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Business Current Events Tampa Bay

Disgraced former Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky arrested; Tampa Bay-based CTO presumably still running free

Alex Mashinsky in a photo altered by Yours Truly.
(The original Celsius t-shirt said “Banks are not your friends.”

It’s the top story on Techmeme right now: Celsius Network’s disgraced former CEO Alex Mashinsky has been arrested and charged with seven criminal counts including securities, commodities, and wire fraud. If convicted, Mashinsky could spend decades in prison. And as a former customer, I say: good.

Celsius, if you’re not familiar with it, was a cryptocurrency exchange that purported to operate like a bank, but better — starting with 1980s-style interest rates on crypto that you stored with them — until their business, which proved to be a Ponzi scheme, collapsed in 2022.

In June 2022, they filed for bankruptcy, but not before pausing withdrawals after its C-level people made big withdrawals themselves. It had been facing federal investigations, and during this process, they leaked half a million users’ holdings info via a data dump of its customers and their holdings.

The Tampa Bay connection

There’s a Tampa Bay connection in the Celsius scandal: co-founder and former CTO Nuke Goldstein, who moved here in 2021 amid a lot of fanfare from local press including these two funny/sad-in-retrospect pieces from Tampa Bay Business Journal:

And let’s not forget how much love Celsius got at the 2021 edition of the Florida Bitcoin and Blockchain Summit, which featured a sold-out party where you could hang out with Goldstein. For more, see my article, If you’re going to Florida Bitcoin and Blockchain Summit 2022, YOU’RE AN IDIOT.

Goldstein’s name hasn’t appeared in any news items about Mashinsky’s arrest, but the smart play for him would be to distance himself from Celsius as much as possible. And he’s taking an approach used by many other shady crypto/Web3 carpetbaggers…

If you look at Goldstein’s Twitter feed, it’s all AI now. In fact, his insterest in AI is such that he joined a meetup I organize:

That’s right — he signed up. As organizer, I see who joined, and when.

I thought about revoking his membership, but you know what would be more entertaining? If he actually showed up to a meetup, just so we could have a little impromptu Q&A session.

Categories
Business Humor

Pivoting, 1980s style

Thanks to Ken Nickerson for the find!
Categories
Business Meetups Tampa Bay

Thursday: University of Tampa speaker series featuring Chaz Ross-Munro on CRMs

Her initials are CRM, and so are her topic’s initials! On Thursday morning at the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center at University of TampaChaz Ross-Munro will talk about Leveraging CRM to Deliver an Experience Customers Love. 

Chaz has forgotten more about customer relationship management (CRM) than most people will learn, so if you have an interest in CRM, don’t miss this one! Find out more and register here.

Sykes College of Business - Lowth Entrepreneurship Center Speaker Series

This event is part of the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center’s speaker series.

Lowth Entrepreneurship Center building

The speaker series takes place at the University of Tampa Lowth Entrepreneurship Center (820 W North A St., 8th Floor, Tampa, FL).

Categories
Business Meetups Tampa Bay

University of Tampa speaker series: Building an innovative sales playbook to grow your business with Sercan Topcu

Tomorrow afternoon (Thursday, April 6th) at 4:00 p.m., catch the latest in a great speaker series at the University of Tampa’s Lowth Entrepreneurship Center! The presentation will be Building an Innovative Sales Playbook To Grow Your Business, featuring Sercan Topcu.

Sercan is an award-winning marketer, seasoned sales developer, and Forbes 30 under 30 winner. He empowers sales teams worldwide with his love for data-driven development and engineering analytical solutions for big problems as the Head of Managed Services at InsideOut Lab, overseeing the PlayOps team. Sercan helps market leaders and innovators, including Fortune 500 organizations, leverage scientific methodology and behavioral sciences to enable their sales/marketing people and strategies.

His clients establish higher returns on effort with their business development strategies through Sales Play. A Sales Play is an outbound series of sales activities designed to turn a prospect into a genuine selling opportunity. 

Topcu is the head of managed services at InsideOut Lab. He oversees the PlayOps team, which helps clients establish higher return on effort with their business development strategies through a “sales play.” According to Topcu, “a sales play is an outbound series of sales activities, designed to turn a prospect into a genuine selling opportunity. “Think of it like a plan of attack, targeting prospective buyers in a direct, structured way, leveraging sales enablement resources, strategies, KPIs, tonality, buyer personas and ideal customer profiles. For inbound calls or buyer enquiries, we create Sales Motions. These are a perfectly balanced series of conversational activities, designed to increase inbound conversions and customer satisfaction rates for rich, memorable and engaging interactions. Our deliverables are established by consulting on: benchmarking; tech-stack utilization and automation; sales operations optimization; improved buyer engagement strategy development; improved call/email/social/video messaging and personalization; strategy and messaging performance; health checks; sales campaign installations to sales platforms; training teams on-site or virtually to increase their confidence in utilizing their new sales plays with target buyers.”

Sercan was the Co-founder of Tembo Education and responsible for developing, managing, and executing traditional and new-age marketing/branding strategies. He was in charge of email, content, affiliate marketing, and re-targeting. Recruit/manage the micro-entrepreneurs network and marketing team personnel. Tembo educates 0-6-year-old children worldwide via Harvard/Lego Foundation/Pearson-backed curriculum text messages. The 15-min activity is sent to parents each weekday via text message. Parents perform the activity with their children in their own homes. Parents answer a quiz to earn rewards for educating their children.

This event is FREE to the public! Find out more and register here.

Sykes College of Business - Lowth Entrepreneurship Center Speaker Series

This event is part of the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center’s speaker series. Upcoming events include:

Lowth Entrepreneurship Center building

The speaker series takes place at the University of Tampa Lowth Entrepreneurship Center (820 W North A St., 8th Floor, Tampa, FL).

Categories
Business Current Events Editorial Systems

My take on the merger of two giant telcos in Canada

Need context? Here’s a news story from Canada’s Global News.

Categories
Business Meetups Tampa Bay

Thursday, March 16th: Growth Hacking and Inbound Marketing with Tracy Ingram!

Tracy Ingram
Tracy Ingram.
Logo: “The University of Tampa Lowth Entrepreneurship Center”

This afternoon at 4:00 p.m., catch the latest in a great speaker series at the University of Tampa’s Lowth Entrepreneurship Center! Today’s presentation will be Growth Hacking and Inbound Marketing with Tracy Ingram, featuring Tracy Ingram, CEO and Founder of Intention Technology, and long-time Tampa Baytech entrepreneur.

Tracy says that inbound marketing is important to startups — it helps them build their brand, generate leads and increase sales. Inbound marketing is an effective way to create an ongoing relationship with customers and build trust and credibility. It’s also a great and cost-effective way to reach a wider audience. Startups can leverage inbound marketing techniques such as content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and email marketing to reach their target audience and generate leads. In addition, inbound marketing helps startups create an online presence, which is essential for success in today’s digital world.

Tracy’s an experienced techie with a list of certifications as long as your arm:

This event is FREE to the public! Find out more and register here.

Sykes College of Business - Lowth Entrepreneurship Center Speaker Series

This event is part of the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center’s speaker series. Upcoming events include:

Lowth Entrepreneurship Center building

The speaker series takes place at the University of Tampa Lowth Entrepreneurship Center (820 W North A St., 8th Floor, Tampa, FL).

Categories
Business Current Events Editorial

Twitter’s legal team over the past 48 hours

Three scenes from “The Last of Us” where Joel has a panic attack.

Need context? Check out this article from about 48 hours ago: