Jason Saltzman, Co-Founder & CEO, Relief

Hello and welcome to the Fourth Act podcast. In this podcast we talk to entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs introducing technology-led innovation in industries that deeply touch every day human life. These industries include financial services, healthcare, real estate, education, retail, and sports and entertainment.

In this episode we talk to Jason Saltzman, the CEO of Relief App. The app helps people in debt obtain debt relief for free and in a user-friendly manner. The company is backed by $17 million in funding from multiple strategic investors such as American Express, City Group, Innerplay, Animal Capital etc.

Jason is also the founder and chairperson of Alley, formerly known as AlleyNYC. Alley started off as a co-working space, and was considered as one of the pioneers of NYC coworking spaces, and in his capacity as founder and the 1st CEO of Alley, Jason helped countless up and coming NYC startups get off the ground. He also founded Seamess Docs to help state and local governments go paperless.

Among his various other roles and responsibilities, Jason is also a contributor to Inc magazine, is a member of the Forbes council, and is an adjunct professor and board member of Florida International University.

In this episode with Jason, we dug deep into the very essence of what it means to be an entrepreneur and to build companies. Below are some of key topic areas covered:

00: 05:27 - What made AlleyNYC such a special co-working space and how do you build a special company culture?
00:17:28 – How did Jason get into entrepreneurship so early in life?
00:21:30 – The near spiritual crossroad that every entrepreneur finds themselves in at some point in their journey and how to navigate it
00:26:35 – What some of the limitations are of learning entrepreneurship in a business school setting
00:31:40 – Is being an “apprentice entrepreneur” and shadowing a more seasoned entrepreneur a better way to learn how to be an entrepreneur?
00:35:20 – Jason’s involvement with Florida International University, and why giving back and contributing to society is so important.
00:44:30 – What is the Relief App, why did Jason decide to tackle the huge credit card debt problem, and how is he going about tacking the problem?
00:54:15 – What is the business model of the company?
00:56:25 – How did Jason go about building his core team to start the company?
00:59:38 – How did the brilliant Squid games promo for the Relief App come about?
01:03:19 – Jason’s views as one of the pioneers in the co-working space on the future of work post-COVID.
01:06:13 – Is there a book or a documentary that Jason recommends young entrepreneurs read or watch?

This podcast is hosted by Sadeq Ali, co-founder of Archimydes. The vision of Archimydes is to democratize software development and to help people and companies to leverage technology to accelerate humanity forward. You can follow Archimydes on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

This podcast is hosted by Sadeq Ali, co-founder of Archimydes, a curated global Software Engineering Guild.
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