Podcast’s first season looks to elevate insights of founders, ecosystem builders around Iowa, says host Kaylee Williams
InnoVenture Iowa Investment Director Kaylee Williams met many startup founders while traveling the state hosting workshops to coach early-stage businesses on raising venture capital.
In those moments, she wished she could tell their stories to a wider audience and in more depth. That wish has become reality in the form of the new Iowa Tech Podcast, which is currently releasing episodes from its first season.
Williams started interviewing guests about two months ago with the partnership of Justin Brady, host of the Iowa Podcast. The Iowa Tech Podcast is a product of IowaPodcast.com. The 13 founders and ecosystem builders featured in the first season are:
- Emily Steele, CEO, Hummingbirds
- Andrew Kirpalani, co-founder, WorkHound
- Liz Keehner, investor, Next Level Ventures
- Brian Waller, president Technology Association of Iowa
- Dan Israel, managing director, Global Insurance Accelerator
- Tony Vanden Bush, CEO, Syntherna
- Eric Dregne, director, the Innovation Lab
- John Jackovin, managing director, BrokerTech Ventures
- Charlie Cuddy, managing partner, Move Venture Capital
- Gabriel Glynn, co-founder and CEO, MakūSafe
- Chris Parker, associate director, UI Ventures
- Alex Hutagalung, co-founder and CEO, Pyrone Systems
- Joseph Nelson and Brad Dwyer, co-founders, Roboflow
The Iowa Tech Podcast’s episodes were created with Iowa’s innovators, entrepreneurs and operators in mind, Williams said.
Williams aimed to find the “unique piece of insight or information” each guest could contribute, such as asking Liz Keehner at Next Level Ventures what prospective portfolio companies should know about the venture capital firm’s new fund.
InnoVenture is holding a launch party for the podcast tonight at West End Architectural Salvage in downtown Des Moines from 5:15-7 p.m. The event is free but registration is required.
Williams shares goals for the podcast and highlights below. Her responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What role do you think the podcast format can have in fostering conversations among different stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem?
Podcasts are a rare form of media that I consume without a screen, and I think there are many people who would probably fall into that same boat. I think it’s imperative that, as the state-backed public venture capital fund, we do the very best we can to try and reach Iowans in any capacity we can and across as many platforms as we possibly can. This felt like a nice addition to the breadth of services that we’re currently trying to provide to founders, and I’m hopeful that for those who maybe don’t read newsletters or aren’t really interested in applying for the InnoVenture Challenge or engaging with us on webinars, this is something that they can consume and it will be beneficial to them.
What is something you learned or a favorite moment from interviewing guests on the first season of the Iowa Tech Podcast?
I had a really nice talk with Gabriel Glynn, co-founder of MakūSafe. He talked about building a team in the early days, and he said something that a mentor had said to him. That piece of advice was a pink flag always becomes a red flag, and it just resonated with me. It’s not the most positive piece of advice, but it really resonated with me. I think the reason I liked it was because you can trust your gut, and I think as founders you get into this growth mindset where you’re constantly trying to figure out what you don’t know, and you’re a sponge. You’re asking your mentors, your coaches, your advisers for advice, you’re talking to investors. You’re constantly being told you’re wrong [or] to course correct. Try this. Iterate here. And here was a founder who I would consider to be a very successful one in our ecosystem saying to me, “Hey, if you feel like it’s a pink flag, it’ll be a red flag later.” You already know that, so trust yourself. I’ve had a lot of good moments with a few founders. John Jackovin shared in his interview that he used to run a smoothie shop. I had no idea. Dr. Tony Vanden Bush from Syntherna shared with me that his very first entrepreneurial venture was a podcast of his own that he did on musicians out of his garage. When you get to sit down with someone one-on-one, you get to learn a lot about them, about their backgrounds, and it’s really interesting what people have been into and what led them to where they are today.
What do you hope founders can gain from the conversations held on this podcast?
The podcast is a push and not a pull. The nice thing holistically is that founders can go through and they can choose which episodes they think are going to be valuable to them. If you’re going to be pitching to Liz at Next Level Ventures, you can pluck her episode out of the batch. I think that’s a good thing, and it helps with some of that overwhelm because you have the ability to go through and curate, “OK, who do I want to learn from today?” I also think if you look at the throughline across all the interviews that we’ve done, and they’re not all published yet, I would say there’s an optimism around our ecosystem, and just generally baked into the founder persona and the ecosystem builders. I also think there’s a solution-oriented approach that you’ll hear in almost every story and anecdote that every guest I’ve talked to has shared with me on the podcast. They’re locked in to seeing the world in this way. They’re trying to understand where can I solve problems? Or as I started my entrepreneurial journey, here are the things that we needed to solve … whatever that growth path might have looked like for that particular founder, they’re always looking for solutions. High level, I think that there are some patterns that you can pull from all these individuals that are good characteristics for entrepreneurs to try and embody on their own journey.
What need do you think the Iowa Tech Podcast can fill in the ecosystem more broadly?
I think these podcasts create a static library, a static resource that founders can always go back to, and it doesn’t require them to spend any money or to get in the car and drive anywhere to be there to shake hands with that founder, or that ecosystem builder, or that investor. I also think that it can help to humanize some of the players in our ecosystem who are larger than life. You get the opportunity to really hear someone laugh and joke about how they started a smoothie shop when they were younger. You might really look up to that individual in the ecosystem and having coffee with that person might be pretty nerve-wracking, so this is an opportunity to demystify the process or the journey that got that person to where they are in their career, but also to humanize them and you get to know them a little bit better before you go out and have coffee.
What other podcasts serve Iowa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem?
The Iowa Tech Podcast is available on podcast platforms and at iowapodcast.com with new episodes releasing weekly on Tuesdays. Here are a few more podcasts focused on entrepreneurship and innovation in Iowa:
- Iowa Manufacturing Podcast hosted by Leisa Fox
- The Innovators Podcast hosted by Iowa State University Research Park staff
- Rural Business Innovators Podcast hosted by America’s SBDC Iowa
- Small Business and Startup Stories DSM Podcast hosted by Greater Des Moines Partnership
- Iowa Innovation Podcast hosted by NewBoCo
- You Don’t Need This Podcast hosted by Ben McDougal
Have another innovation podcast you would recommend? Email Sarah Diehn at sarahdiehn@bpcdm.com
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct
