Power Digital Marketing is a data-driven marketing agency that uses Nova, the company’s very own machine learning platform capable of analyzing business growth opportunities, and tracking consistent progress for its clients. Founder Grayson Lafrenz , and Pierre Le Veaux II , Vice President of Private Equity & Venture Capital Partnerships, gave us an insider’s perspective into the use cases and success of Nova. Grayson is a successful entrepreneur, and founded 11 companies before starting Pow...
Jul 20, 2021•26 min
Melissa Lopez is CEO of Onyx Offsites and Trainings , an experimental education company that provides custom-retreats, executive training, team building and wellness initiatives for organizations all over the world. Originally from Phoenix, Ariz., Melissa came to San Diego for college, studying at the University of San Diego . After she graduated, she decided to stay in town to accept an advertising and marketing position. As her marketing skills grew, Melissa was able to observe the transition ...
Jul 13, 2021•34 min
San Diego’s bluetech cluster is a sub-sector of the larger, broader local “Blue Economy,” which accounts for more than 1,400 companies, supporting 46,000 jobs, and generating $14 billion in direct sales. President and CEO, Yi Chao , contributes to this with his company, Seatrec , which recently relocated to Vista from Los Angeles. Seatrec designs technology used to convert temperature differences in the ocean into electricity. Other applications include oceanic robotics, ocean energy stations, a...
Jul 06, 2021•18 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Ready for a challenge? Ritika Sehgal takes us through her journey in founding Challenge Island San Diego Coastal , a locally owned, award-winning program designed to inspire STEAM development among the younger generation through creativity, collaboration and innovative thinking. Ritika grew up in India, but moved to San Diego early in her career. She initially pursued management roles for tech companies, working primarily on product and a...
Jun 28, 2021•26 min
Where we start and where we end up are two things that are so incredibly different, but equally important when evaluating success. As a rising entrepreneur from South Africa, Jonathan Cogley exemplified this journey and showcased how much can be achieved with tenacity and passion. Jonathan is the CEO at LogicBoost Labs , a startup accelerator in San Diego designed to help B2B startups go from $0 in revenue to $1 million. After growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, Jonathan moved to the UK af...
Jun 21, 2021•31 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Cox Business services small, medium and enterprise-level businesses. As the third largest cable provider in the nation with 6.5 million customers and 55,000+ employees, Cox has seen significant changes in the past year as a result of the pandemic. In this week’s podcast, Jared Ruth , Director of Marketing for Cloud, Channel, and Carrier at Cox Business, and Ron Lev , Executive Director of New Growth and Development at Cox Communications, ...
Jun 14, 2021•27 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Sarah Davis is the founder of Fashionphile , an ultra luxury accessory reseller that specializes in bags, shoes, travel goods, and watches. Building upon the consignment shop model, Fashionphile utilizes technology to appeal to a new era of shoppers. Sarah began her entrepreneurial journey under the eBay username Fashionphile in 1999. To bring in some income while attending University of Maryland School of Law , Sarah sold products online...
Jun 07, 2021•42 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Zeb Evans is the Co-Founder and CEO of ClickUp , a productivity platform designed to replace all other workplace applications. Ever since he was a kid, Zeb had been interested in business. At birthdays, he asked for wholesale toys that he could sell to other kids instead of ones he could play with. His parents had pushed him to pursue a career in medicine, but he was always more interested in the business field. While studying at Virginia...
Jun 01, 2021•24 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Samantha Pantazopoulos and Dylan Barbour are the co-founders of Vizer , an application designed to help people develop healthier habits while also giving back to the community. Sam had been participating in a social innovation incubator when she first brainstormed Vizer. At the incubator, the goal was to come up with unique solutions to social issues. These solutions needed to be both sustainable and scalable. In this process, she thought...
May 24, 2021•34 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Ardy Arianpour , the CEO and co-founder of Seqster , is passionate about the interoperability of healthcare data. Seqster is a platform pioneering patient-centric interoperability to retrieve and seamlessly integrate data from various electronic health records. Ardy was born in Tehran, Iran but grew up in San Diego. While many Iranian immigrants moved to San Francisco, his family wanted to be as far down the coast as possible while optimi...
