Mark Turner - Former Chair of WSFS Bank
BILT215
Over 25 years at WSFS Mark and his team grew WSFS 10 times in asset size, 20 times in revenue and profit, and 30 times in market value. Mark guided WSFS from a market value of approximately $100 million to over $3 billion on the NASDAQ exchange, outperforming the shareholder returns of peers and broader indexes by a factor of many times.m. Listen up as Mark shares highlights from his long, storied career and his new book, "The Path to Sustained Excellence."
info_outline
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...
info_outline
Dan Dimitri - Founder/CEO of PharmaForce
BILT215
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...
info_outline
Sylvester Mobley — Founder and CEO of Coded by Kids
BILT215
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.
info_outline
Felicite Moorman — CEO of STRATIS IoT
BILT215
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.
info_outline
Mahe Bayireddi — Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom People
BILT215
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.
info_outline
Nader Elm — Co-Founder and CEO of Exyn Technologies
BILT215
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.
info_outline
Bill Yoh — Co-Owner of Day and Zimmermann, Author, Chairman of Yoh Group
BILT215
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.
info_outline
Mike Hagan — Founder, Operator, Investor and CEO of Hawk Capital
BILT215
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.
info_outline
Bob Moore — Serial Entrepreneur and CEO of Crossbeam
BILT215
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.
info_outlineMike 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. Following that experience, Mike used his personal profits and lessons learned along the way to buy and build NutriSystem, with an eventual big exit to diet nutrition conglomerate Trivity for $1.4 billion. Mike's next venture was a similar controlling interest investment in the DIY home security company LifeShield which he and his team scaled rapidly, sold, eventually bought back, and sold again for a substantial profit. In 2014, Michael launched HawkCapital, his current passion project. A founder, operator and investor, Michael is a man who has taken on multiple roles and worn many hats. Tune in to find out what he has learned from his experiences.
Key Takeaways:
[1:18] Kevin introduces his guest for this episode — Mike Hagan.
[3:00] Kevin asks Mike five speed questions.
[5:37] What was WaterOnline and how did it start? Mike shares the story of how he got started with what eventually became VerticalNet.
[8:38] Mike shares more about how the expansion of the internet led to establishing multiple VerticalNet communities.
[15:25] How difficult was it to navigate the early stages of VerticalNet in an uncertain environment?
[18:17] What was the business model like for VerticalNet?
[20:16] VerticalNet eventually went public. Mikes shares more about that experience.
[25:08] Beyond just the advertising component, what were some other pockets of revenue that Mike was able to grab?
[28:29] VerticalNet's stock took a sudden plunge in 2000.
[28:59] Mike talks about some of his experiences with the leaders of Microsoft.
[30:06] What were some of the tough decisions that Mike had to make in the aftermath of the dot.com bubble bursting?
[35:40] Mike learned a useful skill during his early days at VerticalNet — seeing opportunities. How did that play into his experience at Nutrisystem?
[39:06] Mike regrets not taking Nutrisystem private. He explains why.
[42:47] How did Mike raise capital? Mike shares the trajectory of Nutrisystem from 2005 to 2008, and briefly after he re-joined the company.
[48:04] Mike talks about some of the numbers behind the business.
[51:19] Who were some of the celebrities that got behind Nutrisystem?
[54:08] How did Mike get involved with LifeShield?
[59:52] What is the business model for LifeShield?
[1:02:11] As a consumer, ADT is the category killer, and LifeShield is considerably smaller. How does LifeShield compete?
[1:04:21] What kind of technology was LifeShield holding on to at the time?
[1:06:08] LifeShield was sold to DirectTV, and then eventually bought it back from them. Mike shares the process.
[1:15:28] Who did Mike bring in as investors?
[1:16:26] Hawk Capital lists a lot of requirements for potential investments. Mike explains some of the reasoning behind that.
[1:20:00] Mike is competing with a lot of capital to get good investments. How does he manage that?
[1:23:19] How important was the Philadelphia region to Mike's journey? What is Mike's hope for his alma mater?
Links: