Troy Lavinia, founder of Stream by Mosaic, stops by The Business Brew to discuss creating Stream, building teams, and strategic thinking. Troy is a really interesting thinker, approaches life with an abundance mentality, and is always looking to find the right partners to grow a business. Interesting tidbits about Troy include his time at Elliott Management and playing football fullback and tight end at University of Pennsylvania.

At one point in the conversation Bill asks Troy how he got comfortable delegating work. Troy responded by saying something to the effect of “You have to associate joy with creating a meaningful job for someone else.” That answer struck Bill as a very positive association for delegation.

We hope you enjoy this conversation. It is a peek into the financial services industry and an introduction to the person behind our sponsor.

Kristi Ross stops by The Business Brew to discuss her career, leading companies through M&A, and two notable exits exceeding $1.7Bn (the most recent of which was valued at $1Bn ). Kristi is the co-CEO of tastytrade, which launched in 2011. She also co-founded dough, a visual front-end trading technology platform that launched in 2014 and ultimately merged with and rebranded as tastytrade when the team launched their own online brokerage firm, tastyworks, in 2017.

Kristi is an award-winning entrepreneur who believes in empowering the do-it-yourself investor to engage more with their finances. She also uses her time to interview innovative entrepreneurs on her show, Bootstrapping in America. She also walks through the ins and outs of taxes for traders in Kristi’s Tax Bursts.

Kristi started her career in public accounting, specializing in financial services industry clientele including individual traders, proprietary firms, market makers, and advisory firms. After her run as a public accountant, Kristi acted as CFO of Automated Trading Desk Specialists, a stock specialist on the Chicago Stock Exchange. She then partnered up with Tom Sosnoff to serve as CFO of thinkorswim Group where she led numerous mergers, acquisitions and integration. thinkorswim sold to TD-Ameritrade for $750M in 2009.

Jillian Jaccard Murrish stops by The Business Brew to discuss co-founding and running Pier Asset Management; an alternative credit firm. Pier delivers fixed income yield by investing in alternative credit, which they define as all nonbank lending. Typical loan sizes in Pier’s portfolio are loans less than $250,000. This was a fun conversation and touches on an asset class that hasn’t been discussed much on this program. As always, nothing is investment advice and do your own due diligence!

Rob Koyfman stops by The Business Brew to discuss his background, starting a Fintech business, building teams, and much more. Rob’s experience includes stints and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and macro roles at Luxor Asset Management and Tekne Capital Management. This was a fun conversation for Bill. We hope you enjoy meeting the person behind our first sponsor.

Alexandra Blumenfeld stops by The Business Brew to discuss her business, Red Rover. Alex is a Junior at Vanderbuilt University and founded Red Rover, an expert network. Bill, Josh Tarasoff, Trey Kuppin, and Elliot Turner have all used Alex's service and all recommend the service. This conversation will highlight the value Alex provides.