June 3, 2026 – Unframe AI Larissa Schneider and Greatest Hits Kay Koplovitz

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion. Jim Beach.

Jim Beach 0:26
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition, a school for startups radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there. I certainly appreciate you being with us here today. We work hard every day to try to get a great show for you with great guests, and to answer all the questions out there, to have a guide, a place where you can go and hear what other entrepreneurs in the exact same spaces you have done, have achieved, and how they got there, so that you have a blueprint to read from. We have two fantastic stories to share with you today. One is the greatest hits. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we lost a server, the company went out of business, and so we had to transfer it slowly over time, and these are just great files that we couldn’t not have up there. Today we have Kay Kapolovitz with us in the greatest tits, she did with the founder of Sci Fi Channel, so wow, pretty impressive. And then from Germany we have Larissa Schneider with us. She has built a product called Unframe AI. It is an amazing new AI tool, so interesting what they are doing and the place that they are creating for themselves. So, it’s a great show. Appreciate you being with us. We’re gonna get started with Larissa in just about 10 seconds, not even that long. We’ll be right back. We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. I don’t know if you remember or not, but just a day or so ago, we had a great guest who had done a survey in the AI space, and found that 96% of AI projects were losing money and not actually good projects of horrible ROI. We have someone who is going to help solve that problem and is helping bring AI into a profitable forefront for businesses. Please welcome Larissa Schneider to the show. She is the co-founder and COO of Unframe AI. They are a global enterprise technology company designed to help large organizations turn artificial intelligence from an expensive experiment into an actual practical business tool. Larissa, welcome. How are you doing today?

Larissa Schneider 2:47
Thanks for having me. Doing great. Thanks for the intro.

Jim Beach 2:49
Oh, well, you’ve been incredibly successful. You also just raised $50 million to fund the company. Very impressive. We will talk about that, but first, tell us what Unframe does.

Larissa Schneider 3:03
Yeah, sounds good. And honestly, I love the intro because the stats you mentioned of the start is exactly what we’re seeing. We started the company at the beginning of 2024 and we saw that AI use cases come from all over the enterprise, all departments, all industries, all verticals, but the technical components that you actually need to solve these AI use cases that are very similar. So, what we did is we created an AI platform that you can actually compare to, like a box of Lego bricks, if you will, and so all of the different technical components you need to put together an AI solution is right there for you, and now every time we meet one of our customers and talk about a specific use case, we basically open this box, we take out the relevant Lego bricks, and in a matter of five days, we’re able to give them completely tailored solutions right for their use case, no off-the-shelf generic software that fits your workflow to like 10 or 20% like you get exactly what you need in the shortest amount of time possible, and the cherry on top, absolutely no upfront cost or commitment, so you can try it, and only if you get that business value will move to licensing, so the 96% of use cases that fail where money is spent for nothing? We want to get rid of that, and it doesn’t exist in our model.

Jim Beach 4:27
Okay, sounds great. So I want to build an AI platform for my business, and I hire you, and you come in and say, oh, okay, we can do that. We already have the input piece, we already have the user interface piece, because that’s Lego brick five and Lego brick seven. And then you take the bricks and you drop them into place, and maybe you’ve used that brick in other apps, but or other applications. And but the Lego piece seven and nine are already built and tested, and then there’s drop in, and then it’s a new thing that works in five days. Did I get

Larissa Schneider 5:10
it? You got it spot on. Sounds very simple this way. Obviously, some enterprise use cases use a lot more than just two bricks, and they’re very, very deep technical, but the the actual setup is exactly the way you just did it. Yes. Okay.

Jim Beach 5:27
How many bricks does the normal platform need, or the normal project need? 2020-five, 100 200

Larissa Schneider 5:34
yeah, multiple hundreds. Yeah, I would say probably two to 300 Is it as a good number, like in those use cases, they consist of a lot of different components to think about. We start with a login page that’s a Lego brick. We start with an integration to Salesforce, SAP, and NetSuite, that is three different building blocks. There, we do unstructured data abstraction and reasoning models, and that’s another few bricks, so it adds up pretty quickly.

Jim Beach 6:03
Yes, but you said each brick that none of the bricks are generic, right, or off the shelf, or

Larissa Schneider 6:14
yeah, the bricks are actually very generic, but the solution that you get because you’re compiling those different blocks in a certain way that is very specific to each customer and their environment, so think about when you have an actual Allegro set, you know, you start building and the bricks, they look exactly the same for every person around the world, but you could use that to build a spaceship or a hospital or a dinosaur, right? It’s always the same break, but what comes out of it is always specific to what you want and how you want it.

Jim Beach 6:48
Okay, I love it. And on average, how much time and money does this save?

