Scaling & Growth Episodes

Aaron Slodov — CEO of Atomic Industries, a company he co-founded back in 2019 and has raised over $20 million from leading investors like Toyota Ventures, Impatient Ventures, Narya Capital, 8090 Industries, and others! Atomic is on a mission to exascale the American manufacturing sector, starting with making tool and die-making orders of magnitude easier and faster through advanced automation. Through the lens of Aaron’s underlying techno-industrialist philosophy, we’ll unpack what exasca...

John Kempf — founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA), a regenerative agronomy company started back in 2006 to share the knowledge, tools, and systems that regenerate farm profitability, soil health, and plant health, all while reducing the need for fertilizers and pesticides. Under John’s leadership, AEA has grown to be trusted by over 10,000 growers across the world to deliver exceptional yield and quality improvement results on over 4 million collective acres of fruit, nut, vegetable, a...

Dr. James Kenyon, Director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio The road to the Moon goes through Cleveland. With a budget of approximately $900 million, a staff of more than 3,200 civil servants, over 725 patents, and over 120 R&D 100 Awards, Glenn — under Dr. Kenyon's leadership and in accordance with NASA's mandates — is providing integral support to Artemis, NASA’s mission to return us to the Moon, overseeing the service module that will propel the Orion Space Capsule out of E...

Rick Stockburger, CEO of BRITE Energy Innovators. Located in the City of Warren, just outside Youngstown in the Mahoning Valley, BRITE was founded in 2010 as a non-profit focused on the acceleration of energy technology in Northeast Ohio. Since then, and under Rick’s leadership, BRITE has helped over 600 companies, creating approximately 2100 jobs, and channeling >$250 million dollars into BRITE’s network of companies. Providing signature start-up programs, a networked ecosystem, and strate...

Azadeh Hardiman — Business Leader of Level20, the new business incubator of Progressive Insurance, one of the largest insurance carriers in the US (which was founded and still headquartered here in Cleveland)! As the new business incubator, Level20 is focused on addressing the unmet needs of current Progressive customers and the general population, by understanding the real problems people face every day, deserving of real solutions. Azadeh and her team drive growth beyond insurance to devel...

Nick Dadas — Co-Founder of University Tees, SISU Lifestyle, Acton Academy Lakeside, ISI, and MasterPlan Coach. In 2003, still a sophomore at Miami University, Nick co-founded University Tees after trying to organize a t-shirt order for his business fraternity and becoming frustrated with his experience; so he and his co-founder, Joe, decided there had to be a better way and like all good entrepreneurs, they started their own company. Since then, University Tees has gone on to grow into the pr...

Patrick Ghilani, CEO of MRI Software. Founded in 1971 & based in Solon, Ohio — MRI Software has been a leading provider of real estate software and has been a trailblazer in the PropTech industry for over five decades, serving more than two million users worldwide, covering over 20 million units, across 45,000 clients, with over 4.2 million leases in over 170 countries — providing solutions that transform the way communities live, work and play! Pat has been with MRI since 2006 and has l...

Brian Krusz is the Founder & Managing Partner at Sgt. Clean Car Wash — a premier express carwash organization proudly serving Northeast Ohio since 2013 with over a dozen locations throughout the region. Under Brian’s leadership, Sgt. Clean has been recognized many times over as a five-time Inc 5,000 fastest growing private company winner, Weatherhead 100 winner, Smart Culture award recipient, and, having spent 8 years in the United States Marine Corps himself, a multi-time Vet100 winner as a ...

Gerald Hetrick (CEO of Docket (formerly Bezlio) & Professional EOS Implementer) Gerald has been on the show once before; those of you who’ve been with Lay of The Land from the beginning may recall Gerald as one of the first entrepreneurs to make an appearance back on Episode #6, which I’d encourage anyone interested in learning Gerald’s personal and entrepreneurial journey co-founding and leading two companies from inception to exit — spanning his time building Vox Mobile and Able — to take a l...

Jack Greco, co-founder and former CFO and COO of ACV Auctions, a Buffalo-based wholesale online marketplace for cars (ACV Auctions went public in 2021 and is currently valued at approximately $3 billion dollars) Now an active angel and venture investor through his fund Far Out Ventures, Jack runs a weekly newsletter called Buffalo Bridge which tells the stories of Buffalo’s startup community and has made nearly 200 investments in other founders and startups! Jack is the first guest to com...

Adam Rakestraw — co-founder, chairman, general counsel, and chief business development officer of MediView XR, based here in Cleveland Ohio! With approximately $29.5 million in capital raised from strategic partners like the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic GE HealthCare, JobsOhio, and many others since its founding in 2019, MediView is a medical technology company working to advance human health through its digital augmented reality ecosystem. MediView's AR visualization platform aims to unloc...

Michael Sirpilla, co-founder and CEO of Society Brands. Under Michael’s leadership as CEO, Society Brands has raised $205 million in capital to continue their rapid consolidation in the e-commerce sector with many completed and successful acquisitions since inception. Society Brands, based in Canton, Ohio, is a tech-enabled consumer products company that acquires e-commerce native brands and powers them with a global growth platform, scaling and evolving them into household brands. They provi...

