Larry Armstrong joined me on Accelerate OC at a time that his industry, commercial architecture and building, is undergoing the greatest disruption and change of his multi-decade career.  It was such an engaging and compelling conversation! 

He is Chairman of Ware Malcomb, an international design firm providing planning, architecture, interior design, branding, civil engineering and building measurement services to commercial real estate and corporate clients, from its 25 office locations throughout the US, Canada, Mexico and Panama. They’ve been recognized as an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company and Best Firm to Work For by Zweig Group. The firm is also ranked among the top 15 architecture/engineering firms in Engineering News-Record’s Top 500 Design Firms.

Larry is a strategic visionary, accomplished architect and strong business leader. He’s been an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner, a multi-time OCBJ OC500 member of the most influential OC community leaders. He’s been with Ware Malcomb for over 30 years, and as CEO for over 25, as he grew firm revenue by 40x during his time as CEO.  Earlier this year he became Chairman.

Larry guest lectures at USC, Chapman and UCI, and has even given the commencement address for his alma mater, Kent State. He’s super active in the OC community across a number of leadership groups, highlighted by his role leading the United to End Homelessness campaign here, along with a couple of my prior guests. He also recently joined the CEO Leadership Alliance of OC, which we discussed on the show.

Nick Zasowski joined me on Accelerate OC to discuss the recent rise of startup and venture studios globally. Speculation by those following the industry puts the number between 250 and 500 global studios, and Nick and I discussed the role they play, why they are important in the startup community, and some examples of studios that are thriving (many of which are friends to us at OC4).

Nick is currently the director of the Global Startup Studio Network (GSSN), where they have built a highly curated global community of Startup Studios and Venture Builders that create and invest in teams to build powerful businesses and make meaningful impact.

Nick and his team have identified and worked with dozens of studios around the world and are tracking emerging trends and sharing best practices.  It’s been a pleasure to get to know him over the last several months.

He’s a community builder, connector, encourager and supporter, which you'll clearly see in our conversation.

David Friedman is a longtime angel investor, and he became President of Tech Coast Angels’ Orange County chapter just recently. He’s has a plan to increase TCA’s engagement and member base, and we talked more about that in our conversation.  

He’s also been a businessman and executive for technology, software, cloud, and service companies, with a passion for customer loyalty and building a success culture that makes employees enjoy working there. He also has developed what he calls “customer jujitsu” while helping companies bridge technology and business into an innovation mindset.

David has commercialized more than $1.5 billion in new products during his career and also worked internationally across Europe and Asia.

He builds businesses, he invests in and teaches the next generation of business leaders, and he gives back to executives and students at Camp Pendleton, UC Irvine’s Merage School of Business, and UCI Beall Applied Innovation.

Fred Haney joined me on Accelerate OC and class was in session. He covered some important points for startups, such as what makes a fundable startup, the importance of strong management teams, and even how entrepreneurs need to understand they are competing for investment dollars.

He is a private investor and venture capitalist, as both a fund manager and individual investor. He is also an entrepreneur, as a multiple time co-founder of companies such as NovaDigm Therapeutics, Dynamic Reconfigurable Computing and PulSentry. As a VC, Fred was the founder and manager of 3i Ventures, California, a subsidiary of 3i Group, which at the time was the largest Venture Capital company in the world.  Fred has served on the board of directors of thirty private companies and four public companies. 

Fred wrote a book, The Fundable Startup, which describes strategies for giving your startup the best chance at raising capital, based on his many years of experience as investor and operator. He also founded Monday Club in the 1980s as a way to connect startups and investors, and he was a co-founder over 20 years ago of Tech Coast Angels. 

Fred has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.  He has been named a “Director of the Year for Early Stage Companies” by the Forum for Corporate Directors and a “Mentor/Angel of the Year.” He’s also former radio talk show host and frequent public speaker.

Neal Polachek is the founder of ThinkLikeAnApp, a methodology and program for companies to better anticipate the future so they can succeed today.  Neal recognized that we are increasingly using devices to help us get things done more easily and effectively, and are expecting other businesses to better recognize that in how we want to do business with them. Consumers expect authenticity, transparency and immediacy in their customer experiences, and businesses who recognize this and implement improvements will be the winners. We talked a lot about the modern consumer today, as well as how this crisis is also changing things.

Neal has been traveling the country discussing his methodology with thousands of business owners. He has a big heart for local businesses, so we’re kindred spirits in that regard, given my family business background. We go back many years, probably close to 15, when we were both in the middle of the digital disruption of local directional advertising. He was the CEO of the leading research and advisory group in the industry, and I’ve always appreciated his thoughtful and strategic views on things.

He is an advisor to many startups in the Bay Area, as well as an independent board member. He is also a UCLA Bruin, so we were certain to learn a lot from him!

Paul O'Brien is currently the CEO of MediaTech Ventures, based in Austin. They are a leading venture development group at the intersection of media and technology. They also run an incubator called Collective, which Paul and team run as part of MediaTech. He’s also been Director of the Founder Institute Texas for the last few years. Paul also founded a group called Funded House a year and a half ago, which is designed to be a place where Venture Capital Firms connect directly with startups at their Series A or B rounds at conferences or online in virtual summits. Paul is a mentor and advisor to a number of other startup, venture and economic development organizations throughout the world as well.

Nearly 10 years ago, Paul and his family relocated to Austin from the Bay Area.  He had been part of early companies there like Yahoo, and ones that had built up and sold to companies like GoDaddy and Stubhub.

I’ve always appreciated Paul for his abundance mindset, willingness to share wisdom with and teach others, and his comfort with developing his own points of view.  He recently posted about building a startup team and thinking about it like building a family – some great content for our chat. We spoke a lot about startup ecosystems, what's worked in Austin and is still needed in the years ahead there.  There's a lot for us to learn from there to apply to Orange County!

Derek Herrera is the founder of Spinal Singularity, a medical device company that develops products to improve lives for those with spinal injury.  He started the company in 2015 after working for another startup medical device company to learn a bit of the ropes. 

We discussed his path to becoming an entrepreneur and journey so far.Derek graduated from the Naval Academy and was a Marine Corps officer for many years.  He was shot and injured while on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and was paralyzed.  He has been a very active advocate for Marines and veterans and is on the board of several foundations.  It is amazing how many parallels his military experience and startup journey have, and his training there has been very helpful to him. 

He’s also been building community amongst medical device industry founders in the area, so we’re kindred spirits in trying to connect more people here for greater support, encouragement and advantage. Derek is exactly the type of entrepreneur we need to support, encourage and provide "unfair advantage" to for creating an innovative company here in Orange County.

Spencer Rascoff and I had a lively conversation about many of the exciting things happening in the LA and Southern California startup community. Spencer has fully immersed himself here and is helping to build it as the next global innovation center, and I couldn't be more excited to have him here! We discussed the many advantages we have here, such as diversity of economy, creativity in abundance, and quality of life that is second to none.

He has done a lot so far in his career. He has co-founded two businesses that became household names, Zillow and Hotwire. And earlier this year he launched his latest company, dot.LA, a media company dedicated to covering and connecting L.A.’s startup world. I also hear he has at least one other new startup he’s developing, which is in stealth mode.

Spencer co-founded Zillow in 2005, had several roles, including CEO for nearly 10 years and took them public. He also led them through 15 acquisitions.  He co-wrote a best-selling book while he was there, and led a company where people loved to work, as they were often awarded for it and their culture. He also co-founded Hotwire.com and we all know that jingle. He and his team sold it to Expedia in 2003.  Prior to that he worked in private equity and investment banking.  He’s lived several lives! 

Spencer relocated back to LA a few years ago, after many years away. I’m excited that he’s back here to share his wealth of experience in building world class and industry shaping technology companies.  When you build a company that gets a single letter ticker symbol, Z, and reaches $10B market cap, people should listen. It will be fun to work with Spencer and the dot.LA team to highlight exciting developments and people here.

