5 (or less) Years of S...

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BTU #110: Co-Founding Plated & Raising $55M (Nick Taranto)

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BTU #110: Co-Founding Plated & Raising $55M (Nick Taranto)

Nick Taranto is the Co-Founder & CEO of Plated, a company whose "Mission is to Help People Eat Better, and Live Better." Plated has raised over $55M in funding, and been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, NYT, Wired Magazine and more. He started out at Dartmouth College, after which he worked at KOMPIP Microfinance before going on to Harvard Business School. After HBS, he graduated from the Marine Corps' The Basic School, where he Drilled as an active reservist for 3 years. He also worked at Goldman Sachs as a Private Wealth Advisor prior to starting Plated.

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BTU #111: Two sibling Army Vets and Their Two Successful Startups

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BTU #111: Two sibling Army Vets and Their Two Successful Startups

Jon Boggiano and Chris Boggiano are the Co-Founders of Versame, which leverages technology for large scale impact to improve early childhood education and language development. Versame has raised $2.5M in funding and is a team of sixteen.

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BTU #106 - Alex Stone: Under Armour, Athletes of Valor, and the Sports Industry

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BTU #106 - Alex Stone: Under Armour, Athletes of Valor, and the Sports Industry

Alex Stone is the Founder & CEO of Athletes of Valor, who’s mission is to help veterans transition from service to career by leveraging the power of collegiate sports. He started out as a Sergeant in the Marine Corps, after which he worked as a Product Manager at Wellpower Sports Co, and then at Under Armour as both a Development Manager and then Product Line Manager.

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BTU #104 - Scott Washburn: Submarines to PhD & Astronaut Finalist

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BTU #104 - Scott Washburn: Submarines to PhD & Astronaut Finalist

Dr. Scott Washburn is a Radiation Effects Engineering Manager at SEAKR Engineering. He started out at the University of Colorado, Boulder, after which he served in the Navy as a Submarine Officer for five years. When he first left the Navy he worked as a Thermal and Project Engineer at SSL (Space Systems Loral), after which he returned to the University of Colorado Boulder for his Masters, and then his PhD in Aerospace Engineering. Since then he has worked as Chief Engineer at Geryon Space Technologies, as well as a research engineer at NASA. Scott was also one of the 50 finalists of the astronaut selection program.

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BTU #100 - My Story

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BTU #100 - My Story

Justin M. Nassiri is the Founder & CEO of StoryBox, a digital marketing start-up that helps companies transform their customers into brand ambassadors. He started out at the Naval Academy, after which he served five years as an officer onboard nuclear submarines. After his transition from the military, he went to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, after which he started StoryBox. He started Beyond the Uniform at the end of 2016 in an effort to help military veterans navigate their civilian career.

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BTU #99 - Jacob Martinez: Army Sergeant to President of USA's 592nd Fastest Growing Company

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BTU #99 - Jacob Martinez: Army Sergeant to President of USA's 592nd Fastest Growing Company

Jacob Martinez is the President of Market Traders Institute, a trading technology and education company with over 200 employees. Jacob started out in the Army, where he served for 4.5 years in military intelligence achieving the rank of sergeant. He started out at Market Traders Institute as Vice President of Managed Accounts and has held virtually every position in the company.

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BTU #93 - Matt Ufford: Marines to Editor & Host at SB Nation

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BTU #93 - Matt Ufford: Marines to Editor & Host at SB Nation

Matt Ufford is an Editor-at-Large and Video Host at SB Nation - a digital sports media brand and network of team sites built by and for the modern sports fan. He started out at Northwestern University, after which he served in the Marine Corps for four years as a Tank Officer. After the Marines he worked as a columnist at AOL Sports, as well as an editor at Uproxx Media, where he founded their sports and TV blogs.

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BTU #92 - Justine Evirs: Service to School and 6+ years helping vets with education

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BTU #92 - Justine Evirs: Service to School and 6+ years helping vets with education

Justine Evirs is the Senior Director of Programs at Service to School. She is a Navy veteran and Navy spouse, and has helped countless veterans find and be accepted to their ideal college and grad school programs. She started out as a Fireman in the US Navy, and has dedicated the last 6 years to transforming our active duty, military spouse, and veteran community through academic advising & program development. She has worked at ECPI University, the University of Maryland, and College of San Mateo in veteran services coordinator positions

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BTU #88 - Mike Benedosso - Army Boxing National Champion to LinkedIn & Google

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BTU #88 - Mike Benedosso - Army Boxing National Champion to LinkedIn & Google

Mike works in New Business Development at Google as part of Google Cloud. He started out at West Point, where he was the Boxing Team Captain and a National Champion. He served in the Army for five years: first as an Executive Officer (XO) of a Military Intelligence Company and then as a Platoon Leader and Team Captain of the Army Boxing Team in the Army's World Class Athlete Program at Fort Carson, Colorado. There, he trained to earn a spot on the 2012 US Olympic Boxing team. Since leaving the Army in 2012, he has worked at Sony, LinkedIn, Google, and earned his MBA from UCLA.