Larissa Schneider 6:57
So we come into our customers that from a specific use case discussion, where we say, okay, we want to help you in your accounting team, and this is the use case to you getting something back and being able to start trying in a matter of five days, so it’s extremely, extremely fast. We at that moment do not charge you anything, like you really get something that is specific to you that you can try, and then we charge after the fact per solution per year, so it’s very predictable. There’s no hidden fees, no hidden costs, and it’s based on T-shirt size pricing. So, depending on the complexity of your use case,

Jim Beach 7:36
what kind of pricing

Larissa Schneider 7:38
T-shirt size, so small, medium large, extra large

Jim Beach 7:44
before, but that makes sense. Okay, and then what would the cost normally be? This is for enterprise, so this is expensive. This is not something for us small businesses, perhaps. How expensive.

Larissa Schneider 8:00
I mean, we usually, we start around $75,000 a year, and then we go up to, let’s say, five, $600,000 a year for the more complex use cases, and anywhere in between. We don’t limit the amount of users or queries or tokens or anything, and it’s really, we land on the use case, you see the prize if you’re happy with it, and you get the output that makes it worth it. Then we move to licensing, and that’s the price for the year.

Jim Beach 8:30
Excellent, makes a lot of sense. So that’s very simple. I love that model. Can you give us an example of some of the things that have been built using this?

Larissa Schneider 8:39
Yeah, actually one of my favorite use cases right now is with a large airline, and they have some 10,000 people that are manually working for change requests of pilots and cabin crew that need to be at the right airport on the right plane at the right time. If a flight is delayed as manual rerouting and manual restarting, they want to grow 3x in the next five years, but they cannot 3x the team. So, how do you get from a 10,000 people team to support the business to supporting a business three times as large in just a matter of a few years? And that is where AI can help you perfectly. One of my favorite use cases right now. Otherwise, we do a lot in really big operational bottlenecks. So think about unstructured data, where companies have a lot of files in SharePoint folders and a lot of data sitting in areas where it could really move the business forward, but people don’t have access to it, and don’t even know it’s there, or where is it? And how can you run autonomous workflows on top of it? That is also something that’s very reoccurring for us.

Jim Beach 9:51
All right, I love it. I love it. Can you go back in time and talk about 2024 when you started the business, and tell us. What you did first, how you got this far? Maybe tell us about raising the money and finding your first employee and getting the first sale. Give us a history lesson.

Larissa Schneider 10:11
Sounds great. Let’s do that. So we started as a founding team of three: Shai, Adi, and myself, and we met in the cybersecurity world, actually, so we’re all working together, and at that moment, ChatGPT came out, and I think all of us here remember how those early days looked like, you know, from the moment it hit the internet, you knew exactly, okay, this is where I’m going to ask questions, like this thing in my pocket became my new doctor, my gardener, my coach, my email writer, it became everything. And then you went to work, and everything was still really old, clunky software, where you had to copy stuff in from one tool to another, out of an email into a system, download a PDF, attach it, send it back to someone. It wasn’t this AI native way that you had just gotten used to in your personal life, and so we’re like, there must be a software company that gets past the generic and past the old legacy software and is able to help people really bring that value into their personal and their business lives, and yeah, it was kind of the moment we looked at each other and we’re like, okay, it’s now or never. AI is happening right now. There’s so much opportunity. Every business will want to adopt it. They don’t know how, they don’t know where to start. Let’s do it. And we left the cybersecurity world, and I’m right into AI. That was in March 24 and pretty quickly we were like we don’t want to be this company that is just sitting in a corner or basement and thinking about what the market wants, we needed to immediately figure out what does the market actually want, so within two or three weeks of building or starting to build the company, we were off to our first conference in Vegas, and we started talking to CIOs and CTOs and AI leaders about what they’re trying to to achieve, and that was the most helpful thing we could have possibly done, because we really got feedback from the street immediately.

Jim Beach 12:13
How many weeks, Larissa? I’m sorry to interrupt, but how many weeks after you started business?

Larissa Schneider 12:19
Two or three weeks, like immediately.

Jim Beach 12:21
Okay, that’s impressive. Our

Larissa Schneider 12:25
investors hit the bank account we spent to buy some tickets to go to Vegas.

Jim Beach 12:31
Excellent. Well, keep going. You were doing a great job before I interrupted you. So, continue.

Larissa Schneider 12:35
No, absolutely. So, yeah, that’s how we started. We were lucky to get a few customers, or initially they weren’t customers yet, but they were happy enough to work with us and start testing our product, and so it was still in the initial stage. Since then, obviously it’s evolved quite a lot, and because we got initial interesting feedback, like let’s hire the first few developers at that stage. Obviously, we were still doing a lot of it ourselves, but we started hiring the first developers in the May-June timeframe, and then immediately kept on going on the go-to market side, brought in our first few business development team members, and been building fast forward to March 25 that’s when we raised our A round. That is, that was kind of the moment we came out of stealth. So, until that moment, the first 12 months, we kind of build in silence a little bit, which meant we were still going out and doing events, and we had a website and all of that, but we didn’t really do major PR and attach our names to the company, just to give us like a little bit of time to come out with a big bang, and so when we did come into our public announcement, we already had the first few customers that were happily speaking on record, so it was, it was really exciting to say, hey, you guys did not know we were around, but we were, we did all of this great work, and we have customers that are happily speaking on our behalf within the first year, was really, really exciting for

Jim Beach 14:11
us. Yes,

Larissa Schneider 14:11
and yes, that’s that’s almost enough. Oh, it’s actually, it’s a bit more than a year now, and we actually just the other day announced that we raised our B rounds, and so that was another 50 million, so our total funding is now within two years up to 100 million, and we also just announced at the same time that we had our 100 million TCVs, a total contract value number, and that was exciting last few days for our team.

Jim Beach 14:40
Yes, very, very exciting, very well done. Where are you raising the money, in the United States or in Europe?

Larissa Schneider 14:47
It’s a mix, so we have always a mix, because we are a very global team. About half of our team is in the US, and the other half is outside, and our customers that really are global. The prizes, so it was important for us that we have kind of presence and support and backing in all areas, so from Kraft Ventures and Bessemer Venture partners in the US, as well as now we have Highland Europe on our cap table, as well as TLV partners, so really a great mix, a good group,

Jim Beach 15:22
that is. I’ve actually heard of a couple of those, so that’s impressive. And congratulations. Is it different raising money in the United States versus Europe?

Larissa Schneider 15:34
Great question. I wouldn’t say it’s too different, to be honest. The vast majority of our raising has been in the US. I would say probably 90% so we have more experience. I think in any case, what’s always important is like the speed, it is the references, it’s the customer conversations that your VCs will take before they invest in you, and I think that that’s the same all around in my perspective.

Jim Beach 16:05
Okay, is it? You know, I’ve never raised money in Europe, so I don’t know anything about it. Is it a fairly similar two to three, four month process, the due diligence? The then as soon as you invest, or they invest in you, then they come and fire the boss and take over the company, and are really mean to everyone.

Larissa Schneider 16:25
Well, let’s say, like that, we haven’t had that experience, neither in the US, nor the UK, but we still are the original founding team, and very happy partnership on the board level, so no one has been fired or replaced, but I would say there is due diligence due diligence gets longer with every round, because there’s more data to look at. I so far have been lucky that every one of our processes was under the two month mark, and so it’s, it’s always great when it’s done, the papers assigned, and we can all get back to like running the business with full focus rather than doing the paperwork on the side. 100

Jim Beach 17:06
million is that all for salaries and marketing.

Larissa Schneider 17:12
Go to market is a part building our R and D, our next version of the platform, and it’s also a part, and so I would say it’s pretty split between that, and because of our global reach, we are opening a lot new markets, and so we just put a team in France, and then now we have the Benelux, and we have the UK, and we have the Nordic starting, so it’s a really exciting time as well, doing expansion in new markets,

Jim Beach 17:40
very impressive, very impressive. And what about your customer base? Are you finding most of your businesses, your customers American, European?

Larissa Schneider 17:48
Yeah, most is American by far. But what we are experiencing, though, is that a lot of the large American companies have their AI teams also scattered around the world, and so we often find ourselves working with teams in Europe and the UK and Asia that are all employed by ultimately a US headquartered company. So we’re also in that regard pretty global.

Jim Beach 18:15
You have to have heard this when you move into Silicon Valley or the States. This sounds like an American business at this point.

Larissa Schneider 18:23
I mean, it is. Look, our headquarters is the US, and we have the majority of our team over there. Me personally, I’m based in Berlin, but half the time, half the time I spent in New York. That New York is really fast, the most exciting, the most fast-moving market for our customer base right now, because there’s obviously a lot of large business, lot of regulated industry that is in need of AI, but doesn’t necessarily have the interest or the access to vast majority of AI developers, and so that’s a really good place for us to log business.

Jim Beach 19:06
Yes, are you finding the market for AI to be getting to the point where it’s a little bit silly that we’ve got AI companies for grocery carts now and AI for your pets leash. We’ve gone crazy with AI. Do you think that we’ve reached the point of silliness in the funding?

Larissa Schneider 19:32
That’s a great question. I would always differentiate a little bit between, like, the consumer-facing and the gimmicky type of AI, and then the enterprise side of things, but look, I mean, the numbers don’t come from from nowhere, like 95% or so fail, that is probably because we’re trying a lot of things, you know, that is that I am really, I believe that we have only seen the first. Inning, if at all, of what is to come in the AI world for us. We will be so surprised, I think, when we look back in the next year, or five years, or 10 years on the state things add right now. We’re like, oh, we thought this is all that was to come, and there was so much more we had no clue about.

Jim Beach 20:21
Okay, very interesting. I think you’ll be living in America full time within a year. That’s my guess. What is Germany or Germans think of America these days? So, totally off topic. Do you hate us because of our president and all of the things we’re doing around the world? What’s the generic German thought of what’s going on in the world right now?

Larissa Schneider 20:55
Interesting question. I mean, very full on. Let’s unpack there. Probably split, I mean, I’m not gonna lie, that’s probably a lot of eye rolling there. I personally have lived in the US, in California, for a while, and worked there for the last many years, split my time, so very used to it, and differentiate with a country that big and that many people. I would say it’s hard to generalize it, so I always try to look at it from a person by person perspective, but I think the world has gone, yeah, pretty pretty insane and unpredictable in the last few months and years here, not just in the US and all kinds of parts of the world, and yeah, I hope we’ll get some some peace and quietness on the news in the next few weeks again.

Jim Beach 21:46
Yes, it is crazy. What’s happening to your gasoline prices there

Larissa Schneider 21:52
isn’t that always goes up.

Jim Beach 21:57
Well, how much is it now? For let’s say to fill up your car, how much

Larissa Schneider 22:05
is it now? I honestly cannot tell you, because I live in the city center, and I drive a bicycle. I can’t even tell you, but I know about, I would say, a month or a month and a half ago, it was an all-time high, and probably twice as much as it was like the year before, so it was a drastic increase to the point that, like, politicians have launched some legislation on stopping the price hike.

Jim Beach 22:34
Really interesting. Yeah, we haven’t really

Larissa Schneider 22:37
equitable barriers in place. Yeah,

Jim Beach 22:39
we haven’t really learned that much about you, Larissa. Tell us your history as well. How did you position yourself to start $100 million AI company?

Larissa Schneider 22:51
Yeah, I mean, look, it’s quite frankly not something I went out to seek. I will say it just somehow happens. I think I was always very interested in, in business, in working with people, and all kinds of functions, and languages, and industry. So, I was always like, I studied international business and entrepreneurship, but I didn’t think it was this moment that would make me start a company. So, it was really the hype in the market, and being with the right two people as my co-founders at the right moment, that we just.. it clicked. I think we are very, very, very different. The other two are extremely technical. I am absolutely not technical. I have a background in business and go to market, and so we complement each other very well, and I think that really helped us to get going, because we had a diverse set of skills, so that ultimately helped it and get us going, and yeah, I wouldn’t, wouldn’t change it for the world.

Jim Beach 23:56
Excellent. And your co-founders, I don’t think we’ve learned how you met. How did you find each other?

Larissa Schneider1 24:03
Yes, so Shine was our CEO. He was the co-founder and CTO of a company called No Name Security, who’s leading the API security market for about four years until it was acquired by Akamai for 500 million, and that is where we all got together and worked together and then made the jump to unframe together.

Jim Beach 24:24
One of my classmates was the on the founding team of Akamai, and he was probably like number four or five on the team, and they had $100 million let’s say, and he bought a Picasso and an airplane and put the Picasso on his airplane, and then was buying up all sorts of real estate here in town, and he started a venture capital firm here in town, and I think it lasted three years, and he spent all of the money in three years in the venture capital. Firm blew up, and he ended up busted.

Larissa Schneider 25:04
Wow, I’m sorry.

Jim Beach 25:07
Yeah, well, I was just, you know, the history of the internet, you know, you well, you know, he thought that in this is a really old, aka mys, an old company now. They were started in 98 I think, ah I think you know the he started a venture capital firm and put like 50 million of his own money in it or something, and then the market blew up, you know, we just didn’t need another venture capital firm that we already had enough, that’s why the market went crazy, because we had too many of them, and so you know he was just riding the wave, and you know, sometimes you ride the wave, and you get crushed by it. So I don’t know what’s your goal for the next five years: sell the company IPO and become a billionaire and buy a yacht.

