Born Global Ventures is excited to partner with Women in AI USA to launch WaiVALIDATE, a free 4-week boot camp specially designed for early-stage founders to validate and develop their tech startups.

Why VALIDATE?

90% of startups fail, and one of the top reasons is lack of product market fit. Most founders don’t conduct enough market research until they launch their product. We believe it is critical to integrate market validation at ideation and in all the stages of startup development, instead of an afterthought. It will save lots of time and effort and greatly increase the chance of startup success. 

Why Women? 

Women entrepreneurship is increasing globally, and recent research suggests that there are 114% more female entrepreneurs in the US today than 20 years ago, and women have started 49% of new businesses in the US in 2021 compared with only 28% in 2019. However, only 2% of U.S. venture capital funding is allocated to female-led ventures.

What is WaiVALIDATE?

The WaiVALIDATE program is a free 4-week intensive boot camp offering educational workshops, mentorship, coaching and counseling, strategic partnerships, investor relations, and startup perks.  

Every week, founders will attend ONLINE synchronized sessions of two hours: the first hour dedicated to hands-on workshops on problem identification, market validation, strategic planning, and selling/pitching and the second hour to relationship building in breakout rooms with experienced founders, partners, investors, and most importantly, mental health counselors and professional coaches. 

Additionally, you will gain a supportive network of mentors, partners, and investors as well as perks and resources for your startups. 

Program Overview

How to Apply?

If you’re a pre-seed startup founder looking for guidance to validate and develop your startup, submit your application at the link given below. We believe that investing in diverse entrepreneurs means tapping into previously unexplored potentials. Therefore, in the spirit of “zero exclusion”, founders from all backgrounds regardless of gender and ethnicity are welcome to join. 

How to Get Involved:

With the mission to “cultivate the galaxy of global innovation,” we welcome all the stakeholders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to join us. You are more than welcome to be a part of WaiVALIDATE if you are an

  • experienced entrepreneur interested in mentoring new founders
  • early-stage investor looking for the next gamechanger 
  • organization supporting ethical and inclusive entrepreneurship 

Please fill this form to let us know you’re interested in getting involved. We look forward to hearing from you and exploring ways to collaborate on this mission.

On November 12, 2021, Nitin Pachisia, Founding Partner at Unshackled Ventures joined Dr. Sunny Zhang, General Partner of Born Global Ventures at a virtual event to talk about Starting Companies as Immigrant Founders. Starting a company is hard. Starting a company as an immigrant is even harder. Nitin addressed the challenges and opportunities for immigrant founders in the US. 

Nitin is a founding partner of Unshackled Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that focuses on investing and supporting immigrant entrepreneurs. Unshackled Ventures does more than just provide capital to fund the most ambitious founders; they designed their solution to provide immigration support and services at no cost to founders, to help optimize a founder’s time in building the future. This formula has sustained a portfolio of 60+ companies in a diverse range of industries. Before Unshackled, Nitin ran finance and strategy for edtech startup Kno (acquired by Intel in 2013) that raised over $90M of funding from some of the top VCs including a16z, First Round Capital, and Floodgate. Before Kno, Nitin immigrated from India to work at Deloitte where he focused on helping tech startups with growth, exits, and strategic initiatives. Nitin Pachisia has sat in several seats in the venture ecosystem and those experiences pushed him to create the same if not better access for others.

Many thanks to our event partners, business angel Minority association – baMa, First Bight Ventures, Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce, Impact Hub Houston, Indonesian American Chamber of Commerce Southeastern Central USA, ITA Houston Italian Trade Agency, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, Texas West Africa Chamber of Commerce (TWACC), Women in AI USA and Z LAB Global for their kind support. 

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On October 29, 2021, Natasha Gorodetsky, who is a Product Strategist, a Startup Advisor, and the Managing Director at Founder Institute, hosted a session on “Mentor Circle: Share and Ask” aka “This is NOT a Pitch Competition” for aspiring founders in energy startups so that they could share what they are working on and ask for guidance needed to make their next big step.

The mentors for this event were:

Special thanks to our event partners, Global Energy Mentors (GEM), SCORE Mentors, and Z LAB Global for their kind support.

