Venture Backed Episodes

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 w...

Adam Graybill , co-founder and CEO of Journey Biosciences . With a robust 20-year tenure in the diabetes market, Adam has been at the forefront of assembling purpose-driven teams and forging impactful strategic partnerships a...

Phil Londrico , Founder & CEO of JaTango — an interactive broadcasting and e-commerce platform that gives individuals the power to host their own live shopping channel anywhere. For many years now, we’ve seen e-commerce grow,...

Ryan McManus — founder and CEO of SHARE Mobility Ryan is passionate about solving workforce and rural mobility challenges, creating and affording equitable access to transportation, and ultimately changing the way people actu...

Kyle Maggard , Founder & CEO of Over Easy. Kyle started OverEasy in the fall of 2018, reflecting on his time as a former college athlete at Westpoint and as an Army Captain where living a healthy and active life wasn’t just h...

Mohamed Kamara , founder and CEO of InovCares. Grounded in a sobering reality: The United States has the highest rates of maternal mortality in the industrialized world. In May 2017, having lost both his sister and aunt to pr...

Every 50th episode on Lay of The Land thus far, I’ve tried to honor the request I occasionally get, that from time to time, listeners would like to hear more of my own thoughts and flip the proverbial script from host to gues...

Andrew Maurer is the co-founder and CTO of Rise Works , an all-in-one compliance and payment platform designed for companies with global workforces. Rise, which is based in Pepper Pike and has raised $3.8 million in seed fund...

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 e...

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...

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 ...

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 c...

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 Envi...

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, conne...

Andrew Spott — Founder & President of HR Signal, and the Founder & Chairman of the VividFront. Andrew founded VividFront back in 2009, growing it to become the acclaimed strategic Cleveland marketing agency it is today with r...

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...

Dom Raban — Founder and CEO of Xploro® While originally founded in the UK, Xploro has recently established its headquarters here in Cleveland accompanying the closing on over $1.7mm in funding in a round led by local investor...

Mike Bruckman, CEO of Haima Therapeutics. With a PhD in organic chemistry and additional training in biomedical engineering and management, Mike joined the founding team at Haima as CEO in 2018 and has led their commercializa...

Our conversation this week is with Lindsay Watson, CEO & Founder of Augment Therapy. Augment Therapy was founded in 2017 when Lindsay — who is a pediatric physical therapist from Chagrin Falls, Ohio — was searching for a way ...

Dr. Onas Bolton — Founder and CEO of Octet Scientific, a specialty Cleveland-based chemical manufacturer unlocking the full power of safe, economical, and sustainable energy storage by providing better electrolyte chemistry f...

Anees Pretorius and Cono Onorato — co-founders of Bean ($1.7mm in funding) — on the pursuit of their vision to reimagine the global accounting industry and elevate the profession into the digital age. Anees Pretorius, a forme...

Julia Solooki & Lior Shafir — the co-founders of Smart Soda, headquartered here in Cleveland — on revolutionizing the beverage industry! The revolution is taking the water and soft drink industry by storm where for many conse...

Matt Crowley and Bill Wichert, the co-founders of TonDone, have recently secured $1.5 million in funding and facilitated over $30 million in work orders through their platform. Their mission is to solve the challenges faced b...

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 fung...