Strong Suit Podcast

If you’re like me, you’re always out to pick up a new skill. So, you’ve likely heard of MasterClass, one of the fastest-growing VC-backed companies around. With over 100 high-quality online courses, MasterClass teaches you something new every day. The instructors are anything but ordinary. MasterClass includes: Annie Leibovitz’s course on photography Serena Williams’ course on tennis Carlos Santana’s course on guitar Steve Martin’s course on comedy writing And they add a new one each month. The quality is astounding. These aren’t some homemade YouTube videos. Masterclass treats each as a mini movie production. In just 5 years, they’ve gone from an idea to a team of 400 people. And they’ve raised over $200 million from top investors like Fidelity, NEA, IVP, Owl Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta. So, I caught up with Mark Williamson, Chief Operating Officer, to find out how he’s scaled the team. In this 20-minute conversation, Mark provides…well…a master class on recruiting.

In case you missed it, Venture Capital is booming everywhere… not just in Silicon Valley. New York is one of those places. And Primary VC is one of those firms. So I wanted to find out how they’re doing it. Gina Yocom is Director of Talent at Primary VC, where she’s focused on building & engaging the firm’s network. Gina is a connector at heart. She’s mastered how to built relationships & opportunities that accelerate growth of Primary’s 50 portfolio companies. No surprise. She’s seen this movie before. Previously, Gina was Partner on the Market Development team at Andreessen Horowitz. Primary VC focuses exclusively on seed-stage NY-based market-defining companies. And you’ve been a customer. They include Ticketfly, Slice, Latch, Deliveroo, Noom, and Chief. Their successful exits include Mirror (acquired by Lululemon) and Jet (acquired by Walmart.) Primary VC’s portfolio is a who’s who of New York growth companies. Here’s how Gina has built a network of who’s who in New York.

Think your company has embraced being remote or virtual? Meet John Jahnke, CEO of Tackle.io Based in Buffalo NY, John leads a team of 50 employees located in 28 states. Tackle.io has created a Cloud Marketplace Platform that enables software companies to sell via the cloud. The Platform makes it easy to list software on AWS, Azure, and GCP… with zero engineering resources. So, John’s team allows companies to focus on goto market & selling vs integration. Customers include Pagerduty, Github, and Snowflake. And clearly, John’s doing something right. He’s raised major funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Sandusky Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s successfully scaled a distributed team.

How do you make your hiring decisions? If you’re like most people, you probably make a pro & con list, spend a ton of time obsessing about hires that didn’t work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly seek other people’s opinions, and wind up going with your gut. Hiring is far too important to do it this way. So I sought out a guru on decision-making. For 20 years, Annie Duke was one of the world’s top poker players. In 2004, she bested a field of 234 players to win her first World Series of Poker bracelet. The same year, she triumphed in the $2 million winner-take-all Tournament of Champions. In 2010, she won the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. And it’s no surprise. Annie was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Now she’s written a fantastic book “How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices” It shows a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess y

Love the movie Ironman? Or your childhood tv show The Six Million Dollar Man? Well, I recently met an entrepreneur who’s building a futuristic technology by recruiting a genius team. And his story inspired me. Coincident with founding his previous company, Drew Perkins developed cataracts in his eyes. He underwent cataract surgery to implant advanced Intraocular Lenses (IOLs) in both eyes, essentially giving him bionic eyes. While his new bionic eyes gave him perfect vision near & far, they still had some deficiencies. So, he decided to start a company to solve the problem, not just for himself, but for millions of other people in the world. He founded Mojo Vision with exactly that goal: to give all people superpowers, even if they have impaired vision. His team is creating the Mojo Lens, the first true Smart Contact Lens. The Mojo Lens will help people struggling with low vision by projecting enhanced image overlays onto their retinas. It provides real-time contrast & lighting enhancements as well as

You don’t become a leader just because of your job title or your location on the org chart. (And even if you do have the Chief title, you shouldn’t rely on it to show your people the way.) This reality is more important than ever, because work happens in networks. So, I wanted to find the authority on this topic. Keith Ferrazzi is the bestselling author of Never Eat Alone, the authoritative guide on how to build your network His newest book is Leading Without Authority Keith was the youngest-ever partner & Chief Marketing Officer of Deloitte Now, he works with all sorts of companies to get them unstuck. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to master the people part of your business.      

