Episode 375 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Becca Xiong, Managing Director of Programs & Engagement at Harvard Innovation Labs.

Becca is a serial entrepreneur with the rare experience of having success in both consumer and B2B products. She was a Co-Founder of an early social networking startup called Going.com which was acquired by AOL and then she went with her fellow Co-Founder, Roy Rodenstein to start SocMetrics, a social insights platform for marketers that was also acquired.

This combination of experiences makes Becca the perfect leader for the Harvard i-lab where 1 in 9 students across all of the schools under the Harvard umbrella are a member of the i-lab.

Since its founding in 2011, the i-lab has supported over 6,000 ventures that have gone on to raise over $8B in funding including unicorns like WHOOP, Shield AI, Mark43, Lightmatter, and others.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:34 The Most Common Startup Mistakes

04:40 The Importance of Storytelling for Startups

06:31 Becca's Background Story

09:26 Early Career and Startup Experiences

13:28 The Story of Going.com

27:00 Building Socmetrics: A Social Insights Platform

30:34 Difference Between Building B2B & Consumer Products

32:52 Transitioning from Startups to Supporting Entrepreneurs

36:05 The Harvard i-lab: Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship

40:46 How the Harvard i-lab Supports Student Entrepreneurs

43:55 Alumni from the Harvard i-lab

45:10 Using ChatGPT for Customer Research

47:05 Startup Pitch Advice

51:15 Fundraising Advice

53:34 Book Recommendation for Founders

Episode 374 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Dave Blundin, serial entrepreneur & investor.

Dave’s track record is legendary as one of the top entrepreneurs and investors in the Boston tech scene.

He’s co-founded 23 companies… and many have been incredibly successful:

* DataSage - acquired by Vignette for over $1B in today’s dollars

* EverQuote - which went public

* Vestmark - manages over $2 trillion in assets

Companies like CourseAdvisor, Jobcase, Autotegrity, LeadKarma were all acquired.

Plus he’s invested in CarGurus, TripAdvisor… and he is the Founder & General Partner of Link Ventures and he’s also the founder of the startup incubator, Cogo Labs.

One might think that after all of this success, Dave would downshift and relax… but it is the exact opposite. He has been waiting for this moment since he was 14 years old and that is the current platform shift to AI.

He studied AI at MIT back in 1984 and pioneered quantizing neural networks as early as 1992. Needless to say… his time is now and he believes that it has the potential to be the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity. He wants to savor the moment and work to train and build faster, better, & smarter AI.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:43 Dave Blundin's Journey Begins

08:27 Founding DataSage and Early Innovations

15:55 Meeting Jeff Bezos & Building Personalization at Amazon

18:18 DataSage Acquisition by Vignette

20:59 Founding Story of Vestmark & Its Scale

27:39 Link Ventures & Cogo Labs - Building Consumer Companies at Scale

32:31 Story of EverQuote to IPO

35:04 The Best Friend Method for Investing

36:33 AI & The Importance of Chip Manufacturing

41:45 The AI Revolution & Opportunities

44:11 Liquid AI: General-Purpose AI Systems at Every Scale

47:45 Boston's Talent Density & MIT's Advantage

53:44 Personal Insights and Hobbies

57:40 Podcast & Book Recommendations

Episode Sponsor:

As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 373 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Jeff Bussgang, General Partner at Flybridge.

Jeff has accomplished so much throughout his career. I’m sure lots of people probably know him best as a Venture Capitalist and Professor at Harvard Business School.

But... you might not know the details about his startup career prior to Flybridge which I was really excited to dig into because he played a key role at two incredibly successful companies in the Boston tech scene.

The first being OpenMarket, which pretty much invented eCommerce with its shopping cart technology that was licensed by companies like Amazon when they were just getting started. The company went public at a billion dollar valuation back in 1996 which was a very big deal.

The second company is Upromise, where he was a Co-Founder along with Michael Bronner, who was also the Founder of Digitas and really helped establish the world of direct & loyalty marketing and David Fialkow, who you might also recognize as one of the founders of General Catalyst. Upromise allowed consumers, including myself, to save for their kids' college education through a loyalty rewards program. The company was very successful and it was later acquired by Sallie Mae.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, investor, and professor, Jeff is also an author of three books and his latest book is called The Experimentation Machine - Finding Product-Market Fit in the Age of AI.

Plus we talk about his Dad (Julian Bussgang), a scientist and entrepreneur who developed the Bussgang Theorem, Jeff's educational background in AI, Flybridge’s history of investments in AI, Hack.Diversity and so much more!

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:05 Jeff's New Book - The Experimentation Engine

04:47 Jeff's Background and Early Influences

08:47 The Story of OpenMarket & Shopping Cart Tech

17:21 The Creation of Upromise

25:06 Transition to Venture Capital & Flybridge

26:37 Flybridge's History & Focus on AI

32:50 Flybridge's Investment Process

34:13 Advice on Go-to-Market Strategy

35:36 Getting Pitched by Curt Schilling

38:03 Teaching at Harvard Business School

39:48 Career Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

42:22 Must-Have Versus Nice-to-Have Products

44:00 Hack.Diversity

46:46 The Boston Tech Ecosystem & AI

52:55 Recommendations - Apps & Podcasts

Episode Sponsor:

As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 372 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Florian Hillen, CEO & Founder of VideaHealth.

