Join in for a conversation with Justin Jackson, Co-Founder of Transistor.fm. It’s a podcast hosting service and full disclosure, Accounted For is hosted on Transistor. I learned about the company and Justin because Basecamp’s podcast is hosted on Transistor and I further learned how Justin bootstrapped Transistor 2 years ago to a company that generated monthly recurring revenue exceeding $50,000. Justin didn’t start out in tech or podcasts but working for a not-for-profit for the first 7 years of his career. In our chat we dive into Justin’s decision into switch into tech at 28, navigating a career to product management in tech startups, starting his first company, building a community with podcasts and his journey with building a successfully bootstrapped SaaS company.
Join in for a conversation with Matt Cohen, Founder & Managing Partner of Ripple Ventures. Ripple Ventures is a Toronto-based early-stage venture fund that works alongside startups through the good and the bad every day. Fitting with their motto of “Operators First” per Matt’s background as an operator turned investor. Though before Matt became an operator, his career started in finance as an equity trader for RBC, completing tours on Wall Street and Bay Street. While working in capital markets, he made a seed investment in Turnstyle Solutions, cutting his operator’s teeth on the company’s journey to getting acquired by Yelp. We go through the various pivots in Matt’s journey from capital markets, tech operations, angel investing and to his current role of running a venture capital fund. As always, it was never a pre-planned linear journey and we dig through every part of it.
Join in for a conversation with Terrance Kwok, Product Manager at HyperComply. Terrance was one of the pivotal folks who recruited me to KPMG to start my accounting career. It’s been a while since then and today we go through Terrance’s journey from leaving accounting just before getting the Chartered Accountant designation to join a young Vidyard, before it became the 150+ tech company it is now, in an entry role in sales. We explore how he pivoted from sales to product management, working remotely in London, UK while working for a company based out of Kitchener and his subsequent journey being a digital nomad product manager at Chilipiper and HyperComply. This was a super fun conversation where we dove into what it was actually like to make each pivotal jump in Terrance’s career and how shame, embarrassment and doubt are all real and even normal emotions when you go through an unconventional career. Please forgive me on places where the audio quality isn’t as great as with COV...
Join in for a conversation is another anonymous podcast with a return guest from episode 29 where we turnover the rock of working in a hedge fund in Canada. This was a top 10 downloaded episode in 2019 so what better way then to bring on my guest back during a time of market turmoil to see how it’s been like being an investor at a fund. Turns out, my guest already has an anonymous profile in the finance Twitter community as Moatsixcap. We chat about what it’s like being a fund manager during a time when the stock market plummets 30%+, deeper into what my guest is investing in, interesting companies worth digging into, and much more.
Join in for a conversation with Josh Broun, Co-owner of Impact Kitchen. Impact Kitchen is a wellness company with 4 restaurants in Toronto. I’ve been a fan of Impact Kitchen since it’s first location at King East and I’ve been a patron here at least once a week for the last few years. It’s one of my staple places for legit healthy meals. My go-to is the paleo waffle though. A comfort food. So it was a real treat to speak with Josh, the man who helped create a place where I could get awesome coffee, work out of for a few hours, have some high-quality healthy food, in an awesome atmosphere. Josh’s journey did not start as a restauranteur. A hint, it involves going to university on a baseball scholarship in the US, studying health science, pursuing teaching, then firefighting, then becoming a personal trainer for successful entrepreneurs. Josh rekindled an inner entrepreneurial fire while getting a masterclass on business from his clients as he learned about their lives over the y...
Join in for a conversation with Elvis Wong, Founder and Managing Director of Innovate Financial Health (IFH). IFH is a not for profit accelerator based in Toronto that works with start-ups addressing the problem of financial health for financially vulnerable Canadians. Having developed a passion for social impact since high school, Elvis leveraged his experience as a management consultant to join the MaRS Studio Y Fellowship program to find ways of using technology to create social impact. What he did not expect was that he would be solving a problem in wealth inequality that would lead him to opportunities working with Social Capital Partners, one of the leaders of impact investing in Canada, and starting an accelerator backed by JP Morgan Chase and Capital One. In addition to dissecting his journey to creating IFH, we dig into the various learnings he has had from building an accelerator and strategies for forming partnerships with large corporations.
Join in for a conversation with Miguel Fernando, the Founder of Moment Financial. Miguel navigated a career starting in international finance to building products in FinTech companies to becoming a full-time bootstrapped entrepreneur. Miguel started his career in finance as an economic researcher at RBC and moved over to international wealth management with a focus on Central and Latin America. He made the pivot to work in a product role and become a product manager after realizing he enjoyed building internal tools and solutions while working for the bank and made the leap to join a FinTech company while teaching himself product management and coding through bootcamps and online courses. He went onto build the advisory solutions product for Purpose Investment’s Purpose Advisory Solutions business and made another leap into entrepreneurship. Something he felt he had to do. We talk a lot about the early years of entrepreneurship, what it was like making the decision, what gap he saw...
Join in for a conversation with a return guest, Marc Champagne. Marc is the Co-Founder of Kyo and Host of Behind The Human Podcast. In episode 46 we talked about Marc’s journey of building Kyo after a career in pharmaceuticals. In today’s episode, we talk through the developments since the year. The process and reason behind shutting down Kyo, the digital journaling app that had 86 million impressions and a community of 200,000 users. We talk about the difference between app rankings and user metrics vs. the economic reality of operating it. We also talk about Marc’s journey of building communities and how the podcast led to so much more than a personal brand, his new pursuit of consulting human-centric companies on brand strategy and writing a book on mental fitness. Traditional media only touts the stories of exits for obscene financial numbers but in our conversation today we talk about the daily process of building something, the constant ups and downs and the many iterations...
Join in for a conversation with Alex Norman, Co-Founder of TechToronto, Head of Canada for AngelList and Partner of N49P Ventures. Through his various ventures and roles, Alex is an investor and tech entrepreneur who is building the Canadian tech ecosystem. TechToronto is on a mission to develop the technology and innovation economy in Canada through its wide-reaching events. AngelList is the startup investing platform that manages $1.8Bn and N49P is a VC fund for early-stage companies in Canada. Prior to these ventures, Alex was an investment banker for Lehman Brothers during the dot-com bubble. He worked in various startups in SF, NY and London, UK. He received his MBA from Wharton, became a management consultant for McKinsey and co-founded Homesav, one of Canada’s largest furniture e-commerce companies, that was later acquired by Rebellion Media. Given how interesting his journey has been, we talk through how he made decisions in each of his career pivots and the circumstances t...
Join in for a conversation with Ben Yoskovitz, CPO and Founding Partner of Highline Beta. Highline Beta is a venture capital and startup co-creation company based in Toronto. In our interview, we pan through Ben’s 20 year career as an entrepreneur, angel investor and startup executive. After graduating with a psychology degree, Ben started by building a web service business then a product based business and one of Canada’s earliest accelerators (where one of its companies was acquired by Airbnb). He then went to become the VP of Product at GoInstant and VarageSale while co-authoring The Lean Analytics book that’s been translated to more than 4 different languages. We go through the major learnings his had from his various ventures, his failures, his philosophy of building organizations and so much more!