TFTSL Ep45—John Church
Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by John Church, lead product manager at Nethermind and adjunct professor at Duke University. John has been deep in the blockchain world since 2017 — from speculative ICOs to running treasury management for a 20,000-person decentralized autonomous organization, to now working on zero-knowledge cryptography and AI agent infrastructure.
In this conversation, John breaks down what stablecoins actually are and why their adoption matters far beyond the crypto-native crowd. He explains why Ethereum’s decentralization gives it an edge over faster competitors, and what it means that AI agents are already building wallets and executing trades on their own. He also shares his take on how he’s preparing engineering students for a world where AI compresses timelines — and creativity matters more than syntax. Plus, a survival school story from the Utah desert involving a wanted poster, stolen macaroni casserole, and a well-timed lie.
TFTSL Ep40 – Steve Subar
Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Steve Subar, COO/CEO at TechCXO, who’s spent three decades building, guiding, and growing companies. His latest venture? The world’s first fully automated yoga mat cleaning machine.
It’s not exactly cocktail party material, Steve admits. But the story behind MatFresher reveals something more interesting than the product itself: what happens when an experienced founder decides to design the business model before the company.
After selling Open Kernel Labs to General Dynamics in 2012 and spending 13 years consulting for tech companies, Steve started his next venture with three non-negotiable constraints. He wanted recurring revenue. He wanted high gross margins. And he was done—completely done—with B2B sales friction. His entire career had been large systems, complex sales, long cycles. At this stage, he wanted something different.
The yoga mat problem emerged from Steve’s own 20-year hot yoga practice. Here’s a discipline built on the Sanskrit concept of Saucha (cleanliness of spirit, mind, and body), practiced on mats that smell like the inside of old hockey equipment. But before investing in product development, Steve did what experienced entrepreneurs do: he tested whether anyone actually cared.
He bought a folding table, rubber gloves, antiseptic spray from Whole Foods, and a Square reader. He showed up at yoga studios and asked people if they’d pay two bucks to get their mat cleaned. They would. But something more valuable happened during those 50-minute gaps between classes when he had nothing to do but talk to studio owners and staff.
He learned that the bigger problem wasn’t hygiene—it was unit economics. Only 10% of yoga studio operators net more than $100,000 annually. They’re not in it to get rich; they’re in it to help people. But cleanliness is the number one factor affecting their Net Promoter Score and churn rate. If Steve could reduce their labor costs while visibly improving hygiene, he’d solve two problems at once.
This is the kind of insight you can’t get from market research or surveys. “Information is not the same as wisdom,” Steve says. You can look up anything online, but “you can’t Google for experience.” True wisdom comes from combining information with experience—and that’s what leads to good decision-making.
Steve’s career bears this out. At Open Kernel Labs, his team figured out how to apply virtualization software to power-constrained devices like mobile phones. They started by targeting the most paranoid customer: the NSA. Thousands of people couldn’t bring cell phones into Fort Meade. The agency was stuck with the “ObamaBerry”—essentially two BlackBerrys glued together, one for classified and one for unclassified communications.
Open Kernel Labs became the first method for the NSA to enable standard smartphones for their employees. That stamp of approval opened commercial doors. By the time General Dynamics acquired the company, their software was in 1.6 billion phones.
Steve calls this approach “in through the out door”—finding the entrance nobody else is using. While everyone lines up at the obvious door, he looks left and right for the legitimate entrance that’s wide open but overlooked.
Now with MatFresher, he’s applying those same principles to a hardware-as-a-service business in an industry where most VCs say “we don’t do hardware.” But that’s the point. Thirty years in, Steve isn’t looking for the crowded entrance. He’s still finding out doors nobody else sees.
TFTSL Ep39 – Neal Miller
Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Neal Miller, partner emeritus at TechCXO and one of the firm’s earliest members. Neal shares stories from 19 years working with over 70 companies, including the legendary Cloud Sherpas journey that started with a Monday morning Starbucks meeting in 2008 and ended with an Accenture acquisition. He reveals the simple napkin drawing that transformed Boomtown from chaos to clarity, why the 1983 IPO market let an $8 million revenue company go public, and his unusual career path from KPMG auditor to software sales to CFO. Plus, hear about his transition to Costa Rica, lessons from owning a microbrewery, and why uncertain economic times actually strengthen the fractional executive model.
TFTSL Ep38 – Louis Gump
Louis Gump joins us in the Sky Lounge to explore a question every founder and executive faces eventually: what happens after the acquisition? In this candid conversation, Louis shares how he helped build the mobile business at CNN.com, led digital transformation at The Weather Channel, and became the steady hand guiding post-acquisition innovation at startups and growth-stage companies alike.
We unpack the differences between entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, what makes someone thrive inside a big company post-acquisition, and how timing and self-awareness shape every meaningful career move. Louis also discusses the importance of clarity in strategy, the value of not rushing change, and why keeping founders involved after a deal often leads to better outcomes.
Louis is also the author of The Inside Innovator, a practical guide to driving innovation from within established companies — ideal for leaders navigating post-acquisition roles or scaling without the founder title.
Whether you’re scaling, selling, or staying to build the next chapter — this episode will meet you at the crossroads.