Venture Backed Episodes

Chad Delligatti — CEO of InnoSource Chad Delligatti is the CEO of InnoSource — a more than two-decade-old, Ohio-based company that has grown into a national workforce solutions platform serving Fortune 500 and midsized organi...

Matt Kalina — Founder and CEO of TandemStride Matt Kalina is the Founder and CEO of TandemStride, a healthcare marketplace that connects trauma survivors with peers, care partners, and providers to support long-term recovery....

Akram Boutros — Founder and CEO of Nexus Bedside. Akram brings more than 30 years of experience as a healthcare leader, executive, and clinician. He previously served as CEO of The MetroHealth System in Cleveland from 2013 to...

Tyler Dunagin is the founder and CEO of Turnserv, a Northeast Ohio–based platform company behind brands like ApartmentPainters.com , ApartmentFlooring.com , and Liquid Liner — each rethinking a critical piece of the residenti...

Michael and Tory Waxman — the founders of Sundays for Dogs, the Cleveland-based company designed to make dog parents’ lives easy. What began with their own dog, Mabel, and a simple but powerful question — why does feeding dog...

Craig Newmark is the founder of Craigslist and someone whose work has shaped the modern internet as we know it. Long before Craigslist became one of the most enduring, important, and frequented platforms on the web, long befo...

Jerry Schill is the founder and CEO of Schill Grounds Management — a company he launched in 1993 with his brother after a chance summer job revealed a passion for landscaping. What began as a two-person side hustle has grown ...

Andrew Hurst is the founder and CEO of Delivered, a fast-scaling logistics platform revolutionizing parcel shipping with faster, more reliable deliveries at lower costs. He also serves as CEO of Ark Transportation, where he l...

Max Pennington is the Co-Founder & CEO of CLEANR, an innovative company that uses filters to prevent microplastics from entering water streams. Max graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Chemical Engineering from Case Wes...

John Knific is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built three venture-backed software companies here in Cleveland. His latest venture, Squad, is a peer discovery platform designed to gamify ratings and rankings for Ge...

Rob van Haaren is a Dutch-born entrepreneur and CEO of Proximal Energy, a Cleveland-based SaaS company transforming asset management for solar and energy storage projects. Rob has long been interested in renewable energy engi...

Stephen McHale — a long-time Cleveland serial entrepreneur with a 40-year career founding, investing in, and building companies. Most notably, Steve served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Explorys, whi...

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Lay of The Land podcast. Today, we're doing something a bit different as I take on the role of guest on other podcasts to discuss recent developments in my journey and offer a glimpse...

Ryan Schreiber is a long-time Clevelander and major advocate for the city, as well as the founder and CEO of Streamline, an innovative mobile platform tackling one of the streaming industry's most pressing challenges—helping ...

Jim Weisman, CEO of Ingine, exploring deep into the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare In our world where healthcare costs are soaring and drug development timelines stretch into decades, Ingine is revolut...

Lance Hill, CEO of Within3, has led one of Cleveland's most well-capitalized startups, raising over $100 million to transform how the healthcare and life sciences industries communicate. What began in 2007 as a secure peer-to...

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Lay of The Land podcast. Today, we're doing something a bit different as I take on the role of guest on other podcasts to discuss recent developments in my journey and offer a glimpse...

Aaron Hoffman and John Zinno — co-founders of DeliverThat, based in Canton Ohio. Friends for life, the two of them started this business out of Ohio University in 2016 off the bat of a viral tweet and have since proceeded to ...

Andrew Rising, CEO of Encore Ventures Labs. As someone who believes deeply in the opportunity for Cleveland’s future, I find Andrew’s journey to be an inspiring and optimisitc one… …Deeply rooted in the heart of Cleveland’s w...

Franco Kraiselburd — Co-Founder and CEO of Asclepii — building the next generation of tissue engineering therapeutics for wound healing. I’ve recently heard a life’s work described as a lifelong quest to build something for o...

Ian Maurer — Chief Technology Officer at GenomOncology and co-lead of the Cancer Informatics for Cancer Centers’ AI working group. With over two decades of software experience, Ian has led GenomOncology — a Cleveland-based so...

Matt Buder Shapiro — Chief Marketing Officer at Vytalize Health, Previously Founder at MedPilot (Acquired) I first spoke to Matt on this podcast 3 years ago. At the time, as a co-founder and chief marketing officer of MedPilo...

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...

Darren Small , co-founder and CEO of Oko . With over a decade of experience on Wall Street, Darren’s analytical background from the world of investment banking, stocks, and data, equipped him with a keen eye for efficiency an...