It was a pleasure to welcome John Bradley Jackson to Accelerate OC. JJ, as his friends call him, is an Investor, Professor at Cal State Fullerton, Author and Startup Adviser.  He is the Director of the CSUF Center for Entrepreneurship and he’s also the Director of CSUF Startup Incubator. The CSUF Startup Incubator helps startups validate business models. JJ is a Professor at CSUF where he teaches Social Media, Entrepreneurial Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Commercializing Technology, New Venture Creation and Launch.

He is the Founder of Titan Angels, an Angel and Pre-Angel investment fund based in Orange County where they fund very early stage companies and ideas.

JJ is also Founder of The BirdDog Group, a consulting firm that specializes in helping small to medium sized firms with marketing, sales, and strategy. He’s also an Author of "Socially Close: Social Media Marketing for Small Business",​ "Déjà New Marketing: Increase Sales with Social Media, Search Marketing, E-mail Marketing, Blogs, and More"​ and "First, Best, or Different."

He is a board and advisory board member of a number of companies and area organizations, such as Junior Achievement, the SoCal committee for the Olympic Games and the LA Venture Association.

I so appreciate his can-do attitude and commitment to paying it forward to others in the community, as he works to connect, enable and help so many here.

Nicole McMackin is currently the CEO of Irvine Technology Corporation, an award-winning Information Technology Solutions and Staffing provider with roots in Southern California. For over 20 years they have helped local and national companies with technology personnel needs, provided through their seasoned technologists, recruiters and support team.  Consistently ranked as one of Orange County’s Best Places to Work, ITC focuses on the quality of our people, commitment to customer service, and exceptional performance. ITC is also a Women Owned and Certified (WBENC).

Nicole is a leader who loves to develop others on her team and help them achieve their goals. We’re kindred spirits as we both started our careers in sales. She quickly became a top performer in her first company, and was a leader in providing staffing to a group of larger clients, as well as managing a team of account managers. Many of her clients are Fortune 300 companies.

She is also active in promoting women in technology roles, even starting a Women in Leadership CIO development program at UCLA last year. We talked about it during our conversation.

She is a SoCal native and is a graduate of the UC Irvine, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. 

Nicole is a great example of a world-class leader here in our community, accelerating things in her industry, business and in Orange County. It was great to have her on Accelerate OC!

Dr. Wallace Walrod is currently the Chief Economic Adviser for the Orange County Business Council and he’s led research there for over 20 years. During that time he has done strategic projects with most of the biggest companies and cities here, such as Toshiba America, Irvine Company, First American, as well as the cities of Anaheim and Santa Ana.

Wallace is also the Founding President of the Center for a New California, which plays a key role in shaping the state’s economic future by focusing on Workforce Development, Economic Development, Infrastructure, and emerging trends in corporate social responsibility.  He develops programs, strategies, and policies across companies, government and foundations, and we talked about some of that work.

He is at the forefront of the demographic and economic changes underway in Orange County, and publishes regular reports that highlight those changes, as well as ideas for positively addressing challenges the changes pose.

Wallace is also one of the smart guys educated right here in OC. He earned his Ph.D. in Regional Economics from UC Irvine.

Steve Pfrenzinger is a successful multi-time entrepreneur, hall of fame angel investor and long-time executive coach specializing in self-awareness and how it can become your X-Factor for success.  Currently he is the head coach of the self-awareness mastery series that he’s developed, as well as his own mastermind to work with executives and entrepreneurs.  Steve has been coaching for over 3 decades with hundreds of successful clients at companies like Sony, Disney, Broadcom, Oracle and beyond.  

Along with that he was also the founder of 2 very successful technology services companies.  He’s built and sold these firms, so he’s been there in the humble and risky beginnings all the way through to growth phases.  He’s also written and spoken extensively in areas around coaching, as well as personal branding, personality type, and how to better manage your mindset.

Steve is also a long-time angel investor as part of Tech Coast Angels and was even named to their hall of fame, with his amazing track record of investing.  His super power, he says, it starts with picking the right jockey.

I also spoke with Steve about personality typing, an area I’ve had great interest in for a long time, and one that he has a lot of experience and expertise in, such as Myers Briggs and DISC. We covered a lot of ground and he shared the feedback that changed his life, as well as some great stories and wisdom.

Niall McSheffrey is currently Managing Partner at Elementz Ventures, a new VC fund here in SoCal. He is a successful entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in startup investment, product management, application development, and creating digital product strategies and solutions. He moved to Orange County in 2019 and is in the process of raising capital for his first fund.  Hear how he's navigating this current environment.

Niall excels in developing digital product strategies with clients, leading sales and marketing efforts, and defining the vision and direction of a company. He is an expert in creating long lasting relationships and thoroughly supporting his clients throughout the design and development process. He's been at the forefront of leveraging new technologies for Elementz, including mobile and web apps to better serve his clients’ business needs.

He graduated from the Thunderbird School of Management with a global MBA. He brings his expertise and experience around the world by engaging with different audiences regarding mobile app technologies, agile processes, and team development. It's great to have Niall here to help Accelerate OC!

Dean Kline is the Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director of a newer group at USC called Rossier EdVentures, which is an education ecosystem at USC. We talked a fair bit about it and the exciting things they're doing to support innovation across the education landscape.  He’s also Co-Founder and Managing Director for Penn Venture Partners, a VC fund for primarily for early-stage tech companies in business services, edtech, life sciences, media, specialty manufacturing, and workplace learning. He’s been a venture investor for over 20 years and has had IPOs and many other acquisitions among his investments.

Previously he was an executive of an organization which setup children’s hospitals in developing countries. Dean was also Assistant to the Executive Director at the World Bank, focusing on project quality, education and health sector policy, Africa, and Asia. He began his professional career as an International Economist at the U.S. Treasury Department.  He has led several efforts to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly as it relates to learning; and he’s been a lecturer at several universities as well.

Dean and I met last year shortly after he relocated out here from the East Coast, and he’s spending a fair bit of his time in Orange County.  I know he’s found some interesting Education Technology or EdTech startups down here, too, which we discussed.  And he believes Orange County has a lot going for it to be a world leader in education innovation going forward as well.

It was very timely to have my friend, Carson Lappetito, on the show. He is currently the President of Sunwest Bank, an OC-based business bank started 50 years ago by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Sunwest is active in Orange County and works with businesses from startups to multi-national corporations.  Carson is also innovative in how he thinks about technology in the banking industry and even rolled out an online application for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) ahead of almost every other bank in the country.  We discussed that as well as how the bank is responding to the current COVID19 crisis.

Carson is a banker, and also an entrepreneur, and I laugh since often those 2 things seem to run counter to each other.  He’s worked in a variety of roles with numerous financial institutions. He is also an investor in other businesses and was part of a hedge fund focused on investment opportunities in the financial services industry.  We’re both transplants to Orange County with our Economics degrees, so we’re kindred spirits there, but he’s way smarter - he also studied Political Science and got a minor in Mandarin.

We covered a lot of ground around fintech innovation, banking, the economy and the current stimulus program.  Enjoy!

Bill Carpou, CEO of Octane joined me again on Accelerate OC for a special show, to discuss what Octane is doing to help businesses here navigate the challenges presented by COVID19, updating us on how the Octane team is doing at this time, and what he's seeing and hearing from our business community.  Bill sits in the middle of innovative startups, many of the professional services providers, and a number of large life sciences and technology companies here, as well as investors locally and around the country.  So he gets perspective from a number of places.

Octane holds several prominent events each year for the innovation community - Technology Innovation Forum, Ophthalmology Technology Summit, and High Tech Awards, to name a few.  Those will all be squeezed into the late summertime this year in a schedule adjustment, and we should all look to support them. 