May 16, 2021•26 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Monica Villanueva is a senior development engineer at Carlsbad-based IntelliGuard ,an automated cloud-based medication management platform that utilizes RFID technology to facilitate pharmaceutical inventory tracking. It is the first and only known for its RFID-enabled management in the pharmaceutical industry. From drug manufacturers to anesthesiologists, IntelliGuard helps doctors and pharmacists alike understand where the drugs have be...
May 10, 2021•18 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Scot Chisholm is one of the original founders of Classy , the highly successful San Diego social enterprise named after none other than “Anchorman”. Classy helps nonprofit organizations maximize their fundraising through its online tools targeted at a younger generation. So far, Classy has helped nonprofits raise $3 billion dollars in the last 10 years, and the company doesn’t anticipate slowing down anytime soon. Classy was founded in 20...
May 04, 2021•41 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Oralia Alvarez plays a key role as the Director of Business Development at San Diego’s Founders First Capital Partners ; however, she didn’t always know she would work on the impact side of business. Kicking off her career in real estate and sales, she worked as a ‘bird dog,’ sourcing deals from other real estate professionals for properties that never made it to market. In real estate, for investors to make a decent profit, agents need t...
Apr 26, 2021•27 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Jared Criscuolo is the Founder and CEO of San Diego-based Upcycle and Company , a sustainable, organic fertilizer company breaking the cycle of consumption hoping to get users to the point where they no longer need fertilizer at all. Jared, originally from Cheshire, Conn., grew up around farming. His mom was a big gardener and his grandfather had a garden that bloomed with strawberries and rhubarb during the Summer. With Jared's first job...
Apr 19, 2021•39 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Silvia Mah has played a huge role in the growth of the San Diego startup ecosystem. As an author, mentor, angel investor and founder herself she has impacted the community here profoundly. Silvia was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela to a CIA operator mother and Italian emigrant father with a strong entrepreneurial passion. She attended an international school in Caracas, where students faced bomb threats, transportation defacement, a...
Apr 12, 2021•35 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Bijan Moallemi , Joe Garafalo , and Brian Campbell all had extensive experience in the finance industry before founding Mosaic , a strategic finance platform that revolves around building the next generation of technology for the modern day CFO. Mosaic connects all of the systems used by businesses on a daily basis, translating rather complicated analytics into easily understood information. The three met while working at Palantir in San ...
Apr 05, 2021•21 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. AlwaysAI provides a platform that allows developers and enterprises to utilize deep learning and machine vision platforms to edge devices. Komal Devjani , a Developer Advocate, and Liz Oz , the Head of Marketing, gave us an inside look on what alwaysAI is up to. Liz was born in upstate NY, but grew up in Seattle where she studied Multimedia Design and Advertising at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology . She followed her education ...
Mar 30, 2021•19 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Dr. John Dobak currently serves as the CEO of Dermtech , a biotechnology company creating a new category of medicine - precision dermatology. DermTech is in the business of transforming the way doctors perform skin exams. Its smart sticker technology - an adhesive tab that collects skin cells - allows dermatologists to run genomic tests looking for skin cancer. Dr. Dobak found himself in San Diego when he started med school at UCSD while ...
Mar 22, 2021•24 min
Jon Corrin is Co-Founder and CEO of XILO , a software company that eliminates the time-consuming manual data entry for insurance agents, automating many of their standard processes. Jon grew up in Dover, Del., and attended the University of Delaware . During his time there, he worked on his first startup, Atlas , with his best friend who moved to San Diego upon completion of his education at the Naval Academy. Inspired by the lonely drive many college students have to make when commuting home fo...
Mar 15, 2021•22 min
Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz have always been interested in both health food and entrepreneurship, which made them likely partners for Once Upon a Farm . Once Upon a Farm began as the first refrigerated baby food on the market and has since developed into a kids’ popular nutrition brand. Cassandra studied nutrition and its impact on development while working towards her Master’s in Psychology at Alliant International University . So she knew that nourishing a growing child was crucial. Only when...
Mar 08, 2021•35 min
Spencer Hutchins is the co-founder and CEO of Concert Health , which specializes in bringing behavioral health to patients through their primary care providers (PCP). The company essentially functions as a care delivery organization, with a vast majority of its 100 employees being behavioral specialists, from social workers to psychiatrists. Upon graduation from Colby College , Spencer worked as a senior intern on John Kerry’s presidential campaign. He started when the campaign had only 60 emplo...
