Category Visionaries

Kian Katanforoosh, CEO of Workera: $21 Million Raised to Build the Skills Intelligence Category

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Kian Katanforoosh, CEO of Workera, a skills intelligence platform that’s raised over $21 Million in funding, about why the future economy demands a more streamlined approach to skills development, and how deep learning is going to provide the framework to keep workers ahead of the curve. By providing a personalized learning system based on cutting-edge psychometric analysis to recommend the ideal skills and precisely where to develop them, including feedback and progress monitoring, Workera combines the benefits of direct face-to-face education with the massive analytic capacity of big data.
We also spoke about the current state of the AI sector and why we found ourselves in a global skills crisis, the limitation of online learning versus a more supportive learning environment, and why Kian is here to stay in San Francisco, even if other global tech hubs are emerging as serious competitors. With a commitment to democratizing AI education and an innovative software solution to make that dream a reality, Workera is set to take its place as a market leader in the emerging category of ‘workplace intelligence’.
Topics Discussed:
Kian’s career bridging business and academia, and the connections between his role as a lecturer and business leader
The current state of the AI industry, and why a global skills shortage poses a significant threat to ongoing innovation
Why mentors and guidance are still an essential component of education, and how to emulate those benefits in the digital space
How psychometrics can provide the critical insight needed to support targeted skills development on an individual basis
How Workera successfully developed partnerships with leading brands
Why Kian is set to stay in San Francisco, even in the face of competing tech hubs emerging all around the world

Steve Berneman, CEO of Blueprint Title: $24 Million Raised to Build the Future of Title Insurance Management

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Steve Berneman, CEO & Co-Founder of Blueprint Title, a digital platform redefining the title and closing experience that's raised over $24 Million in funding.
Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:
Industry Overview: Title insurance is a guarantee against unknown encumbrances on property ownership, primarily found in the U.S. and Canada.
Market Fragmentation: Despite the oligopoly in title insurance underwriting, the distribution is highly fragmented, creating opportunities for innovation.
Customer-Centric Approach: Blueprint Title focuses on reducing friction in real estate transactions by prioritizing buyer and seller needs.
Unique Market Focus: The company targets small and medium-sized businesses that view property as an asset, such as builders, developers, and real estate investors.
Tech-Driven Solutions: Blueprint Title aims to make real estate transactions self-service and more transparent through technology.
Vision for Change: Steve's goal is to reduce the cost and complexity of title insurance, aiming to shrink the industry while improving service quality.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.
www.GlobalTalent.co

Alex Kouts, CEO of Indigov: $38 Million Raised to Transform How Elected Officials Manage and Engage with Their Constituents

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Alex Kouts, CEO of Indigov, a civic relations platform that’s raised over $38 Million in funding, about why innovation in the way we interact with state institutions might just be the key to preserving our democracy. We might not agree about exactly how it should function, but most people agree that democratic institutions are one of our greatest collective achievements, and something worth preserving. By automating, organizing, categorizing and analyzing citizen-state communications across a whole range of platforms, Indigov is determined to rebuild the human aspect of the democratic experience and help us all play a more central role in the big decisions that affect our lives.
We also speak about why Silicon Valley has traditionally been averse to state-involved business models, but why it remains a global capital of value creation mythology, how Alex’ approach to building a business always starts with getting into a very serious problem, and the role of big lobbying firms in swamping the communication landscape of contemporary politics. Dealing with such sensitive and potentially politically-charged material, Indigov has had to deploy an enhanced level of due diligence on potential investors, but have continued to expand as a revenue-generating company over the years. With the critical momentum now building behind them, they are ready to revolutionize the way all of us relate with our government.
Topics Discussed:
Alex’s career building tech businesses, and why the search for a real problem led him to launch a civic engagement platform
Why initially investors were skeptical of any proposal involving the government, and how building momentum in silicon valley takes patience and effort
Why the way public officials manage their digital communications is so problematic, and how a few relatively simple solutions can make all the difference
How big private lobbying firms swamp the civil space, drowning out independent voices with sheer weight of numbers
The current state of civil engagement techniques, and why they would be unacceptable in the private sector
Why Indigov has to rely on additional levels of investor diligence before accepting funds from potentially problematic source
 
Favorite book: 
The Lessons of History

Tommy Dang, CEO of Mage: $6.3 Million Raised to Build a Modern Replacement For Airflow

