Disruptive Ceo Nation

Dorian founded Squirro ten years ago, a company that focuses on building insight engines for financial institutions, to aid them in the process of analyzing and working with unstructured data. In the past ten years Squirro has established itself as a successful competitor in the industry and has been recognised by Gartner as a Visionary in their Magic Quadrant report. Apart from winning numerous awards such as; the Big Innovation AI Excellence Award, the SEF4KMU Label by the Swiss Economic Forum and many more, Squirro is also proud to count the likes of Bank of England, European Central Bank and Standard Chartered to its clients.   Dorian himself has been selected among the top 100 Digital Shapers in Switzerland for the past three years and therefore was inducted into the “Hall of Fame'' by Bilanz & Le Temps. Dorian has also been named among the top 30 Digital Leaders in Switzerland. For his entire professional career Dorian has looked for ways to innovate industries and has done this fortuitously with other

Steve Gallion launched his second company, MedTrainer. His mission was to empower healthcare organizations through compliance automation. He is passionate about supporting all healthcare organizations, which have been put under enormous pressure and demands. With a 100% customer-inspired product, internal healthcare thought leaders, and custom curated content, MedTrainer set out with a mission to solve healthcare’s largest problems using a single platform.  Today MedTrainer has grown to become a respected market leader in the healthcare community. MedTrainer’s success is attributed to over 200 dedicated healthcare SaaS professionals who strive to provide the best experience to our customers every day. MedTrainer and its management team continue to invest every day in the success of our people, culture, and customers, with a focus on our core mission: Being the best compliance solution for every healthcare organization. In our conversation, Steve Gallion explains: -       How Steve got started with the concept

At 24 years old, Jem Bourouh has spent the last four years launching and selling 7-8 figure eCommerce brands, with totals of more than $20 million in sales. After his massive success, he decided it was on to his next projects. He launched his marketing agency called Adcubator in 2018, which also acts as a VC and invests in smaller direct-to-consumer brands. Jem also has an education-focused entity called eCom Incubator. With extensive knowledge in marketing fundamentals, consumer behavior, branding and positioning, business strategy, media buying, copywriting, and creating landing pages, he and his team manage the entire Google Ads platform and take eCommerce businesses to million and multi-million-dollar success stories. His drive and motivation to dominate the industry make him an inspirational powerhouse with a talent for teaching others to think outside of the box and solve problems from a unique perspective. He leads with the belief that if you are working hard enough, it is not if you will succeed, but

Gillian O'Brien, Founder in Residence, Pilot, California, USA - Why companies can benefit from a Founder in Residence and why being loud about failure can lift up the startup community. At 27, Gillian has had more adventure in her career than others do in a lifetime.  Pilot serves over 1,000 customers who are founders and business leaders with their accounting, finance and accounting needs. Having a Founder in Residence helps deliver insight, empathy, and meaningful ideation for their customer base. Pilot has a staff of 400 people strong and is valued at over a billion dollars. In our conversation, Gillian O”Brien explains: Her experiences at Y Combinator and why founders need a community of supporters. Her first startup Cherry, an HR Saas business, and her willingness to be public and 'loud' about lessons learned in failure as she had to shut down the company at the beginning of the pandemic. Understanding resources needed by founders and helping them with investor conversations. Be sure to check out Gi

Rabi is changing the way companies show their thoughtfulness in a way that captivates and engages customers and employees. His company, EvaBot, runs on AI-squared: The Artificial Intelligence to get deeply personal and he Actionable Intelligence to make better business decisions. In other words, it's the intelligence behind thoughtfulness. Rabi is a serial entrepreneur. Working alongside his current founding team for 10+ years, they have used AI to build recommendation engines, social platforms and enterprise software. His first startup iDubba/iCouchapp was a “TV show recommendations + social engagement” app that had 2M+ monthly active users at the time it got acquired. Rabi then made a bold move to Silicon Valley to start a new company. While there, Rabi became frustrated that the ability to build relationships lacked technological innovation and intelligence. And so, EvaBot was born. EvaBot is an emotionally intelligent gifting relationship solution that enables thoughtful companies to accelerate the key r

Emily is an award-winning marketer and passionate entrepreneur who is empowering the next generation of work. She has reimagined the way projects are outsourced, creating the first agency marketplace for high-value, high-consideration transactions online. As Co-Founder of Breef, Emily uses innovative technology to empower brands and agencies to work better, together — improving productivity, business outcomes and relationships. Her leadership has grown the company's network to 5,000 digital and creative agencies globally with users in over 20 countries in less than two years, while securing significant venture funding for expansion. Prior to Breef, Emily brought early-stage startups into culture as a digital marketing leader, working with some of the most sought-after brands, including VSCO, POPSUGAR and S'well. Here she experienced firsthand the challenges in-house marketers face to keep up with the demands of modern marketing. In our conversation, Emily explains: -       How COVID and the opportunity of re

