Tech Startup Network Podcast with Ashley DiBiase

Dylan Morris is the Founder & CEO of Stone Power Technologies. Prior to starting the company, Dylan has built and run manufacturing companies since high school, scaling manufacturing at Anduril and leading hardware delivery as Head of Manufacturing at Rainmaker, shipping every drone, dispersion system, and radar. During this episode, we discuss: What Stone Power is building How the idea came t...

Allison Byers is a founder, investor, and capital access advocate working to build a funding system that includes The Rest of Us. She’s the founder of Scroobious, a relationship-first capital access platform, author of the book Fundraising for The Rest of Us, co-authored California’s landmark Fair Investment Practices by Venture Capital Companies Law, and serves on multiple boards. Previously, she...

Casey Williams is a Partner & COO at Fenway Summer, a VC firm investing in early-stage fintech companies. She focuses on companies building infrastructure for the financial system, with a particular conviction for founders raising their first institutional round in complex, policy-adjacent markets. Casey has walked a non-linear path to venture capital. She began her career as a fourth-grade ma...

Andrew Rush is the President and CEO of Star Catcher, a pioneering company advancing the development of the world’s first space-based energy grid. A seasoned space industry executive, Andrew is widely recognized for scaling groundbreaking ventures and driving transformational growth across the commercial and defense space sectors. He first gained prominence as President and CEO of Made In Space, w...

Jodi Innerfield is a marketing strategist and consultant helping enterprise companies and high-growth start-ups with product launches, storytelling, and go-to-market strategy. Previously, she spent eight years at Salesforce as a marketing leader spanning content and solutions marketing, GTM, product launches, messaging and positioning, and PLG. Jodi’s marketing and leadership perspectives reach au...

Porter Geer is one of the cofounders of Girl Math Capital, the alternative investing community for women. Founded in 2023, Girl Math Capital exists to support women on their wealth-building journeys by increasing the number of women investing in private markets. To date, Girl Math Capital has deployed over $1M into 60+ companies. Porter has spent her career in the crypto and digital asset space an...

Dakota Labine is the Director of Engineering at ThinkOrbital, where he leads multidisciplinary teams building next-generation space infrastructure and advanced X-ray technologies. Starting in a hands-on Assembly, Integration, and Test leadership role before growing into engineering leadership, Dakota has helped scale the company from rapid hardware execution into broader technical and organization...

Jesus Vidaurri is a community and ecosystem builder, entrepreneur, and talent strategist passionate about creating spaces where people, ideas, and innovation thrive. He is the Founder and CEO of Tampa Bay Tech Week, a community-led initiative designed to bring together founders, technologists, investors, creatives, and builders while elevating the Tampa Bay region as a destination for innovation a...

Nalina Murthy is the founder of HealthTech Trailblazers. As a Syndicate Lead and angel investor, she focuses on women’s health, longevity, caregiving, and healthtech infrastructure — a sector she believes is long overdue for bold innovation. Her path to investing is grounded in deep operator experience. As a former engineering and product leader for Global Fortune 500 companies, she brings rare te...

Joe Zhou is Co-Founder and CTO of Monk. Prior to Monk, Joe was an engineer at Snap (top 30 contributor to the codebase), Google, and QuickBooks. Joe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania where he received his B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Engineering. During this episode, we discuss: The journey of Joe’s career What Monk does and how the idea came about Joe's engineering philoso...

Kirsten Co is a New York–based founder, operator, startup advisor, and venture scout. As the founder of K & Company LLC, her firm advises Seed to Series A founders and emerging technology companies. She helps early-stage companies win and keep enterprise customers through commercialization, strategic partnerships, customer growth, and scaling from founder-led execution to institutional adoptio...

Pam Kavalam is a fractional Community Leader at The Pitch Fund as well as Not Another CEO. She is also the NYC Chapter Lead for Angel Squad and a Venture Fellow for Hustle Fund. She previously did product, customer success, and operations at ClassPass, Chief and Lucid Green as well as taught English on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. She lives in Astoria, Queens. During this episode...

