The Way In

Shijia Mao
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Entrepreneurship

The Way In dives into the choices, risks, and lessons behind building a business. Each week, founders and small business owners share how they carved their own path. Season 1 featured 23 entrepreneurs. Now on Season 2.

  1. 3d ago

    Prue @ New New Patch: Making Repair Easier Than Buying New

    New New Patch was named in TIME’s Best Inventions of 2026 Special Mentions. Prue spent 18 years in product marketing before becoming a founder herself. New New Patch started with a very ordinary parenting problem: what do you do when your kids’ clothes are stained? Her answer was a peel-and-stick patch that makes repairing and personalizing clothes as easy as putting on a sticker. But turning that simple idea into a real product took three years, dozens of adhesive samples, countless tests, and plenty of people telling her it wouldn’t work. In this episode, Prue talks about going from product marketer to founder, building a physical product from scratch, and the moment she realized, “I am this entrepreneur. This is my business.” We also talk about building New New Patch while raising two young kids, auditioning for Shark Tank just months after giving birth, what she learned about pitching, and why sustainable choices need to be frictionless if we actually want families to adopt them. Lastly, Prue shares what has surprised her most about being a founder, what she finds hardest about building a business, and her bigger vision for helping families keep what they already have for longer.

    Prue @ New New Patch: Making Repair Easier Than Buying New

  2. Oct 2

    Tim @ Bonsai Bar: Growing the Economy Around a Niche Hobby

    Tim, founder of Bonsai Bar, discovered bonsai while working in software and eventually started wondering not just how he could make a living from bonsai, but how he could help grow the economy around the hobby. That idea eventually became Bonsai Bar. What started with small workshops in Boston has grown into a business operating across 18 states, with roughly 200 part-time instructors and more than 200,000 people having planted a bonsai through Bonsai Bar. In this episode, Tim shares what those first workshops looked like, how he figured out pricing, and why he had to throw out some of his earliest assumptions almost immediately. As Bonsai Bar scaled, the challenge became much bigger than teaching people how to make a tree. Tim talks about the surprisingly complicated supply chain behind keeping hundreds of workshops stocked with living plants, and why that operational complexity can actually become part of the business’s defensibility. Tim's journey is about finding a business opportunity inside a niche hobby, learning by doing, and figuring out how to scale something that had never really been scaled before.

    Tim @ Bonsai Bar: Growing the Economy Around a Niche Hobby

  3. Sep 28

    Tiffany @ FinFast: Can AI Make Sense of the Noise in Economic Research?

    AI tools for investment research have exploded over the past year, but more information doesn't necessarily make research easier. In fact, it can make it harder to know what to pay attention to. In this episode, I talk to Tiffany Qiu, founder of Oxbridge Economics and the company behind FinFAST, an AI platform that turns unstructured macro and policy data into quantitative, decision-ready signals. Before founding Oxbridge Economics, Tiffany spent more than a decade as an economist at Goldman Sachs and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. We talk about what she saw in traditional research workflows that could be automated, how the company evolved from research projects into a platform, and what she's learned from early users. Tiffany shares how she thinks about the growing AI research landscape, the difference between general and vertical AI, and what she believes economists and analysts will need to learn as these tools become more capable. We wrap up with her experience balancing research and entrepreneurship, what building a company has taught her that academia didn't, and her advice for the next generation of economics students and founders.

    Tiffany @ FinFast: Can AI Make Sense of the Noise in Economic Research?

  4. Sep 21

    Natasa Tuohy: Building a Life of Your Own, from Florence to New York

    Natasa Tuohy grew up in Yugoslavia, moved to Florence at 19 to study architecture, and made her way to New York, where she spent nearly a decade working in architecture before starting her own studio in 2019. In this episode, we talk about that journey from Florence to New York, what she learned working inside established architecture firms, and what changed when she became responsible for not just the design, but the business behind it. We also talk about building a business where growth isn't necessarily about taking on more work, how she thinks about success today, and why she created the North Brooklyn Women Collective to bring together women entrepreneurs in her Greenpoint community.

