AZ Tech Podcast

When you ask Alexi Venneri about the challenges she's had while building Digital Air Strike, a multimillion dollar tech company, she answers with an iteration of one of the quintessential interview answers: "Our challenges have become our strengths." But the thing is, she really means it. Alexi loves her company and team, who she says are like family. And she believes in treating them actually even better than most of us treat our own families. She's renting islands, for example.
Hamid talks to Alexi about how she grew her business from her kitchen, how she had to leave a board meeting to feed her premature baby and her love for Richard Branson.
Watch the interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Yaknz-2U9_U

This week in Arizona we saw a merger between two drone data collection companies. The first is Skynetwest, which was based here in Chandler, joined forces with Mississippi-based Soaring Eagle Imaging to create Soaring Eagle Technologies. Another bit of news was that Arizona Commerce Authority announced the National Semiconductor Economic Roadmap (NSER), which will bring people from different sectors together to position the US as the leader in semiconductor manufacturing.
We also discuss Instagram's halt on its product for kids, privacy and what the Elizabeth Holmes trial says about Silicon Valley.

Before Matthew Pittinsky was CEO of the EdTech company Parchment, he was co-founder and CEO of Blackboard, Inc., a software used by universities across the country. If you went to college in the aughts, you likely used Blackboard to submit assignments and interact with your class and professor. Matthew has been passionate about education since he was a kid and has been involved with education for most of his professional career. He's even received a PhD in the sociology of education.
In this episode, Matthew tells Hamid about his experience as a "bad student," his ability to bootstrap creatively and his love of Atari.
Watch the interview on YouTube:

Josh Snow (formerly Josh Elizetxe) didn't have much as a kid. He grew up in a dangerous part of Phoenix and could've easily joined a gang. Instead, he spent his afternoons in the Phoenix Public Library reading all the "For Dummies" books he could get his hands on. He taught himself to code and used his skills to start a business. By age 17, he was a millionaire. Since then, he's had several successful ventures and now, he's trying to change the world one smile at a time.
Josh talks to Hamid about his journey to success, scaling a fast growing business and his passion for white teeth.
Watch the interview on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yrxQpPsGLc

For this episode, we partnered with Startup Grind Phoenix to put together a podcast recording in front of a LIVE audience. It's been a long time since we've hosted -- and attended -- in person events, and it was so great to meet some of our listeners in person!
Anything can happen in a live event, especially with the three founders we invited to join us. Hamid talked with three of his good friends: Bob La Loggia, founder of AppointmentPlus; Mike Roberts, founder of SpyFu; and Chris Cardinal, founder of Synapse Studios and CarbonQA.
The guys don't hold back as they discuss unrealized capital gains, NFTs, outer space and the metaverse.
Watch the discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MQPaSYIsOMI