Brydge Club by Ruffin Mitchener

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I’m your host, Ruffin, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Alex Taylor, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Perelel, the first OB-GYN-founded vitamin brand for women offering tailored nutrition for each stage of the hormonal journey. Since its inception, Perelel has made an impressive mark, selling over 48 million capsules in the last year and raising $12 million from i...

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I’m thrilled to sit down with Sharon Gillenwater, author of Scaling with Soul and a resilient entrepreneur. Sharon’s journey has been nothing short of extraordinary—she raised $3 million in venture capital for her first business before pivoting to bootstrap her second business, Boardroom Insiders, to a $25 million exit. Now a vir...

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I’m your host, Ruffin, and today I’m joined by Erin Levine, Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Divorce, a platform that revolutionizes the divorce process. Hello Divorce combines self-service software and expert services to make divorce less stressful and more affordable. Erin’s 15 years of legal experience have led her to create a service that costs a tenth of the typ...

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Valentina Rodriguez, investor at Wonder Ventures, an early-stage venture fund based in Los Angeles. Valentina has been involved in investments such as Clutter, Tala, Honey, Whatnot, Coinbase, and Bird. Before entering venture, she began her career at Morgan Stanley and founded Cannaves Oliva, a functi...

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I’m excited to be joined by Jess Catorc, co-founder of Carry, the all-in-one platform for tax-advantaged accounts, investments, and strategy designed for business owners and high-earning professionals. Jess is an award-winning brand strategist who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and startups scale their reach and revenu...

Welcome to The Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I’m excited to be joined by Miri Buckland, COO and co-founder of Landing, soon to be rebranded as Zeen. Miri co-founded Landing alongside her Stanford Business School classmate, Ellie, and together they’ve scaled the product to nearly 1 million downloads and raised over $9 million in venture capital from investors like Cowboy...

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I’m excited to be joined by Claire Biernacki, Principal Investor at BBG Ventures. BBG Ventures is known for being one of the most active investors in women and underrepresented founders across the U.S. Claire has been involved in investments such as Zola, Spring Health, and Blueland. Before joining BBG, she earned her MBA fro...

Welcome back to the Brydge Club Podcast! Today we welcome Emily Persky , Co-Founder of ‘ I Have This Friend’ , A curated directory of lifestyle services that allows you to book private chefs, interior designers, photographers, and more. They collaborate with top emerging talent to make these curated services accessible. Before co-founding 'I Have This Friend' with her childhood best friend...

In this episode of Brydge Club, we sit down with Cheryl Kellond , the founder and CEO of Play Money , a groundbreaking investment platform designed to help everyday investors build a diversified startup portfolio without committing to full-time angel investing. Cheryl shares her entrepreneurial journey and insights into the startups she has founded, including Bia Sport, Apostrophe, and Play Money....

In this episode of Brydge Club we welcome Co-Founder and CEO of Bümo , Joan Nguyen !  Joan shares a glimpse of her entrepreneurial journey thus far, highlighting her path to Bümo, offering solutions to the US childcare crisis in 2024, her experience as a childcare provider, pivoting from brick and mortar to starting Bümo, navigating VC for the first time, plans to expand Bümo across the US and muc...

In this episode of Brydge Club, we welcome Tanvi Lal, an investor at Intuit Ventures and the founder of VC Unleashed. Tanvi shares her inspiring journey from consulting to venture capital (VC). Learn about the glaring statistics on the lack of diversity in VC and how VC Unleashed is providing real opportunities for people of color to break into the industry.  Key topics discussed: Tanvi Lal’s care...

On this episode of Brydge Club we are joined by Founder & CEO of Aydn , Elizabeth Russo . We discuss Elizabeth’s journey to founding Adyn, modern issues in prescribing birth control, her personal battle with birth control side effects, her career in genetics, why she became an entrepreneur and much more! More on Elizabeth Ruzzo, PhD and Aydn : Adyn is the first and only test designed to preven...

On this episode of the Play Brydge podcast, we sit down with Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim, founders of ingenious his and hers prenatal supplement company, WeNatal . We discuss the modern fertility crisis, the conceptualization, launch and operations of WeNatal, Ronit and Vida’s personal journeys with prenatal supplements, tips on increasing your chances of a successful pregnancy and more! Purch...

For over 20 years, Alexandra has been a trailblazer in business innovation. She’s launched and scaled over a half dozen successful, multi-channel consumer brands. Now, as CEO of Alix , she oversees rapid growth while ensuring that each Alix family receives the world-class care they deserve.  Alexandra is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2021, she has served on the Board...

Kate McAndrew is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Baukunst , a collective of creative technologists advancing the art of building companies. She is leading pre-seed rounds in companies at the frontiers of technology and design from Baukunst’s inaugural $100M VC fund.  Kate has invested in over 70 companies at the concept stage, helping founding teams build businesses from scratch. Prior to star...

Mallory Contois leads Community at Mercury and founded The Old Girls Club , a virtual community for women in the second and third stages of their careers in male-dominated fields. She is also an angel investor & advisor to early-stage founders, focusing on those building in the consumer social, art & creativity, women's health, and marketplaces. Mallory previously spent time on the ear...

Natalie Barbu is a content creator turned entrepreneur. She began her social media career in 2011 on YouTube as a beauty creator. Since then she has grown her following to over 380,000 across platforms. She is also the host of The Real Reel Podcast , a show where she speaks to entrepreneurs, business leaders, and creators to talk about the real reel - not the highlight reel. Natalie is also the CE...

Kate Sanner is an entrepreneur and marketing expert with a passion for sustainability and consumer behavior. With over eight years of experience at Anheuser-Busch, Kate honed her skills in brand development, notably contributing to iconic campaigns such as Bud Light's "Dilly Dilly" era. Co-founding Beni during her time at Kellogg School of Management, Kate spearheaded the mission to...

Joan is the co-founder and CEO of Arise , whose vision is to create a world where everyone, everywhere has the freedom to heal from eating disorders and disordered eating. Joan brings her own lived experience with eating disorders and mental health conditions alongside a deep empathy for the diversity of the mental health journeys of so many others to drive her work as a product leader in the ment...

Madeleine Cohen is the founder of Nelle Atelier , a premium off-the-rack denim brand for women under 5’4”.  Madeleine has built a career in brand building and start-ups - most recently at Bala , Casper , and Estee Lauder . Her story is simple: She had a closet full of jeans but nothing to wear. At 5'1", she always had to stand on her toes and imagine what her new jeans would look like hem...

In this episode, we’re chatting with Julia Haber, founder and CEO of Home From College. Julia quit her job at Snap to build Home From College, the professional development platform built specifically for career starters and young professionals.    Home From College offers a mix of opportunities from research assignments to social media campaigns for college students, while empowering students to s...

Natalie Sportelli, Director at Bullish, a consumer venture capital firm and creative agency based in New York, joins us to discuss consumer investing and her journey from Forbes to Venture Capital. Natalie previously joined Thingtesting, a B2B platform for brands, as employee number four and has worked across journalism as an Associate Editor at Forbes and served as a Director at venture capital f...

Paige Hendrix Buckner is the CEO of All Raise, a community and mission to accelerate the success of female and non-binary founders and funders to build a more prosperous and suitable future. Female representation at the partner level across fund sizes is consistently low, and All Raise is grounded in reality and measurable outcomes.  Prior to All Raise, Paige has founded ClientJoy, a modern busine...

Anna is the co-founder and CEO of Trayd, a construction payroll platform designed for same-day pay, replacing multiple outdated solutions with an all-in-one platform designed with payments at its core. Trayd is backed by Y Combinator and the team is based in New York City. Prior to founding Trayd, Anna worked on the global marketing team at Marriott and was the co-founder of Curtn, a video dating...

In this podcast episode, I'm chatting with Adela Jamal, the General Partner & Co-Founder at Milemark Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on diverse teams utilizing applied AI to transform existing business models. Adela shares insights into Milemark's investment thesis, emphasizing their commitment to startups leveraging applied AI. She discusses her decision to pursu...