Technori Podcast With Scott Kitun

How do we ditch the dull parts of our day jobs? According to Sean Chou and Catalytic — and numerous sci-fi authors — it’s by giving the boring tasks that make us feel like robots to actual robots — or, specifically, to artificial intelligence. Catalytic takes the existing data processing software like Salesforce, Excel, Quickbooks etc. and helps you run them as one, cutting out back and forth, and speeding up processes like invoicing and employee on-boarding. While many people see AI as a threat to human jobs, Sean believes that introducing software like Catalytic will improve productivity to the point that we’ll be able to use all that saved time to work on genuinely interesting projects that improve customer experience.

Joe Hernandez aka Disruption Joe joins the podcast in-studio at WGN to talk about the latest trends in Chicago tech and diving into all things blockchain. His belief in Chicago's ability to become a center for blockchain innovation led him to create the Voice of Blockchain in 2018. 1,000 people came to Navy Pier to learn about and promote the technology behind bitcoin for the first major event. In 2019, they hope to bring the show to the next level with corporate sponsors like Fidelity Digital Assets, TD Ameritrade, and Deloitte bringing legitimacy to blockchain.

Take a look at a property that is for sale and of course, you’ll see its best attributes on display. It’s pristine and uncluttered, shiny and inviting. Glimpse behind-the-scenes of most real estate offices, and you’ll see the total opposite. This is no secret to anyone in the industry, including Jake Marmulstein who is building a business that aims to tame the chaos for real estate companies. Groundbreaker is a white label SaaS platform that enables real estate syndicators to find, manage and verify investors; receive payments; and show off property profiles. Five years on, they’re hiring for roles in multiple areas of the business. Jake explains to Scott what drove him to create a solution for real estate businesses, the challenges of being a non-technical founder, and the company’s breakthrough realization

If there’s one industry that’s both very old and highly innovative, it’s food. We’ve been eating since before we could talk in more than grunts — but what we want to eat, and how and where we acquire food, continues to change rapidly. One company trying to balance that long history with the need to innovate is wholesale food distributors Gordon Food Service. The company traces its roots back to 1897 when it delivered butter and eggs. Now it employs 19,000 people, and in 2018 Gordon Food Service was the 22nd largest privately held company in the US, according to Forbes. In 2017, Gordon Food Service officially launched a new and separate entity, delightfully named Relish Works. Their mission is to look for innovations that can help Gordon Food Service and the wholesale food distribution industry modernize and grow. One of the people leading the effort is Managing Director Mandy Tahvonen. As Mandy explains, Relish Works is currently working on multiple industry-improving projects; but one that she and Gordon Foo

When you’ve already worked at Google for over a decade, co-founded a successful startup, used your talents to help a non-profit, and earned degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Business School — what’s next? For Minnie Ingersoll, the answer was venture capital and a move away from Silicon Valley. After graduating from Stanford with a computer science degree, Minnie joined Google in its early days — when the company still had fewer than 500 employees. After working there for almost 12 years, she moved on to co-found Shift, a site selling used cars online. (Her co-founder and Shift’s current co-CEO, Toby Russell, was a recent Technori guest.) From there, Minnie left to work as COO of non-profit Code for America. Having spent so much of her career in the tech bubble, Minnie saw the drawbacks of putting Silicon Valley on a pedestal. The Southern California native made the move to Los Angeles — which is where she joined TenOneTen Ventures as a partner in February 2019. She also co-hosts LA Venture, in whi

If you’ve lived through a Chicago winter, the idea of paying someone to let you stand in a machine that gets cold enough to give you frostbite seems dubious at best. But CryoBar owner Sara Latham is convinced that that’s exactly what many of us dealing with injuries, stress and even chronic illnesses need to feel better. For the uninitiated, CryoBar offers treatments based around the belief that submerging oneself partially or totally in subzero temperatures for very short periods of time can treat a range of ailments.

Strategic growth requires a People+People™ plan. Simply put, you can’t have one without the other. As sales grow, so does your need for a talented workforce. Here’s the bottom line: It takes the same strategies to attract and retain clients as it does employees – and you need a healthy, engaged pipeline of both to achieve business goals. Join business leaders from all industries to connect and gain actionable insights into solving several of the most common growth challenges businesses face. Kathy Steele from Red Caffeine and Kirk Miller from Second City join Scott in-studio to discuss the conference hosted at Second City Works.

Chet Kanojia’s entrepreneurial ventures often have a theme of pushing back against the “big guy” — and for good reason. As a kid growing up in Bhopal, India, he was profoundly affected by the Union Carbide plant disaster, which exposed more than 600,000 people to harmful gasses and resulted in 15,000 deaths. It is the world’s worst industrial disaster and Chet was around 12 or 13 when it happened. He says witnessing how corporate mismanagement resulted in major tragedy left him distrustful of big business. That perspective informs the kind of innovations Chet has introduced to the marketplace. His previous company Aereo was an attempt at creating an open platform for television to give viewers more control over their TV content. Now he’s building Starry, which offers low-cost, fast internet access. Listen to Chet talk to Scott about how his entrepreneurial journey and mission to offer great internet for the masses.

