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Born in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, Rosemary Tan has built a successful property development company in Malaysia. Her company, Palam Mesra, builds environmentally-friendly, elderly-friendly, handicapped-friendly buildings and homes. As a young child, she experienced firsthand some of the challenges to living in traditional homes through her own mother, who was confined to a wheelchair throughout Rosemary’s life.  Inspired by her mother’s dream—to live in a home with 2 floors that she could easily access—Rosemary began a successful career as an entrepreneur after studying business and interior design in college. As a college student, Rosemary visited model homes on weekends to see inside the new homes and to marvel at their interior design. Her curiosity and interest in interior design, combined with her passion to create sustainable, handicap-friendly family homes, led her to begin Palam Mesra, which is now a successful boutique property development company in Malaysia.  Rosemary was also the global chairman for Entrepreneurs' Organization from 2011-2014, where she's been a member since 1997. In this episode we discuss Rosemary's journey as an entrepreneur. We focus a lot about building a business in entrepreneur friendly Malaysia. She believes this is a great time for young entrepreneurs to come to Malaysia and build their dream company because of the great tax breaks that foreign ent

In Episode #14 we talk with John Gamba   John is a seasoned entrepreneur with a passion for converting disruptive ideas into high growth and industry transforming ventures. He has founded, funded, managed and helped exit several Internet companies in the education, real estate and media space. He enjoys working with fast paced, brand recognized and results-driven organizations.   One of John's successes was a company that he started called Partnership for Community Excellence. PACE allowed a school administrator to record

Yann is an Entrepreneur that has worked on both sides of the table. He has started, advised and supported several startups throughout the world and has lived and worked in China, New York and Germany.He has worked together with several accelerators and incubators, such as hub:raum (Berlin & Krakow), Wayra CEE (Prague, Munich), Traction Tribe (Silicon Valley & Budapest), Startlabs (Silicon Valley & Belgrade) and a few more. Yann supported them and their teams in the area of sales, business development, growth or personal branding.He is also a frequent speaker at some of Germany's most renowned entrepreneurship institutions and universities.His work was featured and supported by several entrepreneurship outlets throughout the world (e.g. Startup Digest, NextBigWhat India, Founder Institute, German Silicon Valley Accelerator, Lean Startup Circle San Francisco and many more).Yann currently also advises a handful of tech and non-tech startups and just finished writing his second book about entrepreneurship & startups called "Confessions Of An Entrepreneur". Needless to say its pretty busy.A fan of photography he loves to travel and always tries to combine his biggest passions in life. You can never be sure where to find him on this planet earth.

In Episode #12 we talk with Optimal Health Warrior Ameer Rosic.   Ameer Rosic helps Entrepreneurs, athletes and top performers achieve Optimal Health in all aspects. He can help you Get in phenomenal shape, Upgrade your sleep, Boost your energy levels And get your mind in the right place. He's a Keynote Motivational and Health speaker giving lectures and workshops about Motivation, nutrition and mindset around the world.   Ameer has started an underwear company called Riparo Clothing. Riparo’s the modern men’s EMF clothing line, is set to protect men from harmful EMF radiation emitted by electronic devices. Their new line of EMF shielded underwear is designed to reduce EMF exposure by 99.99%. Their motto is "My balls are protected, are yous?   

In Episode #11 we talk with Michael Klanac and Jim Proulx from GripeO.   Michael Klanac is the Cofounder and CEO of GripeO.  In this role he's responsible for outlining the strategic vision of the company and web service as well as coordinating across various business areas to ensure efficient communication and continuous improvement. Within this capacity, he's also tasked with being a brand ambassador and maintain significant influence over the product concept, specifically to keep it focused on market and investor requirements.   Jim Proulx is the Cofounder and handles user experience at GripeO.  His strength lies in usability centric interactive design and information architecture. His style is  "clean," but every project is unique and every client its own en

In Episode #10 we talk with the Todd Brekhus   Todd is the President of Capstone Digital who also runs a startup within Capstone called myON. As President of Capstone Digital, Todd leads the digital product vision and strategy as the organization continues to expand its digital solutions in the education market.   Capstone Digital launched myON reader in January 2011. myON is the world's largest digital directory with over 4,000 interactive titles for grades pre-k through 12th. Think netflix for books in the education space. myOn is a personalized system that knows it's readers age, interests, and reading level. This allow them to recommend books based on these various factors.  myON reader has won several awards in the first year, including SIIA Innovation Most Likely to Succeed. myON is exceeding first year expectations as over 700,000 students have been reading over 3 million books online.

