About Al Morris
Al is a chief architect and co-founder of Koii network. Koii was born in 2020 to widen the possibilities for the future of Web3. Al loves teaching, which made him start Blockchain Institute Chicago. The main goal of the institute is to help educate the public about the use of blockchain technology.

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 | Introduction to Al Morris
0:22 | Why Koii?
2:42 | What sets Koii apart from other networks
4:43 | Crypto -a giant scam?
6:33 | Intricacies of remote work
11:12 | Strategy to track productivity
14:58 | Recurring meetings are time wasters
19:18 | Zoom Fatigue a Real Thing
21:34 | Satisfaction of making your own food
23:00 | Privacy - 10 years later

Quotes
“The reason that we set out to build this one, in particular, is to fix like a really big problem in the world, which is this, this issue of the internet being owned by such a select few.” (20.20)
“You could basically wipe an entire section of civilization off the map and within a decade, no one would even remember that it happened. I think there’s probably instances that is happening in a lot of places right now around the world where we don’t really have those kinds of protections in place.” (26.47)

Connect with Al Morris
Follow Al Morris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderdmorris
Website: https://www.annalembke.com/

Work with Crowdlinker:
https://www.crowdlinker.com/contact

About Mark Rickmeier
Mark is the CEO at TXI - a product innovation firm. He believes in creating rich employee and customer experiences. But, not everything scales well. Even good intentions don’t necessarily scale well. In the pandemic, TXI tried to deliver cooked meals to all members of the team. That didn’t scale well. Mark shares lessons he learned about scalability throughout this episode. Besides TXI, Mark founded The Kermit Collective where founders of software companies get together to share how business is going with their competitors in a high-trust environment.

SHOW NOTES:
00:05 | Who is Mark Rickmeier?
00:57 | What is the ugly side of growth?
02:19 | Focusing on resilience instead of growth
05:16 | What is TXI (product activation firm)?
10:09 | Why would you want to make your competition better?
16:13 | Removing stigmas around your industry through cooperatition OR Revealing your biggest failure to your biggest competitor
19:22 | What to prioritize when scaling SaaS companies
22:32 | Making employee growth paths at scale
25:40 | Growth, accountability, mentorship at scale (mistakes when scaling SaaS companies)
27:49 | Being transparent with job descriptions and salaries OR What is harming you as you scale?
30:13 | Building a community through collaborations OR Spending time in different company culture
34:09 | Do things that don’t scale: is it good advice?
37:36 | Fireside questions (going bankrupt, walkshops with other leaders, balancing family and business)

QUOTES:
[01:08] “The ugly side of growth is the unintentional side of growth; sometimes there's this pursuit of growth at all costs or growth just for growth's sake.”
[02:57] “Resilience is what people should be pursuing more than growth”
[21:40] “You have to be very intentional about the big things you want to get done because the little stuff will always take up all the room.”

Links We Mentioned:
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game/
The Kermit Collective: https://kermitcollective.com/
Walkshop - https://www.walkshop.io/

Follow Mark Rickmeier
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrickmeier/

Follow Aram Melkoumov on Linkedin for highlight clips and DMs.

Ron runs a tight ship at Uplinq and he shares how and why he does so. This interview also explores why growing a startup for the sake of an exit is a bad strategy, why you should want to hold cash in this economy, how to hire people that make a genuine impact in your growth, and the difference between thoughtful scaling and so-called ‘aggressive’ scaling.

About Ron Benegbi
Ron is the founder and CEO of Uplinq. He is a 4 time tech founder with 2 exits and one flop. Being an immigrant who moved to Canada as a child with his family in the early 70s, he knows what it’s like to start from nothing. As he puts it, he’s not cut from the cloth of overspending. He’s cut from the cloth of disciplined business operations and fiscal responsibility, and that’s how he’s currently running Uplinq.

SHOW NOTES:
00:00 | Who is Ron Benegbi?
00:26 | His father getting a loan to start a business
04:19 | Giving new business a shot at financing (Uplinq)
06:50 | Serving the underbanked (opportunity size)
09:38 | Thoughtful scaling vs. aggressive scaling
14:43 | Building a unicorn is a bad purpose
16:48 | Should you take money from VCs or bootstrap?
18:09 | Why hold on to cash in this market
22:52 | Hiring people that 10X your revenue
29:39 | Not hiding from failure
35:13 | Favourite thing about his co-founder
36:22 | What would you do if your company went bankrupt?
36:52 | Becoming less reactive and more mature

QUOTES:
[11:50] “We're building a company, but we're trying to build a profitable company. So i'm not here to just raise money, and then, you know, hire 20 people and then burn cash and be in the same place six months from now. So we're here to, you know, build a product, do it right; hire in a very thoughtful programmatic way, but also give ourselves enough of a cash runway; while always having business milestones that we need to hit.”

[12:49] “It's not that I'm not in a rush. Believe me, I have a sense of urgency every moment of the day but that has to be balanced against a thoughtful pragmatic way to build a business.”

[19:04] “I'm very very concerned about cash and cash runway. That's the number one reason all small businesses fail, regardless of whether they’re VC funded or not intact or not. And especially now with the markets being what they are with the economy turning, we have to hold on to every penny we have until we can't anymore so that's how I look at it.”

Connect with Ron Benegbi:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbenegbi/