The Sean and Thomas Show by Devscale
By Sean Crowe
The Sean and Thomas Show by DevscaleFeb 01, 2019
016: How to hire your first sales team w/ Human Predictions Founder, Elliott Garms
The Sean and Thomas Show is produced by Devscale.com
On this episode we chat with our friend Elliott Garms, the founder of Human Predictions. We dive deep into tech recruiting, raising money, and how to successfully hire your first sales team; something Thomas and I are about to go through ourselves.
015: From successful non-profit, to starting e-commerce company ClozTalk w/ Jonny and Jeff Imerman
Hey everyone! I’m Sean, co-founder of the Chicago software development agency, Devscale and welcome to The Sean and Thomas show…this is episode number 005 of FounderSpotlight — a series where Thomas and I talk with early stage startup founders here in Chicago.
Today’s episode is a special one for us, our guests are Jonny and Jeff Immerman who are two really good friends of ours as well as our client. Jonny and Jeff have a crazy inspiring story and path that they’ve taken in life so it was great to sit down with them. Jonny started his career in tech when he launched a non-profit called Immerman Angels that connecst cancer patients with cancer survivors for 1:1 mentorship. That organization blew up and is all over the world now helping thousands and thousands of those affected by cancer each year.
Jeff and Jonny teamed up to launch their new venture ClozTalk - a company that lets you shop for quality charity-branded apparel. It’s a great mission with two fo the great humans as founders — hope you enjoy!
014: Starting a tech company as a non-technical founder w/ Kristi Zuhlke, CEO of KnowledgeHound
Hey everyone! I’m Sean, co-founder of the Chicago software development agency, Devscale and welcome to The Sean and Thomas show…this is episode number 10 of ScaleTalk — a series where Thomas and I talk with successful, Chicago-Based founders, CEOs, and CTOs that have scaled up their businesses tech teams. The hope is for us learn something from them that we can all apply to our lives and businesses.
On Today’s show we have Kristi Zuhlke - the CEO and cofounder of KnowledgeHound. Kristi has an incredibly inspiring story going from Fortune 500 employee to starting a company that now has companies like Google as their client. Her story as a founder is also very interesting because she is a non-technical founder. So for those of you that may want to start a company or side project but have little technical skills, she’s going to tell us exactly how she started a tech company not once, but twice as a non-technical founder.
013: Bootstrapping to $60 mil ARR with Jason VandeBoom
Welcome to The Sean and Thomas show…this is episode number 009 ScaleTalk — a series where Thomas and I talk with successful, Chicago-Based founders, CEOs, and CTOs that have scaled up their businesses tech teams. The hope is for us learn something from them that we can all apply to our lives and businesses.
We’ve been looking forward to today’s episode for a really long time. Our guest is Jason VandeBoom, the CEO and founder of ActiveCampaign. Now if you don’t know ActiveCampaign, they are a marketing automation company for small businesses and they have an incredible story.
- They have over 60,000 customers worldwide doing about $60mil+ / year in revenue and have more than 350 employees
- Jason famously bootstrapped the company for almost 15 years and then a few years ago raised $20 mil…we get into a good discussion here about that decision to raise so much money even though they didn’t particularly need it.
012: How Alida Miranda-Wolff went out on her own to launch culture consulting company, Ethos.
Today’s episode is a conversation we had with Alida Miranda-Wolff, the founder of Ethos which is a consulting company that helps growing and growth-stage businesses build incredible and incredibly diverse company cultures to fuel success. Alida share some incredible insights, we seriously learned so much from her on this call about time management, team management, and how to read 2 books a week like she does. That sounds like a joke, but she literally read 105 books last year…which is amazing.
011: How these Miami alumni quit their jobs and started an online calligraphy business.
On today's show we have the co-founders of LoveLeigh Loops, Jillian and Jordan. They are both good friends of ours from school when we were all at Miami University, it was super fun catching up with them. Two years ago they both quit their full-time jobs and are now teaching calligraphy online to thousands of students! This is a great story for anybody thinking about starting a side project or trying to turn their passion into a business. Have a great weekend everyone!!
