She Ventures Forward

Hosted by Natalie Abboud

Business Investing

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Episodes

Latest episode

Mar 2026

Language

EN-CA

About the show

Only 2 percent of venture capital funding goes to female founders. These founders aren't household names like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates, but yet they've managed to build remarkable companies and raise venture funding. Welcome to She Ventures Forward, the podcast where we dive deep into the inspiring stories of trailblazing women who secure venture capital funding to build impactful companies and explore the challenges they faced along the way

Listen to episodes

15 recent

March 18, 202638 min

The Acquisition Playbook: Claudia Laurie on Building Prive and Selling Smart

Claudia Laurie spent two and a half years at Uber mastering the science behind pricing, incentives, and subscriptions before leaving to build Prive, a subscription billing platform for D2C brands. Four years later, she had raised $5M, processed half a billion dollars in GMV, and successfully exited through an acquisition. In this episode, Claudia breaks down how she and her co-founder pivoted from their original idea after customer feedback, built a sales motion from scratch, and fundraised pre-product as first-time founders. What does it actually feel like to go from LOI to close? How do you evaluate competing acquisition offers when your team already thinks they're moving over? Claudia pulls back the curtain on all of it. Honest, tactical, and full of hard-won pattern recognition, this episode is a masterclass in founder decision-making.

March 12, 202635 min

What Precision Medicine Has Been Missing: Kelly Lacob on Building Xella Health

In this episode of She Ventures Forward, Natalie sits down with Kelly Lacob, CEO and co-founder of Xella Health, the first precision healthcare platform built specifically for women..Kelly opens up about the real mechanics behind her $3.7M pre-seed raise: why going straight to institutional investors was a costly mistake, how she built a proof of concept with almost no money, what it took to grow a 10,000-person waitlist before launch, and the bold move of setting her own terms when no one wanted to lead.

February 2, 202638 min

Building Human-Centered Education in an AI World with Audrey Wisch of Curious Cardinals

In this episode of She Ventures Forward, Natalie sits down with Audrey Wisch, founder and CEO of Curious Cardinals, a personalized learning platform helping students discover their purpose through mentorship.Audrey shares how Curious Cardinals began as a passion project while she was a student at Stanford and evolved into a venture-backed company serving thousands of students with a network of hundreds of mentors. She walks through her decision to pause her studies, build full time, and raise venture capital from early customers who deeply believed in the product.The conversation explores how Audrey thinks about building human-centered education in an AI-driven world, where technology is used to amplify mentorship rather than replace it. She also breaks down her approach to fundraising, choosing the right investors, staying close to the end user, and why venture capital should be treated as a tool rather than a requirement.This episode is a must-listen for founders, operators, and anyone thinking about education, AI, and how to scale impact without losing the mission.

October 10, 202521 min

Reinventing Marketing Through Regenerative AI: Zinnie Zhang on Building Enttor

Zinnie Zhang joins She Ventures Forward to share how she’s building Enttor, an AI marketing platform helping enterprise teams scale authentic social media engagement. From identifying gaps in marketing software to raising pre-seed funding , Zinnie’s story is inspiring in turning frustration into innovation.

May 12, 202529 min

How Market Experiments Beat Market Research: Kate O’Keeffe, CEO of Heat Seeker AI

Kate O'Keefe wants to end the era of building products nobody wants. In this episode, the Heat Seeker AI founder and former BCG and Cisco exec shares how market experiments, not surveys, are the key to finding product-market fit—and why marketers everywhere are rethinking their playbook.

April 28, 202529 min

From Personal Problem to VC-Backed Company: The Powered by Hue Playbook

Today, Powered by Hue co-founder and CEO Janvi Shah takes us inside her journey from solving her own pain point in beauty to building a platform used by major brands. In this episode, she shares how she turned personal experience into a powerful vision, the tactical steps behind raising $4.5M, and what it’s really like to fundraise. If you're building something from scratch or wondering how to stay resilient when the odds are stacked against you—this one’s for you.

April 3, 202526 min

Launching the Girl’s Bathroom of the Internet: Emma Bates on Launching Diem

In this episode of She Ventures Forward, Natalie sits down with Emma Bates, co-founder and CEO of Diem, a social search engine built to feel more like the girl’s bathroom at 1am than a Google rabbit hole. Emma shares the origin story of Diem, why traditional search fails women, and how she’s building an alternative front door to the internet. She opens up about raising $5 million, navigating bias in venture capital, and what it takes to be taken seriously as a non-technical female founder in tech

February 2, 202520 min

Building the Future of Social: Ali Debow on swsh's Evolution

In this episode of She Ventures Forward, Ali Debow, co-founder of swsh, shares how she and her team pivoted multiple times before landing on an AI-powered shared photo album app. She talks about the early days of testing ideas on college campuses, dropping out of NYU to go all-in, and raising $2.4M to build the future of consumer social. Ali also shares insights from her experiences as a Z Fellow and Thiel Fellow, the power of warm intros in fundraising, and why relentless optimism is key to startup success.

September 17, 202433 min

In a Pickle: Creating a Marketplace With Julia O'Mara

In the latest episode of She Ventures Forward, Natalie sits down with Julia O'Mara, co-founder and COO of Pickle, a peer-to-peer rental marketplace that’s changing the way we think about fashion. Julia opens up about the unconventional path that led Pickle from a social polling app to a thriving community-driven rental platform. She shares insights on raising $8 million in seed funding, the challenges of building a dual-sided marketplace, and the scrappy, hands-on strategies that got Pickle off the ground. Listen in for Julia's advice on building a brand from the ground up and the power of community-driven growth

July 29, 202423 min

How Sophie Wyne pivoted with Ariglad

In the sixth episode of She Ventures Forward, Natalie sits down with Sophie Wyne, co - founder of Ariglad. Sophie shares lessons learned from pivoting Ariglad's product as well as her journey through YC and how that helped her build and raise what Ariglad is today.