Telling the stories of builders in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Jeffrey Stern is a NYC transplant, entrepreneur (co-founder @ Axuall; founding team @ Votem), product manager, investor, and optimist who believes telling the stories of those most inspiring builders around us is one of the best ways to learn and to inspire more to build.
Lay of The Land #199: John Knific (Squad) — The EdTech Guru
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👋 Hello – my conversation today is with John Knific, 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 transformed how universities engage students. Wisr ultimately served nearly one million active users before being acquired by the Education Advisory Board (EAB) and Vista Equity in 2021. For those interested in diving deeper into Wisr’s story, I’d recommend checking out Episode 35 of Lay of The Land, where Kate Volzer, one of John’s co-founders shared her perspective on their journey!
John’s entrepreneurial journey began with Decision Desk, a company he started out of his dorm room as a student at Case Western Reserve University when he was still on a music and pre-medicine track and ultimately raised $6mm in venture funding for. Today, alongside building Squad, John is also a co-founder of K2 Venture Partners where he and Kris Ciccarello, his other co-founder from Wisr, invest in and advises regional startups. In our conversation, we’ll cover how John has evolved as a founder, his philosophy on product management and go-to-market strategy, the intersection of jazz and entrepreneurship, opportunities in education and ed-tech, building for enterprise vs consumers, mentorship, and lots more lessons learned from his journey across three startups. With Love, Jeffrey |
Lay of The Land
Telling the stories of builders in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Jeffrey Stern is a NYC transplant, entrepreneur (co-founder @ Axuall; founding team @ Votem), product manager, investor, and optimist who believes telling the stories of those most inspiring builders around us is one of the best ways to learn and to inspire more to build.
👋 Hello – My conversation today is with DJ Eidson, President and Co-founder of Limitless Minds, where he spearheads efforts to make elite mindset coaching accessible to everyone. Through their digital platform and programs, Limitless Minds has empowered hundreds of individuals and teams across organizations like Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Chick-fil-A, Bristol Myers Squibb, Goldman Sachs, Harvard Business School, and many others to enhance their performance and gain a competitive edge—just...
👋 Hello – My conversation today is with Blake Squires. The Journey of Blake is a Lay of the Land of the Lay of the Land. Listen to The Episode Blake began his journey in the mid-90s in Los Angeles, capitalizing early on the convergence of technology and media. He soon returned to his hometown of Cleveland to co-found Everstream with Steve McHale (episode 196) and Charlie Lougheed (episode 42, and also my co-founder at Axuall). Blake served as COO until Everstream’s acquisition by Concurrent...
👋 Hello – “The road to the Moon and Mars runs through Ohio” as Dr. Jimmy Kenyon says — from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Don Thomas, Ron Sega, Mike Foreman, Gene Kranz, — Carl Walz carries this brave adventurous spirit and like so many astronauts, I believe represents the best of us! Listen to The Episode On Lay of The Land’s 205th episode, I had the privilege of meeting Carl—astronaut, space pioneer, and proud Clevelander who’s a veteran of four spaceflights, spending...