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Video: New Startup Mindset with Sandra Shpilberg , WG

Our exclusive conversation with Sandra Shpilberg Founder and CEO of Seeker Health, Wharton alumnae, and author of New Startup Mindset. She shared how she started, built, and exited her digital health startup, all while not following the Silicon Valley formula. (Video from event dated 7/16/20.)

Event Video

About Sandra Shpilberg

Sandra Shpilberg was the founder and CEO of Seeker Health, a leading digital patient-finding platform. In 2015, Shpilberg founded the company to bring efficiency to the process of finding patients to accelerate the development of treatments for serious diseases.

The company grew rapidly to serve sixty-plus biotechnology companies, connect millions of patients with serious diseases to clinical trials, and achieve profitability. In September 2018, a life science services conglomerate acquired Seeker Health. Medical Marketing & Media named Sandra Shpilberg a Top 40 Healthcare Transformer, and she was a featured speaker at the 2018 South by Southwest conference and at numerous industry and technology conferences.

Prior to this successful entrepreneurial pursuit, Shpilberg held executive roles at biopharmaceutical companies. She has an MBA in marketing and entrepreneurial management from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

More information at: https://sandrashpilberg.com

About New Startup Mindset: Ten Mindset Shifts to Build the Company of Your Dreams

In 2015, Sandra Shpilberg founded Seeker Health, a digital patient-finding platform. The company grew rapidly to serve over sixty biotechnology companies and achieve great financial success. From the start, Shpilberg blazed her own path: she chose to be a solo founder, didn’t pursue an incubator, didn’t accept outside funding, led development of software despite not being a programmer, and charged customers from month one. Instead of creating hype, Shpilberg focused on customer needs, yielding a startup with revenue, profit, and impact; and in September 2018, a large life science services company acquired her startup.

In New Startup Mindset, Shpilberg shares her story of starting, building and exiting her startup and provides readers with sage insights and practical tools to follow this different approach. This book is a needed dose of reality for Silicon Valley and a large serving of inspiration for those who want to create something from nothing. It is a must-read for aspiring startup founders and current entrepreneurs, especially those who don’t fit the traditional mold of a Silicon Valley founder and are open to a new way of making a profound impact with the companies they create.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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The Art of Angel Investing with Angela Lee (37Angels) — June 25, 2020

Angela Lee, founder of 37 Angels, joins WAFFA for a discussion on the Art of Angel Investing.

About this Event

Angela Lee, founder of 37 Angels, joins WAFFA for a primer on the Art of Angel Investing. She will be covering how investors diligence early stage companies and questions to ask yourself before investing in startups.

This session is for you if:

-You’re a founder looking to raise an angel round now or in the future.

-An individual looking to invest in companies or learn more about the process

Event Video

Featured Speaker: Angela Lee

Angela Lee is an educator and entrepreneur. She serves as Professor of Practice and Chief Innovation Officer at Columbia Business school where she teaches top-rated courses in venture capital and leadership. Angela started her career in product management and then was a strategy consultant at McKinsey. She has started 4 startups and is also the founder of 37 Angels, an investing network that has evaluated 15000+ startups, invested in 65, and activates new investors through a startup investment bootcamp. Angela has spoken at the White House and is regularly invited to advise decision-makers at the highest levels, including Prime Minister Trudeau. She is a sought-after expert on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC and Fox Business. She was recognized by Inc. as one of 17 Inspiring Women to Watch in 2017, by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of 6 Innovative Women to Watch in 2015, and by Craine’s as a Notable Women in Tech in 2019. She serves on the boards of Fresco Education Fund and Cariclub.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Startups and product management with Ha Nguyen, Partner at Spero Ventures — June 11, 2020


Join WAFFA for a conversation with Ha Nguyen, Partner at Spero, Board VP of Women In Product, former PM, and Wharton grad. We will discuss what frameworks founders should learn from product management and ask Ha to share what she sees as the difference between a CEO and PM at an early startup. We will also tackle the questions when is the right time to hire your startup’s first PM and how to do it. 

