TJ Fairchild started Commonplace in 2003 with his wife in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Today, Commonplace has nine locations and TJ is consistently hired to consult with other coffee shops to help get their business established. In addition to operating coffee shops, Commonplace also roasts their own beans which they sell directly to consumers and wholesale to other coffee companies. TJ did not have a business background before starting his company, he majored in philosophy and avoided a career in aca...
Aug 30, 2021•56 min
Howie Choset is a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a serial entrepreneur. With his students, Howie has formed several companies including Medrobotics, for surgical systems, Hebi Robotics, for modular robots, and Bito Robotics for autonomous guided vehicles. Further, Choset co-lead the formation of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute, which is $250m national institute advancing both technology development and education for robotics in manufacturing. He is aksi a ...
Aug 23, 2021•32 min
Charles McIlvaine is an effective operator and financier who is in the midst of a significant rebrand for Coen Oil. After acquiring the company in the 2000s, Charlie and his brother Andy have built and spun off the company’s Energy and Transport businesses, in order to focus on their convenience store and gas station business. In this conversation, Charlie and Aaron discuss business strategy, company culture, and how to differentiate a company’s brand. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand...
Aug 16, 2021•52 min
Will Weiner is the CEO of Xpogo, the association focused on the growth of extreme pogo sticking. After taking over in 2018, Will has focused on expanded the sports media reach and developing a more robust event strategy. In this episode, Aaron and Will discuss media, business models, and the athletes that make it possible.
Aug 09, 2021•38 min
Eli Harris is the cofounder and President of R-Zero Systems. R-Zero has raised $60 million to re-design hospital-grade disinfection solutions for day-to-day life. In just fifteen months, R-Zero has raced to over $20 million worth of revenue and finds itself at the right place, at the right time, to take advantage of the cultural changes taking place post-pandemic. Eli has been named a Forbes 30 under 30 and previously founded the portable energy company EcoFlow. EcoFlow has raised $100 million a...
Aug 02, 2021•51 min
Barbara VanKirk is the CEO and founder of IQ Inc. She has spent the last 28 years creating company value by providing the vision, leadership, strategy, and general management skills necessary to grow IQ Inc into a dominant player in Pittsburgh’s tech ecosystem. IQ Inc helps its clients with expert consulting, staffing, project management and software development services. They serve clients across financial services, transportation, and medical device with Software Design & Development, Soft...
Jul 19, 2021•44 min
Jeremy Searock cofounded Advanced Construction Robotics in 2016, aiming to bring robotic technology to construction sites around the country. As President and Chief Technology Officer, Jeremy has overseen the development of ACR’s first two products, TyBot and IronBot. The machines dramatically enhance workforce productivity and safety by aligning and tying rebar for reinforced concrete on heavy infrastructure projects. Prior to starting a company, Jeremy managed the autonomous systems engineerin...
Jul 12, 2021•42 min
Gabriela Isturiz has founded two different high-growth SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) technology companies that were ultimately sold to Fortune 500 companies. Her first company, eBillingHub, was a pioneering electronic billing solution for law firms around the world. Her product development, sales, and business strategy acumen allowed for eBillingHub to be acquired by Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) in 2011. After that, Gaby founded Bellefield System, which rose to be a global leader in time tracking ...
Jul 05, 2021•33 min
Shea Murtaugh is the founder and president of Hoffmann Murtaugh, the largest media-only agency in Pittsburgh. Shea started her company in 2004 with no capital and now leads a team of 30 people. Prior to funding Hoffman Murtaugh, Shea broke into media via broadcast sales. She’s sold every major form of media over her decorated career and blends that experience into a cocktail that delivers wins for clients. In this conversation, Shea and Aaron discuss how she got her start, when to hire vs train ...
Jun 28, 2021•44 min
Dr. Dietrich Stephan is a geneticist, entrepreneur, and CEO of NeuBase Therapeutics. Neubase is biotech startup focused on developing precision genetic medicines. Dietrich previously founded or co-founded 14 biotechnology companies, was the chair of the Human Genetics department at the University of Pittsburgh, and was the CEO of LifeX Labs, a biotechnology incubator. Neubase, his latest company, is developing technology spun out of Carnegie Mellon University that aims to address genetic disease...