The origin story of one of the most influential businesses to emerge in the last 20 years is now available for your reading pleasure — Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph has written a new memoir, “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea." Today Netflix is a household name. But back in 1997, streaming movies directly to your TV still seemed like the stuff of sci-fi. Marc along with Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings were just starting to brainstorm ideas for a new business. Marc, a Silicon Valley veteran, was an entrepreneurial guy long before Netflix, as he explains in his interview with Scott in-studio at WGN Radio

Be honest: are you a regular deskfast eater — grabbing breakfast while you’re settling in at the office? Jon Agay noticed this trend while doing market research for what would become joyböl, a “ready-in-seconds” granola smoothie bowl. Made to eat while you’re on the go, you simply add water or your preferred milk and get ready to enjoy. Jon, the co-founder of joyböl, was in the unique position of developing the product as an “intrapreneur” with the backing of his employer, Kellogg’s, where he is the Global Senior Marketing Director.

While other aspects of business, like marketing, product and UX, have been revamped and revolutionized multiple times in just the last 10 years, the technology many businesses give to their sales teams is decades-old and not up to solving modern problems. Showpad is aiming to help companies move a few evolutionary stages forward. Specifically, they’re focusing on the sales enablement side through their content management platform, where salespeople can store digital materials for clients and easily share them across teams. Showpad COO Jason Holmes joins Scott in-studio to talk about where sales goes wrong, and where it’s going next.

A SaaS platform developed by pharmaceutical industry veterans, Kalderos combines that background knowledge with artificial intelligence and data to calculate when and where discounts should be applied.Jeremy Docken founded the company with the goal of untangling the issue of noncompliant discounts in the pharmaceutical industry. If that sentence made very little sense to you, you are far from alone. Even Jeremy, who has a background in pharmaceuticals and auditing, admits that negotiating the messy world of drug prices from a patient’s perspective is a headache in itself.

This probably comes as no surprise, but around here, we believe that business talk doesn’t always have to be serious. It’s possible to be scaling huge companies, laser-focused on your mission while bringing in your personality, too. A serious business owner who agrees with this sentiment: John Ostler, co-founder of Eight Bit Studios. The Chicago-based creative shop designs and develops apps and websites for companies that want to push the envelope on originality. John also co-hosts his own Chicago-centric business podcast, Bytes Over Bagels. After a hiatus, the show is back for a second season and features interviews with an array of tech and business leaders covering topics like design, investment, as well as product and strategy.

Technology outsourcing firms might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about where the next major tech innovation might come from. But increasingly, firms like Egen Solutions are helping companies — from the Fortune 500 to smaller startups — navigate the path to business growth. Raghu Potini, Egen’s CEO, came on the podcast to shed light on how the Chicago-headquartered company works with businesses on application development, IT modernization and other digital services.

Finding great sales talent is notoriously tough. Interviews are a poor predictor of future performance, and without the proper on-the-job support and training, even a seasoned sales pro can flounder in a new environment. Raleigh Wilkins runs his own company, Wheeler-Wilkins, which offers sales training based on the processes he developed while improving his own sales skills. He is also working on building up a team of former-military sales reps that businesses can hire for short periods of time, calls his approach the “ground truth sales system,” because the best intelligence comes from the boots on the ground. You certainly can’t compare a bad day at the office to active duty. But the ideas that Raleigh brings to the world of sales, the process and preparation, can definitely help any of us survive a sales crisis.

What the car did for transport, Superhuman does for email. But while pioneers like Henry Ford intentionally made cars available to the mass market, Superhuman has a very specific target audience. The service costs $30 a month, and new users must pass a qualification process: there’s an estimated waiting list of over 100,000. (A referral from a current user could help move things along). Once you’re in, you receive a 30-minute phone tutorial. In the early days, this was done in person, and the man walking you through it was Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra. His exclusive strategy for Superhuman is paying off: in June 2019, the company raised $33 million in a Series B round. Over the phone, Rahul explained how he convinced people to pay to read their emails, and which key emotion he strives to create.

Aside from founders telling you that their company is their baby, families don’t often figure into the mythology of the tech startup. One simple reason is that many of the people who are focusing on family life are not in the office: they’re at home with said family. And while some of them are happy with that arrangement, for many it’s less a choice than an inevitability, because the American workplace still hasn’t figured out how to support working parents — especially moms. As the CCO of The Mom Project, Colleen Curtis is working to help companies introduce and implement policies that support parents at all stages of childcare — maternity leave through the teenage years.

FarmTogether estimates that farmland is a more than $2.5 trillion market in the U.S. alone, and as high as $9 trillion worldwide, which makes it larger than real estate and gold. But after a little digging, CEO Artem Milinchuk realized that many potential investors found the sector too confusing, not to mention geographically disparate. Enter FarmTogether, which is helping investors of all backgrounds put their money into vetted farmland. They monitor the farm’s progress, and you get annual payments. We got Artem on a call to explain how farming works today and how it could work tomorrow, and why farmland is a more reliable investment than you might think.

“Uber for ‘x’” is the most overused, maddening phrase in startup land. It’s hype-marketing shorthand for just about every business idea that leverages the sharing economy. That’s why co-founders Keithan and Quiante Hedrick were initially wary of framing their live-translator-on-demand app, Instaspeakers, as “Uber for translation” to potential investors. Translators on the platform are certified, working professionals –– not just people who are bilingual. Plus, they’re available via live video call, 24/7. It’s light years more effective than software like Google Translate, and more accessible than B2B translation services like TransPerfect and LionBridge.

As the founder and CTO of ThreeKit, the Vancouver native spent almost 15 years creating visual effects technology that was used in the Harry Potter, Star Wars and Marvel franchises, among others. But as if that legacy wasn’t impressive enough, consider that he’s now changing the way we shop online. Ben and ThreeKit have moved their focus from the big screen to the small screen — in this case, cellphones and laptops rather than the movie theater. They’ve used their visual effects knowledge to create software that can help e-commerce companies better show off their products.