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BTU #87 - Joe Musselman: Navy to Founder of The Honor Foundation

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BTU #87 - Joe Musselman: Navy to Founder of The Honor Foundation

Joe Musselman is the Founder & CEO of The Honor Foundation. He started out at DePaul University. Joe enlisted in the Navy with intentions of becoming a Navy SEAL, but as he says, “God had other plans.” He sustained an injury that ultimately lead him to found The Honor Foundation. He is also the Founder of The NEXT Series and The SOF Garage.

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BTU #89 - Drew Sanocki: Navy to bootstrapping from $0 to 7-figures in 1 year

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BTU #89 - Drew Sanocki: Navy to bootstrapping from $0 to 7-figures in 1 year

Drew is a Founding Partner at Empire Growth Group, a hybrid consulting agency, services provider, and investment vehicle. He started out Harvard, after which he served in the Navy as an intelligence Officer for four years. After his transition from the Navy, Drew attended Stanford Business School. After a role at Commerce.TV in Business Development, Drew co-founded Design Public, an 'inventoryless' ecommerce company focused on the home furnishings market, which Drew bootstrapped from $0 to 7 figures in under one year, eventually selling the company after eight profitable years. Drew also runs the site NerdMarketing.com, where he writes about marketing automation and customer segmentation rules that have driven over $100 million in transactions in 2015.

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BTU #84 - David Smith: Marine Corps infantryman to CMO of a Norwegian Startup

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BTU #84 - David Smith: Marine Corps infantryman to CMO of a Norwegian Startup

David Smith is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Dogu, a Norwegian Business-to-Business (B2B) software company that creates unique solutions that allow businesses to visualize data and and accelerate sales. He started out in the Marine Corps as an infantry rifleman. Since the Marines he has graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, volunteered as a social entrepreneur doing humanitarian work in over 12 countries, has been part of the Stanford Ignite Veterans program, and many other diverse activities I’m sure we’ll get into during the interview.

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BTU #83 - Chris Dattaro: Navy to Goldman Sachs to Operations at Lyft

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BTU #83 - Chris Dattaro: Navy to Goldman Sachs to Operations at Lyft

Chris Dattaro is an Operations Manager at Lyft in Washington DC. He started out at the Naval Academy, after which he served as a Surface Warfare Officer for five years. After departing the Navy, Chris participated in the Goldman Sachs 3 month Veterans Integration Program, before joining FBR, an investment bank, in an Institutional Equity Sales role. He briefly worked at Trustify as the Director of Recruiting before joining Lyft. Chris is married to an active duty Lieutenant and HR Officer and he is also active in his spare time coaching veterans about their career transition to the civilian workforce and working with veteran entrepreneurs.

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BTU #80 - Zach & Drew - two Navy vets team up to raise $13M for Rhumbix

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BTU #80 - Zach & Drew - two Navy vets team up to raise $13M for Rhumbix

Rhumbix is based in San Francisco and is a mobile platform designed for the construction craft workforce. They were founded in 2014 and have raised over $13M in funding from investors including Greylock Partners, Brick & Mortar Ventures, Spectrum 28, and Glynn Capital.

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BTU #79 - Camilla Maybee: Army Officer to Medical School at George Washington University

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BTU #79 - Camilla Maybee: Army Officer to Medical School at George Washington University

Camilla Maybee is currently in her second year of Medical School at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She started out at West Point, after which she served as a Medical Supply Officer as well as an Ambulance Platoon Leader and role II XO in the Army for four years. After separation from the Army, she worked at the UVA Health System as Administrative Assistant. She holds a Masters of Science in Health Care Administration from the University of Maryland.

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BTU #78 - Josh Carter: TechStars, Operation Code, Patriot Bootcamp and more

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“ Stop worrying about the beta, and just get the product out. If you are not embarrassed by your first product, then you're doing it wrong. It should be ugly, it should be clunky, it should be what you think it should be... but less. And once you get it in the hands of the customer, the customer is going to tell you what they like and what they don't like. And that's what we realized - we were trying to be perfectionists. You want your product to be perfect, but you make these assumptions that it's going to be valuable. And the best way to do that is get it in the hands of the customer who will tell you if they find value in it." – Josh Carter

Josh Carter is the Co-Founder & CEO of Brightwork, a microservices platform that enables developers to build faster on a reliable and scalable solution. Since their founding they’ve raised over $300K in funding and have gone through Techstars in Chicago. Josh started out in the Navy, where he served for about 3 years. Since his time in the Navy he’s held multiple engineering roles in the Telecom industry and eventually a Senior Support Engineer at the startup, Twilio, a communication startup that went public earlier this year. Josh founded his own digital marketing agency - Plunk - and is also a former founding board member of Operation Code.

