Startup Life Show With Ande Lyons

Innovation is often inspired by biomimicry - the design and production of materials modeled on biological entities.Our guest, Sissi Liu, is passionate about solving complex societal problems with cutting-edge technology, and she was inspired by the metalmark butterfly for her innovative new product.After nearly 20 years in clean tech/sustainability, entrepreneurship, and venture investing, Sissi co-founded Metalmark Innovations to tackle air quality and climate change challenges.Metalmark Innovations is a Public Benefits Corporation and is releasing its patent-pending product: Tatama, the first self-cleaning commercial air purifier. Inspired by the nanostructure of the metalmark butterfly’s wings, Tatama provides air cleaning with HEPA-grade filters that capture 99.97% of airborne particles.Once a month, Tatama quickly destroys the captured materials and renews the filter for the next cycle, resulting in indoor air that’s far cleaner than outdoor air, without the hassles of typical air purifiers.You can learn

Many parents are seeking ways to give their children a better head start financially in life.Our guest, Ksenia Yudina, is a chartered financial analyst, a Mom, and the Founder and CEO of UNest, an app that empowers parents to easily invest and save for their kids’ future.After coming to the U.S. from Russia at 18, Ksenia took on $180,000 in debt to pay for college. She quickly realized that many other graduates were strapped with debt and saw a need for a more accessible savings vehicle than the traditional 529 that requires confusing paperwork and fees.In 2020, Ksenia launched UNest, and has raised over $38 million from well-known VCs to build her fintech platform into a popular savings and investment vehicle for parents.With many of UNest’s team members located in Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, Ksenia had to work around the clock to evacuate her team members to safety.To learn more about UNest and download the app, please visit: https://www.unest.coBe sure to follow UNest on LinkedIn and Twitter here:https:

Research shows that aligning company and personal purpose improves productivity, retention, and overall wellness in the workplace.Greg Sloan, CFP®, CEPA, CPMTM, is the Chief Purpose Officer and Co-Founder of Go Beyond, a talent development company that leverages behavioral science and technology to help companies attract, engage, and grow their people.Go Beyond has humanized and gamified the purpose discovery process for both company and worker. Their SaaS platform includes on-demand videos, self-guided exercises, and behavioral assessments to build a purpose-centered culture.With over 25+ years of experience in financial services, Greg is a serial founder who discovered the benefits of activating personal purpose in the workplace and loves sharing this knowledge with other leaders. To try Go Beyond, please visit: https://www.gobeyond.work/solutions/purpose-pulse and select "try it for yourself" and receive 15% off using promo code Ande15. Measure the 6 Factors driving disengagement, turnover, and b

How does one take a brilliant expertise and turn it into a thriving, profitable B2B tech platform serving thousands of paying customers?Our guest, Lee Rubin, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Confetti, a young, well-funded startup helping companies create memorable, easy-to-plan experiences that inspire dynamic workplaces, encourage healthier offices, and motivate happier, more holistic teams. Today Confetti is loved by 2,500+ businesses such as Google, Facebook, Spotify, and many other startups, firms and agencies. A visionary culture leader with a decade of experience in B2B sales, Lee is one of the world’s experts on remote event planning. Under her leadership, Confetti scaled from $0 to $12 million in annual revenue within 2 years using only $2.5 millon in funding. Lee now leads a team of 60 people who support a customer base of over 4,000 unique paying companies. Her hope is that Confetti not only offers a place for people to easily and quickly book these experiences, but to be a vehicle that changes the rel

Supporting and funding entrepreneurs is a terrific way to accelerate economic development in a community.Our guest, Ian Cain, is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of QUBIC Labs, a startup incubator and innovation hub focused on helping entrepreneurs and innovators to develop world-class companies to serve businesses, governments, and people.QUBIC Labs is located in Quincy, MA – the birthplace of many famous founders and innovators: from John Adams and John Hancock to Howard Johnson’s ice cream parlors and hotels, and our beloved Dunkin Donuts.Ian also serves his local community as an elected representative to the City Council in Quincy, MA, a member of the Board of Directors at Bay State Community Services, and a member of the Board of Advisors at the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital - Milton. To learn more about QUBIC Labs, please visit: https://www.qubiclabs.comFollow QUBIC Labs online via:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/qubiclabsTwitter: https://twitter.com/qubic_labsInstagram: https://www.ins

