Superpowers Podcast

On this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris talk with Howard Lindzon, Founder and Partner at Social Leverage. Howard is a kind-hearted Canadian entrepreneur, author, and investor whose superpower is his social intelligence and self-understanding. A product of his Jewish upbringing in Toronto, Howard calls himself a “Larry David meets venture capital.” He had a lot of side hustles as a kid and tried his hand at stand-up comedy as a teen. Eventually he earned his MBA from ASU and started his career as a stockbroker in Dallas. One day Howard cold-called an entrepreneur to pitch stocks, but the conversation took a turn. He ended up partnering with the businessman on a stress ball startup called, “The Grip.” That experience taught Howard valuable lessons in running a business, which he applied when founding a hedge fund shortly after, only to discover quickly that he preferred the lifestyle of angel investing. “I had a pretty good eye for picking winners,” Howard told the Bill and Chris. After one of Howard’s investments flourished, he built a relationship with the founder and collaborated with him to build StockTwits, a platform for investors. As Howard described, “It’s basically Twitter for investors.” A year later, Howard founded Social Leverage to advise and invest in promising tech startups. He wanted to invest in the things he cared about that make a positive difference in people’s lives. Social Leverage’s core goals include elevating the conversation on investing and educating more people on how to navigate startups.

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In this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris bring on Ian Rapoport, author of the Boston Herald blog, “The RapSheet” and National Insider at the NFL Network. Ian had aspired to follow in the footsteps of his favorite writers at sports-centric publications like Sports Illustrated even before attending Columbia University, where he covered sports for the institution’s storied student newspaper. “I always loved sports,” Ian told Bill and Chris before cautioning young writers who want to follow in his footsteps: “You have to like the writing more than sports.” Ian takes a creative approach to his work that led to the 2008 creation of The RapSheet blog at the Boston Herald, which adds a level of personality and humor that’s often lacking in traditional sports news coverage. Ian also writes daily about the New England Patriots, using every ounce of his creativity to get answers from the Patriots’ notoriously tight-lipped, legendary head coach Bill Belichick. “We came to an understanding pretty early that there are always questions I’m going to ask and he’s either going to answer or he doesn’t… I was also never shy about asking.” Through trial and error, building connections without crossing boundaries, Ian became “a nonstop source of Patriots information.” In 2012, Ian’s reputation as a talented reporter landed him a job at the NFL Network. The transition to TV didn’t come to him naturally. “I was really bad at the beginning - one time I completely blanked on the air.” Over time and with support from the network, he polished off his TV presence and has become an NFL celebrity. Ian’s superpower is his ability to see the patterns in his reporting and apply his social awareness to sources to get top tier information.

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On this Episode of the Superpowers Podcast, Bill and Chris talk with Matt Lombardi, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of beam, a CBD wellness startup. Matt went from winning two NCAA Division I Hockey championships at Boston College, to a brief professional career in the NHL’s minor leagues, to becoming a passionate entrepreneur. Matt shared his experiences playing hockey at BC and how discipline and practice played a massive role in his personal growth. The lessons he learned from his athletic career have helped shape everything that came after. “Sports are the ultimate life metaphor. You learn how to be a part of a team, work towards goals, and leadership.” After suffering a severe concussion while playing for a Pittsburgh Penguins minor league affiliate, Matt left hockey, but took his personal drive and enthusiasm with him to launch a career in business. In 2014, he co-founded DRIVN, a virtual coaching platform that became an essential tool for college hockey teams. However, Matt’s involvement with the venture ended when he had a falling-out with his partner and co-founder. “I was still learning how to be a communicator,” He told Bill and Chris. In 2016 Matt co-founded Grander, another platform for athletes and coaches. Two years later, Matt partnered with his friend and fellow former BC athlete, Kevin Moran, to start beam. Matt shared his experience as an athlete struggling to find natural pain relief treatments. “We saw an opportunity to reimagine the CBD space by creating a more wellness-focused brand.” beam’s uniquely transparent and holistic approach to CBD helped Matt and Kevin raise $5 million this past fall.