    Natasa Tuohy: Building a Life of Your Own, from Florence to New York

  5. Sep 5

    Kim @ Utopia Club: Building for Founders Entering the U.S.

    In this episode, I’m joined by Kim, founder of Utopia Club, a private community for software founders making high-stakes decisions around entering and scaling in the U.S. market. Kim started her career as a fractional marketing operator and founded Fua Collective three years ago. After working closely with founders, she noticed a recurring problem: founders were often making major business decisions without access to other founders who were facing or had recently faced the same challenges. That insight led her to pivot and launch Utopia in January 2026. We talk about why international founders are drawn to the U.S. market, the biggest misconceptions they have about entering it, and why being successful in your home market doesn't necessarily translate to success in the U.S. Kim also shares how she validated Utopia before building it, why she believes founders need to figure out their GTM strategy before hiring someone to execute it, and why trust-based channels like partnerships, referrals, and content can be more effective than traditional cold outreach for certain businesses. Finally, we talk about the lessons Kim has learned in her first year building Utopia, including the cost of waiting for a product to be perfect, what she would do with an extra $10,000, and her goal by the end of 2026.

    Kim @ Utopia Club: Building for Founders Entering the U.S.

  6. Aug 24

    Anthea @ ANS: Performance for the Long Run

    Sports gels are everywhere in North America, but in much of Asia, the bigger challenge isn't convincing someone to switch brands - it’s convincing them to use a gel in the first place. In this episode, I’m joined by Anthea, founder of ANS, a Singapore-based sports nutrition brand built around the idea of “performance for the long run.” We talk about why she saw an opportunity to rethink the relationship between sports nutrition and long-term wellness, why she chose Singapore as a launchpad for Southeast Asia, and why she chose to build ANS the unscalable way in its first year: from showing up at running clubs and setting up fuel stations to personally talking to athletes and turning early customers into believers. We also talk about the challenge of creating your own momentum when you're the person responsible for making everything happen. And as Anthea reflects on moving to Singapore to build the business, she shares how being alone in a foreign country can give you the motivation and drive to make things happen.

    Anthea @ ANS: Performance for the Long Run

  7. Aug 18

    Laura @ Renata Rubio: The Unusual Business of Selling Jewelry

    What does it actually take to build a jewelry business? She didn't start with Instagram. She didn't start with a consumer brand. She didn't chase trends. She didn't prioritize rapid scale. She didn't build a big team. Instead, Laura started in jewelry distribution, eventually building relationships with museum shops and airport retailers before putting her own name on the label and moving online. In fact, I first came across Laura's work in the gift shop at the O'Keeffe Museum, long before I knew the story behind the woman who made it. We talk about how Laura built her way into airport retail, and the intricacies of working with airport vendors - from inventory and packaging to understanding what makes a product work in a four-minute purchase window. We also talk about why COVID barely disrupted a business with a solid foundation, and what Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program taught her about the next stage of growth. At the heart of it all is Laura's love of jewelry. After all these years, she still wants to keep making it and she wouldn't trade the business for an exit.

    Laura @ Renata Rubio: The Unusual Business of Selling Jewelry

  8. Aug 12

    Maggie Blackburn: Building a Portfolio Career

    After more than a decade in product marketing, Maggie left her corporate career in November 2024 without even knowing the term “portfolio career.” She initially thought she was simply making a pivot into events. But as she began freelancing, coaching, teaching, creating content, and taking on fractional marketing work, she realized she was building a career made up of multiple interests and income streams. In this episode, Maggie shares how she built her portfolio one piece at a time, why she believes in focusing on one or two things before adding the next, and how personal branding became the thread connecting everything she does. If you've ever had the itch to build multiple income streams, or you're someone with many passions who doesn't want to choose just one, you'll find this episode especially hands-on.

    Maggie Blackburn: Building a Portfolio Career
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

The Way In dives into the choices, risks, and lessons behind building a business. Each week, founders and small business owners share how they carved their own path. Season 1 featured 23 entrepreneurs. Now on Season 2.

Information

  • Creator
    Shijia Mao
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Shijia Mao