The Real Capitalist Podcast

Michelle is the founder of First Code Academy, a leading coding and STEM education institute for kids from 4 to 18 years old and author of Amazon Best Seller First Time Coders. She is also an advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). Prior to starting First Code, she held various technical roles in high growth startups in Silicon Valley, including Buffer and Bump Technologies.

Whitney Sales is the Managing Partner, at Acceleprise Ventures.

Whitney has 10+ years of startup sales experience and is the founder of The Sales Method, a consultancy that helps startups identify target markets, build successful sales teams and quickly get products to market. She led four companies to the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list including LoopNet, Joby, Meltwater and SpringAhead. Whitney graduated with honors with a BA in Sociology from UCSD.

Mariel Reed is cofounder and CEO of CoProcure. Previously, she served in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, where she helped scale a program connecting tech startups and local governments across the country. She was an early employee at Coursera, a venture-backed edtech startup. She graduated top of her class from Georgetown University and is fluent in Mandarin.

Chenoa Farnsworth the Managing Partner at Blue Startups. Chenoa has more than 15 years of experience in business strategy and private equity investing. Farnsworth is the managing director of the Hawaii Angels, Hawaii’s only angel capital investment network.

Trish Costello is CEO of Portfolia and Managing Director of Portfolia Funds. Portfolia creates investment funds designed women, so they can back the companies and innovations they want in the marketplace, for returns and impact. Portfolia has funds in Women’s health, Enterprise, Consumer Tech, Active Aging, and Diversity. Portfolia funds provide an interactive and educational view of investing for its members while seeking market returns and innovation in the marketplace.

Aline Lerner is the co-founder and CEO of interviewing.io, an anonymous technical recruiting platform where companies like Facebook, Uber, Dropbox, and Quora have hired great software engineers. Before that, was a software engineer for 5 years, ran hiring at Udacity, and wrote a lot of stuff about hiring on the internet

Liza Rodewald is an entrepreneur and software engineer with over 16 years of technical experience. She has built multi-million dollar enterprise software for government and healthcare industries. Her passion for entrepreneurship came from her desire to have a more flexible lifestyle back in 2004. She is the Founder and CEO of Instant Teams a support team creation and management platform that fuels support teams with military-connected talent.

Jessica Koncz the CEO and Founder of Eatsee, That brings the restaurant experience to the Instagram generation. They create beautiful, visual menus for cafes and restaurants to showcase photos of each dish on their menu for customers to see before they order. An image like Tinder for Food!

Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google where she co-founded the Access team. Prior to joining Code for America, Minnie was COO of Shift, a Goldman Sachs and DFJ-funded company that she founded and helped the company to raise over 200 million dollars. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in computer science from Stanford University. Millie has recently joined TenOneTen Ventures, based out of LA, California.

Rachel Sipperley is the CEO and Founder of Rent My Wardrobe, a peer to peer marketplace that empowers women to generate additional income while becoming more financially savvy. The daughter of a youth pastor, Rachel came from humble beginnings and was a born entrepreneur. Her mission is to inspire and equip women and girls to become their own entrepreneur in a women-supporting-women culture and share her testimony of financial stewardship.

In this week's episode host Courteney talks all about how to Reverse Engineering Your Pitch to Win the Ask. It's important as a founder to be able to articulate the value and future of your business. It is the key to being able to raise venture capital or securing your first customer. Today's episode will highlight some great tips to helping you craft the perfect pitch!

Sara Brand is the Founding General Partner of True Wealth Ventures, an early-stage VC fund investing in women-led businesses in consumer health and sustainability sectors. She is also the co-founder of (512) Brewing, the largest draught-only, self-distributing microbrewery in the country. Sara was previously in venture capital and management consulting in the Bay Area as well as in a variety of strategic and operational roles in large tech companies.

Ashley Whitehurst is the Managing Director of Syndicates at LAUNCH. She beginning working as an EA for Jason Calacanis. Over the years she has grown with LAUNCH and is now the Managing director of The Syndicate fund at Launch.

In today's show, we talk all about what Syndicate funds are, as well as the benefits they bring to both founders and investors. Ashley also gives us a behind the scenes look at what running a fund looks like and insider tips on how to pitch a company to investors.

Tune-in to this week's episode with my friend 25 Freya Oehle. She is a serial entrepreneur is shaking up the German Startup Ecosystem. In today's show, we talk all about how she went from an MBA student at Northwestern to starting her first company in her parents living room in the German countryside. Freya shares with us lots of great nuggets of wisdom and some hard truths about the startup world.

