Venture for America (VfA) fellows help startups to scale - on a budget they can afford.
Sports teams spend a lot of time and money on their annual drafts, trying to get their hands on top talent at rookie prices. It’s exciting. Done well, it can literally change the trajectory of your team forever. This week’s guest is Katie Grimm, Pittsburgh director of Venture for America, and VfA brings that kind of excitement to the startup scene by making similarly promising talent available to entrepreneurial ventures. In this episode, Scot MacTaggart talks to Katie about the sports draft analogy as a way to simplify the pitch and clarify the value that Venture for America brings to the 14 cities it supports.
Fellowship applications are closing soon! Click here to go to the form. With 55 years of history, American Gas Lamp Works can tell us about change.
DEEP DIVE! American Gas Lamp Works is a small Pittsburgh manufacturing company that dates all the way back to 1963. Like any business, the company has had to grow and adapt over that time. This week, Wendy Stover and Patrick Jardini come in to tell us how AGLW has adapted before, and is now doing it again. The conversation touches on pivoting to new sales channels, expanding the number of options available, maintaining “uncomfortable honesty” in communications, and giving the online buyer an easy way to customize their purchase.
Siloh Moses - once homeless - is being recognized in INC, Esquire and even Congress!
Yes, you read that correctly! This week’s guest was once homeless, and now he’s an award-winning business consultant, philanthropist, and community leader. He has won pitch competitions, been recognized by Congress, and was recently ranked in the Las Vegas 40 Under 40.
Siloh Moses was barely off the streets himself when he started feeding the hungry in his hometown of Las Vegas, and from that first pot of spaghetti, his non-profit Serving Hope LV began to take shape. His consulting practice is called WeWin360, and while his methods may have become sophisticated over time, the purpose is simple: using business as a force for good. Siloh helps each CEO to find the charitable mission that suits them, and helps them to excel in pursuing it. Everyone wonders what Catherine Mott is thinking. Scot just asked her.
In Western Pennsylvania, even people who don’t work in startups and entrepreneurship know this week’s guest Catherine Mott, and Blue Tree Allied Angels. We’re excited to have Catherine in the studio with Pitchwerks host Scot MacTaggart, talking about angel investment, including common mistakes that startup founders make, due diligence, matching up to the right angel group, and what Catherine looks for in a CEO. Big big show!
To get the due diligence document - or any other Blue Tree resource - visit their website. Ray Milhem has years of leadership experience - and he's sharing what he's learned!
This week’s guest has led, mentored, coached and advised more people than nearly anyone you’ll ever meet. Ray Milhem has spent the past year as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Lonprox, a startup that has developed a local positioning technology for indoor applications. Before that, he was VP of Enterprise Software Solutions and Cloud Deployments at ANSYS, the head of engineering for a Boeing subsidiary, a CTO at another startup, a VP at Motorola, Senior Director at Nokia, and the list goes on. Ray Milhem has seen leadership in large and small companies. He’s in our studio this week, talking to Scot about bringing your moral compass to work and leading with integrity.
MJ McCullough reminds us all not to overlook non-English audiences!
This week, Scot is talking to Mary Jayne McCullough, founder of Global Wordsmiths, and MJ has facts on top of facts to explain how easy it is to underestimate the number of people in your audience - prospects, customers, constituents, etc - that prefer a language other than English. And when she explains how simple her team has made it to reach those people, you may reconsider your group’s lack of a language access strategy. MJ also tells Scot about the socially conscious aspects of her business model, in what seems to be a key differentiator between Global Wordsmiths and their high-volume competitors.
RoadBotics isn't flashy or cute. They're just saving us all billions of dollars in waste.
RoadBotics CEO, Carnegie Mellon professor, and veteran entrepreneur Mark DeSantis is our guest this week, sharing educational and inspiring insights with Scot MacTaggart in an extended edition of the Pitchwerks podcast. RoadBotics is an AI company, focusing on the “big and boring” problem of road inspection and analysis, saving municipal clients millions and millions of dollars. In just 20 months they have built a list of 80 clients and raised millions of dollars. After talking about how the company presents itself, Mark and Scot have a great talk this week about motivation, opportunity, and entrepreneurship in general.
Gridwise provides data tools that let rideshare drivers make 40% more money!
Ryan Green and his team at Gridwise have won over some very tough rooms on their journey so far, from the early days at Alphalab to last year’s Techstars Mobility cohort. He knows his way around investor pitches and negotiations, but now he’s here in our studio! This week, Ryan and Scot talk about the basic workings of Gridwise, which raises the earnings potential of rideshare drivers by supplying them with better intelligence. Other topics include ways to increase brand awareness, what to look for in angel and VC investors, and the unexpected ways that drivers cooperate. If you have friends that drive for Uber or Lyft, make sure they check out this week’s show!
WebKite uses machine learning to provide an unfair advantage in Google ads.
Those of you that like the harder content are going to love this week’s show with Maddi Love, the director of sales at WebKite. Maddi is a true professional that was raised under strict sales processes, and she’s now working to help sales and marketing teams to find what she calls “purchase-ready buyers” faster than ever. WebKite uses machine learning technology to compose hundreds of thousands of ads that attract buyers to specific items in your inventory, and the effects are stunning.
Have Fun Do Good has built a perpetual-motion sales engine!
When you’re making a travel and leisure purchase decision, how do you gather your list of products and services to consider? This week’s guest has a strategy that seems pretty solid. Adam Kunes and Have Fun Do Good (havefundogood.co) work in the “volunteer travel” space, and they know that you’ll be attracted by great photos and satisfied customers - especially if those satisfied customers happen to be your friends and family. Adam and Scot start by talking about leaving a job you hate to start a humble new company (even if it’s in a “jank RV”), and move on to what the photography and video gives the prospective client, and the company’s history of rock-solid reviews.
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December 2019
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