A lot of people say that the hustle of an entrepreneur starts long before their first business. For Thomas McLeod, 5x serial entrepreneur, this couldn't be more true. Growing up, Tom never stayed in the same place for too long. Constantly bouncing around to different schools, it got him used to being uncomfortable and facing challenge. By the time he was in middle school, Tom was already calculating profit margins off of baseball cards that he was selling to his fellow classmates. As we get deeper into the episode, Tom speaks on some of the difficulties and achievements he faced along his path of building five different companies and the lessons that he learned along the way. One of those lessons being to drop the expectation of things always working out as a founder. Instead, he speaks on learning from his mistakes and using them as opportunities to better not only his company but also his character. Now, Thomas is building his 5th company Arkive, a decentralized museum of culture curated by its own members, which was able to raise a $9.7 M seed round back in July of 2022. Whatever Tom's doing, it's working. Regardless if you are a founder or not, this episode is full of mindset gems that can be applied to almost anything in life.

Community & representation. These are the two things that Lolita Taub, founder of Ganas Ventures has prioritized while building her fund. Most people within venture would view the way in which Lolita has built her fund as unconventional or even impossible, but that hasn't stopped her from establishing one of the strongest communities filled with minorities and other underrepresented founders who have been pushed away from the 'conventional' world of Venture Capital. So where did this drive to create change come from? Being from a family of immigrants, you could say her drive has always been there. Lolita grew up with the understanding that she had to work twice as hard in order to get the same amount of recognition, especially in the work place. By no means has her journey been easy, but it's been worth it. In this episode, we learn more about what it's taken for her to get this far and what it means to be a founder of a VC firm.