Startup Renegades

Lauren Washington is the co-founder and CEO of Fundr, a platform that automates and removes bias from seed investing by creating portfolios of AI-vetted startups. This is Lauren’s third venture in the startup world, her others including Black Women Talk Tech, the largest membership organization and only conference for black women founders, and KeepUp, an automated social listening platform.

Lauren’s companies have won multiple awards including 43North and the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Award. She has been featured in The New York Times, TechCrunch, Elle, Inc and Black Enterprise and has been listed as a top entrepreneur in CIO Magazine, Essence Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and the ForbesNEXT1000 list.

Lauren discusses her journey in the startup world including how important it is to feel validation when attempting something new, how the funding gap is contributing to the wealth gap, and how difficult it is to face doubt and criticism in the startup world as a woman of color. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How Lauren went from teaching to marketing to getting her first startup moving
• The importance of understanding when the odds are against you and how to work around them
• Lauren’s strategies for customer acquisition 

Listen to this episode and more at www.startuprenegades.com

Lauren is a Pitch Strategist and Founder of VC Worthy Business. Lauren helps female entrepreneurs develop an attention grabbing pitch that investors can't ignore. After spending six years as Director of Operations/Fund Administrator for one of the nation's largest Angel Groups, Golden Seeds Lauren had worked with over 100 female founders. 

Now Lauren is taking what she knows from being on the investor side to help support female entrepreneurs looking for investor capital. 

In this episode, Lauren shares all the things you didn’t know about how to stand out in the investors’ inbox, what it was like getting thrown into the startup world, and why women need more help to get funding. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• Why you can’t start a business and just expect customers to just find you
• The importance of owning the pitching process and understanding how the power lies with you as the founder
• Lauren’s insider tips for pitching your business and how to keep the attention of your potential investors

Listen to the full episode here. 

Sara Ku is the Founder & CEO of Kaya Essentials, a lifestyle, beauty, and home brand that works directly with Artisans and Farmers in the Philippines, creating meaningful opportunities and providing a sustainable livelihood with fair trade wages. 

After working for a non-profit in the Philippines in her early 20’s, Sara discovered the social business model and wanted to bring that recognition and impact, starting with Filipino Coconut Skincare. She developed Kaya Essentials’ first product in her home kitchen, with a unique citrus aroma only found in the Philippines—calamansi. 

After selling in farmers markets and pop ups, she took her side hustle and went full time in 2017. 

In this episode, Sara dives into how a summer internship in college changed her life for the better, trying to keep up with the market demand before you’re prepared to, and how partnering with a subscription box company affected her growth. She also mentions the importance of tracking how customers are finding you and your brand to ensure you’re not putting money into strategies that aren’t working. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How moving around a lot through childhood taught Sara to embrace being out of her comfort zone
• How Sara followed a similar business model to TOMS and made it work for her unique brand
• How to make working with subscription boxes a viable growth strategy

Listen to the full episode here.

Jeff Solomon is currently growing Markup Hero, a screenshot & annotation SaaS tool, but this is not his first startup venture… By a long shot. He’s had many successful startups and one that failed miserably.

Jeff is a 6x founder and has been in the startup scene for most of his career. He has done just about every role from CEO to Chief Janitor, Head of Product to Marketing Lead. Two of his most notable companies are Velocify, which saw an exit in 2017, and the Amplify Startup Accelerator which has had 5 funds, $50MM raised, 10x exits to date.

In this episode, Jeff discusses strategies for keyword research and how to do outreach to ensure you’re making the most of your content while also driving traffic. He also talks about learning how many founders are too many, using your skills to help others who are in similar positions, plus his growth strategy for his newest endeavor, Markup Hero.

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• Understanding the difference between B2B, B2C and B2B2C companies
• How to differentiate yourself from other businesses
• The importance of content marketing for startup growth 

Listen to the full episode here. 

Lynsie is the founder of two tech companies. One was acquired. The other, not so much. She's also one of the General Partners of The Fund Midwest, a seed-stage venture fund. Before tech, she worked in the entertainment industry, doing stints at The Rosie O'Donnell Show and as a Music Publicist in Los Angeles.

In this episode, Lynsie openly discusses the trials and tribulations that she’s endured throughout her career, and her journey will truly inspire you. Lynsie speaks on how making a move to San Francisco helped her rediscover herself, how you can have a ton of business ideas but they won’t all land, and the importance of segmenting both your audience and your market. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How being an avid cyclist helped Lynsie spark her second tech company and creating her own niche
• Wireframes and why you need them as a startup
• The growth strategy that led to this one-woman team to scale her app to 60,000 users

Listen to the full episode here.

Alyssa Kuchta is a Jewelry Entrepreneur and Author of the upcoming book, “Follow your Bliss”, with Quarto Publishing. She is the founder of f.y.b jewelry, a Brooklyn-based company with a mission to inspire and empower women and girls to “follow their bliss” through inspirational jewelry and a positive female community. 

