Startups

From a student team to the space startup: Interview with Awais Ahmed, CEO and co-founder of Pixxel

I’m Vanessa Kruze, the Founder and CEO of Kruze Consulting, CPA and big-four alum. I’ve helped startups raise more than $500 million in funding over the last 12 months and am an early adopter of cloud accounting solutions at scale. 

Don’t get into the trap of feeling like you should know everything or pretending that you do. If you take that route, you’ll stop thinking, learning and asking questions. Furthermore, it will affect your credibility and you’ll start pretending you know things that you don’t.

Rob Koyfman has been an investment analyst on Wall Street since 2002 with research and strategy roles at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and most recently, Tekne Capital.

With more than ten years of experience in Internet product design and development, Ben is an early member of a blockchain technology research team, which founded a series of successful blockchain startups.

When I was a child, my parents and I had left Vietnam and came to the United States as refugees. It’s hard to get a job in America if you don’t speak English. In order to support our family, my parents started a series of small businesses, and that really was my first taste of entrepreneurship.

Pedro Conrade is CEO and founder of pioneer Brazilian fintech, Neon Pagamentos, which today has over 2 million users and is backed by blue-chip funds such as Monashees. In this interview, he discusses the key reasons behind Neon’s success, its greatest challenges and its plans for the future.

Trevor Sumner is an entrepreneur and investor who has spent the last 15+ years working as a product and marketing executive, building innovative tech companies, products and teams. He’s currently serving as the CEO of PERCH, one of the leaders in physical and digital marketing for retail brands like Macy’s, Estee Lauder, and Coty.

Kasha is an international E-commerce company in Kenya selling women’s health and self-care products. Founded in Kigali Rwanda in 2016, the fast-growing company aims to break the stigma associated in getting access to products/services in line with menstrual care, contraceptives and HIV self-tests.

In the freelancing world, work can be very lonely or boring. Remote roles especially experience the little human interaction on a daily basis. Some freelancers experience burnout from the lack of socialization, and with the wide variety of odd jobs or small-scale projects that the gig economy has to offer, freelancers often have trouble attributing meaning to their work.