Mo Faisal set out to build better and more energy efficient semiconductor chips. Lindsay Tjepkema wanted to update the business-to-business marketing playbook. Both founded startups to do it.
Mo Faisal didn’t know any English when he arrived in Canada from Pakistan. But a little more than three years later, he graduated at the top of his high school class. Mo’s academic success continued through a Ph.D program at University of Michigan, where he developed ideas for building better, more energy efficient semiconductor chips. Those ideas became the basis for Movellus, a startup with disruptive chip design technologies. Movellus has grown to 25 employees, has customers on three continents and has raised more than $20 million.
Lindsay Tjepkema had worked in eight different jobs doing brand and content management with a wide range of products. So when Scott Dorsey, who’d sold his startup to Salesforce for $2.5 billion, reached out to pick her brain about business-to-business marketing, she was prepared to talk. What she wasn’t prepared for was a life-changing conversation that ultimately led her to start her own company. Lindsay is founder and CEO of Casted, an Indianapolis startup with nearly 50 employees, a growing customer list that includes IBM, Salesforce, and Paypal, and $9.5 million of investor funding.
Our executive producer is Audrey Nowakowski. Ele Ellis produced this episode. Subscribe to Midwest Moxie on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify and NPR One. And if you love Midwest Moxie as much as we do, help us out by posting a review.
