The Capital Tea

Named to the inaugural Forbes ``50 over 50” list in 2021 and one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s “100 Powerful Women,” Tracy Chadwell founded 1843 Capital in 2016. An experienced venture capital investor and attorney, Tracy’s notable investments include early investments in Beautycounter (Exited: $1 Billion valuation) Tempo Automation, HopSkipDrive, and May Mobility.1843 Capital is an early stage venture capital fund. The fund makes investments in technology and CPG companies, and prefers diverse teams. Companies of interest must demonstrate a cohesive team, product - market fit and a clearly defined competitive advantage.Karla and Tracy talk about elder security, an area she is passionate about finding solutions for, and keen to invest in. They also talk about the investment market and the gender diversity of the industry. 

Michael Levitt is Chief Burnout Officer of the Breakfast Leadership Network as well as a speaker, therapist, and author. Karla and Michael talk all about burnout. Michael shares his story of experiencing burnout and how he lost his job, car, home, and almost his life as a result. They also talk about the state of burnout within IT and cybersecurity teams as well as how to avoid it for yourself and your employees. 

Victor is co-founder of Excess Logic. If your company is downsizing, laying off employees, or renew tangible assets Excess Logic can help. Excess Logic is a Nationwide Excess Asset Decommissioning Company. We remove unwanted equipment, excess inventory, and IT assets, and recover up to 80 cents on a dollar. Victor and Karla talk about their experiences of starting a business in the United States when they grew up in different countries. Useful to anyone considering expansion to the USA on what to expect and what business advice they wish they had. 

Karla and Rocky talk about profit in business. Rocky works with small business owners to help them maximize profit, through his company Profit Comes First. Karla and Rocky discuss what most companies don't consider when it comes to profit and profitability. They discuss the skills needed to run a profitable and successful company. And why profit isn't often discussed in the venture-backed world of cybersecurity. 

Bella owns Lean for Humans, which helps leaders use their scientific thinking for leadership helping them achieve their career goals. She also hosts the podcast, Edges of Lean and is the author of Creatively Lean: How to get out of your own way and drive innovation through your organization. Karla and Bella talk about her journey and how technical leaders can improve their people skills, without changing who they are. 

Akeel Jabber is Investment Director at Horizen Capital. Karla and Akeel discuss acquisitions including some of the areas that they have seen go wrong in M&A. They also discuss why Akeel has changed his strategy recently to include investments as well as acquisitions and what might be coming for the investment market. HoriZen Capital is a team of SaaS Operators, Marketing and Financeexperts focused on growing and exiting businesses through growth marketing and M&A.As a leading SaaS operations group, they partner with a handful of carefully selected B2B SaaS companies to maximize their valuation through our efficient growth marketing playbook and investor-ready positioning.They increase top line growth through our tested and data-driven approach, they help structure financial & KPIs reporting and they handle the fundraising or M&A process of our partners by leveraging our global network of investors and strategic acquirers.

Karla Reffold and William Kilmer discuss the outsiders concept. People coming from outside an industry are often the ones that revolutionize it. Karla and William discuss why this is, the characteristics that unite outsiders, and how anyone can adopt an outsiders mindset. They then delve into the case of Intel. How Intel faced a threat to their existence, how the outsider mindset helped them come up with a difficult solution, how they implemented that and set them on the path of their continued success today. 

Dave has worked in the MSP industry, including as CEO of his own company for 15 years. Now he is a podcast host making content for the same communities. Host of the news and commentary podcast "Business of Tech", and co-host of the "Killing IT" podcast. Editor of https://www.businessof.tech/The Business of Tech podcast focuses on the news you need to know. Covering both the story and why it matters, this show brings you up to speed quickly, and gives you resources to go deeper. Keep up to speed with this newscast, delivered right to you.The Killing IT podcast is a great example of BOGSAT – Bunch of Guys Sitting Around a Table. We all got together one day to talk about working together, figuring out how we could contribute to the broader IT Community . . . and have fun doing it. One of the big take-aways of that day was the Killing IT Podcast.Karla and Dave talk about cybersecurity for small businesses and how the industry needs to change. 

Karla and Megan talk about her journey to found Colorful Capital as well as the funding landscape for LGBTQIA+ founders. Megan has conducted extensive research into funding, developing a plan for how to improve access to capital. Colorful Capital aims to bring capital support and scaffolding to enterprises founded and led by members of the broad LGBTQIA+ community. By filling financing gaps and overcoming detrimental heuristics, we intend to bridge divides and strengthen economic opportunity. Diverse gender and sexual identity and expression is too often a barrier to access to capital and inclusion in traditional financial market flows. By investing in, supporting, and celebrating members of our communities and the ventures they build and grow, Colorful Capital will provide opportunity, spotlight, and a pathway to success for promising ventures and their fabulous leaders. 

