This week, Scot brings a friend of nearly two decades - Blue Bastion’s Andy Hicks - into the studio to talk about selling advanced cybersecurity measures for large clients, including Blue Bastion’s Managed Detection and Response service. Andy has been awarded as a top performer in pretty much every role he has held since he was old enough to earn a paycheck. He’s worked for some of the largest names in information technology and network security, and this week, we’re looking inside his head to see what makes him tick.
Bharath Krishnamoorthy - “B” for short - is one of two founders of Axle Travel, a data-driven ride pooling service that launches on July 24th in Pittsburgh. Beginning with a basic strategy of simplifying trips to the airport, Axle is a web-based application that will eventually consolidate longer road trips to a variety of destinations. This week, B and Scot talk about Axle’s unique experiences at Techstars, the difficulty they had making pivots from one model to another, and the ways in which they selected Pittsburgh and other markets they’ve considered.
This week: Day Bracey - one half of the Drinking Partners podcast - is in to talk about Fresh Fest, an entrepreneurial new beer festival he is launching with partners and friends. Since Day is our good friend and Epicast Network neighbor, we’re giving his new venture the Pitchwerks treatment! Scot and Day get into the details on what the festival is, and how they communicate their unique value to all the beer-heads that might be interested. Bonus this week: Watch the Drinking Partners and Fresh Fest social media accounts to see custom pitches that Scot came up with to change up Fresh Fest’s messaging and help his friends to sell more tickets.
Happy 4th! If you were going to buy a bedding set right now, what would you be looking for? No matter what answer you came up with, chances are that “high tech features” wasn’t on the list. It's unexpected. The industry is kind of in a rut. A long history and familiarity with this product makes us think about price first. This week, we meet Allison Howard, Founder & CEO of Auratek Textiles, who took her chemical engineering degree and unique observations on skincare and turned them into a long-term business endeavor that has spent years in development. Auratek is now ready to reveal itself as a performance fabric maker for skin care applications, and Scot sits down and speaks with Allison about how she got her new materials in front of the right people to get to this point.