Tech Startup Network Podcast with Ashley DiBiase

Lindsey Whiteley is the founder of CampNexxus, a platform helping parents find and manage school break camps with clarity and confidence. After years running a successful marketing agency, Lindsey pivoted from client work to building infrastructure: creating the operating system for camp planning that parents and camps didn't know they needed.

She's known for her strategic, no-BS approach: thoughtful product decisions, transparent partnerships with camps, and a refusal to chase vanity metrics. CampNexxus isn't trying to be the loudest voice in the room. It's trying to be the most trusted. Lindsey is building a business that treats people like adults, respects their time, and quietly makes their lives easier. She's a mom, a systems thinker, and someone who believes the best growth happens when you build signal before scale.

During this episode, we discuss:

• How she got the idea for CampNexxus through her own camp experience with her kids
• Why she brought in an agency to create the product at the beginning before realizing she could build it herself
• How she got through the chicken and the egg problem
• Her decision to start with a smaller geographic region before going larger
• How she has listened to her gut the most in the past six months
• What her typical day looks like as a founder
• Her plans for CampNexxus throughout the next year
• What advice she would give to other tech founders getting started
• Why she loves Boston for the tech space

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things camp!

Courtney Greenwood is the founder of Greenwood Marketing Collective, where she offers a fractional CMO and product marketing leadership for tech startups and SaaS companies that are mission driven. With over 15+ years of experience driving go-to-market strategies for technology solutions—including AI-powered platforms, EHR systems, and educational software—Courtney has a proven track record of delivering measurable results through strategic product launches and comprehensive sales enablement.

As a fractional marketing executive, Courtney specializes in launching and scaling SaaS products through data-driven marketing strategies, voice-of-customer research, and comprehensive sales enablement. Her deep tech background spans healthcare technology, privacy engineering platforms, and autism/IDD therapy solutions, making her uniquely positioned to translate complex technical products into compelling market narratives that drive ROI and customer acquisition.

During this episode, we discuss:

• What Courtney does at Greenwood Marketing Collective
• Her story for starting her company
• What startups should think about with their go to market strategy
• How go to market is so much more than just marketing
• The mistakes startups make when it comes to go to market strategy
• What needs to go into a beta launch
• Why the customer journey matters so much
• How startups can build a waitlist
• The value in influencers
• Why blogging is still important
• When you need to bring in a go to market expert
• Why your launch date and project finish date don’t need to be the same
• The audiences a startup should speak to
• Where she sees things going in 2026
• Why community is so important
• The value in joining incubators and startups

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things marketing!

Tony Tjan is the Chairman and Managing Partner of Cue Ball – a private investment firm based in Boston – and the CEO and Co-Founder of MiniLuxe, a personal care and lifestyle brand that seeks to transform the nail care industry. With a focus on purpose-driven long-term investments, Cue Ball has committed more than 50% of its capital for women-led, inclusionary ventures, most notably MiniLuxe, whose company’s core purpose is to empower and enrich lives through self-care and self-expression. The company is achieving this through medical-grade hygiene standards, safe products, an employee-first model, and a data-driven and predictive booking platform for beauty professionals.

As a multiple-time founder and a trusted strategic counsellor to numerous CEOs, leaders and entrepreneurs, Tony is known for driving business transformations and for his human-centric, multidisciplinary approach. His professional and personal focus is to use capital and entrepreneurship as a force for good.

Tony is also a prominent author and speaker, having written 125 articles for the Harvard Business Review, the author of Good People and co-author of Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck (a New York Times bestseller and one of Fast Company’s ‘Best Business Books’ of the year). Tjan holds AB and MBA degrees from Harvard University, where he served as a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. He sits on the Advisory Council for the MIT Media Lab and is board member The Tory Burch Foundation that focuses on empowering the next generation of women entrepreneurs. In 2018, he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

During this episode, we discuss:

• What inspired Tony to start his entrepreneurial journey
• How he uses entrepreneurship and capital for good
• When he started MiniLuxe
• How he balances between MiniLuxe and Cue Ball
• His investments he’s been proud of
• Tony’s full circle moment of working in self care
• What it was like to start his fund
• The flexibility of doubling down on what’s real
• What he looks for when finding potential
• How he learned from investments that didn’t work out
• What’s next for MiniLuxe throughout 2026
• Where Cue Ball is going in the next year
• His advice for getting into private investment
• What he’s learned through being a franchisor

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things private investment!

