Author Archive for lewiscm18

Hello Walden

Posted by lewiscm18 
· Monday, November 23rd, 2020 
· 1 Comment

Hello Walden is a virtual private coaching service that enables entrepreneurs, business professionals, designers, engineers, and anyone in-between to receive virtual coaching from professional coaches. Each coach is unique in their experiences and focuses so that every individual can find a coach that will be able to relate to them and help them. Hello Walden coaches help with a variety of pursuits, including starting a podcast, setting up a sales funnel, finding a new job, developing a product, writing a blog or a book, cultivating brand voice, fundraising for a startup, and many more. Clients begin by creating an account and filling out a questionnaire. This questionnaire begins by asking them to describe what they are working on, what their biggest challenges are, and where they need the most support. Then, it asks them what they hope to get out of coaching, what kind of coaching style they respond to best, and any other comments they want to share. Once they complete the survey, they are given a few options of coaches that may fit their needs best and they can look at schedules and find a time to call them or message them. Essentially, Hello Walden makes coaching personalized and easily accessible.

Madelin Woods, the founder of Hello Walden, is an experienced engineer and entrepreneur. She has experience working with IDEO, Facebook, Square, and many other start-ups. Madelin came up with the idea of Hello Walden when she was looking for some motivation and encouragement in her projects, but lacked a mentor or coach to help her. Coaching is mostly found through word-of-mouth, but Madelin wanted to create a trustworthy platform for business professionals to find coaching that will work for them and with them. So, Madelin built Hello Walden to help people craving the same mentorship she was seeking.

What stuck out to me the most about Hello Walden was the unique use of technology and people. Hello Walden is a website, but it is highly centralized around people and seeks to cater to each person specifically and effectively. If you visit their website, they have many success stories listed to emphasize how effective their service really is!

 

https://hellowalden.com/

1 Comment
Categories : Business, Coaching, Mentorship, Women Entrepreneurs

Poppy Seed Health – Simmone Taitt

Posted by lewiscm18 
· Friday, November 13th, 2020 
· 2 Comments

In 2016, after leaving her doctor’s office after devastating miscarriage, Simmone Taitt looked to the internet to find comfort and information after a cold and short interaction with her OBGYN. Simmone and countless other expectant mothers experience a disconnect between finding answers to their many questions and concerns and empathetic and knowledgeable listeners during pregnancy. It’s simple: women want open ears, not just quick answers. Simmone Taitt saw this disconnect and created Poppy Seed Health, a messaging system for pregnant and postpartum women to get answers to questions they may be embarrassed to ask, from trustworthy and empathetic care providers. The system provides women with 24/7 access to doulas, midwives and nurses to answer any questions or concerns they might have. Poppy Seed Health offers a personal and trustworthy healthcare environment for women at every step of the process.

Poppy Seed Health

While Poppy Seed Health sits at a steep price of $59 a month, the price point is proving to be more than worth it for expectant mothers.  Currently, the service uses WhatsApp for communication but a messaging app is currently being developed with additional features.

Simmone Taitt is disrupting the market of maternal healthcare in a big way. In an interview for the “Female Founder Series” by crunchbase, Taitt states, “Accessibility and affordability are core to our mission. We know that having the emotional and mental health support of maternal health advocates in collaboration with providers is essential for improved health outcomes for both the birthing person and baby. What we are disrupting is the one-size-fits-all maternal healthcare model.” Taitt’s differentiator, what sets her apart, is what she is disrupting. She is getting rid of a healthcare model that treats every pregnant woman the same with a model that fits the individualized needs of each woman.

Another impressive aspect of this company is that it launched in February of 2020, right before Covid impacted the US. This could not have happened at a better time for Poppy Seed Health. The business grew 140% just two months after Covid hit, due to the increase demand for telehealth and virtual healthcare.

