The Room Podcast

In this week’s episode of The Room Podcast, Madison and Claudia chat with Analisa Goodin, Founder and CEO of Catch&Release, a company making it easier to discover the best content for an open web and making it available for licensing to agencies and brands worldwide. As a classically trained artist and art historian, Analisa personally understood these pain points of creatives. This past April, Catch & Release announced its $15M Series A, led by Accel. We cover the key themes of the intersection between art, creatives, and technology, tips for fundraising and pitching for founders who don’t have traditional tech backgrounds, and how Analisa translated customer pain points into a scalable marketplace. Let’s open the door. Season 3 is sponsored by SVB and Cooley. Find this newest episode of The Room Podcast on all streaming platforms, including iTunes and Spotify. Enjoy!

In this week’s episode, Madison and Claudia sit down with Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder, President and COO of Cloudflare. Public since 2019, Cloudflare is a web performance and security company keeping millions of businesses and, by association, consumers safe online through their cybersecurity infrastructure, stopping over 70 billion attacks a day. Michelle is one of few female founders to take a company public, and now Cloudflare is valued at over $24 billion as the world increasingly realizes the importance of keeping our internet safe. We discuss with Michelle themes including diversity of thought in co-founding teams, the power of changing your own framing of a problem, and only needing to get a few things right. Let’s open the door. Season 3 is sponsored by our friends at SVB and Cooley.

In this week’s episode of The Room Podcast, Madison and Claudia cover early stage startup legal needs, an essential part of the startup journey. Oftentimes, the first round of fundraising is the first time founders will interact with lawyers, and this relationship will continue for years beyond just the initial fundraise. They are also joined by Lauren Creel, Early-Stage Partner at Cooley, to help walk us through what the legal side of startup fundraising looks like. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Cooley is an international law firm with one of its specializations in startup and venture capital legal needs. We are proud to be sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank alongside Cooley LLP for Season 3 of The Room Podcast. This week’s key learnings include when to involve a lawyer when you are starting a startup, understanding the common components of a term sheet and what to look out for, and finally digging into the legal implications of company building decisions. Let’s open the door.

We are so excited to sit down with Maria Salamanca, Partner at Unshackled Ventures, in the newest episode of The Room Podcast. Unshackled Ventures is a pre-seed venture firm focused entirely on investing in immigrant founders. An immigrant herself, Maria came to the United States from Colombia when she was six years old. After attending UC Berkeley, Maria joined the FWD.us team, a political organization supporting immigration reform started by tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. In 2015, she joined Unshackled Ventures and was recently named Partner at the firm. Before Madison and Claudia chat with Maria, our two co-hosts walk us through the pre-seed round from both the founder and funder perspectives. This week’s episode explores the key themes of navigating the pre-seed round, the unique experiences of being an immigrant founder, and the value of time versus money in the early stages. Let’s open the door. This episode is brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank and Cooley LLP.

This week on the room, we are thrilled to be sitting down with SJ, Sacchetti, CEO of Cleo, a working parent family benefits platform for employers. SJ didn’t always think she was going to become a CEO and chats with us about her career path, her learnings along the way, and what it's like coming into a company as CEO just months before COVID and work from home. SJ started her career in politics and policy, cutting her teeth in the world of political fundraising, which “set her clock” for the startup world. SJ made her way into tech as a marketing consultant at Formspring, then as SVP of Marketing at Collective Health, and ultimately CMO- a pivotal step towards her career at Cleo. After nearly 5 years at Collective Health, SJ joined Cleo as CEO late 2019. This March, Cleo announced their $40 million dollar Series C round. Today we dig deeper into themes such as leadership during unfamiliar and unusual circumstances, overcoming imposter syndrome, and being a boss amidst uncertainty. Let’s open the door. This episode is brought to you by our partners at Silicon Valley Bank and Cooley LLC.

In The Room Podcast’s very special Season 3 opener, Claudia and Madison sit down with the one and only, Ciara. We all know her as the Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter behind hit classics like “1, 2 Step,” “Goodies,” and “Level Up,” but she is also a businesswoman and entrepreneur behind multiple businesses. Ciara is the CEO and Founder of music label Beauty Marks Entertainment, through which she produced her latest album, as well as Co-Founder of The House of LR&C, a fashion house she started with husband Russell Wilson. This week’s special episode walks through the themes of digital media’s transformation of the music industry, having a level up mentality, and surrounding yourself with people aligned to your vision. Let’s open the door. Season 3 is brought to you by our partners at Silicon Valley Bank and Cooley.

We cannot believe that we have concluded season 2, but are even more excited for season 3, airing next week! Thank you so much to all of our listeners for joining us on The Room! We have big plans for Season 3, launching Tuesday, May 4th, featuring international pop star & entrepreneur.... *drumroll please*.... Ciara Wilson! But before we enter the room where it happened with a whole new slew of entrepreneurs, we take a look back on Season 2, its guests, our biggest takeaways, and share some life updates.

Yesterday, Brex announced their Series D round, led by Tiger Global, which now valued them at $7.4 billion. Today, we share an episode of The Room Podcast that just couldn’t wait! Madison and Claudia sit down with Henrique Dubugras, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Brex in late March. For those who don’t know, Brex is the unicorn fintech startup that provides the all-in-one money and banking solution for startups. Both Brazilian natives, Henrique and his co-founder Pedro Franceschi founded Pagar.me before both attending, then dropping out of Stanford to found Brex. We discuss the key themes of deciding what market you are built for, the multi-time co-founder experience, and Brex’s decision to remain fully remote in the future. Let’s open the door.

In the Season 2 finale of The Room, we sit down with Trae Vassallo, co-founder of early stage venture fund Defy.vc. Out of undergrad at Stanford, Trae worked for the iconic design and innovation firm IDEO, developing products for companies including the Palm Pilot and Dell. During her second year of business school at Stanford, Trae founded Good Technology, a mobile device company whose purpose was to connect islanded devices to the Internet. Good Technology sold to Motorola for $500 million. Through a relationship built with John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins backing Good Technology, she then spent 11 years at Kleiner Perkins. In 2016, Trae and fellow industry veteran Neil Sequeira founded Defy.vc where her paths intersected with our co-host Madison a few years back. On today’s episode we discuss the early days of the Internet, the pros and cons of venture funding, and how an opening of the venture ecosystem has fostered more equity and inclusion across the table. Let’s open the door.

In this week’s episode of The Room, we welcome Liz Meyerdirk, CEO of The Pill Club, a women’s telehealth platform that simplifies and personalizes the experience of prescribing and delivering birth control. Prior to joining The Pill Club Team, Liz was a founding member of the Uber Eats team, leading strategy and global business development for six years. As The Pill Club hit a $100 million run rate, Liz joined as chief executive officer, now leading the team into an exciting product line launch that we have the exclusive on! We talk knowing when to launch a new product line, transitioning CEOs in a growth-stage startup, and the future of women’s health care. Let’s open the door.