The Launch Cedar Valley Podcast

#006: Laura Hand and Alissa Gardner on the Cannabis Industry, Growing Hemp in Iowa, and Why It's Personal

As Iowa starts to make its initial foray into the cannabis industry, which is still in its infancy in the US, getting into the industry is a wild west of patchwork policies and constantly shifting opportunities. Laura Hand and Alissa Gardner have had a first-hand take on it for the last several years.  And for both of them, it's personal. Laura Hand is the Founder of Laura Loo Experience Design, a customer experience design consultancy that works primarily with hemp and cannabis entrepreneurs. Hand founded the firm after 16 years of experience in her previous executive-level marketing role to realign her focus in honor to her family, having seen first hand the benefits that proper education and access to cannabis would have had in changing the outcomes for her brother, lost to a drug-related heart attack, and to her father who passed from brain cancer. And Alissa Gardner, at the height of her successful real estate career as a broker and owner, in a move most people wouldn't have the courage to do, Gardner walked away. Took a year off. Rested. The clarity that accompanied the decision to rest was astounding. Since then she has keynoted conferences and seminars for HR professionals, business teachers and professors, and other entrepreneurs. Gardner challenges her audiences with her Rest>Run: Confessions of a Workaholic curriculum, leaving them with an awareness and a strategy for their own journey of rest. A natural extension of this personal journey of rest, Gardner launched Farm to Health Organics, a premium hemp/CBD line of wellness products for people and their pets. Gardner educates on the body's endocannabinoid system and the benefits of incorporating hemp products into a healthy lifestyle to rest, relieve pain, and improve one's sense of wellbeing. Gardner also helps run Iowa Hemp, a three-generation family-run Heritage farm in Rowley, Iowa that is one of only about 30 licensed & approved hemp production farms in Iowa.

#005: Pranav Chandra on Influencer Marketing, Trends in the Music Industry, and Running a Biz in High School

With a penchant for music (a lean toward hip hop) and impressively deep knowledge of influencer marketing tactics, Pranav jumped straight into the music industry. Graduating from Cedar Falls High School earlier this year, Pranav founded Pranav Management during his freshman year, a music management firm serving as the marketing manager for several indie-level artists primarily through TikTok.  His age gave him a default knowledge of his generation’s music consumption behavior, and he quickly turned that insight into a paying client list and full-time job before hitting 18. We talk through the trends in the music industry, TikTok tactics on influencer marketing, how he got into the business, and how the next generation of business founders view work, jobs, and what it means to “start a business”.

#004: Nick Evens on Fintech, Venture Capital, and New Role @ Curql Collective

With almost 12 years of experience as President of The Veridian Group managing investment strategy for the $5.2B institutions, including investments in major fintech companies like Dwolla, Alkami Technology, and Moov Financial, Nick is a veteran in the venture capital world.  And as one of the founding partners of the Red Cedar Seed Fund locally, Nick has leveraged his network and experience to source almost $1mm in early-stage seed capital to support the growth of Cedar Valley-based startups. Now Nick is embarking on a new role as President and CEO of Curql Collective, a newly formed, $150m fintech investment fund that is bringing together venture capital and credit unions to invest in the visions of entrepreneurs who thoughtfully and purposefully develop financial services technology that revolutionizes how people engage with their money. We sit down and talk about the trends in fintech, the landscape of venture capital around it, and what new opportunities they’re taking on at Curql – plus some love for the local startup scene in the Cedar Valley.

#003: ReShonda Young and Nia Wilder on Access to Capital, Networks, and Trust as Black Business Founders

ReShonda and Nia have both lived the reality of launching their own businesses as black female business founders in Waterloo.  Learning from her father helping run his manufacturing company, ReShonda founded Popcorn Heaven and eventually franchised the business to several other locations.  She most recently took on the role of Program Facilitator to launch the Black Business and Entrepreneur Accelerator (BBEA) in Waterloo, in addition to working as one of the founding partners of the Bank of Jabez, a Waterloo, IA based full-service CDFI that will intentionally focus on servicing the community’s underbanked, low-income, and minority populations. Nia, more recently taking on the title of entrepreneur, is the owner of ShnDgg, photography, videography, and merchandise brand based in Waterloo.  She recently graduated from the BBEA program and secured a partnership with Hy-Vee to carry her brand.  We talk about the difficulties of getting started, accessing capital, and the networks of trust that can be the difference between welcomed client or unwelcome outsider – and how the BBEA and other initiatives are taking a shot at real, generational change for founders.

#002: Rob Houlihan and Ben Stineman on Broadband, Network Tech, and the Future of Community Infrastructure

Cedar Falls isn’t new to the broadband game. Rob, an avid mountain biker and both CTO and Director of Communications Services at Cedar Falls Utilities, has been captaining the nationally leading broadband infrastructure in Cedar Falls for over seven years, notching a presidential visit in 2015, named fastest ISP in the nation by PCMag in 2020, Best Gaming ISP in the Nation in 2021, as well as being the first gigabit and then 10gig community in Iowa and one of the first for both in the U.S. And Ben, the VP of Instructure & Security for Vinli and also certified drone pilot as the founder of ROTOR VISUAL, has been a regular superuser of that infrastructure for over a decade. We jump in to talk about what all of that means, why it matters for entrepreneurship and tech development and go into (probably too much) detail on the future of network technology and edge computing (let’s talk Kubernetes).