Larissa Schneider 25:58
Wow, five years is a really long time in AI world, honestly. When I’m in an interview setting where I talk to candidates that want to join us, and they ask me about the five year plan, I’m always like, give me like timeline of five months, because in AI, what do we know? Such a fast moving space, nothing that we’ve ever seen before. We want to grow business, ultimately we are not interested in a quick grow and sell kind of motion, so we’re in it for the long run. We love what we’re doing, our customers love it, they keep coming back for more, and we’re expanding with them. We’re building the AI strategy, so it’s really exciting, and there’s no plan right now to get out of it. As I said, we just came from an acquisition standpoint, so at an exit, and let’s build this for longer. That’s the plan,

Jim Beach 26:54
all right. I love it. Very good attitude. Well, Larissa, you’ve done everything right, and I can’t wait to watch this company grow. I hope you’ll come back in a year or five months and give us an update. Absolutely, we’ll do that. Thank you so much. How do we find out more about you? Follow you online, continue to learn about Unframe.

Larissa Schneider 27:14
Yeah, absolutely. Our website is unframe.ai I’m on LinkedIn, Larissa Schneider. My email is larissa@mframe.ai Reach out, happy to chat. Would love to learn more, and to maybe you want to be part of the 5% of AI use cases that actually make it. If you do, let me know, and if you just want to chat about building a startup, also happy to connect.

Jim Beach 27:36
Fantastic, Larissa, great job. And again, we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.

Larissa Schneider 27:42
Thank you so much.

Jim Beach 27:43
And we will be right back. And welcome back to School for Startups Radio again. Thank you so much for being with us today. I am incredibly honored and excited to introduce you to my first guest today. Her name is Kay Koplowitz, and she has one of the most prestigious and outstanding careers that you will ever hear about. She started off by creating an industry, quite literally. She was the person who went and said, you know, we could have a satellite network that supports an entire distribution system, and that became the USA Network and the Sci-Fi Network, and she ran those for a number of years. After that, she has been part of bringing capital to women as part of Springboard Enterprises, which is one of the premier resources for women in the venture capital space, and she has raised or helped women businesses run or raise over about $6 billion in capital, which is an amazing amount, and she has also served at President Clinton’s suggestion on the chair of National Women’s Business Council, very impressive, and she has a new book out there, which talks about all of this, called Been There, Run That, and I love the cover, it has a school of fish swimming in One Direction, and then her, of course, swimming in the other direction. Kay, welcome to the show. It’s our honor to talk with you today.

Kay Koplovitz 29:30
Glad to be with you.

Jim Beach 29:31
Well, we are very excited to learn from you. Let’s start right with the book. Please bend there, run that. Tell us about

Kay Koplovitz 29:42
it. Sure. The book is a compilation of articles written by 45 contributors. They’re entrepreneurs in our network, women entrepreneurs in our network that have been successful in a number of different industries with their business, and what they’re doing is sharing their. Wisdom. What they have learned in building their own companies, and so this is really wisdom from the trenches, and it’s very direct, easy to read, practical, actionable items on a number of different subjects, starting with starting up your business, leadership, raising capital, innovation, company culture, all kinds of topics that entrepreneurs face as they’re out building their businesses, and so, whether you’re a would-be startup or a serial entrepreneur, there’s some really great advice, very direct, actionable advice for you in this book. Been there, run that.

Jim Beach 30:43
And what is the lasting message that you both want both men and women to go away with?

Kay Koplovitz 30:50
That being an entrepreneur and building a business is really, you cannot learn it, you know, only from case studies and studying about it, you can learn certain techniques, but really being out there and doing it is, you can the only way you can really know what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, to get the rewards of going out and starting your own business, but also how to get through the sort of the sticky parts and the problems and the challenges, and the barriers that everybody faces, and you feel pretty much alone out there as an entrepreneur, oftentimes, and this is sort of like a companion for you, this book, knowing that other people have faced similar things, and they’ve got some advice for you, and it’s very actionable advice, I think that’s that’s what I want people to take away about this book. Been there, run that, that it’s a, it’s a good, quick, actionable reference book for them to toolkit for entrepreneurs, really.

Jim Beach 31:51
All right. Well, excellent. I love anything that helps entrepreneurs. So I am very excited about this. I want to jump back and ask, what was your inspiration to go into the cable industry and build the the entire network of satellites and the incredible things that you did with the USA network. Where did that inspiration come from?

Kay Koplovitz 32:17
I came from Arthur C. Clarke, a famous science fiction writer, 2001 a space odyssey, and also a very gifted scientist who wrote about geosynchronous orbiting satellites technology in 1945 coming out of the Second World War, but those geosynchronous orbiting satellites really were not launched until 1965 20 years later, and I heard him talk about them, and as a student in 1966 he was so compelling to me, so inspiring to me about the power of these satellites to connect people around the world instantaneously, that it was an idea that would never let me go, and I wrote my master’s thesis on satellite technology, and its pending impact on communication. We have to remember it was a time during the Cold War, we didn’t really know what was behind the Berlin Wall. Today there is no Berlin Wall, and we didn’t know what was behind the Great Wall of China, but today it’s just tourist attraction. I mean, it’s a very different time, and I thought, wow, these powerful satellites can really open up communication, people to people around the world. And I really pursued my career in satellite technology, in television, and in cable television. Took seven years before, as a country, in the United States, we got the capability of utilizing satellites for commercial purposes, and that was in 1975 september 30, 1975 when we brought the thriller from Manila, Ollie Fraser site from Manila, alive to Vero Beach, Florida, and demonstrated for our congressmen, senators, that there really was a place for commercial use of satellites in the television business, and it came that was the night that launched my career, but it was a path, it was a long pathway. I spent a lot of time developing my own expertise in those businesses and meeting the right people to get to go on the night that changed the course of television history.

