School for Startups Radio

Dr. Daniël Reichman - CEO and co-founder of Ai-RGUS       

If Duke University has this problem with its security 2000 cameras, probably somebody else has that problem too. So, I ran with an idea that wasn't even mine. We use AI to make sure security cameras are working. Recent estimates say there are 900 million cameras in the world. So, lots of potential problems.

Dr. Daniël Reichman is the CEO and Chief Scientist of Ai-RGUS, an AI startup which provides a software solution to security camera systems. Ai-RGUS automatically verifies that security cameras are producing the video they were intended to capture, thereby ensuring video evidence will be available after an incident has occurred. Ai-RGUS is commercializing AI software that Dr. Reichman’s lab at Duke University developed for the institution, at the request of the administration. With over 24 university publications, Dr. Reichman obtained his doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University in 2017—a program fully funded by the U.S. Army Research Office. He has successfully completed consulting projects, including the development of software to assist in reading more than 10,000 pages which needed to be summarized, and developing software to automate aspects of financial projection for New York Life Insurance’s portfolio of liabilities. Caroline Winnett - Executive Director at Berkeley SkyDeck

Our mission is to be the world's top global accelerator.

Caroline Winnett is the executive director of UC Berkeley’s startup accelerator and founder of its VC fund. As a serial entrepreneur, she co-founded neuromarketing company Neurofocus, which was acquired by Nielsen, and has been in the New York Times and Business Insider. By now, we all know that women and minority-led companies need more funding, but there’s another gap-closing tool that Caroline swears by: finding a mentor. Few founders have one (22%), but nearly 70% of companies noticed a rise in productivity due to mentorship. From introducing you to valuable connections to sharing tips on getting VCs to take you seriously as a woman or person of color, mentors are like a cheat code!

Sven Platte - Founder of Digistore24                    

You need very little money to start an online business, you just need to find services like Digistore24 to help you scale.

Sven Platte is the founder and CEO of Digistore24, the industry leader in Europe in the online sales platforms space. The company offers technology solutions for online entrepreneurs such as an integrated online store, affiliate networks, payment processing, and tax automation. The platform Digistore24 enables thousands of coaches, consultants and other online entrepreneurs to focus on their core business while they take care of the rest: technology, administration, integration of platforms and payments. As an investor, he is more than just his projects - he is committed to the development of other companies in the music, energy and fintech sectors. He is also the founder and host of SvenCast, a popular podcast and YouTube channel where he interviews entrepreneurs, business leaders, entertainers, and athletes about their stories and insights into building successful brands. Sven's mission is to help people monetize their passion by driving digital innovation. Roza Szafranek - CEO of HR Hints

HR Hints is the first company which offers human resources as a monthly subscription.

Roza Szafranek is the Founder & CEO of HR Hints, the first HR boutique operating in a subscription model, dedicated to startups and fast-growing tech companies. Together with her team, she has supported over 50 startups, teaching leaders how to be better with people and effectively develop companies. She shows founders and managers how to run companies based on engaged teams that deliver. Roza helps to build superior organizations of the type dreamed of by founders and managers. She cooperated and still cooperates with companies such as Ramp Network, Infermedica, Packhelp, Omnipack, Telemedi, inSTREAMLY, Zowie, Aleph Zero, ShopRunner, Inovo Venture Partner and Innovation Nest. She is a mentor of InCredibles, Sebastian Kulczyk’s mentoring program, a winner of the HR Pearls competition and the title of Recruiter of the Year 2018. She is featured in the Strong Women in IT Global Edition 2021 report. Roza is the author of both industry and academic articles, co-author of books, and a conference speaker. In addition, she runs the People from Work podcast.

Jeffrey Shaw - job title and Author of The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success 

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Jeffrey Shaw became one of the most preeminent portrait photographers in the United States. His on-location style and fine craftsmanship made him the go-to photographer for families of C-suite executives of Anheuser-Busch, Twitter, and many others, Supermodel Stephanie Seymour, news anchors Jim Nantz and David Bloom, sports icons Tom Seaver, Pat Riley, and Wall Street executives too many to mention. His portraits appeared on The Oprah Show, CBS News, in People and O Magazine and hang at Harvard University and The Norman Vincent Peale Center. After 35 years of exceptional service to his exclusive clientele, Jeffrey decided to share his knowledge of business, branding, and marketing to support self-employed and small business owners as well as progressive-minded companies. He's an in-demand keynote speaker at conferences such as HOW Design, Growth Marketing, corporations the likes of Verizon and BMW, and institutions such as Florida Atlantic University and the Adams Center for Entrepreneurship. Jeffrey is also the author of two books, LINGO and The Self-Employed Life, a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and a regular contributor to various publications. In 2014, Jeffrey started a podcast, Creative Warriors, later rebranded as The Self-Employed Life which is amongst the top 15% of all podcasts.  Peruquois - Recording Artist and Healer     

