The VITALIZE Podcast: Venture Capital | Startups | Angel Investing

This is a special episode pulled from the VITALIZE vault—back when The VITALIZE Podcast was Talking Venture! Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Amanda DoAmaral (@AmandaDoAmanda), Co-Founder of Fiveable, a social learning network for students. Since this original episode released in May 2021, Fiveable has raised a $10M Series A. Fiveable is an educational technology company that is committed to unlocking opportunities for young people through academic and social empowerment. At Fiveable they believe that students who are educated, confident, and informed will open more opportunities for their future. Fiveable aims to give equal opportunities for all students to reach their potential.

Amanda DoAmaral is an educator, activist, and co-founder of Fiveable. She spent half a decade teaching high school history in Oakland, CA, where her passion for creating equitable educational opportunities was ignited. Amanda has been a vocal advocate for inclusive history curriculum and is active within the Milwaukee tech community.

Website: Fiveable

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adoamaral/

Twitter: @AmandaDoAmanda

Show Notes:

• What Fiveable does
• Onboarding Serena Williams and Chelsea Clinton as an investors
• Fiveable’s origin story
• Turning tutoring ex-students via livestream into a VC-backed startup
• Fiveable’s early growth stage
• How the Fiveable product has evolved over time
• Risk assessment and hiring a team
• Generational entrepreneurship and participating in an accelerator
• The lack of education about available resources for founders
• Amanda’s experience with gener8tor and how it contributed to Fiveable’s growth
• Raising pre-seed capital and the stress of executing fund allocation
• What has fueled Fiveable’s growth
• Content development and SEO strategy
• Managing an expansive team and hiring students
• The impact of building in public
• The big vision for Fiveable

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

In this special episode, Justin Gordon (@justingordon212), the Director of Marketing with VITALIZE Venture Capital, interviews three key VITALIZE team members, Founder and Managing Partner Gale Wilkinson (@galeforceVC), Partner Caroline Casson (@carolinecasson_), and Community Manager Larissa Insogna (@LarissaInsogna).

VITALIZE Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. VITALIZE has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. We believe in people and process. From our investors to team members to the founders we fund, we are focused on building a community of amazing people. Venture capital is a relationship business, and one of our core differentiators is how we leverage our extensive network to provide value to our portfolio companies. We make valuable connections for our companies, mostly to prospective customers and other VC firms, but we field all types of requests to help our portfolio companies flourish. As founders ourselves, we have learned a lot from building this investment firm. We have implemented effective processes for deal flow, due diligence, and helping our companies post-investment, allowing us to move quickly and offer a high-quality product to founders and investors.

VITALIZE Venture Capital: https://vitalize.vc/

VITALIZE Angels: https://vitalizeangels.com/

VITALIZE on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/vitalizevc

VITALIZE on Twitter: @VitalizeVC 

Show Notes:

• How Gale got into venture and started the Irish Angels investment network
• How Caroline decided to partner with Gale
• Caroline’s cross-country cycling adventure and Gale’s pandemic road trips
• Larissa’s diverse professional experiences and how she ended up running community at VITALIZE
• How a cold DM to get Gale on Justin’s own podcast led to him joining VITALIZE
• The challenges and less glamorous side of working in VC
• How Gale envisions achieving a manageable workload for herself and her team
• The effect of the COVID pandemic on their schedules
• Different strategies the team members use to create boundaries for a healthy work-life balance
• Making investing accessible to everyone through the VITALIZE Angels community
• Gale and Caroline’s thoughts on the future of early stage venture
• VITALIZE’s North Star and the strategy to get there
• Potential paths for the future of VITALIZE
• The trailblazing work some of our VITALIZE Angels community members are involved in
• The due diligence process for VITALIZE Angels
• What makes a good fit to become a VITALIZE Angels portfolio company
• What to expect in terms of ROI for our VITALIZE Angels members
• The value of angel investing communities

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Elizabeth Yin (@dunkhippo33), Co-Founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a VC fund that invests in pre-seed software startups. Hustle Fund is often the first check into a startup or in the first round of funding. Beyond the usual criteria that VCs typically look for, they prioritize founders' speed of execution above all else. Per their name, they also make a fast decision after speaking with a company.

