For Episode 140 of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Lucy Deland, Partner of Inspired Capital.
Lucy was a student at Harvard during the same timeframe when Mark Zuckerberg was starting Facebook. As we discuss in this podcast, Facebook was a key catalyst to ignited the entrepreneurial spirit at the institution.
She was a co-founder and COO of Paperless Post, which included two other Harvard alumni. The company disrupted the online invitation industry by making the process a lot more elegant and personalized with a design-led philosophy, which was unique at the time.
Lucy is now a Partner at Inspired Capital, an early-stage investment firm that was recently launched by Alexa von Tobel. Alexa is best known as the Founder & CEO of Learnvest, a company that was acquired by Northwestern Mutual. And yes, it was at Harvard where Lucy originally met Alexa.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- What is was like attending Harvard during the creation of Facebook and its impact on entrepreneurship there
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The full background story on Paperless Post and the many challenges they had to overcome
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The details on Inspired Capital and what they are targeting for investments.
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What pitfalls to avoid when scaling.
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When you should hire a COO to join your company.
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And more!
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Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.