Golden Seeds is focused on investing in the vibrant opportunities of women-led companies. As such, we work with many talented, passionate female entrepreneurs who are doing truly remarkable things. Our “How Did She Do It?” series shares the stories, challenges and successes of the women behind the companies of Golden Seeds.

Today, Gail Hoffman, board member of Groupize, interviews Alisa de Gaspe Beaubien (left), Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Groupize.

Below, they discuss how de Gaspe Beaubien launched her company, which is revolutionizing managed travel.

The company has created innovative, cloud-based solutions that reduce the complexity of sourcing, booking, tracking and managing multi-room bookings, extended stays, groups and meetings in real time.

GH: Tell us about the origins of your company.

AdGB: My husband, Charles, and I had both worked in travel. In 2009, he was working for a startup in rail transportation that was going through a transition, so we decided it was time to leverage our experience to start our own company. Founded in the attic of our house, Groupize initially focused on group transportation management. Following some initial success, we expanded the scope of our business to focus on all segments of leisure group travel. When a large hotel chain approached us to solve its groups and meetings challenges, we could not refuse. We won that account, our first major client, and the company grew from there. Today, we have a rapidly growing roster of marquee customers, key partnerships and technological integrations, and an experienced management team.

GH: What market need are you fulfilling and how is your approach different from the competition’s?

AdGB: We’re in the arena of managed corporate travel. Our software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform helps users manage simple meetings and events, with an emphasis on face-to-face gatherings and events. Unlike the large events companies might sponsor once a year, these simple meetings happen many times a year and often represent a larger expense and increased risk for the company.

Most meeting planners today are not dedicated specialists; they are executive admins who have many other responsibilities. Historically, the available technology was too complicated and expensive, built for professional planners who organize large, complex and infrequent meetings. But, uncomplicated tools for frequent, basic meetings — such as Excel, fax machines, and the phone — weren’t effective or efficient. Charles and I saw a need for an easy-to-use technology for simple events, and we created a model that disrupted the status quo. Unlike many of our competitors who provide solutions for large events, we don’t ask our customers to pay per user license or attendee. Instead, we offer annual plans based on the estimated number of events, making it much easier for companies not only to budget and control their meetings, but also to roll-out our solution enterprise-wide.

We partner with corporate travel agencies to reach businesses that host at least five meetings annually that require travel. Our prospects have been very receptive. In 2018, we’ll power simple meeting planning and execution for hundreds of companies, including several of the Fortune 100.

GH: What challenges have you encountered along the way? How have you overcome them?

AdGB: We had to make some market fit adjustments at the beginning. We like to say we had a vitamin, but everyone wanted medicine. We were a nice-to-have for our initial target market — hotel chains. Because the target customers did not have a compelling reason to change their behavior or processes, the sales cycle proved too lengthy for a startup.

Listening and talking to our advisors, our prospects and our customers about their most pressing business issues made the difference. Our technology was nice-to-have for the hotel industry, but critically important in managed corporate travel — we made a year-long pivot in response.

GH: Does Groupize have any milestones on the horizon?

AdGB: My husband and co-founder, Charles, was recently recognized by Business Travel News as one of the 25 most influential leaders in our industry. It’s an unbelievable list that includes hotel executives, the founder of Uber and the heads of other travel-related firms. For a startup CEO to be included on that list in the leading publication of our industry, in recognition of a travel category we created, is a wonderful honor and validation.

In the second half of 2017, Groupize partnered with one of the largest sellers of meetings. They have thousands of customers and will leverage our technology to get significant new business from their existing customers. So, this relationship will be significant for us this year, during which our goal is to be North America’s leader in simple meeting technology.

GH: What’s it like co-founding a company with your spouse? Do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs with the same professional and personal partners?

AdGB: Charles and I are very fortunate in that we had already worked together at two other corporations before launching Groupize. We recognize and respect each other’s strengths and weaknesses, so we know how to divide and conquer for the benefit of our company.

Separating our work lives from our home lives is challenging, but we have two kids who don’t want to hear about work when we all get home at the end of the day. As a wife-husband team, we try to be careful about that.