Jun 21, 2021•49 min
Jonathan Steckbeck is the founder of Peptilogics, a biotechnology platform company that develops best-in-class novel peptide drugs for unmet medical needs. He also has a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. Amongst other problems, his company Peptilogics is focused on developing a new category of antibiotics. It has been 20 years since there was a genuinely new class of antibiotics, yet bacterial cells have continued to evolve and dev...
Jun 14, 2021•33 min
Euan Guttridge is the Director of Technical Program Management at Waymo and previously held the same position with Uber’s self-driving car division. Between these two roles, Euan developed an angel investing syndicate under the banner Reinforced Ventures. The syndicate differentiates itself for the technical proficiency of its limited partners, bringing a fresh perspective to the companies it invests in. Euan’s portfolio includes a number of past Going Deep podcast guests including; Gridwise, Lo...
Jun 07, 2021•44 min
Steve Muck is the CEO of Brayman Construction, a heavy civil and geotechnical contractor that builds bridges, dams, and other large infrastructure. Steve is also the cofounder of construction-related robotics startups TyBot and Advanced Construction Robotics. Steve has started or acquired twenty businesses and currently operates a portfolio of entities that in construction-related endeavors alone runs approximately $200 million in revenue annually. Steve acquired the company over 28 years ago in...
May 31, 2021•32 min
Jon Pastor is the SVP for Consumer Solutions at RealPage, a leading global provider of software and data analytics to the real estate industry. RealPage was trading publicly at over $10 billion market capitalization before being taken private by Thoma Bravo. Jon’s entrepreneurial career started when he cofounder RentJungle with previous guest Geng Wang . That company was acquired in 2014 and Jon chose to stay on and lead the acquiring company as President. Four years later, that company was acqu...
May 24, 2021•39 min
Jorge Mazal is the Chief Product Officer for Duolingo. Duolingo is a free language-learning website and mobile app with over 500 million downloads, 40 million monthly active users, and a valuation of over $1 billion. Jorge previously worked on the product for Zynga, MyFitnessPal, and Kleiner Perkins. Today he blends skills in design, gamification, and leadership to manage a product team that has 10xed in size since he joined the company. In this episode, Jorge and Aaron discuss how Duolingo make...
May 17, 2021•39 min
Marko Papic leads the strategy team at Clocktower Group, an alternative investments firm. Clocktower offers long-term strategic investment strategies to their clients, investment managers and institutional allocators. Marko brings his constraints framework, outlined in his book Geopolitical Alpha, to analyzing the geopolitical trends of the day. His ability to accurately forecast major political events has enormous ramifications for portfolios. In this episode, Marko and Aaron discuss how the fu...
May 10, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Andy Norman is a researcher focused on studying how ideologies short-circuit minds and corrupt moral understanding. His studies have led him to develop a toolkit of methods for improving reasoning and share them in his book, Mental Immunity . His hope is that a collection of academic research can be lassoed together to serve as the foundation of a new scientific field, Cognitive Immunology. Cognitive immunology would explore the ability of researchers to develop a mind vaccine to inoculate indiv...
May 03, 2021•43 min
Geng Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Civic Champs, a software startup focused on creating s seamless and rewarding volunteering experience for both volunteers and service organizations This is Geng’s third commercial venture. He’s previously co-founded two companies; RentJungle.com, an apartment search engine that sold in 2014 to The Rainmaker Group, and Community Elf (rebranded as Cosmitto), a social media management firm which we sold in 2017 to a PE firm, Topanga Partners. Given his past su...
Apr 26, 2021•41 min
Sanjiv Singh is CEO and cofounder of Near Earth Autonomy, a technology company focused on autonomous flight. Sanjiv has 25 years of experience working on autonomous ground and air vehicles. He came to Pittsburgh 30 years ago to participate in the DARPA challenge and has spent decades exploring different applications for self-driving and self-flying robots. Near Earth Autonomy started by developing self-flying technology for the United States Government and has expanded to bring their technologic...
Apr 19, 2021•54 min
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and host of Hidden Forces, a podcast devoted to exploring the underlying forces driving the most powerful changes we see in the world. His show covers a wide range of topics, including culture, philosophy, economics, technology, social science, and the hard sciences. Demetri has previously co-founded Guerilla Gaming Concepts, an interactive entertainment company focused on the middleware of gaming. He has also reported on financial news and told stories to...
