Winning The Downturn

Laura Spiekerman tells Amir about co-founding fintech startup Alloy, how it persevered after launching "too early," and making the mistake of building custom software tools for employees rather than buying from vendors.  She also discusses why the startup had a pandemic preparedness committee long before Covid-19 arrived and how it's saving money during the fintech funding downturn. 

Episode Resources

-Learn more about Alloy

-See who else made The Information’s 50 Most Promising Startups 2022 list

-Check out this survey by The Information on how SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for growth

-Subscribe to The Information for in-depth tech stories you won’t find anywhere else

-Learn more about Intel vPro

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi joins Amir to discuss his path to Uber, how he generated free cash flows against the odds, and his tenets of effective leadership: humility, decisiveness and flexibility.

Episode Resources

-Check out this survey by The Information on how SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for growth

-Subscribe to The Information for in-depth tech stories you won’t find anywhere else

-Learn more about Intel vPro

On this episode of Winning the Downturn, longtime former Google executive Dennis Woodside, now president of enterprise software firm Freshworks, talks about utilizing software to improve productivity, the importance of prioritizing investments that will pay off in the future, and what he learned from making meatless burgers mainstream during his recent tenure at Impossible Foods.

Episode Resources

-Learn more about Freshworks

-Check out this survey by The Information on how SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for growth

-Subscribe to The Information for in-depth tech stories you won’t find anywhere else

-Learn more about Intel vPro

Intel Senior Director of Segmentation & Scale Kate Porter joins Amir to talk about why Intel’s vPro platform is the best solution for small to medium size businesses when it comes to security, performance and remote collaboration. Kate recounts the concerning trends she is seeing among SMBs and what they can do to combat them.

Episode Resources

-Learn more about Intel vPro

-Read more about Yubico

-Check out this survey by The Information on how SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for growth

-Subscribe to The Information for in-depth tech stories you won’t find anywhere else

Philz Coffee Co-Founder Jacob Jaber sits down with The Information’s Amir Efrati to share his wisdom on how he scaled a small family business from a bodega to a highly successful coffee chain. In their conversation, you’ll hear how Philz uses tech to meet the need state of its customer, how Jacob navigated the constraints of the pandemic with creativity, and why SMBs in the retail space should think of growing their business in terms of relationships instead of sales.

Episode Resources 

-Learn more about Philz Coffee

-Check out this survey by The Information on how SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for growth

-Subscribe to The Information for in-depth tech stories you won’t find anywhere else

In this episode of Winning the Downturn, The Information’s Amir Efrati is joined by Adrian Auoun, Founder and CEO of healthcare startup Forward. Adrian describes how he is utilizing the power of technology to scale healthcare to billions of people, how Forward is shifting the current healthcare paradigm to a subscription-based model, and what his personal brand of leadership looks like.

Episode Resources

-Learn more about Forward

-Check out this survey by The Information on how SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for growth

-Subscribe to The Information for in-depth tech stories you won’t find anywhere else