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October 10, 2024 38 mins

On this episode, Brenda speaks about purpose with Allison Byers, founder of Scroobious,  a tech company  driving innovation to equitable capital access by removing barriers to partnership among diverse founders, investors, and service providers.

Scroobious is a platform that is working toward equitable capital access: In Allison’s words “ fair representation of all segments with the exclusion of none”  - now into its fourth year –  having served over 900 founders. 

“Finding the funding and the people are critical to early stage success of a company.“ Listen to Allison’s personal story of Scroobius and how her  relationships that go back 20 years ago and an introduction to the newly appointed President and COO of Scroobiuos. 

 

You can find out more about Allison, Scroobious, and other resources mentioned in this podcast at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-byers/

https://www.scroobious.com/

For founders working on a pitch:
Scroobious is dedicated to empowering founders for successful fundraising. Our platform provides invaluable resources including online learning modules featuring investor-vetted content, personalized pitch feedback, tailored pitch practice sessions, access to a vibrant community of hundreds of diverse founders, and connections with investors. Click here to apply for a sponsored (free!) account. You can also join our Lite plan for just $1 to access our community, events, and curated resources immediately.

For early-stage investors:
Scroobious connects you to a network of brilliant and diverse founders solving important problems. These founders have worked with us to clarify their story, showcasing comprehensive pitch material and coachability.

Click here for a quick platform demo.

Visit this website, register, and then use promo code EARLYINV for a free 6-month trial at the Stripe checkout page. After the trial, it's $10 per month (cancel anytime). Complete brief onboarding questions to enter the portal and start messaging founders!

https://www.newswire.com/news/scroobious-scales-up-to-meet-the-urgent-call-to-support-diverse-22415543

additional content here :

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SB-54-SIGN-MSG.pdf

 

Transcript:

00:04
Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke

00:32
corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
We're standing on the edge of something big.We're going to make some changes. Hi, I'm pleased
to announce something very special to me, anew subscription-based service through Next

(00:25):
Act Advisors that allows members exclusive accessto personal industry insights and bespoke corporate
governance knowledge. This comes in the formof blogs, personal book recommendations, and
early access to the founder's sandbox podcastepisodes before they released to the public.

(00:46):
If you want more white glove information onbuilding your startup with information like
what was in today's episode, sign up with thelink in the show notes to enjoy being a special
member of Next Act Advisors. As a thank youto Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use
code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% offyour membership costs. Thank you.

(01:19):
Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I amBrenda McCabe, your host. I'm delighted that
we're now into the third season of this monthlypodcast that reaches entrepreneurs, business
owners, and corporate board directors, and VCs.All interested in building resilient, scalable,
purpose-driven businesses with an undergirdingaspect of great corporate governance. I admission,

(01:46):
my mission at NextAct Advisors, which is myconsulting firm, is really simple. It's just
building the scalable, well-governed and resilientbusinesses. My guests to the podcast are themselves
founders, business owners, corporate directors,professional service providers who like me
want to use the power of the private enterprise,small, medium or large to make change for a

(02:08):
better world. With each of my guests, we gothrough some storytelling. about their origin
stories. And we will touch on topics aroundresiliency, purpose-driven enterprises and
sustainable growth. And again, my goal is toprovide a fun environment in this sandbox where
we can equip one startup founder at a time tobuild a better world through great corporate

(02:32):
governance. Today, my guest is Alison Byers.I'm absolutely delighted that she's joining
me all the way from Boston. Allison is joiningand she wears many hats, but she is going to
talk a lot today about her founder journey ofScroobius. And it is a very unique platform

(02:53):
that unlike other platforms in the ecosystemused by startups, this is one that has a purpose
to improve equitable capital access by providingpitch education for founders while making connections
with investors. to put unused capital to work.And we're gonna hear more as we get into the

(03:16):
podcast. I like to have guests that are alsovery mission-driven as mission-driven as I.
And you are, Alison, unequivocally mission-drivenin your purpose after you yourself encountered
gender bias firsthand while you were fundraising.So I think it'd be appropriate story to start

(03:41):
telling now. So thank you for joining me, Allison.Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me,
Brenda. And absolutely love being so alignedin our missions and being able to talk about
how we can use business elements to accomplishthe mission-driven motives that we have. So.

