Brydge Club by Ruffin Mitchener

Melody Hahm leads community and platform at Harlem Capital, an early stage venture capital firm. There she is responsible for Harlem's content and partnerships strategy and works closely with the fund's portfolio companies to equip them with resources to succeed. Prior to joining the venture world, Melody was a business and financial reporter. Most recently she was Yahoo Finance's west...

Julia O'Mara is the Co-founder and COO of Pickle, the peer-to-peer rental marketplace making it easy and affordable to rent high-quality clothing and accessories within your community and beyond. In less than a year, Pickle introduced a new way to shop , brought 50,000+ items into circulation, and powered lucrative side hustle. Before founding Pickle, Julia served as Senior Product Manager at...

Julie Wroblewski, the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Magnify Ventures, which debuted a $52M fund investing into the care economy. Before launching Magnify, Julie spent over a decade as an investor and advisor with institutional-scale family offices and mission-focused organizations, including Pivotal Ventures, led by Melinda French Gates. Julie is a Kauffman Fellow, member of All Raise, and a...

Steph is the founder of PIN (Power in Numbers), a VC-backed company that enables communities of people (like people from Stanford, YC, and Coinbase) to invest in startups together. She's also writes the newsletter, "Demystifying VC", to help founders navigate the fundraising process and to teach new angels about early stage investing. Steph was formerly a VC at NEA where she helped i...

Amber is a General Partner and full-time investor at The Council Fund, where she invests at Pre-seed stage in software built for legacy industries like Construction, Logistics, and Healthcare. Before transitioning to running her own venture firm full time, Amber worked at companies like Eli Lilly, Apple, Snap, and Cruise in various Operations leadership roles. She's worked at every stage from...

Maggie Zheng is the Head of Fundraising at Wefunder, a YC company, where she works with early and growth stage startups. Before Wefunder, she was the sixth employee and Chief of Staff at Doorvest, building it from pre-seed to post Series A, working across many functions including product, marketing, operations, and strategy. Maggie is also an investor at Potluck VC, a venture firm focusing on AAPI...

Kristine Locker is the Founder and CEO of Locker, the social commerce platform supporting shoppers at every step of their consumer journey, from initial discovery until purchase. Locker enables users to save any product they want while browsing online into one, organized place. As an avid online shopper, Kristine found herself constantly taking screenshots of products or keeping dozens of tabs ope...

This week on the podcast we’re chatting with Dulma Altan. If you dont already know her, she’s a creator on TikTok and host of the Due Dilligence Podcast where she’s interviewed guests including Sophia Amoruso founder of Nasty Gal and creator of GirlBoss. Before TikTok, Dulma started her career with Google before jumping into the world of startups and venture capital. Dulma has been such an inspira...

This week on the show I’m joined by Madeline Darcy, the founder & GP of Kaya Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm building a healthier, happier, and more connected future. Previous investments include Ellevest, Sanzo, Brightland, and Republic. Prior to launching Kaya Ventures, Madeline was a VP at Visible Ventures, Harvard Business school graduate, and consultant. Connect with Madelin...

Audrey Micay Wisch dropped out of Stanford University to build her ed-tech startup Curious Cardinals, which did $600K ARR its first year of business. This year, Audrey was named Forbes #30under30 at just 20 years old. Audrey was in her first year of Stanford, when she started tutoring a 7th grader on criminal justice, gender equality & more. Since then, Audrey Micay Wisch and her co-founder Al...

Nichole Wischoff is the solo-founder & GP of Wischoff Ventures where she’s investing into pre-seed & Seed stage unsexy businesses out of a $20M fund II. Before venture, Nichole started her career working at 2 successful fintech companies, one that was acquired by Walmart. In this episode we chat about everything from, tips for having a successful startup career, how she got started angel i...

Nicole DeTommaso is an investor with Harlem Capital, a seed stage fund investing into diverse founders. She is a former Investment Banker and Forbes 30 Under 30. Today, Nicole dedicates her free time to providing investor education and helping others break into venture capital. If you don’t already follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter, it’s a must! Nicole DeTommaso shares weekly job openings in vent...

Avni Barman is the founder & CEO of GenShe, a community of 16K+women in startups, with a mission to connect 1 billion GenZ women to opportunities in tech. She first got started after working in CS with big tech and realizing how few women break into the space. Avni started hosting make-athons, the first at Snap Chat headquarters, which attracted women from accross the country. Avni bootstrappe...

