Advertise on podcast: Interviews from Blitzscaling a Startup

Dan Lewis is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Convoy. Before Convoy, Dan served as General Manager of New Shopping Experiences at Amazon, as well as Vice President of Product and Operations at Wavii (acquired by Google), and Group Product Manager at Microsoft. Dan started his career in technology and supply-chain consulting for Oliver Wyman, after studying cognitive science at Yale University

Blake Scholl founded Boom Supersonic in September 2014 with the goal of making high-speed travel mainstream and enabling a new world of human connection. Blake is passionate about tackling big problems which the world has overlooked. After seeing Concorde in a museum, he dreamed of the return of commercial supersonic flight. A few years later, Blake dove into aerospace engineering—reading textbooks and taking classes—to figure out from first principles how to enable a supersonic renaissance. As a leader, Blake focuses on inspiring the best people from a range of disciplines to unite in pursuit of Boom’s vision. Prior to founding Boom, Blake held leadership roles at Amazon and Groupon and co-founded mobile technology startup Kima Labs. He started his career at Amazon as a software engineer in 2001, where he developed software for personalized and automated merchandising and later owned a $300M P&L at age 24. Blake pioneered the automation of digital ad buying, enabling advertisers to build their own “long tail” by promoting niche products to relevant customers. Later, Blake was the first employee and director of product development at Kleiner-backed mobile startup Pelago. In 2010, he co-founded mobile technology startup Kima Labs, which was acquired by Groupon in 2012. At Groupon, Blake held multiple executive roles, culminating in responsibility for relevance, email, and search. Blake’s interest in aviation started in childhood—he grew up in suburban Cincinnati, where his parents often took him to the local airport to watch Cessnas take off and land. He started flying for fun in college, earning his private pilot license in 2008 and instrument rating in 2011. Blake holds a BS in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University; he lives in Denver and is the father of three.

Aria is currently the Chief of Staff to LinkedIn co-founder & legendary investor, Reid Hoffman. She works with him across his business investments, philanthropy, thought leadership and political work. Previously, in her rise from entry-level Associate to CEO at DoSomething.org, Aria Finger provided over 5 million pairs of jeans for homeless youth; signed up thousands of college students for the bone marrow registry; registered over 350,000 young voters; started a consulting firm and business development arm that worked with over 25% of the Fortune 100; and doubled the organization’s capital reserve to ensure that all employee salaries were safe for the duration of 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic.  From working through the startup stages of a new organization to leading an international powerhouse, Aria has developed the leadership skills and business acumen to assess, understand, and manage growth, board development, strategic partnerships, global operations, and transformation at scale.  A passionate advocate for social and economic justice, equality, prison reform, and voting rights, she is an active and energetic writer, public speaker, and leader whose ideas and insights are valued by both globally known corporations and NGOs performing important work around the world.

David Kenny is CEO of Nielsen Holdings. David is also on the Board of Directors of Best Buy. He joined Nielsen in December 2018, prior to which he was the senior Vice President of IBM's Watson & Cloud platform. He was also formerly the CEO of The Weather Company, which was acquired by IBM in 2016. David was the president of Akamai Technologies and worked in digital advertising for Publicis Groupe.

Michael Adebayo Olayinka, known as Ruger, is a Nigerian Afrobeats musician and songwriter. Olayinka was discovered by D'Prince, who gave him the name "Ruger". His first song recorded seventy million views in three days. In January 2021, D’Prince announced the signing of Ruger to Jonzing World and Sony Music Entertainment UK, in a joint venture with Columbia Records. He released the song "One Shirt" with Rema in January 2021. In February of 2021, he released "Ruger", a single from first EP, PANDEMIC. "Bounce" became a hit song from Pandemic, and debuted at number 39 on the Top 50 chart Nigeria, and was listed at number 20 on the TurnTable End of the Year chart and number 2 on the Apple Music top Afrobeats songs. On 26 November 2021, he released his second EP, titled The Second Wave, with "Dior" as the lead single, which debuted number 32 on the Top 50 chart, and number 15 on the UK Afrobeats Singles Chart.