Date: Jun 11th, 2020
Time: 12PM PST / 3PM EST
Cost: FREE
Location: Online

TICKETS

Event Video

About Ha Nguyen

Ha Nguyen is a Founding Partner at Spero Ventures. Spero is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the things that make life worth living, specifically: well-being, work & purpose and human connection. In addition to investing, Ha leads the firm’s marketing/network efforts and is a thought partner to founding teams, helping them incorporate design-thinking and user empathy into product development and corporate strategy. A former refugee from Vietnam, Ha is passionate about supporting underrepresented founders and building vibrant, diverse communities, including leadership roles at AllRaise, Product Leader Summit and Women in Product. Before joining Spero, Ha led product and growth at multiple startups, including Stella & Dot, Betfair, Keaton Row and Oodle. She was one of the early product managers during eBay’s hypergrowth years. Ha holds an MBA from Harvard and a BS in Economics & Business from The Wharton School.

About Spero Ventures

Spero Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in founders building the things that make life worth living. We partner with entrepreneurs solving problems in three areas: well-being, work & purpose and human connection. We invest in technology companies that are driven to deliver value to both shareholders and society, including: Core, Droneseed, Gencove, Roam Robotics and Skillshare. We are high-conviction investors and we help companies scale to billions of customers. Our LP and partners are founders and early execs at eBay and Tesla.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Voice of an Angel: A candid conversation about early-stage investing — June 17, 2020

COVID is having a profound impact on the fundraising landscape. Join Carol Curley for a conversation on the future of early-stage investing!

COVID-19 is having a profound impact on the fundraising landscape for startup founders. Fundraising is a daunting proposition without an economy-altering pandemic; now it’s even more challenging. Carol Curley joins WAFFA to demystify the current state of the fundraising landscape. There will be ample time for Q&A!

Date: June 17, 2020 
Time: 5 – 6 pm ET / 2– 3 pm PT
Location: Online
Cost: FREE

TICKETS

About Carol Curley

Chief Investment Officer, Charian Ventures

Carol A. Curley, CFA is the Chief Investment Officer of Charian Ventures, a Managing Director at Golden Seeds, and a member of New York Angels. Carol has been investing in and advising early-stage companies for over 20 years. She is a frequent judge and panelist and serves on the Advisory Board of Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship. Carol has held senior positions in both Investment Banking and Asset Management firms. In addition, she has served as an Adjunct Professor of Finance in the Graduate Programs of both The University of Dallas and Pace University. Carol holds a BA in Economics from Wellesley College, an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Carol writes about topics impacting Angel Investing in her Blog: https://womeninvest.nyc https://womeninvest.nyc

Moderator: Laura Colagrande 

Co-Founder, Chippin Snacks

About WAFFA 

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Do what matters with Kobi Yamada — June 6, 2020

Join WAFFA for this incredible parent/kid event with the New York Times best-selling author Kobi Yamada. Kobi is the author of many inspirational books such as What to do with an idea? and What to do with a chance?.

The event will start with Kobi reading one of his books followed by a lot of Q&A from big and small.

Date: Saturday June 6th, 2020
Time: 9:30AM PST
Location: Online
Cost: FREE

TICKETS

Event Video

About Kobi Yamada

Kobi Yamada is a New York Times best-selling author and the CEO of Compendium, a company of amazing people doing amazing things. Kobi lives happily with the love of his life and their two super fun kids in the land of flying salmon, where he gets to see unbelievable possibilities unfold every day. He wonders if maybe life is even more beautiful than he imagined.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Past Events

How to navigate a change environment with Steve Blank — May 25, 2020

Join WAFFA for a conversation with Steve Blank, the father of Modern Entrepreneurship and the Lean Startup movement. We will discuss what startups should do to keep themselves alive in these uncertain times and how to conduct customer discovery in today’s new environment. We will also talk about how uncertain times bring enormous opportunities to create value and a more meaningful life.  

Date: May 25th, 2020
Time: 10:30 AM PST / 1:30 PM EST
Location: Online
Cost: FREE

Event Video

About Steve Blank

Entrepreneur-turned-educator Steve Blank is the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner’s Manual — and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean Startup movement.

He teaches at Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley and NYU; and created the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps — now the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency, and its sister class, Hacking for Diplomacy, is doing the same for foreign affairs challenges managed by the U.S. State Department.

Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com.

About Waffa

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Future Of Work– May 20, 2020

Join WAFFA on May 20th @5pm PT/ 8pm ET to discuss how the Future Of Work would look like, in a post COVID world.