GH: Tell us about your experience with Golden Seeds. How has the Golden Seeds network been helpful to you?

AdGB: We learned about Golden Seeds after Charles presented at a Boston-area pitch event. Someone from Golden Seeds was in the audience and asked us to attend their Office Hours for entrepreneurs. That’s where we met you, Gail. You invited us to present to Golden Seeds investors and then Golden Seeds became our first institutional investor. Beyond our initial angels and our own investment, Golden Seeds was the first to recognize and believe in us, our vision, and the opportunity we all saw.

The Golden Seeds network means we have a lot of fans out there. They provide credibility to our organization, and they include us in discussions and introductions. For example, we got a great lead recently because its CEO is related to a Golden Seeds partner. Beyond those kinds of leads, we know we can pick up the phone and talk to an expert within Golden Seeds who can advise us on a wide range of issues, which is important to first-time entrepreneurs. And because Golden Seeds is known for its extensive due diligence, we’ve been able to leverage that in subsequent rounds with co-investors. It makes the process much smoother for micro-VCs.

To any early-stage founder, I’d recommend not focusing on valuation first when it comes time to seek funding. Instead, focus on finding the partner who can get you to the next stage. The valuation isn’t as relevant day-to-day, but having access to a network of experts is essential to setting realistic expectations and meeting them.

For more wisdom like this from other amazing female leaders, follow Golden Seeds on Twitter.

Golden Seeds is focused on investing in the vibrant opportunities of women-led companies. As such, we work with many talented, passionate women entrepreneurs who are doing truly remarkable things. Our “How did she do it?” series shares the stories, challenges and successes of the women behind the companies of Golden Seeds.

Today, Kathryn Swintek, board member of Oculogica, interviews Uzma Samadani, left, founder of Oculogica. Below, they discuss how Samadani launched her company, which is transforming the way traumatic brain injury and concussion will be diagnosed and treated.

KS: Tell us about the origins of your company.

US: I have a day job as a neurosurgeon and researcher — I was not looking to start a company, but this was serendipity.

I was doing clinical trials to improve outcomes after brain injury. The FDA was giving us a hard time about the outcome measure we wanted to use, so we ended up having to invent our own, and that turned out to be eye-tracking. At first, the plan was to use it just as an outcome measure for brain injury, and then we realized it was a physiologic indicator of function — you can actually tell what’s wrong with the brain by looking at the eye tracking.

Eye tracking now is where electroencephalogram (EEG) was in the 1950s. It’s freshly discovered. EEG permanently changed the way we diagnose seizures, and eye tracking will permanently change the way we diagnose brain injury.

However, I realized after I made this discovery that the only way for people to benefit from it is to commercialize it. Unless someone has a financial interest in the propagation of the technology, nobody will use it. If you want to change the world, you almost have to start a company to do it.

Here’s what I mean. When we first discovered this, I was sure that other people would want to use this too, so I gave grand rounds on it at Children’s Hospital Philadelphia, where we set up an eye tracker. Afterward, we got about 18 phone calls from pediatric concussion specialists saying, “We want one, too.” The problem is, a single lab can’t do that at 18 different sites; we didn’t have the resources to scale like that. If we wanted to make this available to every neurologist, pediatrician and emergency room physician, how do you do that? The easiest way is to commercialize.

KS: How is this different from what doctors previously did to diagnose brain injury?

US: Even five years ago, most physicians thought if a patient had a negative head CT, they were going to be just fine, that whatever was wrong with them would resolve eventually. That realization has substantively changed primarily because of sports and the military. Because there is increased awareness that there is a problem, there is also increased focus on finding diagnostics that can identify radiographically silent brain injury finding physiologic measures, which is what we do.

When patients come in and we find something abnormal in the eye tracking, they’re often relieved to be validated, if all their previous tests were normal, but their symptoms were not. The first step in being able to treat something is being able to detect it.

KS: What challenges have you encountered along the way? How have you overcome them?

