Esther is the CEO and co-founder of Squad, a screen-sharing social platform that drives real connection and engagement.  Esther found early success on YouTube and became a pioneer in influencer marketing and spearheaded award-winning digital campaigns for companies like Weight Watchers and Kmart. Squad raised $7M in venture capital from funds like First Round, BBG Ventures, Y Combinator, Halogen Ventures and January Ventures. Squad was acquired by Twitter in December 2020.  After finding early success on YouTube, she became a pioneer in influencer marketing and spearheaded award-winning digital campaigns for Fortune 500 companies including Weight Watchers and Kmart.

In this episode, we get into:

Why Esther was obsessed with solving for loneliness

Why starting a company is really a family journey

How to move from operating from a place of fear to finding your power as a founder and operating from a place of confidence

Breaking the prototypical founder mold

How it really feels to go through a pivot and how Esther’s daughter was the inspiration for the product vision that eventually became Squad

Why it’s important to plan for a co-founder to leave from day one

How to sequence your fundraise to become a “hot deal”