Tracy Tobin is Chief People Officer of Denver-based Adswerve, the leading Google Marketing Analytics & Cloud Partner.

Following a 13-year career leading HR at The Integer Group, she was ready for something new.

Enter Adswerve.

Adswerve is a team of media & analytics veterans who believe that smart marketing is built on data discovery. The firm helps thousands of digital marketers, data analysts, and agencies make stronger connections with their customers through data-driven strategies.

The company has 200 people, in a distributed model.

In this 20-minute conversation, Tracy reveals how she’s building a vibrant culture… despite the team not being located in the same office.

Ten years ago, Jilliene Helman was working in Union Bank’s wealth management group. She couldn’t help but notice that the bank’s wealthiest clients earned their fortunes in real estate.

When our government passed the 2012 JOBS Act (intended to encourage funding of small businesses by easing securities regulations), Jilliene saw an opportunity.

So she quit the bank. And created RealtyMogul.

Her new way of investing in real estate has caught on. To put it mildly.

Her firm has done over 300 deals, with a real estate value of $4 Billion. And lets everyday people access institutional-quality investments.

Investors can participate in a deal at a time or invest in one of their REIT pooled vehicles with a diversified group of deals.

Clearly, she’s onto something.

Top investors Canaan Partners and Sorenson Capital have backed her vision.

In this 20-minute conversation, Jilliene reveals how she’s built her 70-person team to shake up the real estate investment field.

Brad Feld is one of the nation’s most prolific Venture Capital investors & business authors.

He’s been investing in early-stage companies since 1995, with dozens of successes to his credit. Based in Boulder, Brad is Co-Founder of both Foundry Group and Techstars.

Foundry’s portfolio companies include Whoop, Suzy, Ordermark, Glowforge, and Drip.

When he’s not investing, Brad is writing. He’s got 8 books on entrepreneurship to his credit.

And now, he’s got a new one “The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors” co-authored with serial entrepreneur Dave Jilk with a forward by Reid Hoffman

It turns out that Friedrich Nietzsche, the late 1800’s philosopher, wrote countless lessons that could be easily applied to entrepreneurship.

In the book, each quick, digestible chapter expands on a quote from Nietzsche to stimulate your thinking about a vital aspect of entrepreneurship, with stories from real-life entrepreneurs help make the ideas concrete.

The book is fascinating, as is Brad.

In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals the lonely struggles that entrepreneurs face & how to keep your wits about you, no matter what role you play in scaling a company.

Nothing lights me up more than a meaty conversation with a successful entrepreneur.

I just bagged the elephant (You can thank me later.)

Godard Abel is one of the most successful SaaS entrepreneurs you’ll meet. And G2 is his Unicorn baby.

After wrapping his studies at Stanford MBA and MIT Engineering, Godard was Co-Founder & CEO of BigMachines, a pioneer of the Configure, Price, Quote software category. He scaled the business from scratch to $50M revenues & 300 people, before its acquisition by Oracle.

As CEO of SteelBrick, the leading Quote-to-Cash software platform, he built the team from 5 to 200 people, before its acquisition by Salesforce.

And currently, Godard is Co-Founder & CEO of G2, which makes B2B tech buying easy by connecting buyers to vendors. It’s “Yelp for Business Software & Services” with 1 million customer reviews & real-time ratings. 5 million tech buyers visit each month.

And he’s onto something big…

G2 has raised over $200M from top investors: Accel, Chicago Ventures, Emergence, High Alpha, Hyde Park Venture Partners, IVP, Permira, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Salesforce Ventures, HubSpot Ventures.

I was curious to understand how Godard makes it look so easy (It’s not.) He attributes not some… but ALL… of his success to “hiring & nurturing incredible people.”

In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals step-by-step how to build your Unicorn team.

Private Equity is so mysterious to so many people.

But it doesn’t have to be.

With billions of capital sitting on the sidelines, P.E. funds are making investments & recruiting talent like never before.

I wanted to find a P.E. investor to show us how it’s done, and pull no punches.

Paul Stansik is Principal at Chicago-based ParkerGale Capital. The P.E. firm leads buyouts of profitable B2B software companies with $10M+ revenue.

ParkerGale’s portfolio companies include Contelligent, Profisee, and Source Intelligence.

Following a successful career with Bain & Company in its Leadership & Talent group, Paul moved to P.E. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School.

In this 20-minute conversation, Paul reveals how the best P.E. investors put a Rockstar in every seat of every portfolio company.

Few people make the transition from being a Venture Capitalist to running an operating company.

Even fewer do it successfully.

I just met one of them. His name is David Wald, CEO & Co-Founder of Aclaimant.

After years at Bain & Company and dough, he was a successful venture investor at Lightbank.

Now, his fast-growing Chicago-based SaaS platform helps companies manage their risks. Specifically, tracking the processes around people who get hurt & property that gets damaged.

With over 50 distributed employees, David & his team have weathered the pandemic with strength.

Clearly, he’s onto something big… Aclaimant investors include Royal Street Ventures, Mercury Fund, KEC Ventures, Next Coast Ventures, Aspen Capital Group, RRE Ventures, EBSCO Capital, KEC Ventures, Moderne Ventures, SMW Capital

In this 20-minute, David reveals how he puts a Rockstar in every seat of the business.

If you’ve never served on a Board of Directors, you may envision it as a country club day filled with palm fronds & chardonnay.

The reality is that most Board meetings are …well… boring. And ineffective.

Indianapolis-based Boardable, the SaaS platform, is out to change that. And to make Boards far more effective in this pivotal role. It manages the agenda, notes, voting, every aspect of communications.

It was specifically designed for mission-driven community organizations & non-profits. They’re countless across the US.

Gabby VanAlstine leads Talent & Culture at Boardable. Prior, she led talent at Emplify.

Clearly, Boardable is onto something big.

It’s raised over $10M from High Alpha, Base10 Partners, Collina Ventures, VisionTech Partners.

In this 20-minute conversation, Gabby reveals the recruitment process that she uses to put a Rockstar in every seat.

Venture Capital is booming. Everywhere.

…Yes, even in Iowa.

With $80M assets under management, Des Moines-based Next Level Ventures originally invested in early-stage Midwestern agriculture & B2B data companies.

Building on their success, they recently broadened their focus to Fintech companies nationally.

Which means a ton of hiring.

I wanted to find out how they do it So I spoke with Scott Hoekman, Partner at Next Level.

Scott has helped birth 26 companies so far. With a typical check size between $500K & $5M, he’s been early in success stories like Eltropy, Nymbus, and MotoRefi.

Scott takes hiring seriously.

In this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how he assesses Founders & helps them put a Rockstar in every seat of the portfolio company.