The IVY Podcast

#74: Can Buying Wine Help End Childhood Hunger? Featuring the Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer of ONEHOPE, Brandon Hall

To help fund a life-saving vaccine or send aid in a natural disaster, all you have to do is buy wine. That’s the idea behind ONEHOPE, the California-based wine brand providing people the opportunity to do more good through everyday actions. Their wine, gourmet coffee, and gift sets each support a charitable cause — every case of pinot funds a pet adoption, while every bottle of sparkling helps fund two meals to help end childhood hunger. No one needed another excuse to pour themselves a glass of Merlot, but ONEHOPE makes it all the more appealing. Brandon Hall, the Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer of ONEHOPE, joins The IVY Podcast to talk about how he and his friends built the socially-conscious brand from the ground up, and their mission of bringing people together to celebrate and serve the world.

#73: How to Change the World Through Entrepreneurship, Featuring Founder of Moon Express, Naveen Jain

Naveen Jain is driven to solve the world's biggest challenges through innovation. His space company, Moon Express, is the first private enterprise to receive formal government approval to land on the moon this Fall — beating Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Naveen has also founded the companies Viome, World Innovation Institute, TalentWise, and Infospace, among others. Those companies goals range from making humanity a multi-planetary society, to rethinking the entire healthcare system from an entrepreneur's perspective, to saving us from extinction — and that’s just scratching the surface. You could say Naveen knows how to dream big. Naveen joins The IVY Podcast to discuss how entrepreneurs can sink their teeth into today’s most complex problems in order to catalyze original thinking, pursue “Moonshot” initiatives, and create companies that make a true impact.

#72: Iconic DJ & Music Producer Kaskade on How to Command a Global Audience

From the rise of subscription and streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, to the surprising return of LPs, to the continuing decline in sales of CDs and digital tracks  — the multi-billion dollar music industry has undergone some massive transformations in the past five years.  In light of all this, one wonders: What will the future of music in the 21st century look like? If there’s one man who has an idea, it’s six-time Grammy-nominated DJ, singer, songwriter, and producer, Kaskade. The stage name of record producer and remixer Ryan Raddon, Kaskade has released nine studio albums since 2008, created remixes for everyone from Lady Gaga to Beyoncé, and performed hundreds of headlining shows a year for a decade running. His latest full-length album, Automatic, amassed over 50 million streams on Spotify in less than a year’s time. Kaskade joins The IVY Podcast to reflect on how he exactly he grew into an iconic music producer, speak to the the future of music industry, and give advice to aspiring musicians looking to captivate audiences around the world — both on and off the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.

#71: How to Create Social Impact that Strengthens Communities to Solve Big Problems, featuring President & CEO of United Way Worldwide, Brian Gallaghe...

Brian Gallagher is the President & CEO of United Way Worldwide, the largest private sector nonprofit in the country, which raises approximately $4 billion dollars annually. It offers leadership support for millions of volunteers and donors and licenses nearly 1800 franchises in 41 countries. In this conversation, Brian describes the successes and struggles he has experienced during his tenure at United Way, explaining how the organization is adapting to engage the next generation of donors. He discusses the prominent role played by the numerous United Way chapters across the globe, describing how the organization's collective impact model engages various stakeholders in communities to solve some of the world's most pressing problems.   

#70: Fashion Icon Tamara Mellon on How to Turn Setbacks into Success

What do you do when you’re stuck with a broken business model? You dig deep and reach into an inner reserve of resilience, grit, and perseverance to pioneer a new range of solutions to make your struggling business thrive. World-renowned fashion icon Tamara Mellon has become a paragon of such business tenacity and savvy. A co-founder of the luxury shoe brand Jimmy Choo back in 1996, Tamara left the company in 2011 with a reported $135 million payout. In 2013, she started her own self-named luxury label in New York, which sold through brick-and-mortar retailers like Neiman Marcus. After realizing that her new venture was using an outdated model of luxury, Tamara filed for bankruptcy and relaunched her eponymous brand in Los Angeles in 2016. The new chapter of Tamara Mellon brings the same top quality, Italian handcrafted shoes to women, but does so in a disruptive, direct-to-consumer model, selling only from her website for a fraction of the price of competing brands. Tamara joins The IVY Podcast to reflect on her rollercoaster journey to founding her own brand, revealing it’s sometimes necessary to break rules and defy expectations to succeed in a competitive industry.