Kelsey Mullaney is a founder, builder, and operator who’s spent the last decade working across martech, data, and go-to-market teams. She’s currently the co-founder and CEO of Strata, an AI-native integration platform focused on helping companies get customer data where it needs to go—reliably and without engineering bottlenecks.

During this episode, we discuss:

• How she started her career in martech in San Francisco
• The pattern she noticed with companies struggling with integrations
• How Strata saves lots of time and resources
• The level of maintenance that’s required with so many integrations
• Interesting requests she’s seeing right now
• Why Strata is a better tool than Zapier
• What the founder journey has been like throughout the past 10 months
• Going through a self-discovery phase when becoming a founder
• How they’ve bootstrapped their startup
• The benefits of having two co-founders
• Why cofounders should do strengths finder
• What’s being released this year
• Why Boston is a great city for tech

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things integrations!

Ann Marie Guzzi is focused on building leverage & community for early-stage startup founders. Through Dalmatian Ops, she gives pre-seed and seed founders time & energy back to focus on product & sales by taking over their business operations. As co-founder of the non-profit Agora Initiative, she’s created a platform in Washington, D.C. that gives women founders not just capital, but networks and visibility. And as a founding partner at Levy, she works alongside startups to design coalitions and public-private pilots that turn local energy into lasting systemic change. As an angel investor, she backs the talented founders she meets along the way. She has been an entrepreneur for the past 2 years, and prior to that had a career in product in analytics & fintech startups.

During this episode, we discuss:

• How Ann Marie spends a lot of her time in and around the early stage product world
• What she offers at Dalmatian Ops
• Why she decided not to focus on product consulting
• How founders can let go of control
• What happens when people try to hand away the wrong work
• What Agora is, what it offers, and how female founders in DC, Maryland, and Virginia can get involved in this
• Ann Marie’s process for balancing all of her projects
• What founders should know if they’re looking to raise in 2026

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things operations and fundraising!

Alex Benik is the founder of Encoded Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in the next generation of cloud, data, and security infrastructure. Before launching Encoded Ventures, Alex spent more than two decades at Battery Ventures, where he focused on enterprise infrastructure and cybersecurity investments and partnered with founders from early stage through IPO. Drawing on his deep technical expertise and long track record supporting category-defining companies, Alex now backs ambitious technical founders building the infrastructure stack for the AI era.

During this episode, we discuss:

• Alex’s transition from over 20 years at Battery Ventures to founding the solo GP fund Encoded Ventures
• Why large venture funds often struggle with true early-stage investing and how smaller funds fill that gap
• What draws Alex to seed and pre-seed investing, and the energy of being “first money in”
• The “favorite uncle, not the parent” philosophy for supporting founders
• What Alex looks for in founders
• Key lessons learned from launching a first-time venture fund
• Major trends in cloud data, security infrastructure, and AI-driven efficiency across the stack
• Why Boston remains an amazing tech hub

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things investing!

Devika Sarin is the founder of soal, an app making art discovery a daily ritual for millennials and gen z. Her path into entrepreneurship blends a multidisciplinary background, beginning in economics, investment management, an MBA in London, and several years consulting on M&A diligence and strategy.

soal is her second startup in the art-tech space, built from a deep belief that creativity, ritual, and storytelling can change the way people see themselves and the world. They just need permission to jump in. She is passionate about building mission-driven companies that sit at the intersection of ambition and impact, and about designing a product that makes the art world feel more accessible and engaging.

She also loves exploring ideas at the intersection of creativity, wellbeing, personal growth, and startup life- threads she brings into her work, writing, and leadership. Devika is curious by nature and loves spending time outdoors, exploring, and noticing the small daily moments of magic.

During this episode, we discuss:

• What Devika is building with soal and how it’s making the art world more accessible to younger people or people who feel excluded
• How her first startup closely brought her into the pain points of younger people
• The role of AI in soal
• How Devika’s journey as a second founder has been very different from her first startup
• The self-awareness she now has as an individual and leader
• The concept of “no rules” as a founder
• How Devika has pivoted many times as a founder
• What goes into finding the right investor
• Why it’s important to look into community
• What goes into building a waitlist for an app
• Devika’s advice to a new founder for finding success

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things art!