(04:02):
Yeah, I'm happy to share my origin story forScrubius. And we're a four-year-old company,
so I incorporated in January of 2020, whichmaybe we'll hit on later what it means to incorporate
right before a global pandemic.
The initiative started after I, as you said,experienced pretty extreme gender bias myself.

(04:26):
So before Scubias, I joined scientific co-foundersand launched a medical device company out of
MIT in a hospital system here in Boston. AndI was the business one on the team and did
all the things from incorporation through ourfundraising. And we did raise almost $10 million
at that company going through a series A prime.And then I really struggled to raise our series

(04:48):
B. So we ended up going to early acquisition.And I didn't know any of the things that I
know now. I was not in this space before then.And Meddevice is a pretty specific industry
with pretty specific investors. So you're kindof in that world. But we were acquired in an
asset sale. The people that acquired us weremen. And not too long after, raised $55 million.

(05:17):
And not. Yes. Every time I share that, there'seyes open. A multiple of what? 10? Yeah. And
it was very clear to me that the one thing Icould point to that was different was my gender.

(05:38):
And I was co-running the company with anotherwoman. So we were two women out there doing
this, and one more woman involved in the company.But it's. it set me on a path of trying to
understand what happened. And so that's whenI researched the field of capital allocation
and investing in pitching first just to understandhow I could have failed so badly. That's the

(06:03):
internalization that many founders have whenthey're unable to raise the capital your company
needs. And very quickly found all the data thatI know you're very familiar with. But for those
who are listening who maybe aren't, Nationally,1.8% of venture dollars go to women-founded

(06:23):
companies. And in my state of Massachusetts,that number is 0.9%. We're also ranked one
of the worst states, 47th, for supporting women-ownedbusinesses. And once you learn that, as devastating
as it is, it also releases that internalizationof failure. Because you say, oh, I didn't actually
fail. I just did not know. that I was operatingin a system that's designed to keep me marginalized.

(06:50):
I was not likely to raise that money regardlessof how well we were operating the company or
how strong our fundraising pitch was. Okay.So that's my origin story for wanting to dedicate
my professional career to working toward moreequitable access to business capital. And it's

(07:10):
not solely focused on women owned companies,is it? Exactly. Yeah. So tell us a bit more
about Scubious and starting a company. And rightwhen the pandemic, you know, set in here in
the United States and we locked it went intolockdown. So, right. Yes. So I did at least
a year of research before deciding. what I wantedto do was meant to be a for-profit company

(07:37):
structure. I didn't rush into it. That's notmy nature. Did my full market analysis and
primary and secondary research, thought aboutour own capitalization plan, then decided to
incorporate in January of 2020. So, impeccabletiming. But I know we'll talk about that a

(07:58):
little later too in terms of how do you handlewhat startups throw at you and building without
the ability to predict how your business mightfluctuate or how the macro economy might fluctuate
around you. But no, we don't focus only on women.That's of course my lived experience. But when

(08:19):
I researched it, pretty much any segment wherefounders identify as underrepresented in some
way, receives incredibly inequitable distributionof. business and growth capital. If you look
at it by gender or race, that's true. If youlook at it by geography or by sexual orientation

(08:41):
or military veteran status, neurodiversity,there's a lot of different ways that people
can identify as underrepresented. And we don'tdefine that for somebody. Nor do we exclude
anyone from our platform because we're reallyworking toward equitable distribution which
means true representation of all segments tothe exclusion of none. So, yeah. I love it.

