Interviews and Podcasts

Join Disruptive Technologists' Lauren Keyson in the Sept. 10, 2021 interview of Yedid Herskovitz.

Yedid Herskovitz is the Founder and CEO of Rapidream, a design-to-code tool for developers. As a full-stack senior software engineer, Yedid’s experience includes leading the complete accounting system rewrite for Avaya CPAAS, the world’s largest business telephony company, as well as core developer for some of the App Store’s biggest business apps including TapeACall, RoboKiller, SpoofCard, and TrapCall.

Having previously served as CTO at CodeBlue Ventures (a software development company) and seeing first-hand the deep inefficiencies in software development, Yedid founded Rapidream to solve the pain of the designer-developer handoff.

Yedid enjoys rough-housing with his four young children and wonders how he got stuck caring for the family guinea pig.

Watch the Disruptive Technologists' Lauren Keyson Interview Ryan Burkett, Cyber Security Specialist.

Ryan Burkett is a Cyber Security Professional with Noblis-ESI. His experience ranges from operations centers all the way to think tanks. His specialty is tackling “tough problems” and some that are not tough, just no one else wants to do them. These types of issues suit him well as he joined cyber security after spending his first career working with various youth organizations.

Find out more about his thoughts on cyber security and what the tough cyber problems are in this quick 20-minute conversation.

Minerva Tantoco is currently the Chief Operating Officer of The Common's Project Foundation and was the first ever Chief Technology Officer of New York City. Minerva has been paving a path of innovation since the beginning of her career working on artificial intelligence in the ‘80s.

As CTO of NYC, Minerva has played a pivotal role in bringing technological innovation to the city. She discusses some of her favorite innovations such as the LinkNYC kiosks.

Additionally, Minerva talks about how the Internet of Things (IoT) guidelines that she helps establish in NYC are now being endorsed in 35 cities and 11 countries. These guidelines include urban elements such as smart park benches, smart waste baskets, etc. Once stand-alone elements become part of a connected system, they introduce layers of complexity like privacy policies and security policies.

Minerva is a New Yorker through and through. She discusses how growing up in the city shaped her perspective and inspired her to step into the role of NYC’s CTO.

Interviewer: Hassan Karimi

Interviewer: Hassan Karimi

On December 17, 2020 Disruptive Technologists interviewed Richard Hill, the Founder, and CEO of VoteOurVoice. Richard Hill created his organization to help solve his own problem as a voter. He thinks it’s hard for voters to really know anything about the people who are running for office by reading a ballot.

In this interview, Hill shares his research on which U.S. Senators' voting histories align best with their constituents — and which ones don't. He also discusses his consulting work through the Lean Experience immersion course for early-stage investors. “You have to focus on profitability — first by getting to break even, and then to profitability,” he said. “Even if you have the money, and work really hard to think as if you have no money, you’ll be more innovative if your solution to the problem is not to simply write a check and make it go away.

“You need to innovate, to figure out how much money is necessary, to spend the least amount of money as possible, and then figure out whether or not you can test for the outcomes. All this before making huge sums of capital investment." ~ Richard Hill

Disruptive Technologists Interviewer: Hassan Karimi

April 7th, 2021 interview of David Postolski, partner at Gearhart Law and a registered patent attorney and intellectual property attorney. David specializes in assisting inventors, creators, artists, start-ups, entrepreneurs, early-stage companies, and emerging companies with their U.S and International intellectual property strategy, protection, enforcement, and monetization.

In this conversation. He offers his insights on working with inventors, artists, and emerging technology companies in 2021 and beyond. Watch the discussion about the future of crypto blockchain and NFTs and what the current landscape looks like. David sees a parallel between NFTs, and the downloading of movies and music when they first became available on the internet.

"Harkening back to the days of downloading illegal music. It's kind of the same issue at the end of the day. If you would download a movie from Netflix when Netflix first came out. You were able to share that movie with a friend. And that wasn't legal, in terms of the terms of use, it wasn't legal. Or you were able to download music from a Russian website or a Turkish website and send it to someone. And then it stopped. It took government and regulation and it took the music community to create systems to control that and [illegal downloads are] not really an issue anymore."

David shared frequently about the importance of protecting one's intellectual property. If you're an inventor, creator of any kind, or a founder with any stake in IP, you'll find critical insights in this conversation.