Genevieve is the co-founder of Fetcher, a Manhattan-based startup combining AI with human expertise to help companies fill open positions at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional recruiting tools. Fetcher launched 2 years ago, and the team has quickly grown to over 160 employees, and they are now working with over 450 companies ranging from stealth-mode startups to the Fortune 50, to help re-imagine recruiting.

Nicola's experience working with startups has almost stretched 10 years. Originally from Ireland, where she led startup and accelerator engagement for the global technology conference, Web Summit. AT Pollenizer, an early stage startup incubator where she made waves to bring startup methods to some of the world’s largest companies.

At AGL Energy, Nicola helped define a technology ecosystem to develop a pipeline of growth companies for investment. Now, Nicola is running the Sydney program at muru-D.

Statusphere is an influencer marketing platform that fundamentally transforms the way brands connect with social media influencers. The company’s influencer-first business model solves the major pain points of outreach, price negotiation, scalability and distribution for consumer brands. Statusphere achieves this with its curated network of micro-influencers who receive a monthly box of Instagram-worthy products in exchange for sharing photos or videos with their followers.

Georgene Huang is obsessed with improving the workplace for women. She’s the CEO and Co-founder of Fairygodboss, the largest career community for women, providing millions of women with career connections, jobs, career advice and hard-to-find intel about how companies treat women.

Ulla Hald is the Co-founder and CEO of @thefavesapp, the fashion tech company that is helping SMB retailers make the best buying decisions for their businesses.

Ulla studied computer science at UCSC and took her first carrier steps at Apple. Her superpower is bringing smart people together and not getting in the way. FAVES is a B2B SaaS platform that enables retail buyers and their stakeholders to have a complete and real-time visual overview of what they are buying, across all vendors and brands.

At 21, Priya was the first Indian woman to start an open-source hardware company in India. At 28, she built Bay Area's first women-centric co-working space. Presently, at 30, she is the first Indian woman working to build a decentralized internet free of net neutrality, censorship, and fake news. She is a community builder and teacher at heart and firmly believes in the power of technology to improve the lives of people. She views entrepreneurship as a deeper path towards self-discovery.

Entrepreneur Kara Goldin is the Founder and CEO of hint, Inc., a healthy lifestyle brand that produces the leading, award-winning, unsweetened flavored water, as well as a scented sunscreen spray that is oxybenzone and paraben-free. Kara has received numerous accolades, one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and Forbes’ 40 Women to Watch Over 40. The Huffington Post listed her as one of six disruptors in business.

Viola is the founder and creative force behind MAIKA, a stylish and sustainable soft goods brand inspired by delightful travel and everyday living. MAIKA products are carried in over 500 specialty boutiques and retail stores worldwide. Concurrently, she is also the co-founder of LimeLoop, a full circle shipper packaging company that combines technology and innovative design to create a more sustainable supply chain.

Founders Embassy is the world's first accelerator designed for international and immigrant entrepreneurs committed to making a positive impact on the world.

Unlike typical accelerators and incubators, Founders Embassy focuses on elevating, inspiring, and educating international and immigrant founders by offering them unprecedented access to Silicon Valley through its immersive acceleration programs, impactful events, and thought leadership - all without any exchange of equity.

Rebecca Story is the CEO and co-founder of The Bloomi, the first e-marketplace that offers a full spectrum of healthy intimate care products. Products include hygiene, menstrual care and sexual wellness. As an entrepreneur and respected thought leader in sexual health, Rebecca is a subject-matter expert and advisor on sexual education, entrepreneurship and diversity initiatives.

Meghan Larson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Adistry.Adistry's technology helps media companies and conferences automate their manual sales processes, increase their potential revenue streams and shorten their sales cycle. Our tech opens up previously unreachable deals by providing an automated framework for ad buyers and sellers to come together. Effectively recovering the tremendous amount of money that is left on the table today.

Shruti Shah started her career as a teacher for Teach for America then moved to Venture Capital by her connections Edtech. This sparked her entrepreneurial spirit where she started her first company Move Loot, started with a few friends. The group took the company through Y - Combinator and raised over 20 million in venture capital. Through all of these learning Shruti is now starting Step Fund, to help bridge the gap for founders between bootstrapping and raising large rounds of venture capital money.

Sona is co-founder and CEO of Neopenda, a medical device company creating needs-based health solutions for high-growth emerging markets.

Emily Levy is an award-winning social impact entrepreneur and keynote speaker who is passionate about advocating for the patient perspective in healthcare. She was diagnosed with Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease during her sophomore year of college. She used a college project, her own personal need and created an amazing company. Mighty Well is a growing line of medical accessories. ⠀