The Entrepreneur Ethos Blue Wire, Jarie Bolander

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Krish Ramineni, CEO and founder of Fireflies.ai, a tool that takes notes - and more - to help knowledge workers be more productive. 
Krish got his start with Microsoft as a product manager after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He explains that his primary responsibility was having a lot of meetings. With meetings costing a lot in terms of money and time, Krish wanted to find a way to more easily record what happened during the meetings and be able to easily refer back to the conversations. For people who have 5-7 meetings per day, as much as 50% of the information gained from those meetings is lost. 
With the rise of Zoom and virtual meetings during the pandemic, it's no surprise that Fireflies AI took off. But, Krish says, it's actually seeing faster adoption now. The tool accrues value over time, Krish explains, as it builds up information and knowledge that you can go back to to analyze patterns and find key details. Krish is also dedicated to providing transparency with the product, explaining that everyone in the meeting knows the tool is being used. In fact, it is its visibility that has helped make it such a success. Another tool, Ask Fred, takes the usability of Fireflies even further by providing a way to easily search for information from the knowledge base created by Fireflies. 
Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Krish noticed something in how he and others worked that he thought he could improve on. While ultimately the company may branch out, he is currently focused on helping people in similar experiences as himself - the business professional. 

While Fireflies AI is not the only notetaking AI tool out there, Krish and his cofounder are clearly steered by their values, which means they provide a transparent solution for business meetings in order to help people be more productive and creative. While Krish also sees opportunities for branching out in order to grow in the future, he is focusing on what they can do right now. 

The time of simply churning out content is giving way to offering unique content. Krish sees Fireflies and other AI tools help access more unique content to help different brands stand out. 

 Links to Explore Further


Krish Ramineni on LinkedIn 

Fireflies on Twitter

Fireflies AI website


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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guests for today, Aakash Shah and Damian Felchlin, founders of High Time Foods, a company that provides meat alternatives to the food industry.
They met in business school at Babson College. Aakash is from India and Damian is from Switzerland, and both have backgrounds in the food industry. They saw a need for an alternative, shelf-stable protein source, so they played to their strengths. They won money at pitch competitions, enabling them to launch their company last year, with their first customer being a Mexican restaurant in Boston. 
The mission of High Time Foods is, as Damian says, very data-driven. They want to turn around the high level of carbon emissions caused by the meat industry while also helping people in circumstances where they don't have access to or can't afford refrigeration. They see their product as being attractive to "flexitarians," meat-eaters who are exploring plant-based alternatives. They ultimately hope that their product will be an affordable, sustainable option for meat, regardless of whether their customers are vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian.
Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Draw on your strengths. While both founders express some disenchantment with working in the food industry, finding a way to solve a problem around food was a good fit for their experiences and interests. 

Start where you know. They started focusing on the sales process they know — selling to chefs and restaurants — though they hope one day to go beyond that. 

Educate your customers. They understand the importance of educating the public about the environmental impact of meat while also providing a product that people will buy. They acknowledge the work other businesses have done in this area that have helped pave the way.

 Links to Explore Further

High Time Foods 

High Time Foods on Instagram

Damian Felchlin on LinkedIn

Aakash Shah on LinkedIn


And if you want to check out the vegan Mexican restaurant in Oakland I mentioned:
Vengazafoods.com

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Eleanor Beaton, a business coach for women entrepreneurs and former CEO of a communications consulting company. 
Eleanor explains how she went from journalist to starting her own business. Both of her businesses were prompted from someone else's suggestions, and in both cases she was skeptical but did it anyway. As she ran her business and sought ideas and support for growing it, she noticed that the coaching and training that existed seemed to mainly speak to men or were too superficial, what she calls "Cosmo-ification." The kinds of discussions male entrepreneurs were having were different from the discussions women were having, and she wondered why, and what women might be missing. 
Eleanor saw the issues women founders faced in her communications business, and she decided women needed support and help in ways that most of them were not getting. One observation she makes is that most of the teachings around entrepreneurship have come out of Silicon Valley and tech entrepreneurship. But service-based businesses, of which many women have, aren't being served well by these teachings. 
Eleanor's observations, questions and frustrations led her to starting a podcast and developing other resources for women entrepreneurs, which has become Safi Media. She seeks to make a space where women can talk to other women entrepreneurs and learn from each other, breaking out of the "bro" culture of entrepreneurship. 
Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Eleanor describes how she met suggestions from others with skepticism. However, she tried out starting her own business and hasn't looked back. Sometimes what might be holding us back is our own discomfort and judgments. 

There are limits to scaling a service-based business. If you're not sure how to grow your business, it might be time to approach things differently. Get help. 

Consider if there's a segment of the market whose needs aren't being met. How can you help that segment? What might you need to do differently? 

 Links to Explore Further

Safi Media

Podcast: Power+Presence+Position

Eleanor Beaton on LinkedIn

Eleanor on Twitter

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Summary
Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I’ll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening.

Now on to my guest for today, Kim Sorrelle, a longtime entrepreneur, director of the humanitarian organization Rays of Hope for Haiti and author.
Kim's first and second book were written in wake of tragedy. In this podcast, Kim opens up about her experiences with her husband being diagnosed with cancer, followed by her husband's death just six weeks later. Married out of high school, Kim built a life and family with her husband by her side. To cope with the experiences and grief, Kim wrote and shared her writings by email. That resulted in her first book, Cry Until You Laugh. 
Her second book, Love Is, draws on Kim's experiences of losing her husband and also her humanitarian work in Haiti after its disastrous earthquake. It was written in response to her search for the real meaning of love, using the famous Biblical verse from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 that starts, "Love is patient, love is kind" as a guidepost.
While there's no magic answer for getting over the devastating loss of someone you love, Kim offers some good insight into how she has coped with grief, including deciding to choose the things you can control and being of service, which gives her purpose. 



Now, let’s get better together.
Actionable Insights

Kim says, "You have permission to live a great life." She emphasizes that crying is a natural expression of grief, and that it's also okay to laugh, too. 

Getting cancer and losing a spouse are not things anyone can control. Instead Kim focuses on things she can control, and focuses on what she needs to do to be happy. 

Being of service can be the greatest healer. It's also good business. 

 Links to Explore Further

Kim's website

Kim Sorrelle on LinkedIn

Book link for Love Is


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Hello everyone and welcome back to a miniseries I’m doing called A Personal History of Silicon Valley Recessions.
This is a five part series of what it was like to go through two (and now starting three) recessions in Silicon Valley.
This is part five titled Supply Chain Woes + War Spikes Inflation.
If you’re just turning in, I’d highly recommend listening to the first four episodes to get a sense of what I’m talking about.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to a miniseries I’m doing called A Personal History of Silicon Valley Recessions.
This is a five part series of what it was like to go through two (and now starting three) recessions in Silicon Valley.
This is part four titled Global Pandemic Recession and it’s about the recession that the COVID-19 created when the world shut down overnight.
If you’re just tuning in, I’d highly recommend listening to the other three parts so you get the Full Monty so to speak.
Most of you listening know this one since you’re living through a version of it now. More on that in part 5.
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