Founders – you work so hard to be prepared for investors' questions during your pitch presentations.But are you qualifying those investors? Your time is valuable, and you need to minimize the chance of wasting your time with investors who will not invest in your startup.Our guest, Alex Iskold, is a 4x founder, a software engineer, an investor in over 150 startups, and the Founder and a Managing Partner at 2048 Ventures, where he leads pre-seed rounds, backs visionary founders who are creating technologies of the future, with a specific focus on biotech, deep tech, platform and API companies.Alex writes one of the top startup blogs (a personal fave!), called Startup Hacks, and is a life-long learner and deeply interested in Complexity Science and Systems Thinking. (https://www.startuphacks.vc/)Prior to founding 2048 Ventures, Alex spent 5 years at Techstars as the Managing Director of its NYC program. He was also the founder and CEO of Info Lab (acquired by IBM), founder and CEO of GetGlue (backed by USV,

Karen Lee is on a mission to reimagine e-commerce for beauty lovers by providing a trusted market place for buying and rehoming new beauty products.Glou Beauty is empowering beauty lovers to become more conscious consumers, pushing against an industry that encourages over-consumption.As the first consumer-to-consumer re-commerce marketplace for beauty, Glou enables consumers to easily buy and sell makeup, skincare, and beauty products.The platform is an environmentally friendly option as it both minimizes waste and maximizes the useful life of a beauty product, while allowing consumers to shop different beauty brands and products at an accessible price point. Good for the planet, good for the wallet!An actor, sailor, polyglot, robot-fixer, and beauty product encyclopedia, Karen spent 8+ years in fashion and luxury and, in just 5 years, earned her HBA & MSc from Ivey Business School, and an MiM from CEMS schools Tsinghua University and Bocconi University.To learn more about Glou Beauty and it's rehomi

You don’t have to come up with a terrific idea to become an entrepreneur. You can buy and scale an already established business!Our guest, Allegra Stennett, is the Co-Founder of New Majority Capital, an impact investing firm that addresses the racial and gender wealth gaps in the United States by providing training and capital for BIPOC and women entrepreneurs to buy and scale existing small businesses.Prior to launching NMC, Allegra completed an MBA at MIT Sloan School of Management and an EdM in Education Policy & Management at Harvard Graduate School of Education.After graduating at Andrews University, Allegra was a commercial and investment banker at J.P. Morgan for 5 years, where she covered a variety of multi-billion dollar client relationships in the Healthcare, Industrials, Oil & Gas, and Nonprofit sectors; launched a second language program to prepare 5,000 tri-state employees for expat assignments; and was the only person in her banking cohort to personally close a $100 million transaction.T

Helping schools help students is a mission that began in Alyse Maslonik's childhood.From living in a domestic abuse shelter to creating a self-funded business that now raises millions of dollars for under-privileged children, Alyse has experienced it all. At age 21, with a measly $63 dollars to her name, she packed up everything she owned and set out on a journey to change her life. By the age of 23, she was managing a multi-million-dollar property asset in Charlotte, NC and went on to become one of the youngest Sales & Marketing Representatives for a custom home builder in the Charlotte region, where she developed a love of helping people achieve their own piece of the American dream through home ownership.With fierce determination and a belief that she could make a difference, Alyse founded RedefinED Advisors LLC, a strategic development partner for non-public and private schools that now offers a wide array of services to help schools grow funding and enrollment.As CEO of RedefinED Advisors LLC, A

The chemical industry has become the third largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, with more than half of its resources ending up in waste streams.Our guest, Daniela Blanco, Co-Founder & CEO of Sunthetics, is solving this global problem by making the chemical industry more sustainable by helping it fast-track innovation, which leads to better materials and more efficient processes.Daniela obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from New York University (2020). At Sunthetics, she developed ground-breaking machine-learning platforms that enable the development of new chemicals, materials, and processes up to 15 times faster, significantly reducing R&D emissions by up to 95%.Daniela has multiple patents on sustainable chemical technologies and has been named Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy North America, Rising Star in Sustainability, Top Innovator Under 35 in Latin America by MIT Technology Review, Top Female Founder by Inc Magazine, Top Graduate Inventor by Lemelson-MIT, Global Student Entrepr

