Strong Suit Podcast

These days, if you’re not sending swag to your candidates & new hires, you’re missing out. I’ve been doing it for years… Books. Wine glasses. Electronics. Shirts. Anything to tip the scales in my favor - when they’re signing a job offer. But it’s been a logistical nightmare. …Until now. Meet Michael Martocci, CEO & Founder of SwagUp. This 26-year-old has built an Inc5000 company, one of the nation’s fastest-growing. I’m a customer & a raving fan. SwagUp is an API-first platform that streamlines the creation & distribution of quality swag globally. They’re reinventing this $30B market by digitizing the supply chain and making it available through beautiful interfaces and APIs. Even more impressive, Michael’s bootstrapped the company. They’re completely customer-funded and now work with over 2,000 companies to help them integrate quality swag into their workflows to make community a top priority and win back time. I wanted to find out how he’s scaled the team that’s scaled the Swag. In this 20-m

If you’re like most leaders who hire, you’ve experimented with using online assessments to see if your candidates have the right stuff. You’ve probably also wondered how accurate they are & whether you’re using them the right way. Let’s find out. The Predictive Index is considered the industry leader. This talent optimization company uses behavioral, cognitive, and job assessments to make hiring & managing people more effective. Clients include AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield, TD Bank, DocuSign, LVMH, and Omni Hotels. Mike Zani is PI’s CEO. He’s also Co-Founder of Phoenix Strategy Investments, a private investment fund. An avid sailor, he was a coach of the 1996 US Olympic Team. Mike recently published 'The Science of Dream Teams: How Talent Optimization Can Drive Engagement, Productivity, and Happiness' In this 20-minute conversation, Mike reveals everything you should know about using (or misusing) candidate assessments.    

Tracy Tobin is Chief People Officer of Denver-based Adswerve, the leading Google Marketing Analytics & Cloud Partner. Following a 13-year career leading HR at The Integer Group, she was ready for something new. Enter Adswerve. Adswerve is a team of media & analytics veterans who believe that smart marketing is built on data discovery. The firm helps thousands of digital marketers, data analysts, and agencies make stronger connections with their customers through data-driven strategies. The company has 200 people, in a distributed model. In this 20-minute conversation, Tracy reveals how she’s building a vibrant culture… despite the team not being located in the same office.      

Ten years ago, Jilliene Helman was working in Union Bank’s wealth management group. She couldn’t help but notice that the bank’s wealthiest clients earned their fortunes in real estate. When our government passed the 2012 JOBS Act (intended to encourage funding of small businesses by easing securities regulations), Jilliene saw an opportunity. So she quit the bank. And created RealtyMogul. Her new way of investing in real estate has caught on. To put it mildly. Her firm has done over 300 deals, with a real estate value of $4 Billion. And lets everyday people access institutional-quality investments. Investors can participate in a deal at a time or invest in one of their REIT pooled vehicles with a diversified group of deals. Clearly, she’s onto something. Top investors Canaan Partners and Sorenson Capital have backed her vision. In this 20-minute conversation, Jilliene reveals how she’s built her 70-person team to shake up the real estate investment field.

Brad Feld is one of the nation’s most prolific Venture Capital investors & business authors. He’s been investing in early-stage companies since 1995, with dozens of successes to his credit. Based in Boulder, Brad is Co-Founder of both Foundry Group and Techstars. Foundry’s portfolio companies include Whoop, Suzy, Ordermark, Glowforge, and Drip. When he’s not investing, Brad is writing. He’s got 8 books on entrepreneurship to his credit. And now, he’s got a new one “The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors” co-authored with serial entrepreneur Dave Jilk with a forward by Reid Hoffman It turns out that Friedrich Nietzsche, the late 1800’s philosopher, wrote countless lessons that could be easily applied to entrepreneurship. In the book, each quick, digestible chapter expands on a quote from Nietzsche to stimulate your thinking about a vital aspect of entrepreneurship, with stories from real-life entrepreneurs help make the ideas concrete. The book is fascinating, as is Brad. In this 20-min

