Level UP

As the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Alec drives the overall strategy and vision for Welcome Homes leading the company through its next phase of growth. He is a serial inventor with over 15 years of entrepreneurial and engineering experience.Prior to co-founding Welcome Homes, Alec was the Founder & CEO of TechDay, the largest tech conferences in the U.S. and Europe, and co-founder of DigitalOcean, one of the largest cloud infrastructure providers in the world. At every business, Alec has a passion for solving large-scale problems and believes the real estate industry is ready for an upgrade.He grew up in Florida and eventually moved to NYC to immerse himself in the startup community. Alec taught himself how to code as a child and hasn't stopped writing code since. He earned his BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Emory University. In this bonus episode of Level UP we explore Alec's career, his advice to other aspiring entreprenuers and a deep dive into the Welcome Homes business mode.

In this episode of Level UP John speaks with Sara Anissipour, Chief Revenue Officer of Welcome Homes. As CRO of Welcome Homes, Sara is responsible for driving and overseeing the company’s revenue growth. She is a distinguished business leader with over 16 years experience in building, growing and leading highly successful revenue organizations. Sara previously built and lead the Global Sales Organization at Pacaso, the Enterprise Sales and Partnerships business units at Zillow Group and oversaw the US New Business Ad Sales organization at Google.  Her winning track record consists of developing high performance teams and leaders, incubating new products and programs, and creating strategies and operating models to break new ground and drive bottom line revenue. As an influential leader motivated by impact, challenge, and growth with an unparalleled drive to succeed, Sara serves as a key speaker for women in leadership, technology, social impact, and personal development. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Business from the University of Washington, completed her executive training at Wharton, is bi-lingual, and a former USA National Karate Team athlete and resides in Los Angeles.

In Episode # 5 of Level UP, I have the pleasure of sitting down with the career coach you've been waiting for Dayana Falcon. Dayana openly shares her top career learnings and gives guidance on building a personal brand, building resilience and putting a setback such as a layoff in perspective.  Dayana currently focuses her energy on igniting equal access to opportunity and elevating the employee experience. As a Career Coach, she specializes in empowering minority women to elevate their transferable skills to shift into career pathways or entrepreneurship that ignite PASSION, VISION, and IMPACT. Falcon has worked alongside Fortune 500 Companies from ESPN, The Walt Disney Company, and Interpublic Group and acquired skills including Digital Media Marketing, Sales, Social Networking, and Analytics to fuel Growth Opportunities, Inclusive Leadership, #FutureofWork Talent Management Strategies, Growth Mindset, Creativity, and Innovation. Dayana has made a point of giving back over the years. She is also the founder of @GatorsUnidos focusing on Mentorship, and sponsorship opportunities for the Latino community at the University of Florida, her alma mater, and also sits on their National Board of Directors.

In this episode of Level UP, John speaks with Troy Kalus. Troy is a passionate leader and dynamic executive with a proven track record of success across multiple functions, geographies, and industries. From managing multi-functional teams across Pepsi Co, to standing up new organizations with innovative capabilities at Adidas, he has built inclusive teams and ensured growth in the most challenging of environments.  Troy currently serves as Vice President of Team Sports at Adidas North America; and is responsible for the organization that authenticates and amplifies the adidas brand from the field to the fans. We take a trip down memory lane with his days at the University of Oregon, University of Oregon - Charles H. Lundquist College of Business, PepsiCo, and discuss some of the pivotal moments in his career, advice to other aspiring leaders.

In this episode of Level UP John speaks with Mitch Robinson, President of the newly formed Real Estate News. Mitch is a longtime real estate and tech industry leader who is known for his entrepreneurial ability to build businesses, grow audiences and create strong teams. Before starting up Real Estate News, Mitch was a senior leader at fintech startup Tomo, CMO at eXp World Holdings, and an early employee at Expedia and other tech companies inside and outside of real estate. In this episode we walk through Mitch's time at both Expedia, Zillow, eXP and discuss some of his career learnings. From there we pivot to talk about his latest start-up Real Estate News. 

In this episode of Level UP John speaks with David Bluhm. David has spent the past thirty-nine years starting and growing technology companies. In a variety of founder, director and senior operational roles, David has been involved in over 20 start-ups that have achieved a combined “high water” equity value of over 36 billion dollars including 2 IPOs and 10 company acquisitions. David is currently co-founder and President of Plunk, a Seattle-based startup bringing AI and Machine Learning to the world’s largest asset class, residential real estate (RRE). Plunk revolutionizes the way homeowners, real estate professionals, and investors value and invest in residential real estate. Plunk empowers all participants - at the market, professional and consumer levels - with next generation analytics and insights delivered in real time. In this episode we talk about entrepreneurship, from an idea to funding, building out a team of talent, boards and executive leadership and career advice and lessons along the way. We also learn about some of the keys to success and the 5 P's: Profit, People, Passion, Persuasive Leadership, Perspective.

In this episode of Level UP John speaks with Prop Tech executive Nick Taylor who serves as Vice President, Head of Real Estate for the Fin-Tech disruptor, Better, leading 400 employees and driving category growth for Better’s real estate business in 40 states. We walk through Nick's 18 years of experience, everything from his early days in real estate at John L. Scott Real Estate, his pivot to a startup, Zillow.com where he formed his leadership and management philosophy. Then we discuss his jump over to Modus Technologies, acquired by Compass in 2020. In 2021, Nick was recognized by HousingWire as a Top 100 industry influencer for his work driving Compass’ title growth strategy in Florida, Texas, Washington and California.  We discuss career pivots, sales, the 5 F's regarding work/life balance, relationship with rejection and failure and why it's important to bet on yourself.