Start a company. Raise funding. Purchase an add-on company. Go public or sell it. These are no small feat. But fruitless, unless you also build a Rockstar team. That’s where Will Herman comes in. Along with Raj Bhargava, he’s co-author of the fabulous book “The Startup Playbook” Collectively, Will & Raj have: ...Started 12 software companies ...Raised over $500M from investors ...Acquired 35 companies ...Taken 3 companies public ...Sold 6 companies ...And made Billions for their investors Will knows that the people part of a Startup is everything. And in this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he successfully scales the team.  

Small experiments often lead to ginormous breakthroughs for your business. Including revenue increases. So, why do most of us get stuck in a rut? I wanted to find the answer. So, I tracked down an expert… Stefan Thomke is an authority on Innovation. He’s the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business at Harvard Business School. And he’s worked with countless firms on innovation in product, process, technology, customer experience, and org design. And he’s written an outstanding new book “Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments” Stefan has received countless awards for his work, including the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching at HBS, and was a finalist for the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award. In this 20-minute conversation, Stefan reveals how you can recruit & build a team of “Experimenters” who can take your business to new heights.

CEO’s often ask my favorite book. Right near the top of the list is “Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t” by Verne Harnish. Verne is Founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), with over 14,000 members worldwide, and teaches the “Birthing of Giants” held at MIT. Verne’s company, Gazelles Inc, shows mid-market companies globally how to build & execute their strategic plan. So, what’s a Gazelle? It’s a business that has increased revenue by at least 20% per year for 4+ years, starting from a revenue bass of at least $1 million. It’s surprisingly rare. …And can’t be done without putting a Rockstar in every seat. In this 20-minute conversation, Verne reveals how to do that.

Great tech startup ideas can come from anywhere. This one came from the waiting room of a high-end car wash. Following a successful career in sales with med device maker Medtronic, Brent Oakley started Prime Car Wash, now with 5 locations. In the process, he discovered how setting the right mood creates an exceptional customer experience that keeps customers coming back. So, he co-founded Vibenomics, the marketing tech software company that provides location-based businesses with an easy & effective way to create whatever vibe they want to convey within their space. It’s an audio out-of-home advertising & experience platform. Vibenomics promotes products in-store, educates shoppers, and drives them to websites or apps for coupons. His investors include BIP Capital, High Alpha, Elevate Ventures, Allos Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners. In this 20-minute conversation, Brent reveals how he’s scaled his team comprised of 40 Rockstars.

You don’t find many attorneys running VC-backed tech startups. But here’s one. Jacob Babcock is Founder & CEO of NuCurrent, which recently raised another $11M. With over 100 patents, NuCurrent is the leading developer of high-efficiency wireless power solutions. They work closely with electronic device OEMs & integrators to determine the best implementation of wireless power for their product. Jacob’s timing couldn’t be better, as wireless is all the rage. With a team of 40 & growing, he’s raised capital from IU Ventures, Purple Arch Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, HBS Angels Chicago, and Independence Equity. In this 20-min conversation, Jacob reveals how he hires, including the importance of crafting a Scorecard for each position.  

Even if you don’t live in his hometown of Chicago, you should know Chris Gladwin. Because he’s a 6-time Founder… including at least one Unicorn. Chris is CEO & Co-Founder of Ocient, which has created the leading high-performance database & analytics platform for the world’s largest datasets. Ocient’s database handles datasets in the petabyte to exabyte range. It’s designed to hold quadrillions of rows of data, ingress at speeds of billions of rows per second, and compute results at rates of trillions of rows per second. To put that into perspective: Caltech researcher Roy Williams suggested that “all words ever spoken by human beings” could be stored in 5 exabytes of data. To scale Ocient, Chris raised venture capital from OCA Ventures & In-Q-Tel. He also serves as Co Chair of P33, the ambitious initiative to boost Chicago’s tech economy. Prior, he founded Cleversafe, the object storage software & systems developer which IBM acquired for $1.3 billion. In this 20-minute conversation, Chris reve

Your luck is about to change. And after 2020, we could all use some of that. But it doesn’t just happen… You need to make it happen. Even the most successful business leaders will tell you that luck & serendipity played a huge role in their ride. Warren Buffett famously said that much of his success is due to winning the lottery of being born in the United States at the right time in its evolution. So how do you change your luck? I wanted to find the answers from an expert. Christian Busch is author of the fascinating new book The Serendipity Mindset: The Art & Science of Creating Good Luck Christian is a brilliant guy. He’s Director of NYU’s Global Economy Program where he teaches purpose-driven leadership, entrepreneurship, and (social) innovation He’s also visiting professor at London School of Economics. In this 20-minute conversation, Christian reveals how to change your luck in 2021.  