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In this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris talk with Jeff Nicholson, the charismatic and fiercely passionate CEO of the data processing platform, Tracer. A Boston native and former basketball standout at Babson College, Jeff has an entrepreneurial spirit that led him from starting a small lobster business with his dad to becoming a top name in data software. When his first post-college job in finance failed to inspire, Jeff had an epiphany: He didn’t want his career to “be sitting in a cubicle with no direction.” So, he joined an MIT incubator and over four years, developed two successful AdTech companies that sold for millions. He then moved to New York to help build Social Code, an AdTech firm that became the first-ever Facebook Ads API partner, pioneering digital-first marketing. Jeff was still eager to do something bigger, and soon began building the platform that became Tracer, which helps clients join disparate data sets in order “to answer the questions you want to answer.” Buoyed by Jeff’s superpower – his endless, focused hustle – Tracer’s team success is deeply personal to its Co-founder and CEO: “I want to make people know I care about them,” Jeff told Bill and Chris. “I sat at those cubicles at those jobs and I knew no one cared about me and it was the worst feeling in the world and so I try to make it the opposite. I try to meet their parents if I can, I try to invite them to my home. Everyone knows that I care.”

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On this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris have a passionate conversation with the infectiously optimistic David Kidder, New York Times Best-selling author of The Startup Playbook and The Intellectual Devotional, and the co-founder of Bionic, a company that installs models and strategies to help large businesses grow. David’s professional journey began at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied industrial design, played lacrosse and began his decades-long career as a founder and entrepreneur. A self-proclaimed “interdisciplinary nerd” with a love for making things, by age 28 David had founded and sold personalized mobile content provider Smart Ray for $40 million. David then embarked on his journey to becoming a writer. “I started doing back-to-back interviews with entrepreneurs.” He wanted to learn the keys to making a successful business. “I would ask them two questions, how do you bet your life and what do you do in the first five years not to die? That became the Startup Playbook.” In 2013, David started Bionic. As he told Bill and Chris, “It’s a service company that helps large enterprises grow and we do that by installing growth operating systems. It’s the idea that venture capital and entrepreneurship are forms of management.” Today, Bionic takes in over $20 million annually in revenue with 55 employees and 10 clients. Through all of his successes, David has relied on his superpower – an ability to act on his obsessions and turn them into passions: “My philosophy is centered around the concept of ‘overcoming’…it’s all about falling in love with the grind, it’s the learning, it’s the ugliness of it. If you can’t get your spirit to be satisfied with that, you’re going to be very dissatisfied with the decisions you make in your life.”

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In this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris talk with the hilarious Terence Kawaja, Founder and CEO of the investment bank LUMA Partners. Terence brightened the video conference with his engaging storytelling and unique views on the intersection between digital media and marketing. A native of Quebec, Terence was an entrepreneur from an early age. From running a paper route at 9 years old to building a prominent investment bank, he has always been a driven and creative problem solver. Terence graduated from the University of Western Ontario, then went on to both law school and business school before starting his career on Wall Street at 26. After a decorated career as a Partner at Salomon Brothers and other Wall Street heavyweights, Terence decided to build his own company. He started LUMA Partners in 2010 and has helped it grow into an influential investment bank that advises top businesses and oversees M&As of dozens of companies every year. Terence’s superpower is his comedic skill and ability to tell stories that captivate audiences. He’s also a giver. As he told Bill and Chris, “95% of the things that don’t accrue to LUMA’s benefit, I believe in giving” without monetizing. That’s why LUMAScapes, which breaks down the supply chain of various parts of the digital media ecosystem with engaging graphics and data visualizations, is free at LUMA’s website along with other information resources.

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On this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris have a socially distanced video conference with Michael Katz, the level-headed and value-oriented Founder and CEO of the consumer data platform, mParticle. Michael is a Boston native and Syracuse University graduate who began his career at internet consulting firms like Zephyr and Accenture. In 2005 he and his brother, Andrew, founded the AdTech firm Interclick, testing the entrepreneurial spirit both had inherited from their father, who had been a business-owner since their childhood. Interclick was acquired by Yahoo in 2011. At Yahoo, Michael learned valuable lessons about leadership, the spread of multi-device data sources, and the importance of inspiring employees to embrace company culture. Michael took those insights with him when in 2013 he started mParticle a company that “make(s) it easy to get data from certain systems out of them, and into other places.” Michael’s superpower is his ability to inspire his employees to wholeheartedly embrace mParticle’s values of being driven and hardworking while also having fun. As he told the Bill and Chris, “our mantra at mParticle is to make business personal.” mParticle has “A few cultural norms: We hold ourselves accountable to being good people. We create value before we extract value. We own our karma; we create solutions, not excuses, and we have fun…If you’re doing all that, every day is pretty good.”

