Finclusive

Garry Cooper is the CEO of Rheaply, a Series-A Climate Tech company in Chicago, and one of six GPs at Longjump VC, a first-check, founder-led fund investing in the next generation of Chicagoland founders. Garry shares his fundraising journey for Rheaply and for Longjump, and ideation process behind the two ventures. LongJump VC had been an idea for Garry and his network of Chicago founders, until George Floyd's death last summer solidified the formation of the fund. The GPs successfully raised over $4 million by the time the fund was announced in March 2021. 

As a Black founder, Garry constantly asks himself, "What more can I do for Black, brown and underserved communities?" He draws parallels between Rheaply's mission of advancing the Circular Economy and LongJump's mission of giving voice to underfunded and unconnected founders. Garry shares his goals for the next ten years, and how he strives to broaden the economy to let more people in. 

Fion is the co-founder and COO of Fairly AI, an AI Governance, Risk, and Control (GRC) solution that keeps organizations' AI responsible and regulated. She discusses her career as a technical and business leader at ATG before, during, and after its Oracle acquisition, her experience with late-stage investing, followed by her interest in early-stage venture investing. She joined Founder Institute, where she met her co-founder and together they launched Fairly AI in April 2020. Fion shares how Fairly AI closes the gap between technical data scientists and non-technical decision makers, and reduces high-velocity financial and ethical AI risk. 

Garry Cooper is the CEO of Rheaply, a Series-A Climate Tech company in Chicago, and one of six GPs at Longjump VC, a first-check, founder-led fund investing in the next generation of Chicagoland founders. Garry shares his fundraising journey for Rheaply and for Longjump, and ideation process behind the two ventures. LongJump VC had been an idea for Garry and his network of Chicago founders, until George Floyd's death last summer solidified the formation of the fund. The GPs successfully raised over $4 million by the time the fund was announced in March 2021. 

As a Black founder, Garry constantly asks himself, "What more can I do for Black, brown and underserved communities?" He draws parallels between Rheaply's mission of advancing the Circular Economy and LongJump's mission of giving voice to underfunded and unconnected founders. Garry shares his goals for the next ten years, and how he strives to broaden the economy to let more people in. 

A C-suite executive connector and facilitator, Nicole Ward is the National Director of Sales at Moss Adams LLP, and Podcast host of Watermark Women of the C-Suite. In her conversation with Kelly, she shares her journey in angel investing, her appetite for risk, and the joy she finds in supporting those building something they are passionate about. She shares her journey of making one of her first investments in Porfolia, where women can learn about venture investing from other women. Nicole appreciates the American philanthropic culture and enjoys sharing her time and network with entrepreneurs and new investors. She's also very interested in biohacking and cites her endless energy as one of her sources of power. 

Leigh-Ann Buchanan is the President of aīre ventures, a venture studio scaling technology, entrepreneurial and innovative solutions to systemic gaps in access, opportunity and racial equity. Leigh discusses the Miami Venture Capital ecosystem, her REDI (Racial Equity Diversity and Inclusion) framework for closing opportunity gaps in investing, and why people, purpose and impact are core to everything she does.

Judith Levey is the co-founder and COO of The Desire Company, a content and media platform that helps customers learn new skills from professionals and introduces them to the best products available. Judith shares how her previous corporate PR career at The Coca-Cola Company taught her the skills she needed to found and lead DesireCo, including the lessons she learned from a PR stunt gone horribly wrong. She identifies the “trust gap” between retailers and consumers on ecommerce platforms such as Amazon, and shares how DesireCo aims to close that gap. She reflects on how the company took a hard pivot during the pandemic to scale their online video streaming platform, and how it taught her to embrace speed over perfection when making decisions to save and scale the business. 

Excited to have interviewed Aihui Ong, exited founder turned VC and hired, to learn about her lessons as a female solo founder who Immigrated to the US post-college. She shared her experiences on how was overlooked as a founder because of her gender and background and how she was able to use those experiences to support the founders that she invests in now. She also shared the difference of being a CEO vs a founder and how having a CEO coach really helped her to scale her companies. 

As an entrepreneur and executive, Aihui has built innovative products and a company that ranked as one of the TOP 50 fastest-growing female-led companies in America by Inc. She is an active speaker at tech conferences globally and has been interviewed by Inc, CNBC, Today Show, Fast Company, TechCrunch, and others.

Plentina is the buy now pay later fintech startup building a new digital-first experience for financial services leveraging artificial intelligence. Earl is an aerospace engineer by training, and Kevin was a computer vision researcher at NASA Ames. The two met as graduate students at Stanford, where they bonded over dinner discussions on how to best serve their shared Filipino community. Realizing that credit card penetration in most Southeast countries (except Singapore) fell below ten percent, the two decided to use machine learning and data science to unlock financial services for emerging markets. Kevin recalls doing research on the ground by approaching street merchants in Manilla and accessing their financial challenges and aspirations. Plentina has launched an initial partnership with 7-Eleven in the Philippines, where they leverage loyalty programs and co-marketing strategies with merchants to increase sales and generate credit scores for their customers. Plentina has raised an initial seed funding of $2.2M and is actively hiring. Check out their open roles here. 

What was your introduction to investing? For Elle Bruno, the Managing Director of the Techstars Western Union Accelerator Program, it was when her father helped her invest her babysitting money in Target - her favorite place to shop as a teenager. Today, with 18 years of startup operator experience under her belt, Elle runs the Techstars Western Union Accelerator Program. The program just closed its third round of applications with applicants from 50 countries. Elle is also an active Angel Investor in female founded/co-founded start-ups. In our conversation, Elle shares the jaw-dropping instances of gender discrimination she faced as a female founder and how that fueled her to become a professional investor in female and underrepresented founders. 

Sajid Rahman is the General Partner at MyAsiaVC. He has been a prolific investor at tech companies ranging from Silicon Valley, Asia, Latin America, and Africa and has managed over 700 syndicates. He shares his experience of becoming an “accidental investor” when he was running a bank in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is attracted to startup investing because it gives him a frontrow seat in the tech and innovation world, and provides a “crash course on business building.” He discusses why he rarely writes the first check, and how he has built and maintained his strong network of global investors.