Startup Life Show With Ande Lyons

Serial and social entrepreneur Ronald Mugaiga has a powerful, purpose-driven mission for his Ugandan startup, Ecomak Recyclers.To build eco-friendly products solving waste pollution, poverty and unemployment while mitigating climate change and creating jobs for marginalized women and youth.Ecomak Recyclers is a social enterprise developing eco-friendly, durable and long-lasting building plastic bricks and blocks from post-consumer plastic waste using a chemical free and energy saving extrusion technology.The plastic bricks are an affordable alternative to conventional bricks, and they solve the challenges of plastic pollution, unemployment, poverty and indecent housing. Ecomak’s plastic bricks and blocks are 2 times stronger and larger than the conventional bricks, have zero breakages once used, require low maintenance, do not rot, are termite resistant and are 30% cheaper than the conventional concrete and clay bricks.Ronald holds a BS in Biosystems Engineering, a Diploma in Environmental Management and was

Looking stylish and fashionable doesn’t have to end after you reach 45!Our guest, serial entrepreneur Janice Ozguc, is the Co-Founder of VNV – a curated, fashion marketplace that solves for fit, style and easy discovery for the modern woman whose desire to look great has not changed even though her body and fashion preferences have.Frustrated by the lack of stylish clothing for women over 45, Janice (a Baby Boomer) and her co-founder Rachel Stevens (a millennial) teamed up and launched VNV on 2/2/22, and the platform is soaring.Janice is a proven technology executive and entrepreneur, with a strong track record for driving business development, marketing and sales efforts from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.She mentors entrepreneurial students at Harvard University and has been an Entrepreneurial Fellow for Boston University’s Entrepreneurial program, where she mentors students at all stages of developing a company. To learn more about VNV, please visit: https://www.shopvnv.com/Connect with Janice and fo

Our guest, Nicole Homer, is Co-founder and COO of biotech startup Hx Innovations, where they are transforming biomechanics technology into a portable camera to enable coaches and trainers to collect human movement analytics to individualize training programs, determine levels of fatigue, enhance return to play protocols, and safeguard against foot and ankle injuries. Nicole drives the mission, vision, and direction of the company; creating and implementing business operations strategies; forming strategic alliances and partnerships; and analyzing our performance for scalability and growth.Nicole has created and implemented operational and compliance processes for top performing international companies and has 8 years of military supply chain and logistics experience through her service in the US Marine Corps.To learn more about Hx Innovations, please visit: https://www.hxinnovationsinc.com/ Connect with Nicole and follow Hx Innovations via these platforms:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hx-innovati

Are you tired and discouraged from cold calling investors?Our guest, Eleanor Haglund, is the Founder of Allianse, a platform that provides a warm introduction to investors.The Allianse platform connects investors to vetted founders in an unbiased way both through search and tailored recommendations. Entrepreneurs get introductions to capital aligned with their mission and investors get early access to (and the ability to follow the journey of) startup deals they might otherwise miss.Allianse also provides founders with peer-to-peer community groups to help accelerate their learning while growing their business.Eleanor earned her MBA at Columbia University, was an inaugural member of the Innovation Scholars Program in Project Olympus and won awards in several start-up competitions like the Columbia Venture Challenge and Hack-a- Startup. To learn more about Allianse visit https://www.allianse.com/Connect with Eleanor and follow Allianse on these social platforms:Twitter: https://twitter.com/eleanorhaglund and h

Is it possible to build a global platform for media production and creatives, raise two rounds of capital and lead a fully remote team at the age of 22 and without a high school degree?Our guest, Jonas Ngoenha, says YES YOU CAN! He’s the Co-Founder & CEO of Beazy, a SaaS-enabled marketplace for content production based out of Switzerland and Mozambique. A photographer, freerunner, and a high-school drop-out, Jonas is proving that you can’t let the world define your founder journey.Launched in 2018, Jonas and the Beazy team help companies find the creatives, equipment, and locations they need for their photo/video productions and give them collaborative tools to manage everything.Beazy has worked with great companies such as Zalando, Bolt, Pinterest, Delivery Hero, Babbel, SellerX, GetYourGuide, Bombinate and many more. They currently have a growing community of over 5000 creatives in 150+ cities in 50+ countries.To learn more about Beazy, please visit: https://www.beazy.co/ - use Discount Code: BzyDemo t