US: Personally, I didn’t realize when I started the company what a different skillset it was from being a physician. It has been helpful to have my sister, who has a business background, take over that aspect as CEO.

As a company, our biggest challenge is it’s a competitive landscape with a lot of noise. There are eye-tracking technologies out there that don’t work, and people have known it for a long time. That’s a problem, because they continue to act as if they can do what we can do. Our challenge is to demonstrate that our algorithms are completely, dramatically different, and that’s why we get the results that we get.

KS: What’s coming up next for your company? Any big milestones on the horizon?

US: Our next step is FDA clearance, which we are working toward, and commercialization. We have a device that is ready for commercialization, and later, we want to develop portable versions, for example something you could run on an iPhone, which would make it accessible to everyone all over the world. For me, that is the ultimate goal. It’s just a matter of getting the resolution of the camera on a portable device where we need it to be.

Ultimately, 10 years from now, all care will be algorithmic. From a patient perspective, you will have access to things at your home that you never had access to before. The role of the doctor is going to evolve, and there is going to be a huge role for algorithmic technologies in changing people’s lives.

Right now, though, we’re not a consumer device. We are a medical company first and foremost, and our initial FDA clearance will be for use under the supervision of a physician.

KS: What advice do you have for early-stage founders?

US: When a lot of people tell you that something is very difficult or disruptive or not going to happen because of dogma, that’s when you know that you’ve got something really good.

For example, optometrists have been very embracing of this technology, but there are sometimes others in the field who have a hard time with the idea that a computer could detect abnormal eye movements better than a human.

KS: Tell us about your experience with Golden Seeds. How has the Golden Seeds network been helpful to you?

US: My first real exposure to Golden Seeds happened after my TEDMed talk in 2014. Joan Steinberg, a Golden Seeds managing director, came up to speak with me afterward. We had just closed a friends and family round, and soon after TEDMed, I got three different term sheets. I ran them by Joan. She gave us great advice, and we ended up turning down all three. It was the right decision — we would have basically been giving the company away, and I didn’t know that.

When we did our official first seed round in 2015, Golden Seeds was extremely helpful in making introductions and raising money with their network. They have really opened doors for us, and I’m grateful to them. They’re earnest about wanting to help Oculogica grow.

For more wisdom like this from other amazing female leaders, follow Golden Seeds on Twitter.

Golden Seeds is focused on investing in the vibrant opportunities of women-led companies. As such, we work with many talented, passionate women entrepreneurs who are doing truly remarkable things. Our “How did she do it?” series shares the stories, challenges and successes of the women behind the companies of Golden Seeds.

Today, Jo Ann Corkran, managing partner of Golden Seeds and board observer of BentoBox, interviews Krystle Mobayeni, CEO and co-founder of BentoBox. Below, they discuss how Mobayeni launched her company, which offers restaurants beautiful, mobile-friendly websites that drive revenue and customers — complete with a simple, hospitality-focused management system, hosting and exceptional customer support.

JC: Tell us about the origins of your company.

KM: I’ve been working in web and digital my entire career, first at ad agencies in New York, and then at my own boutique firm. As a consultant, I worked with a lot of clients in industries from fashion to nonprofits to the financial sector and more. When I took on a project with a well-known restaurant in New York, I learned how deep their pain points around online presence were. The web platforms available at the time did not solve restaurants’ specific pain points, and they were costly to customize. I realized it would be more affordable and effective to build a platform from scratch that addressed these needs. That was when my co-founder, Pierre Drescher, and I put together the first version of BentoBox, back in 2013. We launched with two well-known New York restaurants as our first customers.

JC: What market need are you solving, and how is your approach different from how others have addressed this need?

KM: Technology has become so much more important in the dining out experience, but over the past 10 years, restaurants didn’t have the ability to translate the experience they provide in the brick-and-mortar world to the online one. They were busy running restaurants, and they didn’t have the technology backgrounds to do the work. Yelp, Seamless and other third-party platforms provided these tools, but restauranteurs didn’t want to give up the one-to-one relationship with their guests. They wanted a place online where they could translate their own restaurant experience, cultivate relationships with guests online and drive revenue instead of relying on third-party systems. Their websites are the only places they can retain total control of their brands and experience.

