Startup Renegades

An entrepreneur at heart, Stephanie Cartin walked away from her corporate career in 2012 to follow her passion to launch Socialfly, a leading social-first digital and influencer marketing agency based in New York City named to Inc. 5000's fastest growing private companies two years in a row. 

In 2018, Stephanie co-founded Entreprenista, a media company and membership community dedicated to helping women grow and scale their businesses, and serves as CEO where she also ​​co-hosts Entreprenista’s Podcast Network shows; Startups in Stilettos and The Entreprenista Podcast. 

Stephanie is the co-author of "Like, Love, Follow: The Entreprenista's Guide to Using Social Media To Grow Your Business,” and is a recipient of the SmartCEO Brava Award and a Stevie Award for Women Run Workplace of the Year. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Stephanie’s skill as a young actress translated into great salesmanship that has served her throughout her career
• How Entreprenista went from a podcast to a strong community to a thriving media business
• Why you might want to consider building your community first
• A pro tip for entrepreneurs looking to get instant credibility on a budget

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

The eldest daughter of two immigrant entrepreneurs, Priyanka Murthy has a talent and passion for the law. She became a Fulbright Scholar, a cum laude Northwestern Law graduate, an editor of the Law Review, and a law clerk to two prolific federal judges. But a side hustle with her parents’ small jewelry wholesale business made her realize that the jewelry industry was outdated and ripe for disruption.

To meet this challenge head on, Priyanka launched Access79 to eliminate the risk of buying fine jewelry online by providing a personal and curated, convenient, digital-meets-high-touch shopping experience. The company later rebranded to become Array.

Today, Priyanka counts Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Lopez, and Rachel Zoe as fans of her jewelry.

In this episode, you will hear:

• The methodical step Priyanka took to test out her try-before-you-buy solution instead of simply selling for revenue
• Priyanka’s unique business model and how she convinced talented designers to work with her in this new way
• Why working at the intersection of a tech company and a luxury brand is different than other types of startups

Take 15% off your first full price order with code ArrayRenegade15 

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador, Saskia Sorrosa built a strong career in marketing and moved into what she believed to be her dream role—VP of Marketing for the NBA. When her second child arrived on the scene, Saskia realized that she needed to step back from her corporate career to pursue aligning her business with her values.

That’s when she founded Fresh Bellies, a kid snack brand distributed nationwide by major retailers like Whole Foods. Saskia has grown Fresh Bellies to a national disruptor, winning the the Expo East NEXTY Award for Best New Natural Kid’s Product, pitching to Shark Tank and graduating from the Chobani Incubator.

In this episode, you will hear:

• The micro actions Saskia took to move her business out of the farmer’s market and onto the national stage
• About the importance of being flexible with your business and why Fresh Bellies dropped its first product in the middle of raising a round of capital
• Saskia’s evolving thought process for finding the right channels in which to place her energy and business resources for success

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Joshua March is Co-founder and CEO of SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area food tech company focused on making transformational meat alternatives first by combining plant-based and cultivated meat to make burgers that are drastically closer in taste to the real versions. But his journey began in a completely different industry.

One line in a scifi book sparked his passion and led him to take serious action, and it has been an incredible journey from there!

Josh has two exits to his name. He was previously the CEO and Co-founder of Conversocial, a digital care platform for messaging that integrates with many of the world's leading brands, and he is also the author of Message Me, a book about the future of customer service in the era of social messaging and artificial intelligence.

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Josh blew through his first business loan learning the ropes and what he did to get himself back on track financially
• The key areas Josh and his team focused on to tell a compelling story to investors
• How to identify the biggest risk factors in your startup business

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Before co-founding Truebill (now Rocket Money), Yahya Mokhtarzada and his brothers were always starting companies together. From the traditional lemonade stand to shoveling driveways, their ventures were always evolving. Together, they launched Free Webs—which became Webs.com—and Yahya found himself (and his brothers!) raising Series A when Yahya was graduating college.

He left after a few years to serve as Vice President of Business Development at Nanigans where he helped grow the company from less than $1 million to over $20 million in run rate. 