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Around the world, she fills huge stadiums, arenas and concert halls bigger than Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall—often averaging 6,000 a night! But in North America, she is still a mystery to be discovered! Peruquois (pronounced Peru-Kua)—she is called by one name only—is a phenomenon in herself. Bringing forth an extraordinary healing sound that is part singing in a range never heard before on the planet, part multidimensional healing, part evoking the feminine goddess within all women—Peruquois stands alone. There is no one else like her. She is the world leader in applied spirituality for women. International recording star, renowned wisdom teacher, accomplished female shaman, master of multicultural music from jazz to Indian Classic to a sound uniquely her own, Peruquois opens women to a part of themselves often long buried, or maybe never even discovered. She is committed to helping women experience a true deep love of themselves. Using an ultra-high/low overtone form of singing she developed, Peruquois can produce up to four voices at a time! A unique sound that has been scientifically-tested to heal in many concerts conducted with her. But it’s her remarkable story of how this voice unfolded that is so compelling! Losing her father to a fishing accident at three only began the first of her travails. At 11, she had both legs detached above the knee and then reattached in a botched surgery designed to cure genetic hip rotation, nearly disabling her. Her suffering committed her to rising above pain to focus on living fully and finding the love within. She left home at 15 to find her own way and despite parental disapproval, she turned to her passion to sing as a career. In just one year, she covered 10 years of music education –and, at 19, passed the exams to enter the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts as a jazz vocalist.

Jeremy Delk - Serial Entrepreneur and Author of Without a Plan: A Memoir of Unbound Action and Failing My Way to Success               

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Jeremy Delk is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for disrupting industries. Born and raised in a small-town, blue-collar household, he jumped into entrepreneurial ventures with the naivety of a child and the tenacity of a tycoon. Since 2001, Jeremy’s businesses have earned hundreds of millions in revenue, created hundreds of high-paying American jobs, and earned one of Inc. 500’s fastest-growing company distinctions. Now focused on investing in and advising entrepreneurs, Jeremy shares the good, bad, and ugly of entrepreneurship. While great times don’t last forever, neither do the truly bad ones. He jumped into entrepreneurial ventures with the naivety of a child and the tenacity of a tycoon. He started the day trading at the age of sixteen, learning and failing with each trade. It is this process of adapting through failures that is paramount to his success in business. After high school, he attended college in Rhode Island under a business & marketing scholarship. However, he spent most of his class time using his palm pilot to day trade. By the age of 19, he earned 30K to 50K a day as a day trader from the desk of his college classroom. He felt invincible! As quickly as the money came, it vanished just as fast. After amassing almost 2 million in his early twenties as a day trader, it took him only four days to lose it all! The tech bubble has a way of making people go broke quickly. To make ends meet, he began renting apartments, earning commissions on the sales. As luck would have it, one of the people was a newly relocated executive at Fidelity in Boston. His knowledge and skill as a day trader would help him land a job as one of the youngest brokers at Fidelity trading institutional equities in Boston and later in New York. He was earning great money, but it didn’t fulfill the entrepreneurial spark within him, so he decided to go out on his own. Hila Nissim - CMO of BLEND Localization

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Hila Nissim is CMO of BLEND Localization. BLEND will be launched a SaaS startup program. The program is called First Stamp and it was designed to fuel startup growth. The program will help startups expand into an additional market to tap into a new consumer base, provide access to investors and more. Given the recessionary environment, startups are cutting back on activities. Geo-expansion is expensive but rewarding and BLEND is looking to support 10-15 startups (value of $100K) to boost their presence.

Uri Levine - Co-Founder of Waze and Author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs          

If you are afraid to fail, in reality, you have already failed.