010: Chicago's Home-grown CBD Company HalfDay w/ Dave DiCosola
Super pumped to get this episode out to everyone. We had a really great conversation with Dave about his new business HalfDay CBD. This is one of Chicago's first truly Chicago-based CBD companies. Dave left his successful career in technology sales to jump headfirst into the world of CBD and hemp farming. It's a booming industry that Thomas and I didn't know much about so Dave got to teach us all of the ins and the outs of THC, CBD, Hemp, Cannabis, extraction, and so much more. You're going to love this one!
009: How This Chicago Bootstrapper Grew His Business in a Niche Industry
Hey!! We're Sean & Thomas, the co-founders of Devscale, a boutique software agency and staffing firm. This is the first installment of our new series, Founder Spotlight! On this series, we’ll talk with the founders of small/medium sized businesses and talk about the early days of their businesses and how they got to where they are today. Some of the most inspiring stories come from founders like today’s guest Matt Gornick who is running a very successful small business (OrangeQC) in a very niche industry. We get into bootstrapping vs fund raising, what it’s like to make your first hire, why OrangeQC is a remote-first culture, and much more!
008: Francois Toubol, Sr. Director of Engineering at Reputation.com
Hey!! We're Sean & Thomas, the co-founders of Devscale, a boutique software agency and staffing firm. This week we talked with Francois Toubol, the Sn. Director of Engineering at Reputation.com. We covered a ton of topics with him since he is such a source of wisdom and knowledge. Topics included managing a remote dev team, what it's like being a leader of a large tech team, the importance of EQ in business, books, podcasts, and much more.
Hope you all enjoy!!
007: Candice Savino, VP of Engineering at Trunk Club
006: James Lloyd, CTO of Redox
Hey!! We're Sean & Thomas, the co-founders of Devscale, a boutique software agency and staffing firm. This week we talked with James Lloyd, the CTO of Redox. We talked about what it's like to run a 100% remote team distributed across the country, healthcare systems, hiring developers, and so much more.
Hope you all enjoy!!
005: John Barnes, CTO of Infutor
Hey!! We're Sean & Thomas, the co-founders of devscale.com, a boutique software agency and staffing firm. This week we talked with John Barnes, the CTO of Infutor.com. We covered everything from big data, scaling development teams, going from developer to leader, to traveling to Costa Rica. We really nerded out on this episode and it was a BLAST. John has had an incredible career path from developer to leader of a company that got acquired by salesforce.
Hope you all enjoy!!
004: Bill Furlong, CEO of SquareStack
003: Marvin Russell, CEO of Checkli.com
We had a really fun conversation with Marvin Russell, the founder and CEO of Checkli.com. Marvin is started, grown, and sold two other businesses in the past and is working on his third startup currently. Every conversation with him has nuggets of insights that are super valuable to any business owner or aspiring entrepreneur.
This was fun for Thomas and I since we're actually business partners with Marvin as the mobile development team on Checkli. We talk about life, business, what it's like to get started on a business idea, and lots lots more. Hope you enjoy!
002: Jenny Farver, CTO of Lightstream
We had a great conversation with Jenny Farver, the newly named CTO of Lightstream. Jenny is on her second CTO position and has lots of great advice about life as a Chicago tech leader. We talk about what it's like to go from developer to technology leader and the challenges associated with it.
Lightstream builds live streaming creative tools and technology with a true passion for live video production, gaming and supporting the explosive growth of creators and their communities. For more info about the company: https://www.golightstream.com/
001: Jason Tillery, CTO of BuildOut
TEASER: Welcome to The Sean and Thomas Show!
Hey Podcast listeners - I Just wanted to give you a heads up that Thomas and I will soon be releasing episodes for The Sean & Thomas Show. We’re really excited to start connecting with you via podcast.
The goal of the show is to highlight the stories of all of the amazing people we’ve meet here in Chicago the past couple years.
It’s going to be a lot of fun for us and hopefully really beneficial for you to hear how people have accomplished some pretty amazing things. Our guests will include other tech founders, software developers, marketers, remote workers and friends. We’ll dig into what their life is about, what their businesses are all about and what side projects they’re working on.
You’ll start seeing some episodes come through the feed over the next couple weeks and it would mean so much to us if you hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast app you use. Search for The Sean and Thomas show or head over to seanandthomas.com/podcast and that should open up the podcast app in iTunes for you.
Thanks everyone! And we’ll talk soon