What happens when a woman civil engineer decides to change the minority landscape in the construction industry?She builds an app that easily and instantly connects top-rated minority subcontractors and job seekers with construction contractors!Our guest, serial entrepreneur Angela Sanchez, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Merge-Tek - a social enterprise for construction stakeholders to discover, connect and track compliance for services from minority owned businesses. She is also the Founder and CEO of Artyfactos, a sustainable and ethically responsible jewelry business that offers pieces made from 100% recycled natural materials like orange peel and fruit and tree seeds.Angela has more than 18 years experience in the construction industry holding management positions for multi-million-dollar projects with/for the government. She was also Program Manager for Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Program for Manizales Mas, an action research project to develop the entrepreneurial capacity in Manizales - Colombia.Born

Can you actually make a living as a writer, while making an impact?Our guest, Javacia Harris Bowser, is an award-winning freelance journalist and the founder of See Jane Write, which a friend of hers once called “the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pens.” See Jane Write is a website and community for women who write and blog that Javacia founded in 2011 in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Her newly released book, Find Your Way Back, is a collection of essays that demonstrate how Javacia used writing to achieve some of her wildest dreams such as being a public speaker, having her own column, and being her own boss. The book also explores how writing, self-love, and faith helped her overcome her worst nightmare: a cancer diagnosis in 2020.Today, See Jane Write serves and brings together women from across the country and around the world. Named one of Birmingham’s Top 40 Under 40, Javacia believes we can all write our way to the life of our dreams. To learn more about See Jane Write and join this fab community,

Until we change who writes the check, we can’t change who receives the check.In 2016 our guest, Senofer Mendoza, Founder and General Partner of Mendoza Ventures, launched her purpose-driven venture capital firm to address the funding gap in pre-seed investment.Mendoza Ventures is an early and growth stage Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity venture investing in areas where they have deep domain expertise, using a proven due diligence model. The firm focuses on diversity as playing an important role in its investment decisions, and roughly 75% of their portfolio consists of startups led by immigrants, people of color, and women.With a strong background in enterprise sales and hospitality design, Senofer is a published author, innovator, and thought leader in the technology, startup, and VC space with a passion for equity and diversity.We covered a lot of ground during this delicious conversation, so be ready to take notes!To learn more about Mendoza Ventures, please visit: https://mendoza-ventures.com/ Connect with

Are your thoughts preventing you from successfully leading your startup? Our guest, Chana Mason, understands how negative thoughts can hold us back from success.A gang of armed men broke into Chana’s childhood home in Bogota, Colombia, and held her family hostage. Her family miraculously fled to Miami, but 5-year-old Chana’s sense of safety was decimated.Two decades later, Chana still dealt with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. To heal herself, she dove into a journey to rediscover her peace and joy. She’s learned from the world’s top experts on the human mind and uses her gift for turning complex ideas into easy-to-access tools for transformation.Through her straight talk, open heart, and addictive joy, Chana helps thousands clarify their vision, shift beliefs getting in their way, and manifest their dreams.Chana lives with her family in the funky Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem and works with individuals and communities around the world.Please join me on Tuesday, March 15th to meet Chana, hear her remarkab

Entrepreneurship isn’t just for adults.Our guest, Ayele Shakur, is the CEO of BUILD.org, a national nonprofit whose mission is to use entrepreneurship to ignite the potential of youth from under-resourced communities and propel them to high school, college, and career success.BUILD’s unique program offers students a four-year entrepreneurship experience designed to reinforce the Common Core, develop 21st Century Skills and motivate student engagement in school. Starting in 9th grade, BUILD students work with their peers and community mentors to develop business ideas, pitch to funders, and launch real businesses. Ayele brings over three decades of experience as an innovator in urban education. A veteran classroom educator, she taught for 11 years in the Los Angeles area and in the Boston Public Schools, and her writing has also been featured in The Hill, WBUR, Commonwealth, and Entrepreneur Magazine.To learn more about BUILD visit: https://build.org/To donate to BUILD: https://build.org/donate/Educators - lea

When you feel good, you can take on the world!Our guest, Brittany Driscoll, is the Co-Founder and CEO of Squeeze, a way better massage experience from the founders of Drybar. In fact, she was the person who took DryBar from $30M to more than $100M in revenue.Squeeze’s revolutionary app-based booking and payment platform makes scheduling, paying, tipping, and rating easy, peasy, so you simply float out with the ability to tip and rate your therapist at your leisure. You can personalize services giving you control over everything from pressure to in-room settings like lighting and sound to create the ideal indulgent atmosphere for a truly holistic massage. As a female entrepreneur, cancer survivor, and wellness advocate, Brittany has a deep passion for supporting other women in business and has become a thought-leader in her community. To learn more about Squeeze, visit: https://www.squeezemassage.com/To learn more about the Squeeze franchise opportunity, visit: https://www.squeezemassage.com/franchisingConnec

Turbulent times will happen when you're scaling a startup.Are you prepared? How do you lead when your startup’s growth slows, plateaus, or even declines?When turbulence hits, you must know how to communicate effectively with your team, investors, customers… AND manage your own turbulent internal dialogue!Our guest, Monique Maley, is a CEO, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. In 2011 she founded Articulate Persuasion, her third entrepreneurial success and a company that cultivates authentic and influential leaders. As a classically-trained actor with more than a decade spent in the theater and film industries, Monique offers her clients unique insight into influential communication. She leverages her actor’s toolkit and entrepreneurial experience to mentor leaders with a distinctive approach that emphasizes adaptability, impactful communication, and connection with others. Monique’s clients include Fortune 500 companies, complex government-funded organizations, and scrappy startups from around the w

Preparing our future founders and leaders with meaningful internships is a gift that keeps on giving.Our guest, Fredrik van Huynh, is an award-winning Swedish-Cambodian Entrepreneur, and the Co-Founder of Absolute Internship, a leading global internship program matching university students with internships in-person and remote at top companies around the globe. Since 2009, Absolute Internship has helped over 5,000 students with more than 800 corporate partners in world-class cities including Barcelona, Beijing, Hong Kong, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm and Tokyo.While developing marketable skills for future employment, the program empowers interns to step outside their comfort zone, explore new cultures and gain a global perspective that employers all around the world increasingly seek and value.To learn more about Absolute Internship visit: https://absoluteinternship.com.Connect with Fredrik and Absolute Internship via these social platforms:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/i

Conversion rate optimization is a valuable tool in a startup’s took kit. Especially for eCommerce sites.It helps you dive deep into your key audience and identify what language or messaging best speaks to their needs, resulting in greater customer conversion and retention.Our guest, AJ Davis, is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) specialist. She’s the founder of Experiment Zone, which helps online businesses grow their revenue by improving the user experience of their website using scientific methods. Before starting Experiment Zone in 2017, AJ led optimization strategy for Fortune 500 companies during her tenure at Clearhead. She was also the lead UX researcher on the Google Optimize product. To learn more about how the Experiment Zone can help your startup grow, please visit: https://experimentzone.com/Follow and connect with AJ and the Experiment Zone on social:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajdavisatx/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExperimentZone_ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/StartupIns

Newly minted founders need to quickly build credibility and social capital while building their business.Our guest, Brandy Whalen, is the co-founder of Kitcaster, a podcast booking agency that books podcast interviews for funded start-up founders, entrepreneurs with exits, and C-suit execs.Brandy’s passion is helping people quilt together patches of their personal, professional, and visionary journey to create a compelling story… and then amplify that story through guest appearances on aligned podcasts.To learn more about Kitcaster, visit: https://kitcaster.com/Here's the link to Kitcaster's FREE PGL listing: -- https://kitcaster.com/pgl/ Follow and connect with Brandy and Kitcaster via these social channels:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kitcasterpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/kitcaster/ and https://www.instagram.com/brandywhalen/Twitter: https://twitter.com/kitcasterpod and https://twitter.com/brandywhalenYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6WQJWdKWHaDimq3W2Jy6CwLinkedIn: https

