How could buying a pair of shoes in Paris lead to launching a global fashion technology business? Olga Vidisheva, founder of Shoptiques, a YC graduate and former Goldman Sachs analyst, did this very thing. Vidisheva, an immigrant from the Soviet Union, did not set out to be an entrepreneur but got the bit in her mouth after discovering a big gap in the retail marketplace while traveling abroad. Vidisheva sat down with BroadMic host, Erica Duignan Minnihan, to share her unique and compelling founder’s story. Show Notes Shoptiques Does International Shopping for You How Shoptiques' 30-Year-Old CEO Is Using Tech To Take Indie Boutiques Global (And Make Millions) FemTech: Olga Vidisheva, Shoptiques.com YC Startup School Radio: Shoptiques CEO Olga Vidisheva On The Challenge Of Hiring Great People by Colleen Taylor Olga Vidisheva, Founder of Shoptiques (YC W12) Olga Vidisheva Crunchbase Profile ELLE CV: Olga Vidisheva, Shoptiques Founder and CEO Career Contessa: Meet Olga Vidisheva CEO & Founder, Shoptiques Ideamensch: Olga Vidisheva – Founder and CEO of Shoptiques.com Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

Can taking outside capital kill your startup? Christina Wallace, is the VP of Growth at Bionic, a company that brings startup and VC experience to enterprise.  Previously she was founding director of BridgeUp: STEM, an educational initiative to captivate, inspire, and propel girls and minorities into computer science. Erica Duignan Minnihan and Christina talk about lessons learned from a failed startup, fundraising, and finding the right cofounder. Show Notes Going Against the Flow: Christina Wallace, Founder of BridgeUp: STEM at AMNH by Charu Sharma, Huffington Post BridgeUp: STEM Helen Gurley Brown May Never Have Used a Computer. But Her Trust is Into Coding by Tate Williams, Inside Philanthropy Let’s Get Real About Startups And Mental Health Christina Wallace, Medium After 10 Months, A Boatload Of Press, And A CEO's Departure, Apparel Startup Quincy Shuts Down by Alyson Shontell, Business Insider My Father was an Abusive Sociopath and I was the Only One He Had Left by Christina Wallace, elle.com Tranche Investing Will Kill Your Startup--Here's Why by Tom Kriegistein, Forbes The Moment I Lost Everything by Kathryn Minshew, Medium Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places - How to Find a Co-founder First Round Review Genius in Madness? 72% of Entrepreneurs Affected by Mental Health Conditions by Debra Carpenter, StartupGrind Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

Liz Wessel is the cofounder of WayUp, an app that helps college students find jobs and internships. After graduating from Penn, she worked at Google, first in Mountain View on the Partnerships and Grants team and then in India to lead brand initiatives. After her tour of duty in India, Wessel returned to the U.S. and cofounded WayUp. Season 3 Host Erica Duignan and Liz chat about the inspiration for WayUp, how much money you should raise for your seed round, and her secret to finding mentors and advisors. Show Notes UniEats Gives College Students 10% Restaurant Discounts Peter Cohan, Forbes Money Millennials: Liz Wessel and J.J Fliegelman Making Job Hunting Easier by Kofie Yeboah, The Huffington Post An ex-Googler turned startup CEO asks all her employees to 'cold email' their idols — here's why by Jacquelyn Smith, Business Insider How To Change Your Startup's Name: A Checklist by Brian Solomon, Forbes Do Things That Don't Scale by Paul Graham Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

Gina Bianchini is the Founder and CEO of Mightybell, a platform that enables you to build a community and a business on your own branded mobile apps. She is also the co-founder of Sheryl Sandberg’s leanin.org, an online community dedicated to supporting women’s career development. Bianchini has been featured as one of Fortune Magazine’s “40 under 40”, Huffington Post’s 10 Technology Ultimate Game Changers, and more. Bianchini shares the lessons learned from her first couple of startups, how that experience shaped the founding and development of her current startup, Mightybell, why there’s a real need for another social network, and her takeaways for founders raising capital. Show Notes Sheryl Sandberg Launches ‘Lean In’ Organization As A Global Community For Workplace Equality by Colleen Taylor, TechCrunch Building Better Social Networks: Beyond Likes, Follows and Hashtags by Gina Bianchini, LinkedIn Mightybell Wants To Help Businesses Build Mobile Communities by Leena Rao, Fortune Glam Buys Ning for $150M, Andreessen Joins Board by Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