(09:06):
Can you say that again? That's a great tagline.So you're working towards? So we're working
toward equitable distribution, which means fairrepresentation of all segments to the exclusion
of none. Fantastic. Yeah. So we've got whitedudes in there too, right? Like we're not turning

(09:26):
people away. But our own go to market strategywas to and is still to partner with organizations
that are diversity first as well, so that we'rebuilding the community that represents what
should be equitably represented based on ourpopulation. So let's go into the actual platform

(09:48):
itself. It is a platform, right? Yeah. You'vegot founders on one side receiving pitch education
and you have more, and you have investors onthe other side. So how does a founder experience
Scroobius? Yes, great question. And we are definitelya platform and we actually have three key stakeholders.

(10:09):
So there's some marketplace elements with thefounders and investors on two sides, What we've
come to discover, and this is part of the buildingand pivoting and resiliency of a startup, is
that true understanding of how important relationshipsare in accessing resources and capital. This

(10:32):
is not a transactional industry. And so thethird key stakeholder here are service providers
and program partners. They are very underutilized.in this space and they are key connection nodes.
And so we are a true platform with all threeat the center there. But for founders, to answer

(10:55):
your question, yes, we're a scalable platform.We were designed intentionally to scale because
with all three of those stakeholder groups,they number in the millions. This is a huge
market. And so Founders enter our platform andimmediately they can access our flagship program
called the Pitch It Plan, which is full of microlessons online, asynchronous access, about

(11:21):
everything to do with fundraising strategy andpitching and building those relationships with
investors because that type of quality educationwritten from an authentic perspective of understanding
that it is different. for underrepresented groupsand making it accessible and understandable

(11:42):
for everyone is not easy to access. It's notfreely out there. So your neighbor of love,
for lack of another word, you've curated thatand probably through your professional service
president, how did you curate that specificallyfor underrepresented? So it's all... created

(12:04):
by us. This is proprietary education, and wedo work with providers. In addition to our
custom material that we add to all the timebased on the needs of our community, we also
host workshops twice a month with industry expertson all kinds of topics related to early startup
building. Apologies, I do have a cold today,so I'm going to lose my voice every so often.

(12:27):
Yes, just.
But it's based on hundreds of interviews withinvestors, hundreds of interviews with founders,
and personal experience of myself and otherson the team to really create different material
that speaks to the heart of what founders wantto know. So for an example, we have a lesson

(12:51):
on how do you give a 10-minute pitch? How doyou give a five-minute pitch? How do you give
a three-minute What if you have a one minutepitch? What exactly goes in there? And we provide
the insight into why it is important to an investor.So they get both the lesson and the understanding
of why does this matter to do it this way. Sothey have access to that. And alongside it,

(13:17):
they can upload draft material and get personalizedfeedback from our trained reviewers. So it's
a combination of online learning Again, thatasynchronous scalable human delivered feedback
that founders really do need to feel comfortableand confident. Once they have worked through

(13:39):
our program, they have the ability to sharetheir pitch and their profile with the investors,
right? So that they can get in front of ournetwork of... vetted and active angel investors
who are specifically looking to diversify howthey find opportunities so they can put their
capital toward the founders they're lookingfor, even if they are not in their geography

(14:03):
or not in their known network or affinity groups.Is it national? United States actually? We're
actually international now. We have foundersall over the place. Yes, our community has
grown. We've worked with over 900 founders nowin basically four years. Yeah. Wow. Excellent.