#69: The Cultural Significance of Fashion, Featuring the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the FIT, Dr. Valerie Steele

Fashion, like any other artform, is constantly changing and evolving with the times. A reflection of society’s defining spirit or mood at any given moment, fashion provides a unique window through which to grasp larger cultural, political, and ideological forces at play in the world. Dr. Valerie Steele, the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, has been an instrumental figure in creating and giving shape to our modern understanding of the cultural significance of fashion. In her two-decade career at The Museum at FIT, Dr. Steele has personally organized more than 20 exhibitions and authored or co-authored more than 20 books on the topic. Dr. Steele joined The IVY Podcast to talk about how the business of fashion is changing as the millennial generation grows into the industry’s target consumers, as well as the intersection and fashion and technology. If your wardrobe needs some further inspiration, Dr. Steele's got tips for how to develop your personal style.

#68: How to Raise Your Series A & B, Featuring Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tribeca Venture Partners, Brian Hirsch

Trying to raise the serious capital needed to turn your idea into a global company? The process is daunting and complex, to say the least — from identifying sophisticated institutional investors actually willing to back your pitch, to the initial “seed capital” phase, all the way through series A, B, and C funding. Thankfully, Brian Hirsch is here to simplify your entrepreneurial endeavor. The Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tribeca Venture Partners —  a venture capital firm focused almost exclusively on startups — Brian is an expert at raising early-stage funding for emerging businesses. In this conversation, Brian reveals practical tools gleaned from his years of experiences helping to build world-class companies. Brian’s insights are what any entrepreneur aiming to secure investments in the earliest stages of their business needs to know.

#67: How to Disrupt a Massive Market: Innovations in Real Estate Featuring the Co-Founder & CEO of Cadre, Ryan Williams

The global real estate investment market is a multi-trillion dollar industry — a massive investment vehicle that has made the fortunes of magnates across the globe. Yet this behemoth market has largely remained resistant to major technological change, maintaining antiquated processes for those trying to make money from tangible property. Ryan Williams, the Co-Founder & CEO of Cadre, is on a mission to shake up this lumbering industry. A Harvard grad who worked stints at The Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs, the 29-year-old Williams has built Cadre into a next-generation platform that empowers people to buy and sell real estate more efficiently. Co-founded with Josh and Jared Kushner, Cadre has already closed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of deals on the platform. The New York-based company recently raised $65 million in a Series C funding round, drawing the attention of major real estate players in its plans for global expansion. Ryan Williams joins The IVY Podcast to discuss next steps for Cadre, and the tenacious work he’s doing to remain at the forefront of the next wave of innovation in the real estate market.

#66: How to Be a Great Leader: 10 Timeless Lessons from the Titans of Classical Literature, Featuring Award-Winning Author and Professor, Joseph Luzzi

Successful entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Peter Thiel have obsessively turned to literature for ideas, unpacking canonical texts as "case studies" for effective leadership, concept generation, conflict resolution, and better understanding diverse cultures. Joseph Luzzi, the award-winning author and professor of Italian at Bard College, is a champion of this methodology. Luzzi’s perceptive work analyzes how history’s premier minds — from Dante and Machiavelli to Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche — can spark innovative entrepreneurial insights, even in our modern day. In this conversation, Luzzi delves into the ten timeless leadership lessons of classical literature, mining the time-tested geniuses of the written word for literary test cases geared towards the world of business. Please enjoy our conversation with Joesph Luzzi.

#65: How to Transform Your Concept Into a Product, Featuring Partner at New Enterprise Associates, Vanessa Larco

Picture this: lightning strikes your dreamscape one unexpected evening, stirring you from your slumber with the almighty power of a flawless idea — an idea that will improve people’s lives and solve society’s problems in previously unimagined ways. Bleary-eyed, you type out the concept on your phone and fall back asleep, grinning at your genius. Morning arrives, and with it a sudden, nagging sense of doubt. Though still confident in the life-altering potential of your idea, the reality of the situation is hitting home — how are you actually going to turn this idea into a reality? What form will your product take in the physical world? How will you convince users of its benefits? When can you launch? Enter Vanessa Larco. A Partner at the Silicon Valley-based investment firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Vanessa has a passion for helping founders bring their products to life. Her years of experience in product management — including overseeing web and mobile apps at Box, and contributing to the teams on Xbox Kinect and Surface at Microsoft — have left her with clear eyes on what it takes to transform a concept into a real life, functioning product. Vanessa joins us for a conversation touching on what exactly the role of a Product Manager consists of, and the questions entrepreneurs need to ask themselves to make sure their products will strike the balance between revenue, engagement, and virality. Please enjoy our conversation with Vanessa Larco.