The Startup Journey Interviews

Meet Ahana Banerjee, a young founder defying the odds in a landscape where female-led startups face significant funding disparities. At age 21, while studying physics at Imperial College London, Ahana turned her struggle to find the right skincare products into Clear—an app that makes buying, tracking, and sharing skincare products both intuitive and engaging. I recently sat down with Ahana to discuss her Startup Journey as part of season 1 of our podcast series with successful founders. She shared how Clear grew from a dorm room project into a thriving business. Like many female founders, she faced significant hurdles, including being “often dismissed due to her gender.” Unfortunately, this is not uncommon considering broader industry trends, where female entrepreneurs are 63% less likely than men to obtain venture capital financing. Despite these challenges, Ahana’s determination led to remarkable success: she earned a spot in Y Combinator, secured funding from Silicon Valley’s leading VCs (gaining over $965k at pre-seed), and made Forbes 30 Under 30—all before her peers had begun their first jobs. Today, Clear is transforming how people approach skincare worldwide, joining the ranks of female-led businesses that tend to be more profitable and innovative. Read on to discover how […]

This is Louwrens Van Schalkwyk, a seasoned entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience in building and leading companies in the fintech sector. When Louwrens and his co-founder first started out, they were focused on solving a frustrating payroll problem for the temporary employment sector in South Africa. But in tackling one problem, they discovered new challenges—which eventually revealed an entirely new opportunity. Their solution, originally intended to streamline internal payroll management, ended up laying the foundation for a new startup, MyBucks. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Louwrens and dive into his Startup Journey. He mentioned that he and his co-founder “almost stumbled upon the opportunity by mistake.” However, it quickly became clear that their success was anything but accidental. It was built on countless late nights, strategic pivots, and an unyielding belief in the value they could provide. Within three years, MyBucks evolved from a small, bootstrapped tech experiment into the first online lending platform in South Africa. It ultimately became a leading fintech company across nine African countries, offering comprehensive services in banking, lending, and insurance. They later expanded into Europe and made history as the first African-focused fintech to list on the Frankfurt Stock […]

A few years back, Jags Kandasamy walked into his first investor pitch with little more than a PowerPoint presentation and a bold vision for Latent AI.  Unlike many founders, he wasn’t armed with a fully built product, but he had something else that caught investors’ attention: a proven track record and a deep understanding of how AI could transform industries.  Within two rounds of funding, Latent AI raised over $22 million. I recently sat down with Jags to discuss his journey in building Latent AI.  As Jags puts it, “At Latent AI, we’re solving a key challenge: how to bring about ubiquitous computing across all hardware. How do we make AI available on every device spread across the world?”  With the number of connected devices expected to explode to 40 billion by 2030, Latent AI is building the tools and infrastructure to help developers harness the massive amounts of data these devices will generate and provide intelligence at the edge. His experience is a reminder to early-stage founders, particularly in AI, that technology isn’t always the most difficult part, however. Building the right team and gaining investors’ trust often pose greater challenges. Investors are increasingly focusing on the founder rather […]