Bill also shared the good news of the 2019 Impact Report, which showed the jobs and economic impact that Octane is helping to drive here through its innovative programs like LaunchPad.  Octane plays a key role in our community as we all continue to strengthen support for innovation here and build bridges between the many initiatives underway.

Mike Gentile is the founder and CEO of CISO Share, which provides on-demand professional services in the information security space, including their unique “security program as a service.”  He has been a leader in the infosec (as it’s known) space for a long time.  Mike has been doing security research and program development for all kinds of organizations, from bootstrapped startups to globally recognized billion-dollar companies. He holds patents and has written books on the subject, and he has successfully founded, funded, grown, and sold multiple businesses in the service and technology industries.

Mike has delivered more than 100 presentations on information technology and information security. He's served on the program committee and advisory boards for multiple technology companies, including the RSA conference.  He’s active with our local community in Orange County, including a unique job skills training program on cybersecurity that he and his team deliver in partnership with Orange County United Way. We discussed that, as well as the future of jobs and innovation in Orange County. It was a fun chat!

Matt Case joined me on Accelerate OC to talk about his company, Bionatus, where he is President. It functions as a venture studio here in Irvine, so we had a lot to discuss.  Matt, his partner and team have worked with innovators to launch several companies, with a focus on leveraging futuristic science into next-generation businesses that benefit the planet. I have seen their approach and companies firsthand and have always been super impressed. They have launched companies such as Bluon and Luminas, which we talked about on the show.

Matt is native of Kentucky and moved out here several years ago to help launch a company for another local private equity firm. His background in chemical engineering has served him and the companies as they develop early IP and work to commercialize it.  He's active in our innovation and startup community as well - they're doing big things and expect to see more of them in the months ahead!

Dawn Reese, CEO of The Wooden Floor, joined Paul and me for a special virtual and distributed episode of Accelerate OC.  We had a great conversation about leadership during a crisis, how she is collaborating with her fellow non-profit CEOs during this time to support, encourage and innovate together, and how we'll see long-term benefits from that here.  She also reminded me of her experiences (like my own) in prior economic or other disruptions.  

She has some great perspective for anyone to reflect on their current situation, how we can all grow and contribute at a time like this, and still be reminded to be grateful and community-minded.  Thanks, Dawn!

Super connector and entrepreneur Sinan Kanatsiz joined me on Accelerate OC recently. He is currently the CEO of KCOMM, a PR and marketing agency he started over 20 years ago. He’s worked with many of the largest and most prominent companies in Orange County, as well as some of fastest growing and innovative ones.  Sinan also founded and is currently Chairman of the Internet Marketing Association, a global organization that connects and supports marketing professionals with leading experts, ideas and insights.

Sinan recently spun off a senior executive and leader group called International Executive Council, which brings together growth-minded leaders to learn and connect as well.

He has been awarded for many of his efforts - named 40 under 40 and a Featured Entrepreneur of the Year by OC Metro Magazine. A couple years ago as recognition for his philanthropic involvement, he was knighted and invited to become a member of the Royal House of Savoy by the prince. Last year he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his work in non-profits, PR and marketing, an award that's also been given to folks like Dr. Oz and former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. 

He’s active at both Chapman University here in Orange County, and the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.

Sinan is also a kindred spirit – like me he’s a huge cheerleader for Orange County and inspiring others to get involved and give back here.  We always have great conversations about the amazing people here in our community and what big impact they and we can have on the world.

My partner, Kyle Kamrooz, and I broke in our new studio at OC4 and shared some thoughts on why we started OC4 Venture Studio, our excitement for the future of building great companies in SoCal, and working with amazing founders, our studio team, investors and partners in the community. We got real and raw - and we welcome feedback and follow up conversation.

As we think about the time that we're in right now, a lot of uncertainty is in front of us, yet we know that most of us will make it to the other side, there will be many problems to solve, and opportunities to solve them.  Many of the best companies are started and built during times of economic challenge - we've met some great founders since starting OC4 and know there are many more here.  We're excited to help shape the future culture of innovative technology companies starting and growing here.

Matt Hayden joined me on Accelerate OC and we covered a lot of ground. He is currently the Chairman of MZ Group, a leading corporate communications and investor relations firm globally. Matt has been in the industry of company investing for a long time and I believe it provides him with such an amazing perspective on how investors think, the importance of positioning and story, and how markets work.

He is also the founder and owner of Sea Purity Investments, an investment firm that emphasizes socially responsible businesses and founders or operators with strong alignment to both doing well (winning) and doing good. He’s an amazingly generous guy with his time, money and relationships as well. For the last several years Matt has hosted an amazing event series that brings together investors and exciting companies. We talked a bit about his Big Ideas Dinners in this show.

Matt is also a kindred spirit – he’s a huge cheerleader for Orange County, new ideas and the need we have to inspire more folks here to invest their time, energy and money into the local innovation economy.  Enjoy the conversation I had with Matt like I did - he's a great storyteller!

Hicham Semaan was a great guest on Accelerate OC. He had such actionable advice and insights for startup company founders with regard to fundraising and investment, among much additional wisdom he shared.

He is currently the President of the Orange County chapter of Tech Coast Angels (TCA), one of the largest affiliated groups of angel investors in the country, with 5 chapters from Santa Barbara to San Diego.  We talked a lot about angel investing and how TCA works.

Prior to becoming a member of TCA, Hicham was CEO of QuickStart Intelligence, an e-learning company for IT Skills.  He led it through rapid growth and several M&A transactions.  He’s also been a General Manager, senior executive and senior adviser to other CEOs, management teams, private equity, and sits on several private company boards.

He is respected for his strong vision, value creation, turn around, and acquisition expertise, and has successfully exited businesses. He is considered an expert in the technology, education, and real estate industries and has been a featured speaker at several industry events.

Hicham has an MBA from UC Irvine and is very active with UCI and other local business groups, so has a long-standing personal investment in and commitment to Orange County.

Jeff Bocan is currently a Partner at Okapi Venture Capital, which is his second stint in Venture Capital.  Prior to Okapi, he joined one of his investments, Mophie, here in Orange County, and helped lead it from $10MM to over $250MM in revenue and an eventual strategic sale in 2016 to a publicly listed company, ZAGG. 

Before Mophie he was a VC for 13 years at a firm in Michigan called Beringea, where he sourced, led or managed the investments across their large portfolio.

Jeff has invested in over 40 companies and sat on over 30 boards.  He was also a contributing blogger to The Huffington Post, so he understands the value of sharing knowledge with his community.  He’s been active in the OC startup community for the last several years and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him.  We’ve even gotten to coach youth basketball against each other, which is always fun! 

Doug Wilson is the founder, and currently the Chairman, of the CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County, formed as a group of CEOs from some of the biggest companies here, working together to “build a thriving Orange County for all.” We talked a lot about the formation and work of CLA (as it’s known today). 

Doug is also an Executive Fellow at The Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, an honor he’s received as a thought leader on the topic.  He’s also been the CEO of Next Solutions for over 30 years.  It is a consulting firm focused on significant value-add opportunities to the homebuilding industry. 

Doug and I both share a passion for assessments to aid personal development and team building.  He actually created one, authoring one called Your Style of Influence, an assessment instrument used to build high performing teams. It is used in many Fortune 500 companies and around the world.

Doug is well educated, with multiple degrees in psychology and theology, and even a Ph.D in psychology.  He’s taught, written extensively, and worked in and consulted in a variety of industries.  He’s so well-rounded and curious.  Our conversations are always deep and productive, and you'll see that in our conversation on here.

Toby Corey joined me on Accelerate OC and we explored so many areas - his time working with Elon Musk, his passion for working on critical climate change issues, how to build a thriving startup ecosystem and inspiring people to be bold and excellent.  It was a fun conversation with so much wisdom packed into it!

Toby is the Former President of Tesla, Former President of Global Field Operations, and Former Chief Revenue Officer at Solar City, which merged into Tesla a few years ago.

