Startup Mindsets Dan Gonzales

Dan catches up with one of the first startup founders he met while working as an analyst at VU Venture partners.



Circuit is an all-electric, on-demand, local shuttle service. Download the app & Ride Circuit. https://www.ridecircuit.com

Connect with Alex on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/espositoalexander



Interested in sponsoring this podcast via strategic ad placement? Give us a holler: ⁠https://www.startupmindsets.com/contact



Time Stamps

2:45 What is Circuit? On demand shuttle service focused on small trips 

10:00 Selling advertisers

19:00 Operating and scaling a mobility operation, 

20:00 Moving 150K passengers a month 

21:25: Thoughts on autonomous cars 

27:00 When was your first Uber ride?

34:10: Getting first customer and starting the company

35:10 testing out an idea for a company and keeping desk jobs until it made sense financially to leave

Taking out 3 car notes to start the business 

38:00 Closing first advertiser for 10K 

44:00 Differences of working as an employee of a company vs being a founder



Get in touch with Startup Mindsets/Dan. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners on our⁠ Substack email list⁠.

Website: ⁠https://www.startupmindsets.com⁠

Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/dan.podcasts⁠

Youtube: ⁠https://youtube.com/@startupmindsets⁠

Linkedin:⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangonzales1

Ed Latimore is a writer, physicist, and Professional Heavyweight Boxer. He's been on the world's top podcasts such as Fresh n Fit, Knowledge Project, and Modern Wisdom. It was an honor to interview Ed and we're delighted to share our conversation.



Ed's Website: https://edlatimore.com

Learn how to control your mind, body, and emotions with my Stoic Street-Smarts Newsletter

Follow Ed on X: https://x.com/EdLatimore



Get in touch with Startup Mindsets/Dan. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners on our Substack email list.

Website: https://www.startupmindsets.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dan.podcasts

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@startupmindsets

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangonzales1



Interested in sponsoring this podcast via strategic ad placement? Give us a holler: https://www.startupmindsets.com/contact



Time Stamps

(14:34) If you don’t take a risk, there’s no way to get tough. 

(30:11) Approach 1,000 women to get with 100.

Approach to a formidable situation. There’s an a symmetrical ROI

(39:54) Getting quoted by Steven of Diary of CEO

(40:32) Getting quoted by James Clear

(46:32) Setting limitations, Why people do it

(50:32) Era of humanity we’re in is way different

(64:40) We only see the highlights not the downs on social media

Francis Lacoste speaks about how he fuels growth for VPs of Engineering as a coach. Drawing from decades of startup experience at Heroku and Salesforce, Francis puts into practice operational principles that help teams scale past 20 employees.

He coaches technical executives to become leaders who nurture amazing engineering cultures by helping CTOs transition from “building the product" into “building the org that builds the product”.



Before coaching, he spent over twenty-five years in the open-source and cloud developer tools industry. He started as a software engineer working on open-source technology. He transitioned into engineering management at Canonical. Francis' experience with remote environment led him to Heroku where he built the remote engineering culture.

In 2019, he realized that the engineering management path wasn't fulfilling to me, and moved into a role dedicated to supporting the engineering culture within the Salesforce Platform.- He's worked remotely for 24 years.

Interested in promoting your product/service via sponsoring the podcast? Fill out this form.

Learn more about at https://thevpe.coach




“Thank you for tuning in today! If you found our discussion insightful, there's a good chance your friends will too. We'd love it if you could take a moment to share this episode with a loved one who you believe would appreciate it. It's an easy way to spread the word, and it helps our podcast reach more people just like you.”

In this podcast episode, Dan catches up with Rene Morkos, CEO of Alice Technologies about his company's advancements in construction scheduling and simulation.

Rene highlights the invention of a parametric scheduler and simulator, which now deploys 100 times faster, and the unexpected optimization of schedules with their software. The company has seen positive beta feedback and a shorter sales cycle.


Morkos discusses targeting conferences for customer acquisition, maintaining company culture in a distributed team, and the complexities of scaling and managing a growing organization.
The episode delves into Alice Technologies' impact on the construction industry and its commitment to continuous innovation.
Entrepreneurs shouldn't value themselves based on how well a company performs.


ALICE Core harnesses the power of optioneering to find the most efficient construction paths, all based on your existing P6 or Oracle Primavera Cloud schedule.

David Gaz is the founder and creative director behind several successful ventures, including the award-winning documentary "Kindness Is Contagious" and The Bureau of Small Projects, a branding agency dedicated to amplifying the impact of small businesses, startups, and nonprofits.

The Bureau of Small Projects is a think tank of sorts. They're rated in the top 5 agencies in the Los Angeles area for branding and marketing.

Their clients are not these well known brands but unknown organizations struggling to make a difference or well known people in their own right with noble missions, but not huge budgets, like Animal Planet Star Jackson Galaxy who has an incredible nonprofit to help at-risk shelter cats, or Bill Nye the Science Guy.

The Bureau Of Small Projects started as an incubator within their old firm and it was so successful that it actually out-performed the parent company so in the spring of 2014, they spun The Bureau Of Small Projects off into its own company.

Kindness is central to our brand values and our vision.


Attract Don't Sell, Create attractors (15:30)

Problems Scaling a company (18:30) A $100,000 Problem

Learning how to Trust and Delegate to employees (25:18)

Pricing a service: websites, marketing (30:00)

You can't fail if you don't quit (43:00)

How word of mouth of one client lead to AI startups becoming their clients (48:00)

A film on luck (01:08:33)

Hear how Kindness is Contagious

Be a path, not a goal person

Our guest today is Dorothy Chang who has had an incredible career from venture capital, leading a successful nonprofit working with celebrities and billionaires to being an entrepreneur. She shares cool career stories and her take on being an entrepreneur, and lessons throughout her journey.

She's the Co-Founder of Lynx Collective - Supporting startup founders, helping them make their dreams come true: https://www.lynxcollective.com
Read their substack: https://lynxcollective.substack.com

Previously, as the President of Kode With Klossy, she worked with the org to empower young women to break into the tech industry.

Dorothy spent her career working in technology. Leading marketing and communications for category-leading technology startups and enterprises like Foursquare, Paxos, Brew Media.

In 2012, she was the first woman to startup a VC fund (Liberty City Ventures) investing in the crypto/blockchain space. I continue to angel invest and advise tech companies - especially where I can be supportive of emerging technologies (Web3, metaverse, etc), female founders and social impact.

Check out our new & improved website: startupmindsets.com