Startup Renegades

Eliza Blank is the Founder & CEO at The Sill, a digitally native direct-to-consumer houseplant brand on a mission to modernize the garden center experience. The Sill has 9 retail stores in the United States and recently opened stores in Boston, Chicago, and Park Slope in Brooklyn.

Prior to launching The Sill, Eliza served as a Brand Strategist at Wolff Olins, one of the leading brand agencies in the world, as well as a Brand Manager at Living Proof. 

In this episode, Eliza shares how she grew up surrounded by plants and how moving to the concrete jungle of NYC changed all that. She discusses how her business changed from Eliza packing up plants to deliver within her neighborhood to a full e-commerce operation that ships across the United States. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How you can become a product expert
• The importance of adapting both your physical and digital spaces to be accessible channels to your customers.
• Why understanding your customer on a deep, personal level is a game changer for your business

Use code StartupRenegades10 for 10% your purchases at The Sill

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

Sashee Chandran, founder and CEO of Tea Drops, worked as a Business Analyst for Fortune 100 brands such as eBay. She always loved to drink tea, but found that she just didn’t have the time to go through the whole process and created her own solution to this problem. Before long she had requests for her product and filed her own patent.

Today, Tea Drops has been featured in Forbes, GMA, and Oprah Magazine leading Sashee to be placed on Inc.’s Female Founders 100 list. 

In this episode, Sashee discusses how she developed such an innovative product idea and the marketing territory that comes along with it. She explains the startup founder learning curve and how you can make adjustments in your pitching and the best strategies to gain investors. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How anyone can (and should!) file a patent
• Why pitch competitions might just be your smartest fundraising strategy
• Why trade shows can be an absolute game changer in a startup’s early stage

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

Stefanie Diaz, the host of She Conquers Capital, is an elite capital raise strategist. Her experience working with companies such as Hustle Fund and Zane Ventures Fund led her to her passion of bridging the funding gap of underrepresented groups. Stefanie launched The Women Only Experience (WOE) to support female founders in their business. This led Stefanie to launching a coaching program centered around uplifting women; these combined actions led Stefanie to being named an “Atlanta Startup Wonder Woman”.

In this episode, Stefanie discusses the importance of having a seat on both sides of the table. She talks about frequently being the only woman in the room and needing to navigate a male dominated industry. Stefanie shares the importance of finding what makes you unique and the path to impactful pitching for your business. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How to take to carve out time for your networking journey
• How founders grow and gain credibility and resiliency
• How to pitch like a thought leader

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

Stacy Tuschl is the founder of the Foot Traffic Formula. she started her own business in her parents’ backyard at the age of 18 and turned it into a multimillion dollar business. 

She is also the host of the Foot Traffic Formula podcast that has over 1 million downloads and is frequently in the top 30 marketing podcasts on iTunes.

In this episode, Stacy discusses starting a business from the ground up and creating a successful scalable business. She tells the incredible story of starting up not one, but two businesses, and how that experience illuminated her love for marketing. Through this passion, she helps others grow their businesses. Stacy believes that every business needs to find their “one thing” and must find the customers who will say “I need this!”

In this episode, Stacy gives great advice on how to: 

• Identify the one product that will take your business to the next level
• Focus on daily sales to figure out what activities are actually working so you can scale
• Embrace trial and error, make mistakes, and move forward in your business with confidence

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

Jaleh Bisharat, co-founder and CEO of NakedPoppy, has built some of Silicon Valley’s most vibrant brands from the ground up. After serving as VP Marketing at Amazon.com in the late 1990’s, she held board seats or c-suite marketing roles at OpenTable, Upwork, Eventbrite, Skillshare, and Wealthfront. Very few people out there can build a business like Jaleh.

In this episode, Jaleh discusses what she learned as a child when her family lost everything and how it gave her the mindset she needed to succeed later in life. Jaleh shares how defining NakedPoppy’s moat and moving slower to get it right was actually the best strategy of all.

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• The career power you hold when you have a positive attitude and positive energy
• How to go from the riskiest hire to the biggest power player in a business
• How focusing on your people can be your best growth strategy

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

Jesse Draper is a mother of 3 boys and founding partner of Halogen Ventures focused on early stage investing in consumer technology companies led by female and co-ed teams. Draper, the first solo female GP in Los Angeles is also a 4th generation venture capitalist. She is a fierce advocate for investing in women and the opportunity for using technology and innovation to solve some of the biggest issues facing women and families today. 

