StartOut Founders Reflect on Growth Lab’s Impact
By: Pete Holmberg
If there’s one thing the last year has taught us, it’s the importance of human connection. As we struggled in our professional and personal lives to maintain existing relationships, and cultivate the skills to build new ones with people we’d never met in person, the role camaraderie plays in success has never been more clear. With applications now being accepted for Cohort #8 of StartOut Growth Lab, we decided to tap into that newfound clarity and check-in with four graduates to see how their StartOut experience has helped shape the companies they founded.
Robert Quinn, CEO & Co-Founder of Patchd Inc., a company solving sepsis, was a member of Cohort #3 in 2018. “I learned about Growth Lab from a friend who had been in Cohort #2 and he told me how much of a fantastic program it was. Patchd is incredibly personal for me. I started this company to save my own life. I have had Sepsis 18 times, but I’m lucky enough to have identifiable warning signs — in my case it’s a warm face and sore legs — that alert me to go to the hospital. Not everyone gets these, so we developed the AI platform to automatically identify warning signs of Sepsis, many of which are invisible to the naked eye. We’re about 24 months from being in the market and looking to raise $8 million in Series A. The biggest thing that StartOut offers is a community like no other, a community which can provide counsel on investors, insights on how to scale and founders who have also been through the impossible task of raising a company. StartOut is about creating and fostering a community that is inclusive and supporting and they have done an incredible amount of groundwork identifying strong partners in the LGBTQ community.”
Leigh Honeywell, Founder of Tall Poppy, a software platform that helps companies protect their staff from online harassment, was a member of Cohort #4 in 2019. “I’m not the cookie-cutter Stanford grad in a hoodie that a VC expects when they walk in the door, so to experience that with other folks going through similar struggles was incredibly powerful for me. My team was (and remains) all women and non-binary people — unusual for a tech startup. I think having those peers in my Growth Lab Cohort who were also women and queer was affirming to me and something that really sets the Growth Lab apart from other accelerators. It’s been great to see StartOut work so hard to recruit underrepresented founders, and I think it’s been paying off. With the challenges of the past year, the alumni group has been something I’m really grateful for. Obviously, we haven’t had many events lately, but we stay connected through Slack, and share notes on projects, vendors, and referrals. Cohort alumni status means having an ever-growing community of fellow founders who know what you’ve been through and who are experiencing it themselves.”
Kelly McDonald, Founder of Kyndoo, a data platform solving the most extensive problems in the influencer marketing industry, was a member of Cohort #4 in 2019. “I loved my time in Growth Lab. There was a professionalization to it that was really helpful in getting my company seen with validity in those early deals that I was trying to do at that point. I definitely encourage other LGBTQ founders to apply for Growth Lab, because it connects you with people who are going through the same things you are. People you can check-in with and ask the crucial questions: Am I crazy? Am I gaslighting myself? Are these experiences real? These conversations help put yourself in check but also they also help you find investors. Investors invest in what they know and what they understand so referrals are essential. There is a reason people don’t get funding, and I don’t think it has as much to do with gender or sexual orientation, but more to do with lack of contact. You’ve got to get out and meet these people so they can tell your story for you. Once you have that in place, all of these other issues will hopefully become non-factors. I started Growth Lab completely as a solo founder, I had basically built the shell of the website and had fifty influencers signed up, we didn’t have much, just one client and about $500 in revenue. One of our first checks came from a founder in one of the other cohorts, so establishing those relationships early on was really important to us. After Growth Lab, we were a bit bigger but we had established a relationship with 500 Startups and that wouldn’t have happened without StartOut. Today we are at nine people.”
There are many pathways to success, but one you rarely hear about is the one where someone did it completely alone. As StartOut evolves to meet the challenges of the pandemic and the ever-shifting priorities of the investment world, our commitment to providing safe harbor, inspiration, and connection for the LGBTQ entrepreneur remains as steadfast as ever. If you can see yourself benefiting from Growth Lab, we hope you’ll consider applying and giving us a chance to explore the possibility.