If you build it they will come is a popular myth in the startup ecosystem.Our guest, Cindy Fossouo, Founder & CEO of Information Systems Builder, loves solving the problem facing many tech founders: how to market their products and services to their ideal customers.Her San Francisco-based firm is a branding and marketing company providing services for tech startups seeking to differentiate their product and stand out in a crowded and noisy world.From competitor research to building a sales funnel, Information Systems Builder gives the tech founder and their team the framework they need to reach their target market and revenue projections.Cindy is also a deal partner at a venture capital firm where she helps connect startups with capital.Through the success of Information Systems Builder, Cindy’s goal is to help other startups succeed in every way possible.To learn more about Information Systems Builder, please visit: https://www.informationsystemsbuilder.com.Connect with Cindy on LinkedIn here: https://ww

Innovative products, services and behavior changes are key ingredients for solving the world’s most pressing issues.Our guest, Lori van Dam, is the CEO of Hult Prize, an organization that inspires student entrepreneurs to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovative social enterprises with positive global impact.Hult Prize was launched in 2009 by a group of Hult International Business School students with the support of the Hult family, founders and owners of EF Education First, and benefactors of the Hult International Business School.Through its year-long competition, over 100,000 young people in 120 countries work to create high-impact startups that address the annual challenge in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.Finalists pitch their businesses to a panel of expert judges, and the winning team receives 1 million USD in funding to make their idea a reality.Prior to joining Hult Prize, Lori spent six years as an executive leader for Susan G. Komen, as executive director of The

Founders - you will be INSPIRED by and UPLIFTED from this delicious conversation with global clean beauty brand founder Kim Roxie!Southern belle, seasoned makeup artist, licensed esthetician and member of the Cosmetic Executive Women, our guest – Kim Roxie – experienced firsthand how multicultural women have been overlooked in the clean beauty market.At the age of 21, with a $500 investment, she opened her own makeup shop that catered to multicultural women in her hometown of Houston, Texas. After running her shop for 14 years Kim launched LAMIK Beauty in 2020 as an e-commerce clean beauty company making LAMIK the first black-owned clean makeup brand carried by the major beauty specialty retailer, Ulta.com – changing the clean beauty game in Houston, Texas and beyond.Kim has received numerous awards including the Barack Obama and Joe Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for Community Service, the Houston Business Journal’s “40 under 40,” the Innovation Map Award’s “Top Founder under 40”, the American Business Jou

Who’s ready for some tea from the leading source for LGBTQ+ business news, served with dignity and depth?Our guest, Travers Johnson (he/him), is the Founder & CEO of Queerency, an award-winning LGBTQ+ business media startup, and the Creator of LGBTQ+ Business Week, an annual 7-day celebration of queer-owned small businesses.The winner of the Google News Initiative Pitchfest and the Maynard Institute Media Entrepreneurship Award, Travers’ delicious delivery of the queer economy news through Instagram and TikTok reels has made him a worldwide favorite media founder!An award-winning content strategist and editor with 15 years of experience in digital media, book publishing, and email marketing with companies including Penguin Random House, Edelman, Mailchimp, and Scholastic, Travers was trained at Morehouse College and Georgetown University, and is passionate about helping people tell their stories across various mediums.To learn more about Queerency, please visit: https://www.queerency.com Follow Queerency

You’re never too old to realize a new dream and build an innovative tech business.Our guest, Danielle D. Duplin, is the Founder and President of FreeWind Productions, an award-winning public speaking coach, and an executive producer of strategic innovation programs.She’s also a beloved Mentor and Pitch Coach to hundreds of startups and scaleups via MassChallenge, FinTech Sandbox, Leading Cities Accelerator (Smart CitiesTech), TechStars, JETRO (Japan’s BioTech), AGENCY (AgeTech), and AARP AgeTech Collaborative – many of which have raised millions of dollars and won ‘best in show’ challenges.Danielle’s latest entrepreneurial venture is Founder of AGENCY: Worldwide Innovation for Living Longer and Aging Better, a global community of innovators focused on improving the aging journey; as well as Cofounder of the Founders Over 55+ Collective to help “late in life” founders grow their companies and signal a counternarrative to ageism.Please reach out to Danielle via email: danielle@freewindproductions.comYou can lea

