Check Out All PHX Founders Podcast Episodes

In our final episode from S1 of the PHX Founders Podcast, we continue our conversation with Chris Ronzio, founder and CEO of Trainual, and we're also joined by his co-founder, CMO, and brother, Johnathan Ronzio. This episode is a testament to what it means to be a scrappy startup. When money is tight, creativity needs to flow. The humble beginning is when founders need to say "go for it" more times than they think possible. Of all the ideas you test, one or two might work. Especially if they include Mr. Wonderful.

Our conversation with Chris veered into some interesting places. From starting any business he could imagine as a kid, to learning to live with Type 1 Diabetes, to distance running in Antarctica. In Part 2 of our conversation, Chris continues to lay bare the gritty details of Trainual's early days. Every founder will appreciate his vulnerability and humor.

It’s hard to be around Chris Ronzio, founder and CEO of Trainual, and not feel energized. He brings that excited, passionate energy everywhere he goes, and it’s infections. He’s also a workhorse, who never stops trying and learning. Which is why it’s not surprising that Trainual has become one of the fastest growing software companies in Phoenix. Everything about Trainual reflects Chris’s energy, tenacity, and creativity. In our conversation with Chris, we learned where that entrepreneurial spirit started, and how he became a successful founder by becoming great at bringing order or chaos.

Scarlett Spring is building a software company in a sector of healthcare that is notoriously underfunded and difficult to navigate. Or is it? Scarlett might know something about the future of personalized care and doesn’t mind the headwinds. She has enough belief in what her company is building to keep proving validity. She has enough experience know how to get through the roadblocks. And she has enough humility to keep learning.

When you’re a seasoned healthcare executive, biotech founder, and prominent board member, starting a software company should feel easy, right? When you’re Scarlett Spring, founder and CEO of Taproot, it feels like any other new thing. Which is why she went back to the basics to learn. In our interview with Scarlett, we got a lesson in humility, and a reminder that no matter when you start a company, or how much experience you have, it’s always hard. We also heard her advice on how to make the hard stuff easier. This episode is for every founder who struggles. So…. Every founder.

In the first part of our conversation, we learned that Nirit faces the same challenges as every other software founder. Raising capital is hard, building a customer base is hard, building a team and culture is hard. But Nirit has a trick to keeping her company steady and her eye on the prize…. her obsession with metrics.

Nirit Rubenstein feels a deep responsibility to take care of others, but don’t think for a moment that means she’s a pushover. From training pilots in the Israeli Armed Forces, to building a new kind of credit improvement company that values people over corporations, she is relentless. Nirit is highly focused, obsessed with metrics, and deeply committed to improving the lives of others. In part 1 of our interview with her, we find out why.

In this episode we learn more about how he got on a path to both engineering and entrepreneurship. Both start when he was a kid in a foreign country. He didn’t know the language, or the culture. But he had curious brothers, his dad’s TI calculator, and a desire to make friends.

Enoch Ko is a founder who has a solid handle on process, iteration, and relentless learning. He’s also incredibly tenacious, a skill he developed as child when he immigrated not once, but twice. We’re going to hear how Enoch sparked his entrepreneurial spirit and learned how to connect with people in unconventional ways, starting with a T1 calculator.

Gabe Cooper talks about the endurance of growing Virtuous, a responsive giving platform. In part 2 of our interview, we dig into how he builds culture, community, and category. We also learn that Gabe's knack for endurance extends beyond the walls of his company.

Gabe Cooper talks about the endurance of growing Virtuous, a responsive giving platform. In part 1 of our interview, we learn about his funding journey, what's been really hard in scaling his company, and what's been really rewarding.

In the second part of our interview with Heidi, we talk about company culture, the shift from early to later-stage scale, and what  success looks like for her personally, including her impact work and giving. We also lean what Heidi's spirit animal is.

If you’ve been in PHX for a while, you know the name Heidi Jannenga. She’s a little famous in this community, for co-founding one of the most successful software companies to come out PHX – WebPT. Hers is the quintessential story of a subject matter expert who simply wanted to solve a real problem she was experiencing. Over the last 17 years, that solution has grown to become THE platform every physical therapy business knows and uses. In Part 1 of our interview with Heidi, we find out what it looks like to go big, change lives for the better, and give back.

Gregg Scoresby and Aly Saxe introduce the PHX Founders podcast and test out their interview skills. Importantly, they establish that the bar is high for "best tacos" in Phoenix.