Nothing lights me up more than a meaty conversation with a successful entrepreneur. I just bagged the elephant (You can thank me later.) Godard Abel is one of the most successful SaaS entrepreneurs you’ll meet. And G2 is his Unicorn baby. After wrapping his studies at Stanford MBA and MIT Engineering, Godard was Co-Founder & CEO of BigMachines, a pioneer of the Configure, Price, Quote software category. He scaled the business from scratch to $50M revenues & 300 people, before its acquisition by Oracle. As CEO of SteelBrick, the leading Quote-to-Cash software platform, he built the team from 5 to 200 people, before its acquisition by Salesforce. And currently, Godard is Co-Founder & CEO of G2, which makes B2B tech buying easy by connecting buyers to vendors. It’s “Yelp for Business Software & Services” with 1 million customer reviews & real-time ratings. 5 million tech buyers visit each month. And he’s onto something big… G2 has raised over $200M from top investors: Accel, Chicago Ventures,

Private Equity is so mysterious to so many people. But it doesn’t have to be. With billions of capital sitting on the sidelines, P.E. funds are making investments & recruiting talent like never before. I wanted to find a P.E. investor to show us how it’s done, and pull no punches. Paul Stansik is Principal at Chicago-based ParkerGale Capital. The P.E. firm leads buyouts of profitable B2B software companies with $10M+ revenue. ParkerGale’s portfolio companies include Contelligent, Profisee, and Source Intelligence. Following a successful career with Bain & Company in its Leadership & Talent group, Paul moved to P.E. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School. In this 20-minute conversation, Paul reveals how the best P.E. investors put a Rockstar in every seat of every portfolio company.

Few people make the transition from being a Venture Capitalist to running an operating company. Even fewer do it successfully. I just met one of them. His name is David Wald, CEO & Co-Founder of Aclaimant. After years at Bain & Company and dough, he was a successful venture investor at Lightbank. Now, his fast-growing Chicago-based SaaS platform helps companies manage their risks. Specifically, tracking the processes around people who get hurt & property that gets damaged. With over 50 distributed employees, David & his team have weathered the pandemic with strength. Clearly, he’s onto something big… Aclaimant investors include Royal Street Ventures, Mercury Fund, KEC Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Aspen Capital Group, RRE Ventures, EBSCO Capital, KEC Ventures, Moderne Ventures, SMW Capital In this 20-minute, David reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat of the business.

If you’ve never served on a Board of Directors, you may envision it as a country club day filled with palm fronds & chardonnay. The reality is that most Board meetings are …well… boring. And ineffective. Indianapolis-based Boardable, the SaaS platform, is out to change that. And to make Boards far more effective in this pivotal role. It manages the agenda, notes, voting, every aspect of communications. It was specifically designed for mission-driven community organizations & non-profits. They’re countless across the US. Gabby VanAlstine leads Talent & Culture at Boardable. Prior, she led talent at Emplify. Clearly, Boardable is onto something big. It’s raised over $10M from High Alpha, Base10 Partners, Collina Ventures, VisionTech Partners. In this 20-minute conversation, Gabby reveals the recruitment process that she uses to put a Rockstar in every seat.

Venture Capital is booming. Everywhere. …Yes, even in Iowa. With $80M assets under management, Des Moines-based Next Level Ventures originally invested in early-stage Midwestern agriculture & B2B data companies. Building on their success, they recently broadened their focus to Fintech companies nationally. Which means a ton of hiring. I wanted to find out how they do it So I spoke with Scott Hoekman, Partner at Next Level. Scott has helped birth 26 companies so far. With a typical check size between $500K & $5M, he’s been early in success stories like Eltropy, Nymbus, and MotoRefi. Scott takes hiring seriously. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he assesses Founders & helps them put a Rockstar in every seat of the portfolio company.  