He successfully managed three $1b+ businesses (one as co-founder/President), two successful IPO’s, raised over $300m in private and public financing, Toby is a former President/COO of worldwide leader in web development services with $3b+ market cap and successful IPO, managed 7,000+ employee organization, operating globally, awarded two "messaging" patents, executed 40+ M&A transactions while career path disrupted information technology, digital economy, Renewable Energy and Mobile sectors.

He currently sits on the boards and advisory boards of several companies. He gives lectures at Stanford University's Engineering Department on Management Science and Engineering.

Toby will be speaking at a TedX event here in Irvine on March 6^th.  Having been to a few TedX events, I always find the speakers and topics to be amazing, and I'm certain Toby will be fantastic.

Marinela Gombosev is currently President and CEO of Evoke Neuroscience, a medical diagnostic technology company focused on memory loss and other cognitive disorders.  They have twice been ranked in the Inc. 500|5000 fastest growing private companies. I was excited to talk with her about it and it's exciting prospects.  She described the company's initiative to create the equivalent of a "blood pressure cuff for the brain."

Previously she worked in other regulated industries outside of medicine (such as aerospace) in senior operational roles.  She’s been recognized for his leadership and achievements - named to the Hot 25 of Orange County influential leaders and innovators, and was inducted into the UCI School of Engineering Hall of Fame for her professional achievements.  She’s also been featured in a book as a renaissance woman, and is a big advocate of STEM education for today’s youth, as well as mentoring startup entrepreneurs.

Marinela is a current and future leader of the OC startup, tech and life sciences business community.

I was happy to have Sergey Sundukovskiy on Accelerate OC.  Sergey is currently founding CTO and Chief Product Officer of Certemy, a startup here building a software platform for professional certification, licensing & compliance. Prior to Certemy he was CTO and CPO of Raken, a software company in the construction industry.  He also was CTO of a company acquired by Capital One about 5 years ago.

Sergey has been around this area for awhile and been in early stage tech and Internet companies since even the dot-com era, so he’s seen a lot.  I always appreciate his perspective and wisdom on company building, investing, teams and cultures.  He’s also very giving of his time and talents, as he mentors and advises companies and through incubators and accelerators. 

Andy Fathollahi joined me on the show and immediately delved into the reality of being a founder and longtime entrepreneur. He’s a serial one and done it here in Orange County. He founded
Incipio here over 20 years ago and is still Chairman of its Board. He’s also founder and CEO of his latest venture, The Kanvas Company.

He is currently the founder and CEO of the Kanvas Company, a cannabis technology company. We talked a lot about how to start and build a second company after a super successful one, with different perspective, culture and lifestyle goals, as well as how to attract the right kind of people today.  As example, Andy has instituted a 4-day work week.

Prior to Kanvas he was founder and CEO of Incipio Group, which he started and grew here super successfully, until selling a majority of it to private equity in 2016.

Andy was a great guest and shared a lot about the challenges of being an entrepreneur and the different perspectives he's had as time has gone on in his journey.  I loved his views on himself and what he'd advise others, based on his 25 year old self, 35 year old self and 45 year old self.  Similarly we both have had a hard time taking off time in between adventures!

Tom Baine joined me on the show to talk about the homebuilding industry, which he's been in for 30 years in Southern California.  That’s a lot of change he's seen in both our area and his industry!  I looked up before the show the population change over those 30 years here in Orange County - 2.4MM in 1990 vs. 3.2MM in 2020 (a nearly 33% increase in people here)

Tom is currently the division president of Southern California for Landsea Homes, where he oversees planning, development and implementation of their communities here. He previously spent a considerable amount of his 30 years in the industry at Taylor Morrison Homes throughout Orange County and other parts of the region. Orange County has been a trendsetter and leader in this industry for decades, and there is no slowing expected in that leadership. Tom is also locally educated, graduating from both UCI and Pepperdine.

Landsea came to Newport Beach in 2018 and sold out Lido Villas in Newport Beach, which was one of the last remaining coastal communities in the area.  They are just about to launch their High Performance Home Program in some other new communities in the area. 

We talked a bit on the show about how technology and other innovations have come into the homebuilding industry, as well as the changes in what people want to be able to both live and afford to own property in Orange County.  I believe there will be big innovations in homebuilding here in the next decade.

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Sue Parks became the President and CEO of Orange County United Way in 2017, after a 15 year history of volunteering and working with the organization, including being the Chair of its Board.  Before she signed on as CEO of United Way, she was an entrepreneur and business executive.  She co-founded and was CEO of a corporate wellness company, iCount Wellness.  She also held senior roles in innovative companies like Kinkos, Gateway and USWest.  Both Kinkos and Gateway had storied founders, I’d even call “characters”, so I’m sure she has great stories! 

She has not just made impact at United Way here in Orange County.  She’s touched many other important organizations in our community – she’s on the Executive Leadership Council of UCI Diabetes Center; she is a past chair and co-chair of Women’s Wellness Day for the Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine at UCI; former board President of Susan G. Komen Orange County Affiliate; former board member of Girl Scouts of Orange County, and the Paul Merage School at UCI.

Sue has been named an OC Business Journal Businesswoman of the year award winner as well as a Pioneer by the National Association of Women in Business Organization (NAWBO). I’m so grateful that she joined me on Accelerate OC, and shared some amazing stories of the impact that they have in the lives of nearly 1 in 4 Orange Countians every year.

Also listen to her story of walking 5 miles in each of OC's 34 cities!

I was super excited to have Reynolds Bish on Accelerate OC. He’s had an illustrious career in the technology industry, mainly here in Southern California, and we had a lot to discuss. He is currently the CEO and a Member of the Board of Directors of Kofax, one of the largest software companies in Orange County, and he also has employees in 35 countries and over 25,000 customers.  He’s on his second tour of duty with Kofax, and we talked about that and the fun world of private equity.  In an incredibly unique story, he shared how Kofax was sold 3 times in less than 3 years - what an experience!

Reynolds is super involved in our community outside of his company. He’s on the board of OCTANe, where we serve together, and he’s also on the board of Trustees at The Pegasus School in Huntington Beach, one of my kids’ rival schools. Ha.  He’s is on and has been on other company boards as well, both public and private companies.  And before Kofax he co-founded and was CEO of Captiva Software in San Diego, and successfully grew and ran it for many years. It was a NASDAQ listed company and was eventually acquired by EMC Corporation.

He’s been an E&Y Entrepreneur of the year and a corporate director of the year. And like me, he’s a Big 10 guy (Penn State) for his university alma mater.

Another one of the things I was excited to talk with Reynolds about is the pace of change he’s seeing now vs. earlier in his career in the software industry.

Charles Antis possesses energy and passion like few people I've ever met. It just makes me want to hang out with him more. We spoke about his leadership and life philosophies, his company and its mission and purpose, and the amazing other work he’s doing in Orange County.

He is the founder and CEO of Antis Roofing and Waterproofing, a company he founded here in Orange County over 30 years ago.  Charles describes them as "a shepherd in the community, purposed by helping healthy families to have safe, dry homes." He has firmly embraced and lives by the principle of doing well by doing good. We talked a lot about that in our conversation.

Charles is super involved in our community outside of his company. He’s on the board of Ronald McDonald House, Habitat for Humanity, an advisor to OneOC, and the National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) For the last 10 years Antis has donated every roof installation of every home built by Habitat here in the county.

What I’ve seen from Charles as well in the innovator’s mindset. He’s constantly learning, trying and thinking about what more he can do or impact. It’s inspiring. He’s taken what many might consider a boring business and elevated it to the top of its game nationally, and been recognized for it.  He says what he thinks and shares what he believes.

One of the things that struck me when we met at his office was how cool it was.  I felt like I might be in a tech startup.  We spoke about why he did that – for most of my crowd you’d never expect that from an old school business like roofing.

He’s also embraced social media to share his impact with the community, we discussed the open, authentic life and sharing it with others.

