One the Come Up

I’m starting to lose count of the episodes, so I’ll ditch the tradition of saying it’s such and such number of episodes, and instead I’ll resort to saying it’s n and n+1 episodes. But then I’ll exhaust n and lose track of counting again, so I think I’ll just stop counting altogether ;)
I was honored to be joined by Matthew Simmonds. Simmonds' career began at the University of Oxford, where he graduated with a degree in engineering in 2012. There, he met his co-founders with whom he started Speakset. Speakset developed a device for older people to connect to friends, family, and medical professionals via the TV. Simmonds and his company were one of the very first cohorts to go through Entrepreneur first - Europe’s version of YC. In 2016, Simmonds began a year-long project The Meaning of Work. The thesis: we spend over 80,000 hours of our lives working, so we might as well spend 1,000 of those hours figuring out the meaning behind it all. In 2017, Simmonds joined Entocycle in it's infancy, a Y Combinator-backed business that turns food waste into sustainable protein using insects. Simmonds led the technical team as CTO for the first 5 years before stepping up to the Managing Director role in 2022.

I was honored to be joined by Teasha Feldman-Fitzhum. Feldman-Fitzthum’s career began at MIT as a physics major. Originally intending to pursue graduate school, she pivoted to entrepreneurship after enrolling in MIT’s 13.366 entrepreneurship class, where she and her cofounder successfully launched EverVest. Originally known as Cardinal Winds, and a company a little bit beyond my understanding to explain, EverVest used copula modeling to predict wind in order to calculate the revenue of future wind farms, and was acquired by UltraCapital in 2016. Currently, Feldman-Fitzthum works at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the largest fusion energy company in the world, in technoeconomics – yes autocorrect, that is a word, it is just a new field. Ms Feldman-Fitzthum, your course can’t come soon enough.  
 
Also on this podcast, perhaps my favorite piece of advice that I’ve learned so far: you just need to increase your luck surface area! The crux of the lesson, put yourself out there and good things will (hopefully) happen.

Kostapanos Miliaresis and I covered a lot of ground, so I suppose I’ll go in chronological order. Miliaresis' journey began in the Boy Scouts, where he first discovered a passion for volunteering. The idea of volunteering continued with him to Athens University of Economics and Business, where he was involved with AIESEC (an opportunity that brought him to Taiwan to teach for three months) and served as an event curator for TEDx. It was in college as well that he and his co-founders started GloVo (later to become ethelon) in 52 hours at a startup competition, making volunteering more accessible and relatable than ever before in Greece. Miliaresis, aside from being featured on Forbes’ U30, is a YTILI Fellow and Alumni Ambassador for the Clinton Foundation. In recent years, he has advanced corporate philanthropy initiatives through AbbVie, the RW Institute, and, most recently, Kaizen Gaming, continuing to serve as a catalyst for positive change on a global scale.

It was my fortune to be joined by Anton Toll Håkanson, the CEO and founder of DayCape. Toll Håkanson’s career began somewhere far away from entrepreneurship or user experience: scuba diving. After being a scuba diving instructor for a year, he decided to head off to Hyper Island, where he got his first taste of entrepreneurship, and where he developed his idea for DayCape. After completing his time on the Island, and subsequently following that up with a year at Berghs School of Management, it was time to launch DayCape and Daymonics. The former is an app that helps children with cognitive deficits navigate their days with a fun and interactive calendar. The latter is Håkanson’s freelance company for UX/UI design and strategy consultancy. In 2015, Day Cape went through the Reach for Change incubator, ultimately being one of the winners of 2015 Change Leaders. Today, DayCape has expanded to seven Countries and helps the lives of thousands of users.

The first Dutchman on the Podcast!, Ferdinand Grapperhaus is the CEO of Nextsense, a company aimed at decarbonizing real estate. Grapperhaus’ career began at Delft University of Technology, where, when pursuing his MSc, he made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: a substance to be used in windows to convert natural light into energy. Recognizing the potential of this innovation, Grapperhaus and a co-founder started Physee in 2014 (Physics + Seeing = Physee). In 2024, they merged with EDGE Next, the daughter company of Edge Technologies, becoming NextSense. Pivoting to AI and software, their new technology aims to reduce energy consumption of real estate through data insight. Here’s a paradox for you: AI can be used to optimize and reduce energy consumption. However, AI requires huge data centers. I’m not one for riddles, but I’m grateful that people like Mr Grapperhaus are out there trying to solve them. 

