Steph is the founder of PIN (Power in Numbers), a VC-backed company that enables communities of people (like people from Stanford, YC, and Coinbase) to invest in startups together. She's also writes the newsletter, "Demystifying VC", to help founders navigate the fundraising process and to teach new angels about early stage investing. Steph was formerly a VC at NEA where she helped invest over $150M. And she’s also a graduate of Stanford GSB. Find Steph & PIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ste...
Nov 29, 2023•33 min
Amber is a General Partner and full-time investor at The Council Fund, where she invests at Pre-seed stage in software built for legacy industries like Construction, Logistics, and Healthcare. Before transitioning to running her own venture firm full time, Amber worked at companies like Eli Lilly, Apple, Snap, and Cruise in various Operations leadership roles. She's worked at every stage from Seed to Fortune 500 and interfaced with many of the legacy industries she invests in today. In addition ...
Nov 15, 2023•41 min
Maggie Zheng is the Head of Fundraising at Wefunder, a YC company, where she works with early and growth stage startups. Before Wefunder, she was the sixth employee and Chief of Staff at Doorvest, building it from pre-seed to post Series A, working across many functions including product, marketing, operations, and strategy. Maggie is also an investor at Potluck VC, a venture firm focusing on AAPI founded growth stage companies. Connect with Maggie: LinkedIn TikTok All things Brydge Club: https:...
Nov 08, 2023•45 min
Kristine Locker is the Founder and CEO of Locker, the social commerce platform supporting shoppers at every step of their consumer journey, from initial discovery until purchase. Locker enables users to save any product they want while browsing online into one, organized place. As an avid online shopper, Kristine found herself constantly taking screenshots of products or keeping dozens of tabs open, but there wasn't a platform that provided the utility or social aspect she craved as an "everyday...
Nov 01, 2023•38 min
This week on the podcast we’re chatting with Dulma Altan. If you dont already know her, she’s a creator on TikTok and host of the Due Dilligence Podcast where she’s interviewed guests including Sophia Amoruso founder of Nasty Gal and creator of GirlBoss. Before TikTok, Dulma started her career with Google before jumping into the world of startups and venture capital. Dulma has been such an inspiration for me and my journey into the world of content, SO i was beyond excited to get her on the show...
Jul 19, 2023•35 min
This week on the show I’m joined by Madeline Darcy, the founder & GP of Kaya Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm building a healthier, happier, and more connected future. Previous investments include Ellevest, Sanzo, Brightland, and Republic. Prior to launching Kaya Ventures, Madeline was a VP at Visible Ventures, Harvard Business school graduate, and consultant. Connect with Madeline https://www.linkedin.com/in/madelinedarcy/ Finda Kaya Ventures https://www.kaya.ventures/ Join Bry...
Jul 10, 2023•38 min
Audrey Micay Wisch dropped out of Stanford University to build her ed-tech startup Curious Cardinals, which did $600K ARR its first year of business. This year, Audrey was named Forbes #30under30 at just 20 years old. Audrey was in her first year of Stanford, when she started tutoring a 7th grader on criminal justice, gender equality & more. Since then, Audrey Micay Wisch and her co-founder Alec Katz have built Curious Cardinals to be a network of over 200+ college students, who have mentore...
Jul 10, 2023•48 min
Nichole Wischoff is the solo-founder & GP of Wischoff Ventures where she’s investing into pre-seed & Seed stage unsexy businesses out of a $20M fund II. Before venture, Nichole started her career working at 2 successful fintech companies, one that was acquired by Walmart. In this episode we chat about everything from, tips for having a successful startup career, how she got started angel investing, and how she’s built such a break-through career in venture. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ni...
Jun 21, 2023•40 min
Nicole DeTommaso is an investor with Harlem Capital, a seed stage fund investing into diverse founders. She is a former Investment Banker and Forbes 30 Under 30. Today, Nicole dedicates her free time to providing investor education and helping others break into venture capital. If you don’t already follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter, it’s a must!Nicole DeTommaso shares weekly job openings in venture, tips like 10 questions to prepare for your VC interview, and examples of VC exit models. In this...
Jun 14, 2023•39 min
Avni Barman is the founder & CEO of GenShe, a community of 16K+women in startups, with a mission to connect 1 billion GenZ women to opportunities in tech. She first got started after working in CS with big tech and realizing how few women break into the space. Avni started hosting make-athons, the first at Snap Chat headquarters, which attracted women from accross the country. Avni bootstrapped the business for several years, and recently completed her first fundraise. P.S. she is currently ...