Mar 01, 2021•29 min
Listen on Apple , Google , Spotify , and other platforms. Paul Puey , the Co-Founder and CEO of Edge , formally known as AirBitz, hopes to decentralize financial services, connecting the consumer directly to their cryptocurrency. Paul grew up in the Bay Area where he was often reminded of the increasing importance of tech. He shared that he always had some interest in computer science, creating his first database in the seventh grade while working on real estate mailout campaigns. He would later...
Feb 22, 2021•42 min
Meet some of Human AI Labs ’ co-founders, Kristie Kaiser and Sharon Zhang , who seek to empower all humans with an affordable, unbiased AI-based memory “bank.”. the The tool allows individuals to search for nuggets of information from past events using a variety of AI technologies with the goal of retaining user’s memories to allow for more efficient recall and further utilization. Kristie found herself in San Diego upon attending San Diego State University in 2010 where she earned a degree in g...
Feb 16, 2021•21 min
Ty Smith , the founder and CEO of CommSafe AI and retired Navy SEAL, has always seen himself as a protector of people. That’s why he launched CommSafe AI - a technology company that focuses on conflict and violence prevention in the workplace, while promoting diversity and inclusion. Through its first-to-market AI tool, the startup plans to help companies fight against bullying, harassment, aggression, Title IX offenses and other toxic communications, which costs US workplaces roughly $528 billi...
Feb 08, 2021•25 min
Building a company isn’t easy, and neither is selling one. Hear from local entrepreneurs-turned- Tech Coast Angels investors about the trials and tribulations they faced selling their own companies. TCA is the largest angel investment group in the country that has fueled new innovative companies since 1997, with one of its most active memberships in San Diego. Read more about the entrepreneurs featured on the podcast below: Moderator Dean Rosenberg received funding from TCA in an early phase of ...
Feb 02, 2021•56 min
Cleve Adams is a serial entrepreneur, with his latest venture being CEO of VoxOx , a cloud communication services company that innovates communication across networks and devices. VoxOx utilizes both 5G data and AI in its technologies. Cleve found himself in tech after following a girl (now his wife) from Southern California to the Northwest. In the journey, he met some people who then introduced him to the field. From here he worked at Texas Instruments for a few years and then for Novell, whic...
Jan 26, 2021•26 min
Jasmine Sadler is the Founder and CEO of The STEAM Collaborative , which focuses on advocacy for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education through an artistic lens. The STEAM Collaborative works with community-based organizations, informal educators, and museums to design, implement, and manage team education programs. Growing up in Detroit, Jasmine was always encouraged to try new things, from dance to gymnastics. She always loved math and rather excelled at it, tutoring other ...
Jan 19, 2021•41 min
Steven Cox is the Founder and CEO of TakeLessons , a virtual marketplace that connects learning enthusiasts with instructors in topics ranging from sign language to music, business skills and chess. TakeLessons helps instructors simplify marketing and manage their business with integrated communication tools. Steven tells about how he first got involved with the tech space working for an ecommerce company that served SeaWorld in San Diego. It was this opportunity that prompted him to leave Ohio ...
Jan 12, 2021•41 min
Meri Birhane is the Founder and CEO of Meri Consulting Services , a professional firm that helps service providers, startups, and sales professionals book meetings through a proprietary tech sales playbook and LinkedIn coaching. Meri tells us about how she worked her way through tech sales positions, gaining confidence with each sale up until she felt ready to pursue her own business. Meri’s family emigrated from Eritrea to San Diego in the 90s, where Meri attended both middle school and high sc...
Jan 05, 2021•24 min
Christopher Mizer is the President and CEO of Vivaris Capital , an alternative asset investment company designed to fund growing tech firms and real estate properties. Christopher dives in and shares his journey from life as an investment banker to becoming the CEO of Vivaris Capital. Having grown up in a small town in Ohio, Christopher was never exposed to many tech opportunities. He then graduated from Case Western with two undergraduate degrees and two masters degrees. After working in invest...
Dec 22, 2020•21 min
