Tech Startup Network Podcast with Ashley DiBiase

Lakshmi Natarajan is an Indian-American global executive, strategic advisor, community leader, and investor with over 20 years of experience helping Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups define customer strategy, drive sustainable growth, and optimize operations. Her corporate career spans senior leadership roles across marketing, management consulting, strategy, sales, and operations, wi...

As Platform Manager of Innovation Works (IW), Jordan Marinkovich supports the growth of software, hardware and health-tech startups throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania. She has a passion for creating innovative, equitable opportunities and a community of support to advance entrepreneurs to their next stage of growth. Jordan works closely with IW’s portfolio companies to help them leverage resourc...

Rebecca Pino, MBA, BFA™, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Inertia and the Founder of Money Her Way. As a financial advisor and behavioral coach, she is deeply committed to empowering people through financial literacy and behavior-based financial planning. With a background in wealth management and a passion for simplifying money, Rebecca helps people understand their money relationships, build confide...

Anna Steffeney is the Executive Director of FamTech.org, leading the only national technology association dedicated to innovators, partners, and policymakers transforming the $648B Care Economy. Their mission is clear: to connect, amplify, and champion the builders creating solutions that make care more accessible, equitable, and sustainable. Anna’s path here began personally. After the birth of h...

Shruti Shah is General Partner at Symphonic Capital, an early-stage venture fund investing in technology that works for everyone — not just the privileged few. Symphonic's thesis is built on a simple but consequential observation: AI is collapsing the cost of serving a customer in ways that make it possible to reach communities that legacy systems were never built to serve. That's not an e...

Samder Singh Khangarot is a global entrepreneur and fintech leader bringing a rare blend of policy, entrepreneurship and international business experience to BON Credit, where he serves as co-founder and CEO. Before launching BON Credit, Samder helped the Government of India’s Ministry of Finance establish a $300 million fund-of-funds to support emerging entrepreneurs. He previously co-founded Abs...

Mandy Major is a recognized entrepreneur and healthcare operator. After 15 years in media, she became a certified doula, built one of the first telehealth doula startups in the U.S., Major Care, and then exited to Assured Health Partners. In addition to a master’s degree from Columbia University, Mandy is a trained Scrum master and holds a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt from Purdue University — experti...

Jason Kraus is the Founder & CEO of Prepare 4 VC, where he works with early-stage founders to help them become investor-ready, sharpen their narrative, and build companies that actually last. Prepare 4 VC supports startups from pre-seed through Series A, with founders collectively raising over $480M+ in capital. Jason is also an active investor in 20+ ventures and the author of Venture Forward...

Ritesh Patel is the co-founder and co-CEO of Ticket Fairy, an advanced AI-native vertical SaaS platform built specifically for the live entertainment industry. Ticket Fairy combines ticketing, fintech, AI (artificial intelligence), marketing automation, and real-time analytics to help event and festival producers across music, gaming/esports, and food & beverage increase revenue, reduce operat...

As co-founder of MAG PR, Nina Pfister brings over a decade of professional experience helping VC firms and early-stage B2B startups find their voice in crowded markets through strategic media relations. She built the boutique agency from the ground up, led by senior-only practitioners who deliver both strategy and execution without the typical agency runaround. Beyond PR, Nina is a published child...

Rachel Tsui is a Partner at The Council Capital, an early stage VC firm investing in First Builders that disrupt essential industries (industrial tech and healthcare), with her focus on healthcare as one of the essential industries. She is the former Head of Customer Success at Komodo Health, a healthcare data insights platform company, where she started as the founding CS leader of a new business...

Lindsey Whiteley is the founder of CampNexxus, a platform helping parents find and manage school break camps with clarity and confidence. After years running a successful marketing agency, Lindsey pivoted from client work to building infrastructure: creating the operating system for camp planning that parents and camps didn't know they needed. She's known for her strategic, no-BS approach:...

Courtney Greenwood is the founder of Greenwood Marketing Collective, where she offers a fractional CMO and product marketing leadership for tech startups and SaaS companies that are mission driven. With over 15+ years of experience driving go-to-market strategies for technology solutions—including AI-powered platforms, EHR systems, and educational software—Courtney has a proven track record of del...