Humble. Soft-spoken. Not your typical tech CEO. That’s Mike Gamson, CEO of Relativity and one of Chicago’s most seasoned tech executives & investors. Relativity’s software helps users organize data, discover the truth, and act on it. Its e-discovery platform is used by thousands of organizations to manage large volumes of data and quickly identify key issues during litigation, internal investigations, and compliance projects. Relativity has over 180,000 users in 40 countries including the U.S. Department of Justice and 75 of the Fortune 100 companies. Its investors include ICONIQ Capital. Mike knows a thing or two about scaling teams: In his former role at LinkedIn, he oversaw LinkedIn’s Global Solutions Organization. Mike led a salesforce that grew from a handful of people to more than 5,000 employees in 36 cities, generating more than $6 billion in revenue. In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals what he looks for in a Rockstar and how he scales companies by putting people first.  

Talk about a rocketship… Fishtown Analytics, named for Philly’s hip namesake neighborhood, started this year with 16 employees. Next year, it’ll have over 100. I wanted to find out how CEO Tristan Handy is doing it. He Co-Founded Fishtown, which created the open-source data engineering platform named dbt (“data build tool”) that’s used by thousands of data analysts & engineers. dbt enables the modern analytics workflow by organizing, cleansing, and aggregating data so that it’s ready for analysis. It’s a big vision. So, it’s backed by tens of millions in Venture Capital by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Amplify Partners. In this 20-minute conversation, Tristan reveals how he’s scaling the team 6x this year. And how you can do the same.

Here’s the perfectly-named & ideally-timed company of 2020: Remote. Its CEO & Co-Founder, Job van der Voort, is based in Portugal. And he just raised $35M in Venture Capital so that You can hire the best people remotely in just an hour… Even across the globe. The pandemic has been rough on the work world. But the silver lining: you’re no longer limited to hiring the best people in your town. Now you can hire the best from the world. This opens up a new chapter in hiring. But if you’re going to do it, you need to abide by the rules & regulations of the states & countries of your new hire. And that can be super complex. But it doesn’t need to be. Job’s company Remote handles everything … Payroll, benefits, compliance when you hire internationally. (You don’t need to be an expert on Liechtenstein’s labor laws.) Before starting Remote, Job was VP Product for GitLab a distributed company… so he’s been doing this for long before the pandemic. His investors include Sequoia Capital, Two Sigma Ventures

Hopefully you haven’t had to deal with it. I’m talking about employee ethics breaches. Not fun. But unfortunately, one day you will. So I tracked down J Rollins, CEO & Founder of Ethix360, to take a look. Based in Charlotte NC, its software manages employee ethics issues, breaches, and compliance. Clients include global leaders in insurance, package delivery, retail, tech, and energy. J is a veteran CEO who’s worked in startups & large companies alike. He’s an expert on the topic. And in this 20-minute conversation, he shares how he’s successfully scaled his team.

During 2020, the majority of companies began working remotely or virtually. But Evan Walden, CEO of Getro, was one step ahead. Because he’s been doing it since before we’d heard the word Covid. Based in NYC, but with a widely distributed team, Getro help companies & talent do work that matters. They match the two together, by creating talent networks for VC firms, PE firms, and Accelerators. Getro itself successfully completed the Techstars program. In this 20-minute conversation, Evan shares the keys to leading a team across time zones. And the gotchas that can hold you back.  

Startup Grind is the legendary community of 600 Chapters in 125 countries that educates, inspires, and connects entrepreneurs. Since 2012, it has hosted 10,000 events for over 250,000 entrepreneurs. And I just had the chance to interview its Founder Derek Andersen, based in Silicon Valley. He’s spent the past 10 years building communities. Derek is also co-founder & CEO of Bevy, the Customer-to-Customer SaaS platform that helps Salesforce, Atlassian, and Slack scale their event communities. His investors include Accel & Upfront Ventures. So he knows a thing or two about building communities, scaling startups, and hiring Rockstars. In this 20-minute conversation, we cover all three.