I was fortunate to share the time with Mr Matthew Rastovac. The former CEO of Respell (now acquired by Salesforce), his career began at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Here, Mr Rastovac was co-president of Founders, the university’s entrepreneurship club, where he doubled the group’s budget and grew from 5 to 60 members. During this time, he also landed internships at NASA and Facebook. One semester shy of completing his four years, he landed a job at Cameo (who can turn down a startup soon-to-be Unicorn?) where he designed and implemented core components of Cameo's infrastructure. However, realizing he had more potential as an entrepreneur and founder, he moved to the Bay Area and joined Atmos, a dream home builder. After going through Y Combinator, starting a founders dorm room in San Fran., and building 30-50 homes, he was officially bitten by the startup bug. And so came about Respell, a no-code AI agent builder. Where the future will be for Mr Matthew Rastovac, I do not know. But as The Chords once said, Life could be a sojourn ;)

I was honored to be joined by Ms. Milagros Barsallo, who currently serves as the Outreach Director for the Denver Mayor’s Office. Her career began at Cornell University, where she studied Government and International Relations. After college, her first role was as a bilingual third and fourth grade teacher through Teach For America in Colorado, working to support underserved students. Afterwards, seeing the persistent barriers between families and the education system, she founded RISE Colorado in 2012. The mission of RISE Colorado is to bridge gaps between underserved families and public schools by promoting educational equity and community organizing. Over the years, Millie has expanded her work to include civic leadership consulting and international education, including a Fulbright fellowship in Panama. Today, she leads efforts to foster inclusive community engagement and shape equitable city development initiatives in Denver.

I was fortunate to be joined by Mr Peter Hazlehurst. The CEO and founder of Synctera, a platform that provides the technology infrastructure, compliance tools, and banking partner connections to enable FinTech companies and other businesses to build and launch financial products like bank accounts, debit cards, and lending services. Originally from Australia, Mr Hazlehurst landed in North Carolina in the early ‘90s, where he started his career at Phoenix International. It’s hard to imagine a time before mobile email, and in part we have Mr Hazlehurst to thank for that: His startup Eizel innovated the mail system that would be acquired and rolled out by Nokia. His next move was to Yodlee, where he served as Chief Product Officer from ‘04-’11, overseeing some of the company’s most successful rollouts and transitions. Next, he went to Google, where he pulled another trick out of his hat: serving in several high-level positions (including CEO of Google Payments), he oversaw the development of tap-pay, perhaps the most ubiquitous form of payment used today. A digression from his fintech sojourn, his next stop was at Postmates, where he threw the company into the spotlight, growing the company 5%-10% weekly. I start to feel like a broken record, but I think he must have a Tony Stark Laboratory somewhere – After Postmates and a couple other startups, he went to Uber. Most people think of Uber as the modern-taxi service, but that’s because they take for granted all the work that goes on behind the scenes. Case in point the “transactional-less transaction” at the end of every ride, thanks to the extraordinary Uber Money payments team. Today he serves as CEO of Synctera, the glue between banks and fintechs. I don’t know the future of innovations, but I do know where I’ll find them: behind Mr Hazlehurst.

I had the fortune of speaking with Mrs Karoliina Kauhanen – twice. Unfortunately (or, maybe, fortunately) the first go around had issues with the recording (and prompted new measures on my part), so I had the pleasure of a second interview. Mrs Kauhanen joined me all the way from Finland, where her career began at Humak University of Applied Sciences and the University of the Arts Helsinki, where she obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Arts and Events Management. During this time, she worked at the Classic Floorball Academy [Floorball is Finland’s most popular sport], where she was introduced to international affairs and marketing. Here, she oversaw an historic floorball match between Singapore and Finland. Commu was founded in 2019 on the eve of the pandemic – perfect timing for good deeds. The objective of the app is to connect those who need help and those who want to help. It was the first time Mrs Kauhanen and her co-founders started a company, and there were definitely some learning curves. Through fundraising and a rock band (Yes, they have an official rock band!!), they spread across the world – and rapidly. The first time I spoke with Mrs Kauhanen, two months ago, they were in three countries. Between then and now, they have proliferated to Portugal, the UK, and Asia, and even have some users here in America. I don’t propose to tell the future, but if I can apply one takeaway from my conversation with Mrs Kauhanen, is that we are all human. And we will always be humans.

The Podcast is back!! After a little hiatus (Thank you AP Exams ;), I was excited to debut the podcast again with Mr Steel! Starting his career at UCLA, where he majored in Sociology, Mr Steel started his first company (GoGuardian) in a different direction. After his friend’s backpack was stolen (and in it was his personal computer), Mr Steel decided to create a Chromebook tracker to recover the device in case of a robbery. Posting it to the Chrome Store, it quickly generated traction. Listening to his customers, his prowess soon expanded and he began creating other features mostly by the request of school teachers. And so GoGuardian was born, and with it a crazy ride. After scaling his idea to a billion dollar company, he took a prolonged vacation for several years, going on many adventures and learning a lot. Now starting with a new program, he’s decided to impart his knowledge onto the next generation of entrepreneurs. CoDream is an incubator in Hawaii that might change the traditional startup ecosystem. I was especially excited to catch him at the moment I did, as CoDream is in its infancy. Looking back on my own break from the podcast, and picking it up again, I realize that no matter how many answers you may have, you will always have more questions.