Ike Kavas joined me on Accelerate OC to share his story, leadership philosophy and current company, Ephesoft, where he is the founder and CEO.  It's a company he founded here in Orange County nearly 10 years ago.  They have built the first document capture platform for the cloud and serve global customers in areas of automated data entry, compliance and document processing.  

Before Ephesoft he was a senior technical architect and professional services manager at Kofax, a longtime technology company based here as well.  Ike is a technologist through and through and has committed to becoming a great entrepreneur, CEO and people leader as well, which I greatly admire about him.

To me Ike epitomizes the modern entrepreneur and leader – he has great passion and deeply cares for all the constituents around a company – customers, employees, investors and his broader community.  We discussed that during our conversation. 

Ike has won awards like the High Tech Innovation Awards, a “Best Place to Work” for 2019, Top Workplace for 2018 and he was an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist in 2019.  Ephesoft was even in the INC 500 fastest growing companies a few years ago.

He’s a super busy guy, traveling the world for his company, so I felt fortunate to have him on Accelerate OC to share his story.

Peter Polydor is the founder of Eureka Building and Eureka Hub, a 3-acre event, office and creative campus that many of our community has enjoyed and visited in the last 6 years since it opened.  Peter’s vision was to support the startup community here with it, and it has. Eurekafest is an annual celebration of entrepreneurship that is one of the few can’t miss events in Orange County.

Peter joined me for our first remote conversation on Accelerate OC, in front of an audience of several dozen of our friends - this one at the OC4 Venture Studio in Costa Mesa.

Peter is also the President of Ergo Holdings, an investment group focused on Property, Technology, Workspaces and Diversified Investments in the US and Canada.  Peter is an honorary professor, a venture capitalist and real estate investor.  And he started out at one of the few local venture funds based in Orange County, Sail Venture Partners, where he quickly rose through the ranks in his few years there.

He’s been a fast-mover for a long time, winning awards like Power 30 under 30 and the Greek 40 under 40. He’s built companies and a successful investment firm.  He has strong ties and experience here in Orange County, and also a perspective we can learn from as he's spent considerable time in an innovative global city, Toronto.  We talked about those similarities and differences in our conversation as well.  

Neel Grover is currently the founder and CEO of Indi, a software as a service video platform to help brands engage their customers and enable "individual commerce" (where the name Indi comes from).  He shared more about Indi and how the opportunity came to him in our conversation.  Before Indi he was CEO for a couple well-known e-commerce companies, Bluefly and Buy.com, and he’s been a board member for several other companies and advisor to both companies and private equity firms. 

Neel started his career as an attorney, and we talked about his transition from elite firm, Brobeck, to the tech startup world, and he always felt like he'd go into the business world.

Neel has also been in Orange County for awhile, and graduated from UC Irvine, where he played on the tennis team. He's still an elite level competitive tennis player.  Neel is a great example of a world-class leader raised here in our back yard.

It was a lot of fun to welcome Lori Torres to Accelerate OC to share her amazing journey with Parcel Pending, a company she founded in 2013.  She was the founding CEO and remains in the role today, and I could hardly imagine anyone else ever replacing her!

Lori grew the company to over 150 people and thousands of customers around North America. She sold the company in January of this year to Neopost, a global company based in Paris.  Prior to Parcel Pending she was an executive at The Irvine Company, where she oversaw a huge apartment portfolio.  Lori had a very successful career in commercial real estate before becoming an entrepreneur.

Lori also has a great story in that she raised a significant amount of her early investment from a group of local investors, particularly folks in Tech Coast Angels here.  They were greatly rewarded when she sold the company!  Lori and Parcel Pending are a great example of a local entrepreneur and local investors working together to build a great company and achieve a great outcome.  And hopefully they’re now reinvesting here in Orange County in the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

Lori learned a ton through this process, as she’s shared with me, and she also had a lot of help along the way, which she talked about during our conversation.  She’s also continued to grow Parcel Pending post-acquisition, so we talked a bit about life inside a bigger company after an acquisition.

She’s a great example of a world-class leader here in our community, accelerating things in her industry, her business and in Orange County.

Dan Heinfeld is currently the President of LPA, a leading national architecture firm, and he has been there for over 30 years.  He leads their design and sustainability initiatives as well.  LPA has more than 400 people in 6 offices in California and Texas.  Their Orange County office, in Irvine, is right in the middle of one of the "innovation" areas here - University Research Park - and right next to Acorns, CloudVirga, Ready at Dawn, and the Beall Center for Applied Innovation at UCI, to name a few of his neighbors.

Dan is an architect with a strong sense of duty to leave a lasting impact on the built environment and has been focused on sustainability long before others did, combining that with design excellence.  LPA has one of the largest portfolios of LEED certified projects in the US and has earned hundreds of awards for their designs.

LPA has led the way in adopting energy reduction and efficiency in their buildings, even creating their own Irvine office as a living laboratory for design, redevelopment and energy reduction. Dan was the recipient of the 2018 President’s Award from the American Institute of Architects-Orange County chapter in recognition of his contribution to local architecture.

Dan clearly leads by example with his innovative spirit.  And while I tend to focus on innovation here in Orange County in areas like software, technology has infiltrated architecture in so many ways that I bet I can’t even appreciate.  Dan and I talked about that and how technologically savvy today's talent is in his business. He is another great example of a world-class leader here in our community, accelerating things in his industry, his business and in Orange County.

Kurt Johnson is currently the founder and CEO of FreightPop, a cloud-based software that makes logistics simple. They give one login for all transportation management, including inbound and outbound freight management across all different freight types.

Kurt is a grizzled startup veteran, with six startups. He’s gone from his garage to $100M in revenue.  He’s had 2 two exits and two acquisitions.  He’s received the E&Y entrepreneur of the year award.  And he tells me that with FreightPop, this is his last one.  And to him, his most important.

He founded Horizon Technology over 20 years ago in his garage and did PC refurbishing and parts distribution, and guided the company to twenty years of consistent growth and profitability. He also reached $100M in revenue with it, as I mentioned earlier.

Kurt is passionate about building an inspiring culture and builds an environment of opportunity and engagement.  He’s created an employee Hopes & Dreams program, he requires all new staff to complete our ten-week leadership training class and gives all employees paid time off to volunteer in their community.

He’s also a smart guy and learner, having graduated college with high honors and recently taking a data science class at UC Irvine.  There was so much to learn from this conversation!

Scott Duffy is driven by one simple idea: helping people live their dreams through entrepreneurship.  He uses his media channels, speaking and best-selling books, to help people breakthrough in their lives and businesses. He’s worked with many of the world’s top entrepreneurs and innovators, and he lives in our back yard here in Orange County.

Scott started his career working for Tony Robbins, and went on to work for companies that became big media brands like CBS Sportsline, NBC Internet, and FOXSports.com. He then founded Smart Charter, an online booking tool for private aviation, which was acquired by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.

Entrepreneur Magazine has listed him as a Top 10 Keynote Speaker.  He’s often asked to join discussions on TV and radio stations like CNBC, FOX News, and CBS Radio. Scott is also Co-Host of “Business & Burgers, Presented by Microsoft”.

Scott has worked with and interviewed countless other world-class businesspeople and athletes – he’s way more qualified to be on Accelerate OC than I am! I tried my best to be a good interviewer.  I’m grateful that he joined us; once again it showcases just how many amazing people call Orange County home.

Dawn Reese joined me for a great Accelerate OC conversation, and we explored her early career in the technology industry and then her transition to helping establish the Software Council of Southern California (now Technology Council Southern California) and eventually joining amazing non-profit, The Wooden Floor in Santa Ana.

She is an author, consultant, mentor, and national speaker in the areas of board governance, strategic planning, fundraising, and creative youth development.  For the last 10 years she’s been with The Wooden Floor, with most of those years as CEO.  She shared much more about this organization and its mission and impact during our discussion.

