Turning data into decisions for growth and traction is where many startups stumble. Our guest, Ahmed Elsamadisi, is the Founder and CEO of Narrator.ai, an innovative platform allowing companies better and quicker access to their critically important data. Before Narrator, Ahmed was the first member of the data team at WeWork, a team he helped grow to over 40 people. He has also worked as an AI engineer for missile defense systems as well as for self-driving cars. Narrator allows companies to ans...
May 27, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Founders are terrific at investing in their startup’s technology, team, marketing, and product development, but often forget to carve out time and dollars to invest in themselves. Our guest, transformational speaker, author and leadership coach Lolita E. Walker, teaches founders, busy women and high-performing teams how to embrace the power of a pause and invest in their wellbeing. During a successful corporate career of nearly twenty years, Lolita thrived as a senior leader who delivered excell...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Are you uncomfortable picking up the phone and cold calling the key contacts you need to grow your startup or invest in your startup? Our guest, expert telemarketer, Queen of Conversation, and natural chatterbox, Wendy Harris loves helping people make their conversations count. Wendy has worked in the sales and communication industry for over 30 years, and now uses this knowledge to train others in telemarketing. Today she focuses on training others to make their conversations count and increase...
May 17, 2022•1 hr 6 min
How do you successfully position your new product in a saturated marketplace that has many options for consumers, lots of demand, and fierce competition? Our guest, Claire Siegel, Co-Founder and CEO of Flourish, has proven you can find a profitable and sustainable lane in a competitive environment. She found a sweet spot no one was addressing in the diet and weight loss industry - weight inclusivity – and she created an app for that! Flourish lifts the burden of navigating the over whelming heal...
May 13, 2022•50 min
Are you considering expanding and scaling your business into the US market? Our guest, Frances Simowitz, is the founder and CEO of WEVE Acceleration, a virtual accelerator program helping international startups expand and scale in the U.S. market through expert mentorship, targeted curricula and warm introductions to New York's most influential entrepreneurs, investors, and business contacts. With over 10 years of experience in the startup ecosystem, Frances has helped establish and grow operati...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Are you preparing your kids to be financially capable adults? Our guest, Gayle Reaume, is the Founder of Moolah U, a learning system kids love and a super easy way for parents to get their kids money smart. Gayle founded Moolah U after noticing that children are often not equipped to manage their money powerfully–now or when they venture out into adulthood. Through listening to the concerns of parents and understanding the viewpoints of young people, she created a series of real-life and real-mo...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Do you have a favorite recipe you’d like to turn into a food business, but don’t know where to start? Our guest, Alison Elliott, is the founder and CEO of The Farmer Foodie, and she’s sharing her fresh ingredients for launching a food business. Originally a food blog featuring over 150 healthy, sustainable, plant-forward recipes, Alison created the brand’s initial product called Everything Cheeze, a delicious Cashew Parmesan Alternative. Everything Cheeze is inherently sustainable with its plant...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 9 min
Having an optimized brain is a competitive edge for founders. Our guest, Portia Asli, is a licensed engineer and the Founder of Optimyzed Brain, which helps entrepreneurs and executives optimize their brains for peak mental performance. Optimyzed Brain has a track record of transforming business leaders that were overwhelmed, overworked, burnt out, and sleep-deprived into elite-level performers that thrive during uncertainty and chaos. Portia has engineered a proprietary Science-Based Brain Opti...
Apr 29, 2022•1 hr 9 min
How can a 29-year old founder run her startup from a bomb shelter in Kyiv? Our guest, Alyona Mysko, joined us LIVE from Ukraine to share her startup stories and show us how we can support Ukrainian entrepreneurs. She’s the Founder and CEO of Fuelfinance, a cloud-based financial department. They do your spreadsheets, graphs, and automations. You get P&L, Cash Flow, Financial Projections, Plan/Fact, Unit Economics, and peace of mind. All in Google Spreadsheets. Alyona shares stories from the f...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Is fundraising for your startup causing daytime stress and nighttime terrors? Our guest, serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor Ben Jen, is here to help ease your fundraising journey with his insights and advice. Ben is the Founder and Managing Director of Ben Jen Holdings, a venture capital and private equity firm dealing with companies in various tech and business fields. Ben Jen Holdings has completed investments in over 200 companies, from Pre-Seed to Series C rounds, with a proven track ...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Serial and social entrepreneur Ronald Mugaiga has a powerful, purpose-driven mission for his Ugandan startup, Ecomak Recyclers. To build eco-friendly products solving waste pollution, poverty and unemployment while mitigating climate change and creating jobs for marginalized women and youth. Ecomak Recyclers is a social enterprise developing eco-friendly, durable and long-lasting building plastic bricks and blocks from post-consumer plastic waste using a chemical free and energy saving extrusion...
