Let's Grab Coffee Podcast ‪☕‬ George Khalife

Samir Mirza is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Fifth Star Funds - a venture philanthropy fund investing in Black tech entrepreneurs at the pre-seed / "Friends & Family" stage in Chicago. He was formerly the Co-Founder and CTO of TapCommerce (acquired by Twitter for $100M).  

He began his career in Chicago consulting for Fortune 500 clients while building robust content management applications, APIs, and backend distributed systems. In 2012, he co-founded TapCommerce in New York and created the industry's first mobile ad retargeting solution. As the Chief Technology Officer, he led the engineering team and built a backend platform that processes over 40 billion ad auctions per day with the ability to show ads to over 1 billion mobile users for the world's top mobile brands.   

Samir then lived in Berlin, Germany where he served as a coding instructor at the ReDI School for Refugees and worked as a consultant for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Digital Transformation Team.  Samir has a Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.  

To connect with Samir: https://www.fifthstarfunds.com/

Dan is on a mission to personalize nutrition by leveraging CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) and Machine Learning. In simple terms, Nutrisense helps reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes & heart disease, helping people shed unwanted weight, and advise athletes on how to become the best versions of themselves.

Website: https://www.nutrisense.io/

Chris Kelly is Owner of the Sandler Training® Center located in Toronto.

His firm works with Business Leaders, Sales Leaders, Sellers & Customer Care professionals who are serious about personal and professional success and willing to succeed through ongoing improvement and implementation of growth strategies, structure and skill.

Over the last decade, the typical Toronto based organisation that chooses to begin a conversation with Chris has some business success behind it. The leadership is growth minded and they have a belief that how they sell has a significant impact on their growth success.

Chris' consulting and delivery and process implementation is rooted in the Sandler methodology. Sandler Training is a world leader in innovative sales and sales management training.

You can contact Chris @ ckelly@sandler.com

Claude Cimeus is a close personal friend and peer within Chicago's entrepreneurial ecosystem. He's currently Director of Platform at P33 Chicago; a non-profit focused on driving inclusive growth for Chicago’s tech sector. Prior to that, Claude worked as a Product Manager at five startups and founded three of his own right out of high school. On the side, Claude enjoys bringing the startup world closer together by hosting fireside night chats with leaders in different industries as well as hosting in-person tech events via ChiTech IRL.  

To connect with Claude: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claude-ci

Check out ChiTech IRL events: https://twitter.com/ChiTechIRL

Swapnil is the CEO & Co-founder of Zeni.ai - Bookkeeping, Tax, and CFO Services Platform designed for Startup Founders. Zeni is his 3rd startup. He has built and sold two startups before. His first startup was Dhingana and his second startup was Mezi.

Venture Capital investor, CEO, Serial entrepreneur, a faculty member at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and Co-author of Exit Right.



Check out Mark's new book: https://amzn.to/3EGmqPS