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A behind-the-scenes look at company building from the perspective of builders themselves - this is how we operate! With host Carey Ransom.
Episodes
Saturday Nov 09, 2019
Saturday Nov 09, 2019
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.
Friday Nov 01, 2019
Friday Nov 01, 2019
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!
Thursday Oct 31, 2019
Thursday Oct 31, 2019
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.
Wednesday Oct 23, 2019
Wednesday Oct 23, 2019
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.
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
Wednesday Oct 16, 2019
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.
Monday Oct 14, 2019
Monday Oct 14, 2019
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.
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
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.
Monday Sep 23, 2019
Monday Sep 23, 2019
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.
Friday Sep 20, 2019
Friday Sep 20, 2019
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.
Monday Sep 16, 2019
Monday Sep 16, 2019
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.