In this episode, I chat with Lori Chai - a UX Designer and Co. Lab Alumna, about her experience living and working abroad in Japan (one of my bucket list destinations!). She shares what drove her decision to transition in a UX career, the state of UX design in Japan at the time and how she started her own co-hosted podcast: Designer Sushi. For the first episode of this season, Lori was kind enough to be the guinea pig for the This or That segment. I had so much fun and a lot of laughs recording ...
Mar 13, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 43
Note: This episode was recorded in March 2022. Hi everyone! This is the final episode for 2022. I'm hoping to get back into a podcasting groove next year. I really enjoyed interviewing Ali Shah - co-founder & CEO of TapeReal. TapeReal is a social platform where human connection, authenticity, and meaningful content comes first. I came across his company through Equivesto, the Canadian equity crowdfunding platform. The previous episode (Ep. 041) is an interview with Equivesto's managing direc...
Dec 13, 2022•51 min•Season 4Ep. 42
* Correction : I have been in my current role as a Product Manager at an e-commerce startup for just over a year now. The previous year and a bit, I was working on trying to break into the industry. Popping in with a solo episode to share some life updates to explain why I've sort of been MIA. Hoping to add a few more solo episodes to the mix in the future, including why and how I got into product management. FOLLOW THE BACON BITS 'N BYTES PODCAST Twitter - @baconbits_bytes Instagram - @baconbit...
Aug 31, 2022•10 min
NOTE: This episode was recorded back in February 2022 The idea of helping people who never considered themselves to be investors, to be individuals, investing in a variety of different busineses where they could start creating more intergenerational wealth was something that was really meaningful to the both of us - Alexander Morsink , Co-Founder and Managing Director of Equivesto Equivesto is a Canadian equity crowdfunding platform, that allows all Canadians to directly invest in local business...
Aug 05, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 41
In this episode I chat with the CEO and co-founder, Cole Kirschner of longevity tech company Age Rate. We chat about how AgeRate began as a capstone research project in university and how the company is empowering the world with tools to demystify and optimize aging. Use the code BACON at checkout or by using this link: https://age-rate.com/discount/BACON and receive 20% off. AgeRate is a direct-to-consumer longevity company that aims to unlock the secret to living a longer and healthier life by...
May 15, 2022•35 min•Season 4Ep. 40
Note: This episode was recorded back in the end of August. Imagine a world where teachers are doing Tik Tok inspired videos to educate their students and these short-form videos can be accessed by anyone from around the world. Beau is CEO & Founder of SOLcademy - a new short-format educational video platform. He is on a mission to improve the quality and availability of learning. He went to Dartmouth College and worked as a software engineer before discovering his true passion for education....
Dec 14, 2021•39 min•Season 3Ep. 39
"Food is a choice we make 3,4 times a day, what to eat, when we're hungry. We do it every single day of our lives and that is a very personal choice for various reasons." - Kishan Vasani , Co-Founder & CEO of Spoonshot. Kishan has worked in the food-tech industry since 2011. He is the Co-Founder & CEO of Spoonshot, an AI and food science-powered insights company helping the industry uncover the future of food by predicting consumer needs, trends, and innovation opportunities.Before start...
Aug 10, 2021•47 min•Season 3Ep. 38
NOTE: This episode was recorded back in May 2021 That feeling when you get to interview the creator of a product you are absolutely in love with. I was beyond thrilled to have James Mulvany, founder of Radio.co, Podcast.co and matchmaker.fm (my fave platform to connect with podcast guests and other podcasters). Really enjoyed learning about his entrepreneurial journey (he started his first business when he was 16) and about his 30 podcasts in 30 days experience (it was actually more than that). ...
Jul 06, 2021•47 min•Season 3Ep. 37
Amira Polack is the Founder & CEO at Struct Club, an app for fitness instructors who design motion to music - and their fans, starting with spin (indoor cycling) & treadmill running. Amira's career has centered around technology, startups, and social impact and her opinion has been featured in TIME, Forbes, and the World Economic Forum Agenda. She earned her MBA at Harvard Business School and BA at Princeton. In this episode we chat about both her entrepreneurial journey and fitness jour...