Sonia Baschez is the founder of Bend Growth Co, a fractional CMO and marketing consultancy helping early-stage startups build momentum through narrative, growth, and press. She specializes in taking companies from zero to their first major milestones—whether that's landing enterprise deals, raising capital, or driving viral product launches.

Before Bend Growth, she led growth at Atmos, a homebuilding startup. As Head of Marketing and part of the leadership team, she joined pre-YC and scaled inbound 20x and pipeline 10x through Series A, directly supporting $16M+ in fundraising from Bedrock, Sam Altman, Dylan Field, and Khosla. She helped take the company from early idea to multi-state launch, with major coverage across TechCrunch, Forbes, and Business Insider.

Additionally, Sonia co-hosts Meme Team, a weekly marketing podcast decoding the intersection of business, culture, and brand strategy. Marketing isn't just logic — it's culture. Each week, she and co-host Amanda Natividad break down real campaigns and cultural moments with sharp takes and zero fluff.

During this episode, we discuss:

• Sonia working with startups for almost 10 years now
• How she’s learned how to do press
• The level of legitimacy and trust that comes with being featured somewhere
• Understanding where your customers are and what they’re talking about to bring your content back to them
• The non-negotiables that should be a part of building your marketing & comms strategy
• Why you need to focus on brand awareness
• How startups actually know if their strategy is working
• What companies are doing wrong with their marketing

Tune in as we dive into all things marketing!

Raja Ghawi is a Partner at Era Ventures, a venture capital firm he joined at inception in 2022 to drive transformational change in our physical world.

Prior to joining Era, Raja worked at Suffolk Construction. While there, he helped to found Suffolk’s venture arm, Suffolk Technologies, which invests in startups in the AEC industry and helps them to scale by leveraging Suffolk’s network and resources. At the end of 2020, he was named Suffolk Tech’s Investment Director. While at Suffolk, he founded and led Boost, Suffolk Technologies’ accelerator program, the leading AEC innovation accelerator, which has since graduated 30 companies.

Before joining Suffolk, Raja worked for McKinsey & Company in Boston and spent meaningful time at QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI/ML arm. A native of Syria and a Harvard graduate, Raja currently lives in Brooklyn. He’s an avid reader, a budding cyclist, and a big fan of Brooklyn’s underground art scene.

During this episode, we discuss:

• How Era Ventures invests in innovation in the physical world
• What got Raja really excited about VC
• How he joined Era at inception
• Some of his favorite portfolio companies throughout that time
• Types of industries that he works with in the physical world (real estate, construction, agriculture, energy, manufacturing, etc.)
• Where he sees the physical world going in 2026
• The impact of inflation and labor shortages on these industries
• Spending more time in robotics and physical AI
• The problems that come with go to market - how to prove your products work
• How robots can be used for growth in companies
• What Raja looks for when investing in startups
• The importance of having a trusted community/network who will try your product

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into investing in the physical world!

Lily Vittayarukskul, Waterlily's CEO and Co-Founder, was on the path to become an aerospace engineer at an exceptionally young age, a patented inventor, starting college at 14 and interning at NASA by 16. But her life took an unexpected turn when her Aunt, a cornerstone of her first-generation immigrant family, was diagnosed with terminal stage colon cancer.

Post chemotherapy her family was shocked to learn that health insurance doesn't cover long-term care costs, driving their family to provide care from the home, stepping away from work and school to take on the physically demanding tasks of daily caregiving.

This devastating event revealed the profound gaps in the healthcare preparedness of most families, leaving lasting impacts on her own. Determined to ensure a future where no one else would face the same hardships, Lily shifted her focus from aerospace engineering to healthcare innovation.

Graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Genetics and Data Science, Lily led product and engineering teams at multiple startups before founding Waterlily, a company dedicated to making healthcare and its costs accessible, understandable, and empowering for all.

During this episode, we discuss:

• What she does at Waterlily
• How she got the idea for her startup
• The expense that goes into long-term care
• The solutions that Waterlily offers
• Why parents shouldn’t be paying for this
• How Lily never wanted to become a founder but what led her away from being an aerospace engineer
• Why she did a lot of things YC teaches you not to do
• What led her to bringing on a co-founder
• Her advice for anyone looking to fundraise

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things long-term care!