Hail to Pitt! Serial entrepreneur and accelerator exec Greg Coticchia is in the studio!
Few people have earned more entrepreneurial merit badges than this week’s guest has collected. Greg Coticchia, the Director of the University of Pittsburgh Innovation Institute’s “Blast Furnace” student accelerator program, is now giving students the benefit of his experience, giving back to the community after having been in startup mode for decades.
Greg has raised nearly $100 million in funding for his various startups, earned some massive exits, and had some...learning opportunities along the way. Seven years ago, he settled down for a one year contract with the University’s new Blast Furnace program, and now he’s taking applications for BF Cohort #6 and teaching MBA students about marketing. This week, he sits down in the Epicast Studios and tells Scot MacTaggart his secrets of pitching anyone - from an angel investor to a large client. Don’t miss it! 
Choose the path that's right for you. Jackson explains how he did it.
This week’s guest, Queble Technologies (www.queblesolutions.com) CEO Jackson Wang, owns a software firm that develops apps and websites for startups and early stage companies.
Jackson offers Pitchwerks listeners bluntly honest insights and advice. At 10, his family sent him to live on his own in Shanghai, in pursuit of better education and opportunities. Now at the ripe old age of 25, he is living on the opposite side of the planet, he’s been educated in three countries, and he has learned some of entrepreneurship’s hardest lessons, and he shares them openly on today’s show. 
Kenny was quite the introvert when he was younger. Now he's a well-known face.
The Thrival innovation and music festival is coming up at the end of September! Now seems like the perfect time to talk to Kenny Chen, the socially-minded program director of Ascender, the economic laboratory that brings the event together each year.
Kenny and Scot start out discussing Kenny’s adventurous transition from school into the workforce, covering “rejection therapy”, dance parties, Hong Kong and Pittsburgh. Before long, they’re on to what Thrival truly represents, how it connects to Ascender, and ultimately they work together to craft a concise definition of Ascender’s mission, in a fun and friendly pitch dissection segment to close out the show. 
Table Ten: The band that became a business by giving money away
On this episode of the Pitchwerks Podcast, we’re digging into a web series called Spare Change (sparechange.tv), which started off simply with a band called Table Ten, but it has been growing into a show and a business. Start with a band, then add in a non-profit cause, and local businesses, and watch them come together to create entertainment that profits all three groups.
This week, Table Ten’s Josh Corcoran and production prodigy Taylor Mantick come into the Epicast Studios to visit Scot MacTaggart and talk about the business model that has taken shape, the rules the band has set for themselves, and what the future might hold for the band that became a business by giving money away. 
This episode features Scot trying to keep pace with a Ph.D!
Have you got something complicated to sell? Amanda Lowe can relate. She and her partner Adam Nelson are the geniuses behind Flywheel, an “organizational design studio” that helps business owners and executives to build a useful and rewarding structure for employees...but it sometimes, people just don’t get it.
Amanda did her undergrad at UC Berkeley and has her Ph.D from Duquesne University, where she spent time as an adjunct professor. She’s smart, she’s accomplished - and Flywheel is a unique startup. This week’s episode works just as a cool story. If you care to dig deeper though, you will find some very useful ideas for selling complex products and services. |
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December 2019
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