Apr 15, 2022•57 min
Looking stylish and fashionable doesn’t have to end after you reach 45! Our guest, serial entrepreneur Janice Ozguc, is the Co-Founder of VNV – a curated, fashion marketplace that solves for fit, style and easy discovery for the modern woman whose desire to look great has not changed even though her body and fashion preferences have. Frustrated by the lack of stylish clothing for women over 45, Janice (a Baby Boomer) and her co-founder Rachel Stevens (a millennial) teamed up and launched VNV on ...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Our guest, Nicole Homer, is Co-founder and COO of biotech startup Hx Innovations, where they are transforming biomechanics technology into a portable camera to enable coaches and trainers to collect human movement analytics to individualize training programs, determine levels of fatigue, enhance return to play protocols, and safeguard against foot and ankle injuries. Nicole drives the mission, vision, and direction of the company; creating and implementing business operations strategies; forming...
Apr 08, 2022•59 min
Are you tired and discouraged from cold calling investors? Our guest, Eleanor Haglund, is the Founder of Allianse, a platform that provides a warm introduction to investors. The Allianse platform connects investors to vetted founders in an unbiased way both through search and tailored recommendations. Entrepreneurs get introductions to capital aligned with their mission and investors get early access to (and the ability to follow the journey of) startup deals they might otherwise miss. Allianse ...
Apr 05, 2022•58 min
Is it possible to build a global platform for media production and creatives, raise two rounds of capital and lead a fully remote team at the age of 22 and without a high school degree? Our guest, Jonas Ngoenha, says YES YOU CAN! He’s the Co-Founder & CEO of Beazy, a SaaS-enabled marketplace for content production based out of Switzerland and Mozambique. A photographer, freerunner, and a high-school drop-out, Jonas is proving that you can’t let the world define your founder journey. Launched...
Mar 29, 2022•1 hr
What happens when a woman civil engineer decides to change the minority landscape in the construction industry? She builds an app that easily and instantly connects top-rated minority subcontractors and job seekers with construction contractors! Our guest, serial entrepreneur Angela Sanchez, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Merge-Tek - a social enterprise for construction stakeholders to discover, connect and track compliance for services from minority owned businesses. She is also the Founder and C...
Mar 25, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Can you actually make a living as a writer, while making an impact? Our guest, Javacia Harris Bowser, is an award-winning freelance journalist and the founder of See Jane Write, which a friend of hers once called “the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pens.” See Jane Write is a website and community for women who write and blog that Javacia founded in 2011 in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Her newly released book, Find Your Way Back, is a collection of essays that demonstrate how Javacia used wr...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Until we change who writes the check, we can’t change who receives the check. In 2016 our guest, Senofer Mendoza, Founder and General Partner of Mendoza Ventures, launched her purpose-driven venture capital firm to address the funding gap in pre-seed investment. Mendoza Ventures is an early and growth stage Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity venture investing in areas where they have deep domain expertise, using a proven due diligence model. The firm focuses on diversity as playing an important role...
Mar 18, 2022•1 hr
Are your thoughts preventing you from successfully leading your startup? Our guest, Chana Mason, understands how negative thoughts can hold us back from success. A gang of armed men broke into Chana’s childhood home in Bogota, Colombia, and held her family hostage. Her family miraculously fled to Miami, but 5-year-old Chana’s sense of safety was decimated. Two decades later, Chana still dealt with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. To heal herself, she dove into a journey to rediscover her peace and...
Mar 15, 2022•50 min
Entrepreneurship isn’t just for adults. Our guest, Ayele Shakur, is the CEO of BUILD.org, a national nonprofit whose mission is to use entrepreneurship to ignite the potential of youth from under-resourced communities and propel them to high school, college, and career success. BUILD’s unique program offers students a four-year entrepreneurship experience designed to reinforce the Common Core, develop 21st Century Skills and motivate student engagement in school. Starting in 9th grade, BUILD stu...
