In this Podcast Episode

Rob McNealy interviews author, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki about his latest book, Reality Check and his internet projects including Alltop.com.

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Guy Kawasaki’s Bio

Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954. His family lived in a tough part of Honolulu called Kalihi Valley, where he attended Iolani School. After Iolani, he attended Stanford University, where he graduated in 1976 with a major in psychology - the easiest major he could find.

After Stanford, Kawasaki succumbed to the wishes of his Asian American parents, and enrolled in law school at UC Davis.  He only lasted a week before he left, but the following year he entered the MBA program at UCLA.  While completing his MBA, he worked for a fine-jewelry manufacturer called Nova Stylings, where he learned how to sell.

Guy remained at Nova for a few years, until he was bit by the computer bug and took a job with an educational software company called EduWare Services. After Peachtree Software acquired the company, he got a job at Apple with the help of his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich. He spent four years evangelizing Macintosh to software and hardware developers and led the charge against world-wide domination by IBM.

Kawasaki left Apple to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS, which published a product called 4th Dimension. from there he moved on to pursue writing, speaking, and consulting.  Eventually, Guy returned to Apple as an Apple fellow, in order to help maintain and rejuvenate the Macintosh cult.

Currently, Guy is a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and co-founder of Alltop, as well as a husband, father, author, speaker, and hockey addict. In addition, he’s also written nine books, including his latest called Reality Check.

In this Podcast Episode

Rob McNealy interviews Sergio Stiberman, founder of LeaseTrader.com about how the idea behind LeaseTrader developed and what the company offers to consumers.

Sergio Stiberman’s Bio

Sergio Stiberman is president and chief executive officer of LeaseTrader.com, a website that easily and affordably matches car buyers with owners looking to terminate their lease contracts. His decision to start the company grew out of his life?long entrepreneurial spirit that was developed at a young age.

A native of Argentina, Stiberman arrived in the United States at the age of 14.After taking several business courses at local colleges in Miami, Stiberman decided to venture out on his own to start a consumer electronics wholesale company. Leveraging his experiences and knowledge of the Latin American marketplace, Stiberman’s consumer electronics company catered to visitors traveling to Miami who were interested in purchasing electronics such as VCRs, televisions, radios and portable electronics devices. Stiberman realized many of these items were difficult to purchase at a competitive price in his customers’ native countries. Through the 80s and into much of the 90s, his operation grew to over five locations throughout South Florida.

Stiberman’s consumer electronics business reached a plateau in the mid 90s, and with the advent of the Internet, he decided to search for a new business venture that would leverage the internet’s power. Then one day the idea surfaced – using the Internet to help trade car leases between people who unexpectedly wanted, or needed, to terminate their contract to consumers looking to upgrade their current vehicle. As a result, he started LeaseTrader.com in 1998.

In nearly 10 years of operation, Stiberman has grown LeaseTrader.com to a complete lease transfer service spanning the entire country. His innovative ideas have helped LeaseTrader.com thrive, especially in the first few years when a majority of market research did not support the concept. Today, Stiberman continues to develop the company, working on patent?pending technologies that will revolutionize and streamline the entire lease transfer process.

Stiberman resides in Miami with his wife and two children.

In this Podcast Episode

Rob McNealy takes time out at Defrag Conference 2008 to interview Puneet Gupta about enterprise social networking software and his company, Connectbeam.

Puneet Gupta’s Bio

Puneet brings over 16 years of enterprise software experience to Connectbeam. Prior to founding Connectbeam, Puneet served as CEO of CourseCafe, an online social collaboration application company for researchers around the world to collaborate around academic and coursework related research. Prior to CourseCafe, Puneet was Director of Product Marketing at Selectica (NASDAQ: SLTC) - an enterprise sales and solutions pricing software company. During Puneet’s tenure the company grew from 70 employees to over 900, and had one of the top ten IPOs in Nasdaq’s history. Prior to Selectica, Puneet spent several years at Peoplesoft and Oracle Corporation in engineering and product marketing roles where he brought several new products to market. He received the Best Innovative Product of the Year award at Oracle.

Puneet holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Ohio State University, Management of Technology from UC Berkeley, and MBA from Columbia University in New York.