Dan catches up with one of the first startup founders he met while working as an analyst at VU Venture partners. Circuit is an all-electric, on-demand, local shuttle service. Download the app & Ride Circuit. https://www.ridecircuit.com Connect with Alex on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/espositoalexander Interested in sponsoring this podcast via strategic ad placement? Give us a holler: ⁠https://www.startupmindsets.com/contact Time Stamps 2:45 What is Circuit? On demand shuttle service focused on small trips 10:00 Selling advertisers 19:00 Operating and scaling a mobility operation, 20:00 Moving 150K passengers a month 21:25: Thoughts on autonomous cars 27:00 When was your first Uber ride? 34:10: Getting first customer and starting the company 35:10 testing out an idea for a company and keeping desk jobs until it made sense financially to leave Taking out 3 car notes to start the business 38:00 Closing first advertiser for 10K 44:00 Differences of working as an employee of a company vs being a founder Get in touch with Startup Mindsets/Dan. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners on our⁠ Substack email list⁠. Website: ⁠https://www.startupmindsets.com⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/dan.podcasts⁠ Youtube: ⁠https://youtube.com/@startupmindsets⁠ Linkedin:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangonzales1

Ed Latimore is a writer, physicist, and Professional Heavyweight Boxer. He's been on the world's top podcasts such as Fresh n Fit, Knowledge Project, and Modern Wisdom. It was an honor to interview Ed and we're delighted to share our conversation. Ed's Website: https://edlatimore.com Learn how to control your mind, body, and emotions with my Stoic Street-Smarts Newsletter Follow Ed on X: https://x.com/EdLatimore Get in touch with Startup Mindsets/Dan. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners on our Substack email list. Website: https://www.startupmindsets.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dan.podcasts Youtube: https://youtube.com/@startupmindsets Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangonzales1 Interested in sponsoring this podcast via strategic ad placement? Give us a holler: https://www.startupmindsets.com/contact Time Stamps (14:34) If you don’t take a risk, there’s no way to get tough. (30:11) Approach 1,000 women to get with 100. Approach to a formidable situation. There’s an a symmetrical ROI (39:54) Getting quoted by Steven of Diary of CEO (40:32) Getting quoted by James Clear (46:32) Setting limitations, Why people do it (50:32) Era of humanity we’re in is way different (64:40) We only see the highlights not the downs on social media

Francis Lacoste speaks about how he fuels growth for VPs of Engineering as a coach. Drawing from decades of startup experience at Heroku and Salesforce, Francis puts into practice operational principles that help teams scale past 20 employees. He coaches technical executives to become leaders who nurture amazing engineering cultures by helping CTOs transition from “building the product" into “building the org that builds the product”. Before coaching, he spent over twenty-five years in the open-source and cloud developer tools industry. He started as a software engineer working on open-source technology. He transitioned into engineering management at Canonical. Francis' experience with remote environment led him to Heroku where he built the remote engineering culture. In 2019, he realized that the engineering management path wasn't fulfilling to me, and moved into a role dedicated to supporting the engineering culture within the Salesforce Platform.- He's worked remotely for 24 years. Interested in promoting your product/service via sponsoring the podcast? Fill out this form. Learn more about at https://thevpe.coach “Thank you for tuning in today! If you found our discussion insightful, there's a good chance your friends will too. We'd love it if you could take a moment to share this episode with a loved one who you believe would appreciate it. It's an easy way to spread the word, and it helps our podcast reach more people just like you.”

In this podcast episode, Dan catches up with Rene Morkos, CEO of Alice Technologies about his company's advancements in construction scheduling and simulation. Rene highlights the invention of a parametric scheduler and simulator, which now deploys 100 times faster, and the unexpected optimization of schedules with their software. The company has seen positive beta feedback and a shorter sales cycle. Morkos discusses targeting conferences for customer acquisition, maintaining company culture in a distributed team, and the complexities of scaling and managing a growing organization. The episode delves into Alice Technologies' impact on the construction industry and its commitment to continuous innovation. Entrepreneurs shouldn't value themselves based on how well a company performs. ALICE Core harnesses the power of optioneering to find the most efficient construction paths, all based on your existing P6 or Oracle Primavera Cloud schedule.

David Gaz is the founder and creative director behind several successful ventures, including the award-winning documentary "Kindness Is Contagious" and The Bureau of Small Projects, a branding agency dedicated to amplifying the impact of small businesses, startups, and nonprofits. The Bureau of Small Projects is a think tank of sorts. They're rated in the top 5 agencies in the Los Angeles area for branding and marketing. Their clients are not these well known brands but unknown organizations struggling to make a difference or well known people in their own right with noble missions, but not huge budgets, like Animal Planet Star Jackson Galaxy who has an incredible nonprofit to help at-risk shelter cats, or Bill Nye the Science Guy. The Bureau Of Small Projects started as an incubator within their old firm and it was so successful that it actually out-performed the parent company so in the spring of 2014, they spun The Bureau Of Small Projects off into its own company. Kindness is central to our brand values and our vision. Attract Don't Sell, Create attractors (15:30) Problems Scaling a company (18:30) A $100,000 Problem Learning how to Trust and Delegate to employees (25:18) Pricing a service: websites, marketing (30:00) You can't fail if you don't quit (43:00) How word of mouth of one client lead to AI startups becoming their clients (48:00) A film on luck (01:08:33) Hear how Kindness is Contagious Be a path, not a goal person

Our guest today is Dorothy Chang who has had an incredible career from venture capital, leading a successful nonprofit working with celebrities and billionaires to being an entrepreneur. She shares cool career stories and her take on being an entrepreneur, and lessons throughout her journey. She's the Co-Founder of Lynx Collective - Supporting startup founders, helping them make their dreams come true: https://www.lynxcollective.com Read their substack: https://lynxcollective.substack.com Previously, as the President of Kode With Klossy, she worked with the org to empower young women to break into the tech industry. Dorothy spent her career working in technology. Leading marketing and communications for category-leading technology startups and enterprises like Foursquare, Paxos, Brew Media. In 2012, she was the first woman to startup a VC fund (Liberty City Ventures) investing in the crypto/blockchain space. I continue to angel invest and advise tech companies - especially where I can be supportive of emerging technologies (Web3, metaverse, etc), female founders and social impact. Check out our new & improved website: startupmindsets.com

Luke Diaz has a passion for building and leading high-performance Customer Success orgs (CSM, AM, SA, Support) to drive 3 outcomes: 1) accelerate product adoption, 2) drive quantifiable business impact for customers, and 3) achieve best-in-class gross & net retention. Customer Success is an underrated segment of startup success, it ensures users are getting value out of the product and even increases their customer value in an increasing revenue stream. Luke is also an angel investor and managing partner at DBT (Do Big Things) Ventures having invested in Kahawa 1893 coffee. If you're a coffee drinker use code: Luke at Kahawa's website at checkout for a discount. On the show, Luke shared a story about investing 100K into the company before they got into Trader Joe's and major grocery stores. Take a gander at their book summaries of over 40 business and self help books: https://www.dbtventures.com/library

Julia Arpag joins Startup Mindsets to detail her roller coaster career journey from working at SoulCycle to a career in recruiting. After she was laid off from her job she scrambled to get 6 job offers within a few months and decided to take one from Alanna the cofounder of Aligned Recruitment. Julia is also an English Major from Hamilton College and describes the best part of her job as seeing people land offers. Julia has successfully run challenging recruitment searches & led high-performing recruitment teams, with a laser focus on the tech industry. She prides herself on deeply understanding her clients so she can deliver best-in-class talent that matches their needs. Learn more at alignedrecruitment.com

The Bar brothers, Eliran and Itamar, join the podcast today to talk about their company Jorny. They are on a mission to solve the existential crisis that is lack of meaning after retiring and entering a new phase in one's life. JORNY is the 1st global hospitality brand, dedicated to midlife growth. Our Growth Compass helps people assess and track their growth, identify their optimal growth “Jorny” and advance towards achieving a sense of purpose. Reinvent Retirement.Love your future. Join the first-ever global community focused on the second half of life. Built on connecting, exploring and thriving. Your adventure awaits. Brought to you by Changed: Download the Changed app and get closer to a debt free future. Automatically send spare change toward your student loans, credit cards, and mortgages. Click Here to sign up>>> https://changed.app.link/mmC3elk9hGb

