The Room Podcast

Welcome back to another episode of The Room Podcast! We are so excited to share another inspiring conversation with the co-founder and CEO of Vise, Samir Vasavada. Vise is an AI powered asset manager that enables financial advisors to build, manage, and explain personalized portfolios for their clients. Vise is on a mission to create financial freedom for all with a platform that allows all invest...

We are so happy to be joined by this week's guest, Sarah Flint. The Founder, CEO, and Designer of Sarah Flint, Inc. Sarah Flint proves that beauty doesn’t have to mean pain by creating comfortable and stylish luxury shoes for women who live any kind of lifestyle. When Sarah noticed a gap in the women’s shoe market, she began designing her own and she used her network to produce them at mass! She r...

Joining us this week is Kashish Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Hightouch. Hightouch is a software for your data stack that syncs any data warehouse to the SaaS tools that your business runs on, making internal usage and sharing easier for everyone. Kashish talks to us about the current state of the modern data stack community and how the industry is constantly pushing forward. He describes how this...

We have another incredible episode in store with Cynthia Plotch and Jamie Norwood, the founders of Stix , the company transforming women's health experiences. Stix was founded to “create a convenient, discreet, and judgment-free way to get the products you need.” Cynthia and Jamie walk us through their negative personal experiences that drove them to create Stix. Plus, they share their ideas to ev...

This week we chat with another phenomenal guest, William Santana Li, the founder and CEO of Knightscope. Knightscope is the developer and manufacturer of autonomous security robots. William explains how and why Knightscope was created and why he believes that the future of national security is autonomous. William details his professional experience in the auto and motor industry and how even that...

Season 7 continues with another incredible episode as we chat with Kelsey Mellard, co-founder and CEO of Sitka. Sitka is an online network of experts in medicine, technology, policy, and product with the goal of making access to specialists more available for all people. Kelsey talks to us about her initial career in healthcare, both public and private, and what that taught her before she began he...

Welcome back to The Room Podcast. We kick off Season 7 with Spencer Rascoff, co-founder and previous CEO of Zillow . Spencer walks us through how he and the team came up with the idea for Zillow and the unforgettable “Zestimate” feature. Prior to Zillow, Spencer had been the founder of Hotwire , which sold to Expedia for $685 million. Currently, Spencer is an active angel investor in more than 100...

In our final episode of season 6 of The Room Podcast, we close out with another incredible guest, Anvisha Pai, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Dover. Dover is a modernized recruiting platform that adapts to your business's needs to connect you with people that you would want to meet and that would want to meet you. In this episode, we and Anvisha discuss her journey as a multi-time founder...

In this special episode of The Room Podcast, we get to listen LIVE as Madison interviews David Yuan , long-time investor and more recently, Founder and General Partner of Tidemark Capital . Tidemark is a venture capital firm built to serve category-leading technology companies as they succeed and scale. In this episode, Dave details how he went from investor to founder and is now a fund founder wi...

We are joined this week by Andrew Savage, Founder & CEO of Suma Brands, a commerce platform focused on developing marketplace brands, specifically on Amazon. Andrew is using his experience from helping establish early E-Commerce for Target and Amazon to guide other growing retailers to high-level success. Andrew and Suma Brands will “find, acquire, and help brands realize their potential.” In this...

S6E5: Lisa Bubbers , Co-Founder of Studs , is Bringing the Ear-Piercing Industry into the Modern Era with Integrated Piercing and Shopping Experiences Our season continues with Lisa Bubbers, Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Studs, the modern platform for ear-piercing and earrings. Studs is all about safe and accessible ear-piercing for all people. Plus they have an easy-to-use, refreshingly b...

We are returning this week with another incredible guest, Sarah LaFleur. Sarah came up with the idea to create comfortable and fashionable, professional attire for women because she herself found that whenever she was searching for work outfits, it seemed that fashion would always be sacrificed for comfort. In this episode, we discuss the current state of the apparel market and how things have cha...

Season 6 continues with Sandra Abrevaya, CEO and co-founder alongside her husband, of Synapticure. Synapticure's mission is to make sure no one living with ALS is ever told, “I'm sorry, I can’t help you” because Brian and Sandra know firsthand how difficult it can be to receive ALS treatment. We chat with Sandra about balancing a romantic relationship and a business relationship with your signific...