Jun 07, 2023•44 min
This week, I'm chatting with Miray Tayfun, the co-founder of Vivoo, an at-home health & wellness tracking startup that helps you monitor your hydration, magnesium, vitamin c, and more. Since launch in 2017, Miray and her team have scaled to 50K users in over 100 different countries and attracted over $7M in venture capital funding from Techstars, Draper Associates, and Halogen Ventures. Try Vivoohttps://store.vivoo.io/
May 31, 2023•29 min
This week on the Play Brydge podcast, we welcomed Sam Safer Valentine, Co-founder & COO of Norby. Norby is an AI-powered communications platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs amplify their work through a lightweight website, event hosting, texting and email campaigns, lead collection, and so much more. Before Norby, Sam pursued a career in marketing and worked at organizations including the MET. During this episode, Sam and I chatted about everything from her career pivot, marketing ...
May 24, 2023•47 min
During this week’s episode, I spoke with Zehra all about her experience building founder community at Republic and with the Z list, her community of 12K investors and founders in NYC. Zehra first started learning about venture capital investing while studying at Columbia. After graduation, she accepted an offer with the Republic venture team. Since then, Zehra has focused her work on democratizing access to venture capital investing and education. In this episode, she shares tips and thoughts fr...
May 17, 2023•40 min
Amy Molk is the founder & CEO of Beanstalk, the future of kids’ entertainment, combining AI , real-time animation, and educational expertise to create engaging experiences for children. Prior founding Beanstalk, Amy built a career in Hollywood with big name companies including CAA and A&E Networks. Since then, she has led her startup Beanstalk through Techstars and a $1M pre-seed fundraise. Beanstalk all started with a zoom room offering live, interactive shows for kids. During COVID, th...
May 10, 2023•40 min
Tiffany Faith Demers is the CEO & founder of Upkeep , the trusted way to book your botox, facial, & other MedSpa needs. Tiffany was working in skincare, when she started to notice millennials and gen z consumers shift spending from beauty products to medical aesthetics. In fact, the Global Medical Aesthetics Market Size is expected to surpass $30 billion by 2030 💅 Upkeep Beauty is backed by notable investors including MrBeast's venture arm Night Ventures, Anthemis Group, and 1517 Fund. ...
May 03, 2023•35 min
Loved having an honest conversation, with Claudia Laurie, all about her journey co-founding Prive, the revenue platform for commerce enabling subscriptions & more. Claudia is also a podcast co-host of The Room Podcast, which is ranked top 5% globally. Fun fact, Claudia first met her Prive investor, Jesse Draper of Halogen Ventures, while recording an episode for her show 💥 In this episode of the Future is Female, we talk all about Claudia's journey from Harvard University to her experience ...
Apr 26, 2023•33 min
Isabella Mandis is a freshman at Harvard University and founder of Girls Who VC, the first organization dedicated to bringing young women in to the field of venture capital. 🔥 Isabella is the first undergrad student to be accepted into The MBA Fund. 💻 Prior to Harvard, she learned to code with Girls Who Code and worked with a number of startups 🤩 She's most inspired by Audrey Micay Wisch the founder of Curious Cardinals, an edtech company committed to empowering K-12 students Connect w/ Isabe...
Apr 20, 2023•21 min
Today welcome Dana Le. Founder of Wander Health. A medical concierge startup that connects travelers to vetted local healthcare services while abroad. Dana is a graduate of UT Austin. She holds her Master's in Health Administration from Columbia university. She's a former TEDx speaker and Forbes 30 under 30. Most recently her startup was accepted into both the Primary Ventures fellowship. As well as the Antler accelerator program. And those are just the highlights. I'm so excited to share my con...
Apr 12, 2023•33 min
Meet Juliette Richert 👋 She's an investor at The Artemis Fund -- a seed stage VC firm investing in female founders building businesses that modernize wealth. Their portfolio includes Hello Divorce, UNest, Reel, Green Room + more! The fund was co-founded by two women, Leslie Goldman Tepper & Diana Murakhovskaya, who are on a mission to diversify wealth. During this episode, Juliette and I chatted all about she got started in venture capital, the Artemis investment process, + more. I always e...
Apr 05, 2023•32 min
Tech entrepreneur Jessica Chang is the CEO and Co-Founder of WeeCare, the largest childcare network in America. A committed early childhood education advocate and mom of two, she is set on solving the childcare crisis. Prior to co-founding WeeCare, Jessica was COO of Affinity China, a principal investor at Macquarie Capital, and VP of Marketplace at Radpad. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she is a preschool owner herself and resides in Los Angeles with her husband, Witt, and two kids, Teddy and Maddi...