Tommy Dang is the Co-founder & CEO of Mage, an open-source tool for building and deploying data pipelines. Mage helps data engineers synchronize data from 3rd party sources, build real-time and batch pipelines to transform data, and orchestrate thousands of pipelines without losing sleep.
Topics Discussed:
Tommy’s career journey in tech, and the core values he learned from working at Airbnb as a software engineer
The mindset that guided Tommy in creating Mage and how this mental framework helped him efficiently utilize his energy and mind share 
Mage’s origin story and how it helps developers solve data processing challenges
Product features and core design principles that differentiates Mage from other developer tools 
The positioning strategy that’s helping Mage gain market traction 
Why Mage focuses primarily on data integration and data pipelines
Mage’s approach in marketing to developers and company decision makers 
Why Tommy and his team decided to keep Mage as an open source tool, and future plans for monetization
The biggest go-to-market challenge the Mage team has had to overcome,  and it’s vision for the next three years
 
Favorite book: 
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

Nicholas Freund, CEO of Workstream: $7 Million Raised to Build the Data Knowledge Management Category

Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Nicholas Freund, Founder & CEO of Workstream, an analytics platform that's raised $7 Million in funding.
Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:
Elon Musk’s Influence: Nick shared how working at Tesla during its critical financial times under Elon Musk's leadership taught him the importance of taking risks and pushing boundaries, a philosophy he carries into Workstream.
Identifying a Pain Point: The idea for Workstream was born out of Nick's experiences both as an analyst and an operator, where he felt acute pain points around how analytics were managed and utilized within organizations.
Category Creation: Workstream aims to create a new category called Data Knowledge Management, addressing data sprawl, tribal knowledge, and broken workflows between data teams and business teams.
PLG Strategy: Workstream employs a Product-Led Growth strategy, offering a freemium model that allows easy adoption by users, with the product becoming more powerful as more people within an organization use it.
Traction and Adoption: Since opening up to a public beta, Workstream has seen hundreds of companies adopt the freemium version and has secured dozens of formal client relationships.
Evangelizing the Category: To build the category and educate the market, Workstream is investing in a video series featuring discussions with technologists and customers, creating comprehensive content to define and promote Data Knowledge Management.
 
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Sponsors:
Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership.
www.FrontLines.io
The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe.
www.GlobalTalent.co

Kacper Nowicki, CEO of Nomagic: $30 Million Raised to build the Future of ​​Robotics Fulfillment

Kacper Nowicki is the Co-founder and CEO of Nomagic, an AI and robotics  fulfillment automation company providing smart pick-and-place robotic systems for e-commerce and retail warehouses. 
With Kacper and his team’s expertise in robotics, cloud and deep learning, combined with their experience in logistics, Nomagic is able to help e-Commerce and retail operators build their fulfillment systems to the highest level of  automation.  
Topics Discussed:
Kacper’s experience as an entrepreneur at the height of the dotcom boom and rapid tech growth in Silicon Valley, all through to the dotcom bust
Lessons Kacper learned from his time working at Google
Overview of Nomagic and the full scope of automation services it offers to retail and e-commerce operators
Nomagic’s current customer base  and their target customers
Strategies Nomagic has employed to build customer trust
Kapcer’s take on the media narrative of the human workforce being replaced by robots
How statistics supports  the need for automation in the workforce
The market category that Nomagic falls within and how they are keeping up with service providers  within the same category
Biggest challenges Kacper has seen in bringing robotics and automation technology to market and getting the mainstream market to adopt the technology
Kacper’s three year vision for Nomagic
 
Favorite book: 
Sam Walton: Made In America

Tom Lee, Co-Founder of LOVO AI: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Voiceovers

Tom Lee is the Co-founder of LOVO AI, a California-based AI voice & synthetic speech company. LOVO’s platform accelerates content production by giving creators access to highly adaptable AI voiceovers, synthetic speech, and custom voice cloning capabilities.
In this episode, Tom shares how having the right team culture and employing a product-led growth approach has helped LOVO rise above the noise and quickly gain traction in the AI space.
Topics Discussed:
Brief overview on AI voice and synthetic speech and the role that data plays in improving the technology
How customer education efforts, marketing, and content creation has helped LOVO with user acquisition
LOVO’s diverse user base - from individual content creators,  to SMBs and Fortune 500 companies
Adapting tech to customer’s needs using hypothesis, experiment, and analysis
Targeting individual customers to support LOVO’s vision of product led- growth
How Tom helps instill the right culture and beliefs in his team
How to effectively navigate the issues and ethical concerns around AI technology
The biggest challenge Tom encountered when bringing his idea to market
How LOVO is providing revenue sharing opportunities for voice actors and democratizing access to quality voices 
LOVO’s goal of becoming an established content creation and IT platform 
 