Sometimes we think the safest path when confronting hard things is avoidance – “I don’t want to talk about it!”What if I offend the other person? What if they challenge my beliefs? What if I ruin a relationship?Our guest, renowned speaker, author, and equity consultant Dr. Nancy Dome, co-founded Epoch Education in 2014 to provide leaders in education and business with accessible professional development in diversity, inclusion and belonging, and equity.In her book Let’s Talk About Race (And Other Hard Things), Dr. Dome provides a framework to recognize feelings, interrupt flawed patterns, and repair relationships.As an educator for nearly three decades, Dr. Dome taught in the juvenile court and community schools teaching our most vulnerable students and has served as a Distinguished Teacher in Residence and faculty member at California State University San Marcos.Please join me on Friday, February 11th at 12pm ET to meet Dr. Dome, hear her startup stories, and learn how conflict is normal, survivable, and you

Raising businesses and babies at the same time can take a toll on ParentPreneurs! Especially Black ParentPreneurs.James Oliver, Jr. is CEO of the ParentPreneur Foundation, which empowers Black ParentPreneurs to succeed at entrepreneurship so they may leave a legacy for their beautiful Black children. As a parent of twins who were born prematurely and weighed only two pounds each, two days before he started a tech accelerator, James has a deep understanding of the challenges facing Black ParentPreneurs. James is also the founder of WeMontage.com, which turns your photos into repositionable wallpaper, and the author of The More You Hustle, The Luckier You Get: You CAN Be a Successful ParentPreneur. Grab a copy here: https://amzn.to/3Hr6rpw Join the Black ParentPreneur Foundation here: https://www.parentpreneurfoundation.org/Donate to the Black ParentPreneur Foundation here: https://opencollective.com/parentpreneur-foundation/contributeConnect with and follow James and the Black ParentPreneur Foundation here: L

Rebecca Rosenberg is the Founder & CEO of ReBokeh, a startup dedicated to enhancing the lives of those with visual impairments with simple, comprehensive assistive technology solutions. Rebecca was born with oculocutaneous albinism, a condition that affects the body's ability to produce melanin and causes moderate to severe visual impairment as well as reduced pigmentation in the hair, skin, and eyes. In July of 2019, Rebecca founded ReBokeh to develop assistive technologies more appropriate for the moderate low vision community. In 2020, Rebecca received her BS in biomedical engineering from Bucknell University and transitioned to the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design to receive her masters of the same title. After completion of the 12-month program, Rebecca was awarded an Abell Foundation Fellowship to remain with the Center and lead through implementation a global health tool for surveillance and intervention of mosquito borne diseases. She currently leads a team of 10

Founders need a deep purpose – a north star – to help them navigate the murky waters of founderhood.Our Guest, Kevin Withane, is passionate about purpose-driven startups that make the world a better place. He’s the founder of Diversity X, a pre-seed to seed-stage venture capital fund (in the works) to support UK and European-based underestimated founders of purpose-led startups and tech startups focused on solving issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion.While he’s building Diversity X, Kevin is a purpose-led senior lawyer and ethics and compliance executive at an FTSE 250 company. An independent non-executive director of various private companies, Kevin also sits on the advisory board of several startups, and he hosts the Cocktail Leadership podcast. Kevin has lived and worked in the UK, China, Hong Kong, Russia and the United States as well as traveling extensively across Europe and Asia where he has gained deep insights into the shift towards human leadership and the demand for business to align thei

Studies clearly illustrate that investing in women-led companies is great business for investors, yet the biggest chokehold in venture capital continues to be gender injustice.Our guest, Xiao Jean (XJ) Chen, is an award-winning business and technology hybrid, angel investor, and the Founder & CEO of VenturePole, a Swiss-based, AI-powered venture investment platform.VCs continue to display little innovation in how they make investment decisions, which is infected by human bias, resulting in a gender gap of over $130 billion.VenturePole is armed with smart tools, including Investment Risk Rating, Valuation Calculator, Company Strength and Weakness Analysis, as well as automated due diligence.To learn more about VenturePole, please visit: https://venturepole.com/When you join VenturePole, your first 30 days are free. To receive an entire year FREE use this discount code AFTER the 30-day trial: AndeConnect and follow XJ and VenturePole via:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/venturepole/ and https://ww