What Dawn won’t share, so I will, is that she and this organization are often honored - 2019 Women Breaking Barriers Award from Women of Influence, the 2018 Founders Award from the Institute for Community Impact, the 2016 Center for Leadership Award for Innovation from Cal State Fullerton and a Difference Makers Award from the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce to name a few.  She’s also on a bunch of other boards – they want her energy and impact there, too; such as One OC, Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, The Board of Advisors at Mihaylo College at Cal State Fullerton, and Orange County Business Council Latino Education Attainment Committee.  The Wooden Floor has also been awarded as a Best Place to Work here in Orange County.

Dawn also continues a trend of guests with leadership positions in their college greek house – I’m going to have to study what it is about chapter presidents that leads to leadership and innovation later in life.

Mike is the Regional Director of the Orange County and Inland Empire Small Business Development Center Network, which assists aspiring entrepreneurs and current business owners throughout Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.  Before this role he was the director of an SBDC office in Long Beach for 5 years.

He has been and is a business owner and entrepreneur himself. He started with a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory store in LA, and then opened a second location in Long Beach, eventually employing 20 people including managers at both locations.  He eventually sold the LA store and took minority position in several other locations.  He has the retail bug, though, as he has another store in Long Beach now called Sugar Daddies Sweet Shoppe.  We had a good discussion about starting as a franchisee and then developing his own brand.

Mike is an entrepreneur, working with other entrepreneurs, and managing a critical support system that our government provides to small businesses here.  He sees so much activity that I was excited to hear his important perspective and input. I learned a lot about trends in small businesses in Orange County.

Lawrence Greaves is both an entrepreneur and investor, as well as a board advisor. Prior to being an entrepreneur he had roles in boutique advisory firms and large national consulting firms, advising on a number of large international M&A transactions.

Lawrence invested in and co-founded OPKIX in 2016. He is the CEO and on the Board today.  OPKIX makes the smartest, smallest, simplest, and most powerful little cameras and camera accessories, and as Lawrence described it, it's changing consumer habits for capturing life's moments by allowing people to be in those moments (and not looking at them through their phones).

Prior to OPKIX, he co-founded a company in 2008 and then went on to sell his 50% share of the company about 10 years later.  It was a leading provider of contract CFOs and other technical finance and accounting professionals and they opened offices all across the U.S.

Lawrence is also passionate about philanthropy as well as investing in other businesses.  We covered some of those projects and initiatives as well.

OPKIX recently won a prestigious OCTANe High Tech Award for Best Technology Innovation in a Consumer Product, and he's committed to building the company and making the products here in Orange County.  He's a great cheerleader for all the great things happening and people making it happen here in our backyard.

Don DiCostanzo has a really cool current company, Pedego, which is also his passion. That's clear in how he talks about it. 

Don is the co-founder and CEO of Pedego® Electric Bikes, the number 1 electric bike brand in the United States, according to Navigant Research. They are sold at more than 100 Pedego-branded stores in the United States, plus in Canada and Europe. The bikes have electric motors that help riders over hills and through headwinds, and traveling up to 60 miles on a single battery charge.

The company was founded here in 2008.  I love their tagline - “Hello, Fun!”  And you’ll love the many celebrities on his website who have and love his bikes.

Don is a serial entrepreneur – he founded and invested in another company, bringpro in 2014; he also has another company in the equestrian space with his daughter. Before that he was the CEO of Zak Products and worked with auto dealers for over 5 years, and he was the president of Wynn Oil Company, an 80 year old company in the automotive industry.  

Don and I also share a life experience.  We were both presidents of our fraternities in college, a job I still consider as one of the hardest I’ve ever had.  Don's energy and enthusiasm are infectious - he's a great cheerleader for Orange County and an inspiration to other entrepreneurs and aspiring ones here.

Nick Kovacevich is the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of KushCo Holdings, a publicly-traded company providing ancillary products and services to businesses operating in various industries, including legal cannabis and CBD. It was formerly known as Kush Bottles.

Nick became CEO 5 years ago and has grown the business dramatically – from under $2M to nearly $150M in sales and the team from less than 12 to more than 250 people, as well as diversified the business into five categories and operations in multiple states and countries.  For a non-tech company, that is still tech company growth rates!

Prior to KushCo, he helped co-found another successful company here, BigRentz, a leader in online commercial equipment rental.  He remains on their board today.  He also has a number of other business holdings.

I have to note that he was captain of his college basketball team at Southwest Baptist University, which was a dream I always had growing up in Indiana, playing basketball.  He was also a great student there, graduating with high distinction. 

Like prior guests at Accelerate OC, I think he was born an entrepreneur.  He had his first business shortly after college, joining a friend (and now longtime business partner) in one called Pack My Dorm, which they successfully sold in 2010.

With KushCo, Nick has become an expert on the cannabis industry, and he speaks and writes about it often in mainstream media and at events. We had a good discussion about the value of developing industry expertise as an entrepreneur.

Nick and his team have a front row seat in the evolving and fast-growing cannabis industry. No matter how you feel about it, it's an exciting and dynamic industry with a lot of change in it.

Peter Nguyen is the founder and CEO of Ad Exchange Group, based in Irvine. It is a leading direct-to-consumer digital performance-based agency, reaching $100M in revenue in less than 2 years in business.  Both Peter and the company have received many awards for growth and entrepreneurship from people like Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Ernst & Young, and the Orange County Business Journal.

He’s also the founder and CEO of Push Innovation, a leading logistics and service provider to direct-to-consumer brands.  Push has over 100 employees and ships tens of thousands of products every day.  Another of his ventures, Chargeback360, is also growing rapidly.

I'll speculate and say that Peter was born an entrepreneur, as he started a web design and development firm while he was still in college in Florida many years ago.  He’s started a number of businesses, including an educational one to help others launch their own product or service online. Baylor University adopted it as a class and it's been a student favorite there for many years.  He’s been here in Orange County for about 10 years and has done business all over the world.

Enjoy some amazing stories, perspective, wisdom and advice from Peter!

Lori Seal has an amazing story, incredible leadership philosophies and such thoughtful perspectives on life, business and people.

She is currently CEO of Blytheco, a leading national reseller of software that she took over from the founder, Steve Blythe, at the beginning of this year.  He had been CEO for almost 40 years, and he hand-picked Lori! Prior to that she was the company’s COO for 6 ½ years. 

Lori was also a longtime executive at Sage, an enterprise software company here, so she’s been in software and technology longer than many of our audience members have been.  She has a lot of wisdom to share from her years there in a number of various roles.

In between Sage and Blytheco, Lori had her entrepreneur experience for a year and a half, leading an e-commerce SaaS and services provider.  We had many good conversations during that season.

Lori is one of the most enlightened leaders I know here.  She’s so caring about her people and shares her gratitude with them every day, and she’s committed to helping each person be their best and reach their highest potential.  I see her developing each person into the hero of his/her own story.  There is so much to learn from her in this conversation.

On this episode of Accelerate OC, we get to hear from Cary Breese and his journey from software engineer to insurance company executive to tech startup CEO, and his current venture, NowRx.

Cary is currently the co-founder and CEO of NowRx, a tech startup in the pharmacy experience industry.  Using improved logistics, intelligence and analytics, the company is saving the health care industry cost and improving patient adherence to prescriptions.  NowRx opened its first pharmacy in Northern California, yet is led by a team from Orange County.  Their latest one is about to open here.

Prior to NowRx, he was CEO at Genie DB which went after Amazon Web Services in the DB as a service (DBaaS) space.  He was also an executive at several insurance businesses, including a marine one he acquired out of a larger financial services firm.  He began his career at Lockheed Martin as a software engineer.

We met several years ago when we were both in the middle of navigating our respective startups and I really enjoyed our conversations. 

Cary is also a community guy here in Orange County and has been involved in youth sports and mentoring other entrepreneurs.  He is the model for the type of innovator we need many more of here – making things happen in his business and in the community.

