Libsyn Directory

Sashi Reddi — Founder and CEO of AppLabs and SRI Capital

Release Date: 10/16/2019

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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...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

More Episodes

Sashi Reddi was born in Madras, today known as Chennai, India. He graduated with a Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi), a Masters of Computer Science from NYU and a PhD in Operations and Information Management from UPenn (Wharton). Over 30 years ago, Sashi seized the opportunity to move to the US and began putting down roots there. He shares his journey of entrepreneurship from the web content management space with EZPower Systems, to the software testing space with AppLabs, to the investment sphere with SRI Capital. Sashi provides insights into what India was like when he was growing up in terms of technology, economy, and opportunity, as well as how things have changed over the years. Tune in to find out more about Sashi’s current investment projects, and his thoughts about the lessons he has learned over the years.

Key Takeaways:

[2:58] Kevin does a speed round with Sashi Reddi.
[7:51] Sashi has an impressive educational background. He shares more about his educational trajectory from India to the US to his PhD.
[12:49] What was the economic, technological, and enthronement in India like when Sashi was growing up there?
[15:34] How did Sashi decide to stay "where he was planted" on the East Coast instead of heading to the site of action as the Internet was being born?
[18:40] Why did Sashi decide to exit his web content management company so quickly, and why was he attracted to DocuCorp?
[20:46] When did Sashi start AppLabs?
[21:50] What was the problem Sashi was trying to solve with AppLabs and how did he approach it?
[24:30] How was AppLabs structured?
[27:28] What were some challenges AppLabs faced in convincing Sequoia?
[29:16] How did Sashi grow his company from 5 employees to 2500 employees, from $10 million to $110 million in such a short time?
[31:46] Sashi shares some of his insights from working in a large company.
[33:11] Sashi entered the world of investments with SRI Capital. What elements does Sashi look for in his investment decisions? He shares his process of investing from his family office to starting SRI Capital.
[38:05] What is a strong offline customer acquisition strategy?
[40:58] Sashi explains more about Fakespot.
[45:33] Kevin and Sashi discuss the potential of Foyr.
[48:15] Another of Sashi's investments is SoftWear Automation Inc.
[50:35] What is TiE?
[53:57] What is the story behind Sashi's investment in Thinci?
[59:42] What is Sashi's involvement in the consumer tech space?
[1:06:11] What are LetsMD and FITSO? Sashi explains how they are business models that may not work in the US but make perfect sense in the Indian market.
[1:11:58] Indian Money is a financial advisory services company in India, which clearly shows the scale of the market in India.
[1:14:17] What is the story behind PhenomPeople, a local success story?
[1:15:29] As Sashi looks back on the past 20 years, who was a major influencer or inspiration?
[1:17:23] What is Sashi's opinion on whether entrepreneurs are born or made?
[1:18:48] How does Sashi feel about investing in an entrepreneur's dreams but not being able to interfere?