The top reason to listen to today’s show is:

  • Support - Josh has been living in the startup world for a while, and has a great overview of different resources available for other veteran entrepreneurs. In particular, he talks about TechStars, and gives a fantastic overview of this 3 month program, as well as Patriot Bootcamp and other great resources. In this conversation, we cover a lot of topics, including:

Our Sponsor

Audible is offering one FREE audio book to Beyond the Uniform listeners. You can claim this offer here, and see a list of books recommended by my guests at BeyondTheUniform.io/books

Selected Links

  • Twilio
  • Brightwork.io
  • Plunk
  • TechStars - this was a great help for Josh in starting a venture backed company. It is a 3-month program offered all over the United States. They take 6% of the company in exchange for $120,000 in funding.
  • FounderCon - all TechStar founders get together for one year
  • Patriot Bootcamp - offshoot of the TechStars core program. It's a one weekend program that is very intense, but very targeted in preparing veterans for entrepreneurship
  • Operation Code - Chris was a founding board member; they help transitioning veterans get into coding - finding mentors and sharing advice for becoming a programmer
  • Resources
    • Meetup.com - Coffee with CoFounders - lowkey get togethers are rotating coffee shops for founders to connect with each other and talk about what they're struggling with

Show Notes

  • 1:45 - Josh's background
  • 2:30 - When Josh knew he would leave the military and how he approached this decision
  • 3:20 - What Josh's first job search looked like and how he found the Art Academy to be different than he expected. He talks about how he found his way to the Telecom industry
  • 4:23 - An overview on the Telecom industry and the sorts of jobs Josh held
  • 5:16 - An overview of Josh's work at Brightwork, as well as the engagements he held before then
  • 7:57 - What it was like for Josh to be actively employed at Twilio while running his own digital agency
  • 9:15 - The moment when Josh first had the idea of Brightwork
  • 11:55 - An overview of TechStars and how Josh ended up in Chicago
  • 15:28 - How TechStars provides an investment of $125k for 6% of the company
  • 17:38 - An overview of Patriot Bootcamp and Josh's experience
  • 19:46 - What Josh's founding team looks like and advice to veterans for finding initial team members
  • 25:48 - What Josh's life looks like on a day-to-day basis as part of an early stage startup
  • 28:50 - Josh's advice to other veterans considering starting their own company
  • 35:10 - Other resources Josh would encourage other veterans to check out
  • 39:32 - An overview of Operation Code and how Veterans might engage with them
  • 41:00 - One of the biggest mistakes Josh made in his entrepreneurial journey and what he learned from it
  • 44:00 - Josh's final words of wisdom
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BTU #73 - Sarah Travaglio: Army to Asurion, Accenture, and LinkedIn

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BTU #73 - Sarah Travaglio: Army to Asurion, Accenture, and LinkedIn

Sarah works at LinkedIn, where she is the Senior Manager, Head of Media Account Management for the Americas. She started out at West Point, after which she served in the Army for five years as a Company Commander and Assistant Battalion Operation Officer. While on active duty she obtained her Masters in Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma, and after her transition from the Army she worked at Asurion in Customer Experience positions, before moving on to Accenture. She then moved to LinkedIn, where she has worked for the last three years.

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BTU #67 Don Faul: A Leading Veteran in Silicon Valley (Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and more)

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BTU #67 Don Faul: A Leading Veteran in Silicon Valley (Facebook, Google, Pinterest, and more)

Don is the CEO at Athos, a company that offers a wearable technology that is fully integrated in workout clothing, and can track your muscle groups, heart rate, breathing level and more. They have raised over $50M in funding since their founding 4 years ago. Don started out at the Naval Academy, after which he served for five years as an Marine Corps as part of the Force Recon. After his transition out of the Marines, he went to Stanford Business School, after which he joined Google in 206 as a Manager of Online Sales and Operations. Two years later, he joined Facebook as the VP of Online Operations, and four years after that Pinterest as the Head of Operations. He serves on the Board of Nuru international, which listeners may remember from Episode #68 with Nuru’s founder, Jake Harriman.

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BTU #66 - Sean Barney: Purple Heart recipient to Congressional Candidate

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BTU #66 - Sean Barney: Purple Heart recipient to Congressional Candidate

Sean Barney is a public defender. He started out at Swarthmore College, after which he served for five years as a Machine Gunner in the 25th Marine Regiment, where he was awarded the Purple Heart. Since transitioning from the Marines, Sean has worked at the Think Tank, Third Way. He has also been extremely active in politics - one of the main things we’ll talk about today - his experience here is extensive but a few highlights are serving as both the Campaign Manager and then Policy Director for Governor Jack Markell  and a Candidate for Congress. Sean holds a Master of Arts from Columbia University, a Masters of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of government, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

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BTU #65 - Mark Frank: Army to Serial Entrepreneur and Founder of Four Companies

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BTU #65 - Mark Frank: Army to Serial Entrepreneur and Founder of Four Companies

Mark Frank is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sondermind, a startup that is focused on making mental health services more accessible and accepted for everyone. He started out West Point and served as an Logistics Officer in the Army for five years. After the Army, Mark earned both his MBA and Masters of Engineering Management at Northwestern University. After grad school, he an Associate Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley for two years before serving as Founder & CEO at Next Oncology. After six years at Next Oncology, he sold the company in a deal that brought a 12X return to investors. In addition to founding Sondermind and Next Oncology, Mark has also started SafeImageMD and TermScout, as well as served as the Managing Director of the investment company, Goldwing Capital.