Young Founders Podcast Young Founders

Marina has been living zero-waste for the past six years and loves sharing her enthusiasm for waste reduction with anyone willing to learn.


She was named a pioneer and expert in her field by the Burlington Free Press
In March 2020, she was awarded Vermont's Young Entrepreneur of the Year
Nominated for 1% For The Planet's Pinnacle Award: Unleash Passion Every Day.

Her company, Waste Free Earth, uses an interdisciplinary yet balanced approach to creating a fully sustainable model for their clients through the implementation of three essential frameworks:


environmental stewardship
economic prosperity
social responsibility

She also creates sustainability-focused content for brands through writing blog posts, creating social media posts, cultivating mindful engagements on websites and being a spokesperson for certain brands that align with her values.

In her free time, you can find her in the mountains, volunteering, or making waste-free dinners with friends.

You can follow Marina at:

IG: @sustainabilitybosslady

Podcast points:

✔️ How did her sustainable movement company start?

✔️ When did Marina go from a volunteer to realizing that this is a valid business that she wants to grow?

✔️ The importance of client relationships in growing your business.

✔️ Building a business, and the importance of scaling and pricing your services.

✔️ Pivoting your business during the pandemic and managing client expectations.

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Maia Bittner is a  serial entrepreneur, investor, and social media influencer. She's been a cofounder at RocksBox, a subscription Jewelry company, and Pinch, a financial services app (which was later acquired by Chime). She's also an advisor to Parcel B, an investment fund supporting startups founded by students and alumni at her alma mater, Olin College.

She’s been featured in the Wall St Journal, Huffington Post, Forbes, TechCrunch, CheddarTV, Crunchbase, Lifehacker, and more. She’s also been featured on a bunch of great podcasts, including Chicks Who Give a Hoot, Crazy Wisdom, and Bank On It.

At RocksBox, Maia and her co-founder Meaghan Rose were able to raise ~$15m, despite the challenges of raising capital in San Francisco as a pair of female co-founders targeting women customers.

Later, at Pinch, she raised a pre-seed round of close to $1m with her cofounder, Michael Ducker.

You can follow Maia on Twitter at @maiab.

Some of the things we talk about on the podcast are:


What does it mean to find Product Market Fit (PMF) and how can you work towards that? 
How to use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to improve customer experience. 
How to decide which investors to pitch your idea to. 
Why you shouldn't always listen to industry standard advice and how A/B testing helped RocksBox grow. 
Why sometimes founders need to throw in the towel and move on to something else. 



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Jason Levinthal, or JLev as you may know him, is a professional skier turned serial entrepreneur. He’s the guy who founded LINE Skis, Full Tilt Boots, and now J Skis.

He’s been featured in FreeSkier Magazine, Powder Magazine, BombSnow, New Schoolers, and more. He was named a top 40 under 40 professional in the sporting goods industry by Sporting Goods Business Magazine in 2010.

Jason was a bronze medalist in the 1998 X Games, gave a TED talk in 2015, and has sold over half a million pairs of skis.

You can find him on social media @jasonlevinthal, follow J skis @j_skis, and grab a pair of limited edition sticks at jskis.com.

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Zeke is the co-founder and CEO of Pure Investments, a cryptocurrency investment community and content publishing company based in Burlington, VT.

Zeke was a sophomore at Champlain College when he founded Pure Investments, which attracted 10,000 users within their first year in business.

He and his co-founder Miles placed third in the 2018 LaunchVT Collegiate pitch competition and have built a team of analysts and content creators in the crypto niche and have been able to monetize their audience through paid memberships for premium content.

Some of the things Nate, Zeke and I talked about on this episode of the Young Founders Podcast:


How he built Pure Investments from $0 to $60,000/m in recurring revenue in less than 18 months.
How online networking sparked a relationship with his co-founder

If you have an idea, don't just let it be an idea. Turn it into something that's tangible. Make it a reality. All you have to do [as an entrepreneur] is take that first step. Once you take that first step all the other steps are a lot easier because you've already got the ball rolling. The worst that can happen is you fail– and that's a really great thing to happen.

Kickstarting their business with content marketing
How he juggles running a company with college classes and social activities
Building and selling long-boards in high school

It's crazy. We didn't see it as ever becoming a company. [We were just] doing it for fun on the side.

Building a Discord community and the pros and cons of Discord as a platform
Why you shouldn't take money from VCs
His biggest mistake: outsourcing product development overseas

We did a lot of marketing in the right places.