Alicia Thomas is the founder and CEO of Dibs, a B2B digital platform that gives studios quick and easy access to real-time pricing for the boutique fitness classes their clients want. A former developer and director of data strategy at Citigroup, Thomas chose to start a company in the fitness industry because she knew she would have a competitive advantage. BroadMic host, Erica Duignan, and Thomas discuss what she's learned about focus and “getting it done” when it comes to fundraising, her advice for female founders, and her perspective as a woman of color in tech. Show Notes Dibs is Seeded to Bring Dynamic Pricing to Fitness Industry by Lora Kolodny, The Wall Street Journal

Even the Pope is talking about it, but what exactly is impact investing? Meet Fran Seegull, Executive Director of the U.S Impact Investing Alliance, a project of the Ford Foundation and Omidyar Network. Fran is also an Adjunct Professor at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Senior Fellow at the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab, both at USC’s Marshall School of Business. Kelly Hoey and Fran chat about impact investing, the drivers behind this growing market, and how social entrepreneurs can find investors. Show Notes The Impact Economy: An Open Letter to the 2016 Presidential Candidates by Fran Seegull Beyond Tradeoffs: The Rise of the Impact Unicorns by Fran Seegull Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation Two Years After White House Commitments: $1 Billion Deployed for Impact by US Investors In 2014 29 Orgs Committed $1.5 Billion to Impact Investing. Where’s the Money after 18 Months? socialimpactinvestment.org "Impact Investing: What Will It Take to Get to Scale?" Conscious Company Magazine, January/February 2016 "Impact Investing for the Rest of Us," Conscious Company Magazine, Spring 2015 Online video interview, “Is Impact Investing A Solution To Global Problems?” Forbes, July 13, 2016 Online video interview, “An Eventful Year in Impact Investing – An Interview with ImpactAssets’ Fran Seegull,” Next Billion, January 14, 2016 Online video interview, “Impact Investing No Longer Reserved for Country Club Crowd,” The Street, April 2015 Impact Investing With Fran Seegull of ImpactAssets by Charley Wright, DailyAlts The Landscape of Social Impact Investment Research: Trends and Opportunities University of Oxford Introducing the Impact Investing Benchmark Cambridge Associates The Diana Project F.B. Heron Foundation Is Going 'All In' by Anne Fields, Forbes How Etsy's IPO Could Spark Investor Interest in B Corps by Dennis Price, Entrepreneur Toms Shoes Is Investing In Companies That Actually Care About The World by Alexander Kaufman, Huffington Post Honest Tea: It Ain’t Easy Being Mission-Based by Leon Kaye, Triple Pundit Ben & Jerry’s CEO: How to Get Your Social Impact Game On by Renee Faris, Triple Pundit Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

Aileen Gemma Smith recognized opportunity as she watched her community recover in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  She believed in her business idea so strongly that she sold her house in order to fund it. Smith is cofounder and CEO of Vizalytics, and creator of Mind My Business, an app now helping over 3,000 local business owners get critical data specific to their geo-location. Host Kelly Hoey and Smith discuss the unique challenges of developing product for SMBs, the important role trust plays in building a strong team, and how she got her first 100 customers. Show Notes Vizalytics Leaving a Six-Figure Salary to Start a Company Instead by Aileen Gemma Smith, Huffington Post Aileen Gemma Smith of Vizalytics Technology Inc.: Helping Small Businesses Stay Up to Date on Their Markets and Their Communities Connecting Small Businesses and Closing the Digital Divide Face-to-Face by Dave Nyczepir, The Atlantic 500 Startups’ Dave McClure on portfolio diversification and the return opportunities of “spray and pray” Harry Stabbings, TechCrunch 13 things tech founders should look for in an incubator or accelerator by Scott Gerber, Mashable Are You Ready to Seek Funding? This 10-Point Checklist Will Decide. by Jayson Demers, Entrepreneur The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, iBooks Staten Island Makerspace Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