Season 6 of The Room returns with Julie Bornstein, Founder and CEO of THE YES, a personalized web-based fashion retailer that works with hundreds of brands, large and small. Julie describes what she learned from her time at Nordstrom, Sephora, and Stitch Fix and how she was able to use those experiences to create THE YES. Julie gives advice to new founders and the best first steps to take to raise...

Thank you for joining us for Season 6 of The Room Podcast! We are starting strong with our first guest, Shuo Wang. Her company Deel was evaluated at over $5 billion last year from their revolutionary work in remote work and international payrolling. Shuo joins us to talk about her experience at the Y Combinator and the impact it had on her work with Deel. Subjects continue with how the pandemic wa...

Season 2 of Movers & Shakers ends with another incredible guest, Founder and CEO of Meet Cute, Naomi Shah. Meet Cute is a “rom-com incubator.” Audio, written video, short-form video, long-form video, etc. Meet Cute produces them all. Naomi tells us what inspired the idea for Meet Cute and what it was like for her to raise funding at the start of her founding journey. Naomi also speaks on balancing...

Our mini-series, Movers & Shakers, continues with Rachel Goddard, a partner at Cooley LLP for over 22 years. Rachel walks us through her path to becoming a lawyer before becoming a partner at Cooley. She explains why she loves her job and what she and Cooley do to assist emerging managers to start their funds. Rachel also shares some best practices on things new managers might now know, like manag...

Season 2 of “Movers and Shakers” continues with a legend in the digital marketing ad space, Zach Coelius , Co-Founder of Triggit and Managing Partner at Coelius Capital . Zach and his sister, Susan, played an instrumental role in modernizing the way advertisers use targeted digital ads. Zach deep dives into “retargeting,” a form of online advertising where the ads are targeted to consumers based o...

We are kicking off our second entitlement of “Movers and Shakers” with a bang! In The Room with Mary D’Onofrio , partner and co-founder of the growth investment practice at Bessemer Venture Partners . Topics this week include the very active investing climate of 2022 and how to be proactive when searching for businesses to partner with, how to find, obtain, and retain skilled, specialized new hire...

In The Room with Alexandra Wilkis Wilson , Co-Founder of Gilt Groupe , GLAMSQUAD , and Clerisy . In our final episode of the season, and 50th episode of The Room Podcast, Alexandra shares her experience breaking into the online retail fashion world with her smash hit, Gilt Groupe, alongside her partner, Alexis Maybank. Alexandra explains how she had limited merchandising experience but took advant...

In The Room with Rathna Sharad, Founder, and CEO of FlavorCloud. With the constant growth of social media and the impacts of the pandemic, more businesses and brands are looking to export or import internationally. And since consumer expectations are only increasing, there is immense pressure on independent companies to unlock access faster. Enter, FlavorCloud, who takes care of the whole cross-bo...

In The Room with Mac Conwell , the Managing Partner and founder of RareBreed Ventures . After founding a few of his own startups, Mac’s life changed when he learned about the world of VCs and funders. This inspired him to start RareBreed Ventures, a pre-seed fund that invests in founders outside of large tech ecosystems. Mac and RareBreed provide resources, capital, and financial education to new...

In The Room with Ash Rust , Managing Partner at Sterling Road . Since moving to Silicon Valley in 2008, Ash Rust has become an experienced mentor to startup founders and funders. Ash realized that he didn't like the traditional Silicon Valley approach of meeting someone for a small amount of time before making a decision on a large check, as fast as possible, because “that's the cool thing to do.”...

In The Room with Kelly Graziadei and Joanna Lee Shevelenko , General Partners of F7 . For this episode of The Room, we chat with the women who lead the investments and operations of F7. F7 is a seed investment fund, composed of seven senior female operators. With their combined 16 years at Facebook, Kelly and Joanna explain what they learned from their time there and how they want to use their exp...

In The Room with Faye Keegan, Co-Founder, and CEO of Dipsea. Consumers are leaning more and more into audio as their primary medium for receiving content. Faye describes how Dipsea is the first of its kind by using the new consumer love of personal audio to empower women. “Sexy audio stories and intimate wellness sessions to help you find joy and confidence in and out of the bedroom.” This episode...