Tony Tjan is the Chairman and Managing Partner of Cue Ball – a private investment firm based in Boston – and the CEO and Co-Founder of MiniLuxe, a personal care and lifestyle brand that seeks to transform the nail care industry. With a focus on purpose-driven long-term investments, Cue Ball has committed more than 50% of its capital for women-led, inclusionary ventures, most notably MiniLuxe, whos...

Kelsey Mullaney is a founder, builder, and operator who’s spent the last decade working across martech, data, and go-to-market teams. She’s currently the co-founder and CEO of Strata, an AI-native integration platform focused on helping companies get customer data where it needs to go—reliably and without engineering bottlenecks. During this episode, we discuss: How she started her career in marte...

Ann Marie Guzzi is focused on building leverage & community for early-stage startup founders. Through Dalmatian Ops, she gives pre-seed and seed founders time & energy back to focus on product & sales by taking over their business operations. As co-founder of the non-profit Agora Initiative, she’s created a platform in Washington, D.C. that gives women founders not just capital, but ne...

Alex Benik is the founder of Encoded Ventures, an early-stage venture fund investing in the next generation of cloud, data, and security infrastructure. Before launching Encoded Ventures, Alex spent more than two decades at Battery Ventures, where he focused on enterprise infrastructure and cybersecurity investments and partnered with founders from early stage through IPO. Drawing on his deep tech...

Devika Sarin is the founder of soal, an app making art discovery a daily ritual for millennials and gen z. Her path into entrepreneurship blends a multidisciplinary background, beginning in economics, investment management, an MBA in London, and several years consulting on M&A diligence and strategy. soal is her second startup in the art-tech space, built from a deep belief that creativity, ri...

Sonia Baschez is the founder of Bend Growth Co, a fractional CMO and marketing consultancy helping early-stage startups build momentum through narrative, growth, and press. She specializes in taking companies from zero to their first major milestones—whether that's landing enterprise deals, raising capital, or driving viral product launches. Before Bend Growth, she led growth at Atmos, a homeb...

Raja Ghawi is a Partner at Era Ventures, a venture capital firm he joined at inception in 2022 to drive transformational change in our physical world. Prior to joining Era, Raja worked at Suffolk Construction. While there, he helped to found Suffolk’s venture arm, Suffolk Technologies, which invests in startups in the AEC industry and helps them to scale by leveraging Suffolk’s network and resourc...

Lily Vittayarukskul, Waterlily's CEO and Co-Founder, was on the path to become an aerospace engineer at an exceptionally young age, a patented inventor, starting college at 14 and interning at NASA by 16. But her life took an unexpected turn when her Aunt, a cornerstone of her first-generation immigrant family, was diagnosed with terminal stage colon cancer. Post chemotherapy her family was sh...

Sarah Mattina is a strategic communications consultant with nearly a decade of experience across startups, venture capital, and financial communications. She has held in-house roles leading communications at JetBlue Ventures, the National Venture Capital Association, and Southwest Airlines, and has advised founders and funds alike at Edelman Smithfield. As founder of Mattina Media, Sarah partners...

Phylicia Koh is a General Partner at Play Ventures a leading early-stage VC fund that invests globally in gaming, consumer apps and gaming-adjacent tech. Phylicia has led investments into Alter (avatar tech company acquired by Google, Arya (AI-driven couple intimacy platform), BibleChat (fastest growing AI-powered faith app, #4 US App Store). She most recently led Alinea's $10.4m Series A (per...

Philip Toussaint is the founder of Ecopreneur, an EdTech company that helps schools and students manage, track, and fulfill community service hours. A Stonehill College graduate from the Class of 2019, Philip’s professional journey began at the age of 19 in sales and marketing, where he developed a deep passion for these fields. Outside of work, he enjoys being outdoors, volunteering, hitting the...

Megan Kane is the founder of Rellia, a platform that connects early-stage digital health, medical device, wellness, and diagnostic companies with industry experts, healthcare practitioners, and engaged investors. During this episode, we discuss: What she does at Rellia, an incubator How she got the idea for Rellia and the gaps she noticed for healthtech startups Why having a positive community is...