Season 3 and 4 Recap

As we recently wrapped on Season 4 of The Room Podcast, Madison and Claudia take a trip down memory lane to look back on our past two seasons. Over the past year, we’ve had the most amazing guests come join us in The Room to share their inspiring stories. Thank you to all of our listeners who’ve joined us across the past four seasons! If you’re not already, please follow and subscribe to our channels! You can find us on Apple and Spotify here. Then, across social media on Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram.

We have so much more in store, but for now, let’s take a look back through the doors we’ve opened together.

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Key Theme 1: the past, present and future for CPG

In the past two seasons, we’ve conversed with groundbreaking brands and founders. Heidi Zak of Third Love dove into the company’s early days of figuring out their distribution channel.Today, they are one of the largest intimate category brands in the United States, but primarily on direct-to-consumer. Hearing about Third Love’s pivots in finding product market fit remind us that sometimes your first incarnation isn’t the successful one. But through iteration and perseverance you can build a scalable consumer experience. Kara Goldin, founder and CEO of Hint similarly pioneered a better consumer experience for her customers. Hint hydrates consumers with healthy, transparent ready-to-drink beverages. Kara shared about her journey into providing clean and healthy drinks before anyone was talking about what was going into their beverages. If you’re a founder building a direct to consumer brand or consumer product good, these past two seasons provide a wealth of knowledge on lessons learned from those who’ve come before. A tactical tip if you’re embarking on venture funding for your company in this category, is to make sure you’re talking to the right investors!

Key Theme 2: Starting a company from a non-traditional background

While many founders do come from a Silicon Valley tech background, we also talked with plenty of founders who came from non-traditional backgrounds that ultimately helped them in the long run. Take Katie Warner Johnson of Carbon38 as an example; Katie is a professional dancer turned fitness instructor who created one of the leading luxury athleisure online marketplaces. Because she came from a fitness background, she really understood what problems Carbon38 needed to solve and for whom. Another powerful example is Ciara Wilson, a Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter, who is also the Founder and CEO of her own music label Beauty Marks Entertainment. When her pre-existing music label said they weren’t going to publish her Level Up song and subsequent album from there, she walked out of the room and built a label herself. Both of these women, while not initially entrepreneurs in the traditionals sense, had unique learned insights that ultimately allowed them to build their ventures.

Key Theme 3: Increasing Access and Opportunity in a closed door ecosystem

For both founders and funders, access has remained a key theme across our podcast. In one of our season three conversations with Maria Salamanca, she shared her personal immigrant story and how that lived experience informs her perspective as a partner at Unshackled Ventures. Unshackled’s mandate is to invest in immigrant or first-generation founders. As a part of that offering, they have full time lawyers on staff who can tackle the unique problems non-American citizen founders face in America. We also got the opportunity to sit down with Sydney Sykes, founder of BLCK VC. She shared her perspective and BLCK VC’s mission of how to support underrepresented founders and stakeholders in the venture world. One of her most salient points surrounds why to invest in differentiated backgrounds is the data that supports it yields better returns for investors. Funds like Maria’s and non-profits like Sydney’s are opening the door to access and equitable opportunity by raising the bar for what support looks like across the ecosystem.

Catch us next week Tuesday, November 16th on our mini-series Movers and Shakers where we’ll sit down with emerging founders and funders who should be on your list to watch. Don’t forget to catch up on old episodes across podcast streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.