Jun 03, 2021•52 min•Season 3Ep. 36
Note: This episode was recorded during the beginning of April 2021. After having recently gone through the Product Management track of Co.Lab, I have a conversation with the co-founders Sefunmi Osinaike and Helen Huang on their difficult path to product management and why they want to provide confidence and practical experience for those looking to break into tech. Helen is a first generation Chinese-Canadian, as well as an earth scientist turned product manager turned startup founder. After lea...
May 18, 2021•51 min•Season 3Ep. 35
Lena is a product manager turned entrepreneur, writer and speaker. After running an innovation lab as a product manager and getting her first taste of entrepreneurship, she quit her job in February 2020 to take a break from the corporate world and test her own ideas. Lena's projects include a self-published book called The Making of Product Managers and a customer interviews tool for venture teams at startup accelerators called Hypothesee. She writes about her entrepreneurial journey on her webs...
Apr 21, 2021•51 min•Season 3Ep. 34
Not ready to commit 30-60 min of listening time? What about 1 min? Check out this trailer for The Bacon Bits 'n' Bytes Podcast. Ciao for now!
Apr 01, 2021•1 min
A social media futurist, Eugene's forward thinking attitude towards how we connect using technology has been at the forefront of his mission to connect the world. In 2014 he graduated with a BA in Liberal Arts with an emphasis on "YouTube Studies" from Evergreen State. Upon graduation he went to work at the YouTube consulting Agency, Press Play. In 2016 he quit his job as an art director to pursue XR social media. Eugene's first project was producing the film "Journey VR". This film became an of...
Mar 14, 2021•50 min•Season 3Ep. 33
UPDATE: The Passionfruit App is now available on both The App Store and Google Play app store and can be found by searching for "Passionfruit." Trying to connect with people can be quite difficult if your goals are not aligned or you don't share the same passion for something. Passionfruit is the brainchild of creator Paul Deng who came up with the concept of his social app while volunteering at Toronto Distress Centres, where he realized that there was a need for people to make deep, genuine, a...
Jan 11, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 3Ep. 32
Jennifer Hargreaves is the Founder and CEO of tellent. tellent is a flexible work recruitment and social impact organization with a mission to create more equal opportunities for women to lead and earn. Through a job board and virtual networking platform, she supports women on their journeys to finding work that works for them (flexible work). tellent also helps forward-thinking and inclusive businesses to access professional and skilled talent when and how they need it so that they can thrive i...
Dec 04, 2020•50 min•Season 2Ep. 31
Women entrepreneurs account for only 16% of business owners in Canada. It's time to invest in change. ELLA is a community and an accelerator for women, by women. Their mission is to reduce the gap of gender inequality in entrepreneurship. They believe that every woman entrepreneur should have access to the community, information and resources needed to scale their business. In this episode, I chat with Nicole Troster, the manager of the ELLA accelerator. We chat about ELLA's launch at the beginn...
Nov 11, 2020•33 min•Season 2Ep. 30
"You never know what the market wants until you go and talk to them' - Ardalan Benam, AI scientist and serial entrepreneur. Ardalan is someone who really understands what it means to be an entrepreneur and provides some honest, no BS advice for those who are looking to get into this world. As he puts it, there are so many easier ways to make money and that you shouldn't get into entrepreneurship for the money.
Oct 19, 2020•41 min•Season 2Ep. 29
Being a former personal finance blogger, but still a personal finance nerd, I loved having this type of discussion with Sandy Yong, Keynote Speaker and Award-Winning Author of The Money Master Book. Sandy Yong earned a business degree at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. After graduation, she started her career and began saving her hard-earned money. She naively invested in high-fee, high-risk mutual funds and soon lost thousands with the bumpy roller coaster ride of the stock market. Feeli...
Sep 25, 2020•46 min•Season 2Ep. 28
Lee Chambers is one amazing individual. He is a Wellbeing Consultant, Workshop Facilitator and Sleep Specialist. Through relearning how to walk after illness, working in different industries, and building 2 businesses, and studying a number of advanced qualifications, he has now brought all this together to improve wellbeing advancement. He does this by working with organisations to help them become more conscious and purposeful, defining values and communicating them with clarity. Wellbeing str...
