Bootstrapping In America

Steve Greene is the Founder of Fantastic15. They help kids work towards their sports goals without ever leaving the house. As a parent and coach, Steve thought it would be helpful to have short workouts readily available for kids to do at home, especially during cold winter, or rainy days, and also at night. Users can workout with experts online, or file through a library of more than 250 various drills and exercises.

Hawaiian Bros Island Grill is a chain of 30+ restaurants spread throughout the U.S. that serves Island-inspired Hawaiian fare. Cameron McNie and his brother Tyler are two of the Co-founders. They're from the West Coast, but they relocated to Kansas City, Missouri to launch the business, and in less than five years they have grown the company ten-fold.

Masa Kabayama is the Co-founder & CEO of Uplift, whose technology delivers real-time movement tracking and 3D analysis to enhance performance and health using only your smartphone. Their user-friendly, patented solutions provide coaches, trainers, and physical therapists with the tools and analytics they need to optimize human performance while mitigating the risk of injuries in sports, health, and wellness. Masa is the former President of Tesla Japan, GoPro's Advanced technology senior leader, and a machine learning scientist from Carnegie Mellon University.

Steve Dolinsky has won 13 James Beards Awards for journalism. He is the food reporter for NBC 5 Chicago. Even though he has reviewed all different types of restaurants, he has a passion for a certain type of food... pizza - he has a pizza podcast, has authored two books on pizza, and is the founder of Pizza City Tours, and now he's launching the inaugural Pizza City Festival in Chicago on July 23rd & 24th. There will be 40 pizzerias serving some of the most famous pizzas from around the world.

Mike Evans is the Founder of Fixer, which is a right-now handyman service, bringing a modern tech approach to homeowners, apartment dwellers, and landlords.

JETWAY is a natural, uplifting, ultra-premium wine seltzer, that is taking California and hopefully soon the rest of the country by storm.

Our guest today immigrated from Bolivia to the U.S. when he was 18-years-old, and after a successful exit of his last company, Carlos Antequera founded Novel Growth Partners, which is a revenue-based financing firm for growing B2B software companies. Based in Kansas City with the goal of providing entrepreneurs with the capital and support needed to maximize their value, they have funded over 50+ companies across a wide variety of verticals in just 3 years.

Washington Maritime Blue (WMB) is an organization that runs an intensive mentor-based program focused on helping maritime industry startups learn how to grow.

Darren Powderly is the Co-founder of CrowdStreet, which is the largest online real estate investment platform for institutional quality real estate in the country. In 2021 and 2022, the company was recognized as the Best Overall Real Estate Crowdfunding Site by Investopedia.

Howard Tullman is back to speak with Kristi and Jules on today's episode!

Learn more about Boys Hope Girls Hope, a non-profit organization that helps young people graduate to break the cycle of poverty.

Rudy Willingham is a content creator and director whose work spans all verticals—art, fashion, beauty, sports, food, and more—and adapts effortlessly across platforms, from social channels to TV ads, print ads, billboards. He is the Founder of RudyCorp, which has created content and ads for companies such as Whole Foods, ESPN, Starbucks, and Amazon, to name a few. He has over 4.3M TikTok followers, and can also be seen on Instagram.

The Garage is a community and physical space for every Northwestern student interested in entrepreneurship to learn, iterate, & grow.

Today's Bootstrapping in America is all about lessons learned from a lifetime of entrepreneurship. Featuring the Founder & CEO of United Scrap Metal and the Founder & Chairman Emeritus of Belgravia Group Ltd. Marsha and Buzz share their wisdom about starting a business to challenges they've faced and conquered along the way.

Scott Lerner is the CEO of the Better Choice Company, which is a rapidly growing animal health & wellness company committed to leading the industry shift toward pet products and services that help dogs and cats live healthier, happier, and longer lives. They take an alternative, nutrition-based approach to animal health relative to conventional dog and cat food offerings and position their portfolio of brands to benefit from the mainstream trends of growing pet humanization and consumer focus on health and wellness. They sell the majority of their dog and cat food and treats under the Halo and TruDog brands

CDL 1000 is a technology-driven, asset-based third-party logistics company handling the full logistical processes between customers. 

d.RT is a fashion-forward collection of clothing for both teenagers and men. Dylan Thompson is the Founder of d.RT, and is only 18 years old.  He credits his gravitation and appreciation towards fashion to his exposure to traveling at a young age. Visiting fashion capitals, such as Milan and New York City, provided him with an early understanding that dressing well is a way of finding out about yourself. That sentiment stayed with Thompson and ultimately became the cornerstone of d.RT.

Knightscope is an advanced security technology company based in Silicon Valley that builds fully autonomous security robots that deter, detect, and report possible crimes.

Spaced Ventures is the planet's first public space investment portal. They offer flexible and much-needed alternative funding options to early-stage space companies.