upside

Interview begins: 09:33 
Insight begins: 1:00:43 
Debrief begins: 1:08:09

Matt Wan is the founder and CEO of Momentous.

Momentous is a nutritional supplement company driven by science, consumed by transparency, and grounded in experience. 

With products designed by NFL, NBA, and NHL human performance experts, Momentous has leveraged the best knowledge in sports in order to deliver innovative products that only use high quality ingredients, absolutely no fillers, are certified safe, and taste phenomenal. 

Momentous was founded in 2016 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

• Momentous CEO's humble beginnings (9:51 & 23:12)
• The target market (23:39)
• Do professional athletes gets to decide on what supplements to take? (29:03)
• Qualities to look for a good supplement (40:19)
• How social media affects the sports consumer products (1:03:05)
• Fitness vs. Nutrition (1:02:18)
• How to be smart in taking supplements (1:03:58)
• Overview of Momentous and what can we expect from it. (1:14:45)

Follow Tenika on Twitter: https://www.instagram.com/tenikatime/
Learn more about Momentous: https://www.livemomentous.com/
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This episode is sponsored by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, a full-service law firm known for assisting entrepreneurs across the Heartland.

Learn more about or get in touch with Taft: https://www.taftlaw.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview starts: 06:15

This conversation took place on the third Comeback Cities tour on May 15, 2019, aimed at connecting venture capitalists from the East and West Coasts with investment opportunities in the heartland. It also had stops in Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown.

This conversation includes:

Ashley Brasier and Janou Gordon from Lightspeed Ventures Partners, a Bay Area VC firm focusing on early stage investments in the enterprise technology and consumer space.
Learn more about Lightspeed: https://lsvp.com/

Courtney Buie Lipkin from First Round Capital, a Bay Area and Philadelphia based early stage VC fund specializing in technology based around real estate, manufacturing, logistics, agriculture, and transportation, among other industries.
Learn more about First Round: https://firstround.com

Ezra Galston from Starting Line Ventures, an early stage Chicago based Venture Capital fund investing in premier consumer startups & brands.
Learn more about Starting Line: https://www.startingline.vc/

Nitin Pachisia from Unshackled Ventures, a Bay Area based early stage venture capital fund for immigrant founded startups.
Learn more about Unshackled Ventures: https://www.unshackledvc.com/

Patrick McKenna from HighRidge Venture Partners, which invests in early stage companies and focuses on tech startups bases outside of Silicon Valley
Learn more about HighRidge: https://www.highridgevp.com/

Peter Rojas from Betaworks Ventures, a seed stage venture capital fund based in New York and the Bay Area investing in network-focused, consumer-facing media businesses.
Learn more about Betaworks Ventures: https://betaworksventures.com

Roy Bahat from Bloomberg Beta, an early stage venture capital fund based in the Bay Area and New York focused on investing in the future of work.
Learn more about Bloomberg Beta: https://bloombergbeta.com

Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Haley Keith is the co-founder and CEO of MITO Material Solutions.

MITO Material Solutions developed a nano-additive named the “MITO T-Series.” The T-Series is mixed in with any epoxy or resin, which then toughens composite parts by 100% while decreasing the chances of mechanical failure by 80%.

This allows industries to pick which value they would like to have in their products: a 100% increase in toughness, or up to a 35% decrease of materials needed.

MITO Material Solutions was founded in 2015 and based in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Learn more about MITO Material Solutions: https://www.mitomaterials.com/
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This episode is sponsored by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, a full-service law firm known for assisting entrepreneurs across the Heartland.

Learn more about or get in touch with Taft: https://www.taftlaw.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview begins: 09:04
Debrief begins: 49:12

Rich Stapleton is the co-owner and CEO of GTI Fabrication.

GTI Fabrication creates modular containerized solutions. Products include Modular Shower, Kitchen, Gym, Farm, Security, Office, Mobile Beverage, Mobile Showcase, Modular Construction, and Currency Mining Units.

GTI Fabrication was founded in 2015 and based in Buffalo, New York.

Learn more about GTI Fabrication: https://www.gtifabrication.com/
Learn more about CannaBox: https://www.cannaboxcontainers.com/

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This episode is sponsored by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, a full-service law firm known for assisting entrepreneurs across the Heartland.

Learn more about or get in touch with Taft: https://www.taftlaw.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview begins: 07:30
Insight begins: 58:56
Debrief begins: 1:21:22

Ignacio Juarez is the Founder and CEO of Semtive.

Semtive is a Clean Energy startup that was born in Argentina. They believe that access to clean energy should be effortless and affordable. In order to achieve that, the company developed Nemoi, a vertical axis wind turbine designed to work at very low wind-speeds making it ideal for commercial and residential use in urban and suburban areas.