This week on the Play Brydge podcast, we welcomed Sam Safer Valentine, Co-founder & COO of Norby. Norby is an AI-powered communications platform that helps creators and entrepreneurs amplify their work through a lightweight website, event hosting, texting and email campaigns, lead collection, and so much more. Before Norby, Sam pursued a career in marketing and worked at organizations includin...

During this week’s episode, I spoke with Zehra all about her experience building founder community at Republic and with the Z list, her community of 12K investors and founders in NYC. Zehra first started learning about venture capital investing while studying at Columbia. After graduation, she accepted an offer with the Republic venture team. Since then, Zehra has focused her work on democratizing...

Tiffany Faith Demers is the CEO & founder of Upkeep , the trusted way to book your botox, facial, & other MedSpa needs. Tiffany was working in skincare, when she started to notice millennials and gen z consumers shift spending from beauty products to medical aesthetics. In fact, the Global Medical Aesthetics Market Size is expected to surpass $30 billion by 2030 💅 Upkeep Beauty is backed...

Loved having an honest conversation, with Claudia Laurie, all about her journey co-founding Prive, the revenue platform for commerce enabling subscriptions & more. Claudia is also a podcast co-host of The Room Podcast, which is ranked top 5% globally. Fun fact, Claudia first met her Prive investor, Jesse Draper of Halogen Ventures, while recording an episode for her show 💥 In this episode of...

Isabella Mandis is a freshman at Harvard University and founder of Girls Who VC, the first organization dedicated to bringing young women in to the field of venture capital. 🔥 Isabella is the first undergrad student to be accepted into The MBA Fund. 💻 Prior to Harvard, she learned to code with Girls Who Code and worked with a number of startups 🤩 She's most inspired by Audrey Micay Wisch th...

Meet Juliette Richert 👋 She's an investor at The Artemis Fund -- a seed stage VC firm investing in female founders building businesses that modernize wealth. Their portfolio includes Hello Divorce, UNest, Reel, Green Room + more! The fund was co-founded by two women, Leslie Goldman Tepper & Diana Murakhovskaya, who are on a mission to diversify wealth. During this episode, Juliette and I...

Tech entrepreneur Jessica Chang is the CEO and Co-Founder of WeeCare, the largest childcare network in America. A committed early childhood education advocate and mom of two, she is set on solving the childcare crisis. Prior to co-founding WeeCare, Jessica was COO of Affinity China, a principal investor at Macquarie Capital, and VP of Marketplace at Radpad. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she is a pres...

Meet Meera Clark, she's an investor at Redpoint Ventures, former investment banker, Forbes 30 Under 30, & Kauffman Fellow ✨   In this episode of the Future is Female, Meera and I talked all about:  ⚡ Pivoting careers from investment banking to early stage investing   👼 How she made her first angel investments & tips for others looking to get started!  🎗 Her favorite...

Why are there so many dating apps to help us find love, but so little to help us keep it?  At Stanford, Ali Maggioncalda studied Human Behavioral Biology and researched how to improve relationships.   During grad school, Ali launched Lovewick: Relationship App: a new couples app that helps you learn about each other and share new experiences.   To celebrate Valentine's day, I'm shar...

Our very first Future is Female episode featuring an investor!! 🎙  Ashley Aydin is a principal at Vamos Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund backing diverse founders.   In this episode, Ashley and I dive into:   🖥 Her early career at Morgan Stanley & a YC startup  📚 Why she pursued her MBA at MIT Sloan (***and who the MBA might not be right for)  💥 Her drive...

What if Noom + Headspace + Betterment had a baby?   👶 Aura Finance is a mindful money management platform that helps you put your money to work and anxiety to rest.   In the first episode of 2023 🎇, I interviewed Kelsey Willock, my former WFU classmate (Go Deacs!) and co-founder of Aura.   We discuss everything from:  🏦 Her decision to leave Goldman Sachs  👋 Meeting he...

Sandy Lin has over 500K followers on TikTok, and now she's building a tech business around it. Her startup, Creobase , is the new HubSpot for creators. Making it easy for creators to find, manage and automate their brand partnerships. It's fascinating to watch creators like Sandy build brand and community around their tech businesses. In fact, Sandy has already had success partnering and angel inv...