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Masters of ITAD

Masters of ITAD

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Welcome to "Masters of ITAD," a podcast dedicated to exploring the crucial world of ITAD (IT Asset Disposition). Launching in early January 2025, this show champions and supports individuals and companies leading in electronics sustainability, data protection, and environmental standards (R2v3, eStewards, ISO). Join Ryan Mezera as he delves into topics like reuse, recycling, refurbishment, reverse logistics, ALM (Asset Lifecycle Management), eWaste, electronics sustainability, circularity, and the circular economy. The podcast maintains a championing, supportive, and admiring tone, elevating ITAD companies working ethically.Copyright Heartcast Media Direction Economie Management et direction Politique et gouvernement Science Sciences de la Terre
Épisodes
  • ITAD Sales, Branding, and Private Equity with Tim Suhling

    ITAD Sales, Branding, and Private Equity with Tim Suhling
    Oct 21 2026
    Why sounding like every other IT asset disposition company might be the biggest risk in ITAD today

    Every ITAD services company says the same three things. Secure. Sustainable. Maximum recovery value. Tim Suhling has sat inside hundreds of these conversations, and he told me flat out that sounding the same is quietly holding back growth for a lot of IT asset disposition companies who think they are just doing what everyone else does.

    Private equity is circling ITAD right now, unit economics are getting more competitive, and AI is speeding up the hardware refresh cycle across the entire IT asset disposition industry. Tim has been inside all three of those conversations this year alone, and this episode is a real look at what separates the ITAD companies about to get acquired from the ones about to get left behind.

    Tim Suhling is President and CEO of Circular Integrity, a growth and marketing consultancy built specifically for ITAD, eWaste, and circular tech businesses. Before that he spent years at Ingram Micro running global sales, marketing, and demand generation for OEMs, ITADs, MSPs, and VARs, so he has seen the ITAD services sales motion from just about every angle there is.

    Key Takeaways
    • Most ITAD companies sound identical because they lead with data security and compliance messaging that every competitor already uses, and true differentiation comes from finding a specific, ownable point of view instead.
    • Operational efficiency and revenue growth are not competing priorities, and the ITAD companies pulling ahead are the ones improving both at the same time through a clearly defined ideal customer profile.
    • Only 20 percent of data bearing assets currently receive a second life, which means the addressable market for IT asset disposition and refurbished enterprise IT is still far from fully captured.
    • Private equity is attracted to ITAD because the industry is still largely founder led with low barriers to entry, and outside capital is helping the strongest operators scale past growth ceilings they could not break through alone.
    • The next decade of ITAD will belong to companies that pair strong operations with real capital backing, since fast throughput and access to funding are both becoming deciding factors in who wins the biggest contracts.
    • “I say the worst thing to be is ordinary, and that applies to companies as well.” Tim Suhling, President and CEO, Circular Integrity
    • “The statistic still holds that only 20% of data-bearing assets receive a second life.” Tim Suhling, President and CEO, Circular Integrity


    Timestamps

    00:00 Welcome and introducing Tim Suhling
    01:10 From coaching youth baseball to running global sales at Ingram Micro
    02:33 What separates strong ITAD sales organizations from the rest
    05:10 The ITAD branding problem and the case for standing out
    07:18 Operations versus sales, and which one actually wins deals
    09:17 Where ITAD companies confuse revenue growth with real profitability
    11:20 Unit economics and where ITAD margin actually gets made
    13:15 Why private equity is circling the ITAD industry right now
    17:20 The low barriers to entry into ITAD, and why scaling is the harder problem
    18:29 How AI is speeding up refresh cycles and changing business development
    22:34 What private equity actually evaluates in an ITAD company
    25:12 Consolidation, and what happens to smaller regional ITAD players
    27:19 Speed round, uncomfortable truths, and who wins the next decade of ITAD

    Connect with Tim Suhling

    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothysuhling/
    Website: https://www.circularintegrity.com/
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    31 min
  • Building an AI Pricing Platform for ITAD with Mackenzie Kettwig

    Building an AI Pricing Platform for ITAD with Mackenzie Kettwig
    Oct 7 2026
    What happens when a college senior project turns into the pricing engine an entire industry did not know it needed?

    Four engineering students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo set out to answer one question: what actually happens to electronics once people are done with them. That question led them into ITAD, an industry that has run for decades on gut feel, spreadsheets, and hard won experience. Two years and a $125,000 investment later, that class project is GreenSight Technologies, an AI pricing and grading platform real ITAD operators use every day.

    Mackenzie Kettwig is co-founder and Chief Product Officer of GreenSight, and they join Ryan Mezera to talk about what actually surprised them building AI for an industry built on relationships and instinct. They are blunt about where AI in ITAD earns its keep and where it does not, why the company built its grading tool on computer vision, and why they thinks AI has become a buzzword that scares off more operators than it helps. They also talk through real resistance GreenSight has met in the field, and why the answer is not replacing the people who already know the business.

    Mackenzie Kettwig is co-founder and Chief Product Officer of GreenSight Technologies, an AI pricing and grading platform built for the secondary electronics and ITAD market. GreenSight began two years ago as a senior project at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, when Mackenzie and their co-founders, Jake Daniels, Diego Curiel, and John Ieng, started asking what happens to electronics once people are done with them. That question led them into hundreds of conversations with ITAD operators, recyclers, brokers, and wholesalers, and eventually into a first place win and a $125,000 investment at Cal Poly’s AngelCon competition. As CPO, Mackenzie leads product strategy and spends much of their time talking directly with the people quoting, grading, and routing devices on the floor.