(14:24):
And how does the investor then experience it?So are they actually contacted by the founder?
Or can they just peruse Scroobius platform,identify opportunities that fit within their
investment thesis? How does that work? Yeah.So it's a great question. And again, we've

(14:45):
built a differentiated platform by listeningto what. investors want and we focus on angel
investors. We're pretty specifically findingthose who are more likely to write checks to
our founder base to underrepresented foundersand angel investors represent an enormous untapped
opportunity. So when they join our platformthey do give us some information when they

(15:07):
on board about their thesis and what they'relooking for and then. They can see all of the
founders who have uploaded their material, whichincludes both a comprehensive deck, because
we QA what goes up there, and a short videointroduction. So they can see the human behind
the deck. And that is really core to how wecurate for investors what they see. We are

(15:31):
measuring variables both about the businessand about the founder. and constantly learning
from the investors as they engage with differentpitches, what are they actually drawn to? So
that's the AI behind this is building an enginethat's a little bit like Netflix, where it's

(15:51):
constantly learning based on what you watchand suggesting other things you might like,
right? Based on your behaviors, we're incorporatingthat based on your behaviors. Here are other
founders that you might like. And so you canlog in and get a very customized experience.
We also heard pretty loud and clear from angelinvestors that there's a variety of reasons

(16:15):
why they might like to keep their anonymityand not be on a list or have founders reaching
out to them constantly. And so they do. Theymake the first outreach to the founder and
they can make that outreach anonymously if theywant. So they can open a founder's pitch material
and ask questions within it, either with theirname attached or anonymously, the founder still

(16:36):
needs that feedback, still needs that connection.And then they can choose to reveal their name
later on. If this seems like someone you wantto get to know better. So that's in the investors
control. Yeah, totally in the investors control.Interesting, interesting. And it's asynchronous.
So if the investor were to ask any questions,then the founder does see those and can answer.

(16:59):
Yep. Everyone gets an email. They can answerin the platform. They can answer via email.
You can have a whole conversation about a slidein a pitch deck in that slide to, again, make
efficient use of everybody's time and decide,is this worth a 45-minute call after you can
get through some of that conversation? Excellent.So you did share. I wanted to get into some

(17:23):
of the metrics that there have been. 900 foundersalready experiencing scruvias. What about investor?
Because I had an interview just some time back.It dropped this month with Marsha Dalwood.
Oh, yeah. And she has her podcast, The AngelNext Door, and her new book has just released.

(17:46):
I ask her, how many angel investors are actuallyin presently United States? There's only 300,000.
I mean, if you think about that, we are a smallgroup of. angels and her mission with the book
is to increase the number of people that becomeangel investors. So like back to you and there
are fights of course. Yeah. I know I was justwith Marsha the past two days contributing

(18:09):
to the Angel Capital Association Women InvestorsForum and I got her book yesterday. I'm very
excited to read it. So yes, and that I will
representative of the potential for angels thatcould be actively investing. And it's also

(18:30):
very difficult to measure. There is not a goodcomprehensive set of data on angel investing
activity because it does not have to be reported.So you can't scrape it. So personally, I believe
that number to be much higher in reality. Andthere also is, I think it's 32 billion in unallocated

(18:56):
capital based on inactivity of angel group members.Wow. There are members who are part of that
group, but not investing through the group.And that was pretty key in my research as well.
To put this capital to work, it means they'renot finding the people they want to put their
money behind. So 32 billion in dry powder wouldbe the word, right? Yeah, basically. Yeah,

(19:20):
that we know of. That's of angel group membersand not every angel is a member of a group.
Right. So, yeah. So in terms of our own investorplatform, we launched it last year in twenty
three and we've been working on a somewhat invitationbasis. Although we do make it open to anybody
to join. But we're really looking to have peoplewho actively write checks to those who identify

(19:45):
as underrepresented as part of our platformor those who are. active investors in looking
to start establishing those relationships. Again,we're not transactional. We don't affect the
investment through our platform, but we arelooking to make more of those connections.
We're the infrastructure that allows investorsand founders to find each other. I think it's

(20:11):
around 40 or 45 active angels in there. We have...multiple financings that have happened by discovery
on our platform. And it really hasn't been thatlong a period of time. I know. And in a tough
market, very tough market. Yeah, in a toughmarket. Although again, an angel is an entirely
different investor than a fund manager. Andwhere fund managers might go stagnant, angels

(20:36):
don't necessarily do that. Excellent. And inthe show notes, there will be links, Alison,
to Scroobius. as well as some other materialsyou've provided.
In addition to your day job, right? You're nowinto your fourth year of running Scroobius.

(20:56):
You also have been a catalyst for change andyou have co-authored the California Senate
Bill 54 that was signed into law in October,2023. What's this bill about, Allison? I got
excited last year when I saw this and I gota lot of phone calls from VCs saying I need

(21:18):
women. I need underrepresented found companies.Well, I'm very glad it already catalyzed calls
to you and awareness of this. But no, I'm extremelyproud to have participated in this and Scrubius
is my company and we're making demonstrablechange and growing quickly. But yes, I do also

(21:39):
a number of other advocacy efforts. Again, it'sdedicating myself toward working to equitable
access. And policy is something my own companyneeds and other companies in my space because
this is unregulated territory for the most partwhen it comes to trying to move the numbers

(21:59):
on at least venture allocation of capital. Again,different than angels. So the bill deals with
venture allocation. But it will require venturefunds to publicly report diversity metrics
about their prior year's investments. It isa California bill, but California is responsible

(22:21):
for over 30% of investing activity and thiswill have a global, was it 30 or 60? I might
have mixed up that stat. I'm so sorry. But...It will have a global impact because it is
about having a nexus in California, which couldmean you invested in a company with a nexus
in California, but your fund is located elsewhere.You will still need to report. And so nexus

(22:44):
is defined in the bill. I've actually read it.And it comes into effect in 2027, or is it
immediate? So reporting requirements. Yeah,they're working through the implementation
of it now. It was signed into law in the lastyear, and there's a whole lot of things that
need to happen before this is implemented andenforced. But there are a number of efforts,

(23:10):
especially in the private industry, that arealready helping funds figure out how to make
this the most efficient that they can. And it'sinformation they're collecting anyway. This
is a data collection bill. It's to establishthat baseline of where are the dollars going?
So we have accurate data and they have it, they'rejust not reporting it. So now it will be available

(23:35):
to anybody who wants to go see and have an enormouspositive impact on future policy, but also
on entrepreneurs and how they spend their timebecause it is not transparent to any entrepreneur
now, unless they're going to scour every websiteof every fund and then look up the leadership
to know, does a fund write checks to women?Is it worth my time to go do that? So this

(24:01):
is not telling anyone where they must investtheir money. It isn't dictating that at all.
It's just saying, we need a baseline of accuratequality data. Because to date, all those numbers
we cite, even the ones that I quote, they'refrom private companies. They're from Pitchbook
and Crunchbase. And there's data flaws withtheir collection as well. Absolutely. And did

(24:27):
you pick off California, start with Californiabecause of the sheer presence in the ecosystem?
Because you're also championing initiativesin other states. like the Massachusetts Senate
Bill 978 and New York Senate Bill 809786.

(24:51):
Yes, there were a lot of strategic reasons forCalifornia to start, although it's interesting.
work on Massachusetts legislation in this spacepredated the work in California. And we started
by working with what we have been pursuing andare still pursuing in Massachusetts over there,

(25:13):
over in California. It shifted to a differenttype of bill for a variety of reasons. I have
learned a whole lot about this process in co-authoringthat bill. But there's so much that goes with
getting policy. A lot of it again is peopleoriented, relationship oriented. California
was a, we were there at the right time in theright place with the right people to push that

(25:40):
through. I love it. We're going to switch gearsa little bit here. And you made an important
announcement in the past couple of days. Congratulationson the appointment of president and CEO Ralph
Gross III. Thank you. He's joined you at Scroobius.And if you see the announcement on LinkedIn,

(26:07):
it goes into detail about how relationshipsare important. So you've mentioned, you've
touched on relationships several times, right?When you're an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur,
you founded Scroobius, right? Can you sharehow relationships matter when building your
business? That's the And now that you have aCEO and president, how's your day job gonna