Sep 02, 2020•49 min•Season 2Ep. 27
From online banking to digital payment processing, the fintech industry has evolved and continues to evolve tremendously. In this episode, I have an open and honest conversation about finances with FinTech entrepreneur, Co-Founder and CEO of Ostrich, William Glass. His mission is improving financial well-being globally. As founder & CEO of his company, Ostrich, William’s mobile app addresses financial literacy deficits by creating social community and accountability around money - think savi...
Aug 18, 2020•41 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries: Beverly Hills Chairs, the leading seller of refurbished Herman Miller Aeron chairs in the country; Custom Tobacco, a one-of-a-kind e-commerce platform where customers can create fully customized, private-label cigars in real-time; and Veloz Solutions, a technology consulting and software development practice. Adam is a also a nationally acclaimed thought leader, writer and s...
Aug 09, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Note: This conversation with Steve Hoffman (aka Captain Hoff) was recorded back in May when there were still many restrictions in place during the lockdown. He shares his insights on how the pandemic has affected both startups and investors and how he has never been busier, tackling the many things on his to-do list Steve considers himself to be someone who was always innovating on his life, likes challenges and doesn't like routine (Something that many of us can relate to, including me!). He he...
Jul 06, 2020•45 min•Season 2Ep. 24
*Note: This episode contains explicit language* In this episode, we're talking about the F-word. Failure or as others like to call it "A fuckup". I chat with Marsha Druker, the Founder and Director of Fuckup Nights Toronto about the importance of sharing the failure, especially for entrepreneurs and why children need to be educated about failure at a young age so they learn how to deal with it early on. She also shares a few of her own fuckups when first launching Fuckup Nights Toronto. Learn mo...
Jun 18, 2020•43 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Entrepreneur and cybersecurity expert Tawana Anderson tells her story of growing up in a rough neighbourhood and becoming a teen mom. She shares these experiences in her book, Bruised and Broken To Shine , available on her website and Amazon.com. We also discuss how being broken is not necessarily a bad thing, in that you have to go through things sometimes in order to let that light shine through. Connect with Tawana: IG: @tawana_shine FB: Tawana Anderson Shine...
Jun 08, 2020•38 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Due to self-isolation and the current social distancing rules, it's no doubt that people are spending even more time online on social media, surfing the net, streaming shows and listening to podcasts. This is the time where you may want to consider pitching yourself to journalists and to podcast hosts. Media expert Christy Laverty shares tips for entrepreneurs on how they can get visible in a big way with media coverage by being mindful in your approach during these unprecedented times. Follow C...
May 26, 2020•46 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Arlan Hamilton is the incredible woman who built Backstage Capital from the ground up while homeless. Backstage Capital is a fund that is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now raised more than $10 million and invested in more than 130 startup companies led by underestimated founders. In 2018 Arlan co-founded Backstage Studio which launched four accele...
May 12, 2020•22 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Interesting fact: This episode was recorded the day before the COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by WHO. In addition to discussing diversity in tech, Danielle Meadows-Stinnett of Octane Designs and I were also chatting about how education and the way people are learning is evolving. And now there is a surge in not just people taking e-courses but the consumption of online content overall. Instagram: octanedesigns...
Apr 26, 2020•31 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Listen to some of the bloopers from recording Ep.018 with some of the team members from 6initiative.
Apr 13, 2020•3 min•Season 2Ep. 18
The entrepreneurial journey has many ups and downs, sometimes on the same day- which is why it's so important to find a community that can support you along the way. In this group interview, I chat with some of the members from the 6initiative team, an entrepreneurial community platform that provides resources, connections and guidance to side hustle/small business owners. We chat about what makes their events so successful and how they've been engaging their community during the pandemic. Tune ...
Apr 13, 2020•37 min•Season 2Ep. 18
There have been many misconceptions of competitive gaming, also known as Esports, but it is a billion-dollar industry with millions of people playing it around the world. In this episode, I chat with Arwina Mogul, (Yes, that is her real last name), the CEO of the online gaming community platform, Beam.gg. She shares how her love for gaming began when she was a child. In high school, Arwina became even more serious about gaming. She would go to internet cafes, study the other players and ask ques...
Mar 22, 2020•36 min•Season 2Ep. 17