Andrew Wolfe, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bloomfilter. Andrew is a software engineer turned entrepreneur who is passionate about improving the ways people build software. Prior to Bloomfilter, he and his co-founder Chris Stoll co-founded Skiplist, a consultancy dedicated to refining the software development lifecycle (SDLC) — an experience that led Andrew down the path to work on Bloomfilter addressing the same problem space. Businesses rely on software development to solve problems, delive...

Mike Schroeder, Founder & President of Roundstone. Mike founded Roundstone Insurance in 2003 — when they launched the first Group Medical Captive of its kind, and have since revolutionized the self-insurance industry. Roundstone’s captive approach to insurance allows small and mid-sized businesses to take advantage of the benefits of self-funded insurance that previously only larger enterprises could enjoy — such as plan flexibility & control, transparency, and cost savings. By banding smalle...

David Levine — Co-Founder/CEO @ Wireless Environment (Acquired by Ring, Acquired by Amazon) & Co-Founder/CEO @ My Home Park Having made a career of invention and serial entrepreneurship, in 2005 David Co-Founded Wireless Environment to revolutionize the lighting industry with a belief that off-grid, wireless, LED lighting would be the future of lighting. Over the next 13 years, David proved that thesis as he lead the organization as CEO to over $30 million in sales on just $1.1 million in equ...

Mitch Kroll, co-founder & CEO of Findaway (acquired by Spotify). Mitch started Findaway back in 2004, a time when audiobooks were available only on CD and cassette, in order to revolutionize this business of audiobooks, connecting storytellers with listeners at scale. With this vision of audiobook democratization in mind, Mitch led the company over the next 17 years to sell over 6 million units of its Playaway audiobook device and through a honed focus on innovation, became the global leader...

Michael Crawford — Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of the Hall of Fame Resort & Entertainment Company, which he joined in December of 2018. The Hall of Fame Resort & Entertainment company is a publically traded organization (trading as HOFV on the NASDAQ) headquartered in Canton, Ohio. Spanning media, gaming, entertainment, resorts, and sports — the company is dedicated to making legendary moments for fans and leverages the power and popularity of the Hall of Fame Village, the 100-...

Angie Dianetti — President and driving force behind Radcom, a company specializing in performance improvement consulting, which she founded back in 1996. Under Angie's guidance, Radcom has earned the distinction of a Weatherhead 100 Outstanding Growth Company seven times over since then as one of Northeast Ohio’s fastest-growing companies that Angie has successfully navigated through various challenges over the years spanning the dot-com bubble burst, offshoring, reshoring, the Great Recessi...

Tory and Michael Waxman — the founders of Sundays (>$14 million raised, Cleveland-based) — on building Sundays for Dogs to become a leading dog food brand offering the first human-grade, air-dried dog food, made with 100% all-natural ingredients, that is healthier than kibble, but easier than refrigerated foods since it doesn’t require a freezer, prep, or clean-up. In pursuit of their mission to make it easier to be an awesome dog parent and feed millions of dogs, Tory and Michael have grown...

Brendan Anderson and Donnie Bedney on their work at ScaleCo — a Cleveland-based entrepreneurship-through-acquisition organization that has invested more than $165 million in over 20 regional companies. In our conversation today, we explore what entrepreneurship-through-acquisition even is, the advantages of buying a business over starting one from scratch, ScaleCo’s unique approach to unlocking value in partner companies, and why Donnie and Brendan have double-downed in ScaleCo’s commitment t...

Ed Largent — President, CEO, and Board Chair of Westfield, one of the most enduring companies in Ohio. Very few companies in the world can boast the longevity of Westfield, which is celebrating its 175th year of existence. Originally founded by a small group of Ohio farmers in 1848, Westfield is now one of the largest non-public companies in Ohio, the largest employer in Medina County, Ohio, and has grown to be one of the nation’s leading property and casualty insurance companies, with recent...

Dan Hampu and Daniel Isenberg on their collective work at the Burton D Morgan Foundation and Scalerator NEO — covering why it’s important to focus on companies at scale relative to startups when thinking about the overall prosperity of an entrepreneurial ecosystem, the state and trajectory of Northeast Ohio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and the challenges that scaling companies experience, and how the Burton D. Morgan Foundation and Scalerator NEO can help. Dan Hampu joined The Burton D. Morga...

Afif Ghannoum, a biotech attorney by background and the CEO of BIOHM Health — which he co-founded with his father, Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum, a leading microbiome researcher and recognized for naming the mycobiome (the body's fungal community). With over 30,000 citations and 500 published papers, Dr. Ghannoum is one of the top 0.5% of cited microbiologists and the top 2% of all scientists across all disciplines and has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1991, in...

Steve Santamaria — CEO of Folio Photonics — on innovating storage media and the future of storage technology, the opportunity ahead for Folio Photonics, Cleveland's entrepreneurial ecosystem, and reflections on leadership!