Mar 11, 2022•1 hr 3 min
When you feel good, you can take on the world! Our guest, Brittany Driscoll, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Squeeze, a way better massage experience from the founders of Drybar. In fact, she was the person who took DryBar from $30M to more than $100M in revenue. Squeeze’s revolutionary app-based booking and payment platform makes scheduling, paying, tipping, and rating easy, peasy, so you simply float out with the ability to tip and rate your therapist at your leisure. You can personalize services...
Mar 01, 2022•59 min
Turbulent times will happen when you're scaling a startup. Are you prepared? How do you lead when your startup’s growth slows, plateaus, or even declines? When turbulence hits, you must know how to communicate effectively with your team, investors, customers… AND manage your own turbulent internal dialogue! Our guest, Monique Maley, is a CEO, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. In 2011 she founded Articulate Persuasion, her third entrepreneurial success and a company that cultivates authent...
Feb 25, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Preparing our future founders and leaders with meaningful internships is a gift that keeps on giving. Our guest, Fredrik van Huynh, is an award-winning Swedish-Cambodian Entrepreneur, and the Co-Founder of Absolute Internship, a leading global internship program matching university students with internships in-person and remote at top companies around the globe. Since 2009, Absolute Internship has helped over 5,000 students with more than 800 corporate partners in world-class cities including Ba...
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Conversion rate optimization is a valuable tool in a startup’s took kit. Especially for eCommerce sites. It helps you dive deep into your key audience and identify what language or messaging best speaks to their needs, resulting in greater customer conversion and retention. Our guest, AJ Davis, is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) specialist. She’s the founder of Experiment Zone, which helps online businesses grow their revenue by improving the user experience of their website using scientifi...
Feb 18, 2022•56 min
Newly minted founders need to quickly build credibility and social capital while building their business. Our guest, Brandy Whalen, is the co-founder of Kitcaster, a podcast booking agency that books podcast interviews for funded start-up founders, entrepreneurs with exits, and C-suit execs. Brandy’s passion is helping people quilt together patches of their personal, professional, and visionary journey to create a compelling story… and then amplify that story through guest appearances on aligned...
Feb 15, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Sometimes we think the safest path when confronting hard things is avoidance – “I don’t want to talk about it!” What if I offend the other person? What if they challenge my beliefs? What if I ruin a relationship? Our guest, renowned speaker, author, and equity consultant Dr. Nancy Dome, co-founded Epoch Education in 2014 to provide leaders in education and business with accessible professional development in diversity, inclusion and belonging, and equity. In her book Let’s Talk About Race (And O...
Feb 11, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Raising businesses and babies at the same time can take a toll on ParentPreneurs! Especially Black ParentPreneurs. James Oliver, Jr. is CEO of the ParentPreneur Foundation, which empowers Black ParentPreneurs to succeed at entrepreneurship so they may leave a legacy for their beautiful Black children. As a parent of twins who were born prematurely and weighed only two pounds each, two days before he started a tech accelerator, James has a deep understanding of the challenges facing Black ParentP...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Rebecca Rosenberg is the Founder & CEO of ReBokeh, a startup dedicated to enhancing the lives of those with visual impairments with simple, comprehensive assistive technology solutions. Rebecca was born with oculocutaneous albinism, a condition that affects the body's ability to produce melanin and causes moderate to severe visual impairment as well as reduced pigmentation in the hair, skin, and eyes. In July of 2019, Rebecca founded ReBokeh to develop assistive technologies more appropriate...
Feb 04, 2022•56 min
Founders need a deep purpose – a north star – to help them navigate the murky waters of founderhood. Our Guest, Kevin Withane, is passionate about purpose-driven startups that make the world a better place. He’s the founder of Diversity X, a pre-seed to seed-stage venture capital fund (in the works) to support UK and European-based underestimated founders of purpose-led startups and tech startups focused on solving issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion. While he’s building Diversity X, ...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr
Studies clearly illustrate that investing in women-led companies is great business for investors, yet the biggest chokehold in venture capital continues to be gender injustice. Our guest, Xiao Jean (XJ) Chen, is an award-winning business and technology hybrid, angel investor, and the Founder & CEO of VenturePole, a Swiss-based, AI-powered venture investment platform. VCs continue to display little innovation in how they make investment decisions, which is infected by human bias, resulting in...
Jan 28, 2022•1 hr 4 min
