Episodes

Carl Walz is an astronaut, a pioneer of space exploration, and a proud Clevelander! As an astronaut, Carl is a veteran of four spaceflights, logging a total of 231 days in outer space and performing three spacewalks during that time. A physicist by training, with degrees from Kent State and John Carroll University, Carl made his way to NASA via the Air Force, where he served as a flight test engineer and managed all engineering activities related to F-16 avionics and armaments. At NASA, he was a...

Paul Roetzer is the founder and CEO of SmarterX and the Marketing AI Institute—a media, event, and online education company that he started back in 2016 to make AI accessible, approachable, and actionable for marketers and business leaders. Through the institute, he created MAICON—the leading annual Marketing AI conference, which is hosted here in Cleveland! He is also the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing, and the Future of Business , the co-host of ​ The Artificial ...

Geoff Bruder, co-founder of GhostWorks Engineering and Sonic Fire Tech—a company redefining fire suppression—is fighting fires with acoustic wave technology. Geoff's journey is rooted in his work at NASA Glenn Research Center here in Cleveland, where he focused as a Research Engineer on projects like the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG), thermoacoustic stirling heat engine designs, and led the design for the Glenn Extreme Environment Rig (GEER) — the largest chamber on earth able ...

Jared Semik, founder of Eternium Aerospace, a long-range, zero-emissions aircraft development company, is focused on sustainable transatlantic flight. A multi-service military aviation veteran with three global deployments, Jared began his career in the Marine Corps in 1999. He is an aerospace research and development engineer with over 20 years of experience working with next-generation zero-emissions aircraft systems. His expertise spans R&D, aircraft systems engineering, program management, t...

Robert Marks founded Fidelity Voice and Data in 1999 with just a $600 investment, which he grew into a business generating over $30 million in revenue, making it one of the largest telecommunications and cloud services competitors throughout the Midwest. The company focused on providing high-speed Internet access to various industries. After selling the company in 2015, Robert turned his attention to giving back to his local community through various philanthropic initiatives. In 2020, however, ...

Andy Tran has lived more lives than just about anyone I know. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has started multiple businesses across industries, including tech, ammunition manufacturing, defense contracting, and tequila, among many others. Andy is a true modern Renaissance man whose path defies convention and serves as a testament to his deep curiosity, creativity, ability to execute, and humility. He has alpine mountaineered in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego while living out of the back of a tru...

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 Gen Z, starting on college campuses, delivering valuable preference data to marketers. Before Squad, John co-founded Wisr, a virtual communities platform that transformed how universities engage students. Wisr ultimately served nearly one million active users before being acqu...

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 engineering — he holds a Master’s from Columbia University in Earth and Environmental Engineering and a PhD from Columbia as well with a focus on utility-scale energy storage optimization and engineering. He also has over a decade of experience blending bridging academia and ind...

Ali Bonar — CEO & Co-Founder of Oat Haus, a food company bringing fun and play to eating. Their flagship product, Granola Butter, is the world's first oat-based spread and while Oat Haus was born out of Ali's decade-long battle with an eating disorder, and it's now her mission to help others feel less alone. Since its beginnings in 2018, Oat Haus has evolved from Ali’s personal project to a Cleveland-based, nationwide company with distribution in over 5,000 stores, including Target, Whole Foods,...

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, which he formed in 2009 in partnership with The Cleveland Clinic. He co-founded and funded Explorys with Charlie Lougheed, one of my former co-founders from Axuall, where Steve is also a board member. In six years, Explorys became the leader in leveraging electronic medical rec...

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 of what lies ahead. As some of you may know, I've recently embarked on a new professional path by joining the founding team of The O.H.I.O. Fund. In the near future, I'll be recording a dedicated episode to delve deeper into The O.H.I.O. Fund alongside some of my partners. ...

