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The Sean and Thomas Show by Devscale

The Sean and Thomas Show by Devscale

By Sean Crowe

We are Sean & Thomas, co-founders of devscale.com and the hosts of The Sean and Thomas Show! Each week we sit down with a prominent tech leader in Chicago as part of our series called "ScaleTalk". The goal of this series is to shed light on the stories behind some amazing people right here in our city. We nerd out with CTOs, talk revenue and growth with CEOs, and get inspired with amazing entrepreneurs. Let us know what you think and make sure to hit subscribe! Cheers everybody! Reach out at sean@devscale.com with any questions or feedback :)
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009: How This Chicago Bootstrapper Grew His Business in a Niche Industry

The Sean and Thomas Show by DevscaleMar 29, 2019

00:00
32:45
016: How to hire your first sales team w/ Human Predictions Founder, Elliott Garms

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. 


May 08, 202050:47
015: From successful non-profit, to starting e-commerce company ClozTalk w/ Jonny and Jeff Imerman

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!

May 27, 201901:03:41
014: Starting a tech company as a non-technical founder w/ Kristi Zuhlke, CEO of KnowledgeHound

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.

May 20, 201901:00:37
013: Bootstrapping to $60 mil ARR with Jason VandeBoom

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. 
Apr 26, 201901:07:15
012: How Alida Miranda-Wolff went out on her own to launch culture consulting company, Ethos.

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. 

Apr 19, 201901:18:54
011: How these Miami alumni quit their jobs and started an online calligraphy business.
Apr 12, 201901:13:44
010: Chicago's Home-grown CBD Company HalfDay w/ Dave DiCosola

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!

Apr 05, 201901:15:09
009: How This Chicago Bootstrapper Grew His Business in a Niche Industry

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!

Mar 29, 201932:45
008: Francois Toubol, Sr. Director of Engineering at Reputation.com

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!!

Mar 22, 201901:04:09
007: Candice Savino, VP of Engineering at Trunk Club

007: Candice Savino, VP of Engineering at Trunk Club

Hey!! We're Sean & Thomas, the co-founders of Devscale, a boutique software agency and staffing firm. This week we talked with Candice Savino, the VP of Engineering at Trunk Club. We talked about what it was like working at Groupon during their explosive growth and IPO, to navigating her career path as an engineer, and what it has been like leading up Trunk Club's engineering team.  Hope you all enjoy!!
Mar 15, 201901:03:50
006: James Lloyd, CTO of Redox

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!!

Mar 08, 201901:02:25
005: John Barnes, CTO of Infutor

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!!



Feb 22, 201901:19:37
004: Bill Furlong, CEO of SquareStack

004: Bill Furlong, CEO of SquareStack

On this episode Thomas and I are talking with Bill Furlong. Bill is the CEO of SquareStack, the business apps command center for small businesses. Bill has an incredibly successful career, selling one company to LinkedIn for a whopping $200 million. We had a great conversation with him, hope you all enjoy!
Feb 16, 201901:05:29
003: Marvin Russell, CEO of Checkli.com

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! 

Feb 08, 201901:10:29
002: Jenny Farver, CTO of Lightstream

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/




Feb 01, 201901:00:34
001: Jason Tillery, CTO of BuildOut

001: Jason Tillery, CTO of BuildOut

The very first episode of The Sean and Thomas Show!
Jan 25, 201942:17
TEASER: Welcome to The Sean and Thomas Show!
Dec 21, 201801:22