After getting the gang back together, the team of brothers couldn’t find a million dollar idea—so they started with a small one. The pain point was huge for people and momentum grew quickly. In late 2021, Truebill was bought by Rocket Companies for $1.275 billion. Yahya continues to serve as the CRO at Truebill, which is now called Rocket Money. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Yahya and his brothers started Truebill with a very small, specific pain point that he didn’t believe had potential to be a big business
• The PR strategy Yahya used to do PR in-house and grow users from 3,000 to 30,000
• Why you need PR in the early stages of your startup, but should focus your energy on the channels you can control in later stages

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Joe Keeley’s love for hockey led him into entrepreneurship in one of the most unique ways you’ve ever heard! Today, Keeley is the CEO and Co-founder of JustiFi Technologies, a venture backed fintech business providing payments and fintech infrastructure and strategy for vertical SaaS platforms. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Joe accidentally started a very successful small business and the powerful moment when a recruiter moved Joe away from a career in corporate and on his path of entrepreneurship
• What Joe did to reorient himself after successfully exiting his first company
• Why you MUST do things that don’t scale before you can begin to scale your startup

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Doug Ludlow grew up in Modesto, an agricultural town in Central California. Despite Modesto city’s proximity to Silicon Valley, the city is almost entirely cut off from the technology industry, which is the economic engine of the 21st century. He helped start MainStreet in part to bring back good jobs and upward mobility to the people living in his hometown.

Before MainStreet, Doug split his time between entrepreneurship (founding The Happy Home Company, Hipster, and madKast) and leadership roles at top technology companies, including Google and AOL. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Doug kicked started his entrepreneurial journey with a textbook import business
• All about Doug’s experience in the founding class of Techstars
• Why “moments of delight” was key to Mainstreet’s growth strategy and the fun, unique ways that Doug and his team implemented it 

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Lisha Bell is cofounder of BLXVC, an angel syndicate of moms funding Black and Brown founders. She is also the co-founder of the Women of Color Capital Collective, a women of color led group ensuring equitable distribution of capital  for women of color. She is the host of the Sisters with Ventures Podcast that aims to tell the stories of women in VC. Bell is also the deal flow lead for Pipeline Angels.

She has over 20 years of demonstrated technology innovation focused on digital money movement solutions and is currently at PayPal Ventures where she leads the Economic Opportunity Fund, the 100M investment into emerging fund managers.  

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why VC wouldn’t let Lisha in and what she did about it
• What founders should know about the shift in current valuations
• Where we can go from here and what marginalized founders can do to get the funding they deserve

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Dominic Kalms is CEO of a new venture backed Fintech company B Generous, which is revolutionizing how people donate to nonprofits through the advent of the first ever philanthropic credit product. B Generous is backed by some of the top VCs, Banks, and  institutional investors in the US and was just accepted into the highly selective Blackbaud Social Good Startup Program. 

He has raised over $120M in venture and philanthropic capital during his career and has been featured in an array of media publications where he discusses philanthropy and impact. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• How a would-be actor made it to Wall Street, and eventually made his way to the Senate Finance Committee
• How a clear vision and personal credibility helped Dominic successfully raise two rounds of capital
• How Dominic created the first ever philanthropic credit product
• Why curated outreach on LinkedIn has been Dominic’s favorite strategy for growth

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com

Samantha Citro Alexander is the Co-Founder of bitewell, a food health company on a mission to improve your health through food. She came onboard as co-founder after a LOT of conversations with the original founder and after asking herself, “Do I believe in the product that we’re building and the problem that we’re solving?”

The answer was yes, and now bitewell is working to change the way we eat.

Prior to co-founding bitewell, Samantha worked at The Estée Lauder Companies as the Chief of Staff to Jane Lauder and as the Director of Integrated Marketing, where she co-created Jefacon, a women’s empowerment and leadership summit celebrating the Beauty of Being a Boss.

In this episode, you will hear:

How Sam’s acting training gave her a strong marketing skill set

• What Sam did to learn how to make every new customer a customer for life
• How Sam met her co-founder and why she decided to join the company full time
• What bitewell looked like in the idea stage and how the founders pivoted

Connect with your host on Instagram at @shauna.armitage and listen to more Startup Renegade stories at www.startuprenegades.com