Launch Pad

If you can lead soldiers into battle, you can cold call 140 investors.

Neuroflow founder Chris Molero, WG’17, is a veteran, and he’s seen the effects of PTSD. As he reminds us, “20 veterans a day commit suicide, on average.” Neuroflow is his way of fighting back.

Neuroflow uses wearables to measure the physical effects of stress, and quantify them in a way that is useful to therapists who are treating people for severe anxiety and stress. For the first time, therapists can use quantifiable measurements to see if their therapies are working—and adjust for maximum effectiveness. Listen to hear how Chris and Karl talk about fundraising--and how Neuroflow ultimately raised $1.25 million, after talking with 140 investors.

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Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for December is Harper Wilde, founded by Jenna Kerner and Jane Fisher, both WG'17.

Harper Wilde “takes the BS out of bra shopping.” Jane and Jenna “decided to build a company that would make it easier to buy more fairly priced bras, everyday bras, online, without the hassle.” They offer home try-on of three bras, and they sell just a few great options, all priced at $35, “which is about half of what you would find at a similar quality product at other retailers.”

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All right, men: imagine that every time you wanted to buy a pair of boxers, you had to spend three hours searching through hundreds of options and pay $50 or even $70?

This is the hook that finally got investors—93% of whom are men—to pay attention to Harper Wilde, a company which, as founder Jane Fisher says, “takes the BS out of bra shopping.”

She explains that she and her cofounder, Jenna Kerner, “decided to build a company that would make it easier to buy more fairly priced bras, everyday bras, online, without the hassle.” They offer home try-on of three bras, and they sell just a few great options, all priced at $35, “which is about half of what you would find at a similar quality product at other retailers.” Listen to hear Karl talk with Jenna and Jane about the perils of pitching to (male) investors, how to test a home try on method using no tech (and spending virtually no money), and pinpointing the actual pain point of bra shopping.

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If what you need is a diamond, head over to RareCarat.com immediately.

If what you need is some insight into founding and growing the Kayak for diamonds, listen to this fascinating conversation between Karl Ulrich and RareCarat founder Ajay Anand.

This interview is full of useful ideas—one of which is, obviously, to be in Karl’s class at Wharton and get him to be an advisor for your company, as Ajay did. But even if you can’t have that, you can pick a great name (Rare Carat was not Ajay’s first idea); decide whether to pre-arrange affiliate relationships or wait until you’re already sending them traffic; and figure out how much time you, as a founder, should spend answering customer questions on the chatbot. (How often is Ajay actually the chatbot? "Most of the time.")

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What happens when two women with amazing tech skills and experience have kids? They create Winnie, a companion app for modern parents.

Sara Mauskopf and Anne Halsall, founders of Winnie, have some seriously impressive tech cred. Anne was a Webmaster at Google during its early days, then quit to build iPhone apps as soon as soon as Apple released the iOS software development kit, because, as she explained to her horrified parents, “that is the future, I am going to work on that.” After a stint at a startup called Inkling, she was an early employee at Quora, before going to Postmates, where she met Sara, who had prior stints at Google, YouTube, and Twitter.

Sara returned to work shortly after having her daughter, and quickly realized that there was a lot she needed to know—but she wasn’t sure how to find it. “I was a working mom, and I was busy, and so I turned to Anne and I said, where do people get all of this information? I don’t have time to dig, and look at the bulletin board at my local library for activities. And she said, there really isn’t anything. You have to spend time, and you have to network, and you have to meet other parents, and that’s how you get your information. It’s really you can’t just put in a Google search, you have to find the right groups to really get the high quality information.” That was the lightbulb moment, when the two of them realized, “This was a problem we could solve with technology. We could take these vast amounts of data that’s right now in parent’s minds, or offline, bring it online and make it searchable and accessible and personalized.”

Winnie was born.

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