Apr 12, 2021•59 min
Black Tech Nation Ventures is launching its first flagship venture fund in Pittsburgh, PA. The firm is founded by three managing partners, Kelauni Jasmyn, Sean Sebastian, and David Motley have come together to form an investment thesis focused on investing in black and other minority founders who have historically missed out on opportunities to raise venture capital. As David outlines in this podcast, these represent an underutilized asset capable of creating outsized returns, not a charitable d...
Apr 05, 2021•54 min
Paul Martino is a venture capital investor and has raised 5 funds totaling over $350 million in capital. That money has been deployed into FanDuel, Grove, Ipsy, and SpotHero. Before forming Bullpen, Paul was an active angel investor and personally invested in the first rounds of Zynga, TubeMogul, and uDemy. Prior to his investing career, Paul founded four companies including Ahpah Software (a computer security firm acquired by InterTrust) and Aggregate Knowledge (a big data advertising attributi...
Mar 29, 2021•38 min
Aubrey Strobel is the Head of Comms for Lolli, a free browser extension that lets users earn free bitcoin when shopping online. The platform’s mission is to help make cryptocurrency more accessible to the average shopper. Founded in 2018, Lolli has over 1,000 retail partners including Expedia, Nike, and Glossier. In this episode, Aubrey and Aaron discuss stacking sats, bringing women into crypto, and how Aubrey has modeled the Lolli brand and marketing off of Barstool Sports. Sign up for a Weekl...
Mar 22, 2021•34 min
Mike Green is the Chief Strategist at Logica Funds and has spent nearly 30 years studying markets. These days, he calls on that experience and his proprietary research to educate the public, the Federal Reserve, the BIS, and the IMF about the shift from actively managed portfolios and investment funds to systematic passive investment strategies. Previously, Mike has served as the portfolio manager for Thiel Macro, an investment firm that manages the personal capital of Peter Thiel, founded Ice F...
Mar 15, 2021•54 min
Mark Kovscek is a mathematician, inventor, and entrepreneur. His company, Conservation Labs, builds and sells a smart water meter that provides consumption insights, custom conservation recommendations, and leak detection. At the cutting edge of Internet-of-Things and conservation, Mark uses his experience from a career building products and delivering solutions to address multi-billion dollar challenges. He has spent time using his mathematics skills in marketing analytics, finance, and supply ...
Mar 08, 2021•42 min
Matt Harbaugh is a co-founder and Managing Director at Mountain State Capital. The 20 million dollar fund has invested in over 16 firms in the greater Appalachia region. Prior to founding MSC, Matt served as CEO of a machine learning-based software company that was acquired by Facebook and was the Chief Investment Officer at Innovation Works, one of the most active seed funds in the United States. Across his career, Matt has invested in, managed, and advised more than 100 private companies over ...
Mar 01, 2021•45 min
Andrew Gazdecki is the solo founder of MicroAcquire, a marketplace for buying and selling small Software-as-a-Service companies. He has previously started two companies, Bizness Apps and Altcoin.io, which were both acquired. MicroAcquire has reached $250,000 in annual revenue in just one year, by collecting fees from buyers in exchange for connecting with the entrepreneurs selling their business. Andrew is applying lessons that he’s learned from past successful companies to *hopefully* make this...
Feb 15, 2021•41 min
Chris Anderson is the founder and Chief Technical Officer of Innotescus. He leads a multi-functional team of machine learning scientists, software architects, and engineers that are innovating in the world of image annotation software. Prior to founding Innotescus, Mr. Anderson was the Director of Software Engineering and IT for ChemImage. Here he oversaw the core innovative software products for hyperspectral data acquisition, analysis and visualization. These products range in application pote...
Feb 08, 2021•25 min
Jeff Booth led BuildDirect, a technology company he co-founded in 1999, for nearly two decades through the dot-com meltdown, the 2008 financial crisis, and many waves of technological disruption. BuildDirect aimed to simplify the building industry and graduated from online catalog to logistics network to artificially intelligent platform. Last year, Jeff released his first book “ The Price of Tomorrow – Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future ” where he outlines the current state of our econo...
Feb 01, 2021•44 min
Stephen Tse, is founder and CEO of Harmony.one. Harmony is a blockchain-based open source development project with its own cryptocurrency. Stephen has been obsessed with protocols and compilers since high school. He reverse-engineered ICQ and X11 protocols, coded in OCaml for more than 15 years, and graduated with a doctoral degree in security protocols and compiler verification from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to founding Harmony, he has worked a researcher at Microsoft, a senior infr...
Jan 25, 2021•35 min
