AZ Tech Podcast

AZ Tech Podcast puts Hamid Shojaee in conversation with people working inside Arizona's technology economy. He is not a neutral observer. In some cold opens he says that he and his wife sold their software companies and are now investing in the state's tech ecosystem, and he presents the interviews as his way of keeping up with what is happening locally. That shows in the questions. They go straight at money, timing and hard decisions. With Saeed Eslami, he asks how big VisualLive got and what it sold for, and admits he is putting his guest on the spot. Eslami answers with a timeline: founded in 2017, acquisition talks in 2020, sold to Unity in March 2021. He also explains why he never took outside capital: clients who pay you don't expect equity. Aly Saxe, VP of Communications at CampusLogic, describes the point in 2019 when she decided she could not run a company and keep raising money at once. The shutdown became real, she says, with a phone call to Greg Head during which she cried. Her conversation also includes a candid stretch on the harassment women face as an extra hurdle, and the host thanks her for being open about it. Pat Sullivan, founder and CEO of Defendry, is credited by the host with inventing the CRM category alongside co-founder Mike Muni. The two trade founding-team advice until they agree on a formula: one partner who can build, one who can sell. Not every guest runs a startup. Grant McFadden of the ASU Biodesign Institute talks about viruses being studied against intractable cancers such as late-stage pancreatic cancer. The host then asks him to explain how the COVID-19 vaccine was fast-tracked. Jenny Poon says she started her co-working space, CO+HOOTS, ten years ago after leaving the Arizona Republic, when the publications she worked on shut down and she had to decide what came next. Her parents ran a restaurant, and they warned her that entrepreneurship was the hardest thing anyone could do. The pandemic comes up in other episodes too. Alexis Krisay and Melissa DiGianfilippo, co-founders of Serendipit and co-hosts of the podcast 'Will It Stick?', talk about good staff leaving to travel or try something new, and about consumers who may now value an experience over the lowest price. Most episodes close the same way, with a request for a genuine review and a nudge to share the episode with someone who would enjoy it. Now and then the recording keeps running past that sign-off and catches a bit of relaxed chatter after the interview. What the show offers is first-hand accounts, from the people who made the decisions, of how companies here get funded, sold or shut down.