Brydge Club by Ruffin Mitchener

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...

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...