The hidden hand in all venture capital funds are the limited partners who pledge capital to the fund manager. Today we interviewed, a long time angel investor, physician, and serial entrepreneur Dr. Alan Kadisch. Alan details what it is like being pitched by VCs for funding, his thoughts on how food contributes to our health, and why he created InvestorMatch.ai Brought to you by Changed: Now's the time to get rid of those pesky student loans. Changed rounds up your spare change from debit purchases and puts them directly toward your student loan payments automatically. Sign up & download Changed here: https://changed.app.link/mmC3elk9hGb Follow Startup Mindsets on Youtube Instagram Linkedin

Shannon Imler started the Ice Cream Factory from scratch like how he makes the ice cream. From hand cranking out the batches to scaling this to an entire factory and product available in 48 states we hear the behind the scenes. They are on a mission to spread happiness to the world through high quality ice cream. Enjoy Ice Cream Factory's flavors delivered to your door or if you're a small mom and pop shop, add them to your offerings! https://www.icecreamfactoryco.com

We've got an insanely special podcast coming your way. Have you ever felt the burden of student loans or credit card debt? I know I have, those pesky loans won't go away easily but I have a solution for you. In this episode, we sit down with Nick Sky, CEO of Changed who shares insights, anecdotes, and invaluable tips on harnessing the power of entrepreneurship. Changed started as Dan and Nick were among the sea of graduates struggling with the burden of student loan repayment (43.6 million at latest count). To ease the pain, they created an app that simply rounds up everyday purchases and stashes it in an account. Such if you pay, say $3.65 for a grande Starbucks latte, the app adds and routes that 35 cents short of $4.00 into your account. Surprising how fast that loose change adds up to help pay off loans. (It was a “why didn’t I think of that” moment as I listened to their story.) Changed offered a winning combination of leveraging technology to help with education-related issues, a concept that totally resonated with me – and apparently also with Shark Mark Cuban. He granted the brothers $250,000 for a 25% equity stake plus his invaluable high-tech, high-profile expertise. Since then, Changed has racked up success to make a Shark proud: It’s sent over $25 million in payments, helping members save $50M+ in interest and shorten their repayment time by decades. Do Debt Differently: put more money back in your wallet with an app that helps you manage your savings and minimize your debt. https://www.gochanged.com

Shaun Gold returns to shed light on an exciting new startup, Jorny We talk more about personal meaning as it relates to entrepreneurship, social norms, how Jorny solves this problem for the 50 and up community. Some parts of the conversation I found valuable: Find something that transcends the basic needs of your life and pushes you through the gauntlet Makes you avoid the nuisances of entrepreneurship Focus on what you're doing, it's about climbing your own personal mountain. The feeling of I'm doing this either way and it's not going to matter if they say yes or no. Community makes you healthier as you have people you can rely on Having a WHY can get you through any HOW

What's up Startup Mindsets! We have an exciting podcast with General Partner, of Creative Ventures, James Wang. He's held a number of impressive roles working at Bridgewater Associates, Google X, to his own sex tech startup, and now as a venture capitalist. Creative Ventures invests in early-stage deep tech companies, solving humanity’s most critical crises—rising healthcare costs, climate change, and labor shortages. Learn more about Creative Ventures at https://creativeventures.vc

Dan welcomes entrepreneur, author, and certified 🎲 roller, Lloyed Lobo, drops pearls of wisdom on the podcast, I guarantee you it's worth a listen. Lloyed's achieved success in Silicon Valley by bootstrapping Boast.ai His unique background as a young refugee from Kuwait during the Gulf War has shaped his perspective on community-led growth.  Some concepts to think about: 🤔Who are you going through this life/business journey with? 💭What is your definition of success? 📣Let us know, we've got a worksheet and want to hear from you! Type your definition of success on this form! 🔑 Points How much to pay yourself as a startup founder Coming together from the ground up and leveraging people to go from nothing to impact while dealing with risk and uncertainty True leaders instill purpose, not just goals Going from engineer to cold-caller to startup founder Follow Startup Mindsets on Instagram Follow Dan on instagram Connect with Lloyed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lloyedlobo/ Buy Lloyed’s new book, 'From Grassroots To Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community Led Growth' (Top New Release on Amazon) at  https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Greatness-Iconic-Brands-Community-ebook/dp/B0CFR8F7PH

