Lay of The Land

Paul Roetzer is the founder and CEO of SmarterX and the Marketing AI Institute—a media, event, and online education company that he started back in 2016 to make AI accessible, approachable, and actionable for marketers and business leaders. Through the institute, he created MAICON—the leading annual Marketing AI conference, which is hosted here in Cleveland!He is also the co-au

Geoff Bruder, co-founder of GhostWorks Engineering and Sonic Fire Tech—a company redefining fire suppression—is fighting fires with acoustic wave technology.Geoff's journey is rooted in his work at NASA Glenn Research Center here in Cleveland, where he focused as a Research Engineer on projects like the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG), thermoacoustic stirling he

Jared Semik, founder of Eternium Aerospace, a long-range, zero-emissions aircraft development company, is focused on sustainable transatlantic flight.A multi-service military aviation veteran with three global deployments, Jared began his career in the Marine Corps in 1999. He is an aerospace research and development engineer with over 20 years of experience working with next-gener

Robert Marks founded Fidelity Voice and Data in 1999 with just a $600 investment, which he grew into a business generating over $30 million in revenue, making it one of the largest telecommunications and cloud services competitors throughout the Midwest. The company focused on providing high-speed Internet access to various industries.After selling the company in 2015, Robert turne

Andy Tran has lived more lives than just about anyone I know. He’s a serial entrepreneur who has started multiple businesses across industries, including tech, ammunition manufacturing, defense contracting, and tequila, among many others. Andy is a true modern Renaissance man whose path defies convention and serves as a testament to his deep curiosity, creativity, ability to exec

John Knific is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built three venture-backed software companies here in Cleveland.His latest venture, Squad, is a peer discovery platform designed to gamify ratings and rankings for Gen Z, starting on college campuses, delivering valuable preference data to marketers.Before Squad, John co-founded Wisr, a virtual communities platform that tran

Rob van Haaren is a Dutch-born entrepreneur and CEO of Proximal Energy, a Cleveland-based SaaS company transforming asset management for solar and energy storage projects.Rob has long been interested in renewable energy engineering — he holds a Master’s from Columbia University in Earth and Environmental Engineering and a PhD from Columbia as well with a focus on utility-scale

Ali Bonar — CEO & Co-Founder of Oat Haus, a food company bringing fun and play to eating. Their flagship product, Granola Butter, is the world's first oat-based spread and while Oat Haus was born out of Ali's decade-long battle with an eating disorder, and it's now her mission to help others feel less alone.Since its beginnings in 2018, Oat Haus has evolved from Ali’s perso

Stephen McHale — a long-time Cleveland serial entrepreneur with a 40-year career founding, investing in, and building companies.Most notably, Steve served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Explorys, which he formed in 2009 in partnership with The Cleveland Clinic. He co-founded and funded Explorys with Charlie Lougheed, one of my former co-founders from Axua

Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Lay of The Land podcast. Today, we're doing something a bit different as I take on the role of guest on other podcasts to discuss recent developments in my journey and offer a glimpse of what lies ahead.As some of you may know, I've recently embarked on a new professional path by joining the founding team of The O.H.I.O. Fund. In the near f