The Early Stage Podcast

Today I bring to you an awesome conversation with Blake Bartlett from OpenView Venture Partners. Born and bred in Southern California with a penchant for warm weather and analyzing businesses from a holistic perspective, opportunities at Battery Ventures and now OpenView have led him to meticulously maintain a beard, stock up on winter parkas, and make a number of exciting investments in expansion-stage B2B startups. In our wide-ranging chat, we discuss the keys to making the leap from venture associate to partner, OpenView investment focus areas and peer differentiation strategies, ascertaining the core DNA of a startup, and his personal goals for 2018. Enjoy today's conversation with Blake.

The sun is finally out in Boston, the weather is getting warmer, and the scent of burgers can be detected around the neighborhood. Summer is officially here! Today's conversation with true tickets Co-Founder and CEO Matt Zarracina gives us insight into running with a strong early application of a burgeoning technology, in this case blockchain. The idea for leading the ticketing world onto the blockchain came when white-boarding blockchain applications with a subject-matter expert and later getting a call from his friend on exactly the same concept. Once the product vision and a friends-and-family round came together, Matt and his Co-Founders Steven Dobesh and David Piskovich jumped in full-time to make trackable and verifiable event ticketing a reality. Let's catch up with Matt to check in on true tickets's progress to-date. ----- And, while things may be slowing down a bit in the office, the startups of Early Stage have been achieving incredible milestones. - Digital health startup Wellist from Episode 7 just closed a $10M Series A funding round, led by Summation Health, Cedars-Sinai Health System, and .406 Ventures. - Night Shift Brewing from Episode 31 just announced Night Shift Lovejoy, a brand spanking new brewpub on the first floor of Converse's HQ near Boston's TD Garden. Anna Jobe, called out in the podcast by Co-Founder Michael Oxton as an unsung hero, will manage the new location. - An SEC filing from May 10 shows cybersecurity startup CYBRIC from episode 32 receiving almost $500,000 in follow-on funding. - Vesper, the startup building miniature microphone technology from Episode 15, just picked up $23M in Series B funding, led by American Family Ventures, to help them scale the mass production of their microphones and support R&D and sales. Congratulations to all on these incredible milestones and achievements!

Wow, what a difference a year makes. For Liz Asai and her startup 3Derm, the last twelve months welcomed a bigger team, bigger markets, and more strategic partners. Artificial intelligence, just a gleam in their eye back then, has now come to the forefront. A few important AI papers came out since my last conversation with Liz showing how a few researchers using open source neural nets trained on skin photos from the internet were more accurate diagnosing skin cancer than board certified dermatologists. The main limitation is you need to take super high quality images and match them with a strong model. 3Derm is in a unique place to take advantage of these constraints. People used to be uncomfortable with the thought of a "robot" interfering with the physician-patient relationship, but today's patients want an algorithm to provide a second opinion affirming their physician's assessment. Liz envisions a day when visitors to CVS Health walk into the MinuteClinic for a quick mole check with instantaneous feedback to calm the nerves and make the right recommendation to a dermotologist at the right time. The future is bright for 3Derm. Listen on to find out why. If you're interested in the full backstory, make sure to check out Episode 10 as well.

Imagine the utter joy and promise of taking a food brand from a regional player to a national powerhouse, meeting the woman of your dreams, getting married, buying your first house, and running 5 New York City marathons…only to find out that you have 12 weeks to live. Such was the devastating news received by Dan Schorr a couple years ago. Not to be deterred, Dan dove into his battles with lymphoma and the ice cream world with equal vigor. 20 months later, he had beaten cancer and expanded Vice Cream, his new venture, from 20 stores to 4,500. Taking a business from concept to reality means making huge personal and professional sacrifices, including raising money for Vice Cream in the dead of winter in New York City, but it’s those magic moments that keep Dan motivated to reach his dream of building an impactful company. It’s giving inspiration to others with cancer, closing big deals, and just having a beer with a good friend. I like to think I come at life with a ton of energy, but I felt like a slug compared to Dan’s passion and enthusiasm for life, business, and helping others. Let’s dig into the interview. Vice Cream Website - http://www.eatvicecream.com Twitter - @EatViceCream Early Stage Website - https://www.earlystagepodcast.com/ Early Stage Twitter - @EarlyStagePod

