From CIO to Climate Tech Pioneer: Kentaro Kawamori on Building Persefoni and Raising $175M In this episode of the Phoenix Founders Podcast, we sat down with Kentaro Kawamori, CEO of Persefoni to discuss his entrepreneurial journey and the impressive development of his company. Persefoni is an enterprise SaaS company focused…
This recording is from an insightful workshop led by Jake Huber, Founder and Managing Partner of Venture Scaler, as he shares his expertise on building a strong and reliable team for your startup. This workshop is designed for early to mid-stage founders and hiring leaders who want to learn the…
Before Phoenix became one of the fastest growing tech markets in the country, we had a handful of visionary, ambitious founders building software companies. One of them is Clate Mask. He co-founded Infustionsoft, now Keap, at a time when no one was paying attention to the needs of small businesses,…
When we think about the worst epidemics in this country, “loneliness” doesn’t usually top the list. But it should. 44 million Americans struggle with loneliness. And not just older Americans. For the first time in history, it's highest among young adults. Loneliness is a condition we all need to take…
Anthony Kennada tells us his story of learning how to be resilient. He got bit by the startup bug early in his career, working for some of the fastest growing tech companies in Silicon Valley. Then decided that Phoenix was the best place to start his company, AudiencePlus. In this…
We kick off Season 2 of the PHX Founders Podcast with one of the most successful founders in Arizona, Matthew Pitinsky, CEO of Parchment. Matthew found tremendous success with his first ed tech venture, Blackboard, where he was the founder and CEO. After going public, and exiting the company, Matthew…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In part 2 of our interview with Enoch Ko 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…
Enoch Ko, founder and CEO of Soraban, 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…
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…
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.
