PIEdcast, a podcast from PIE PIE

In this episode, the tables are turned, as PIE mentor in residence Kasey Jones interviews Rick Turoczy, cofounder and general manager of PIE, about the motivations behind experimenting with podcasting for the PIE family, the Portland startup community, and the broader startup community in general. 

During this pleasantly meandering conversation, Leah Noble Davidson — Chief Experience Officer at Because Human — and I will explore topics ranging from mobile phone hardware design to publishing poetry to MIT design challenges in the time of a pandemic to how it all really comes down to timing. And a few things in between.

Leah has consulted within Portland’s startup tech industry for 10 years, working with larger teams from Jive and Puppet to startups like Torch and BeyondPulse.

Having newly ventured into the role of a founder, she’ll be asking questions from the perspective of a female design professional who can speak the language — but is only now really learning how to juggle the risks and rewards firsthand.

Named as one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 100 Powerful Women in Business, Shelly Bell is a computer scientist, system disruptor and business strategist who moves ideas to profit while empowering people to live to build and foster better relationships. She connects entrepreneurs, investors, and corporations in order to diversify their talent pipeline, increase equity and grow their brands.

Shelly is among the nation's most sought-after transformational speakers in the DC Metro area with features in Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Business Journal, NewsOne, Entrepreneur Mag, People of Color in Tech and on Politico Live.

Her organization, Black Girl Ventures (BGV) is a culturally converging ecosystem igniting economic security, civic engagement, and hyperlocal infrastructure at the intersection of STEM education and entrepreneurship for Black and Brown woman-identifying founders, funders, and veterans. Since 2016, BGV has funded 41 women, increased access to social capital for 168 program participants and launched their efforts in 10 cities. As a one of 8 Google Gurus across the nation and an Ecosystem Builder, she engages audiences from grassroots to government.

Through Shelly’s Return on Relationship (R.O.R) Method she is teaching intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, and wantrepreneurs how to hold the ladder for others and/or how to find the person they need to hold the ladder toward moving to the next level of success. She has trained over 5,000 entrepreneurs, held over 300 events for empowering leaders, managed multi-million dollar contracts, and helped to scale over 200 businesses.

For the entire conversation, visit https://youtu.be/dlDkW9wW2N0

Please join us with a former founder who has seen the ups and downs of the economy for insights on what to suspect — and some guidance that may help you navigate this new normal.

Elia Freedman was founder and CEO of Infinity Softworks, which he started in 1997 as a senior in college, leveraging both his business training and programming ability. The company has helped more than 20 million professionals and students in real estate, financial services, math and science who use calculation every day to solve problems and generate proposals, both in the field and at their desk.

The company's primary app, PowerOne, has been in existence as apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Windows computers for more 20 years, Infinity Softworks re-launched PowerOne as a web and mobile service in 2018.

As a founder, Elia  weathered both the dotcom bust and the mortgage crisis. Which is sure to inform a unique vantage on our current state of existence within a pandemic ravaged economy.

For the entire conversation, visit https://piepdx.com/youtube

With the onset of quarantine and social distancing, many of us have been settling into a somewhat surreal semblance of remote work. It doesn't feel quite right. But we're doing our best to fake it. And because of that we're not really working from home.

PIE wants to help. That's why we've assembled a panel of PIE mentors: one who helps lead a successful remote only company, one who has worked as a remote employee for a decade while working alongside an online school student, and one who has assembled the most fervent community of remote workers on the planet — all while leading a remote company, himself.

Join these incredibly insightful PIE mentors for an open and honest discussion about how to be truly successful as a remote employee. And how to manage remote teams. And deal with all the life that happens when that life all happens in a single place.

Invited panelists


Barrett Brooks, ConvertKit
Cami Kaos, Automattic
Darren Buckner, Workfrom

Full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPzMoKczEaE

Everyone needs hobbies. And if you follow PIE mentor Nick Lambert on Instagram, you'll see that the pandemic has been a good time for him to reboot a few of them: music, cooking, ridiculous short films… we all deal with this stuff differently.

We're happy to have Nick take moment away from his more creative efforts to join us for an "Ask Me Anything" session. Being a former startup founder, startup accelerator manager, and professional musician — and currently Customer Success Manager at local VR/AR/XR startup The Wild — we've got a wide range of topics at our disposal.

To hear the whole interview, visit https://www.crowdcast.io/e/founder-nick-lambert-ama