The Defiance_ Ventures Podcast
John Espey, a serial entrepreneur, MBA, and early stage investor interviews founders and investors at innovative companies. Defiance_ invests in, consults, and starts companies that defy conventional wisdom, and this podcast explores that world.
Episodes
When Christian Giordano joined Mancini Duffy, he was attracted to working with a well established architecture firm with a top shelf list of customers and a stellar reputation. He would eventually take a majority ownership stake and help the company transform the industry by embracing technology. Christian hosts The Anti-Architect podcast. He and John discuss all of this and more in this episode.
Jeff is a podcast host and executive coach who focuses on helping executives perform better by improving their daily habits. In this episode Jeff tells his story of a life changing event that made him walk away from a successful corporate career to figure out how to improve his own health and effectiveness. He ultimately turned that into a business and a podcast.
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Amy is the founder and CEO of AnswerLab, a design strategy firm that she started after working with a design-focused startup in Japan. In this episode she talks about starting and scaling AnswerLab. She discusses challenges that female founders face and also talks about her ongoing efforts to support diversity and inclusion. Amy created The Human-Centered Work Project in order to help companies embrace diversity a...
Mac has started multiple successful business in industries ranging from apparel to internet software to soccer agency and many others. He has six total exits and in this episode tells the story of how his career has shaped up. He also talks about his interest in blockchain, what role soccer has played in his life, and what he is currently working on.
Grant is one of the founder of Lucidworks, a leading search engine platform. In this episode he and John discuss the evolution of search and big data, starting a business with a group of friends, scaling that business and raising money, contributing to and starting new Apache open source projects, and becoming the CTO of Wikimedia and some of the unique challenges they face. Grant is an author and also hosts a podcast t...
Laura is the Assistant Director at Ventureprise, an entrepreneurship center at UNCC. In this episode she discusses working on a radio show, creating a radio program for NASCAR, joining a startup, and eventually joining Ventureprise after working closely with it at her startup. She discusses entrepreneurship in Charlotte, building an ecoSystem, and shares lots of knowledge after years of working with students and founder...
Aaron is one of the founders of Opkalla, an IT services company based in Charlotte. In this episode Aaron talks about going out on his own, surviving a pandemic, and scaling a business in a rapidly changing IT landscape.
In this episode John talks with co-founder and CEO of Rent Ready, Jonathan Kite. Rent Ready is a turnkey solution for multi-family real estate owners. Jonathan discusses the origin story of the company, when he and two friends with very complementary skillsets came up with the concept and turned it into a reality. He discusses raising angel and VC capital and scaling a business during a global pandemic.
Blenheim Chalcot is the UK's leading venture builder and much of the inspiration for Defiance Ventures. In this episode Lee Arthur gives an overview of several of BC's portfolio companies. He also talks about what it takes to make it in early stage companies.
BatteryXchange is a Charlotte-based startup that provides portable charging solutions for mobile devices in popular venues. Desmond is the founder and CEO. In this episode he describes the process that led him to create the company. He talks about building a supply chain in China, raising money, and the challenges that minority founders face throughout the process.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/battery...
Matteo is a JavaScript expert, having created and maintained multiple open source frameworks including Pino and Fastify. Matteo is also a Technical Director at NearForm, a leading application development consultancy that focuses on JavaScript and Node.js in particular. In this episode Matteo talks about the popularity of JavaScript, speaking at conferences, and building open source frameworks. Matteo also talks about hi...
Juston Burris talks in this episode with John about making it in the NFL and planning for the future. Juston purchases and up-fits homes in towns that he knows and turns them into income producing short term rentals.
Chris is one of the founders of Global Wired Advisors, an investment bank with a particular focus on e-commerce. In this episode Chris discusses starting Global Wired Advisors with partners, watching COVID unfold and the incredible effects it had on his clients, and he talks about growing, scaling, and exiting an e-commerce business.
Farhan is the founder and general manager at Axcelinno, a software consulting shop based in Dallas and Charlotte. In this episode he and John discuss the growth of open source, the disruption of public and hybrid clouds, OpenShift, and the Red Hat/IBM acquisition.
C-Trax is a cannabis POS solution developed by the founding team of Sean and Kiah Tolliver and Michael Clinton. In this interview, the team talks about weed legalization, social justice, raising money as minority founders, and the future of legalization in this country and globally
Steve has founded, invested in, run, and exited multiple companies through the years. He is the founder of All-In to Fight Cancer. In this episode he talks about his philosophy on business, work life balance, fitness, and especially on the progress being made against cancer.
Duncan operates multiple companies related to marketing and sales. In this episode he explains how he started each company and where he is taking them.
Tony decided to build a subscription news service focused hyper-locally on Charlotte. In this episode he talks about new business models in media enabled by Substack. He talks about creating a free service and converting it into paid. And the two discuss the changing landscape of tech and media broadly.
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