Startup Foundations

Sophia Yen is the CEO and co-founder of Pandia Health, a women-founded and women-led birth control delivery company. Pandia partners with pharmacies and doctors who specialize in women’s health to bring convenient, dignified and stress-free ways of accessing telehealth services.

In our conversation we talked about the goals of Pandia Health, and how abortion laws could potentially impact Sophia’s business. We also discuss how the idea for Pandia Health was born through Sophia’ practice as a clinical associate professor at Stanford, and why she thought birth control delivery company should be doctor-founded and led by women. Sophia also makes the case for physicians being able to practice medicine nationally not federally when they’re granted their license.

Sophia shares how she prepared for starting Pandia Health, and how she ended up distributing equity and roles among 6 founders initially. Sophia also discussed finding the first users and product-fit for her company, and the potential dangers of telemedicine abuse.

Find out more about Pandia Health on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Website, Blog, and YouTube.

Ashley Etling is the CEO and co-founder of LimeLoop, a smart shipping platform building reusable packaging and sustainable logistics solutions.

In our conversation with Ashley we cover the origin story of LimeLoop, and discuss how their product evolved from reusable packaging to a smart platform helping companies make their supply chains sustainable. We dig deep into the issues of minimizing the environmental impacts of global supply chains, and discuss interesting innovation happening in that space.

We also discuss the recent political actions for environmental impact like carbon taxes in EU and China’s National Sword policy, and how governments worldwide are dealing with the issues of waste management and climate change.

As a repeat founder, mentor and advisor, Ashley shares her approach to building a great team, finding co-founders, key hires and early startup employees. She also speaks on issues like dividing equity between co-founders, and common mistakes made by first-time founders.

Jill Koziol is the CEO and co-founder of Motherly, an educational platform and lifestyle brand redefining motherhood. Motherly’s goal is building a movement helping women across the world thrive as mothers and make the most of their parenting experience.

Jill talked to us about how the idea for Motherly was born, and how she and her co-founder Liz Tenety originally met. Jill discussed building the brand recognition, getting the first publicity and leveraging the organic content distribution to get the initial traction. We also talked about the advantages of a content and community-first approach to building a startup.

Jill discussed the relationship between her and her co-founder and how they approached divvying up the roles and equity in Motherly when founding the company. Jill also shared what she thinks are the most important traits of the first hires for a startup, and what every founder should look for when hiring their first employees.

We also cover the process of raising capital for Motherly, striking a balance between journalistic integrity and brand building, and Motherly’s educational platform.

Motherly: https://www.mother.ly/
Jill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkoziol/
Capbase: https://capbase.com/

Tara Viswanathan is the co-founder and CEO of Rupa Health, a health startup focused on expanding access to root cause medicine and modernizing the process of ordering specialty lab tests.

Tara talked to us about what exactly is root cause medicine and why is it central to Rupa Health’s mission. We discuss how the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry has evolved and what are the current challenges for healthcare practitioners.

Tara shares her thoughts regarding chronic illnesses and talks about why they are currently the biggest danger to our health. We also discuss Americans’ nutrition and dietary habits, gut biome issues, novel treatments, and why taking a lot of prescription drugs can have adverse effects on people’s health.

Tara also shares her personal story behind the decision to start Rupa Health, speaks on finding the first key hires, equity splits, and role distribution between her and her co-founders, and shares how she found her product-market fit.

We talked to Elise Boivin, the CEO and founder behind ArtlyOwl, an art curation and ecommerce startup that’s focused on connecting local artists and collectors in their respective cities. Since our conversation with Elise, ArtlyOwl joined forces with Wescover, an online marketplace for uniquely made items, that aims to support artists and designers from the local communities.

In our conversation with Elise we discussed how ArtlyOwl worked, how it sourced artists for their platform, and built out the local connections to artists and clients. Elise shares the backstory of how she got the idea to start ArtlyOwl and why she decided to bootstrap ArtlyOwl as a solo founder, and not raise any outside capital.

We also talked about what it means to create an experience marketplace and how Elise was trying to do that with ArtlyOwl. Elise shares her thoughts on art as as an investment and speaks on the evolution of the art world in general.

Borys Musielak is an investor, engineer, and entrepreneur, currently managing SMOK Ventures, a US venture capital fund investing in early-stage software startups in Central & Eastern Europe. Borys’ entrepreneurial experience includes co-founding Filmaster, a startup for film fans to get personalized film recommendations which got acquired by Samba TV back in 2015. Borys is also very active on the Polish startup scene, where he’s a board member of the Startup Poland foundation and has co-founded ReaktorX, a remote-first startup acceleration program.

Borys talked to us about turning his passion for films into a successful startup that created a Netflix-like recommendation system. We discussed early Polish arthouse cinema and how Borys had grown the company from 2010 to its acquisition in 2015.

Borys also shared why he decided to start investing and become a VC, and talked about all the things he had pioneered in the Polish startup scene, including creating a first coworking space dedicated to startups, an accelerator program, and events that contributed to growing the Polish startup community.

We also discuss the evolution of the Polish and Eastern European startup scene, and why large enough domestic markets can be detrimental to the creation of innovative startups on a global scale. Borys also shares very interesting insights regarding the Polish and European VC scene and highlights the niches developing within the Polish startups.

Kim Roxie is the founder and CEO of LAMIK Beauty, licensed esthetician, motivational speaker, philanthropist and community advocate. Her company is creating makeup products made with organic ingredients that help women of color enhance their beauty.

In our conversation we talked about Kim’s background, running a beauty salon, developing her own formulas for beauty products, and how she got the idea to start her own company.

We discuss how Kim’s customers helped to shape LAMIK Beauty products and getting the initial funds to start the company from a crowdfunding campaign and pitch competitions.

We also talk about the startups and recent exits in the beauty industry, and how that space has been getting more and more traction in the recent years, after being overlooked by tech for a long time.

Aaron Bailey is the CEO & co-founder of Builtfirst, a startup building cloud marketplace platform. Aaron’s company streamlines creation of community-based marketplaces and modernizes how SaaS and services are discovered and purchased.

Aaron talked about his background, the time he spent as head of global partnerships at 500 Startups, and how that influenced his decision to start his own company, Builtfirst.

Aaron shared how the product has changed to meet the needs of users, shifting from a focus on accelerators and VC funds to a focus on anyone who wants to recommend trusted vendors to their online communities.

We also cover finding the right co-founders for a startup, distributing equity between founders and early employees, and the advantages of hiring remotely.

Dr. Roshawnna Novellus is the founder and CEO of EnrichHER, a Techstars backed FinTech lending platform that streamlines capital deployment process for individual and institutional investors who want to support businesses led by women and people of color. EnrichHER has been in-market since 2019, deploying $14M in capital to traditional businesses from 47 states.

In our conversation with Dr. Roshawnna we talk about many obstacles facing small business owners, women of color in particular, when trying to raise capital for their companies. We also discuss Roshawnna’s backstory and how she got into entrepreneurship.

Dr. Roshawnna shares her insights regarding lending landscape for small businesses and speaks on systemic bias and discrimination against black women in the financial ecosystem.

We also cover different types of financing available through Roshawnna’s company, and talk about the early days of building the product. Roshawnna gives her thoughts on what are the most important traits to look for when hiring employees and shares lessons learned from her experience of going through Techstars accelerator.