Mar 29, 2023•23 min
Women make up more than half of the U.S. population, and control or influence 85% of consumer spending. Yet, female founded companies receive just 2% of venture capital funding. To Amrita Bhasin's point, we need more women creating the products and services we want and need, and more women in investment positions to fund them. In this week's episode of the Future is Female, I interviewed Amrita Bhasin, co-founder of Sotira, a Saas startup building financial tools to help e-commerce businesses th...
Mar 22, 2023•38 min
Meet Meera Clark, she's an investor at Redpoint Ventures, former investment banker, Forbes 30 Under 30, & Kauffman Fellow ✨ In this episode of the Future is Female, Meera and I talked all about: ⚡ Pivoting careers from investment banking to early stage investing 👼 How she made her first angel investments & tips for others looking to get started! 🎗 Her favorite investment themes + how to evaluate startup opportunities + so much more! Special shoutout Charlotte Country Day School for mak...
Mar 01, 2023•44 min
2% of venture capital funding is allocated to women, and of that, roughly 0.05% to Black women. Mitchella Gilbert, MBA is 1 of 200 black women who have raised over $1M in venture capital. Her advice: ignore the stats. As a college athlete, Mitchella Gilbert, MBA learned that the leggings she wore daily make women 2X more likely to develop health issues. After realizing millions of women deal with the same problem, she developed Oya Femtech Apparel: the first functional athletic wear with women's...
Feb 22, 2023•38 min
Why are there so many dating apps to help us find love, but so little to help us keep it? At Stanford, Ali Maggioncalda studied Human Behavioral Biology and researched how to improve relationships. During grad school, Ali launched Lovewick: Relationship App: a new couples app that helps you learn about each other and share new experiences. To celebrate Valentine's day, I'm sharing my conversation with Ali, founder of Lovewick: Relationship App...and here's a sneak peak! 💜 The common needs of co...
Feb 14, 2023•37 min
After graduating from Harvard, Sophie Randolph launched a music agency side-hustle, while leading strategy for a high-growth tech startup. Today, Sophie is the founder of Green Room, a business management tool for live entertainers. To pursue her business, Sophie attended Rice Business - Jones Graduate School of Business as a Forte Fellow. Green Room was selected for grant prize funding and was accepted into the Techstars Music program. Sophie recently closed a $1.1M pre-seed round of funding to...
Feb 08, 2023•32 min
Emily Herrera dropped out of Northeastern, launched her own female-focused syndicate, and now she's an investor at Mr. Beast's venture fund 💥 In this episode, Emily and I talked all about: 👩🎨 The fusion of people of influence, venture capital, & startups at Night Ventures 🐥 The power of Em's own digital brand on twitter & how she's using it to accelerate her career 📚 Why she dropped out of college & why she believes the college-experience is dying + so much more Follow Em on Tw...
Feb 01, 2023•51 min
See both sides of important issues— in 5 minutes a day. The The Flip Side is a new kind of news source for liberals, moderates, independents, conservatives, and even the apolitical. In this week's episode of the Future is Female, I chatted with Annafi Wahed, CFA all about: 👩💻 Her career pivot from finance to Hilary Clinton's campaign ✍ Publishing an op-ed in the WSJ to gain 4.5K subscribers overnight 💰 Raising Seed capital from readers and the current WeFunder campaign + so much more Checkou...
Jan 25, 2023•29 min
Creator, investor, and #1 best selling author...all while studying computer science & English at Harvard University ✨ So excited to share my conversation with Catherine Yeo! Here's a sneak-peak of our convo: 🎨 Growing an audience of 400K+, monetizing her passion, and how the creator economy has evolved since 📚 Launching a crowdfunding campaign to publish, The Creator Revolution, a #1 best selling book 📈 The intersection of creators, startups, and venture capital (Special shoutout to MrBea...
Jan 18, 2023•28 min
Our very first Future is Female episode featuring an investor!! 🎙 Ashley Aydin is a principal at Vamos Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund backing diverse founders. In this episode, Ashley and I dive into: 🖥 Her early career at Morgan Stanley & a YC startup 📚 Why she pursued her MBA at MIT Sloan (***and who the MBA might not be right for) 💥 Her drive to get more money in the hands of diverse founders + so much more Check out Vamos Ventures here Connect with Ashley here...
Jan 11, 2023•30 min
What if Noom + Headspace + Betterment had a baby? 👶 Aura Finance is a mindful money management platform that helps you put your money to work and anxiety to rest. In the first episode of 2023 🎇, I interviewed Kelsey Willock, my former WFU classmate (Go Deacs!) and co-founder of Aura. We discuss everything from: 🏦 Her decision to leave Goldman Sachs 👋 Meeting her co-founder Courtney through OnDeck 🚀 Her team's acceptance into Techstars + SO much more Want access to Aura? Aura is currently at...
Jan 04, 2023•34 min