Uri Levine is a passionate entrepreneur and disruptor, a two-time ‘unicorn’ builder (Duocorn). He is co-founder of Waze, the world's largest community-based driving traffic and navigation app, which was acquired by Google for $1.1 billion in 2013, and former investor and board member in Moovit, ‘Waze of public transportation’, which was acquired by Intel for $1 Billion in 2020. Levine has built more than a dozen startups and has seen everything ranging from failure, midlevel success, to immense success. Unicorns—companies that reach a valuation of more than $1 billion—are rare. Uri Levine has built two. Levine is co-founder of Waze, —the world’s leading commuting and navigation app with more than 700 million users to date which Google acquired in 2013 for $1.15 billion—and his second unicorn, Moovit. Dubbed “the Waze of public transportation,” Moovit was sold for $1 billion to Intel in 2020. In his new book, Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution: A Handbook for Entrepreneurs, with a foreword by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Levine reveals the formula and key components of building a successful start-up that drove those companies to compete with industry veterans and giants alike. Significant tech companies in the world today—Tesla, Waze, WhatsApp, Facebook, Uber, Netflix—were start-ups not that long ago, but Levine believes the next generation of entrepreneurs will make an even bigger impact. As a mentor and teacher, Levine intends to help entrepreneurs disrupt inefficient markets and improve under-functioning services, to focus on solving society-wide problems while saving consumers time and money.

Barrett Young - Senior VP Fleet Safety Strategy at Netradyne    

Our automobile driving artificial intelligence has almost 37,000 years’ worth of training.

Barrett Young is a strategic and innovative leader with half a decade in fleet safety and fleet management technology and over a decade of integrated marketing experience for both B2B SaaS and B2C companies. He has developed and led strategic go-to-market initiatives of advanced safety technology and the roll-out of the ELD mandate. He is passionate about GTM analysis and has a fury for big thinking and innovation that scale companies and revenue. With roads increasingly more crowded with delivery drivers and commercial vehicles, driver safety is top of mind for everyone. Between road risks and driver safety concerns, small and medium businesses (SMBs) with fleets face unique challenges in today’s climate. In fact, a recent survey revealed that two-thirds (66%) of decision makers at SMBs with fewer than 1,000 employees and five or more vehicles in their commercial fleets are making financial decisions based on immediate needs instead of safety. Smart tech and A.I. driving solutions may make staying on top of driver safety and saving money easier for these owners. With businesses making safety a priority for their fleet of drivers, this keeps all drivers safe on the road.

Will Robinson - CEO at Encapture                 

Start with one very specific area, nail it, get a bunch of customer feedback, show that you have strong product market fit, and then bring on great people to help you scale that.

Will Robinson is the CEO at Encapture, a high-growth SaaS platform that helps banks automatically extract important information from documents. Launched 20 years ago in Dallas, Texas, Encapture helps companies such as Wells Fargo, Frost Bank and Truist save time and money by using machine learning to process large amounts of data. Since joining the fast-growing company in 2019, Will has assembled a strong team of individuals that shares his passion for fintech and AI banking, ensuring sustainable growth, achieving innovative excellence and tripling revenue. He leads Encapture with an emphasis and passion for company culture and setting a high standard of excellence for a team that is constantly learning and excelling. Encapture’s user-friendly automation empowers banks to save valuable time and reduce compliance risk by processing documents efficiently and accurately in an easily accessible format. Instead of getting bogged down with quarterly compliance and regulatory audits, they can put a greater focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience and boosting satisfaction. Best of all, no technical expertise is required to utilize and reap the benefits of the Encapture platform thanks to the power of sophisticated machine learning AI. Before joining Encapture, Will held several executive management positions at Dynata, the largest market research data company with over 3,000 clients in 40+ countries. While at Dynata, he led the company’s global product development teams and pioneered the use of automated research and integrated data within the industry. Prior to Dynata, Will was an investment professional at The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful investment firms. He helped to source, conduct due diligence and manage technology and business services investments on behalf of the firm’s $14 billion US buyout fund. He also worked closely with Carlyle’s portfolio companies to execute various financial and strategic initiatives. Will began his career in the investment banking division of J.P. Morgan. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Baylor University, where he was a Carr P. Collins Scholar. Today, he lives in Dallas with wife and two sons, and is involved in leadership roles at several community organizations. Eric Johnson- Angel Investor and Author of What The Hell Is an Economy?: 2nd Edition

Interest rates have remained too low for too long which led to too much speculation and excessive borrowing. I think we are due for a correction.

