Category: Found
How one founder bucked the data-driven trend and created a startup based on inspiration
When Oleg Stavitsky and his co-founders started Endel, they didn’t necessarily expect for it to become a venture-backed business with the likes of Amazon’s Alexa Fund as investors. Stavitsky and his founding team describe themselves as a “collective of imaginative creatives and artists,” and the group had previously developed a…
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How one founder turned her extensive retail experience into an entirely new kind of shopping
The Yes founder and CEO Julie Bornstein helped some of the world’s biggest and best-loved brands develop industry leading e-commerce operations, and also served as COO at Stitch Fix, arguable one of the top success stories of digital-first fashion. The Yes is her first foray into entrepreneurship, however, and we…
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How one founder aims to make money management a mutiplayer game
Aditi Shekar’s path to entrepreneurship was a very intentional one, and while it wasn’t quite a childhood dream, it was the real-world version of the goals she did have as a kid. Fast forward to today, and Aditi’s company Zeta is on a rocket ship ride in fintech, having recently…
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How one founder pivoted a startup designed for in-person interaction in light of the pandemic
When Ashley Sumner designed and launched Quilt, it was meant to be a response to digital social networking, preferring creating authentic in-person interactions between people who didn’t necessarily know each other before. The app would match members for in-person conversations and informal meetups in their own homes — but when…
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How one founder’s startup journey began with dropping out of school to work with Drake
This week’s episode of Found features Courtne Smith, founder of NewNew, a social app where people pay to vote on your decisions. The platform takes the concept of social polling to the next level, essentially allowing everyone to monetize their choices by turning them into a kind of social stock…
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How one founder realized the potential of sustainable energy stored deep below our feet
On this week’s Found podcast, we sat down with Dandelion co-founder and President Kathy Hannun. Kathy came up with the idea for Dandelion while working at Google X, tackling some of the world’s most intractable problems, and making them tractable through the application of technology. Kathy realized that harnessing geothermal…
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