I record each episode of Early Stage with the hope of discovering someTHING special: a tip for raising capital, a secret strategy for growth hacking or closing big deals, or the even the best way to manage a growing staff. Today, I present to you someONE special. It's not easy to share a narrative that led to your startup shutting down, but that's exactly what Charlie Kaplan joined me to do. I was going to use the word failure to describe Cymbal, the "Instagram for music" startup he led with founders Gabriel Jacobs, Amadou Crookes, and Mario Gomez-Hall, but I realized that wouldn't quite do it justice. How can you measure the professional growth of Cymbal's young leadership team over the past three years, the deep connections forged on their platform over a shared passion for music, and Cymbal comments that turned into relationships and even, as you'll hear soon, marriages? Charlie's incredible stories often left me speechless, and his beautiful answer to my final question was, without a question, the most profound 5 minutes of my year. Enjoy listening to the life and times of this intrepid startup. Long live Cymbal.

Today's guest, Ernesto DiGiambattista, Founder and CEO of CYBRIC, is helping define a new industry term: DevSecOps. Ernesto and Co-Founder & CTO Mike Kail have been obsessed with figuring out how to bring the security process into development without slowing it down, and CYRBIC is their answer. CYBRIC's security orchestration platform helps developers, DevOps, and security teams apply commercial security testing tools throughout the software development lifecycle. Their platform automatically scans each line of code as it's entered, each build as it's completed, and each push to production -- without any layer of friction. If you're a cybersecurity novice like myself, don't worry, I made sure Ernesto explained some of the tougher concepts a couple times. Oh, and if you like pasta, you'll like our little culinary digression. Enjoy today's conversation with Ernesto.

Have you ever tried to brew beer in one of those cheap Mr. Beer plastic barrels? How did the batch turn out? Michael Oxton, Co-Founder of Night Shift Brewing out of Everett, MA, started his foray into the beer world in exactly the same manner. For the record, his first batch turned out horrible -- it tasted like rotten cider! Michael and his fellow conspirators wouldn't be deterred, and soon their house was overrun with beer-making equipment and hundreds of friends more than willing to taste test the beer at one of their many house parties. With $100,000 in friends and family money, they opened their first brewery and sold 200 barrels in the first year, then 700 the year after, then 1,500, 4,000, 10,000, and 20,000 in 2017. Night Shift Brewing was officially a runaway hit, with lines continually out the door of their new Everett Brewery and legions of loyal Night Shifters saddling up to the bar to test out their latest concoctions. Boston Magazine even named them the best craft brewery in Boston for 2017. With production maxed out at their brewery, they added a RI-based contract brewer Isle Brewer's Guild to help meet demand from Massachusetts liquor stores and bars. The sky is the limit for this trio of co-founders and their growing team, but under the facade of automatic success was a ton of hard work and navigating a number of life-or-death challenges. No doubt, Michael and his team will face new hardships as they push themselves to innovation on their model. First, the brewery. Now, a craft beer distribution company. What will they dive into next? I had so much fun interviewing Michael at their Chelsea, MA, distribution center last week, and I know you'll enjoy the conversation as well.

After interviewing Janet Comenos, CEO of Spotted, for Episode 21, I asked her to introduce me to one of her favorite people in the startup world. That night, she connected me with Sarah Hodges, Partner at Pillar VC. Literally 10 seconds into our coffee meeting I realized that A.) she's an absolute force of nature, and B.) I had to figure out a way to share her insights with all of you. After spending years as a a business, strategy, and marketing leader at a number of successful startups, Sarah is now making early stage investments in machine intelligence, AI, ML, robotics, and blockchain. All these subjects were fairly new to Sarah at the outset of her time at Pillar -- she refers to her first partner meeting as if it was spoken in another language! Over the past two years, she has gone deep into these new technologies with hundreds of founders and has been a driving force for the blockchain movement in Boston. In this episode, we played a fun game called "Pass or Play" in which she shared: - A cool startup in the region she wishes she had money in. - The most satisfying round she's been able to get into - An under-rated city for startups - An overhyped technology that needs to cool off a bit - The best founder to get a beer with - Which founder she'd go skydiving with - Her biggest fear as a venture capitalist - How she looks at competition with VCs for deals - Whether she gets stressed when making contrarian investments - Her perspective on ICOs Enjoy "Funding Friday," a fun conversation with Sarah Hodges. You can reach Sarah anytime @Hodges on Twitter.