Through its state of the art all-in-one micro inverter the whole Nemoi system becomes smart and, using AI and blockchain technology, Nemoi systems nearby can communicate with each other to improve energy management and efficiency. Nemoi can work as a stand alone system or in combination with other energy sources and storage devices.

Semtive was founded in 2009 and based in Austin, Texas.

Learn more about Semtive: https://semtive.com/

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Benjamin Stafford is the Director of Policy and Public Affairs for Clean Energy Economy Minnesota.

He serves as advocate and liaison to key industry stakeholders, elected officials, community leaders, and policymakers. He works with member companies and stakeholders to develop and implement strategies to ensure CEEM's organizational interests are advanced in legislation and regulatory policy work.

Follow Benjamin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BenjArtStafford
Learn more about Clean Energy Economy Minnesota: https://www.cleanenergyeconomymn.org/

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This episode is sponsored by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, a full-service law firm known for assisting entrepreneurs across the Heartland.

Learn more about or get in touch with Taft: https://www.taftlaw.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview begins: 07:12
Insight begins: 57:53
Debrief begins: 1:05:28

Johann Moonesinghe is the co-founder and CEO of inKind.

inKind has invented a new form of finance where they purchase a bulk amount of food and beverage credit up-front from a restaurant, and then sell it to guests over time. They purchase large dollar amounts of credit in the restaurants (average $100,000) for a discount and then sell the credit to consumers as large gift cards (average $750) with a bonus.

inKind was founded in 2016 and based in Austin, Texas.

Learn more about inKind: https://www.inkind.com/

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Kevin Tien is the Executive Chef at Himitsu in Washington, D.C., and Hot Lola’s in Arlington, VA. 

He was nominated as a Rising Star Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation, and has now used InKind to open two restaurants.

Learn more about Himitsu: https://www.himitsudc.com/
Learn more about Hot Lola's: https://hotlolaschicken.com/

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This episode is sponsored by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, a full-service law firm known for assisting entrepreneurs across the Heartland.

Learn more about or get in touch with Taft: https://www.taftlaw.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview begins: 05:12
Debrief begins: 39:24

Scott Resnick is the founder and former executive director of StartingBlock Madison.

StartingBlock is a 50,000 sq foot entrepreneurial hub which opened in 2018. Scott led efforts to raise millions dollars to build the “beacon for Midwest startups” particularly around technologies spurred by the University of Wisconsin. 

The organization connects startups to corporate partners clustered in the healthcare, manufacturing, insurance and gaming industries, and provides links to mentors and capital partners. 

StartingBlock Madison’s motto: Think big. Fear less. Listen deeply.

Learn more about StartingBlock: https://www.startingblockmadison.org/
Follow Scott on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sjresnick
Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjresnick/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview begins: 07:55
Debrief begins: 52:27

Marcus Carey is the founder and CEO of Threatcare.

Threatcare allows organizations to better defend against cybersecurity threats by improving vulnerability management and defense capabilities. 

Threatcare’s Violet platform is a Breach and Attack Simulation Technology that allows security teams, incident responders, and network forensic practitioners to reduce their attack surface by continuously monitoring their cybersecurity posture. 

Threatcare was founded in 2014 and based in Austin, Texas.

Learn more about Threatcare: https://www.threatcare.com/
Follow Marcus on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcusjcarey

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This episode is sponsored by Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, a full-service law firm known for assisting entrepreneurs across the Heartland.

Learn more about or get in touch with Taft: https://www.taftlaw.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Interview begins: 07:00
Debrief begins: 1:04:20

Josh Dorkin is the founder and former CEO of BiggerPockets. BiggerPockets.com is the nation’s largest and most active real estate investing social network, designed to simplify and enhance networking, deal making, data evaluation, education, marketing and transactions for investors, consumers and professionals.

As of January 2019, the  BiggerPockets podcast had amassed over 58 million downloads and was the top real estate investing podcast on iTunes. Their publishing arm, BiggerPockets Publishing, launched in 2013, has published 17 print books. These titles remain near the top of the real estate charts since launching, selling almost 350,000 collective copies in just five years.

BiggerPockets was founded in 2004 and based in Denver, Colorado.

Learn more about BiggerPockets: https://biggerpockets.com
Learn more about Josh: https://www.joshuadorkin.com/
Follow Josh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jrdorkin
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Hey guys, welcome to part two of Library magic.

Eric and I are celebrating one year of upside, and as he mentioned last week in part one, we were particularly struck by Monique Villa’s comment in our fifth Coffee Chat:

“It’s sort of like novelists, whenever you read a book, you’re getting the benefit of someone’s life’s work that they’ve put into book form. And I really think of founders that way. Anytime I meet a founder, I’m absorbing something that they’ve been working on for years or sometimes decades -- sometimes longer than I’ve been alive -- and I just love diving into something and learning about a new industry. And learning about a new way that this industry is being looked at by people who have been, frankly, often times confined by the traditional industry and, and see this opportunity of what the world could become.”