It goes without saying that AI is going to transform pretty much every industry, but I think there is such a unique opportunity in healthcare as the benefits are hopefully going to be extraordinary.

The tricky thing about building a company in healthcare is that it’s heavily regulated industry, so you need to get FDA approval on the algorithms and AI technology if you are building software as a medical device, so that is going to take a lot of time… but once you get there, it makes your company highly defensible.

And this is the very case of VideaHealth which was ahead of the curve as an AI native company that has been in existence for 6.5 years and crossed the hurdles of the FDA.

Fast forward to today, VideaHealth has scaled to over 40,000 dental clinicians using their platform every day for identifying and treating dental conditions and the company is processing over a half of a billion x-rays a year. VideaHealth recently announced a $40M Series B round of funding.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:10 The Rise of AI in Healthcare

03:19 Florian's Journey from Medicine to Entrepreneurship

08:35 Founding VideaHealth: The Vision Behind the Company

12:03 The Importance of Oral Health and Its Impact

13:34 Early Days of VideaHealth

18:10 Transforming Dental Practices with AI

25:06 Scaling Through Strategic Partnerships

26:56 Hiring and Company Culture at Video Health

30:00 Lessons Learned in Building a Startup

30:15 Hiring & the Importance of Talent Density

31:09 Priorities and What You "Do Not Do"

31:49 Be Customer Obsessed

32:59 Process for Fundraising

39:07 App, Podcast, & Book Recommendations

Episode 371 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Melissa Withers, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of RevUp Capital.

As an entrepreneur, are you thinking about your capital stack? Meaning, how are you going about funding your company? There are lots of options… you could bootstrap, raise money from friends & family, grants, and of course, raise venture capital which is the most discussed option in the media and blog posts.

But, one vehicle that I don’t think is talked about enough is Revenue Based Financing which is a non-dilutive form of financing where repayments are tied to a percentage of the company's revenue.

In this interview with Melissa, we get into lots of details about what why this is a compelling option for entrepreneurs as RevUp is focused on this category as a non-equity investment fund for B2B and B2C companies ascending the $1M-$10M growth curve.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics:

* Melissa’s background and the story of her journey to becoming an investor.

* All the details about RevUp and how their model works.

* The importance of storytelling when pitching your startup to investors.

* KPI’s and figuring out your company’s God Metric.

* The importance of mental health and balance for entrepreneurs.

* And so much more

Episode 370 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Toshit Panigrahi, Co-Founder & CEO and Olivia Joslin, Co-Founder & COO of TollBit.

There are going to be so many amazing benefits and advancements that are a result of the platform shift to AI. However, in this new world, many industries will need to go through radical transformation and the publishing industry is right in that mix.

We even see some of these issues with VentureFizz, of course at a much smaller scale as compared to major publishers. For example, if you are searching for information about some startups in Boston, it’s possible that the results will include content from VentureFizz in the results from Google Gemini.

While in one regard, it is great that Google views us as an authority on the topic, it does however eliminate the need for the consumer to come to our site because they likely have their question answered. It’s really not a major problem for us because of our business model, but it is certainly a major problem for publishers who count on pageviews for ad revenue.

Enter TollBit, a two-sided marketplace for AI companies and publishers started by two alumni of Toast. The platform seeks to address the new economics of content creation in the AI era by reducing the legal uncertainties of scraping and protecting the health of the entire content ecosystem.

The company recently announced a $24M Series A round of funding in October of last year which comes shortly after raising a $7M seed round in March of last year, as well.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics:

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:10 AI & the Media Industry

03:51 Olivia's & Toshit's Background & Professional Journey

12:48 Starting TollBit

17:46 The Details of TollBit's Platform

25:07 TollBit's Funding & Pitch Advice

31:06 TollBit's Business Model

37:27 The Importance of Advisors for Your Startup

39:12 Lessons Learned While Building TollBit

42:18 Hiring

44:11 App & Podcast Recommendations

Episode Sponsor:

As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 369 of The @Venturefizz Podcast features Krenar Komoni, CEO & Founder of Tive.

The question: “What led you down the path to start this company?” is always interesting, as you never know what ultimately inspired the entrepreneur. It could be years of experience working in an industry, maybe it is a personal experience, or it could be a tremendous amount of research to find a problem that’s worth solving… or in the case of Krenar and Tive, it could be your family as the idea stems from his father-in-law’s trucking company and the manual process of located its drivers. From Krenar’s point of view, it is a problem that could be fixed with a tracking system and oh… it is a problem that Krenar just happens to be uniquely qualified to solve based on his expertise and background with wireless connectivity, hardware, and chipsets.