As I sit here and look around my apartment, it's likely that every single item has been shipped here from across the state, country, or even the world. Supply chain is an essential cog of the global economy, albeit one of the least sexy industries out there. Tive Chief Revenue Officer Rob Stevens and his team have cracked the code on tracking these shipments in real-time.Their combination of always-connected sensors and cloud-based software gives companies visibility on shipments over sea, land, and air. With over $3M in seed funding from Accomplice, NextView, Hyperplane, Bolt, and others, Tive looks to add their cellular trackers to every shipment in transit. Rob and I touched on the startup's origin story, competition, current and future technical challenges, how his seed round came together, who he's looking for to build out his sales team, how to flip pilot customers into paying customers, and a ton more. Enjoy the conversation, and let's get Monday started right! Rob Stevens, CRO LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertgstevens/ Website: https://tive.co/

Why hello Startup Nation, and welcome to Episode 28 of the Early Stage Podcast, the weekly show that gives you a deep dive into startup life right from the source, the founders themselves. I'm @JohnnyStartup, your host. At the top of today's show you're being treated to the final #InnoSprint with Bostinno Tech Writer Dylan Martin, in which he shares some interesting personal news. We touch on his favorite interviewees, why it benefits a startup to be transparent to their customers and the public, why diversity and housing are the biggest challenges in entrepreneurship over the next decade, and the purpose of tech press in an innovation ecosystem. For today's main dish, I'm bringing you a fun conversation with Eamon Carrig and Ravi Paintal, the fearless leaders of Autonomous Marine Systems. AMS is a Boston-based startup that uses low-cost, self-powered fleets of sailing drones that form an intelligence sensor network to collect and transmit hydrographic data across the surface of the globe. Their "Datamaran" is the world's first self-righting catamaran -- the backbone of the platform. Their oceanic missions have expanded from 3 to 30 days over the last year, stretching their catamaran's capabilities over 200 miles. AMS is ushering the world into the era of automated oceanic observation. Enjoy the show. John Valentine, Host Twitter - @JohnnyStartup Email - John@EarlyStagePodcast.com Dylan Martin, Tech Writer, Bostinno Twitter - @DylanLJMartin Dylan's Personal News Blog - https://dylanljmartin.com/2018/02/20/some-personal-news-exclamation-point/ Autonomous Marine Systems Website - http://www.automarinesys.com/ Eamon Carrig, Co-Founder & CTO, AMS LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamon-carrig-723ab082/ Ravi Paintal, CEO, AMS LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravijit-paintal-533772108/

Why hello startup nation, and welcome to Episode 26 of the Early Stage Podcast. If you're tired of listening to shows full of wildly successful entrepreneurs telling tales of grandeur and more interested in hearing early stage entrepreneurs share their war stories, milestones, fundraises, and pivots, then you've found a home. My name is John Valentine, or @JohnnyStartup on Twitter, and I'm your host. By day I'm scouting aerospace, space, defense, security, and transportation startups for Thales xPlor, the Boston-based innovation unit for French multi-national Thales, and by night I interview top entrepreneurs seeking the best part of the hockey stick. The February #InnoSprint experiment continues with Dylan Martin, Tech Writer for Bostinno. We'll cover FitBit's acquisition of Twine Health, Amazon's acquisition of Blink, MEMS microphone startup Vesper, and new blockchain startups Algorand and Talla. The main dish of today's podcast is an interview with RadioPublic Co-Founder and CEO Jake Shapiro. When I launched the podcast last year, I was surprised that Apple provided no listener analytics, didn't offer creative content curation for listeners in their podcast app, and most importantly, and didn't allow me any insights into who was a part of my listener community or how I could engage them. RadioPublic not only solves these challenges, but also just launched a "paid listens" program to help all podcasters get paid for their efforts. Jake was an amazing host at the PRX Podcast Garage, a converted Jiffy Lube fitted out with all the best podcasting equipment. The Garage has become a center-point for podcasting in the region, which has grown tremendously since its launch. Oh, and the audio quality for our chat is amazing. Enjoy this weeks pod!