Elizabeth is a tech entrepreneur turned startup investor. Her mission for the next 30-40 years is to democratize wealth through entrepreneurship. She also blogs about how to raise early stage capital. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Elizabeth has reviewed over 20k startup pitches from around the world in the last few years and has helped numerous portfolio founders raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Her work and writing on startup fundraising has been featured in numerous publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, Huffington Post, BetaKit, and more.

Website: Hustle Fund

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elizabethyin/

Twitter: @dunkhippo33

Elizabeth’s Website: https://elizabethyin.com/ 

Show Notes:

• The transition from founder to investor and why Elizabeth doesn’t actually see herself as a VC
• The variety of ways Hustle Fund is supporting founders and investors beyond investing capital
• Behind the scenes of developing Camp Hustle
• How Angel Squad came about and the power of angel investing communities
• Elizabeth’s perspective on crowdfunding
• How Hustle Fund provides value and stands out in a crowded industry
• Becoming widely known for her Twitter threads
• What Hustle Fund looks for in their potential investments
• How they evaluate founders in emerging markets
• Lessons from raising a second fund
• Their fund strategy and portfolio construction
• What’s next for Hustle Fund

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Jon Morris (@yojonmorris), Founder and CEO of NOWHERE, an online metaverse platform that aims to revolutionize gathering with patent pending video presence technology that allows serendipitous social mingling between conversations with friends or colleagues at conferences, meetings, or parties all within dynamic web environments.

Jon Morris is a conceptual artist who creates multilayered installations, performances, and experiences with the express intent of elevating his audience to a sublime state. Challenging the relationship between art and spectator, Morris’ work is typically equal parts technical, playful, inventive and rich with depth. From Le Louvre to Lady Gaga from Cirque Du Soleil to the Metropolitan Opera, his work has been praised by NY Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Rolling Stone, NBC, VICE, Wired and more. He previously founded The Windmill Factory, an interdisciplinary arts collective that creates interactive installations, immersive performances, stage designs, and experiential events.

He has been a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Kinnernet-Europe Experience Director, LaMaMa ETC Artist in residence, Watermill Center Fellow, Tennessee Williams Fellow, NCAA Post Graduate Scholar, 6-time All-American Springboard Diver, and holds a B.A. from the University of the South, Sewanee. Jon has taught master classes at Harvard, NYU, Columbia, Pace, The University of The South, Vanderbilt. 

Website: NOWHERE

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonlmorris/
Twitter: @yojonmorris

Email: [email protected]

Show Notes:

• The future of online gathering with NOWHERE’s metaverse platform
• Jon’s journey from all-American springboard diver to tech founder
• NOWHERE as a pandemic-born pivot 
• Early creative development for the platform
• Developing NOWHERE’s vision and the challenge of finding web3 engineers
• Sourcing talent and building the NOWHERE team
• The power of spatial audio in the NOWHERE platform
• Customer discovery and growing to venture scale
• How NOWHERE plays into the future of work
• NOWHERE’s competitive advantage

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Amanda Greenberg (@AKGreenberg), Co-Founder and CEO of Balloon, a research-backed platform that unlocks ideas and feedback from a group by eliminating groupthink and amplifying voices. They’re rebuilding the way teams collaborate, making them more productive, innovative, informed, and inclusive.

Before founding Balloon, Amanda was a public health researcher, translating science and research into national behavior change campaigns for the U.S. CDC and EPA. Her research focused on engagement, listening, and community-based decision-making, and it was in that work that she discovered that groupthink plagues decision-making. To solve this problem, she and her co-founder Noah built Balloon from the ground up to align with research for how to unlock the highest quality and quantity of information from a group...and how to do it in the most productive way possible.

Website: Balloon

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/amandagreenberg/

Twitter: @AKGreenberg

Show Notes:

• How Balloon is enabling teams to drive better outcomes, leverage creativity, and improve productivity
• Amanda’s background and how it led to great founder-market fit to build Balloon
• Navigating minimal prior exposure to tech entrepreneurship and VC
• Deciding to raise funds through angel investors, being Vitalize Angels' first portfolio company, and the value of diverse cap tables
• The big vision for Balloon 
• How Balloon’s flight templates fuel their growth by building credibility
• How they on-boarded and partnered with industry experts
• How pandemic-related shifts in FOW have affected Balloon
• Balloon’s use-cases and the ROI it provides to companies
• How Balloon uses their own platform internally

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Jonathan Siddarth (@jonsidd), CEO and Founder of Turing, a company on a mission to help unleash the world’s untapped potential. Turing’s hiring platform combines planetary reach and AI to deliver your ideal engineers in order to help you spin up your engineering dream team. Their deep matching intelligence finds the best Turing developers across 100+ skills like React, Node, Python, Golang, Angular, Swift, Java, and many more. As part of their rigorous vetting process, they also review software engineers’ technical abilities, English skills, and remote working capabilities. Turing ensures time zone overlap, transparency, and reliable communication in order to make remote development easy for you after the match.

The Turing team has deep expertise in AI and building engineering dream teams in the U.S. at top companies. Turing is backed by well-known investors like Facebook’s initial CTO (Adam D’Angelo), executives from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Founders Fund (investors in Facebook, Tesla, Asana, etc). Turing.com is led by serial A.I. entrepreneurs Jonathan Siddharth and Vijay Krishnan, whose last A.I. firm leveraged remote talent and had a successful acquisition.

Website: Turing

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonsid/

Twitter: @jonsidd

Show Notes:

• Jonathan’s path to Turing’s moment of inception in 2018
• How COVID accelerated Turing’s growth as our world quickly turned remote-first
• The challenges that come with hiring and managing fully remote, distributed teams
• The importance of the market evaluation and opportunity validation stage of building a company
• Early customer acquisition and why it’s important to start with non-scalable approaches
• The value of specificity and curiosity when narrowing down your ideal customer profile
• Why companies are choosing Turing today
• Turing’s silicon valley-caliber, cloud-based vetting and matching process
• When companies should start using Turing and the value it provides
• Jonathan’s thoughts on the future of work

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Deena Shakir (@deenashakir), Partner at Lux Capital, a venture capital firm that makes long-term bets on contrarians and outsiders. At Lux, Deena invests in transformative technologies improving lives and livelihoods, and she is particularly interested in intersectional and underdog entrepreneurs building breakthrough companies to accelerate advances and equity in human and population health.

Since joining Lux in late 2019, Deena has led a number of investments across stages and sectors, including in women's health (Maven Clinic, Alife, Adyn), digital health infrastructure (SteadyMD, H1), health equity (Waymark), and foodtech (Shiru), and fintech (Mos and Ramp). Prior to joining Lux, Deena was a Partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures), previously led product partnerships at Google for early stage products in healthcare, AI/ML and search at Google, and directed social impact investments at Google.org.

Before tech and venture, Deena had diverse partnership-centric experiences as an aspiring anthropologist, journalist, diplomat, aid worker and technologist. She was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State under Secretary Clinton, where she helped launch President Obama’s first Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2010. Her non-traditional path has cultivated Deena’s deep conviction in the potential of breakthrough ventures to positively transform the future and garnered her unparalleled network to help them achieve it.

Website: Lux Capital

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/deenashakir/

Twitter: @deenashakir

Show Notes:

• Deena’s background and how she ended up in VC
• How her experience across a variety of industries has led to a valuable diverse network
• How Deena views innovation opportunities in global markets
• How Deena evaluates the coachability and grittiness of founders
• Some founders with unique backgrounds that Deena is excited to be working with
• Deena’s strategy around supporting founders
• The benefits of investing across different stages with Lux
• Supporting founders through a market downturn
• Emerging industries where Deena sees a lot of potential
• Why certain areas such as women’s health are underinvested in
• How Deena began angel investing and breaking down barriers to entry for women
• Time management and work-life balance
• Deciding to write a children’s book

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Alex Damianou (@alex_damianou), Founder and CEO of OpenAxis, a company that’s simplifying and democratizing the data storytelling process. 

Alex is a multilingual political economist & entrepreneur trying to figure out how the world works. After a brief stint at the United Nations and a failed attempt at a pro soccer career, he went abroad and spent about five years conducting on-the-ground economic research and policy consulting across several emerging markets in Africa & the Middle East. Before returning to the US, he then took on the research & strategy lead for a new $20bn smart city and the world's tallest tower.

