HackToStart

Sophia Dominguez is the CEO & Cofounder of SVRF, the best way to search and discover VR content on the web. Sophia learnt how to be a front end developer after asking for an internship with a local company. From there, she developed a passion for product and startups. After graduating, Sophia went to San Francisco and fell in love with VR. Wanting to spend more time around this emerging technology, Sophia ended up helping to organize one of the first conferences for wearable technologies. After the conference, Sophia got a Google Glass and decided to travel the world to see how people in other countries would react to this emerging technology. She raised some money to make the project a reality and ended up visiting countries like: Spain, France, England, Germany, India, and more, before ending up at CES to cap off her trip. Sophia continued to build her career in tech by joining a startup called Context Labs where she helped launch several different products and startups. Following this experience, Sophia launched AllThingsVR as a go-to newsletter for VR enthusiasts. She then joined Rothenberg Ventures (now Frontier Tech Ventures) as an EIR before launching her current startup SVRF which is the best way to search and discover VR content on the web. Sophia joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it was like organizing a Google Glass trip around the world, how she approaches product management, why she’s so excited about VR, what it’s been like working on SVRF, and much more!

Emma Nemtin is the Senior Marketing Manager at Headspace, an app that makes meditation simple. In school, Emma studied psychology before shifting to International Media and Communication in Sweden. After school, Emma started her own consulting company after school, getting her own clients through word of mouth. Emma then moved to Toronto and ended up joining the team at Hubba as one of the first 5 employees. There she continued to deepen her skillset as a full stack marketer and helped the company grow very quickly. Today, Emma is the Senior Marketing Manager at Headspace, an app that makes meditation simple. Emma joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it was like joining the team at Hubba, how the app grew so quickly, what it’s like now being in LA and working at Headspace, and much more!

Mike Singleton is the co-founder of Iterate, a product that helps you get the feedback you need to build better products and make better decisions. Mike started off his career as a developer working for a small startup in NYC before joining the early stage team at Foursquare. He later became the VP of Engineering and help build the team that focused on the web services part of the platform. After several years with Foursquare, Mike’s back at it with a startup of his own called Iterate. Mike and his co-founder decided to create Iterate after seeing a real need for smart tools that could help smaller teams get dynamic product feedback to help them grow. Mike joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like being one of the first employees and later the VP of Engineering at Foursquare, how he grows technical teams, what motivated him to launch Iterate, and much more!

Allison Esposito is the founder of Tech Ladies, a community that connects women with best jobs and opportunities in tech; as well as companies with the best women techmakers. Allison is a New Yorker through and through - loving the fast pace of the city and all it has to offer. Graduating with a masters in Journalism in 2008, Allison had to find other ways to build a career. She put her writing skills to work as a consultant and copywriter / marketer with startups like Foursquare. Allison later joined Oyster as one of the first hires and quickly dove into all types of roles to help the company grow and set the bar for what mobile reading could be. Oyster was then later acquired by Google. Allison then found herself hosting a small meetup - at coffee shops - with other women who worked in tech. The group grew week-after-week until Allison decided to make Tech Ladies her full time focus. Allison joins us to share her story, how she got into tech and startups, what it was like working at Foursquare and Oyster, what motivated her to launch Tech Ladies, how they’ve grown to over 7,000 members worldwide in just a few short months, and much more!

Mike Schmidt is the co-founder and CEO of Dovetale. Mike grew up outside Toronto, Canada and later attended Queen’s University, studying Chemical Engineering. While at Queen’s, he quickly developed an affinity for tech startups and was accepted into the Next 36 (an exclusive program in which he’s still involved to this day). After graduating from both programs, Mike launched Listn from a dorm room at the university. As the CEO, Mike helped raise money, create the vision for the product, sign major partnerships, and helped the company get acquired by SFX Entertainment. Following the acquisition, Mike’s career in tech continued to flourish. He lead mobile and many other product initiatives at SFX Entertainment as part of a product called BeatPort. After a few year there, a mentor introduced him to another startup called We Heart It in San Francisco where Mike was the Head of Growth, Product, and Engineering. Under Mike’s guidance, the app grew by 5M users and reached as high as the #12 spot overall on the App Store in less than 12 months. Throughout his career, influencer marketing was a common area of interest and fruitful tactic that Mike came back to time and time again. But it was often complicated to execute, expensive, and unpredictable. Today, Mike is the founder of Dovetale, a startup that’s looking to change exactly that. Dovetale is backed by Expa, a startup studio created by ex-founders of companies like Uber, Foursquare, and more. Mike joins us to share his story, how he turn a chemical engineering degree into a passion for tech startups from a dorm room at Queen’s University, what motivated him to launch Listn, what it was like being part of the Next36, what it was like raising funding, how Listn was acquired, how he’s trying to change the way influencer marketing happens for everyone, what it’s like being part of Expa, and much more!

Morgan DeBaun is the co-founder and CEO of Blavity. Morgan initially wanted to be a teacher before learning more about startups. She then started to explore some of her own ideas for startups before diving into a career as a Product Manager. After a few years at Intuit, Morgan later joined a much smaller startup in San Francisco called Demandforce. She then started to think about launching a company of her own. Today, with a team of 17, Blavity reaches more than 20M readers per month, runs 2 major conferences a year, and has raised over 1M in funding. Morgan joins us to share her story, how she started her career in tech, what motivated her to launch Blavity, how she had to approach fundraising, why they started a pair of conferences, and much more!