Favorite book: 
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Adrian Ferrero, CEO of Biome Makers: $24 Million Raised to Bridge the Divide Between Natural Environments and the Digital World

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Adrian Ferrero, CEO of Biome Makers, an agriculture technology startup that’s raised over $24 Million in funding, about why it’s time we let data drive decisions about our relationship with the natural world, in ways that can be both beneficial to the environment, and also make great business sense. Biome Makers was founded with a mission to bridge this digital-ecological divide, providing critical insights to farmers about one of their most important natural assets - the soil in which they grow their crops. By understanding its critical microbial and chemical composition farmers can understand how to make the most of what they’ve got to work with, both today and for years to come.
We also spoke about the rapid transformation of the agricultural sector in recent decades, why farmers are hungry to adopt new innovations, and why the old-fashioned approach of ‘resetting’ soil biology for cultivation just isn’t sustainable anymore. Improving the way we work with our land is Biome Makers’ clear and determined mission, making a genuine impact that helps them attract not only investment, but also bring together the right kind of team. 
Topics Discussed:
Topics Discussed:
How the story of an agricultural landscape in the North of Spain seeded the idea for a disruptive tech startup in California
Why the agricultural sector might not be the way you think, and why so many farmers are hungry for new innovation in almost every aspect of their operation
How monoculture and a lack of data caused the degradation of precious soil ecology, and how Biome Makers intends to restore balance
Why doing something that ‘makes sense,’ and working to create real impact, keeps Adrian motivated every day
How being a mission-oriented company helps attract and retain some of the industry’s top talent
The future of the ag-tech space, from drones to data and autonomous assistance
 
Favorite book: 
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Joseph Fung, CEO of Uvaro: $15 Million Raised to Build the Career Success Platform Category

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Joseph Fung, CEO of Uvaro, a career success platform that’s raised over $15million in funding, about why reframing a host of familiar categories like recruitment and training support leads to a whole new approach to business that puts people first. Career success means taking a human-oriented approach to professional development, helping people find the positions that really work for them, and helping them really deliver on what their host companies need. It’s a whole new perspective on the oldest challenge in business.
We also spoke about why it just makes sense to work with a partner when it comes to professional development, the increasing importance of skills suitability in an economy defined by rapid career transitions, and how the real stories of Uvaro’s members are the best possible promotion for a company that builds everything on trust. By fostering a sense of genuine community and facilitating organic interactions, Uvaro is rapidly changing the way we will all soon approach the prospects of work.
Topics Discussed:
Why we should all invest in a career development partner with the skills and insight to get us where we need to be
Why putting people in the right positions helps entire industries do amazing things
How the pandemic pushed Joseph to reframe his company’s commercial activities, and why a comprehensive career success approach has paid dividends
What a future economy where we all change jobs more regularly means for career development, skills support, and finding success
Why trust is key for a company promising personalized support, and how Uvaro’s organic communities help build it from the ground up
How real support includes unique features like deferred membership payments to help the next generation get started on their road to a better life
 
Favorite book: 
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

David King Lassman, Founder of GigXR: $7 Million Raised to Bring Immersive Learning to Healthcare

David King Lassman is the Founder of GigXR, a global provider of immersive extended reality training solutions that aims to transform collaborative learning in healthcare education.
In this episode, David shares how he saw a big potential in the application of mixed reality in education, and the serendipitous moment when he was able to acquire immersive learning research assets from another company,  which led to the creation of GigXR. 
Topics Discussed:
David’s background as a serial entrepreneur in the ed tech space, and the origin story of GigXR
The current state of the mixed reality market
How solution providers can tap into the education space, and how GigXR was able to effectively market its value proposition 
Effects the pandemic has had on the healthcare industry, and how GigXR has learned to shift  their training operations for remote learning
Why David decided to focus on the application of extended reality in the healthcare market before expanding to other verticals
What excites David the most about the future of immersive training in  healthcare