Now, as a founder, he tries to tackle socio-economic challenges. After starting a macro/geopolitical advisory, he joined Andrew Yang's 2020 Presidential campaign as his national policy director and foreign policy advisor. Today he’s focused on democratizing data via OpenAxis, a Vitalize Angels portfolio company. 

Website: Open Axis

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adamianou/

Twitter: @alex_damianou

Instagram: instagram.com/openaxishq/

Show Notes:

• OpenAxis as a data storytelling platform
• How society’s poor data literacy drove Alex to start OpenAxis
• How Alex serendipitously got involved with Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign
• Alex’s time working on the Smart Cities project in Saudi Arabia
• The ideal co-founder combo of complementary skillsets and shared values 
• OpenAxis’ go to market strategy
• Challenges within customer discovery and onboarding
• The community-building aspect of OpenAxis
• How OpenAxis’ big vision fits into the Future of Work
• The reality of being a first-time tech startup founder

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Lolita Taub (@lolitataub), GP at Ganas Ventures where she invests in pre-seed and seed community-driven companies in the US and Latin America. She’s on a mission to change the narrative about who's an investor, who we invest in, and the types of founders that build unicorns. With 15 years working within the Silicon Valley ecosystem, Lolita has accomplished $70M+ in sales and made 90+ investments as an angel investor, Scout at Lightspeed Venture Partners, and VC at Backstage Capital and The Community Fund. She is also a Co-Founder of proprietary matching tools Startup-Investor Matching Tool, the GP-LP Matching Tool, and the LaaS community which brings along a community of over 4K+ founders, funders, and ecosystem friends. Forbes and Inc Magazine have featured her as a woman promoting investment in underestimated founders and funders. She has a BA from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the IE Business School. Lolita is currently in LATAM, hunting for unicorns, and most importantly, she is a dog mom to the cutest Dachshund mix, Choco.

Website: Ganas Ventures
Lolita's Website: https://www.lolitataub.co/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lolitataub/

Twitter: @lolitataub

Lolita’s Newsletter: https://lu.ma/lolitataub

Show Notes:

• Lolita’s background and how she got into VC
• What led her to start Ganas Ventures
• Lolita’s journey building community, leveraging her social capital, and expanding her services
• Raising a fund and LP strategy for Ganas Ventures
• How Lolita stays organized while maintaining a variety of initiatives
• Job opportunities with Lolita and what she prioritizes in hiring

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Jennifer Smith (@scribeceo), Co-Founder and CEO of Scribe, a software tool that makes it easy to learn from your most productive people without slowing them down by automatically generating step-by-step tutorials for any task, while they work. Scribe seamlessly captures how work gets done across your organization, enabling you to analyze, optimize, and standardize processes, in a way your employees will love. Founded in 2019, the Scribe team imagines a world where the best of what anyone knows how to do is available to everyone. Instantly and automatically. So every person, company, and community can do their best work, every day. With a little more ease and joy.

Prior to founding Scribe, Jennifer spent time at McKinsey & Company and Greylock Partners. She is a Princeton and Harvard Business School alum.

Website: Scribe
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenniferreneesmith/
Twitter: @scribeceo

Show Notes:

• How Scribe is making it easy to share how to do something
• Jennifer’s background and realizing she needed to build Scribe to solve a problem she observed for years
• Going from “someone else will solve it” to “I’m going to solve it” and the first steps she took to start a company
• Finding developers early in Scribe’s journey
• Talking to 80+ engineers before she connected with her technical co-founder, Aaron Podolny
• The importance of finding a co-founder that shares your value and vision
• How organic growth enabled Jennifer and the Scribe team to run lean and focus on building in the right direction without any marketing for the first 1.5 years
• How their approach to growth and marketing has shifted
• How they narrowed their target market for a product with such a wide variety of use cases
• Raising an unexpected Series A for Scribe while pregnant with her first child
• Jennifer’s strategy behind bringing on great angel investors
• Making Scribe an extremely user-friendly product

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 300+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/