Simmone Taitt recognized the difficulties of being a black, female entrepreneur and used them as a springboard for her business. She truly understood and identified with the problems that her stakeholders were experiencing, which enabled her to serve them in a truly effective manner. According the CDC, Black, American Indian, and Alaska Native women are 2 to 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy than white women, and Poppy Seed Health could have huge positive impact on that number as it provides women an outlet to seek help and identify early warning signs of complications.

CrunchBase interview: https://about.crunchbase.com/blog/a-trusted-and-safe-digital-space-how-simmone-taitt-is-disrupting-the-maternal-healthcare-model/

https://www.poppyseedhealth.com/

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparities-pregnancy-deaths.html

2 Comments
Categories : Uncategorized

Katrina Lake- Stitch Fix

Posted by lewiscm18 
· Monday, November 2nd, 2020 
· 1 Comment

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, a “personal shopping service for men and women that evolves with your tastes, needs, and lifestyle.” Essentially, the mission of Stitch Fix is to combine technology and the personal touch of stylists to provide a shopping experience that is easy, saves time, and creates a style unique to each customer. To use this service, customers take a style quiz that uses multiple choice questions and pictures to determine the specific style of the customer. Once they complete the style quiz, a box of tailored clothing choices are sent them for a $20 down fee. The user can try on the clothes at home and keep or send home whichever items they want. Stitch Fix provides free shipping, exchanges, and returns. The customer can order on demand or receive regular deliveries based upon their preferences.

Stitch Fix is changing the way the world thinks about shopping and personal styling of clothing. In the age of “fast fashion” and big box stores, personal styling by professionals has largely become a thing of the past because it is considered too expensive and shopping by yourself is much more convenient. Stitch Fix uses technology to take the complexity out of shopping with a personal stylist. It provides a way to get clothing tailored to your taste without having to keep the clothing items you do not like. Why spend hours shopping for the perfect outfit when a professional can do it for you?

Katrina Lake is a bold female millennial entrepreneur who saw the potential for a new market space in the fashion industry (a largely saturated industry) by combining technology and personal styling. She started Stitch Fix while completing her MBA from Harvard University and continues to invest in and work with startups at Leader Ventures. When Lake took her company public in 2017, she became the youngest female founder ever to lead an initial public offering (IPO).

The story of Katrina Lake and Stitch Fix is inspiring to me because it shows that all it takes to succeed is to find your niche and pursue it. Katrina saw an open space in this over-saturated industry and recognized a frustration that many women experience and was able to build a highly successful company and brand from it.

Learn more about Stitch Fix by following this link: https://www.stitchfix.com/

 

1 Comment
Categories : Women Entrepreneurs

Kang Sisters – Coffee Meets Bagel

Posted by lewiscm18 
· Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 
· 2 Comments

Dawoon, Arum, and Soo Kang are changing the way online dating works for women with their app called Coffee Meets Bagel. The sisters grew up in an entrepreneurial family and all had ample experience in the business world. Dawoon worked in investment banking, Arum received her MBA from Harvard University, and Soo was a successful graphic designer in the fashion industry. They decided to combine their expertise and solve a pain they saw in the online dating market. Many of their friends felt that dating apps were oversaturated with men and geared toward the way men want to date online. They created Coffee Meets Bagel as a way to connect online through meaningful conversation. The app is unique from Tinder and Bumble because it specifically selects up to 6 bagels (or matches) for women every day through their algorithm that matches couples based on multiple similar interests so they only see matches that are highly relevant. Essentially, Coffee Meets Bagel connects people through similarities, not location or looks. To date, there are more than 70,000 couples who met on Coffee Meets Bagel and that number continues to grow.

 

One of the most impressive things about these entrepreneurs is that they were offered $30 million dollars by Mark Cuban when they pitched their idea on Shark Tank, yet they declined the offer. The Kang sisters used this offer as a confirmation that their idea was good and it had a huge potential for success, but they do not regret turning the offer down. They wanted to be in control of the app themselves. Being female tech entrepreneurs in this day and age has had challenges, but the Kang sisters have demonstrated that knowledge, expertise, and the ability to identify and fix pains in a market can have a huge impact and payoff and they wanted to develop this app on their own. They were able to raise over $11 million dollars in venture funding which enabled them to start and continue to grow their app.

