John has co-founded and scaled 3 startups in consumer goods, from pioneering & creating the fresh soup category at New Covent Garden Soup Company to launching the toddler food category with Little Dish, he has spent over 30 years turning ideas into category-leading brands. Today he mentors entrepreneurs, invests in startups and helps large and small companies work together through Mission Ventures. We talk about the future of FCMG, why we need to buck conventional wisdom and the importance of understanding of deeply understanding your consumers. We also cover innovation vs. renovation, price pressures, the say to do gap, and why premium is the new standard and the value of brand.

When Jim Weber took over Brooks Running, the company was weeks from missing payroll and $30 million in debt. Two decades later, he built a billion-dollar performance brand that outpaced giants like Nike and Adidas. As CEO and author of Running with Purpose, Jim shares how radical focus, scientific innovation, and an unshakable sense of purpose fueled Brooks’ transformation—from near-bankruptcy to Berkshire Hathaway. He breaks down how to bet big on conviction, lead through crisis, and build trust that powers long-term growth.

Alexa Ryan left a decade-long career at P&G to launch Bakr, a frozen cookie dough brand built on real butter, clean ingredients, and bakery-quality flavor. What began with Alexa and her husband’s hand-scooping dough for 14-hour shifts has grown into the Midwest’s #1 frozen cookie dough brand. In this interview - originally recorded at the 2025 Midwest Dairy Pitch Competition in September of this year, Alexa shares how winning the 2023 Midwest Dairy Pitch Contest jumpstarted Bakr’s journey and opened doors to major retail expansion. She also reveals the biggest challenges of scaling, the importance of partnerships, and her advice for fellow founders. Tune in to hear how grit, vision, and a love of baking turned one woman’s idea into thousands of store shelves nationwide.

This week's VentureFuel Visionary is Ben Colman, founder of Reality Defender. It is the leading deepfake detection platform helping enterprises flag fraudulent users and content. Additionally, its enterprise-grade API and web app detect dangerous AI-generated and manipulated content across audio, video, images, and text. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of AI, cybersecurity, and the innovative solutions being developed to protect our reality in an increasingly digital age. This is crucial in today’s landscape where cyber threats are evolving rapidly, posing risks to individuals, businesses, and society as a whole!

Untapped markets to rising tides, Ruchi Desai career has spanned law, craft beer, and now venture investing. As co-founder of EIGHT Brewing Co. with NFL legend Troy Aikman, Ruchi scaled one of Texas’s fastest-growing beer brands before launching Rising Tide Ventures, a fund dedicated to fueling untapped consumer markets with often overlooked founders. She shares lessons from navigating industry to her playbook for spotting disruptive opportunities to the trends shaping the future of consumer goods and venture capital.

This week, we’re using NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered research tool, to share insights from Alice Ponti’s on-the-ground experience at Shoptalk Spring in March. This conversation is a comprehensive, insight-rich overview of the conference, organized around ten core themes transforming retail. From the rise of Agentic AI and multimodal search, to the fast-evolving world of retail media, this episode captures the pulse of where commerce is headed, and what brands need to do next. We're excited to share this POV on key trends spotted last spring, as Alice prepares to take the stage at Groceryshop next week, where she'll moderate a conversation on Embracing Agility and Innovation featuring Emily Xu, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Republic National Distributing Company, Alastair Dorward, CEO, Dropps and Harshad Agashe, VP Data Products, Albertsons. Visit Groceryshop.com to learn more. .

We go inside Northwestern Medicine’s Innovation Engine to see how they are solving healthcare’s biggest challenges with Kali Arduini Ihde, Director of Ventures and Innovation at Northwestern Medicine. Kali is at the forefront of bringing emerging technologies into one of the country’s top academic health systems to help shape the future of patient care through innovation. She leads the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare Accelerator, which partners with AI and digital health startups to solve real, high-impact challenges in healthcare. We discuss the value of creating organized programmatic innovation to solve important problems (prior authorization, physician burden, supply chain) in a safe space that allows for co-creation to accelerate scale.

In this episode, we bring you an exclusive recording from the Innov8rs LearningLab featuring Tito Obaisi, Senior Manager of Pipeline and Insights at Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, in conversation with our Founder and CEO Fred Schonenberg. Tito shares how his team captures and socializes insights from startup collaborations across Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky to inspire colleagues, educate teams, and uncover opportunities for transformation. Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at how strategic partnerships with startups fuel enterprise-wide innovation and shape the next generation of products, technologies, and services.

Rohit Nuwal is a Partner at TELUS Global Ventures, Canada’s largest and most active corporate venture capital fund, with over 100 investments across transformative sectors such as HealthTech, AgTech, IoT, and AI. In this episode, we explore TELUS’ unique approach to commercialization beyond capital — and how they leverage deep insights from their global businesses to provide investment partners with a pathway to real-world traction and growth. Rohit shares how their Strategic Portfolio Development team, combined with a distinctive incentive structure within the core business, accelerates adoption — generating over $100M in P&L value.

Rikesh Shah is a visionary in public sector innovation and the driving force behind the Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre at Connected Places Catapult. Rikesh shares how rethinking procurement can catalyze transformative solutions in the public sector, fostering environments where governments proactively solve pressing societal challenges. Drawing from his groundbreaking experience at Transport for London, Rikesh reveals how opening up city data empowered entrepreneurs to reshape mobility for millions, and how adopting a venture mindset in public procurement can deliver remarkable outcomes. Tune in to explore how procurement strategies can shift from cautious compliance to bold innovation, redefining what's possible for cities around the world.

