Startup Grind

Mike Cassidy who is currently a vice president at Google and Project leader on Google x’s project loon which is an attempt to blanket the globe in wireless connectivity using hot air balloons. Before joining google Mike was a serial entrepreneur founding companies like rubber, xfire, direct hit, and stylus innovation. 

Mike has a BS/MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT and graduated from the Harvard Business School.

Christine Tsai, the founding partner of 500 Startups, one of the worlds most active, well known, and internationally focused incubators. Tsai has invested in over 150 companies including Ipsy, Sprig, Bombfell, and Storefront, and also oversees the accelerator and distribution teams at 500. Prior to 500 Christine was in product marketing at Google and YouTube for many years. She worked on Developer Platforms and Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference. She also worked on Google AdSense, Analytics and YouTube syndication. Before that, Christine held roles in international sales at OSIsoft and ChevronTexaco. Christine has a BA in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley. She is also a ballet dancer of 25 years.

Sarah Wood the founder of the video ad tech startup Unruly. Sarah co-founded Unruly in 2010 and it was named the UK’s second fastest growing tech companies in 2012. Unruly’s core mission is to deliver the most awesome social video campaigns on the planet. They are currently the leading programmatic platform for social video advertising, powered by their proprietary supply side mobile distribution technology which make campaigns scalable in native formats. Prior to being named one of inc magazines top 15 women to watch in tech, Sarah was an academic and professor and currently still teaches as an associate lecturer at the university of Cambridge. Unruly was recently acquired by News Corp for 176 million dollars.

Paul Singh who is a former partner at 500 Startups and currently the director of the 1776 incubator co-working space in Washington DC. previously Paul was the founder of Disruption Corporation which provided tools, research and advisory services to corporations, angel investors and venture capital firms. Paul is also an investor via the Crystal Tech Fund. Previously, he was a Partner at 500 Startups and has overseen the investments in 525+ companies across 35+ countries. He is currently serving as an Entrepreneur in Residence with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Let’s listen into Paul Singh interviewed by Oleg Yefymov our chapter director in Halifax, Canada.

Steve is one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs and a pioneer in making the Internet part of everyday life. He currently serves as Chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a Washington, D.C.- based investment firm he co-founded in 2005, where he partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build significant “built to last” new businesses. The mission is to establish Revolution as the premier firm outside of Silicon Valley.

Steve’s entrepreneurial career began in 1985 when he co-founded America Online (AOL). Under Steve’s leadership, AOL became the world’s largest and most valuable Internet company, driving the worldwide adoption of a medium that has transformed business and society. AOL was the first Internet company to go public and among the best performing stocks of the 1990s, delivering an 11,616% return to shareholders. 

At its peak, nearly half of Internet users in the United States used AOL. 

Steve’s passion for helping entrepreneurs remains his driving force. He was the founding chair of the Startup America Partnership—an effort launched at the White House to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation.

 Steve is a leading voice in shaping government policy on issues related to entrepreneurship and working across the aisle to advance public policies that expand access to capital and talent.

Gagan Biyani is CEO and co-founder of Sprig, whose mission it is to make eating well simple. Open your phone when you're hungry, tap a button and get a healthy meal delivered in 15 minutes. Sprig has raised $57M from Greylock Partners and Social Capital Partnership and is available in San Francisco, Chicago and Palo Alto.

Prior to founding Sprig, he was a Growth Advisor for Lyft where he led supply and demand acquisition for their launch in Los Angeles. Gagan previously was co-founder and President of the education marketplace, Udemy, which has raised $113M and has over 7 million students worldwide. Gagan will be interviewed by Greylock Partner, Simon Rothman.

Simon invests in entrepreneurs building consumer networks and platforms, and he leads Greylock’s $100 million commitment to marketplace investments. His area of focus includes network effects businesses and transaction-based startups with a specialty around marketplaces.

Bob is the co-author of the startup owners manual, a manual for starting up companies that aims at preventing many of the cardinal startup sins many founders make. together along with steve blank, the two spent 2 years conceiving, outlining, drafting, rewriting, and revising the global bestseller. A serial entrepreneur, bob left a lucrative broadcasting job at the age of 22 because the had a passion to start a company which he did 7 times over 3 decades. He describes his track record as 2 home runs, two base hits, and three great tax losses. Bob now teaches customer development and business modeling at columbia business school. he has also lead training session in mexico, russia, and other place around the world

Hey there and welcome to Monday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have an awesome chat with the legendary Guy Kawasaki. Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. Formerly, he was an advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google and Chief evangelist of Apple. He is the author of The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media,Enchantment, and ten other books. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College. 

 

Guy is interviewed by startup grind’s founder Derek Andersen for a globally held google hangout. streamed live from google hq in mountain view california. Lets listen in.

Hey there and welcome to wednesday’s episode of the startup grind podcast. Today we have a great chat with Adam Lashinsky, author of the wildly popular and revealing book "inside apple". Adam is the senior editor at large for fortune covering silicon valley and wall street. He’s been on the magazines staff since 2001. Prior to that he worked at the Street.com and the san jose mercury news. He is also a weekly panelist on foxes cavuto on business program. Adam  co-chairs fortunes annual technology conference Fortune Brainstorm Tech, and is a seasoned speaker and panel moderator. Lets listen into this great interview between adam and startup grind’s founder Derek Andersen recorded in 2013.

Hey There and welcome to Monday's episode of the startup grind podcast. This week we have a truly awesome interview with one of Silicon Valley’s biggest personalities. Chamath Palihapitiya. Chamath is the founder and managing partner of the Social Capital Partnership, a venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CA that incubates and invests in breakthrough companies in Healthcare, Education, Fincancial services, mobile, and enterprise software. Preceding his focus as an investor, Chamath was the longest tenured member of Facebooks senior executive team and helped drive its ascension to one of the most important companies in the world. Chamath is also an owner and director of the NBA’s golden state warriors. Chamath was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in canada, and graduated with a degreee in electrical engineering from the university of waterloo. 

In this very honest and insightful interview chamath speaks with startup grind’s founder derek andersen in Palo Alto about his early life, time at Facebook, encounters with Steve jobs, and what he feels the valley should really be working on. Lets listen in.