Our conversation went fairly deeply into fundraising for startups and particularly, equity crowdfunding, which has been a key part of the NowRx fundraising formula so far, and it's been quite successful.  They are currently raising their Series B on SeedInvest, a leading equity crowdfunding platform.

I was super excited to have my friend Grant Van Cleve join the conversation on Accelerate OC. We got to hear about his amazing journey and he shared his wisdom about both investing in startups and leading one, as well as his thoughts on Orange County as an innovation community. 

Grant is currently the CEO of Buy It Installed, an exciting and fast-growing company that automates the process of getting a professional installer to a consumer around a purchase that requires it.  In our conversation he shared how he got involved.

He’s also the Chairman of the Board of Governors of Tech Coast Angels (TCA), the premier angel investor group in the country, with over 400 members in the 5 Southern California chapters.  Formerly he was the president of the Orange County TCA chapter, and he’s been a super active investor, in which I’d actually say active is an understatement!  How many investments, boards and advisor roles he’s managing is incredible.

Grant is an inspiration to many of us here who are working to build a more inclusive, open and connected innovation community in Orange County.  Grant lives that way every day and his leadership is so authentic. I always feel like the group or conversation is better and enriched when he’s a part of it.

Beckham Thomas is the Founder and CEO of Dealer Credit Resources, a Software as a Service business in the commercial equipment financing industry.  Think about a small business buying a truck or piece of equipment for their office, that they’d like to get payment terms to break up the cost, usually from the dealer or manufacturer.  It's a trillion dollar per year market in the US - yes, it's that big!

Beckham started the company last year after continuously seeing the need from the market.  He’s been a partner in a commercial lending business here for a number of years.  Beckham has also been an entrepreneur and investor in other ventures, which have helped shape how he looks at building businesses.  As example he’s a partner in a fast-growing restaurant chain here, Sessions West Coast Deli.

He’s an over-achiever: he’s currently getting an executive MBA at Wharton, and he already has a law degree and his pilot’s license. Beckham, is there anything you can’t do?!?

Beckham is an Orange County native and is committed to building an innovative, disruptive and purpose-driven company here.  He’s a great example of an entrepreneur making it happen in Orange County.

Fauad was most recently the CEO of Bonti, a biotech startup that he co-founded in 2015 in an area of biologics where he saw a key need.  He was right, as the company had great success and was acquired by Allergan about a year ago.  Before Bonti, he was an executive at Allergan in biologics development and manufacturing.

He’s had a very successful career in biopharmaceuticals, and was at both Baxter and Regeneron before Allergan.  Fauad has developed quite a reputation as an innovator and leader in the industry, and he’s already at work on his next venture, Ornovi, which he’s going to build here in Orange County.

He’s currently on the board at Biopharm, as well as OCTANe. He is a great example of an entrepreneur driving innovation and making it happen in Orange County.

Travis Lindsay is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Cal State Fullerton, manager of the CSUF Startup Incubator, and the co-founder of Titan Angels, an angel and seed investment fund based here in Orange County.  He also has multiple degrees from Cal State Fullerton in areas of business and entrepreneurship.

Travis serves the community of students and entrepreneurs around CSUF to mentor and grow them and support the next generation of companies and business leaders here. He is a great example of a servant leader for innovation activity in Orange County.

Richard Sudek is the Chief Innovation Officer at UC Irvine, and Executive Director of UCI Beall Applied Innovation.  Over the last 5 years there, he’s firmly established the center as a key part of the innovation ecosystem here, connected it to the OC community and what he calls an “innovation district”, and accelerated UC Irvine’s efforts in commercialization of its research and IP, and created an entrepreneurial energy and activity at the school that’s at an all-time high.  He also teaches entrepreneurship at UCI.

He was previously at Chapman University as both a professor of entrepreneurship and director of their entrepreneurship center.  Prior to that Richard received a masters and PhD in Management from Claremont University. He’s a former chairman of Tech Coast Angels here and has made many angel investments. He was also a successful entrepreneur as CEO of Nadek Computer Systems.

He is a great example of a leader and key stimulator of innovation activity in Orange County.

Dick Gochnauer is an amazingly busy guy. He is the co-founder of the CEO Leadership Alliance of Orange County, which he and Doug Wilson created to become the clear venue for leaders of Orange County’s largest companies to collaborate on the most strategic issues facing the county.  They are working together with the goals to build both a competitive ecosystem and higher quality of life for this region.  Their mission is “to create a thriving OC for us all” and I think everyone here in Orange County can support that mission.

Dick has also been involved on a national level with the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership, where he is a board member.  He and they believe that the best-run, best-performing companies are those that do more than just maximize shareholder value - they value improving outcomes for all stakeholders.

Dick walked the walk as a leader of both large public and private companies. He is the former CEO, President, and COO of United Stationers, Inc, in Chicago. Prior to that he was the President and COO for Golden State Foods Corporation here in Orange County. He currently serves on the board of directors for several companies, including Golden State Foods, AmerisourceBergen and UGI Corporation. Dick is also a trustee of Rush University Medical Center and a lead director at a startup, Vodori.

He is a great example of an innovative and values-driven Orange County leader, and it was such a pleasure to have him on Accelerate OC.

Tony is the co-founder and CEO of Restaurant365, which he started in Orange County in 2011 and over the last 8 years has built the company into a leading back-office solution provider to restaurants.  Earlier this year the company raised $88 million in a series C funding round.  His world class investors include ICONIQ Capital, Tiger Global Management and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The company won the best ERP SaaS Award last year and has been recognized in a number of other industry awards as well.  Tony has been a finalist for Ernst & Young’s entrepreneur of the year, as well as received other industry and entrepreneur accolades.  He’s very humble about the company’s explosive growth and success, though.

Prior to Restaurant365 he was a key member of the team and board member at Dynamic Methods, a Microsoft-focused reseller and solutions partner. 

Tony has been in Orange County for over 15 years and is building a company of significance here.  He also has good perspective on OC vs. other tech centers as he opened an office in Austin a few years ago.  He is a great example of an innovative Orange County leader.  One of his many words of wisdom in this conversation was "fist bump the messenger."  Listen and learn what that means!

Scott Hamilton is the President and CEO of Executive Next Practices Institute, which he started here and over the last 10 years has provided advisory and thought leadership to thousands of senior executives around the globe. ENPI is a partner with universities such at UC Beall Applied Innovation, Pepperdine, and ASU, research organization Gallup, and corporate members in over 2000 companies. 

Scott is also a board member for many other for-profit and non-profit companies.  He’s also CEO of Nextworks Strategy, which provides innovation programs to align organizations and leadership teams for peak performance and revenue growth.

Prior to founding or getting involved in these organizations he was a successful practitioner as an executive at DirecTV, Nestle, Amerisource Bergen and Honeywell.

Scott has been super committed to and active in Orange County for many years, and ENPI has helped raise the knowledge and capability of many of our local business leaders. He does a great job of bringing business leaders in our community together.  I had a great time at one of his recent events on corporate governance, where I participated in a mock board meeting. He is a great example of an innovative Orange County leader.

Sean is the CEO of the Internet Marketing Association or IMA, which since 2001 has been one of the largest organizations for professionals across business disciplines in marketing, creative and development, and has been an active network, with over 1 million members!

Sean is also a principal at Epic Insurance Brokers, where he provides business insurance products and consulting, while also helping to foster a culture that’s been recognized as a best place to work both regionally and across the insurance industry.

He’s also a founding member of the International Executive Council, which came out of IMA’s roots and has attracted an amazing group of leaders who share passion for tech innovation and their personal and professional growth around it.

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Sean this past year, and appreciate his passion for entrepreneurship, innovation and making Orange County a leader in those areas.  Through his work at IMA and IEC, he’s definitely doing his part to Accelerate OC. 

