In this episode of the SmartMoney Ventures Podcast, Ry Walker tells the story of his entrepreneurial journey from college dropout to Unicorn success in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In this episode, you will learn:

1. How to build Unicorn software companies in Cincinnati Ohio.
2. Why the entrepreneur’s journey is like mountain climbing, where you value the climb more than the peak itself.
3. How Astronomer & Tembo are commercializing open source platforms and challenging software giants like Oracle and Snowflake.
4. What NBA Legend LeBron James and startup CEOs have in common.
5. Why we learn more from failure than we do from success.
6. Advice for tech entrepreneurs: Visit San Francisco, build confidence, pursue speed.

Ry Walker is one of those rare entrepreneurs who sees trends before most other people do. After dropping out of college at the University of Cincinnati, he got hired to build and deliver IBM clone computers and teach people how to use early PC software tools.

Then he founded his first company, SharkBytes, building websites in 1995 in downtown Cincinnati. He and his brother went to businesses, unplugged their fax machines and showed people the internet, trying to sell them websites, many times being told to plug the fax machine back in. Failure is part of the process, but getting back up is essential.

They built SharkBytes to 30 employees and sold it to a rollup in 1999. He was a paper millionaire at 27 years old, only to watch it go up in flames in the “dot-bomb” of 2000/2001.

Fast forward to 2015, when he founded Astronomer, a software company that has raised over $280M of venture capital and is valued at over $1 Billion. He describes Astronomer as a pipeline for data, built on top of Apache Airflow, a Python based open-source workflow management platform. Ry served as CEO for 4 years, CTO for 2 more years, and left to start another company and become an investor.

In November of 2022, he founded Tembo, a developer platform built on top of PostGres, an open-source relational database management system. Coming strong out of the gate, he raised a $7 Million dollar seed round led by Venrock with CincyTech, Cintrifuse Capital, Fireroad, Grand Ventures and Wireframe Ventures participating. Ry believes that commercial platforms built on top of open-source software is the future, and is a founding principle for both Astronomer and Tembo.

Ry has been recognized as a Cincinnati “Top 40 Under 40” and is an AngelPad alum. He loves nature, science, art, sports, and indie game development.

I know that you’ll enjoy hearing Ry share his story of entrepreneurship and all the wisdom that he’s learned along the way. Enjoy!

In this episode, you will learn:

1. Why you should do 50 customer interviews before building your product.
2. Why Joe recommends only building software code that is differentiating.
3. How less code & less employees translates into faster speed to market.
4. Which company became a Unicorn with only 13 employees.
5. Why Columbus is an excellent place to build a tech company.
6. Where to buy Joe’s book “Serverless as a Game Changer”

Joe Emison is the Co-founder and CTO of Branch, a personal lines insurance company that is a unicorn startup company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio and one of GlassDoor’s Best Places to work in 2022 and 2023. He is also the author of one of the Top 50 books on Amazon for cloud computing entitled “Serverless as a Game Changer: How to Get the Most Out of the Cloud”.

Before Branch, Joe built five other companies as a technical co-founder, across many industries, including consumer electronics, local government, big data analysis, and commercial real estate. Joe graduated with degrees in English and Mathematics from Williams College and has a law degree from Yale Law School.

Joe has a unique perspective on building software based startups. A big part of his philosophy is that he buys most of his software components and he only builds software code for what’s differentiating.

He believes that the most effective technology leaders are the ones that are able to really focus and minimize what code they're writing into just the necessary parts. I encourage you to purchase his book and listen to this episode to learn more!

In this episode, you will learn:

1. How MapQuest became a Unicorn in 1999.
2. Channeling your inner 10 year old: The 5 Principles of Building a Fort.
3. The one mistake that all 1st time founders make.
4. Why community & collaboration are essential for innovation.
5. Systems theory for building startups & innovation.
6. Why not all mentorship & advice is created equal.

Did you ever build a fort when you were a kid? Chris Heivly has been building successful startups & communities with that same mindset for decades and he shares his story in this episode and his latest book called “Build the Fort”.

Long before Waze existed or Google Maps, there was MapQuest, which started in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with maps on CD-Roms and went on to become a unicorn in 1999. Chris Heivly was the co-founder of MapQuest, and that was just the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey.

Chris has been building and investing in startups and the communities around them for decades. From the Startup Factory in North Carolina, to TechStars where he served as Senior Vice President of Ecosystem Development, he has spent the last 12 years building ecosystems around the country.

Chris has the experience of a 63 year old, the energy of a 40 year old, and the humor of a 12 year old, which is exactly the mix needed to help a large number of entrepreneurs and innovators.

Chris’s book “Build the Fort” outlines five basic elements that are common to fort-building, startups and innovation ecosystems:

1) Socialize your idea without fear or inhibition
2) Identify & marshal the people you trust
3) Gather the minimal resources closest to you
4) Act on the smallest & simplest forms of the idea
5) Take action building your fort

He produces and hosts a podcast called your Startup Community with Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway, and he recently released his second book entitled Build the Fort a Startup Community Builder, and it's a global field guide for how to get involved, how to create impact and fund and accelerate your entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Chris is a best-selling author, contributing writer for Inc.com and a public speaker. He's spoken to over 400 audiences about startups, corporate innovation and the startup community ecosystem development.

Chris is a graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania with a bachelors degree in Geography and holds a Masters degree in Geographic Information Systems from University of South Carolina.

I know you will enjoy this episode as Chris shares his wit and wisdom with us on the SmartMoney Ventures Podcast!