Jesse’s original career was actress—first on a Nickelodeon show before adding several other projects to her resume. After a bad casting experience, she decided not to continue in the industry. Then, from her parents’ garage, Jesse launched the Emmy nominated series, The Valley Girl Show where she interviewed industry powerhouses like Sheryl Sandberg and Elon Musk.

She launched Halogen Ventures to help founders build their networks, get brand exposure, hire great talent, raise follow-on rounds and find their path to acquisition or IPO. 

In this episode, you will hear:

• The defining moment that changed Jesse’s career trajectory
• How one simple business idea helped Jesse build an amazing and powerful network
• Jesse’s best tips for pitching potential investors

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

Jessica Hoskin is the co-founder of HIKI, a new line of everyday sweat products made for ANY body. Hiki is a brand with products created together to show that when people are seen, heard, and invited into the process the results are far better than “normal”.

In this episode, Jessica shares her (several!) startup stories and explains how she got the opportunity to join an established brand as co-founder. Jessica goes into detail on those first challenges and tells us how she overcame them through creativity and a willingness to fail.

In this episode, Jessica gives great advice on how: 

• To conduct effective market research and make your target audience feel valued as part of the building process
• To build an advisory board to make influencer marketing more effective
• Her experience in grassroots marketing has helped to build a successful company 

Use START30 for 30% off your entire order on https://myhiki.com. 

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

Start with community. Such simple advice! But the road to build Mighty Networks wasn’t a simple one, as CEO and founder Gina Bianchini will tell you. 

Before Mighty Networks, Gina was the first entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz. She was also the CEO and co-founder of Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating niche social networks she started with Marc Andreessen in 2004. 

Under her leadership, Ning grew to ~100 million active users across 300,000 social networks led by brands and creators across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education. 

The company was sold for $150M in 2011.

On this episode of Startup Renegades, Gina talks about all the companies, skills, and connections she built on her journey to launching the premiere SaaS platform for creators and brands to start and grow businesses. (Powered by community of course!)

Gina has a wealth of business-building knowledge and shares:

• How Gina's life experiences have led her to unique opportunities as an entrepreneur
• How her passion for community culture drives Mighty Network’s success
• Her biggest takeaways for launching a successful business in today’s ecosystem

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

Ever wonder how you’re going to create, launch, and scale your fashion brand? The incredible Shannon Lohr can show you the way.

Shannon is the founder of Factory45, the online business school trusted by over 500 fashion entrepreneurs since 2014. Over the years she's worked with aspiring designers, all over the globe, to launch or grow their brands in a way that’s better for people and the planet. Shannon got her start in 2010 when she co-founded {r}evolution apparel, a sustainable clothing brand for female travelers and minimalists that was featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.com.

In this episode of Startup Renegades, Shannon shares her journey into fashion and the key takeaways she had from building a community and launching a Kickstarter campaign that raised 3 times the initial goal. 

Shannon’s #1 tip for entrepreneurs? Build an audience before you have anything to sell.

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How her love of travel and desire “not to get a real job” put her on the path to entrepreneurship
• The importance of be willing to have real conversations and elicit real feedback from customers 
• All about her new business, Factory45 and why it’s the go-to program for aspiring fashion entrepreneurs
• Understanding the CEO mindset as an evolution of a person, not a title 

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

Marian Leitner is founder and CEO of Archer Roose Wines, one of the leading canned wine companies in the US. Marian is on a mission to democratize fine wine by making the wine industry more inclusive and leveraging format to fit the lifestyles of modern consumers.

Marian's wines can be found in James Beard Award Winning restaurants, grocery stores, and on JetBlue flights. Marian has been named one of the top 10 entrepreneurs by Boston Harbor angels. And she recently welcomed Elizabeth Banks as creative director for the brand.

Startup Renegades’ listeners can get 25% off your first order with coupon code Leitner25

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How a family with no vineyard or history in the wine industry built a thriving canned wine business
• How Marian Leitner and her husband David re-envisioned how we view wine
• The importance of understanding your customer and making her feel seen

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