Daniel has been training executives on how to use LinkedIn since 2008. In his words:LinkedIn and training run in my veins. My blood ran cold when I trained managers for the first time. But the thrill was worth it.  In 2004 I joined LinkedIn (yes, that early). Now I help executives leverage the most powerful business tool you aren't using well, the LinkedIn platform. Be it via Zoom meetings, webinars, or a keynote - your business gets ahead!Karla and Daniel talk about the best ways to leverage LinkedIn, alongside some of the common things that hold CEO's back from utilizing the platform. 

Ken is the CEO of Cyber Life, providing education to the cybersecurity industry (more below). Karla and Ken talk about the education landscape in cybersecurity, including some of the challenges and criticisms the industry has faced in recent years. They discuss how building a personal brand supplements education for job seekers. They also talk about the investment industry for edtech, and cybersecurity right now. From Ken: I wanted a platform where cybersecurity professionals could share their voice without biased algorithms, which is why the Cyber Life television show was created.Watch the Cyber Life television show at the links below:www.CyberLife.TVhttps://www.bingenetworks.tv/channel/cyber-life-14846YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CyberLifeTV

Karla and Garret talk about compliance, how this is built into new projects, blockchain, regulation and more in this episode full of Garret's wisdom and experience. Garret Grajek is a certified security engineer with almost 30 years of experience in information security Garret is recognized in the industry as a security visionary in identity, access and authentication matters. He holds 8 patents involving x.509, mobile, SSO, federation and multi-factor technologies. He has worked on security projects for major commercial accounts including Dish Networks, Office Depot, TicketMaster, Oppenheimer, E*Trade, HP.com and public sector accounts as GSA, U.S. Navy, EPA an USUH

Karla interviews Sarah, the founder of Unique-U Coaching where she helps female leaders in tech & ambitious tech businesses thrive by design.Karla and Sarah talk on a wide range of subjects about how businesses can hire the right people, develop the best possible culture and ensure their businesses become more successful because their people are set up for success. 

Martin is the Founder of Climategames. Climategames was founded in 2021 to fill the gap for millions worldwide, who are looking for a way to fight climate change that is fun, rewarding, repeatable, engaging and enjoy an active lifestyle. So far, they have inspired thousands of people to take climate action in over 110 countries.Karla and Martin talk about how the idea for Climategames developed, his thoughts on the future for climate change action and his views on growing the business. 

Karla interviews Shrav Mehta, CEO at Secureframe. Secureframe helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and HIPAA compliance. Secureframe allows companies to get compliant within weeks, rather than months and monitors 100+ services, including AWS, GCP, and Azure.Shrav felt he would become an entrepreneur at an early age and he talks to Karla about the steps he took to become a successful CEO. They also speak about potential trends in privacy and compliance as well as the funding landscape for companies in 2022. 

Chris is a disabled veteran and founder of TeamWorx Security. TeamWorx Security is a data science and software engineering firm focused on creating intelligent workforce solutions for cybersecurity and incident response, advanced malware analysis, threat intelligence analysis, enterprise communication, and critical infrastructure support.Chris and Karla talk about entrepreneurship and why veterans make great entrepreneurs. They also talk about Chris' journey, what he has learned, what they are doing differently and about government contracting. 

Billy is CEO at SureFire Cyber. Surefire Cyber delivers swift, strong response to cyber incidents such as ransomware, email compromise, malware, data theft, and other threats with end-to-end response capabilities. Karla and Billy talk about his journey to becoming CEO at SureFire which starts with him as an entrepreneur in residence at Forgepoint Capital. They talk about what SureFire is doing differently in incident response, with a focus on how they build their team and take care of their people. They also talk about the future of incident response and what we might see from ransomware groups. 

Scott Wright is CEO of Click Armor. Click Armor helps businesses reduce risks from phishing and social engineering threats, by using gamified simulations and challenges to engage employees and improve their attack resistance.Scott and Karla talk about founding and growing a business, including funding and marketing. They also talk about how organizations manage risk, cybersecurity, and how to get buy-in from the board. 

Karla and Amy talk about all the things that are wrong with cybersecurity recruitment. Combining the experience of Karla's background in recruitment, with Amy's current experience building Capture the Talent, a company delivering CTF's and certifications companies can actually use. They also talk about cybersecurity sales and what the recruitment market is doing for non-technical positions in 2022. 

Karla and Dom talk about the lack of leadership training in cybersecurity and why this is detrimental to the industry. Dom discusses his view that the skills-gap in cybersecurity can be linked back to a lack of good quality leaders and what he is doing to try and solve the problem. Karla and Dom also talk about diversity within cybersecurity and how kindness and positivity is a key antidote to some of those issues.