Jim Beach 34:22
I actually remember that night when the fight was on, and it was a big deal. I mean, it was a huge event that we could all see that, and I had no idea that it was a woman behind all of that. You know, today to be a woman in business is certainly not easy, and you’re helping with all of the things you’re doing at that time, though, in the early 70s, and being a woman, it must have been near impossible,

Kay Koplovitz 34:53
you know. Truth be known, I never really considered being a woman as a liability, I. Yeah, I was like the competitor as a kid, I competed in everything I could get my hands on, it could be, and I never, I never really felt it was a liability. I don’t know what other people thought. If I, I actually was a television producer for a short period of time at WTMJ in Milwaukee, my hometown, and I saw that the people there really thought I had reached the pinnacle of my career at the age of 21 being a television producer, and they didn’t understand, I didn’t really want to be that producer, I didn’t want to be the manager of the TV station, I didn’t want to be the president of the Waukee Journal that owned the TV station, I wanted to be the president of NBC, and I knew they didn’t know that, and they couldn’t see that, and they could never have believed it, so I left and created my own network.

Jim Beach 35:46
And do you think that in that role as a woman fighting through, do you think that it was 10% 100% harder because you were a woman, or I mean, the fact that you weren’t aware of how significant it was. Certainly, you look back on it now and see that you were a phenomenal trailblazer and changed, you know, television for all of the other women that have come after you. Do you think it was a lot harder because of being a woman, or in fact that just gave you the strength to fight through all the bureaucracy and BS that you had to overcome, was it significant at

Kay Koplovitz 36:25
all? Well, to tell you the truth, the most significant thing I did, not because I was a woman, what I did was create the business model for cable television program networks, and I reversed the model in television and had the cable systems pay us a license fee, and then advertising, and it was the creation of that model that had made that made USA successful at all cable television networks that are on a basis of advertising and license fee today, which makes them so much more valuable even than broadcast stations today, so that was the great contribution that launched the industry. The fact that I was a woman, you know, you, it really, that was not necessarily relevant to me, in the sense that I really thought about it. I think in the end people treat you the way you treat yourself, and I worked hard to get to where I was. I felt confident in what I was doing. I think people understood that the men look, I brought all professional sports to cable when I got the deal with Major League Baseball, or the NBA, or the NHL, or Augusta National, or the US Open Tennis Tournament, or boxing, or track and field, or whatever it was. I was confident in what I was doing, and I really think people understood that. I think they believed me, and I don’t think it was because I was a woman or not. I just think it was.. look, I think I am a visionary, and I think I can execute, and I really think that came across, and I think that’s how women need to feel today. They need to feel confident in themselves. They need to, because people actually do treat you in the end the way you treat yourself. You look, we all ran into barriers. I never let a barrier stop me. I go for daylight. I say, don’t keep banging your head against a barrier, go on, move on, find the opening, go to where the opening is for you, for what you want to do. Don’t let other people paint you into a box. Well, that’s true for medicine.

Jim Beach 38:32
You said you thought you were a visionary. There’s absolutely no doubt that you’re one of the huge visionaries in the industry, and in the time that we live in, so it’s an incredible thing that you’ve done. Was there something about your personality, something that you see in the disruptive entrepreneurs of today that was the same? Is there a certain personality trait or a skill, something about you that made that happen and made that possible, was it persistence, a chip on your shoulder, something like that, that made you fight on, and something that you see in entrepreneurs today?