(26:30):
change? All right? Thank you. Yes. Well, I mean,we're now really the perfect example of why
a platform like Scubious and ours in particularneeds to exist because it is relationship driven.
And people will say everything in business isrelationship driven, but there's plenty of

(26:51):
transactions that happen and finding the funding.And the people are critical to early stage
success of a company. It's very different atthe early stage. And for our story, I was introduced
to Ralph three years ago by a woman who's onour advisory board, who I had actually met

(27:15):
nearly 20 years ago when I won a scholarshipfrom her as an MBA student. And he became one
of our very first investors. He has an. exceptionalcareer in large financial institutions and
investment banks. But earlier on, he did attemptto start his own company. And it was very similar

(27:37):
to what Robin Hood ended up being. But as ablack man, he really couldn't raise the funds
that he needed. So he experienced that biasas well when he was attempting to go the entrepreneurship
route. And it's always stuck deep with him.Right. So he has a very strong resonance with
what we're building and our mission and firsthandexperience, right? That authentic lived experience

(27:59):
is something you cannot replicate and the connectionwith your stakeholders. We both have them.
We both have them from the entrepreneur's perspective.And we both have them from an investor perspective.
I'm an angel investor as well. And clearly,so is he. But we've developed our relationship
over the three years of him being of our teamas an investor on my cap table. And very recently,

(28:23):
he made the intentional decision to leave thatcorporate career and join us as our as leadership
as our president and COO. So we'll be workingvery closely together as CEO and COO. And it
accompanied a $500,000 investment into the company.So we have capital we need to really grow.

(28:46):
This is a game changer. for the trajectory ofScubius, both from a capital perspective and
a leadership perspective. Amazing, amazing.So I wanted to bring us back to the founder
sandbox and my guest. And again, you're verymission-driven, Alison. And I always like to

(29:13):
ask my guest what the meaning is of three. kindof terms that I use when I'm working with my
clients. And those are resilience, purpose-driven,and scalable slash sustainable. But what does
resilience mean to you? Lise. So resilienceis somewhat similar to me when people talk

(29:36):
about grit. It's the quality of taking. an unexpectedcircumstance and figuring out how you utilize
that and move forward. And so for me, an easyexample is that a month into my company building,

(29:59):
we were in a global pandemic. I have two youngchildren who all of a sudden had no school
to go to, and all the things that life throwsat you. I immediately had to decide, do I close
the company down right away? Or do I figureout a way to keep doing this? And so when I
think about being resilient, there's a lot ofelements to that. But that for me was, OK,

(30:24):
I'm going to take it, and I'm just going tomodify how I build this company. Because it's
too important to just close it, and I'm toodedicated to it. And it really did impact our
own growth. I was going to go raise a big round.That was my plan. Go do what I did before and
start raising. I'm building a scalable venturebackable company. And immediately I had to

(30:45):
say, nope, that's not what I can do anymore.So what do I do? How do I build slower? How
do I make this a reality based on the circumstancesthat have been dealt to me? And we really turned
it into a positive for how we've grown. Andyou did the data gathering. And also really

(31:08):
just I love that. My guests share a personalexperience, but personal slash professional,
right? And that is an exceptional example ofstarting a company, incorporating it in the
pandemic after experiencing the gender biasin your own previously venture-backed company.

(31:33):
So amazing, amazing. What about purpose-drivenenterprise? What does that mean to you? Each
guest has a different, this is kind of my favoritepart other than your origin stories. I love
it. It's really interesting. The word purposeto me is very interesting because I do a lot
of speaking about social entrepreneurship andimpact entrepreneurship, but purpose is a little

(32:02):
bit different for me. It doesn't have to meanthat you're an impact oriented company, but
it reminded me of guidance that we give ourfounders is something you need to be attuned
to is as you're talking about your company andas you're pitching for the thousand and eighty
second time, if you don't naturally get veryexcited about what you're talking about, that's