There’s nothing like a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic to instill stress, uncertainty, and fear into people’s lives. And that includes your employees. Jan Bruce is out to change that. She’s CEO of meQuilibrium. Based in Boston, meQuilibrium gives your employees online stress management solutions & measurements. Which has a major impact on your business. Previously, she was Managing Director & Publisher at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. And she’s onto something big. Her backers include Chrysalis Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, Safeguard Scientifics, Crimson Seed Capital, Eastward Capital Partners. In this 20-minute conversation, Jan reveals what this past year has taught us about mental health & how she’s putting a Rockstar in every seat of her company.

Car insurance isn’t exciting. Unless you’re the Silicon Valley company turning this enormous industry on its head. That’s Jerry. Thanks to machine learning, Jerry finds its customers the best, customized quotes from more than 50 insurance carriers in 45 seconds. For free. The typical customer saves $800 a year on car insurance. And now its evolving into a mobile-first car ownership “super app,” aiming to save customers time & money on all their car expenses. I wanted to find out how they’re scaling the team. So I tracked down John Spottiswood, Chief Operating Officer of Jerry. John knows how to build a Rockstar team because he’s been a part of some of the valley’s biggest success stories. He led business development for Lending Club, Earnin, and GoodHire. Led a division of QuinStreet. Even served as President of Match.com Clearly, Jerry is onto something big. The company has raised $130M in VC from: Y Combinator, SV Angel, Bow Capital, FundersClub, Goodwater Capital, Kamerra, Liquid2 Ventures, Oriza Ventu

After a successful career with Wayfair building its B2B division, Joel Stevenson had a random chance meeting with the team at another Boston-based company, Yesware. (He points out that their names rhyme, but have little else in common.) Industry-leading Yesware makes tools to help salespeople build better relationships with their prospects & customers. This all-in-one sales productivity toolkit includes email, phone, video, and meeting scheduling. He was hooked. Joel joined Yesware as head of Sales & Marketing. And was later appointed to Chief Executive Officer, succeeding one of its Co-Founders. He now leads the 100-person team, which he describes as “clever & friendly.” And he’s able to drill into specifically what that means. Clearly, he’s onto something big. Yesware has raised over $40M from top investors like Battery Ventures, Foundry Group, Golden Ventures, Ridge Ventures, Shea Ventures, GV, and Techstars. In this 20-minute conversation, Joel delves into what it’s like to be named CEO and ho

M&A is on fire. Which means not just combining companies, but merging cultures. And there’s where so many deals fall apart or fail to live up to expectations. (Some research shows that 75% of M&A deals bomb.) And it’s often because the team was too busy making sure the technology was compatible or figuring out how to streamline the sales organization or merge brands. Nobody bothered to figure out if the 2 teams were aligned in the first place. Such a shame. So, I found an expert to guide us on doing it properly. Sloan Gaon is CEO of PulsePoint, the leading global authority in programmatic health advertising, recently acquired by WebMD parent company Internet Brands. Prior, he was CEO of DotMenu, acquired by GrubHub. And he led M&A at Miva, acquired by Adknowledge. He’s forgotten more about M&A than most will ever know. So, he knows how to assess teams for compatibility. In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how to do it (and potentially avoid a huge M&A mistake)  

  Based in Chicago, Akuna Capital is an innovative derivatives-based trading firm. With a team of over 400, the firm continues to scale rapidly. Akuna’s core competency is providing liquidity as an options market-maker – meaning they provide competitive quotes that they are willing to both buy & sell. Doing this successfully requires that they design & implement their own low latency technologies, trading strategies, and mathematical models. I wanted to learn about the people part of the business. Evan Demchick is Partner at Akuna, where he leads Junior Traders during their inaugural 2 years with the firm. He also oversees trader recruitment, and runs courses for traders & developers. In this 20-minute interview, Evan reveals how he finds, onboards, and develops the talent at this fast-growing firm.