Ziga is the co-founder of Flowout, an Unlimited Webflow design & development subscription service. From an early age, Ziga was always passionate about entrepreneurship. After discovering the power of coding, he joined one of the fastest-growing marketing agencies in Slovenia straight after college where his career kicked off. With acquired knowledge and network, he went ahead and started multiple successful tech ventures. As a developer, Ziga saw the opportunity in the no-code space where his coding background gives him a big advantage. No-code tools helped him create new products and prototypes faster and with ease. This led him to be more successful in testing the market, finding a product-market fit, and thus solving consumer problems In our conversation, Ziga explains: -         His partnership with his co-founders and how it took a few failures to finally achieve the right formula for the business they were destined to build. -          The mission of Flowout, and how changing the pricing model to offer

Shriya Sekhsaria runs Lumhaa: The Memory Jar Company, which helps people create and save memories together in "memory jars" (online folders/albums). Lumhaa was founded based on her award-winning research from Princeton which showed that even 10 minutes with memory jars made people happy -- it's one of the first social media platforms (if not the only social media platform) that shows statistically significant improvements in psychological well-being. Aside from powering users across 190 countries (and ranking in Apple's Top 50 Social Apps in 90 countries), her company has helped a few dozen artists in Indian villages find dignified income through their physical memory jar product orders. Shriya is 25, currently lives in India, and has won awards like 2021 Superwoman of the Year award (in association with the Indian Govt) and 2020 STEM Woman Entrepreneur of the Year (AWIS In our conversation, Shriya explains: Why Shriya decided to create her company Lumhaa, and how she built her company up to where it is toda

Blima Ehrentreu is the Founder and CEO of The Designers Group, an interior design firm based in New York, Miami, and Toronto. As an MWBE (Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise) owner in the commercial real estate industry, she knew she had to build a brand that required acceptance and respect in such a male-dominated industry. Investing in the community and supporting women in the construction industry is something she is very passionate about. Blima opened The Designers Group in Toronto, Canada, back in 2009. After establishing the company in Canada, she took the company internationally by opening an office in New York in 2016. Cementing their presence in a design hub like New York proved to be a game-changer for The Designers Group. Since then, TDG has designed over 200 residential, healthcare, hospitality, and commercial projects. We have an incredibly diverse portfolio and are always looking for innovative ideas to stay on the cutting edge of design.  In our conversation, Blima explains: Bold ambitio

Vanessa Karel, is a second-time Founder, Serial Entrepreneur, Storyteller, and Creative Producer. She was recently named as one of the 100 rising Latinx Startup founders to watch through her work founding Greether; a travel startup that helps women travel safer. Vanessa is also currently leading Girls in Tech, San Francisco as their Manager Director. Born in the USA, raised in Mexico City. Growing up constantly traveling, Vanessa always found an interest in exploring different cultures and expanding horizons. In 2020, she finally realized what had been lacking throughout her solo journeys, while traveling alone being stranded in Morocco in the middle of the pandemic. Which led to her founding a safety platform for female travelers around the world named Greether. The platform targets some of the most important SDGs and sustainable UN development goals, which are to reduce safety risks for women and to increase income opportunities for them through sustainable tourism. Having only worked on Greether for a year

Melissa Bauknight is a multi-passionate entrepreneur, adventurer, mother, wife, and a Business and Life Coach. As a collegiate athlete, she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Finance and has since earned an applicable Ph.D. in Life. She garnered over 15 years of sales and business development experience in the corporate world working across 6 states and consistently performing in the top 10% of her peers. Having checked many boxes on her life goals list - traveling the world, achieving corporate success, marrying a loving husband, and starting a family, she still felt anxious and incomplete.  She knew there were untapped parts of her soul longing to be unleashed. Melissa chose to boldly follow that inner knowledge leaving her corporate career and went on to be in the top 1% of a social impact direct sales company, build a coaching business at The Ripple Connection, and coach over 1,000 women in sales, mindset, and life alignmen In our conversation, Melissa explains: -      The most admirable common traits

Josh Fraser, the founder and CEO of Estated (based in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada). Estated’s open-source API provides easy and transparent access for clients from a wide range of industries to integrate and implement property data into their workflows to start generating insights into their customers within minutes of signing up to our intuitive platform. Each property record contains hundreds of different data points from parcel and boundary information, structural building data such as square footage and roof type, historical deed information including sales and transfer of ownership, market value which uses an industry leading AVM to accurately valuate properties, taxes, and assessment data, as well as current ownership information. Estated works with a variety of industry leaders including State Farm, Capital One, Swiss RE as well as emerging proptech, real estate tech, and insurtech startups like Obie, Kin, and Blend Insurance.   In our conversation, Josh explains: -      How Estated operates and

Paulina Walkowiak is a co-founder & CEO of cux.io – the first-ever tool for UX Automation, a behavior, and user experience analysis application, currently operating in 102 countries. She's the only specialist training in behavior patterns analysis in CEE, who helps companies translate knowledge about users into specific business decisions. She supports enterprise-level organizations in data-driven transformations and developing analytical strategies. Paulina worked with, among others, TVN Media (Discovery Group), Prisjakt (Shibsted), and EFL. She's the author of the Product Analytics workshop “Data-driven design”, a TEDx speaker, and an academic lecturer. She has been featured twice in the Strong Women in IT 2019 and 2021 reports. Alongside her husband (and cux.io co-founder), she's won the 50 Most Creative People in Business Award. Furthermore, as a mom of two, she proudly calls herself #Mompreneur   In our conversation, Paulina Walkowiak explains: -       What lead Paulina to start her company and her inspi

