TechieBytes

Episode 68: Today I’m speaking with Jonathan Skogmo, Founder  & CEO at Jukin Media, the company that buys up viral videos. We discuss the why Jonathan decided to start the company, how Jukin Media decides which videos it wants to purchase, and what he thinks of TikTok and Quibi. Enjoy!

Episode 67: Welcome back! Today I’m speaking with Jorge Perdomo, co-founder at goTenna and also the designer behind the art installation The Fluffy Cloud which has made appearances at multiple festivals including Burning Man. We discuss the challenges surrounding starting a hardware company, what people can do to increase their marketability in the workforce, and what it’s like to attend Burning Man. Enjoy!

More information about Jorge

As the Inventor, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of  goTenna  - the world’s leading mobile decentralized off-grid communications system for smartphones - Jorge knows the entrepreneurial journey well. Jorge brought the project from concept to market in six years, during the course of which, he designed and released 10 different critically-acclaimed hardware and software products. The uniquely broad experience Jorge gained at goTenna allows him the ability to speak on just about every class of tech company; from mobile apps to servers and of course, the unique intricacies of hardware development itself. 

“Hardware is the double-black diamond of tech startups,” says Jorge, “Unlike software-only companies where a bug can be patched with the click of a button, hardware tech is a high stakes game where a single mistake can cost months of delays and hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is in addition to still having to do all the typical software tasks. It was an incredible challenge that allowed me to gain perspective on just about every facet of technology development and startups in general.”

Episode 66: We spoke with Mike Morris, CEO at Topcoder, a crowdsourcing company with a global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. We discuss how to cultivate a community, the benefits of crowdsourcing, how soon until we see quantum computing at scale, and why Mike believes the gig/passion economy is the future of work. Enjoy!

Also, a quick programming note: We’ll be taking a few weeks off from TechieBytes, but fear not, we’ll be back soon with more awesome interviews. So stay tuned and stay safe out there!

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Episode 65: We spoke with Mike Cessario, Co-founder & CEO at Liquid Death, a company that helps you murder your thirst and save the environment with its canned mountain water at the same time. We discuss how important marketing is for companies selling commodities, why plastic is even more terrible for the environment than you may have realized, and how he plans to ramp up distribution. Enjoy!

Episode 64: We spoke with Mada Seghete, co-founder and Head of Market Development at Branch, a company that helps app developers increase customer acquisition, revenue, and engagement. We discuss the best ways to promote your app, whether or not  you should spend time on App Store optimization, and how to be a good corporate data citizen. Enjoy!

Episode 63: We spoke with Karim Lakhani, Professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the new book: Competing In The Age of AI. We discuss how AI is disrupting all kinds of businesses, how companies should think about implementing AI, and the rise of the AI factory. Enjoy!

More about Karim

Karim Lakhani is the Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Fellow at the Harvard Business School.  He is the founder and co-director of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the faculty co-founder of the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. He specializes in technology management and innovation. His research examines crowd-based innovation models and the digital transformation of companies and industries. Lakhani is known for his pioneering scholarship on how communities and contests can be designed and managed to achieve innovative outcomes. He has partnered with NASA, Topcoder, and the Harvard Medical School to conduct field experiments on the design of crowd innovation programs. His research on digital transformation has shown the importance of data and analytics as drivers of business and operating model transformation and source of competitive advantage. He serves on the Board of Directors of Mozilla Corporation and Local Motors.

Episode 62: We spoke with Eyal Feldman, co-founder & CEO of Stampli, a company that makes it easier and faster to get your invoices paid. We discuss how Stampli can benefit your business, how Eyal is managing his team during the Coronavirus outbreak, and why startups should focus on the mid-market before the enterprise. Enjoy!

More about Eyal

Eyal Feldman, founder and CEO of Stampli, an AI-based platform that streamlines the accounts payable process and reduces the time spent chasing invoice approvals by 5X. Stampli, whose customers include Revolve, Purple Mattress, GrubHub and TechStars, processes more than $13B in invoices annually.

Eyal has had an interesting global tech path – from getting his MBA at Solvay Brussels to working at Colgate-Palmolive uniting all subsidiaries under one SAP ERP to building the Documentum business in Israel for Ness. He is now CEO of Stampli. He has a lot to say about a non-traditional path and some great advice.

Episode 61: We spoke with Chrys Bader, co-founder of Ikaria, a company focused on building the next generation of social apps. Chrys was also a co-founder at Secret, a social app that encouraged anonymity which ended up shutting down in 2015 despite raising $36 million in funding. We discuss Chrys’ time at Secret and what he learned from it, what the next generation of social apps needs to consider, whether or not he would sell to Facebook, and more. Enjoy!

Episode 60: We spoke with Bill Demas, CEO of Conviva, a company that offers streaming media intelligence and analytics. We discuss the ongoing streaming wars playing out amongst Netflix, Disney, Amazon, WarnerMedia, and others and what it means for consumers, his views on when it’s time for a startup to hire a professional CEO, and more. Enjoy!

Bill Demas, CEO of Conviva, a company that provides media industry giants, including CBS, HBO, Hulu and WarnerMedia, streaming media intelligence and analytics. Conviva has a global footprint of more than 150 billion streams per year across three billion applications streaming on devices.

Bill is a four-time CEO, startup mentor and angel investor. In the past, Bill was CEO of Shopkick as well as Turn and held executive roles at Yahoo!, Overture and Microsoft. Throughout his 25-year career, Bill has successfully scaled dozens of software companies – usually while simultaneously serving as a mentor, coach, board member, board director and venture partner. He has also been recognized by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.

Episode 59: We spoke with Terry Jones, founder of Travelocity.com and founding chairman at Kayak.com. We discuss the early days of Travelocity, why Terry got back into travel tech with Kayak, and how traditional companies can compete with newer, more agile startups. Enjoy!

Terry Jones was the founder of Travelocity.com and founding chairman of Kayak.com, is author of the new book Disruption OFF: The Technological Disruption Coming for Your Company and What to Do About It. For the last 15 years he’s been speaking and consulting with companies on innovation and disruption. Jones began his career as a travel agent, jumped to two startups and then spent 20 years at American Airlines, serving in a variety of management positions including Chief Information Officer. While at American he led the team that created Travelocity.com, served as CEO for six years, and took the company public. After Travelocity he served as Chairman of Kayak for seven years until it was sold to Priceline for $1.8 billion.