During his years leading the residential lending division of a major bank, Patrick Boyaggi closed over $11B in residential mortgages. Yet, he knew there had to be a better way. Did you know that …depending on the mortgage they select… consumers can spend an extra $30,000 over the life of their loan? So he started & is CEO of Own Up This Boston-based fintech business is on fire. Own Up has changed the way that consumers shop for & secure a mortgage. The service includes a marketplace of lenders who have agreed to charge below-market prices. So consumers save a ton on their mortgage. Clearly, Patrick is onto something. He’s raised $25 million from Link Ventures, Listen, Techstars Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, and Brand Foundry Ventures. In this 20-minute interview, Patrick reveals how he’s scaled the 120-person team that’s turning mortgages upside-down.

If you’re like most people, you think that printing things on paper has gone the way of the Dodo Bird. You’re be wrong. Combined, we still print over one Trillion pages in the US annually. Sure it’s declining a bit each year, but that remains a lot of used toner cartridges. Not to mention hassle. When Jonathan Treble learned the magnitude of the problem, he saw an opportunity... And started PrintWithMe, the Chicago-based & fast-growing company, on a mission to make printing convenient for everyone. He & his team have built a distributed network of 2,000 printer kiosks in coffee houses, apartment buildings, and college dorms. That’s more than the FedEx Offices in the US. And a whole lot easier. By the time you pay an Uber to take you to & from the FedEx Office or UPS Store - not to mention forking out a buck a page - that printed lease agreement costs a small fortune. Jonathan is onto something big. He’s raised venture capital from Network Ventures, Great North Venture, New Stack Ventures, and M25.

I just interviewed one of the top Growth Capital investors around. Todd Cozzens is Managing Partner of Transformation Capital, with 30+ years of experience in the digital health industry that includes founding, operating, building, investing in and exiting innovative companies.  He has a rare history of creating value both as an operator & as an investor. As investor, he's served on the Boards of leading companies PatientPop, LetsGetChecked, Sword Health, PatientPing, and Health Catalyst.   Previously, Todd co-led digital health investing at Sequoia Capital, where he helped build several breakthrough companies like AirStrip, MedExpress, ZirMed, SCIO Health Analytics, and Natera.   Prior to investing, Todd was a Founder & CEO of Marquette Medical (acquired by GE) and Picis (acquired by UnitedHealth Group)   Todd was a member of the US Sailing Team for three Olympiads, reaching a No. 2 worldwide ranking and winning several North American & European championships, two Bacardi Cups and a gold medal

Being on an Olympic team is a life-changing event. From what I’ve heard (You don’t wanna see me on those Rings) But there’s one thing even better. More gratifying… And that’s coaching an Olympic team to victory. Seeing those under your charge go on to achieve unthinkable things. Break records. And change history. It’s breathtaking. Not to mention hearing your name on MSNBC at 3:30am in the morning US time. To do that, you’ve got to commit. To practice. (Actually, to perfect practice.) And to putting a Rockstar in every spot on your team. Easier said than done. So, my job is to seek out those who have done it. To figure out how. And to make sure you know how to replicate their success. (And to avoid their occasional bellyflops.) I just had the chance to interview a business Olympian, who’s built & led successful teams in both large companies and small. In multiple geographies. And numerous industries. Gian Fulgoni is a champion in the measurement of consumer behavior & the effectiveness of advertising

Just had a chance to interview Jon Stross. He’s President & Co-Founder of Greenhouse Software, the smart recruiting SaaS platform used by over 4,000 companies including Cisco, Airbnb, and Time Inc. He’s also Co-author of the new bestselling book Talent Makers, which reveals how talent-savvy companies find, land, and keep the best talent. Prior, Jon was GM International at BabyCenter (acquired by Johnson & Johnson), the leading destination on the Internet for new & expectant parents. Jon also led Product at enterprise performance management software company Merced Systems (acquired by NICE for $170MM.) Clearly, Greenhouse are onto something big. He’s raised over $100M in VC from Frontline Ventures, Riverwood Capital, Benchmark, Lumia Capital, Thrive Capital, Social Capital, Resolute Ventures, Felicis Ventures. In this 20-minute conversation, Jon reveals how a company that helps companies hire hires (very meta!) We also talk thru the Hiring Maturity curve, and how to propel your business to the next