Irete Hamdani is an entrepreneur and founder of askBelynda, a Google Chrome extension helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint by recommending sustainable products while they’re shopping online. She has a Computer Science MSc. with honors from Tel Aviv University and is an AWS Certified Associate Developer and Solution Architect. Irete uses her 25 years of tech experience to develop askBelynda. She believes in a greener future with the expansion of sustainable consumer goods. Irete resides in Denver, CO, with her husband and two daughters. In our conversation, explains: -       The importance of reducing your carbon footprint and how people can do this! -       Why Irete started her company and the different functions and services askBelynda provides! -       askBelynda’s team structure and overall management process.   Be sure to check out Irete’s listed below. Enjoy the show! Connect with Irete: Website- https://www.askbelynda.com   LinkedIn- https://www.iretehamdani.com/about   Connect with Allison:

When Christine Akselsen accepted her role as CEO of Kezzler, a leading product traceability technology provider, she set out to change the way that consumers and companies think about the global supply chain. It’s not just about getting an item to a buyer. It’s about ensuring that what they receive is safe, authentic, and produced sustainably. Fast forward to 2022: Amid a stagnant global supply chain, keeping track of products and assuring their quality can be the competitive edge that keeps an organization viable.  Kezzler’s traceability technology uses specialized codes on individual products to secure their validity. They utilize patented serialization technology to track products through their entire supply chains while ensuring the products we consume (such as food and pharmaceuticals) are safe prior to use. From source to consumer, data is associated with the product through the code.  In our conversation, Christine Akselsen explains: -      Christine’s role at Kezzler and the products Kezzler traces.

 Martin Luenendonk is a 3x serial entrepreneur who founded the Finance Club (community of 1.6m finance professionals), Cleverism.com, and Founderjar.com. He loves to share his learnings about business model generation, entrepreneurship, and digital marketing. A product of his generation, Martin thrives in the world of digital communication, which is why marketing is his natural calling. Always sprouting a smile on his face, he gets way too excited about everything new in the marketing world. FounderJar helps small businesses grow faster by choosing the right software tools and with practical in-depth guides on how to start and grow a business. In our conversation, Martin Luenendonk explains: -       What his company Founder Jar is and how it operates! -       The resources Founder Jar provides and how they help others start their own businesses. -       The advice Martin provides to fellow entrepreneurs and business owners.   Be sure to check out Martin’s listed below. Enjoy the show! Connect with Martin: Li

 Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom. Video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes.  Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund. Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites around the world today. Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences. In our conversation, Richard explain

Ben is the CEO of Message Lab, award winning storyteller, he’s showing businesses and content entrepreneurs how to use data to tell stories and build audiences that produce business growth results. He’s sharing how to overcome the cultural and organizational obstacles to doing content marketing well. Message Lab combines journalism, data and design to create content that resonates with the people their clients most need to reach. They believe engaging people around their interests is more effective than always trying to sell. They use their training as journalists to learn what people are interested in and then write, shoot and design stories they care about. They make sure the content they create reaches the right audience and apply a measurement framework that focuses on business outcomes to show their work gets meaningful results.  In our conversation, Ben explains: -       How to “talk right” when marketing your business and how to create a positive brand. -       Becoming a seller that makes customers fa

Andy has been in sales for over four decades. His first sales job was selling women’s shoes at JC Penney. In his professional career Andy has sold everything from computers to small businesses to complex communications systems that sold for tens of millions of dollars to some of the world’s largest enterprises. Andy closed hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services before starting his own company. He has grown and managed large sales teams from scratch. He has coached average performers into being top producers. Andy is #8 on LinkedIn’s list of the Top 50 Global Sales Experts to follow. More than 170,000 people have signed up to follow the advice he shares there. His podcast, Accelerate Your Sales!, is on the top of every list of the best sales podcasts with over 2 million downloads to date, and was on INC Magazine’s list of the top leadership podcasts. His two award-winning books, Zero-Time Selling and Amp Up Your Sales, were both Amazon best-sellers. In our conversation, Andy Paul explains: - 

An entrepreneur and thought leader in geospatial analytics and climate tech, Josh Gilbert is Co-Founder and CEO at Sust Global. He has spoken on these topics at events such as COP26 in Glasgow, and has helped Fortune 500 companies, NGOs and the UK Government to integrate cutting edge climate technologies. Sust Global’s mission is to democratize access to satellite-validated climate data, and Josh developed his idea for Sust Global through first-hand experience working with climate innovation and geospatial technology sets. His previous experience includes his role as Environment and Resources Lead at Cleantech Group, go-to-market consulting at Orbital Insight, where he helped launch the market-leading Orbital Go product. In our conversation, Josh explains: Transforming climate complexity into business intelligence. The climate risks Josh’s company looks into and how they help companies manage their supply chains through these risks.  How Josh’s team operates and Sust Global’s company culture.  Be sure to