Startup HandMeDowns

Today Philip Kasumu had the pleasure of speaking with Raz who's vision is fueled by wanting to leave a better environment for his children and the next generation, Rich ‘Raz’ Razgaitis is tackling a problem most people don’t even know they have: toxic drinking water.

As Co-Founder & CEO of FloWater, which is the world’s most advanced water refill station and member of the Inc. 500 list, Raz is combining this vision with his 20+ years of leadership & tech experience to deliver a product that keeps 5.5 plastic water bottles from reaching our landfills and oceans every second (230+ million to date).

startuphandmedowns.co 

Today's interview was with Amir Salihefendić the CEO and Founder of Doist and Twist. Amir has viewed life a little differently ever since his family fled war-torn Bosnia for Denmark. He began to see the world becoming borderless and that worldview has influenced his mission to shape the future of work as Founder and CEO of Doist, a fully distributed, bootstrapped company that creates productivity tools used by over 25 million people globally.

Amir has always believed that the future of work is remote way before covid 19 and that innovation doesn’t only happen in offices. From day one, when Amir began working on his first productivity app (Todoist) from his dorm room, the Doist team has been fully distributed. It’s now made up of over 70 employees across 30 countries around the world, building tools like Todoist and Twist -  an anti-Slack, asynchronous communication tool made for the modern workplace. Having bootstrapped Doist to profitability from the beginning, Amir has zero plans of ever seeking outside investment or exiting the company.

Peter Yared is the founder and CEO of InCountry, a regulatory technology company that is providing data residency-as-a-service worldwide. Peter is also a 7x founder with more than $500M in exits, A Silicon Valley veteran, Peter founded six enterprise software companies that were acquired by Sun, Oracle, Citrix, VMware and more. Previously, Peter was the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive, where he was responsible for bringing CBS into the cloud with the end-to-end replatform of its Comscore #7 group of Internet properties. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Application Server Division and the CTO of the Liberty federated identity consortium that designed SAML 2.

Site: Startuphandmedowns.co

In this episode, Philip speaks with Kal Vepuri, serial investor and founder and CEO of Hero, the IoT-connected device that automatically dispenses medication when you need it, was inspired to build his company after his mother, who's an M.D., admitted herself to the hospital for quadruple bypass surgery.

The surgery was successful, but it was what came next for his mother that opened her son's eyes to the difficulties millions of Americans face every day. Dr. Vepuri, herself a nationally renowned physician, underwent two readmissions that could have been prevented if she managed her medication as prescribed. Kal talks about the creation of Hero and the work that went into it before they had one customer. In addition to that, we talk about Kal's early success as a founder before he went to college and how he's managed to become a stellar angel investor as well as investing in some household names such as ClassPass, Sweetgreen, Warby Parker, Harry's and more. 

Website: startuphandmdowns.co