Jason Saltzman Podcast: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
2018

Jason Saltzman, the CEO & Co-Founder of Alley talks with Dania Hammad about building a post-business incubator and shared workspace for entrepreneurs.

Alley deals with early-stage companies and with several of the largest companies in the world by bridging the resource gap. Smaller companies have little to no resources and no way to grow. Larger companies have tons of resources but don’t know how to deploy them. In the end, it’s the startup world that is going to be their future.

Alley officially opened its physical doors in 2012, but the company has around for eight years. “I think what the media does, in a bad way, is glorify entrepreneurship. and they make it seem like everyone is an overnight success,” he said.” But it took me 10 years to look like an overnight success! In reality, it’s the grit and the grind. Everything it took to get here was a bloody mess. But all the media focuses on is the $1 billion exit, or the unicorn -- when there’s like 80 unicorns out of millions of companies. And most of those fail. So, there’s a story that’s just not being spoken about.

For the Viziotag interactive version of this video - http://viziotag.com/disrupters/Default.aspx?mg=49263974-b2c5-49cb-af2b-7686806fc30f

Interviewer: Hassan Karimi

On December 17, 2020 Disruptive Technologists interviewed Richard Hill, the Founder and CEO of VoteOurVoice. Richard Hill created his organization to help solve his own problem as a voter. He thinks it’s hard for voters to really know anything about the people who are running for office by reading a ballot.

In this interview, Hill shares his research on which U.S. Senators' voting histories align best with their constituents — and which ones don't. He also discusses his consulting work through the Lean Experience immersion course for early-stage investors. “You have to focus on profitability — first by getting to break even, and then to profitability,” he said. “Even if you have the money, and work really hard to think as if you have no money, you’ll be more innovative if your solution to the problem is not to simply write a check and make it go away.

“You need to innovate, to figure out how much money is necessary, to spend the least amount of money as possible, and then figure out whether or not you can test for the outcomes. All this before making huge sums of capital investment." ~ Richard Hill

In our Disruptive Technologists interview with Scott Moss on November 19, 2020, we discussed his experiences growing a billion-dollar organization from the ground up. From starting his first company with a $5,000 bank loan through the key lessons he's learned along the way to taking the company to $1 billion in revenue, and his latest venture, Sidewalk College.

We go into many topics including his early education, thoughts on hiring staff, and why he doesn't fundraise for his companies. Scott Moss shares some traits he finds indispensable for entrepreneurship such as using Excel, having the hunger to succeed, and communication.

"The one thing I would recommend for everyone out there. It doesn't matter what business you're in, it doesn't matter what education level you're at or trying to obtain, communication is the number one thing." ~ Scott Moss

Interviewer: Hassan Karimi

Disruptive Technologists Interview with Arnell Milhouse, CEO of CareerDevs

Date: Monday, May 11th­, 2020

Arnell Milhouse is the CEO at CareerDevs, a 12 month rigorous and immersive computer science program that is designed for the layperson in the U.S. CareerDevs guarantees every graduate will earn a job paying $50k-$80k within 6 months or their money back. Arnell also has the role of Entrepreneur In Residence at Brown University where he works with students, sculpting their ideas to scale as businesses.

In this conversation, Arnell shares his insights into entrepreneurship and his road to creating CareerDevs. Watch as he breaks down his definition of entrepreneurship, why CareerDevs is well-positioned for diversity, and why a money-back guarantee makes more sense as a business than traditional school tuition. Arnell's passion shines throughout the whole conversation and you truly get a sense that he's passionate about his work and the people he gets to impact.

Podcast Interviewer: Hassan Karimi

David Sorin; Managing Partner, Chair of Venture Capital and Emerging Growth Companies at McCarter & English
Date: June 1, 2020

David Sorin discusses his journey from an accountant to becoming a partner in a law firm where he works with entrepreneurs and start-ups at all phases of their endeavors. He discusses how traditional law firms are incompatible with the needs of entrepreneurs and how he has created a model that works at McCarter & English, “We are not investors in the traditional sense, we are not writing the checks, but we are investing in our clients through the use of time and skill knowing that not all start-ups will succeed. Not all businesses are a finance-able one and so we rely on our expertise in attracting the right clients and in turn choosing the right clients to represent.”

Listen to David share about the changes he’s witnessed in NY/NJ start-up scene, his concerns about the aftermath of COVID-19, the importance of diversity for start-ups, and his thoughts on where the future is headed.

Podcast Interviewer: Hassan Karimi