What does a venture investor with operating experience look for in the entrepreneurs she funds? Kara Nortman, a VC partner at LA-based Upfront Ventures, shares some inside baseball with BroadMic host, Kelly Hoey. Nortman, a former co-founder of Seedling, a family activities startup, claims her previous experience as a founder has improved her ability to support founders as a VC investor. Notes Battery Ventures Upfront Ventures Nuzzel Recode Decode a16z Podcast The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna & Michael J. Casey, iBooks Grit by Angela Duckworth, iBooks Kevin Plank Is Betting Almost $1 Billion That Under Armour Can Beat Nike by Tom Foster Campbell Soup CEO: Stunning disruption in the ecosystem of food by Abigail Stevenson, CNBC Upfront plants funding in Stem to 'improve the business of being an artist' by Annlee Ellington, L.A. Biz Additional Reading Is Conversational Commerce Really a Thing? by Kara Nortman, LinkedIn In Defense of Food (Technology) by Kara Nortman, Recode The VC World Returns to Its Operating Roots by Leena Rao, TechCrunch 5 Pieces of Advice for Pregnant Startup Founders by Jessi Chow, Inc. Rethinking Education: Why Our Education System Is Ripe For Disruption by Naveen Jain, Forbes How to Succeed by Leaving Your Fear of Failure Behind by AJ Agrawal, Inc. Upfront VC Analysis 2016 Mark Suster, LinkedIn Los Angeles Tech Venture Capital Almanac CB Insights How Many Cofounders Are Too Many?  Quora Video: This Startup Shows Why There's No Such Thing as Too Many Co-Founders Inc. Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

Venture capitalist Jeanne Sullivan is taking the cannabis industry by storm. Formerly, a co-founder of StarVest Partners, Sullivan is an advocate for cannabis legalization and adviser to investors in this new high growth industry. Jeanne tells host, Kelly Hoey, why cannabis presents such a massive business opportunity for women. Notes Starvest Partners Olivetti Justin Trudeau may have made the best case for legal pot ever by Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post Why we need to end the War on Drugs by Ethan Nadelmann, TEDtalks Drug Policy Alliance Women Grow Anna Netrebko's Mournful 'Mamma Morta' by Tom Huizenga, NPR Marijuana Business Conference & Expo The Sexiest Story of Taxes and Marijuana: The History of Tax Code 280e by Will Yakowicz, Inc. Cannabis Quora Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, iBooks Master the minefield - dealing with bullies, bozos & buffoons | Jeanne Sullivan | TEDxBarnardCollege YouTube Women in Tech Entrepreneurs: Elemoon’s Jing Zhou Bridges Fashion and Tech by Beth Cone Kramer, Huffington Post Additional Reading 5 Stupid Mistakes Entrepreneurs Are Still Making: Interview with Jeanne Sullivan by Susan Price, Forbes Start-up Advice: Jeanne M Sullivan, StarVest Partners Siliconrepublic Problem: Women Entrepreneurs Need Greater Access to Capital National Women's Business Council Talking Weed Entrepreneurship with a Side of Raw Vegan Edibles by T. Kid, Vice NFL To Name New Medical Chief, Bringing Hope For Cannabis Concussion Treatment by Debra Borchardt, Forbes Marijuana Companies Stuck Doing Business the Old-Fashioned Way, in Cash by Yuka Hayashi, The Wall Street Journal Former Justice Department Official: Pot Laws Are a Danger to Public Safety by Will Yankowicz, Inc. The Greed Rush: Venture Capital Enters Cannabis by Chris Roberts, SF Weekly Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.

As an early stage entrepreneur, how do you balance having a big vision with staying narrowly focused on a product’s proof of concept? Meet Seattle-based nanotechnologist, Christina Lomasney, whose startup uses electrochemistry to “grow” metals. Listen to Lomasney’s conversation with Kelly Hoey for advice to female founders about the importance of focus, communicating your vision, and how a Herman Hesse quote about happiness has sustained her quest to disrupt the legacy steel industry. Notes Dan Schwartz Dan Rosen Alliance of Angels The Great Bridge by David McCullough, iBooks Andrew Carnegie Biography.com Nikola Tesla Tesla Memorial Society Production of Aluminum: The [Charles Martin] Hall-Hérault Process American Chemical Society Washington A. Roebling Roebling Museum Clara Barton American Red Cross Additional Reading Policy protection of IP critical to nation's competitiveness Christina Lomasney, The Hill This startup can grow metal like a tree, and it's about to hit the big time by Katie Fehrenbacher, Fortune Founders Fund Leads $33.5M Round For Modumetal, Maker of Nanolaminated Metals For The Oil And Gas Industry by Kim-Mai Cutler What Great Leaders Have in Common by Ryan Allis, The Startup Guide Top Entrepreneurs And Investors Share Their Best Fundraising Tips For Startups Alex Konrad, Forbes 6 Places To Find The Right Investor For Your Startup by Martin Zwilling, Forbes Is Seattle Silicon Valley’s Next Favorite Stop? by Hadi Partook, TechCrunch FAIL FAST, FAIL OFTEN, FAIL EVERYWHERE by John Donahue, New Yorker 6 Ways That Lack Of Focus Can Kill Your Business by Martin Zwilling, Forbes Guest bios & transcripts are available on www.broadmic.com.