Topics covered:

+ How COVID-19 is impacting (executive) placement

+ How tech companies are planning “back to work”

+ How digital services are changing the way we work

+ New Definition of “Career Success”

Panelist:

Lauren Rawlings – Founder @ Precita Placements: an executive search firm placing untapped talent in corporate leadership roles

Madison Kempf – Director @SPMB: executive search and placement for startups & public tech companies

Nicky Kamra – Seed investor in data & applied AI @Streamlined Ventures

Vivian Chen – Founder @Joinrise.co: promoting flexible working for leading women

Moderator:

Alice Zhang – Co-Founder @Hellowaffa.org; Founder @incubate-me.com

Date: May 20th, 2020
Time: 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM PDT
Location: Online
Cost: FREE

Event Video

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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SURVIVING AND THRIVING AS A DTC BUSINESS DURING COVID-19 — May 13, 2020

COVID-19 is having a profound impact on all types of DTC businesses – from affecting multiple parts of the supply chain to changing consumer behavior.

Join us for a panel moderated by Jason Stoffer (WG’05), Partner at Maveron to hear how these outstanding founders are navigating this new climate. Featuring:

  • Rachel Cohen (WG’12), co-founder and co-CEO of Snowe
  • Jenna Kerner (WG’17), co-founder and co-CEO of Harper Wilder
  • Kabeer Chopra (WG’17), co-founder and CPO of Burrow

Date: May 13, 2020
Time: 3 – 4 pm ET / 12 – 1 pm PT
Location: Online
Cost: FREE

TICKETS

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Love in the Time of Corona w/Arum Kang, CEO & Co-Founder of Coffee Meets Bagel — April 30, 2020

WAFFA Arum Kang

Join us for a tactical discussion on navigating love in a Covid-19 world with Co-Founder & CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel, Arum Kang (W’04).

Join Wharton Alumnae Founders and Funders Association and Arum Kang W’04, Co-Founder & CEO of Coffee Meets Bagel for a “Quarantalk” on love in the time of coronavirus. Across industry, user numbers are slightly down and engagement is way up. Quaranteeners are a captive audience!

On Thursday, April 30 please join us with Arum Kang on what the new normal looks like when it comes to dating in the time of Coronavirus.

Event Video

About Arum Kang

After completing her BSE in Marketing from the University of Pennsylvania— The Wharton School, Arum Kang has focused in delighting customers in the consumer product space. She has worked with a variety of companies including Amazon and Avon Products. After obtaining her MBA degree from Harvard Business School, Arum co-founded Coffee Meets Bagel with sisters Soo and Dawoon Kang. As the Co-CEO, Arum leads the business strategy and the vision of Coffee Meets Bagel. With her various roles, her overarching goal is always to make sure the customers’ needs are heard and met with a superior product experience. She has been interviewed many times about the dating and startup scene and has given many talks about the subject alongside her sister, Dawoon.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.

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Andy Rachleff: How to find product-market fit in a changing market?

In May 2020, we had a very interesting discussion with Andy Rachleff, co-founder and CEO of Wealthfront, co-founder of Benchmark Capital, and a Penn alumnus.

We explored some of the most important questions a founder needs to answer: How do you find product-market fit? How do you know when your company has found it? And, how do you do this in today’s crisis.

We also discussed Andy’s Wealthfront journey and Wealthfront’s current direction of becoming the next generation banking service. We talked about about how he navigates this crisis that directly affects his customers and personal finances during a down market. 

Event Video

About Andy Rachleff

From 1995 until 2004 Andy was a co-founder and General Partner of Benchmark Capital. Upon his retirement from Benchmark, Andy joined the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to teach a variety of courses on technology entrepreneurship. In 2011 he co-founded Wealthfront Inc. where he now serves as President & CEO. Prior to his 10 years at Benchmark Capital, Andy spent 10 years with Merrill, Pickard, Anderson & Eyre. 

Andy serves as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a member of its executive committee and Chairman of its endowment investment committee. He also sits on the board of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation with whom he and his wife partnered to provide funding for early-career investigators to conduct high risk/high reward research to significantly impact the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. 

Andy earned his BS from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980 and MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 1984.

About our sponsor

The Silicon Valley office and DigitalBCG Immersion Center opened in January 2019 to serve BCG’s local clients while providing the valley with a state-of-the-art office and events center.  The unique space enables us to showcase our digital capabilities and build on our strong connections to Silicon Valley’s innovation ecosystem.

About WAFFA

The Wharton Alumnae Founders & Funders Association (WAFFA) is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to accelerate the success of Penn Wharton female founders and investors. Today, 13% of Penn founders are women but they raise just 6% of venture capital. WAFFA harnesses the power of the Penn Wharton network to educate, support, and foster connections for female founders and funders.