Shawn was one of my most energetic guests. He is the co-counder and CEO of Givsum, a startup helping charities and service clubs to embrace the digital age.  He’s getting good traction and has an ambitious vision for the company, which we talked about in this episode.

Prior to Givsum, Shawn co-founded Future Leaders of Our Community here in Orange County, which he built into an organization that connected thousands of young professionals with each other and inspired them to get involved with many OC non-profits.  This work was very important to uncovering the opportunity for Givsum.

Shawn has a Masters in Divinity & Theology and was a pastor for a number of years earlier in his career, before the entrepreneurial fire led him to start Givsum.  He also has a background and undergraduate degree in radio broadcasting, so, in reality, he should be the one leading the discussion, instead of me.  He also has a great podcast series called American Philanthropy that you should check out.

Shawn is living the mantra of doing well by doing good, and is also one of the scrappiest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met.  We always have a lot to talk about! He is also committed to building his company here in Orange County and has tapped into some great local talent. I'm excited to be an investor in his company, and supporting his efforts to Accelerate OC.

Dalip was a fun and energetic guest on Accelerate OC.  He is a super active and busy guy, with a full-time job as head of business development at Vincit, a contract software development firm, as well as a startup, Eva Smart Shower, and several other volunteer efforts at OC Tech Happy Hour, Tech Coast Venture Network, YEC and Forge 54.  Dalip is also involved with a new group here, Coded in OC, which is bringing together companies here who are developing software here in Orange County.  Dalip is getting more member companies involved.

He sold his company, Devise Interactive, to Vincit last year, which he started while he was still finishing his degree at Cal State Fullerton.  And he only finished there about 5 years ago!

Dalip is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council, sharing his insights globally on the Forbes platform.

Dalip is big on technology and purpose, so we always have a lot to talk about when we're together. He's a great representative of the younger entrepreneurs emerging here, who are interested in solving big problems and building their companies in Orange County. 

I love that he envisions a bigger thinking and risk-taking Orange County in the next 5 years, where entrepreneurs are comfortable and vulnerable to ask for help, and where we support each other and celebrate all that is happening here.  Let's all get on board with that vision!

One of the leading cheerleaders for the innovation ecosystem in Orange County is Bill Carpou. He is CEO of OCTANe, the leading organization in Orange County for the technology and medical technology business ecosystems, by connecting people, resources and capital.  During Bill’s 4½ year tenure at OCTANe, I’ve had the pleasure of serving with him on OCTANe's Board and seeing his great leadership propel OCTANe to heights never seen in its 16 year history. 

Bill has expanded OCTANe’s flagship annual events, expanded capital and growth services to companies here, and increased the organization’s job creation impact goals to 55,000 by 2030.  Through OCTANe he was responsible for launching a unique ophthalmology-focused venture fund, Visionary Ventures, that has garnered global attention. 

Before OCTANe Bill was a partner at 2 firms that helped businesses with growth and profitability, he was a senior executive for prominent private equity firm, Blackstone Group, portfolio company, and he was a senior executive for Ikon Office Solutions. 

Like me, Bill is a transplant to Orange County but has deeply committed to making it an awesome community.  He's involved in or supporting many of the great things happening here in our tech and medical communities.  He had great encouragement on here for folks to get involved.  Thanks, Bill!

Dan Rodrigues brought so much wisdom and perspective to our discussion today.  I loved how reflective he was on his entrepreneurial journey.  To share a bit about Dan –

He founded and is the CEO of Kareo, a SaaS company here in Irvine in the health care industry. Kareo is providing a kind of "medical office in the cloud" for independent physician practices.  He and his team have over 50,000 customers in every state and have grown rapidly over their history.

Dan has raised over $100M in capital and has over 600 employees at Kareo.  He recently added a well-known entrepreneur to his board of directors, Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.

I’ve had the privilege of knowing Dan for over 10 years and we’ve talked a lot about the company and his personal journey over the years. He certainly shared a lot of that in this conversation, and I hope the listeners appreciate how open he was with them. 

Before Kareo, Dan founded or co-founded a couple other companies.  He began his career at a couple well-known software and Internet companies, Visio and Real Networks, after he graduated from UCLA. Go Bruins!

Dan is a cheerleader for Orange County and has built a big family (5 kids) while building Kareo, so he’s super busy!  And so is his amazing wife, Kate!

Dan's words of wisdom at the end were 3 things: "You've got to love what you do, and where you do it. (that's how you'll persevere through the challenges you'll face)  You really have to be honest with yourself about the opportunity, and your true north star to believe in.  And you have to have the tenacity and resilience to overcome. (often the entrepreneur gives up on the business instead of working through it).  With those 3 things, you can be successful."   Great perspective and advice, Dan!

Andrew Lyon joined the Accelerate OC show and was a great guest and fun conversation. He is the founding Dean of the new Dale & Sarah Ann Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University here in Orange County.  It’s super exciting to add a new engineering school here in Orange County, and especially at Chapman, which does everything in such a world class way.

Andrew had been the Dean of the College of Science & Technology there for several years, so this new engineering school is an expansion of the STEM work where Andrew is so passionate.

Andrew is also an entrepreneur, as the co-founder of a couple companies in the biomedical and therapeutics markets.  He’s active in our community as well as a board member of both OCTANe and the Beckman foundation.

Andrew spent several years in another innovation ecosystem, Atlanta, as chair of the chemistry and biochemistry school at Georgia Tech, a world-class institution.

He has great energy and excitement about Orange County as a destination for engineers to be trained, work, start companies and live and thrive.  

Listen to Andrew's tip to students to think about where they're going and how they're going to get there - "process over product." Great perspective!

It was a great pleasure to welcome Ray Grainger to Accelerate OC. He is the co-founder and CEO of Mavenlink, a fast-growing software company in the services business management and collaboration space.  

He’s also a graduate of highly distinguished school, Harvey Mudd College, where he’s been a trustee now for many years.

He was a Managing Partner at Accenture for nearly 20 years before starting Mavenlink, and that experience provided much of the idea kernels for starting the company.

Ray started Mavenlink in 2009, and over the last 10 years has had an amazing run in building Mavenlink, headquartered here in Orange County.  I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Ray nearly the entire time he’s been on this journey and have been so impressed with his leadership and energy, and his support of the OC tech community along the way.

Ray has built an amazing team and company, and is doing his part to Accelerate OC!

Great quote he shared from Ernest Shackleton: "By endurance we conquer."  Such a powerful message! 

Michael has been an active member of the tech community here for many years as an investors, advisor, mentor, coach, cheerleader and entrepreneur.  He has been one of the most active and available people to startup entrepreneurs in Orange County.  He started the business incubator Fast Start Studio in 2012, which we talk a lot about on this episode.

He’s active with Tech Coast Venture Network, TIE Orange County, Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Entrepreneurship, and he now teaches there as well as at Irvine Valley College.

Before all of that he was a super successful entrepreneur as the founder of AIM Mail Centers, which he started, grew and ran for 25 years before selling it in 2011. 

Michael is an amazing guy and inspires me every time we meet.

Scott has a huge heart for entrepreneurs and the Orange County tech startup community.  In 2018 he founded the Orange County Startup Council to provide a resource for the various pillars of the community - startup entrepreneurs, investors, partners and potential customers - with the goal to help startups thrive and grow here.  He is building momentum with it and helping to Accelerate OC startups!

He also hosts a regular startup founder mastermind group and is a member of Tech Coast Angels.  Join the conversation that Scott and I have about the many resources here and ideas to keep building our ecosystem.

Visit: Orange County Startup Council

Kyle is one of the most accomplished professionals in the mortgage industry, even at his young age, and he shares his experience and learning from starting Cloudvirga and growing it rapidly over the last few years.  He is absolutely one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative entrepreneurs in Orange County!

What's the biggest lesson Kyle has learned so far in this Cloudvirga adventure?

"The people. Invest in the emotional IQ of the people. What you have is a family, treat it as such."