Today’s guest is Alon Chen, Co-Founder and CEO of Tastewise, and former Google CMO — who just raised a $50M Series B to transform how the food and beverage industry leverages AI. We dive into why big companies shouldn’t build everything in-house, especially when AI is costly to develop and maintain, and why they should instead focus on their true edge. Alon shares how Tastewise predicted the rise of air-fried vegetables, leading to 3x profits for one client. We talk about the future of food and beverage, how AI enables companies to stay close to their customers. From trend forecasting to strategic innovation, this is a must-listen for anyone navigating the intersection of AI, technology, and taste.

On today’s show, I sit down with Flossie Hall, CEO of Stella Foundation, a powerhouse organization serving 10,000 women founders and investors worldwide. Flossie shares her journey from serial entrepreneur—having built and exited multiple seven-figure businesses—to leading a global movement that empowers women to launch, scale, and sustain their ventures. We will talk about how Stella’s initiatives, including the acclaimed Women’s Venture Summit, have facilitated over $200 million in fundraising for women-led companies. The conversation dives into the mission of Stella: to inspire, equip, and propel diverse female founders while cultivating a thriving network of investors to increase equality for women-led startups.

A CVC masterclass from Bill Taranto, Founder and President of Merck’s Global Health Innovation Fund, a $600M fund that is considered one of the most impactful corporate venture funds in the world. Bill has over 20 years of healthcare investing and is focused on digital health companies transforming the future of care. Bill was just named to the Global Corporate Venturing Power List for the 14th time. We talk about the dual mandate to predict and prepare as well as the unique structure he has created which includes multiple levers like accelerators, studios, the growth equity fund, and a private equity roll-up function. We talk about the right relationship with the corporate parent, flying too close to the sun in the strategic/financial balance and why communication is often what determines success and makes innovation tangible for large organizations.

On today’s show, we have Tito Obaisi, the Senior Manager of Pipeline and Insights for Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs. Tito leads efforts to identify strategically relevant, enterprise ready AI startups that are at the cutting edge of new technology that not only deliver new capabilities but also shape insights from working with the world’s largest media and technology companies. Tito brings a unique perspective on how large organizations can drive innovation through collaboration – the value of an always learning mindset, grounding insights in tangible business needs, delivering insights at the speed of AI. We talk about the disruption of SaaS, Agentic Orchestration, Intelligence Allocation and how Enterprise-Ready startups are spinning up faster, with less people, and more impact for enterprise organizations.

Now in its seventh year, the Real California Milk Excelerator has become a powerhouse for commercializing breakthrough dairy innovations. With over 60 startups and 100+ mentors participating to date, the program continues to elevate the dairy category by fueling scalable, consumer-ready products. In this episode, Bob Carroll, CEO of the California Milk Advisory Board, shares what’s new in the program and why dairy is having a major moment. From wellness trends to sustainable innovation, Carroll reveals how legacy industries can stay ahead through bold thinking and fresh partnerships. If you're into food innovation, scaling startups, or future-proofing traditional sectors, you don't want to miss this conversation. For founders go to www.realcamilkexcelerator.com to apply by Aug 4, 2025.

Fatih Nayebi is the Vice President of Data & AI at ALDO Group where he leads AI initiatives that transform retail operations and customer experiences. He’s also a Faculty Lecturer at McGill University and the author of Foundations of Agentic AI for Retail, the first book on autonomous AI systems in retail. He demystifies agentic ai, federated learning and the promise of A2A (agents to agents) and while these advances will still need humans in the loop. Come learn how AI is reshaping retail and the opportunities of scaling these technologies.

Join our Founder & CEO, Fred Schonenberg, alongside Laura Plunkett, Vice President, Startup Engagement, Head of Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, and Marc Silberman, Partner at Comcast Ventures, for a fireside chat entitled From Pilots to Portfolios: Comcast’s Integrated Corporate Growth Startup Strategy recorded earlier this year during the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit 2025. The discussion delves into how LIFT Labs' strategic pilots with business units seamlessly complement Comcast Ventures' investment strategy in adjacent and emerging markets, with a particular focus on AI technologies. VentureFuel is proud to serve as the operating partner for the new accelerator—focused on identifying and supporting startups that align with Comcast’s strategic priorities.

Tahaji Felder, a seasoned social entrepreneur, corporate innovator and community leader. She has over a decade of experience supporting startups and founders to accelerate their emerging brands. Her TEDx on the power of embracing your unique voice is simply awesome. She has launched her own lifestyle brand, is a “Corporate Champion”, has mentored over 150 entrepreneurs, and is a champion of inclusive innovation through program leadership and social impact.

VentureFuel’s Visionary of the Year is an honor voted on by peers in corporate innovation for the change agent who seizes new opportunities that drive outsized results. This year’s winner, Charlotte Newman, is the former Global Head of Underrepresented Founder and Investor Startup Business Development at AWS, former founder, and a passionate advocate in the Senate and US House of Representatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion, driving initiatives that empower marginalized entrepreneurs worldwide. Join us to hear her inspiring journey and insights on transforming the innovation ecosystem through collaboration and access.

Valentina Assenova is the Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Endowed Term Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She is renowned for her insightful research on entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in how cultural and societal factors influence entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. She recently released a study “Exploring the relationship between accelerator program design and startup performance.” She has a Ph.D. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the University of Cambridge and has collaborated with organizations like FINCA International and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to advance entrepreneurship globally. We discuss the dynamics of Capital and Ideas, and define what an accelerator is, why program design matters so much, and how corporates can receive and deliver the most value from their work with entrepreneurs.