Startup Renegades

Military life often requires wearing lots of hats, and that’s especially true for Monica Fullerton, founder of Spouse-ly. Named a Trailblazer in Tech by Military Spouse Magazine, Forbes Next 1000 List, and recently named on the MIGHTY 25 list as one of the most influential leaders supporting the military community, Fullerton is an ambitious entrepreneur, twin mom, and Air Force spouse. 

In an effort to provide highly-transient military families, as well as those that have previously served, a space to market their products and services regardless of their duty station, Monica came up with an idea to emphasize learning and income-generating opportunities for the creators, service providers, and entrepreneurs within the military family.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why Monica’s dream to become the next Oprah is what drove her to tap into the power of communication and use it successfully to grow Spouse-ly
• About the inspiring moment when Monica realized that there needed to be a platform to harness the skill and expertise of passionate military spouses
• How being “closed-minded” kept Spouse-ly from growing in the beginning and what Monica did to change her mindset and successfully move forward
• Why the art of storytelling is so important

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

Co-founders of Caire Beauty Celeste Lee and Lorrie King were both grade-school entrepreneurs. Both are graduates of The Wharton School. Both started in finance.

Both knew they were onto something ‘important’ when their friends were constantly asking for skincare recommendations because their long-time moisturizers and regimens were not ‘doing’ it. 

After meeting with scientists to truly understand how and why skin aging changes after 40 and again at the onset of actual menopause, they realized there was an opportunity to really educate and empower modern women by empowering their skin with science-backed, clean formulated, hormone-responsive skincare solutions. 

In other words, skincare for grownups.

In this episode, you will hear Lorrie share:

• About the VERY practical college major that set Lorrie up for success
• Lorrie’s unusual path into beauty and skincare
• What you need to know about accelerators and how to decide if one is right for your startup journey
• Lorrie and Celeste’s biggest regret as founders

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

Named Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay Military Spouse of the Year 2019 and MCAS Miramar Military Spouse of the Year 2022, Michelle Penczak is a virtual assistant by trade and a military spouse by love. Her husband Sean is a pilot in the Marine Corps, and through multiple relocations and deployments, Michelle built a vibrant, thriving independent virtual assistant business for herself. 

This grew into the business that is Squared Away today.

In this episode, you will hear:

• How Michelle turned her thriving freelance business into a scalable startup company
• Why she never planned on being a CEO
• The way Squared Away reverse engineered their affiliate program

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

Cara Oppenheimer and Cary Telander Fortin are creative social entrepreneurs who founded goodbuy, a first-of-its-kind online shopping tool that connects consumers with small businesses that align with their values, and does so in a simple and streamlined way. 

These two powerhouse mamas bonded over new babies and breastfeeding. When Cara had a big idea about how and what she could do to give consumers easy opportunities to shop small instead of at mega retailers, she texted Cary in the early hours of the morning and goodbuy was born.

In this episode, you will hear:

• How these co-founders focused on a product-cultural moment fit instead of a particular niche
• The nitty gritty of building strong messaging and organic growth to grow a large waitlist
• What combination of strategies on Instagram have been essential to getting the goodbuy message out

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

Lynn Power spent much of her 30 year career running and transforming agency brands. She recently left the big agency world to launch MASAMI, a premium clean haircare brand which launched in February 2020.

In this episode, Lynn shares the small steps she has taken to move her brand forward through the pandemic and beyond. She shares the importance of taking control by taking action each and every day.

20% off with code RENEGADE at lovemasami.com

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why being a receptionist is a great way to start in your career or in a new industry
• One of the biggest differences between working in corporate and working in startup
• How Lynn grew their email list from 2,500 to over 30,000 leads
• Why strategic partnerships were the biggest growth tool for MASAMI (And the important things you need to consider before launching partnerships for your business.)

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

Swarnali Mitra is currently an early-stage investor at Anthemis Group where she invests in female founded and co-founded companies at the pre-seed/seed stages. Her background spans across engineering, product, public policy and capital markets and she is most interested in solving the hard problems of fintech. 

She talks about the importance of funding female founders (and how we can do it!) as well as the key things you should consider highlighting as a founder pitching for funding before building traction. (Spoiler: Swarnali LOVES founders who are able to articulate the potential for long-term sustainability.)

In this episode, you will hear more about:

• Swarnali’s path from engineering to venture capital
• What we can do as an industry to see the 2% of venture capital dollars going to women increase
• Why we can be optimistic about the current landscape for startup funding
• The core qualities that an early-stage founder should be focused on

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

After developing Hashimoto’s and guttate psoriasis, Elaine Morrison went on a health journey to find the answers to put her autoimmune illnesses into remission. She radically changed her diet to reverse her symptoms of fatigue, weight gain, hair loss and dry skin. Supplementing with collagen was a game changer, and in 2015, she launched a collagen water with no previous experience in the beverage industry.  

She learned a lot from the collagen water and re-launched with a powder collagen under her own name a few years later. Elaine Wellness is now growing grassroots-style and Elaine is sharing exactly how she’s doing it.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why Elaine decided not to move forward with her collagen water business
• The steps Elaine took to master her marketing funnel
• How Elaine Wellness is growing from the activation of brand advocates
• The strategy Elaine used to find partnerships that actually convert

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

Robin Doyle, the founder of Beautyologie—a fair trade and ethically-sourced online marketplace for conscious consumers who want beauty products that make a difference, not just on the surface of their skin, but in the world we live in— decided on a humanities major in college because she learned that it meant she wouldn’t have to take math classes. That journalism degree led her to work at a teen magazine, which gave her the opportunity to interview celebrities like Britney Spears. She moved into a position as a fashion editor.

Today, Robin has 25+ years of experience in the beauty industry as a writer and publicist and is a passionate advocate for beauty brands that use the industry as a vehicle for social change. 

In this episode, you will hear more about:

• How Robin’s early career in journalism led her into the PR industry
• The first steps Robin took to validate her business idea
• What you need to know if you’re trying to generate PR on a budget

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

Olivia Hipkins is the Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner of Gaia Global Ventures as well as the Founder of Green Atlas Consulting. Through this work, she works with investors and target investment companies across venture capital and private equity to integrate sustainability in capital allocation decisions, empowering investment professionals to see sustainability as an opportunity for positive impact and returns. 

Olivia’s big goals to change the world led her into finance, but she quickly learned that she was not meant to work within such a fixed structure. She launched her fund to focus on the “unsexy”, yet essential sectors that truly make an impact on our communities.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why going into finance was Olivia’s path to change the world
• What you need to know about startup flexibility and how Olivia is redrawing lines around funding startups in the earliest stages
• Why the “underloved” startups might be the most important ones to fund and grow
• The 3 big things that Olivia is looking for from founders

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

Jess Hershfield is the founder and CEO of Just Enough Wines, a premium canned wine brand based out of San Francisco. They focus on high-quality wine, in the convenience of a can. After working at Google, Uber, and Lime, Jess had a fantastic resume but just wasn’t passionate about her work. She decided to leave to solve a problem that she cared about.

Along the way she found an amazing co-founder and dealt with the challenges that came with breaking into an unfamiliar industry dominated by men.

In just a few short years, Jess has accomplished a lot, and in this episode, you will hear:

• Why her first startup failed and what she learned from it
• All about their specific micro-influencer strategy and why it’s more effective than what you’ve tried in the past
• How they managed to execute win-win partnerships and how it helped them get exposure

Don’t forget! You can get 15% off Just Enough Wines when you use code Renegade15 at checkout. 

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