Fast forward to today, Tive is a leading provider of supply chain and logistics visibility technology. Trusted by over 900 customers, the company recently announced a $40M Series C round of funding led by WiL (World Innovation Lab) and Sageview Capital.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:23 Advice for Raising Follow On Rounds of Venture Capital

08:47 Krenar's Background Story in Kosovo

11:11 Landing in Vermont & Experience at Startups

19:45 Background Story of Tive

23:32 Industry Trends

25:22 Naming the Company

28:25 Landing First Customers

30:50 Early GTM Approach & Learning from the Sales Team

36:08 Picking the Right Industry Vertical

43:19 The Latest at Tive

46:35 The Question that Entrepreneurs Need to Ask Themselves.

48:09 The Culture at Tive

48:20 New Chapter

50:06 Apps & Book Recommendations

Episode 368 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Matthias Hofmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Eyebot.

I met Matthias and Jack, Eyebot’s Co-Founder & CTO at a pre-party for TechCrunch’s Early Stage event in Boston a couple of years ago.

It was one of those meetings that when someone describes their product - an AI powered kiosk that could conduct vision tests in 90 seconds… it sounded like something out of science fiction… but it made you pause and think… what if they actually build this… the market opportunity is massive - like TAM - everyone in the world massive.

On top of that, here are some crazy stats of the void in the market that needs to be addressed with a solution:

40,000 unfilled eye doctor positions in the U.S. - more doctors retiring than graduating from school)

25% of U.S. counties don't have a practicing eye care provider

63% of Americans don't have vision insurance

Well, this product and solution became a reality when Eyebot announced its partnership with Zenni Optical by deploying their kiosks in various locations and as you’ll hear from Matthias… the pipeline of demand for their kiosks is incredibly strong.

Another crazy stat that he shared with me is that the team is only 14 people.

It’s another perfect example of the level of innovation in the Boston tech scene with several next generation hardware & robotics companies that are emerging like 10 Beauty, Ozlo Sleepbuds, Pickle Robot, and many more.

Eyebot raised a $6M seed round of funding last year led by AlleyCorp and Ubiquity Ventures with participation from other top investors.

In this podcast, we cover:

* Eyebot’s first appearance at CES this year and advice on how to create a buzz.

* Matthias’ background story and how positions at EyeNetra & Formlabs helped shape his career.

* The full story of Eyebot and the challenges in the market that they are addressing.

* How their technology works, plus their go-to-market strategy, and details on funding.

* Advice for founders on building hardware and raising capital.

* And so much more.

Episode Sponsor:

As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 367 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Vivjan Myrto, Founder & Managing Partner at Hyperplane.

Why Boston Be The Star of the AI Revolution - this is the title of an article that Zach Winn wrote for VentureFizz seven years ago. It talks about the history of AI in the Boston area including Marvin Minksy’s first neural net machine back in 1951, the amazing academic institutions, plus the state of the tech ecosystem in this industry back then.

Vivjan was featured in this article along with this quote:

“I think machine intelligence represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for entrepreneurs...”

It’s impressive to see how Vivjan and his partners were well ahead of the AI hype machine, as they built Hyperplane’s focus around backing the best founding teams working in this sector along with other innovations in hardtech like robotics, sensors and more.

The firm’s name is even based on a term in machine learning applications, a higher-dimensional plane used to help categorize data based on its underlying structure from images to real-world events.

In this podcast, we cover:

* Vivjan’s inspirational background story from growing up in Albania to fighting cancer and moving to the United States for treatment and learning how to speak English while he was in the hospital.

* Going on to build a healthcare startup that was acquired.

* How Hyperplane came to fruition and how they raised their first fund.

* All the details about Hyperplane and the firm’s area of focus for investments.

* A deep dive into Modulate, one of their portfolio companies.

* Advice on taking the entrepreneurial leap

* A discussion around the Boston tech scene and areas for improvement.

* His passion for wind sports and photography.

* And so much more.

Episode Sponsor:

As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode #366 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Graham Brooks, Partner at .406 Ventures.

“Data is the new oil” - it’s a slogan that you hear everywhere these days… it’s on TV commercials, print ads, LinkedIn posts… but this is not a new trend or revelation for Graham. His interest in data goes back to his first job out of college and his passion for data has followed him throughout his career, including in his current role as the leader of .406 Ventures’ Data + AI strategy.

.406 Ventures is a Boston-based venture capital firm with over $1.4B under management and nearly two decades of experience leading or co-leading early-stage investments in pioneering healthcare, data + AI, and cybersecurity companies founded by visionary entrepreneurs.

Oh… and here’s a fun fact about Graham… his sport of choice while growing up was fencing. He competed all over the world and was a two-time All American at Princeton. So cool.

In this podcast, we cover:

* Graham's thoughts on AI and the investment outlook for 2025.

* His background story including how he got into fencing.

* Joining a Princeton startup called ALK Associates which was early AI for data cleansing that was acquired by Trimble.

* Learning sales and fundraising as part of the founding team at Accentus after he received his MBA at Dartmouth.

* Graham’s journey to landing a job in venture capital which was intentional, plus he shares some great advice for others who are interested in this career path.

* The details about .406 Ventures and its thesis driven approach, plus portfolio company examples and their investment process.

* His passion for extreme sports

* And so much more.

Episode Sponsor:

As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.