Hanna Kassis — founder @ Babylon Asset Management — who has deployed over $1.5 billion in capital throughout his career in alternative lending.Starting with Tim Ryan's congressional campaign in Youngstown, Hanna went on to build OAREX Capital Markets while still in law school, securing seed funding from Dan Gilbert's Bizdom and later an additional $100M in institutional credit, to build an innovative online ad revenue exchange.After a successful exit in 2022, he later launched Babylon Asset Management, recognizing an opportunity after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Under his leadership, Babylon has invested in 170 alternative loans and helped dozens of companies access growth capital.His entrepreneurial drive also led him to expand into new ventures, including acquiring and revitalizing Whistle Taproom (formerly Whistle & Keg), which has become a Downtown Cleveland premier game day destination. In this episode, we explore Hanna's journey from campaign manager to financi…

It is with a heavy heart that I honor Bob Sopko’s memory by revisiting Lay of The Land 's 12th episode . While no conversation could ever fully capture the breadth or depth of his legacy, I hope this episode relays an essence of his spirit, his unwavering commitment to supporting others, and his vision for Cleveland’s entrepreneurial future. Bob will be deeply missed, but I believe his influence will continue to resonate through the community he devoted himself to and the people whose lives he t...

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 users navigate the increasingly fragmented world of content and entertainment, from sports to shows and movies, across over 200 streaming platforms. With over $1.6 million in funding raised since founding the company earlier in 2024, Ryan is on a mission to transform how we ...

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 revolutionizing how we can analyze complex medical and healthcare data to produce better knowledge to create better medicine. By leveraging quantum mechanics principles and advanced probabilistic mathematics, they're tackling some of healthcare's most pressing challenges - from dru...

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-peer platform for physicians quickly evolved into something much more ambitious—a solution to break down communication barriers in life sciences and accelerate the development of life-changing therapies for patients worldwide. Under Lance’s leadership, Within3 has become in...

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 of what lies ahead. As some of you may know, I've recently embarked on a new professional path by joining the founding team of The O.H.I.O. Fund. In the near future, I'll be recording a dedicated episode to delve deeper into The O.H.I.O. Fund alongside some of my partners. ...

Chas Withers, chairman and CEO of Dix & Eaton, the storied Cleveland integrated communications firm, known for its specialization in marketing communications, Crisis management, and investor relations, which has partnered with its clients to drive impact and results in their public relations since 1952. While Chas has led the firm as CEO since 2015, he’s overseen many aspects of the business prior serving as COO and leader of the marketing communications, technology, emerging growth and interact...

Joe Pulizzi is a serial entrepreneur and deeply passionate about all things content marketing and entrepreneurship — he is the bestselling author of seven books including Content Inc. , selling over 500,000 copies worldwide with his work featured New York Times, Insider, Entrepreneur, and other notable publications he hosts multiple podcasts and writes Orangeletter , a weekly newsletter with over 50,000 subscribers delivering actionable life, marketing, and business tips for content entrepreneur...

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 revolutionize catering delivery with over $300 million dollars of catering delivery under their belt, a network of over 25,000 active drivers on their platform, operational in all major cities in all 50 states, helping over 500 brands elevate their catering. This is an aweso...

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 west side where he grew up before embarking on a decade-long adventure in the Bay Area—a place where innovation and venture capital converged to create world changing technologies. Andrew has spent his career at the intersection of talent and venture capital — from Google to ...

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 others that expresses who you are. It feels to me that Franco is not just building a company, but has found his life’s work and is truly pursuing a grand mission. Grounded in an international childhood living across the United States, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, Franc...

John Vickers , Founder & CEO of Blue Abyss. John is building one of the most ambitious and inspiring projects I’ve encountered while exploring what people are building in Cleveland! After spending eight years in the British Army, John completed his service at the rank of Corporal in 1991 and transitioned to a civilian career where he worked in management consulting, and leadership roles across IBM and GE Capital. In 2014, grounded in his desire to prepare for an imagined future of proliferated h...

Laura Bennett and Alex Krooglik, co-founders of Embrace Pet Insurance, which was sold in 2023 for $1.5 billion to JAB Holding Company. The duo founded Embrace Pet Insurance after graduating from Penn’s Wharton School of Business in 2003 and moving to Cleveland, where they built and grew this e-commerce, specialist insurance company selling pet insurance directly to pet owners — from their first policy sold in October 2006 to insuring over 500,000 pets across the country and handling over 4.6 mil...