Today's guest, Mike Mills, is on pursuit of a bold idea and has combined his passion for mathematics/economics to create Infinitary Fund. Mike talks about winning limited partners over, leveraging technology to select investments, thoughts on the US economy, and being an entrepreneur. About Infinitary Fund: Infinitary Fund is a limited partnership based in New York that provides investment advice in the form of a pooled-investment vehicle designed for long-term investors. The Infinitary Fund was created using an algorithm developed by Nicolas B. Spoors. We recognized the value of data, the significance of analyzing it properly, and the benefits of a stable investment strategy. Combining these three elements we have been able to perform competitively while staying true to our core belief: prioritize research. 📣 Connect with Mike on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmills-infinitaryfund Contact Infinitary Fund: https://www.infinitaryfund.com/contact-1

We're excited to share this conversation with Cari Jacobs Crovetto, an executive coach and advisor specializing in leadership development who has coached leaders from LinkedIn, Coinbase, and Twitch. In addition, she is an active coach at Stanford GSB and regularly publishes in Forbes, as a Forbes Council Member. ⭐️ How to change your perception about your life, story, and what identity you give yourself ⭐️ Deciding to quit her job, sell her Santa Monica condo, and journey to India ⭐️ Going on a silent retreat About Cari: Cari rose up through the ranks of the ad agency world in the 90s working on brands like Levi’s, Intuit, P&G, Lexus, General Mills, Honda, Coca Cola and more. I was a marketing leader in the entertainment industry with NBC, CBS and FoxSports and spent three years building a customer experience-led Marketing Practice for Slalom Consulting in San Francisco, servicing clients like Gap, Athleta, Sephora, Salesforce and Atlassian. But she's most known for her work building five Bay Area startups in executive marketing roles, including two solar companies one of which was Sunrun, now the largest consumer solar company on wall street; one retail women’s fashion brand, ModCloth, which sold to Walmart; a fintech company called Unison that is changing how we buy and own homes; and a software platform called Torch for coaching and mentoring that seeks to create more conscious leaders. Reach Cari 👇 https://www.carijacobs.com

Dan Wang joins Startup Mindsets to discuss his role as VP of Finance/Operations at Iterative Health How Iterative Health uses computer vision and AI to enable doctors to make more informed decision for patients The advantages an MBA can provide in a career Joining an early stage startup with a ton of uncertainty Working in a startup vs huge corporation Raising a series B over 100M and applying that capital to grow the business What are startup proof points?

In this episode of "Startup Mindsets" we dive headfirst into the fascinating notion of how AI is set to change recruiting and hiring with Mehdi Taifi, CEO and founder of Rolescale. We also talk working on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and quitting a career with a safety net to pursue entrepreneurship. About Mehdi: Mehdi is the Founder and CEO of RoleScale, a SaaS company specializing in AI based solutions in the recruiting tech space. Mehdi is an experienced founder with over 18 years of Wall Street and Silicon Valley experience combined. He was one of the early joiners at Robinhood where he built and scaled operations for their brokerage division. Mehdi also worked on Wall Street for some of the top investment banks including Bank of New York Mellon and Deutsche Bank. Giving candidates a fairer chance at landing a job. Conversation Time Stamps: (5:00) What Rolescale does/inspiration for starting (12:00) Being data driven, efficient, and automated to save recruiters time/energy (23:00) Moving from wall street to silicon valley (28:00) Carving out a niche in the recruiting industry (31:00) Helping grow a startup to unicorn status (34:00) Making the decision to leave Robinhood and do a startup full time (40:00) discipline, keep motivating yourself (42:00) Working with the founders of Robinhood. The value of a humanities/nontechnical degree(45:30) Getting a job in tech is tough (49:00) Miami Tech/startup scene (55:00) Writing and publishing a novel on magical realism (58:00) Is getting a degree in the humanities worth it? (60:00) the value of philosophy, today. (62:00) How art and philosophy ties into a business by taking a logical approach (64:00) Leading a company despite the emotional toll (66:00) understanding team member's motivations and pulse check on how the team is feeling. Follow us on your podcast platform and leave a review, your listenership means a ton!

Dan gives his thoughts on life as an entrepreneur, being his own boss, running a company, surviving, and getting the podcast to 107 guests. If you haven't already, follow us on the platform you're listening to and on instagram and linkedin. We'd love to have you along our journey to becoming a premier podcast on entrepreneurship. Subscribe to our newsletter and Youtube channel.