We’ve spoken to over 100 founders in this past year, and published more than 40 of those conversations as episodes here on upside. That’s over 100 “founder novels” in our library.

But these aren’t your typical books. We’re not interested in collecting an incremental set of Harry Potter books, and more interested in collecting the rare books that are difficult to find or discarded based on their cover.

We’re looking for what the book world calls, “first editions.”

First editions are prized because they are as close as a reader can get to the source. They are the way the book first appeared to readers, with the original cover art, and sometimes even the original typos.

One of my virtual mentors, Seth Godin, also talked about the value of books in his interview on the Tim Ferriss Show:

“A book is a screaming bargain. You pay $15-20, and you have something that might change your life; you have something that reminds you 20 years later, sitting on the shelf, where you were when you read it.”

I’d say the same is true of running a podcast for a year. It’s an order of magnitude more expensive and a whole lot more work, but you build a library that no one else has. You have control over your library.

And our library is eclectic. Over the past year, we’ve spoken with founders in more than 30 cities, including founders outside of the United States.

We’ve spoken with bootstrapped founders and we’ve spoken to venture investors.

We’ve spoken with community builders and we’ve spoken with community members.

We’ve spoken to immigrants, and we’ve spoken to former academics.

Our conversations have ranged from virtual reality athletic training to enterprise blockchain to children’s toys.

We’ve augmented our learning with the perspectives of guests that are users of a product or investors in a particular market.

And while reading the books of others, we were writing our own.

Our story is one of exploring the fringes. We’re just as interested in learning about defense drones as we are in material science and Quantum Dots.

We look through an investors’ lens through most of our interviews, but we’re just as interested in exploring the fringes of the financing options that are available to bootstrappers and indie hackers like TinySeed and Earnest Capital.

For a long time, the founders we speak with were considered on the fringes of investable geography. Investors weren’t all that interested in traveling to Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Lincoln, Nebraska.

But these locations aren’t by chance…

Preteckt, a commercial vehicle prognostics company and SOMAVAC, an out-patient medical device, found a home in Memphis, Tennessee, where accelerators brought them to the doorstep of their ideal clients.

Freshfry, a technology that purifies cooking oil, calls Louisville home, where they can sit within the franchising capital of the world.

Frank Jackman of Local Crate setup shop in Minneapolis, where he both learned from Schwann’s and build his geographical advantage through local depots for food delivery.

...and they aren’t the disadvantage they were assumed to be.

Corbett Morgan of LOOP Returns is building a reverse-logistics infrastructure to let ecommerce companies all over the country compete with Amazon.

ShearShare is located outside of Dallas where they have access to the largest percentage of licensed cosmetologists, while employing a remote team of engineers.

The same is true of Vlipsy, a consumer app in Ohio that promises its engineers a better life through remote work.

It turns out, it’s not so crazy to start a financial data platform in Florida, or a travel and swim apparel company in St. Louis. 

The advantages of areas inside the coasts aren’t just cost-savings, but instead include things like proximity to customers, supply chain and logistic advantages, and access to Fortune 500 companies who Summer Crenshaw told us would take her call when you’re in their backyard, “because they are nice, and they want to help.”

And you don’t have to get giant checks to start -- sometimes, like in the case with Nick Potts, living in a trailer in your parents’ backyard can afford the runway to get your first contract with a national pharmacy chain.

These founders are scrappy. That may be teaching themselves to code in the case of Seth Miller of Rapchat, or that may be finding non-dilutive funding through grants and pitch competitions like Tony Bova of Mobius.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and sure, some founders are located by happenstance. There are still strides to be made in terms of investor education in local ecosystems and convincing investors to invest in other ecosystems. 

Just about every ecosystem we speak with could use more density and diversity in terms of talent, capital, and support.

Our episode with Stephanie Manning was my first exposure to the idea of a “platform” team within Venture Capital. I think “platform” as a concept will mature first within ecosystems, and then across ecosystems.

Because none of the founders we’ve spoken to bought into the narrative that you must be in Silicon Valley to start a company. None of the community builders either. They’re finding a way and writing their own narrative.

And with this podcast, we just so happen to be the beneficiaries of those narratives.

Now, as Eric would tell you, I don’t read a lot of paper books. 

When you’re a founder, you don’t have time to learn for learning’s sake. Instead of picking up a book “just in case” you need that knowledge later, you’re more often forced to learn things “just in time” for you to use them. And for the last several years, I’ve found myself in this camp.

And it’s for this reason that I often find myself opting to learn directly from the “books” of others. When a problem comes up, I find someone I know has already faced or solved that problem, and I look first for their insight.

I gravitate to audiobooks and recorded conversations, just like we have here on the podcast. 

Looking forward, we will continue to collect new and interesting stories here on our show. We’re always looking for those first edit...