Before BentoBox, most restaurants couldn’t even update their seasonal menus without hiring consultants, never mind sell tickets to events, offer gift cards, take catering orders and more. BentoBox provides all of that in one place, where restaurants can get to know their customers and all of the ways they interact with the brand. For the owner or general manager who is wearing many hats, we make it easy to automate all of these things and turn them into marketers without any heavy lifting.

The return on investment (ROI) is clear to our customers. What is the cost of losing a customer? That resonates. If someone goes to your website and can’t find your menu, what does that cost you? For restaurants that use our revenue-generating features, they see six or seven times the ROI on what they pay to BentoBox.

JC: What challenges have you encountered along the way? How have you overcome them?

KM: Early on, we did some non-scalable things, but I stand by them and think they were important. For example, we did a lot of custom work, but it was the best way to learn the specific customer needs. In terms of sales, we started with top restaurant groups, which required a lot of effort to close, but that got us the brands that helped solidify our expertise and place in the market. Our model evolved into a more templated approach and process, but we’re happy we didn’t do that right off the bat — we would have built the wrong thing. Spending all that time with the customer and doing that work early on showed us the commonalities and where we could be systematic to grow a scalable business.

JC: Did you know from the beginning you would seek funding?

KM: We made a conscious choice to seek funding, so we could build a business that scales quickly, ramp up the sales team early and move quickly to capture as many restaurants as possible. It was the right choice. Even to this day, we have competitors for different features, but we don’t have an obvious direct competitor.

We got feedback early on that this was a lifestyle business, and it seemed like we were running an agency rather than creating a product, but it was always clear to me that we could move out of that. I think being a female CEO played into that perception. That has always been a challenge. My approach to that whole problem is just making sure we’re building the best business possible and we’re as successful as can be. The only way to make a huge change and impact is to show undeniable, quantifiable success, which is what we’re focused on, and showing that there can be a different style of leadership that creates an environment people love working in. That’s what we’re focused on, and we’re in it for the long game.

JC: What’s coming up next for your company? Any big milestones on the horizon?

KM: Our customer has primarily been restaurants, and many restaurants have relationships with designers, developers and agencies that work on their menus and websites. Our initiative in the next year is to create a platform from which those types of organizations can service their clients. We’re also working on other initiatives to help restaurants drive traffic to their sites, so they can then drive revenue and convert visitors into paying customers

JC: What advice do you have for early-stage founders?

KM: Making sure that you have early revenue speaks volumes. If you’re going to raise money, especially when there are biases beyond you, being able to give quantifiable proof that what you’re building has a need and people are willing to pay goes a long way. If you can be scrappy and get those customers on board without giving away anything for free, that’s very important.

I’d also advise women entrepreneurs to be authentic about who they are. All our examples of what leadership looks like are a specific mold. I found it frustrating when I was growing a team and raising money to try to fit myself into that mold of what people expected from the CEO figure. For example, I thought I needed to be extremely aggressive, outspoken and overly confident to the point of exaggeration. It really made me uncomfortable, and my discomfort was obvious.

As I embraced the person I really was and let that be my leadership style, I got a lot more confident. I held onto why BentoBox was successful in the beginning, my strengths in product and visual design, and my focus on the customer. When I focused on those things in conversations with investors, it was so much more effective, and I could be more passionate and convincing.

JC: Tell us about your experience with Golden Seeds.

KM: I was introduced to Golden Seeds through our lawyer while we were raising our seed round. I appreciated their process in terms of vetting. They really dug into the economics of the business and the market. It was comforting to me, because they were uncovering everything and investing from a place of understanding what we’re trying to do.

The whole Golden Seeds network is very direct. You know exactly where you are in their process. After the investment, the Golden Seeds team brought in a lot of experience in growing companies and made a lot of key introductions for us. The fact that their network is so large, it’s like getting hundreds of investors.

Learn more about our investment criteria and the Golden Seeds angel network.