Menstruation is one of the many bodily issues women have been taught to suppress.Our guest, Rachael Kim, said “enough with the silence,” and is actively changing the social conversation around menstrual health.She’s the Co-Founder and CEO of My Comma—an organic period care subscription platform amplifying women/BIPOC led brands to menstruators, and powering new routines.My Comma represents the pause to take care of oneself, acknowledge the different facets of you, and the fact that it takes more than yourself to change the social conversation around menstrual health.This work gave rise to the Femtech Salon series taking place in LA, ATL, MIA with other high growth cities — to support and amplify diverse femtech founders by creating more connected ecosystems in their respective local cities.A Forbes Trailblazer, Rachael is a Northwestern and London School of Economics alum who spent 10 years working for Strategy, Risk, and Analytics in Accenture. As an ex-corporate intrapreneur turned social impact entrepreneu

What do you get when you combine beautiful dispensers, a sanitizer people love to use, and a commitment to doing business in a better way?A hand sanitizer system that prevents more plastics from polluting our planet and helps to remove existing plastics too! Our guest, Ashley Wayman, is the Founder of Shimmy – a customizable and eco-friendly hand sanitizer system elevating the way businesses provide this necessary consumable to their employees and customers.Built to last, Shimmy’s impeccably designed containers are made with as little plastic as possible, and all refills are packed in easy-to-recycle aluminum. They also partner with Climate Neutral and Plastic Bank® to offset their carbon emissions and plastic footprint.Prior to founding Shimmy, Ashley led Integrated Promotions for Wayfair through their IPO in 2014, and led the mobile marketing team at Rue La La during the flash sale site craze.To learn more about Shimmy, please visit: https://getshimmy.com and follow Shimmy on Instagram here: https://www.ins

Every woman, regardless of hair texture, deserves a wig that resembles the hair that she lost.Our guest, Pamela Shaddock, is Co-Founder and COO of Coils to Locs, a social impact, for-profit enterprise that addresses a healthcare disparity: the lack of coily, curly, ethnically inspired wigs at cancer center hospitals and medical hair loss salons that can be purchased with health insurance reimbursement if applicable.Pamela and her Co-Founder (and sister!) Dianne Austin are intimately aware of how dehumanizing fighting cancer and traction alopecia can be, even with the best efforts and the most compassionate care. Hair loss adds to the feeling of powerlessness and loss of control, especially when you can’t find a wig that resembles the hair you lost.A professional film, TV and stage actress with a strong background in nonprofit, Pamela co-leads the company’s free health, wellness and beauty workshops for cancer patients, survivors and caregivers.Add wind to Coils to Locs Equity Crowdfunding Campaign on Wefunder

Are you ready to say Hasta Luego to 2022 and Hello Gorgeous to 2023?Our guest, seasoned founder, mouthy activist, super opinionated blogger and Host of the popular $h!t We Don’t Talk About Podcast, Mia Voss, joined us again on the 3rd Annual Andelicious Startup Life LIVE Holiday and Solstice Celebration!Mia and I touch on so many topics, including:• Mia’s Year in Review – WOWZA • Glorification of entrepreneurship • White supremacy and capitalist hustle culture based on slavery per our friends at The Nap Ministry• Musk + Elizabeth Holmes + what happens to unicorn founders• Ageism in the startup ecosystem (and everywhere!) • The blame/shame game… Founders feeling shame for: bad hires, not raising $$$, not being a Unicorn, etc.• CU BYE Clubhouse• funding female founders • women’s rightsTo learn more about Mia's extraordinary work in the world, please visit: https://miavoss.live/May 2023 be structured enough for success and achievement and flexible enough for creativity and fun.Waving from Boston and wishing

Events are a great way to bring people together, and share a moment, message or idea with a captive audience. They do, however, take considerable time, effort, and organization to execute successfully.Our guest, Dr. Shanna M. Scott, has fine-tuned the art of event planning with her business, Shanna Scott PR & Events, removing the stress and effort from her clients’ shoulders.For 18 years Dr. Shanna and her team have produced luxury lifestyle and transformational events and messaging that leave their clients delighted from the experience and thrilled with the results.To learn more about Shanna Scott PR & Events, please visit: https://www.shannascott.com/Connect online with Dr. Shanna via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannamscott/ Thank you for carving out time to improve your Founder Game - when you do better, your startup will do better.Waving from Boston – cheers!Ande ♥https://andelyons.com #startupstories #startuplife #startupstrategies #eventplanner JOIN STARTUP LIFE LIVE MEETUP GROUPGet