Looking for a Great Founder Community? Get Acquainted With Our Startup Members
Back at the beginning of 2020 — what seems like a long, long time ago nowadays — the Startup Grind team was busy problem-solving.
With the world on lockdown and the startup community in need of more support than ever, it was crystal clear we needed to create something new for our community. Something that didn’t rely on in-person events (our previous standard), but could easily span across different global startup communities as needed.
And thus began the Startup Grind Virtual Membership.
Startup Grind’s Membership is a unique online space for founders to connect with other leaders and experts from around the world. It offers benefits not always accessible to early startup teams (like direct VC intros, mentorship, access to partners, and similar opportunities). In addition, it’s also a space where founders can get the extra boost of support and confidence needed as they navigate the million and one decisions ahead of them. All-in-all it’s an ideal space for startups of all types, locations, and growth stages.
As a way to highlight our members — something we love to do as an added promotion benefit of the membership!— we thought we’d introduce you to a few of our new Startup Grind members, all of who are busy building incredible new solutions, services, and companies.
Let’s meet ‘em.
1. ZumVet
“The founders of ZumVet met while working for a digital health platform and bonded over their fur babies. Despite all the innovation in the human health space, we realised that the veterinary space was being left behind.
As pet ownership rises exponentially around the world, pet owners remain lost when it comes to the health and wellness of their pets, with many serious condition going undiagnosed.
We created ZumVet as a way for pet owners to easily access the advice and care that they need, all from the comfort of their own homes.” — Athena Lee, CEO & Co-Founder
2. Chirp Birding
“Chirp Birding is the brainchild of John and Natalie White, a husband and wife team who are passionate birders and have created this company on a shared love of wildlife and a desire to use smart technology to use to solve real problems for birders. It started with an idea on a safari holiday, and with a lot of hard work and effort they’ve created a platform that connects a community who really care about birdwatching.
As parents of two young girls (who also love birdwatching!) they are passionate about what impact Chirp can have on future generations. They see the power that the platform can have to help solve global problems like ‘Nature-Deficit Disorder’ by getting kids outside for their entertainment. They want to educate them through knowledge and observation — and have more fun doing it.” — John White, Co-founder
Learn more about Chirp Birding here!
3. FriendWithA
“One summer my wife and I were house sitting in a neighborhood about a mile away from where I grew up. In the cul-de-sac, the neighbors shared everything from tools to sports equipment. It was common sight to the riding lawn mower driving down the road to the next persons house.
This was one mile away from my mom’s house, where she did not even feel comfortable going and asking her neighbor to borrow their lawn mower when hers broke down. She would drive 25 minutes to home depot, rent a lawn mower, rush home since she was on the clock at $20/hr. By the time she returned the lawn mower she was exhausted, covered in sweat and if she was lucky, only spent $60, usually spending 4 hours with the drive and spending $80 just to mow her lawn.
I wanted to build an online platform that could replicate my cul-de-sac experience and help my mom and others find that friend with a…” — Stefan Cordova, CEO
Learn more about FriendWithA here!
4. Nomad Stays
“After travelling over 100 countries around the world and living as a digital nomad for quite a few years, I needed a better way to find an affordable, easy way to book places to stay for a few weeks at a time. So I built the better way with my partner.” — Mark Phillips, Founder
Learn more about Nomad Stays here!
5. Menu del dia APP
“Menu del dia APP started as a way to help a group of friends in Ibiza Spain easily decide where to eat. We are currently seeking investment to help us grow worldwide as we have app users in 69 countries!” — Joanne Crumlin, Sole Founder & CEO
Learn more about Menu del dia APP here!
6. The School of UX
“I came to the UK from Estonia 15 years ago in search of career prospects. Three years (and thousands of pounds in fees) later I have completed computer science degree (hooray!) and realised that sadly much of the academic curriculum wasn’t relevant to what actual industry and employers were expecting from new hires (*sigh*).
It was only thanks to my proactive freelancing and numerous side projects with fellow teammates Vitalij Kudresov and Roy Herrod (big kudos to them!) that I’ve gained experience, which significantly helped me start my career. I wondered if there are other ways.
I’ve decided to share my knowledge with aspiring designers and started The School of UX in London — bringing accessible and affordable education in User Experience design to everyone.
