Sacramento Startups Podcast

During the third trimester of her pregnancy with her daughter, Beata Adamczyk was frustrated and alarmed by how difficult it was to find reliable and affordable products. Having worked with tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, she had the drive to launch her own solution to address the problem. She met her technical co-founder Patrick Guderski, a developer […]

Mentors and advisors play a key role in any startup ecosystem. The knowledge and experience that veteran business people can share with entrepreneurs is incredibly valuable. Kyle Kaneshiro spent nearly 30 years working for Intel in Folsom, most recently as Director of Strategic Planning. About a year ago, Kyle retired and he now spends much […]

For patients recovering from surgery, medical drains are a necessary yet uncomfortable and awkward part of post-op recovery. Medical drains like a Jackson Pratt® (JP) drain collect fluids from the surgical area. Most medical teams only offer safety pins to suspend and manage these drains. Experiencing this firsthand, Cinde Dolphin thought there had to be […]

Stephane Come and Criss Come have created a STEM educational comic book series called PodPi for kids 9-14 as a series of story-based monthly adventures that teaches kids electronics and JavaScript coding by building their first simple circuits to WiFi enabled devices and the Internet of Things, all in comic book format, on a mythical […]

Open submission for the second annual Sacramento Region Innovation Awards wrapped up recently and the judging committees have begun reviewing submissions. Judges will include several winners from last year’s Innovation Awards, including last year’s winner in the software category, Riskalyze. Riskalyze believes that everybody has a Risk Number, a measurement from 1 to 99, that […]

Elizabeth Dodson is the co-founder HomeZada, a platform that gives homeowners a valuable tool to manage their home and the assets and possessions in it. I met up with Elizabeth in the wilds of the Sacramento startup scene at Old Soul Weatherstone in Middtown to learn more about her experiences in entrepreneurship. Old Soul was packed […]

Deema Tamimi is the co-founder and CEO of Giving Garden, a local food & gardening social network launched last year when she and her team won the 2016 Apps for Ag hackathon. She’s also the key organizer of this year’s Apps for Ag hackathon. I met up with Deema at Old Soul Weatherstone in Midtown […]

As a mechanical engineering student at Rochester Institute of Technology, Jordan Darling created a new plastic for use in jet ski hulls that’s stronger and more durable than traditional fiberglass, then launched his business, Free Form Factory, based on that innovative technology. Faced with the challenge of growing his fledgling personal watercraft business in upstate […]

Charlie Hinojosa is passionate about finding great apps, but knows it can be difficult. So he set out to solve the problem of mobile app discovery by combining social networks with app marketplaces. In 2016 he founded Tapp That App, a new social, app discovery platform that allows you to see the favorite apps of people […]

It’s Sacramento Region Innovation Awards time with submissions for the 2017 awards open through the end of July. To help celebrate innovation in our region, the StartupSac podcast will feature a series of podcast episodes on the awards program, including interviews with last year’s winners. In the previous episode of the StartupSac podcast I met […]

The Sacramento Region Innovation Awards is an annual program designed to celebrate and spotlight the Sacramento’s region’s vibrant innovation community, from startups to established companies. Founded in 2016, the program is organized by Stoel Rives with support from the Sacramento Business Journal and Moss Adams. In this episode of the StartupSac podcast I met with […]

As a businessman applying for several loans over the past decade, Chris Meyer, like a most people, found the whole process onerous and time consuming. This pain point sparked the idea that there had to be a better way. After failing to find one, he reached out to his friend, and soon-to-be-cofounder, Dean Sioukas, to […]

For this episode of the StartupSac podcast, I recorded co-founder of Skyslope, D.J. Stephan, at StartupSac Happy Hour answering questions from the audience about his entrepreneurial journey, the origins of Skyslope, insights into their business model, advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, and thoughts on the Sacramento startup ecosystem.

Not only is Mariah Lichtenstern the founder of a startup, Cineshares, a motion picture marketplace to connect filmmakers and stakeholders, she’s also co-founder and Managing Director at DivereCity Ventures, an impact-oriented micro-VC firm. As if that weren’t enough to have on her plate, she’s also one of the key people involved with bringing Founder Institute […]

Shell Mendelson woke up one morning want to give a gift of coffee to a friend and to do it just by texting them or sending them an email that would allow them to go pick up their coffee at an independent coffee house. After failing to find an existing way to do this and asking […]

In this episode of the StartupSac podcast, I met with Chris and Liv, cofounders of tCubed, to talk about how they invented a classic game with a strategic twist for groups on the go, the origins of their game and how they’ve bootstrapped and gone from concept to paycheck.

50% or more of the tech work force in Silicon Valley and Northern California is comprised of Asians. Yet this prominence doesn’t carry over into management and executive levels. One of the reasons for this is that APIs (Asian and Pacific Islanders) lack vital established networks due to only 2% of APIs being in executive […]

UC Davis is recognized as a national center for new, creative, & innovative ideas and is ranked 16th highest in research funding. The UC Davis Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a key component of the innovation powerhouse at UC Davis, with programs like the Big Bang! Competition and several Entrepreneurship Academies. Niki Peterson is […]

Brenda Tello Horton was organizing and planning a fundraising event for a Northern California children’s non-profit. The event had a lot of moving parts and logistics to coordinate in the planning process with her team. Using a set of disjointed tools she grew frustrated with the set of tools available. Like the origins of ideas for […]

Brian Dombrowski, CEO of Fantag, relocated his young tech startup to Sacramento recently amidst much fanfare from the Greater Sacramento Area Economic Council and the City of Sacramento. Fantag’s pioneering mobile video technology enables people at live events to capture, replay, and share their favorite moments, with a simple tap on their mobile phones. Brian joined me […]