED Escape Room.

“You surround yourself with people who tell you you can’t do it, and pretty soon you think you can’t do it. …Luckily we’re strong enough individuals.” –Ryan Steiner

This week on the podcast we listen in to the latest audio from our #Emerge video series. In these videos, we sit down and have a conversation about entrepreneurship in Rochester and peek into the city’s startup culture with a member of the innovation community. This week, I sit down with Collider Coworking Community Manager Jamie Sundsbak. We talk about navigating career change, how to handle risk and uncertainty, and ways to build your business while maintaining another full-time job. And as always, we end by talking about the current state of the Rochester entrepreneurial community and what it needs to grow.

“That’s what a true entrepreneurial community should do. We give first, we surface what’s going on. We go out of our way to help people in any way that we can.” –Jamie Sundsbak

This week on the podcast, we talk about a recent Supplier Diversity Summit held in Rochester. The summit was hosted by the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce to highlight the benefits of engaging with diverse suppliers and to explain the importance of diversity and inclusion in today’s workforce. In the podcast today, we dive into the keynote speech at the event, which was given by Dr. Tony Byers. Dr. Byers has over twenty years of experience with diversity and inclusion initiatives, including roles at Starbucks, Heinz, and Cargill. In his talk, Dr. Byers explained the importance of diversity and inclusion for growth of a business and spoke about how the “multiple effect of inclusion” helps businesses capture new markets, expand their existing markets, and truly innovate.

“We want to not just count heads, but make heads count.” –Dr. Tony Byers

Our podcast this week features the latest installment in our Diverge series, where we tell the stories of four entrepreneurs who took significant risk to change career paths. On the show today, we speak with local entrepreneur Rosei Skipper. Rosei is a trained medical doctor who completed a five-year residency program at Mayo Clinic in Adult and Child Psychiatry. Now, she teaches yoga and barre classes around town and holds individual and group yoga and meditation classes through her business, Rosei Skipper Yoga and Wellness. On the podcast today, we listen in to Rosei’s full interview, where she talks about her career divergence from psychiatrist to yoga, wellness, and social media guru.

“The first step for me was actually to practice the thing. You don’t have to make any big change in your life to just start moving in a new direction.” –Rosei Skipper

This week on the podcast we speak with David Edmiston, Senior International Trade Specialist for the U.S. Commercial Service. The U.S. Commercial Service is a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce and serves as a “public facing agency that exists to work with companies that produce goods and services here in the U.S. to help those goods and services get to international markets.” Today on the podcast we talk about international trade and exporting, the first steps Minnesota businesses should take to enter the global market, and the role of the U.S. Commercial Service in this process.

“A lot of folks don’t realize that actually 95% of potential customers are outside of the U.S.” –David Edmiston, U.S. Commercial Service

Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development’s 2017 Q2 export statistics.