Female Founders: We are just getting started.

Columbia female founders and friends gathered as a group by the beach to get to know each other and offer support in their startup journeys.

We thank Sophie Nazerian of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Lisa Smith of Columbia Venture Community (CVC- Project 2.8), and the Long Beach Accelerator (LBA) for co-sponsoring the event in Long Beach, California.

We welcomed a dynamic group of founders including my Columbia Hacking4Humanity student founders, Samantha Arthur and Krystal Eimunjeze, who provided logistical support for the gathering.  

Villa.                            

Samantha Arthur and Krystal Eimunjeze shared with us recent traction with their maternal health startup, Villa, which has attracted investor and institutional stakeholder attention to improve outcomes of the underserved.   

Thimble.                     

Manju Dawkins, MD, both a Columbia Hacking4Humanity and CVC Project 2.8program participant, shared the recent achievements of her startup, Thimble, which offers pain and anxiety reducing products for needle procedures.

Inline.                          

Anna Ivey, a CVC Project 2.8 program participant and founder of Inline, a platform to streamline the college admissions process, shared her path to entrepreneurship.

Dance4Healing.          

Amy Li, founder of Dance4Healing, a telehealth platform enabling behavioral and physical healing regimens, discussed how she created her startup to address what worked and what was missing in her own health recovery.

At Their Side.              

Emily Woodman-Nance, founder of At Their Side, talked about her extensive use of customer interviews to validate her business, set up pilots, and take her startup to the next level.  At Their Side is a HIPAA compliant platform enabling healthcare providers to communicate patient health status to their families in real time.

Limon.                         

Lili Montes, co-founder and CEO of Limon, discussed the platform she created to make finding and creating day trips easier.

Also joining us were impact investors Lorana Quintero PE, MBA of Golden Seeds and Rui Zhong of Huck Capital.  It is our objective to connect founders and funders at the earliest stages.  In this way, we enable authentic and productive conversations to realize commercialization and scaling opportunities.

We look forward to our next informal gathering.  Participants showed an interest in taking a group hike in the Santa Monica mountains as well as relaxing at brunch along the coast.

Join our community!  Female founders and funders, please reach out to me if you would like to join us in building out this fun support network.