    Key Takeaways
    • GreenSight’s core principle is augmenting ITAD operators, not automating them out of the job. The relationships and judgment stay with the people who built them.
    • The platform prices devices using live data from marketplaces including eBay, Amazon, Back Market, and Google Shopping, refreshed daily for volatile categories and weekly for niche ones.
    • Cosmetic grading runs on computer vision built out of co-founder Diego Curiel’s graduate research, scoring devices against a company’s own A through F rules from a few photos.
    • Larger ITAD operators are ahead on data driven strategy, but smaller shops can move faster because they carry less organizational overhead.
    • Mackenzie’s clearest warning for the industry: generic AI tools that do not understand a business’s compliance requirements and client relationships will give confident answers that are simply wrong.
    • “We’re augmenting the work that people are doing. We’re not automating them out of it.” Mackenzie Kettwig, Co-Founder and CPO, GreenSight Technologies
    • “Generic tools that don’t understand your business are going to give you confident answers that are just wrong.” Mackenzie Kettwig, Co-Founder and CPO, GreenSight Technologies

    Timestamps

    00:00 Meet Mackenzie Kettwig and GreenSight Technologies
    01:15 San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, and skipping the skis
    02:35 From a Cal Poly senior project to a funded company
    04:07 What hundreds of ITAD conversations turned up
    07:11 What GreenSight actually means by AI pricing
    08:52 Inside the cosmetic grading tool
    09:58 Where the pricing data actually comes from
    14:54 Big players versus small shops on AI adoption
    16:40 What surprised them two years in
    19:23 Industry resistance, and where AI earns its keep
    21:56 Free demos, free trials, and where to find GreenSight

    Connect with Mackenzie Kettwig

    Website: https://www.greensighttech.com
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackenzie-kettwig-50a4981b7
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    24 min
  • IT Asset Disposition Done Right with Ben Cartwright

    IT Asset Disposition Done Right with Ben Cartwright
    Sep 23 2026
    What happens to your hardware after you're done with it matters more than you think.

    Most companies treat old IT equipment like trash. Ben Cartwright thinks that is one of the most expensive mistakes in business. And after spending years in China watching how recovered components get reintegrated into manufacturing, he came back with a perspective that most people in IT asset disposition simply do not have.

    This episode is for anyone who manages enterprise IT hardware and has ever wondered whether there is a smarter way to handle the end of life process. Whether you are running a data center, managing assets for a private equity portfolio, or sourcing refurbished enterprise IT for resale, the conversation around IT asset disposition is changing fast and Ben explains exactly how.

    Ben Cartwright is a leader at Cirkadis, a company that started in technology manufacturing using repurposed parts in Shenzhen before evolving into a full lifecycle services provider. With roughly a decade in the IT hardware lifecycle space and fluency in Mandarin from years living in Beijing, Ben brings a genuinely different lens to ITAD services, data center hardware resale, and responsible e-waste recycling.

    Key Takeaways

    The ITAD industry started with dumpster divers and is now evolving into lifecycle strategy.
    • Ben traces how IT asset disposition grew from opportunistic resellers finding value in discarded equipment to sophisticated lifecycle companies that engage on day one of a hardware purchase.

    The right moment to retire hardware depends on your business model, not a universal rule.
    • Residual value curves are real, but Ben explains that the optimal refresh timing for refurbished enterprise IT assets varies based on financing strategy, depreciation schedules, and how aggressively a company wants to manage its hardware as a financial asset.

    Market intelligence is what separates lifecycle companies from brokers.
    • Cirkadis monitors secondary markets across the US and Asia in real time, tracking demand and price fluctuations on everything from used Dell servers to Nvidia GPUs coming out of decommissioned data centers.

    Certifications are a starting point, not a shortcut.
    • Ben argues that any company with a net zero goal should be following the full path of their hardware, not just checking a compliance box. He wants to see more transparency and collaboration between ITAD operators and certifying bodies.

    The volume of e-waste has passed a tipping point and old solutions will not scale.
    • Ben makes the case that the regulations and standards built around old cable boxes and monitors do not apply cleanly to three-year-old servers or retired Nvidia GPUs, and that the industry needs to differentiate between e-scrap and high-value technology assets.
    • Ben said, "We are past that tipping point, and the old solutions are not going to work anymore."
    • Ben said, "I am an ally of anybody who wants to improve the system, and I will be 100 percent transparent. But what I ask for in return is don't punish me for the transparency. Work with me and let's make the system better."

    Timestamps

    00:00 Introduction and welcome
    01:16 How Ben got into ITAD through language and a Chinese computer broker
    03:48 Learning Mandarin in Beijing and going all in on a foreign culture
    04:50 What Cirkadis learned from manufacturing with repurposed parts
    08:47 What surprises Ben most about what companies discard
    11:14 How the ITAD industry is shifting toward lifecycle services
    13:20 Who is furthest ahead in understanding hardware lifecycle value
    14:46 Residual value curves and how to time hardware retirement
    16:05 How market intelligence and secondary market data factor in
    20:23 Nvidia GPUs coming out of data centers
    21:07 What it means to be a technology company, not a recycling company
    22:27 PCB recovery R and D and the future of e-waste smelting
    24:14 Is e-waste volume heading toward a crisis
    25:57 What every CEO should understand about their old IT hardware
    27:23 Data security and asset tags still on decommissioned equipment
    30:44 What responsible recycling really means
    32:39 Upcoming shows including ITAD Summit and AI4 in Las Vegas
    34:04 What Ben wants to see change in the ITAD industry
    40:15 Closing thoughts

    Connect with Ben Cartwright

    Website: https://cirkadis.com/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-cartwright-738319121/
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    42 min
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