Eric Johnson is the founder/CEO of a software engineering firm and a successful entrepreneur. After selling his firm, he focused on “angel investing” and has invested in more than 50 start-up firms in a variety of industries. He has served on several boards of both profit and non-profit organizations. Eric holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from Harvey Mudd College and master’s degree in electrical engineering from San Diego State University. In 2007, a surprise call from his broker expressing concerns about the economy enabled Eric to make financial decisions that allowed his family to weather the Great Recession. Never wanting to feel financially vulnerable again, he set out on a 15-year journey of empowerment, namely the self-education of finance and economics. In “What the Hell is an Economy,” Eric shares his accumulated knowledge and practical experience so you too will become similarly empowered to make better financial decisions.

Jeff Miller - Top 15 Private Wealth Advisors at Northwestern Mutual    

Make a yearend financial checklist and review what you did in 2022, determine how you did in relation to your early year expectations and then get a positive start to 2023.

Jeff Miller is one of the Top 15 Private Wealth Advisors at Northwestern Mutual every year since 2007 out of 6,400+ advisors. Jeff built his reputation through holistic financial planning and investment management. His process has been incorporated throughout Miller Financial Services as he seeks to first understand the uniqueness of each client’s situation, followed by a thorough analysis, organization, and execution with regular monitoring of each individualized plan and portfolio. As 2022 is coming to an end, it’s not too late to make sure your finances are in check ahead of the new year. Especially as the season of giving has arrived, a year-end financial checklist can help you achieve whatever goals you’ve set for yourself that you have not yet fulfilled. If you are struggling to get your spending plan to where you desire, a Northwestern Mutual financial expert can give tangible tips and tricks to help you stay motivated through the rest of the year as well as what to investigate when starting your year-end financial checklist.

Tony Restell - Founder of Social-Hire       

Try and get out in the market and sell whatever your product as quickly as you possibly can!

Tony Restell is the Founder of Social-Hire, a leading UK social media marketing agency that helps businesses turn social media into a consistent source of leads and sales within 90 days. They have helped thousands of clients grow their businesses using social media at less than a 1/3 of the cost they would pay to hire an in-house social media manager. Before starting Social-Hire, Tony built and sold Top-Consultant, a successful job board business that served clients like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Coca-Cola, to the Daily Mail Group. He is also a guest speaker at dozens of leading business schools across Europe on how MBA students and alumni can leverage social media to further their careers or launch thriving businesses.

Kathi Vidal - Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office  and

Paul DelPonte - Head the National Crime Prevention Council

Worldwide, the impact of counterfeit goods is about $1 trillion. And Los Angeles city alone it cost $483 million in lost taxes and 100,000 lost jobs. 

[caption id="attachment_49990" align="alignright" width="150"] Kathi Vidal[/caption]

The holiday hustle and bustle are in full swing as shoppers search for this year’s best steals and deals. The good news, discounts are expected to hit record highs for popular categories such as electronics, computers, and toys according to Adobe’s online-shopping forecast. However, scammers are looking to take advantage of American consumers as fears of a looming recession increase, and people tighten their purse strings leading up to the Holidays. These criminals are on the prowl both online and off looking to entice consumers with even lower-cost price tags attached to dangerous counterfeit products. This is especially true online as sales are expected to grow by 2.5% throughout December. The rise of e-commerce has led to an increase in sales and purchases of duped products. McGruff the Crime Dog®, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) are alerting people to these scams and educating them on how to spot the red flags this holiday season. Kathi Vidal is Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She leads one of the largest intellectual property (IP) offices in the world, with more than 13,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $4 billion. She is the principal IP advisor to the President and the Administration, through the Secretary of Commerce, and is focused on incentivizing and protecting U.S. innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. Paul DelPonte is an accomplished nonprofit leader, award-winning consumer advocate, and pioneering communicator. Paul was appointed to head the National Crime Prevention Council in 2021. The nonprofit National Crime Prevention Council is home to McGruff the Crime Dog® and has helped generations of Americans Take A Bite Out Of Crime® through public education campaigns and advocating for public policies to make the U.S. safer. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the federal agency for granting U.S. patents and registering trademarks. For more information, visit www.ncpc.org/goforreal and www.uspto.gov.

December 12, 2022 135 Patents Sebastien Lagree and Get the Money Rhea Wong

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December 8, 2022 Celebrating King Tuts 100th Adam von Gootkin and Financial Fast Track Dr. Keith Johnson