(32:29):
a warning signal for yourself that you mighthave lost some of your purpose. Okay. It doesn't
really matter what you're building, but as thefounder, you have to have a direct tie to the
purpose of why you're building what you're buildingor your company is at risk of crumbling because

(32:50):
as the leader, if you lose that, where is theNorth Star for everybody else? Excellent. And
you often mentioned the word authenticity duringthis podcast today. And I think that, forgive
me for putting words in your mouth, but if afounder is authentic in sharing what that purpose

(33:14):
was when creating the company, is don't losethat North Star. Thank you. Absolutely. You
know, there's too many stories of companiesreceiving large amounts of funding and burning
it and having to close. And there's too manyfounders that just want to be a successful
founder, which is not. it doesn't have thatauthenticity that you're talking about. And

(33:38):
right, the other side of that is having thelived experience to be authentic with those
who you are servicing with your company. AndI mentioned it before, but again, that's when
investors talk about a moat, which some of thatlingo is so annoying to founders, but that's

(33:58):
a moat, you can't replicate that. You can'treplicate someone's lived experience. And we're
seeing that right now with some backlash inFemTech funding, where more FemTech funding
is going to men than to women. They can neverhave that lived experience. It doesn't matter
how close to a woman they are. They can't. Andthat is not ever going to be as authentically

(34:23):
received by customers as somebody who sharesthat lived experience. Amen, sister. Yes, I
am co-leading with the Thai SoCal chapter. It'san entrepreneurial membership organization,
a competition of women-led companies. We'rein our third year, very large cohort, that's

(34:43):
in my finals and independent judges, male feeble.It's amazing the energy. And we've talked about
nails. We talked about an air purifying machine.The gamut of you know, feminine or women-led
companies was amazing. And just, we have a secondsession today. Yeah. And that's, you know,

(35:09):
that's something that I talk a lot about andI try to get this message through because it's
not something that people always communicate,but you know, the lack of funding to women,
to black founders, to any, to take your pickof unde For women, it is not just a women's
problem. We're not just building companies onlyfor women. This is an everybody problem. We

(35:34):
are building companies addressing enormous societalneeds. And without our contributions to that
innovation and to that problem solving, everysingle person is suffering, not just women.
Thank you, Allison. Other term, scalable growth.What's that mean to you? Scalable. Um, so scalable

(36:02):
means that you are building something that isintentionally designed to reach many, many
people and that you are doing it in a way whereyou can effectively sustain that growth, sustain
that scale. Right. and there are businessesthat are made to be scalable. Scurvius is made

(36:26):
to be scalable and there are businesses thatare not and both are completely needed and
fine, but there is a distinction. And if youare not building something scalable, you're
probably not right for the venture capital fundingmodel of how you capitalize your business,
but you still might be right for angel investingor loans or debt. whatever other type of capital

(36:50):
you can add to your stack. But that isn't avery important thing to know. And again, something
we educate in our platform for founders, it'snot always clear to founders what is the right
path or how to understand the venture capitalbusiness model and why it requires scalability
to be viable. Exactly. And I love that you areall encompassing or scrupulous, right? It's

(37:16):
equitable capital access. So not all businessesare venture capital, subject to venture capital.
All right, so that's amazing. My last question,did you have fun in the sandbox today? Absolutely.

(37:37):
I do love that question. We build humor intoeverything we do. I think humor is just a critical
element of building. And if you're not havingfun, what are you doing? You have to be able
to have fun. So yes, thank you for making afun podcast experience. Thank you, Alison.
So to my listeners, if you liked this episodewith Alison Byers, CEO and founder of Scroobius,

(38:01):
sign up for a monthly release of the FounderSandbox where founders, business owners, corporate
directors and professional service firms providestories on how to build with strong governance
a resilient scalable. and purpose-driven companyto make profits for good. Thank you for joining
me, Allison, and until next month. Thank youso much, Brenda. That was fun.
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