I have an incredible interview coming at you with Ethan Bernstein, Co-Founder & CEO of Freebird, who, with his growing team, is trying to solve a $60 billion pain point. Flight disruptions cause a huge amount of economic loss, and business trips can cost upwards of 10% to 15% more than their original price tags because of the extra costs associated with accommodating unplanned interruptions. Travel managers at big companies can activate Freebird for their most important travelers so when disruptions happen, the traveler receives a text message to their phone with the best new flight options from any airline. In three taps of the phone they are off to their new gate, minutes, hours, or days before everyone else on their flight. Isn't that how the flight experience should be today? Freebird is making it a reality. Before we dive into my chat with Ethan, you're being treated to the next installment of #InnoSprint with Bostinno Tech Writer Dylan Martin. We touch on Milestoned, Flipside Crypto, MIT spin-off Lightelligence, MIT $100K winner Lightmatter, and industrial IoT startup MachineMetrics. Enoy!

If you listen back to the first few episodes, you'll hear me ask founders where they think they'll be in twelve months. One year seems like a long time in startupland, but it actually goes by in a flash. Patrick Boyaggi and Mike Tassone, Founders of RateGravity and guests on our first episode ever, discovered just that. In this inaugural 1-year lookback, we discussed their $2M funding round with Listen Ventures, Accomplice's BOSS Syndicate, and others, examined how other players in the market can interfere with potential deals, analyzed which marketing channels are most effective in a highly competitive environment, and talked about the value of the human touch in a tech-dominated industry. Their online home mortgage platform made major strides in 2017, but there is still a ton of work left to do. Before we jump into the conversation, I wanted to give you all a little taste of the tech conversations I usually have over beers with Dylan Martin, Tech Writer for Bostinno. Early Stage and our friends at Bostinno are testing 10-minute "InnoSprints" at the top of each episode in February. This InnoSprint will cover grocery startup Takeoff Technologies, wearable startups Nix and Whoop, student loan benefits startup FutureFuel, and MIT's Intelligence Quest AI initiative. Let Dylan and I know what you think of the new bit @DylandLJMartin and @EarlyStagePod on Twitter. That's all for now! Enjoy this week's show.

Navigating the healthcare system in America is so exhausting it could make you sick. The average wait to see a primary care doctor in Boston is 49 days. 49 days of being scared. 49 days of potentially getting even more ill. New technologies in the medical field like telemedicine have focused on increasing the number of patients doctors can see, and useful tools like minute clinics are popping up everywhere. These new solutions will help, but a new approach is needed considering our country is about 10,000 doctors short of optimal levels. Can we better help patients get the right care at the right time? Buoy Health aims to be the digital front door to your healthcare experience. A simple interface that feels like texting a doctor is actually, under the hood, artificial intelligence algorithms that sort and re-sort 30,000 potential questions for patients until 3 of a possible 1,700 diagnoses are suggested. Classic online symptom checkers, essentially decision tress, make the correct diagnosis 34% of the time. Andrew Le, MD, Co-Founder & CEO of Buoy Health, and his team have been able to more than double that accuracy rate. Why did Andrew, a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, go against his family's advice to practice medicine and instead become a digital health entrepreneur? What drives him to make healthcare more approachable, efficient, and intelligent? Listen in to find out. Website - https://www.buoyhealth.com Twitter - @BuoyHealth

I'm super excited to publish today's founder interview. A group of curious material science students at MIT, while working on a project to help commercial buildings save on energy costs by heating people directly, developed a very low-powered thermal heating and cooling device for the wrist called the Embr Wave. Their startup journey took a winding course through Greentown Labs to the MIT Skills Accelerator and later the MassChallenge accelerator. Along the way, they picked up an NSF grant, non-dilutive funding from Intel's "Make It Wearable" competition, and the Cool Ideas Award from Proto Labs. This validation led to a venture round from Intel Capital and Bose Ventures and a massively successful Kickstarter campaign that raised $630,000 from 3,000 backers. After four years of hard work, their product started shipping at the end of 2017. Enjoy my conversation with Forbes "30 Under 30" Recipient and Embr Labs Co-Founder and CEO Sam Shames as we learn how his startup took advantage of what his professor coined "Luck Surface Area" to help out the thermally underserved population. Website - https://embrlabs.com/ Twitter - @EmbrWave Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/embrwave/