Alyssa started f.y.b in 2011 when she was a senior in college. Under her leadership, f.y.b has grown to encompass a network of nationwide retail partners, hundreds of brand ambassadors, and a thriving mentorship program. Her work has been featured in international publications including: Elle, Glamour, Nylon, Huffington Post, and more. Her first book, “Follow Your Bliss” , which comes out October 2021, features a curation of timeless wisdom and intimate stories of grit, adversity, and triumph from 60 trailblazing women spanning U.S. Olympians, CEOs, Grammy Award-Winning Musicians, Actresses, Musicians, Artists and more.

Alyssa discusses the doubt she faced with a business idea that was all about creativity, how her “mid-college crisis” flipped a switch for her, the importance of networking in college, plus how going wholesale changed her jewelry business. She also goes into the importance of getting to know your customers away from a screen and just how much that can help your business scale.

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How some people may not see your vision at first and the importance of staying true to yourself
• The importance of treating your passion as if it’s a business
• Creating a community of small businesses

Listen to the full episode here.

Dr. Silvia Mah is a contributor to Forbes and host of the globally recognized podcast “She Invests.” Mah is a native of Caracas, Venezuela, who evolved from a scientist doing research in the rainforest of Guyana to an investor and advocate leading a powerful campaign dedicated to funding startups of underrepresented individuals. 

Mah has 50 companies in her portfolio, most of them spearheaded by at least one female or person of color.

She is a social impact focused investor who co-founded gender lens investment firm, Ad Astra Ventures, business accelerator, Stella Labs, and the Annual Women’s Venture Summit.

One common theme throughout the episode is Dr. Mah’s love for uplifting women entrepreneurs, including what she’s doing to make sure women entrepreneurs are in a better place in the future. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How women entrepreneurs fit into the industry and what Dr. Silvia Mah is doing to help them
• How to show a product to market fit BEFORE you have traction 
• The importance of women investing in women, plus how and why they are more likely to do so 

Listen to the full episode here.

Sina is the founder of Wing—a new company revolutionizing the way we do in-person networking—and host of the leading UK Entrepreneurship podcast, “The Millennial Entrepreneur”. The pod has featured the likes of Forbes 30 under 30 winners, TEDx Speakers and Dragon's Den Entrepreneurs. He is the co-founder of Wing, a startup with the aim to bring in-person networking into the 21st century with their contactless business card which has received orders from across the globe.

Sina discusses his personal entrepreneurial start as a college student, having an incredible business idea that just couldn’t cut it and how he saw an opportunity to make an innovative change for in-person networking amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• Launching a business amidst a global pandemic
• How to acquire new customers and where
• The best way to do your market research

Listen to the full episode here.

In just 5 years, Dre Baldwin went from his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. At the same time, Dre built a content publishing empire. Blogging since 2005 and publishing videos to YouTube starting in 2006, Dre has published over 8,000 videos with his content being viewed over 73 million times. Dre's daily Work On Your Game Podcast has over 3 million listeners. Dre has given 4 TEDxTalks and authored 29 books.

Dre began his business all while being a pro-basketball player overseas, beginning with posting YouTube videos. Throughout this episode, Dre goes into the importance of being immersed in your industry in order to learn, how he figured out what add-on products would help take his business to the next level, the importance of the “Know, Like, and Trust Factor” when building an audience, and how different it is to create and build a business now than it was in years before.

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• Why it’s important to set up automations in your business
• The importance of increasing your product suite to increase your customer lifetime value
• Three strategies for bringing people into your world to build an audience 

Listen to the full episode here. 

Elizabeth Galbut is a venture capitalist, designer, professor, and philanthropist. She is Managing Partner of SoGal Ventures, the first female-led millennial venture capital firm, which invests in diverse founding teams in the US and Asia. With over 90 investments to date, she is actively seeking to back exceptional startups revolutionizing how the next generations live, work, and stay healthy. Elizabeth has been recognized as Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women, Forbes 30 Under 30, JPMorgan’s Diversity Champion, and NYC’s 33 Under 33 top innovators.

This is a very special episode with a slightly different format than usual! Shauna and Elizabeth take a deep dive on the investor side of the startup scene where Elizabeth shares many actionable tips for founders who are looking to get venture capital to scale their brands. 

Elizabeth openly discusses the perspective of investors, which is a side that a lot of us are not able to see or hear. She goes into detail about the realization of how difficult it is for startups to get funding (especially women) is what led her to be an investor and the research behind female-led startups overall performing better. Elizabeth even takes a moment to talk about how without capital being invested in startups, it’s hard for businesses to truly get anywhere. 

Check out this episode to hear more about:

• How female founded startups are being funded compared to their male counterparts
• How you can invest in yourself when nobody else has yet
• What to look for when investing in a company or team
• Why becoming an angel investor might be the next step in your future!

Check out the full episode here.