Kay Koplovitz 39:13
Very good question. I don’t think I have a chip on my shoulder. I don’t think that really helps you at all, and I don’t think.. I think either you have to learn to operate in the environment that you’re in, but you’re asking a very good question, and I actually have a direct answer for it, because Korn Ferry, the search firm for executive placement, did a study on the entrepreneurs, the women entrepreneurs in the Springboard portfolio, there were there have been almost 600 of them, but in this study there were 183 and they were being compared it for attributes of leadership in against C-suite men and women in corporations for various attributes, and what they found out was that these were. Been entrepreneurs, and I would say it applies to myself. We have an extreme tolerance for ambiguity. We can launch ourselves into the unknown. We don’t have to have all the answers. We’re going to do something that hasn’t been done, and so looking for the answer while we’re doing it is something that we feel comfortable with. We have enormous curiosity, and women in our entrepreneurial group have very high quotients of this compared to even C-suite people who are successful, and what does that say? It says that we have learning agility, we learn and adapt, we learn and adapt very quickly, and I have to say I have always loved to venture out onto the unknown. I love to be where no road has been plowed, no directions have been given. I love being out there, and I think that is for a lot of entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people who are entrepreneurs who are a lifestyle business, they see a business or service in their community that they could do a very good job at, that could be needed or is absent, that they could introduce, and that’s a different kind of entrepreneur, but still requires flexibility and billing to go out there and not have someone guide you, but go out and do it yourself. So, I think that that is learning agility is really key attribute of successful entrepreneurs, I think.

Jim Beach 41:26
And do you see that same ambiguity and possibility for learning agility in other spaces and other industries today?

Kay Koplovitz 41:37
Well, I think they’re in every industry, and I think today we have the exponential growth of technologies that is changing every industry. I myself have been involved in the fashion retail industry, the software industry, the food industry, the media industry, and I just see across all those industries and many more, the financial industries that technology is upending the businesses, the business models, even the business model that I created for the cable industry is being upended and disrupted today by over the top, meaning internet delivered video, Netflix, Lou, Amazon Prime. These types of services are upending the business model of cable television networks today, so you know, you see, time moves on, and you always have to move. You cannot stop the future, you cannot stop a consumer, massive consumers, when they get something to do. And I think that this is going to have a big impact on our healthcare services, as well as when consumer behavior enters in a big way the service of healthcare services in the marketplace, and remote technologies, mobile technologies are used to help people interact with their providers. I think it’ll make healthcare services much more available to people on an on-demand basis, I think people will bring their consumer traits of comparing value and price to the healthcare market, and I think I think this will help bend the curve on the cost of our healthcare services today and make them much more available to more people.

Jim Beach 43:18
Well, I certainly agree with that, and it’s interesting. I’m working with a woman here in Atlanta that has created a healthcare company, an IT company that I think is going to change the entire world, and it’s fascinating to see that it came from a woman and her perspective. And so I certainly agree with what you’re talking, or in what you’re saying, the innovation that it’s going to take to change and solve these industries. Where does that come from? Do you think? Does it come from past behavior? Does it come from product? Where do you see the source of innovation being?

Kay Koplovitz 43:56
Well, it really has to do with technology and going back to Moore’s Law, really in semiconductor business, that the power that we have in our hands today, in our smartphones today, is hundreds of times more power than the big supercomputers had 25 years ago, so when we put a man on the moon, that was a very small amount of computing power compared to what we can possibly hold in our hands today, so you can see the exponential growth and the availability, because superconductors took enormous rooms full of just one huge supercomputer in a room, didn’t have 100th the capability of what we hold in our hands today. So that is the exponential growth of technologies that are really affecting all businesses. I mean, you remember when you would order. Or an airline ticket online, I mean, not online, but you’d have to call an agent, or you’d have to call, yeah, I mean, people just don’t do that, they order on the run, they get their boarding pass and download into their smartphones, they just run to their, you know, it’s just a very different, you know, every kind of business has really been changing very dramatically, and I think that this is all because of the power of computing and the ability to put it in smaller and smaller devices makes it mobile and available to everybody all the time, everywhere and in every industry, whether it’s retail, whether it’s commercial, even big industries have computerized their functions with robotics and computer operations, which, of course, reduce the number of people that they have to have, but also increases the productivity, so that could be a steel business, it could be any business. Today is all being changed by the rapid development of technology and computing power.

Jim Beach 46:06
I want to ask you about corporate culture. I interviewed someone recently, a man, and in their company, which is it’s in Menlo Park, Michigan, actually, they let the women who have had babies bring the baby to work and put a pack and play right next to their desk, and that’s part of their corporate culture. Very, very open workspace, very collaborative. Do you think that men and women create different corporate cultures over time? Are women going to create a corporate culture that’s more understanding and better serving of the employees, or is there any difference at all?

Kay Koplovitz 46:49
Well, I mean, traditionally there has been a difference. I mean, there, that you know, the acceptance of biological fact that actually women bear children, and, and the fact that, you know, respond adults have responsibility for their children with more women in the marketplace, and companies needing to keep the talent these women bring to the marketplace, and the money they invest in in their training, and you know, their promotion within the business, they don’t want to lose them, and so the being able to have a bigger and wider understanding of that is acceptable, that family life is acceptable, that women aren’t disregarded because, oh, she’s going to have a baby, so we’re not going to promote her because she’s not going to be available to us, and she’s going to leave the business. I mean, this is all the kinds of things that would happen in the last couple of decades, and I think it is changing. I think it’s healthier, and I also think it’s healthier for men, because I think men see the value of keeping the company, the family intact, and and I think that men actually are beginning to enjoy the role of having some responsibility and access to their children in a way that maybe their fathers or grandfathers never had.

Jim Beach 48:13
Well, at our house, I’m the stay-at-home dad. My wife goes out and works, but we’re pregnant right now with our fourth child, and I think you’re entirely right. The dynamic has changed. It’s inconceivable that my father would be the one at home doing some diaper changes, but that works better for our family today. So, we’re about to run out of time. Kay, I want to ask some personal questions. What is your favorite sci-fi series? If I had to say, you can only watch one movie, one sci-fi show, again and again, again, you’re stuck on an island, it’s the only thing you have. What is your favorite sci-fi vehicle program?

Kay Koplovitz 48:58
Well, I kind of like, like, sort of the sort of modern version of sci-fi. I mean, I liked series like Quantum Leap. I think Star Trek is absolutely as close as we’re going to get to Shakespeare in entertainment form, because the underlying questions being asked and challenged on a series like Star Trek are just common to mankind, and they were able to embed them in a, in a future-looking series that had all these different characters in it that really you could find in Shakespeare, and I think that you know it’s got to be one of the stellar series and movie series of all time, and then Star Wars to me, the movies, the Star War movies to me were I launched sci-fi with three Star War movies, and to me they are more imagination fill, they weren’t techno. As much at that time as they were fulfilling the imagination of mankind, and I love that. So, those are longstanding series that I think really stand the test of time and are extremely high quality.

Jim Beach 50:15
Are you disappointed by some of the junk that is now on cable television, like The Real Housewives and the Kardashians, and all of that kind of stuff, does that disappoint you, or do you think that that actually has a positive role out there in the myriad of shows that are broadcast over 700 channels?

Kay Koplovitz 50:36
I have never watched. Good, you’re not attractive to me, but I will say, as a television programmer, you program for the audience, you don’t program for yourself. I’ll give you an example. We had World Federation Wrestling on USA for many years, still there. I don’t like wrestling, I know it’s Kabuki theater. I know their characters. I know that they have a big following, and they please the audience. So they’re there because they please the audience, and they were there when I ran that network because they pleased the audience. They didn’t please me, but they pleased the audience. So that’s what you do when you’re a programmer. So those shows that you’re mentioning, for some reason are attractive to, you know, a considerable audience, and the Kardashians have made, you know, an entire cult of themselves, and so that’s that’s celebrity media, I think that there’s a place for all these different kinds of programs, and I guess we all get to choose what we want to watch. Me, I’m a big sports fan. I watch a lot of sports. Well, that’s obvious with the programming you’ve done.

Jim Beach 51:49
Yes. So, K, thank you so much for being with us. Go ahead. You’re welcome. All right.

Kay Koplovitz 51:58
Yeah, I was just gonna say that I think that in today’s world, in television programming, there’s more great writing in television today than we’ve seen in a long time. There’s some really extraordinary writing series on television, both broadcast and cable, today more than we’ve seen in most recent years. So, I just wanted to say that I think you know people are rising to the challenge of having all these different channels and try and find an audience.

Jim Beach 52:22
What are you watching right now, other than sports?

Kay Koplovitz 52:27
Well, I watch Blacklist, I watch The Good Wife,

Jim Beach 52:33
love it,

Kay Koplovitz 52:33
love Homeland. Yeah, I mean, I have my series that I like, those are kind of like my favorite series that I never want to miss, and I love hosts of cards. Orange is a new black, so I, you know, I really, we find characters that you find intriguing. I’m limited in the amount of time I can watch television, because I’m a very, have a very heavy schedule every week, so I have to choose, but you’re gonna say, “What don’t you want to miss this week? But a lot of times, of course, I have to record and see them off cycle. But yeah, I love, I love really good writing and characters who are both evil and good, and just make such a good series,

Jim Beach 53:20
right? Well, I agree with almost all of your shows, except Orange Is the New Black, that I just could not get into that one and gave up after like three episodes. So, anyway, Kay, thank you so much for being with us. I love talking to you, and I want to make sure that all of our listeners get a copy of Been There Run That, it’s unbelievably reviewed on Amazon. Hey Koplovitz, thank you so much for being with us today.

Kay Koplovitz 53:48
Thank you, it was pleasure.

Jim Beach 53:50
We’re out of time for today, but you know what, we do this right, we come back tomorrow. Be safe, take care, we go make a million dollars. Bye now,