How We Raised $500 million: Founders Tell All!

About the CEOs:

AMY NELSON, FOUNDER AND CEO OF THE RIVETER
Amy Nelson is the founder and CEO of The Riveter, work and community spaces built by women, for everyone. A graduate of Emory University and the NYU School of Law, Amy practiced corporate litigation for over a decade in New York City and Seattle. She served on President Obama’s National Finance Committee and previously worked with President Carter’s The Carter Center. Amy launched The Riveter in 2017 while pregnant with her third daughter in three years. The startup’s growth has outpaced even WeWork’s first years and they recently closed a $5 million Series Seed led by Madrona Venture Group. Amy is a contributor for Forbes, and has been published in The Washington Post. She has spoken across the world on many stages, including Forbes Under 30, Cannes Lions and the United State of Women.

JENSEN HARRIS, CTO AND CO-FOUNDER OF TEXTIO
Jensen is the CTO and Co-Founder of Textio, where he leads engineering, product, brand, and design. A graduate of Yale University and Interlochen Arts Academy, Jensen led the creation of some of the most widely-used and influential software in the world: the innovative Ribbon user interface of Microsoft Office, the often-imitated email user interface of Microsoft Outlook, and the pioneering touch user interface built for Microsoft Surface. Jensen is known for designing beautiful, powerful, and forward-thinking products that are used every day by a billion people.

GRANT GOODALE, FOUNDER AND CTO OF CONVOY
Grant Goodale is the founder and CTO of Convoy. Each year, for every one percent improvement in truck routes and utilization, nearly 400 million gallons of fuel and 100 million hours of time can be saved, as well as three billion miles from being driven. As more truckers and companies shipping freight join the Convoy network, its software creates smarter routes that efficiently batch shipments for the drivers, helping their businesses thrive, saving on transportation costs and curtailing environmental waste. Prior to Convoy, Grant worked at Amazon, was the founder/CEO of Massively Fun, and held senior positions at multiple startups.

MATT OPPENHEIMER, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF REMITLY
Matt Oppenheimer is the Co-founder & CEO of Remitly, the largest independent digital money transmitter in the North America, sending over $6 billion a year. Matt set out to disrupt the broken $574 billion remittance industry 7 years ago after living in Kenya and seeing how difficult it was to send and receive money overseas. The company now has more than 700 employees worldwide and has raised more than $150 million from leading venture capital firms. Matt was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 in the Pacific Northwest and has been recognized as a Puget Sound Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree for his work with Remitly.

JEFF SPECTOR, CO-FOUNDER OF KARAT
Jeffrey co-founded Karat with Mohit Bhende in 2014 to fix the process of interviewing software engineers. Karat conducts highly predictive technical interviews for clients, helping companies to hire the engineers they need to create the future. Karat has completed over 20,000 technical interviews on behalf of clients such as Intuit, Indeed, Pinterest, and MuleSoft. Before co-founding Karat, Jeffrey served as Chief of Staff to Melinda Gates at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In this role, he provided strategic and analytical support to Co-chair Melinda Gates and program teams on the full range of the Foundation’s work, which cuts across health, education, and poverty issues domestically and around the world. Previously, Jeffrey worked in the private sector as an Investment Analyst at John A. Levin & Co.’s hedge fund in New York. He began his career at Linktone, a Shanghai-based mobile services startup, where he served as VP of Customer and Market Research and helped drive the company to its Nasdaq IPO. Jeffrey holds a BA in economics from Duke University He lives with his wife and two children in Seattle, WA.