Michael Sacca is the President at Crew and co-host of Rocketship.fm. Michael started his career with a moved to LA in order to pursue a career in the music industry. However, he quickly had to turn to other options. After teaching himself a bit of code and making a few websites, he ended up launching his own agency - Tiny Factory. While running that company, the team began to build some of their first products. Michael then joined a startup called Crew to help establish partnerships. He has recently taken on the role of President to help lead the company to new heights in 2017. Michael joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what it was like teaching himself how to code and building an agency, how he approached building some of his first products, how he approaches partnerships, what he’s doing as President of Crew, and much more!

Terri Burns is an associate product manager at Twitter. After being bored with general classed when she first got to college, Terri applied for a student program with Google and discovered the world of startups and development. She started to teach herself how to code online before changing her major to computer science. Terri was also the President and is currently the Chair for Tech@NYU. Terri has since taken on new challenges - like being a Developer Evangelist for Venmo, the co-host of the Forbes podcast Well Technically, and now as an Associate Product Manager at Twitter. Terri joins us to share her story, how she got into coding and tech startups, what it was like being a part of Tech@NYU, how she got into Twitter, and much more!

Seth Louey is the co-founder of Botlist and the Creative Director at SimplyTapp. As many entrepreneurs do, Seth started his career by saying he could code websites and then spent a week straight learning how to do it. He later met a fellow developer named Mubashar (aka Mubs), and they quickly became friends. They’re among the most prolific makers on Product Hunt both being nominated for Makers of the Year in 2016. Seth, Mubs and Ben Tossell then launched a site called Botlist. Now, just over a year later it’s already crossed more than 2M+ page views, thousands of bots submitted and a thriving community of bot enthusiasts. Seth joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, why he’s so passionate about bots and messaging, what it was like launching BotList, how he manages to balance several side projects and full time job, and much more!

Daniel Beauchamp is the Head of Virtual Reality at Shopify. Daniel has been passionate about technology and developing video games since his early teens. While taking an entrepreneurship class in university and realizing that he could build a company of his own, Daniel worked with classmates to build their first startup. After working on their startup for a bit, they eventually joined Shopify. Over the past 7 years, Daniel has been leading all kinds of projects and initiatives within the company, heading up the Internal Tools team and working on other projects like Open Data Ottawa. Daniel spent his spare time exploring VR technologies. He became so passionate about them that he decided he needed to be working on it full time. He then pitched Toby the CEO of Shopify on why they should be investing in VR and now heads up their team working on this exciting technology. Daniel joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, why he’s so passionate about VR, how he helped create Shopify VR, how he thinks about and sees the future of VR evolving, and much more!

Jake Cohn is the Founder & CEO of And Chill, a friendly bot that gives you amazing movie recommendations! Jake was introduced to the world of startups through university and various groups afterward graduation. He then left his law office job for a contact with Google. Jake’s career continued to push him down the startup path and saw him develop an affinity for putting the customer first and championing for their needs. He then decided to go all in and launched And Chill, a recommendation app that broke the mold - creating a friendly and funny personality via their first chatbot for Facebook Messenger. Jake joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, what motivated him to launch And Chill, why he’s so excited and passionate about the bot space, why they chose to create the personality and tone of the bot, and much more!

Chris Gimmer is the co-founder and CEO of Snappa, the fastest way to create graphics. Chris joined the government after school, but quickly found himself wanting to explore other career paths - eventually stumbling on to tech startups. He and his co-founder, Marc, began working nights, weekends, and even the occasional lunch hour at work to launch some of their first online projects. Their second bootstrapped startup - Snappa - first launched just over 12 months ago and has seen over 40,000 signups since then through a combination of growth focused tactics. Chris joins us to share his story, how he got into startups, how they’ve leveraged constraints to push growth as a bootstrapped company, what it’s like scaling a SaaS company, how to approach partnerships with bigger companies, and much more!

Adelyn Zhou is the cofounder and Head of Marketing at Topbots. Adelyn is a seasoned technology leader with experience at Nextdoor, Eventbrite and Amazon. She has spoken at SXSW, Harvard Business School, Launch Festival, Growth Marketing Conference, 500 Startups, and more. She is a frequent contributor to VentureBeat, Forbes, Wired and other publications. Adelyn began her startup career by joining an up and coming company called Diapers.com which was later acquired by Amazon. Following that experience, she continued to build her career as a growth marketer joining startups like Eventbrite and NextDoor - where she helped significantly grow the reach of the platform. Moving back to New York, Adelyn started her own growth consultancy, before launching Topbots - a community for the best bot news. Adelyn joins us to share her story, how she got into startups, what it was like growing Diapers.com and being acquired by Amazon, some strategies Adelyn uses to approach growth based on the stage of a startup, why she’s so interested in bots, and much more!

Orrett Davis is the Head of Growth at Abe, a company that builds conversational banking solutions for progressive community banks. Orrett is originally from Jamaica and moved to Florida as a kid. After studying Biotechnology, Orrett was exposed to the world of startups and marketing and jumped right in - loving the fast pace at which (almost anything) is possible. Orrett is also deeply connected in the Orlando startup community, having organized several startup weekend events, meetups, and even launching an accelerator there. He was also previously an analyst with a VC firm in between startups of his own. Today, he’s leading growth at a fin-tech bot company called Abe. Orrett joins us to share his story, what it’s like building and being a part of the tech community in Orlando, how he joined the team at Abe, why he’s so interested in the intersection of the fintech and bot spaces, what it’s like growing a bot, and much more!

Hailley Griffis is a communications specialist at Buffer. Hailley started building her personal brand as a communication strategist while in school. She then launched her own consulting business while travelling before joining Getaround in San Francisco. Hailley then found her dream job at Buffer and has since also helped grow their new podcast - The Science of Social Media. Hailley joins us to share her story, how she approached building her brand, how she launched her own social media consultancy while travelling, how she got into tech startups, what it’s like working at Buffer, how she started writing for sites like Time and Fast Company, and much more!