Alyssa Rapp, Founder and CEO of Bottlenotes

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Alyssa Rapp is the Founder and CEO of Bottlenotes, an online wine retail business that helps individuals discover and learn about wine. Alyssa started the company while at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she headed the school's 500-person wine club. In this interview, Alyssa gives key insights on starting and running a hybrid online retail business, talks about her personal and entrepreneurial story for Bottlenotes, and gives leads to the most amazing wine regions in the world. Her goal for Bottlenotes, she says, is to create the "Pandora of wine".

Alyssa earned a B.A. in Political Science and the History of Art from Yale University in 2000 and an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2005. In between her first and second years in business school, she spearheaded the sales and marketing efforts at RO Imports, an importer of boutique New Zealand wines in New York.

Thanks to Julio, iinnovate emeritus, and Roger for contributing to this interview.

- Min Liu

Chef Thomas Keller of French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon

Thomas Keller is widely regarded as one of America's finest chefs, and his restaurants French Laundry and Per Se have been named the best restaurants in America.

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Interviewing Thomas Keller at the French Laundry in Yountville was a rare treat for two food fanatics like ourselves, and the great surprise that Chef de Cuisine Corey Lee whipped up for us in the kitchen post-interview was the icing on the cake.

Food allusions aside, we hope you enjoy this superb interview with Thomas. In our conversation we talked about his entrepreneurial success, how he picks new members for his team, expanding his personal brand, and, of course, food.

Check out this video of Thomas talking about the secret of success behind French Laundry as well as how to select a great team:

And as a special bonus here's a video of Chef de Cuisine Corey Lee in the kitchen talking about his involvement with French Laundry. Click to hear what Corey's answer to "if you were any food, what would you be?"

- Owen and Julio

Tom Kaplan, Senior Managing Partner of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group

Tom Kaplan helped build and now runs Wolfgang Puck’s Fine Dining Group, consisting of some of the world's finest and most innovative restaurants, including Chinois, Postrio, CUT and the flagship Spago.


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Wolfgang Puck is known as the first celebrity chef and Tom Kaplan has been his right-hand man for over 25 years, managing the overall business. The flagship LA restaurant Spago (host to the most famous of Oscar parties) has been the subject of Hollywood legend and food critics delight for decades. Spago’s success allowed Puck and Kaplan to expand into one of the most successful fine dining groups in the world.

We caught up with Tom Kaplan in Las Vegas to talk about innovation in the restaurant industry and received a heaping serving of knowledge. Don’t miss out Tom’s advice for how to get a reservation at a restaurant where you thought one was impossible.

For some additional content on how the group manages the Puck brand, see the video below:



And for the story of how Tom joined Puck, check out this video.

We need your help in providing us with feedback on the podcast! Please take 5 minutes to answer a few questions about what you want to see next on the very brief iinnovate listener survey.

- JULIO.

Alex Tai, Vice President of Virgin Galactic

Alex Tai is the VP of Operations for Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's effort to commercialize space travel

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Virgin Galactic is Richard Branson's effort to bring space travel to the masses (well, at least those masses that can fork over $200k for a ticket). I spoke with Alex Tai in London at the Virgin Galactic headquarters. Alex, an experienced pilot and personal friend of Branson's, is responsible for figuring out how to put space tourists in zero gravity in a safe flight.

Virgin is working with Burt Rutan (click here to hear Burt talk about space flight), winner of the Ansari X-prize to build Spaceship Two to make multiple flights into space per day. Check out this amazing animation of what it will be like to be on the space flight:



If you want to hear Richard Branson narrating a 10-minute promotional video of Virgin Galactic, including some original footage of Rutan's winning X-prize design, click here.

In this interview, Alex talks about the challenges and promises of space tourism and how this fits in to Virgin´s long-term vision of long-haul travel. Also, he talks about the long-term vision for space travel (1.5 hour roundtrip between London and Sydney anyone?) and responds to Heidi Roizen's question about how Galactic fits into Virgin's portfolio. The Gadling travel blog has a useful post on the topic.

Click here to see a video of Alex talking about the long term vision for Virgin Galactic and space travel. And check out the video below to see Alex's response to Heidi Roizen's question about where Galactic fits in Virgin's overall plans:



On our next episode Matt interviews Geoffrey Moore, VC and author of "Crossing the Chasm" and "Dealing With Darwin", so make sure to subscribe and tune in!

- JULIO.