Learn more about Coffee Meets Bagel here. 

2 Comments
Categories : Technology, Women Entrepreneurs

Yunha Kim- Simple Habit

Posted by lewiscm18 
· Monday, September 28th, 2020 
· 1 Comment

How could the careers of business and businesswomen be improved so that they reduce stress and improve productivity and creativity? Wall Street investment banker Yunha Kim asked herself this question when she quit her job and started her first start-up. She was experiencing lots of stress because of her startup and looked to find ways to manage it. After awhile, she looked to meditation. Just of few minutes per day improved her work life, personal life, and physical health. Because of this improvement in her own life, Yunha decided to build an app to help busy business professionals such as herself balance work-related stress.

Simple Habit was officially founded in the Spring of 2016, and it’s mission is to “empower humans to stress less, achieve more and live better.” (https://www.simplehabit.com/press) It does this through over 2,000 guided meditations that range from 5 minutes to 30 minutes or more. Each meditation session is situationally specific and uses calming talking or sounds to focus the user and calm them. The categories range from evening and sleep meditation and mindfulness sessions to before a meeting to before a date.

 

Yunha Kim used her connections from Wall Street to raise over $3 million from prominent investors for her first startup. Simple Habit is backed by some of the best of the best in Silicon valley, including Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves. Yunha Kim is a great example of an entrepreneur because she used her own struggles and needs to solve a problem that many people experience.

Want to learn more about Simple Habit? Visit https://www.simplehabit.com/

 

1 Comment
Categories : Mindfulness, Women Entrepreneurs

Jasmine Crowe: Goodr

Posted by lewiscm18 
· Sunday, September 13th, 2020 
· 2 Comments

 

Jasmine Crowe is a female entrepreneur who uses her innovation and knowledge to make a huge impact on the food supply chain and hunger in America. In 2017, Jasmine founded Goodr, a food logistics company that takes excess food from large conference centers, airports, and companies, and redistributes it to people who struggle with poverty-related hunger. According to Feeding America, 37 million people in America struggle with hunger (https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/facts) and Jasmine Crowe believes that this number can be significantly lowered by distributing food correctly, instead of producing more.

How does Goodr deliver value?

Goodr has a “triple-win” solution that delivers value to customers, the planet, and those struggling with poverty-related hunger. By donating excess food to food banks and other donation centers, companies can increase their bottom line through charitable tax donations. Additionally, companies are no longer sending the excess food to landfills and creating more greenhouse gases, which improves sustainability in the company and benefits the environment. Finally, Goodr delivers value to communities in need by delivering the surplus food to those who are struggling. Goodr does not deliver the food to communities and leave, instead, they take a hands-on approach to ending hunger. The company produces pop-up grocery stores in low-income communities that allow community members to shop a variety of fresh foods for free. Many of these pop-up grocery stores are sponsored by local companies and corporations, enabling and encouraging these companies to give back and care about the community they are in. In addition to these pop-up grocery stores, Goodr provides demonstrations on how to cook healthy meals.

Goodr has donated over 2 millions pounds of food from companies such as Netflix, Hartsfield- Jackson International Airport, NFL, and many more.

Inspiration

This is not Jasmine’s first innovative approach to giving. She is also the founder of BCG (blackcelebritygiving.com), a non-profit philanthropic company that partners with black celebrities all over the world to use their influence and resources for good. Jasmine is an inspiration to innovators worldwide who seek to make the world a better place through entrepreneurship and service.

To learn more about Goodr and their mission, visit goodr.co

2 Comments
Categories : Enviornmental, Food, Women Entrepreneurs