Dr. Mike Daley - Founder of OrthogenRX
Bilt215
Dr Mike Daley has a big personality to go along with his big company exit. But his seeming overnight success was years in the making. He spent decades assembling advanced degrees and making money for Big Pharma before deciding at the ripe age of 62 to become an entrepreneur and launch his company Orthogenrx. Dr Daley literally liquidated his retirement plans, raised a few million from investors and bet the farm on importing an injection for knee pain already used widely overseas. Seizing the opportunity to exploit a rarely used FDA process loophole he was able to fast track the approvals and...
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Dan Dimitri - Founder/CEO of PharmaForce
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After spending 20+ years as a project manager for giants Kaiser Permanente and McKesson he paused to find a problem that he could solve with a new business. He took a deep dive into interviewing clients to find aches and pains that he could capitalize on. After much research and a chance encounter with an investor-backer he launched PharmaForce with the mission to deliver flexible technology solutions for pharmacies, providers and patients demanding greater transparency and lower costs. After a mere 7 years he recently had a very successful exit to a PE firm. Tune in to hear Dan’s story on...
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Sylvester Mobley — Founder and CEO of Coded by Kids
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Sylvester Mobley is the Founder and CEO of the youth tech education non-profit, Coded by Kids. Through his organization he works to increase access to tech education opportunities for those who are underrepresented in tech, especially children of color. Under his leadership, Coded by Kids has grown from serving fewer than 15 children in a rec center to serving more than 500 students per week. Tech has a lot of great benefits but there are still groups of people being locked out of it.
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Felicite Moorman — CEO of STRATIS IoT
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Felicite Moorman is the CEO and co-Founder of STRATIS IoT, the only Sidewalk to Sofa® Intelligent Building Solution built for Multifamily and Student Housing. STRATIS helps create smart apartments and intelligent buildings built for the complexities of split multi-family and student housing. Serving over 325,000 apartments in the US, and over 18,000 internationally, STRATIS is poised for more growth in the future.
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Mahe Bayireddi — Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People
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Mahe Bayireddi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People, a global HR technology company with a mission to help 1 billion people find the right job. With over 200 million people using the product in 140 countries, including 50 of the Fortune 500 companies, Mahe is well on his way to achieving his goal of revolutionizing the talent life cycle through technologies, specifically AI.
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Nader Elm — Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies
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Nader Elm is the Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies, a commercialization of the technology spun out of GRASP Labs (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania). Since its founding in 2014, Exyn has become the world leader in autonomous data acquisition using drone technology.
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Bill Yoh — Co-Owner of Day and Zimmermann, Author, Chairman of Yoh Group
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Bill Yoh is the youngest of five children born to Spike Yoh. Bill's grandfather, Harold, helped build the Philadelphia-based business that is now in its 5th generation, Day & Zimmermann. Founded in 1901 as a fledgling staffing company for engineers, it has grown into a massive organization of 45,000 employees globally and nearly $3 billion in revenue, making it one of the biggest privately held companies in the US and the world.
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Mike Hagan — Founder, Operator, Investor and CEO of Hawk Capital
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Mike Hagan is a founder, operator and wildly successful investor in a variety of companies. He has repeatedly proven his ability to create or invest in a company, scale it and successfully exit. His venture was the B2B procurement WebHost VerticalNet, which hit a market capital peak of $11 billion. Unfortunately, Vertical Net ended in flames like many other dot.com companies at the turn of the millennium.
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Bob Moore — Serial Entrepreneur and CEO of Crossbeam
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Bob Moore is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience, who started his first business venture when he was at Princeton. In the early 2000s, as online poker was becoming popular, Bob jumped on an observation he made to create the Mooraculator to computerize what his peers were calculating in their heads to level the playing field for others who wanted to make money playing poker.
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Dean Miller — President and CEO of PACT
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Dean Miller has been a venture capitalist for over 20 years, with particular interest in the healthcare technology and innovations space. Brought up in upstate New York, his early experiences shaped him for independence and entrepreneurship. Dean served as Managing Director at Novitas Capital, where he focused on venture capital investments across healthcare and technology.
info_outlineChris Cera, is the CEO of Arcweb Technologies, a consulting company serving the bespoke needs of its financial and healthcare customers, founded in 2011. This is his fourth startup — his first venture was Vuzit. Chris shares more about the rise and fall of Vuzit over its 8-year lifespan as well as his two other ventures that did not become viable businesses. Chris and Kevin discuss his latest venture, Arcweb — how it is serving the marketplace and some of the challenges he faces in the industry, as well as the unique company culture that sets it apart. As the founder of Philly Startup Leaders whose mission is to develop Philadelphia as a place where everyone can achieve their entrepreneurial potential, Chris reveals some of his hopes for Philadelphia in the future. Tune in to find out more!
Key Takeaways:
[1:19] Kevin introduces his guest for this episode — Chris Cera.
[4:00] Kevin and Chris go through a speed round of five quick questions.
[5:52] What do the letters A, R, C mean in Arcweb? Chris explains more about the name and brand of his company.
[8:44] What is Arcweb and where does it fit in the market?
[10:21] Kevin and Chris discuss the importance of considering the user when it comes to UX.
[13:42] Chris shares a real world case study to illustrate Arcweb's 4D process with Penn Medicine.
[22:52] In the medical industry, faxes are seen as more secure than digital alternatives. What have been Chris' challenges on that front?
[25:47] Chris has "founded" four companies, but only two became viable businesses. What happened to the other two?
[30:02] Chris and Kevin discuss if entrepreneurs are born or made.
[33:46] When did Chris change the name of his business to Vuzit?
[35:05] The two products that made up Vuzit were online document viewer and document security system. How did Chris market these products?
[38:22] How did Chris come up with the idea for Vuzit to begin with?
[44:16] Chris reveals some of his naivety in starting Vuzit that didn't take into consideration how to generate revenue.
[47:00] What caused Vuzit to ultimately fail?
[52:27] How did Chris cope with the "dark days" of his business?
[58:59] When Chris started Arcweb, he decided to run his company without partners, without external money. Has he stayed that course?
[1:08:25] How did Chris leverage his network with the Philly Startup Leaders and Indy Hall?
[1:12:04] How did Chris get vendors in the beginning?
[1:13:14] What are some of the unique aspects of Arcweb's company culture?
[1:23:23] Chris and Kevin discuss some of the challenges that having a whistle blower policy helps address.
[1:26:17] How does Chris guard his time and say 'yes' to the right things?
[1:31:19] What are two things Chris would change in the next 100 days if he were made mayor?
Links:
UX is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it isn't that good.
We're All Born Entrepreneurs, by Steve Welch
The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz
Ben Franklin Technology Partners
EMyth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber
Tim Ferriss Show: Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism (#355)