The Chief Technical Penguin – Aaron Ralls – and I had an amazing year of fun with our 2021 Startups with Sassi & Ralls livestream. Having a chance to roll up our sleeves and welcome startups into our living rooms hopefully me recognize the vast number of worldwide and local problems yet to be solved, as well as a number of innovative solutions disrupting and evolving industries such as fintech, healthtech, insurtech, edtech, musictech and so much more.

Speaking of musictech, what rad bunch of moments I experienced this year! I remember when my crew at Village Capital – our startup accelerator partner – told me that Timbaland and his new startup, Beatclub, had applied to our program. Fast forward to the announcement of their team joining the IBM Hyper Protect Accelerator and welcoming them to our livestream. Interviewing Tim and the Beatclub team was HANDS-DOWN my favorite moment of the year! I mean, who doesn’t want to have an opportunity to personally engage with one of Time’s Top 100 Most Influential People in the World and Grammy Award-winning Producer?! What a flipping rush!

Throughout 2021, Aaron and I hosted 37 guest speakers across 15 episodes representing 13 startups.

Our interviews take a very human approach, which means: no scripts, no pre-planned questions, and only a rough agenda that includes an opening, a business-focused chat, a tech-focused chat, and a close. We go wherever we fancy and prefer it to be as authentic and transparent as possible.

As I start closing out 2021 and preparing for 2022, I think about the signature moments from the year and what stood out to me as special opportunities to help all of us who touch the startup ecosystem or corporate innovation world to keep doing the thing and whatever that thing is, to do it much better than how we started the year.

To save you the trouble of looking of looking for the standout shows from our Startups with Sassi & Ralls series, I’ve curated a list of my ten favs. Check them out below so you can close out 2021 and kickoff 2022 with inspiration and a fire to go out and do your thing…whatever that thing may be!

Dr. Sassi’s Top 10 Fav Episodes of 2021: Startups with Sassi & Ralls

1. Sassi & Ralls: How Beatclub is Changing the Music Creator Landscape
2. Women of Fintech: brought to you by Financial Alliance for Women
3. Hyper Protect Accelerator Startup Magic: brought to you by Home Lending Pal
4. Hyper Protect Accelerator Startup Magic: brought to you by finclude
5. Startups with Sassi & Ralls: brought to you by Vittas
6. Startups with Dr. Sassi & Ralls: brought to you by MedPharma
7. Startups with Sassi & Ralls: brought to you by OSPREE
8. Startups with Sassi & Ralls: brought to you by Staple AI
9. Startups with Sassi & Ralls: brought to you by Pegasi
10. Startups with Sassi & Ralls: brought to you by Zenda.la

Let us know what you think by using the Discussion tab in the Accelerator Hub, and don’t forget to register while you are there!

See ya in 2022!

Melissa Sassi
Chief Penguin, IBM Z
@mentorafrika