When Bitcoin started gaining traction, Mike Dudas started buying. In fact, of all the cryptocurrencies out there, bitcoin is the only one he's gone all in on. But his passion for the Blockchain and Crypto world didn't end there. IN 2018, he not only put his money where is mouth was, but his whole career, when he started The Block, the goal being to create THE destination for news in the Blockchain and Crypto world. Over Negronis at Fools Gold in New York, Mike talks about how he started his career doing business development for Disney but eventually got the bug for FinTech, leaning to early roles at Google Wallet and Braintree, eventually co-founding the mobile payments company Button. Through it all, his devotion to crypto hasn't waned - including a passion so deep that it's gotten him kicked off Twitter multiple times. he talks about all that and more.

What You’ll Learn:

• How you know it’s time to leave a company you founded
• How using Twitter as a growth strategy can be a blessing and a curse
• How to pivot your mission based on a quickly changing landscape
• How to pivot your mission based on a quickly changing landscape

The tech world is understandably frustrating and at some point, you’ve just had enough. For Katie Smith-Adair, that point came after she watched Sonar, the startup she was working for, blow up. The mobile app was part of a plethora of location-based people finding networks that permeated South by Southwest in 2012, but never really found its footing. Over a bottle of Chardonnay at Fools Gold in Manhattan, Katie talks about her experiences from waiting tables in Portland, Oregon to moving from the agency world to Microsoft and finally how she started PlaceInvaders, a culinary company that hosts unique dining events in amazing residential spaces.

What You’ll Learn:

• How working in the service industry makes you better in the business world
• The glory and fall of working for one of the hottest startups of the moment
• The challenge and excitement of switching industries entirely to do what you love

From music promotion to managing bars. From political strategist to startup founder. From consultant to professor. Jeremy Kagan’s gone down many roads over the course of his career. Over a variety bourbons at Fool’s Gold in New York, Jeremy talks about how his career has taken so many different turns, the emotional trauma of running your own startup and how all his experiences prepared him for his latest role as the Managing Director at the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School.

What You’ll Learn:

• How the challenges of the music industry make you smarter in the more traditional business world
• How to persevere when your startup isn’t moving at the pace it needs for success
• Why business school can actually be useful for an entrepreneur

Leah Finnegan’s journalism journey reads like the resume of someone decades in, which makes what she’s accomplished even more impressive. She first discovered her passion for journalism while working on the newspaper at the University of Texas and parlayed that into a stint at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she quickly realized that one does not need a master’s in journalism to be a good journalist. Over coffee and sparkling water, Leah shares how she’s worked her way up the journalism ladder from Gawker to the New York Times to the current Executive Editor of The Outline, the quirky online publication started by Josh Topolsky that recently sold to Bustle.

What You’ll Learn:

• The challenges of going freelance
• How to differentiate yourself as a media company
• The value, or lack thereof, of a degree in journalism
• How the media environment is changing in today’s political climate

Adam Levin has lead five different lives or at least had five different careers. From consumer protector to politician to real estate investor to digital entrepreneur to best selling author. And there’s even more beyond that. Over glasses of Lafroig scotch at Fool’s Gold in Manhattan, Adam sat down and discussed all of these facets of his life, including his experience shaping New Jersey’s consumer protection laws in the 1970s, why he co-founded Credit.com, one of the biggest online financial services educators, in the 1990s, and what lead to his need to write Swiped, his book about protecting yourself from all forms identity theft.

• How the government protects consumers from sketchy business practices
• The things we don’t know about our own privacy
• The history of cyber liability
• The origin and exit of Credit.com

Growing up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai may not seem like a place where technology takes the forefront, but for Nicole Wilke it was a ubiquitous part of her life. Taking her lifelong education around design and computer science with her from the islands to the mainland, Nicole worked her way through media and tech’s biggest names. Over negronis  at Fool’s Gold in Manhattan, she talks about her experience at brands like Disney and Wired and the transition to her most recent role as Head of Product for Techcrunch.

What You’ll Learn:

• The secrets behind what makes a good redesign
• What it takes to break into media
• Why a diverse skill set is critical to succeed in product design

When Nick Carlson started at Business Insider, he was a young reporter coming off stints at Gawker Media and Internet News, putting his faith in a fledgling media startup. Today, he’s the Global editor in chief of BI and oversees 250 plus reporters and writers at the publication, which has become one of the biggest voices in tech journalism. Over Old Fashioneds at Fools Gold in New York City, Nick talks about how he went from working in world of finance at Merrill Lynch to becoming the go-to source for all things Yahoo with is book “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!” as well as what it means to spearhead a place that has become a tech and business new institution.

The genre of political and social journalism has spawned a plethora of new voices over the past few years and Taylor Lorenz has emerged as a notable voice, most recently as a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her origin story starts in New York City, where she grew up and as social media became a major destination for communication, she quickly adapted to it by becoming an early Tumblr user and building off that to eventually running social for The Daily Mail. Over bitters and soda at Fools Gold in New York City, Taylor talks about how she went from a social media expert to covering tech for Business insider and growing into her own as a journalist and finding her voice writing for The Hill and The Daily Beast.