In Episode # 9 we talk with Oscar Pedroso.    Oscar is the Founder and CEO of Gradfly. Gradfly is a digital makerspace where you can build, share, and explore technical projects. Oscar began his entrepreneurial journey while working for the admissions office at the University of Rochester. There he noticed how there was not a good way for applicants to add projects that they've done in school so they would be noticed by the admission office. For example,You're a recent high school graduate looking to get into a school with a god computer science program. You submit your application, but the school has no way to know   You wouldn't have a good way to show your technical skills in a step by step approach. In comes Gradfly. With Gradfly, you can document the steps you took to develop a computer science program and share that through the cloud with Gradfly.    I was excited to bring Oscar on the show because  I wanted to interview an entrepreneur who recently started their first business. I think this is very important because his journey has just started as an entrepreneur and you can learn a ton from his story. We talked a lot about the importance of forming a team. He formed his first team during startup weekend, but that ended up not working. He f

  Bonus Episode: Live from Startup Weekend.    What is Startup Weekend? Startup weekend is a 54 hour event where developers, designers, marketers, product managers, business people, and aspiring entrepreneurs come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups. I got to witness first hand what a crazy and inspiring this event really is. The minute I walked into the room I felt this energy and buzz that can be explained, but I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about. Everyone was so friendly and enthusiastic that it made me want to share a business idea and form a team (maybe if I had time :)    I interviewed organizer, mentors, and the winners of this event and here are my takeaways from this experience.   

In Episode #8 we talk with Jed Friedrichsen.   Jed is the founder and CEO of the Blended Schools Network. Blended Schools Network helps schools maximize student engagement and achievement by providing rich, challenging, research-based online and blended learning K-12 curriculum, state-of-the-art technologies, and the highest quality professional development. Blended Schools Network spearheads thought leadership and innovation of school transformation through the use of online teaching, learning and assessment solutions.   In 2014, Blended Schools Network was acquired by the Sibling Group. Sibling Group Holdings, Inc. provides benchmark quality online curriculum for the K-12 marketplace, complete hosted course authoring tools, professional development for teachers, and learning management systems' administration and support. 

In Episode # 7, we talk with Barbara Seymour Giordano.   Barbara is the founder and CEO of Story Works LA. As a Communications Strategist specializing in speech writing storytelling and presentation skills she's advised Fortune 500 executives, entrepreneurs, scientists and TED presenters on how to create global talks that unite, influence and inspire audiences worldwide.  During her career, she's worked as an assignment editor with CNN and E! Entertainment Television as well as produced internal videos, global sales meetings and events for Amgen, Cisco Systems, and Nike to name a few.    What I loved about this episode, is how she breaks down the art of storytelling. Y

In episode #4 we talk with Bill Kallman.    Bill Kallman is Entrepreneurial innovative executive with twenty five years experience in technology ventures as founder, executive, CEO, board member, chairman, and venture capitalist. Record of launching companies and technologies that reinvent online communication. Raised $75 million, attracted $125 million in co-investment, achieved $400 million in liquidity events. Served on eleven boards.  Co-Founder. Former Director, Chairman and CEO of Scayl from inception to January 2014. Scayl P2P email is the fastest way to send unlimited size files to one or many, most privately and securely at lowest cost with an easy to use social email experience in which users own their inbox and contact profiles locally.Co-founded Timberline Ventures, one of the earliest affiliates in the Draper Fisher Jurvetson venture network - DFJ, backer of Baidu, Divx, D-Wave, Hotmail, Skype, SpaceX, Tango and Tesla. 

In episode #6 we talk with Entrepreneur and Mentor for High Tech Startups Matt Foley    Matt helps businesses develop online communities and social networks for market research and consumer insights. his experience is across a wide range of qualitative market research methodologies (beyond online research communities), including traditional in-person focus groups, in-depth interviews, usability testing, eye tracking, ethnography studies, contextual inquiry, online bulletin board focus groups, online chat-style focus groups.   Matt went to school at Boston University and majored in entrepreneurship. Matt Started a company called PluggedIn. PluggedIn was a specialty platform that focused in building and facilitating online communities for market research and consumer insight.  After 5 years, PluggedIn was acquired by Edelman PR in 2011. Since the acquisition, Matt has been spending his time as an advisor to the lean launchpad program in his Hometown Rochester, NY.  Plus, he's started a new product called FocusGroupIt. FocusGroupIt is the easy, fast, and free way to create online focus groups. 

In episode #5 we talk with Steve Coulton.   Steve has Ground floor experience building and running a start-up golf company. He an adviser to early stage emerging technology companies with a particular focus in medical, information technology and cleantech industries. He has past experience in finance and trading at an investment banking firm. His passion for life includes, art, languages, design, poker, golf, venture capital, traveling, social entrepreneurship, friends and family.   This was one of the most fun interviews I had. Steve and I share a passion for golf, but unlike him, I'm not very good. Steve shares his experience how his passion for golf helped open the universe to him starting Oncore Golf. Steve's passion for golf goes all the way back to his time working on a golf course. This lead to a life experience in golf which opened a door to meet his co-founder that introduced him to a new an innovative golf ball. This patented golf ball is made with a hollo

In episode #3 we talk with Alan Sullivan.   Alan Sullivan is a Founder and leader of Internet companies, innovator of products and services. Dedicated to building great companies with a focus on generating revenue via the Internet; creating platform adoption of Internet products while ensuring customer satisfaction. Knowledgeable about Internet businesses, including an extensive technical knowledge of system and platform interactions with Internet Service Provider and Network Operator networks. Alan Sullivan was one of the first pioneers of the DNS. An innovator, technologist and businessman who has been directly involved in the technology of the Internet since 1997, right at the inception of the domain name system. He built the registry systems for .biz and .us during his time with Neustar as well as creating one of the very first registrar systems to service the emerging domain name market with NameEngine (Verisign). There a few people that have such deep knowledge of the nuts and bolts of how this industry works at so many levels than Alan, having built a registry, a registrar, an affiliate network, systems for ISPs, as well as successfully building and launching a number of startups in this space. Alan graduated from the University of Rochester with a BS in Neuroscience, and he graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a MS in Computer Science. Alan also has a number of patents in the industry.

In episode #2 we talk with John Katzman.    John Katzman is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three education tech companies. While john was in college he realized how much he loves to tutor people especially when it comes to SAT prep. More importantly he realized that people are willing to pay a premium price for a service like this. In 1981, he founded the Princeton review. John would be the Chairman and CEO for the next 25 years. In 2014, the Princeton Review was bought by Tutor.com.   After the Princeton review, John went on to start 2U (formerly 2tor,inc.). 2U helps universities create and run high quality online graduate programs. High quality university clients include UNC, USC, George Washington University, and Georgetown University. In 2014, 2U went public by selling 9.2% of their shares for $119.3 million.   

In episode #1 we talk with David Brown.    David Brown is a serial entrepreneur who has started three different companies. David is very passionate about helping entrepreneurs which led him to starting an accelerator called TechStars. TechStars provides $118,000 in seed funding, intensive mentorship, and an amazing network of mentors in exchange for 7-10% equity in your company.    What I loved about this episode is David's passion for entrepreneurship. He shared with us his vision for TechStars and what the criteria is to get accepted in the program. The biggest takeaway I got from that part of the conversation was "the team" is the most important aspect when having a chance to being accepted into the program. Their belief is an A team and B idea is far superior to a B team with an A idea. I love what these guys are doing at Techstars and their track record speaks for itself.