How the Pure Investment team stays connected with a remote workforce using Slack as a communication tool
Customer segmenting
Generating subscriptions and revenue through referrals and word of mouth

We wrapped up the podcast with a testimonial for Pure Investments:

Pure Investments is the best investment community I've ever joined. The calls the staff give are top-notch backed with solid and accurate technical analysis. Furthermore, the community is very friendly and helpful. I would strongly recommend anyone who's looking to join an investment group to join Pure Investments. - Andy
You can learn more about Zeke's business at pureinvestments.com or click here for more episodes of the Young Founders Podcast.

Chas is a cofounder and the CEO of Sap! Beverages. He founded the company alongside his cousin Nikita. Sap! has been featured in USA Today,  Country Living, Food & Wine Magazine, and many more.

Their products were featured in Whole Foods' Top Trends for 2018 and the pair made an appearance on NBC's Shark Tank with famed investors Mark Cuban, Robert Herjavek, Barbara Corcoran, Rohan Ohza, and Lori Griener.

They ultimately turned down an offer from Herjavek for 30% of their company, valuing the business at close to $2m.

Some of the things we discuss with Chas on this episode of the podcast:


How running his business has set him up to succeed in his future endeavors regardless of the industry.
How to find a product-market fit and better understand the opportunity for your business
Launching the product at a single location- City Market in downtown Burlington, VT.
His experience developing new, innovative products that the market had never seen
Why it's so important to understand your customer and what they care about
Why he turned down a deal on NBC's Shark Tark
Chas' feelings about sacrificing a career in law in order to build his own company.
How social media has helped distinguish Sap! and build their fanbase

It takes constant hard work and hard truths about your products. I'm really a strong believer that you have to go through the experience yourself to learn.
You can find Sap! products online at SapVT.com and follow along on their journey on social media @DrinkSap.

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Georgia Grace, along with her co-founders Bianca Gonzalez and Charlotte Massey, recently launched SheFly Apparel.

SheFly is a layerable line of pants that allows women to comfortably, safely, and easily relieve themselves in the outdoors, without exposing skin to the elements or to other people. Their mission is to promote inclusivity, accessibility, and women’s empowerment in the outdoors through innovative product design.

I’ll also add that I’m really impressed with the sustainability aspect that’s been infused into the brand, and I’ll let Georgia Grace speak to that later.

Georgia Grace and her team have appeared in several business pitch competitions, including the Vermont Road Pitch and Peak Pitch, both hosted by Fresh Tracks Capital. They’ve been able to generate a BUNCH of press locally here in Vermont, recently being featured on Fox Local 44 and Think Vermont and in Seven Days and the Vermont Business Magazine. On the national level, SheFly has been recognized by Boston Inno and featured on several other podcasts.

Their crowdfunding campaign on iFundWomen far exceeded their fundraising goal, having raised over $20k from 200 individual backers.

You can find their products online at sheflyapparel.com, or follow them on social media at @SheFlyApparel


How she thought up the idea for SheFly while climbing glaciers in Alaska
Her crowdfunding experience and how SheFly raised $50,000 before ever selling a pair of pants.
How to navigate the process of patenting IP and how to leverage patents to license to other companies
The impact that a class in entrepreneurship hosted by VCET partners David Bradbury and Sam Roach-Gerber had on the SheFly team
How to build an audience on social media
Why every startup should build a press kit
How to define the roles of each of your co-founders (hint: Hustler, Hacker, Hipster)
How to develop a prototype that you can use to pre-sell your product and how to find a manufacturer to replicate and improve your design

Anytime we make an assumption about something, it usually ends in a mistake.

How customer survey data can inform your marketing and product development

I think for any product in this market, sustainability should be high up on the list of priorities and part of the mission. We’ve partnered with a factory that has a zero waste policy. Their name is Visible Clothing. They believe that every piece of fabric or material that enters their building should leave as a finished product, so nothing is being thrown away.

Why you should fall in love with your co-founders and how to facilitate that
How Georgia Grace and her co-founders have built their business while being fully remote and living all over the world

I wish I had known how to file taxes as an LLC, and kept better records of all spend no matter how directly or indirectly its related to the business.

SheFly’s approach to packaging and the unboxing experience

Georgia Grace’s Top Reads for Young Entrepreneurs

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
Smart People Should Build Things by Andrew Yang

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