Brandon Florian is the Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Grid Aero. Brandon is a seasoned aerospace and defense leader with experience spanning strategy, innovation, and growth across government and commercial sectors. He has led business development at top firms like Northrop Grumman, Starburst, and Mandala Space Ventures. Brandon combines technical depth with strategic vision and an unm...

Aymbré Paige, MBA ‘25, is an Investor at Mendoza Ventures, where she focuses on early-stage investments across AI, fintech, and cybersecurity. She plays an active role in sourcing, diligence, and portfolio support. Aymbré earned her MBA from Babson College with concentrations in Finance and Marketing. During her time on campus, she was selected as a Babson Board Fellow and was a recipient of the D...

Geena Greguric is a growth strategist, startup advisor, and founder with a track record of helping companies turn marketing into measurable revenue. With more than a decade of experience across startups and scaling businesses, she specializes in go-to-market strategy, brand positioning, demand generation, and growth marketing for companies navigating rapid growth. Previously, Geena led marketing a...

Mike Chambers is an entrepreneur and growth marketer who has built and sold ventures across tech and media. He is Founder and CEO of Ridley, a company redefining how people buy and sell homes using AI. Previously, he co-founded Moonbeam, a podcast discovery platform acquired by Audacy, and founded Bang Bang Media, a creative agency specializing in viral marketing campaigns for brands like Smashd,...

Carmen Banks, PhD is the Founder & CEO of MelanInScience, an organization that’s reimagining the future of biotech and life sciences by building pathways for underrepresented talent. They connect academic training to industry opportunity through industry-backed programming, internships, and partnerships with leading biotech and biopharma companies. Since their founding in 2024, Carmen and her...

Elvia Perez is a Senior Associate at Las Olas Venture Capital (LOVC). Before joining the team, she built her experience in investment banking at Barclays and in early-stage investing at Inicio Ventures. Elvia holds a B.A. in Economics and Entrepreneurship from Brown University, where she was selected as the Economics Department’s commencement speaker. While at Brown, she founded EmpowerU, an edtec...

David Berg is the CEO and founder of CommanderAI, a company at the forefront of leveraging artificial intelligence to transform the waste management industry. Under his leadership, CommanderAI has raised over $5 million in funding and grown to a team of 15+ employees serving customers across the U.S. and Canada. The company was selected from 8,000 applicants as one of 70 startups to participate in...

Shweta Agrawal is a high-impact technology and AI product leader known for turning bold ideas into scalable products and growth. She is the Chief Product Officer at Boston New Technology and Co-President of ProductCamp Boston, she helps founders, executives, and product teams build winning products and accelerate go-to-market success. With experience spanning AI, product strategy, GTM, digital tra...

Ola Jewusiak, VP of Marketing at Jump Capital, is a generalist who tends to do her best work in environments that are a little undefined, where there’s real urgency and no clear playbook. At Jump, she leads brand, website, content, and events, and regularly advises founders on how to tell their story when it matters most. Her work has included launching a full website and brand refresh in 12 weeks...

Erynn Petersen is the founder of Emme, a seed-stage healthcare company building the consumer decision layer for healthcare costs. They start at the highest-leverage moment — insurance and basic medical services — where consumers routinely make four-figure mistakes and trust is earned quickly. Erynn has spent her career building and scaling consumer technology at scale (hundreds of millions of MAU)...

Leah Nurik is the co-founder and CEO of Brandi AI, the leading AI visibility and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform. Nurik launched Brandi in 2025 after recognizing that generative AI was transforming discovery and creating a critical visibility gap for brands. Today, she leads the company in empowering CMOs, product marketers, digital strategists, content creators and PR leaders with d...

Jim Conti is the Talent Partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners and has been with the firm since 2021. In this role, Jim provides strategic talent support and consulting to the firm's portfolio of companies. Prior to Hyde Park Venture Partners, Jim served as head of people at dscout and Sprout Social — both Chicago-based software startups. In these roles, Jim built, grew, and oversaw teams acros...

Garima Shah is a dynamic, results-oriented FinTech executive with over 18 years of extensive experience driving revenue growth through strategic business development, corporate acquisitions, and a motivational, hands-on leadership approach. As a sought-after industry expert with a vast network and deep-rooted connections, Shah is committed to revolutionizing the payments and fintech landscape. As...