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On this episode of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris invite Deirdre Lester, Chief Revenue Officer at Barstool Sports, to share her experience moving up the ranks of the sports industry as a mother and competitive digital marketing icon. Deirdre was born in New Jersey as the middle child between two brothers before attaining her BA in English literature from the University of Vermont. After a short-lived stint in the finance world, Deirdre took the leap to digital sports media at CNET.com. She told the hosts, “It was so new and innovative and was changing people’s lives.” Soon Deirdre had risen through the ranks of sales at CNET and moved on to ESPN. There she committed herself to a career in digital despite being offered a leading role in the television department. She told Bill and Chris, “I that felt getting into the digital forefront was an opportunity to grow… to be entrepreneurial.” After collecting a vast knowledge of the sports industry and working at other companies like Rivals.com and MLB.com, Deirdre joined Barstool sports in 2018. She saw the potential in Barstool and its strong millennials fan base. “It was eye-opening for me… Barstool was built off the backs of hardworking people.” At Barstool Deirdre helped grow the sales team from 6 people to 33 and has facilitated numerous partnerships. Her superpower is that she’s diligently passionate. Throughout her career, Deirdre not only balanced the responsibilities of motherhood with the demands of corporate leadership, but also diligently identified where industry trends were going, well before they arrived at their destination.

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To kick off season 2 of the Superpowers podcast, Bill and Chris invite Beeswax CEO and AdTech pioneer Ari Paparo to discuss how his whit, transparency, and skillful communication have guided him to extraordinary success at both start-ups and tech giants. Ari shared his story, starting with his upbringing in New York and college days at Georgetown, followed by his time at Double Click and Google, then the runup to his founding of Beeswax, a first-of-its-kind AdTech product for large enterprises. Like most innovative ideas, Beeswax began with the identification of a problem. During his time at the AdTech firm AppNexus, Ari “kept hearing the same thing over and over again which is, ‘It’s great what your platform does, but I kind of want to own my own tech’… I said to myself, ‘Well… what can I build that would solve this problem?’” Ari took on the challenge and developed a product called “Bidder-as-a-Service.” “It was a full AdTech stack in the cloud. So, we founded the company, Beeswax… It’s a buy-side solution for buying ads, it’s very customizable. We have customers that write their own algorithms.” In 2014, Ari and his two co-founders raised $1.3 million in seed funding to start building Beeswax. To make the most out of that money, Ari and the other founders didn’t take any salary. As Ari put it, “it was just going to increase our burden enormously to have three high paid employees.” By 2019, Ari and his team had raised $28 million in total. With real resources in tow and a highly skilled team with experienced leadership, Beeswax is off and running. “Now we have 91 employees and about $30 million in revenue,” Ari told Bill and Chris.

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In the eighth episode of Superpowers, Bill and Chris bring on Alison Wyatt, an angel investor who supports and advises female entrepreneurs. Alison’s superpower is her ability to create a strong ecosystem of women leaders while managing the responsibilities of motherhood. Before becoming an angel investor, Alison led several companies in the media industry from their shaky beginnings to established enterprises. As the head of revenue at Refinery 29, Alison created value out of the company’s vast network. She told Bill and Chris, “The most important thing I learned… was how important people are. And what it takes to be a leader.” After building Refinery 29 to a 300-person company, Alison was ready to build again. She told the hosts, “There’s an incredible power in if you stick to something and build it yourself.” In 2014, she started working at Gwyneth Paltrow’s company, Goop, as Chief Revenue Officer. She elevated Goop from a weekly newsletter to a prolific lifestyle brand. Alison started investing after Goop. Her angel investing philosophy was centered around supporting women re-entering their careers. “When I became a mom, I was like oh, for women, it’s basically impossible for you to go back into a corporate environment.” She told Bill and Chris. She helped co-found Girlboss, a summit and network that helped young women who were just starting their careers. Alison told the hosts, “I got really passionate about my investment career and specifically, working with female founders.” She met with the creators of the Female Founder Collective and brought insights. “Female founders actually need a place to share resources and there’s so little funding that goes towards them, let’s build a platform that’s almost like a VC.” Today, Alison continues to be a magnet in a network of strong and powerful entrepreneurs that she’s helped create and fund.

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