It’s been running for 3 years now and helped over 2000 students of different backgrounds (from lawyers to graphic designers) — who received lots of practical insights and career advice from experienced designers in under 5 days (without a need to take a loan and quit job).” — Sergei Golubev, Founder
Learn more about School of UX here!
7. Pelagic Dive Travel
“I’ve been a SCUBA Instructor for over 17 years and was looking for a scuba trip where I could see Manta Rays. I spent hours until finally I found a liveaboard dive vessel which was traveling at my dates of holiday. I tried to book, but had a reply days later it was full so had to start again. Coming from the travel industry, I thought there must be a better solution — but there wasn’t. And so I created Pelagic Dive Travel.
We offer unique search by marine species & instant booking confirmations. Our values were always to support the marine environment, but today this is our focus. We support, help create exposure & promote marine conservation organizations & initiatives in the sense that all of our dive trips have to be sustainable with a direct focus on marine conservation.” — Terry Smith, Founder
Learn more about Pelagic Dive Travel here!
8. Square Comp
“Both of us founders — Srinivasan & Sriram — have been great friends since childhood. We wanted to be aligned with the next frontier in tech and we believe VR was the right place to be. The basic idea and sense of what Virtual Reality can do excites us to the core.
Once we started working on Virtual Reality a mutual friend of ours — who happens to be in the HR space for a leading Auto Manufacturer — complained about the challenges they face with training and other up-skilling processes and the amount they’d spend on these activities. That’s when we started researching more on the industry, the pain points, and the problem that they deal with at large. That paved a way for our solution which can save more than 50% of the cost and time spent towards these training activities for the Manufacturing Companies.” — Srinivasan Yagnanarayanan, Founder
Learn more about Square Comp here!
9. Sauciest
“My founder and I have known each other as long as I’ve known my wife. He’s my brother-in-law and closest friend. The idea for Sauciest came about after listening to Mike Maples’ Starting Greatness podcast. The point that sparked it went something like this: ‘Find a problem you have to which you could find a meaningfully unique solution.’ From that comment, Sauciest was born.
Our problem was that we both eat REALLY healthily and the sub-problem there is that not all healthy food tastes great. Therefore, we found ourselves constantly in the condiments aisle trying to find something to make our nutritious food a bit more palatable while not completely wrecking the main reason that we eat that way in the first place.” — Hunter Thevis, Founder
Learn more about Sauciest here!
10. ARTSMILEY
“While I was working in an oil & gas, one of my fabricators gave me a beautiful painting as a gift. In our conversation, I found out the painting was done by him and I also learned that he quit his career as a full-time artist and become fabricator because as an artist he is earning less than $5000 USD per year. One of his main problems was he didn’t know how to showcase and market his work to gain exposure as traditional galleries were not accessible to him.
Being an art lover and collector, I felt really bad and understood his pains completely. I discussed these problems with my wife and she (being an IT specialist) suggested we build an e-commerce platform for these emerging artists. This is how Artsmiley was founded and my wife has been my co-founder on our first startup journey.” — Lurdh Allam, CEO & Co-Founder
Learn more about ARTSMILEY here!
11. iERP.ai
“Dusan and I have known each other for more than 25 years. Two years ago, we were discussing why small & medium size businesses weren’t using predictive analytics solutions to reduce their costs and increase their revenue, as we saw how big corporations were using AI to be more agile. Then the idea sparked! Let’s create a solution focused on the SMB market which can be used by anybody with ZERO AI & Datascience knowledge. It would provide actionable predictions tailor-made for each company using it.
And here we are two years later. We offer 3 pre-packaged algorithms (Sales forecasting, Discount recommendation, Predictions what consumers will purchase next, and an algorithm to assess probability that invoices will not be paid). We have 2 investors, a team of 7 people which will grow further this month. Plus, pilot customers all around the world.” — Jozef Balaz, CEO & Co-founder
Learn more about iERP.ai here!
12. Verivend
“Verivend was founded to find a better way for businesses to do business. Our experience from industry veterans spans the transportation, commodities, software-as-a-service, and B2B marketplace industries. Our goal is to provide a solution that allows businesses to realize clarity and predictability of their cashflow, grow within a trusted network of buyers and suppliers, and reduce the risks of doing business.” — Rodney Reisdorf, Co-Founder
Looking for supportive founder community? We’d love to have you join the Startup Grind Membership, which accepts applications all year-round! We’ll also throw in the first-month of membership free so you can test the waters.