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On October 20, 2021, marketing professor Dr. Krishnan Trichy joined Born Global Ventures General Partner Dr. Sunny Zhang for a virtual event to address How do the Sales of a New Product Grow. The key takeaway from his talk was that it is critical to identify the innovators and early adopters of your new product. They will become your spokesperson and help you penetrate the mass market and address the “side effects” through word of mouth.

Dr. Trichy V. Krishnan spends his professional time on academic research, teaching and consulting. Currently, he is a Professor at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai and has held faculty positions in various institutions over the years like Tilburg University, The Netherlands, Rice University, USA, and NUS Business School, Singapore. At NUS, he also held administrative positions such as the Head of Marketing and Vice-Dean of Research & PhD. He has written many articles that have appeared in top academic journals, has got the Best MBA Teacher’s award at NUS, and has taught in many corporate executive programs covering several aspects of marketing including Marketing Strategy, Channel Strategies, Retailing Strategies, Pricing Strategies and New Product Management. His works on new product diffusion have got a lot of citations (counting 1500+), have been reprinted in many textbooks and are extensively used in the investment world. He has written award-winning case studies and was involved in consulting work for quite a few companies in the US (oil and gas industry) and Singapore for the past 20 years. He is also a board member of CIGS, a fin-tech company based in Chennai, India, that is building a digital bridge between people in rural markets and urban markets. 

Read more about Dr. Trichy’s talk at: https://lnkd.in/giMuYhSc

Many thanks to event partners, Elementz Ventures, Houston Community College, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, TiE Houston, Women in AI and Z LAB Global for their kind support.

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On October 15, 2021, the Executive Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University, Dr. Angela Wilkins, joined our virtual event for a fireside chat with our General Partner Dr. Sunny Zhang to address Sustainable Innovation in AI and Data Science. The event accomplished a deep discussion with a diverse group of people from multiple communities connecting applied and fundamental data science and spinning academia and industry. 

Dr. Wilkins is responsible for the development and implementation of the Rice Ken Kennedy Institute’s programs in the computational sciences. After earning a PhD in theoretical physics from Lehigh University, she shifted her focus to computational biology and spent nine years at Baylor College of Medicine as a researcher and instructor. She later served as director of clinical research at the nonprofit Center for Science & Law, and in 2017 founded a start-up to help early-stage companies solve data science problems. 

We thank our event partners, Rice Ken Kennedy Institute, Black Women in AI, Women in AI USA, Women In Data, Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs and Z LAB Global for their kind support. 

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On October 8, 2021, Allison Byers, Founder and CEO of Scroobious, joined General Partner of Born Global Ventures, Dr. Sunny Zhang for a virtual fireside chat. Allison addressed the fundraising strategies for underestimated founders. The discussion covered many important aspects of finance strategies such as:

  • how you, as a founder, can identify the best path to obtain capital including your aspirations and vision for the company
  • how to know when you’re ready for external funding
  • what is required for different capital providers
  • how preparing your pitch material can help you evaluate your funding options  

Allison is an MBA with 15+ years of experience building and leading data-driven start-ups. She has done everything from management consulting to advising Google on marketing and strategy, to co-running a medical device company where she raised nearly $10M. Her model for building a clear and concise investor-ready pitch deck has been published in Business Insider and she is a frequent pitching advisor, mentor, and speaker. Her company, Scroobious is increasing diversity in the startup ecosystem by providing the education, tools, and community that founders need to create investor-ready pitch material, and a platform to help investors easily find those founders. 

We thank our event partners, Women in AI USA, Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce and Z LAB Global for their kind support. 

Please join our Slack space and sign up for our Newsletter to learn more about Born Global events and connect with amazing members of our community!

On October 1, 2021, our Born Global event featured Carey Ransom, Founder and President of Operate, a venture studio that partners with startup founders to build and scale high-growth software companies in Southern California. This event was hosted by General Partner of Born Global Ventures, Dr. Sunny Zhang. Carey discussed how Venture Studios propel Startup Founders and the Venture Community. He also shared his extensive experience in venture building at Operate and gave a comprehensive explanation of the venture studio model.  

Carey is a serial entrepreneur and investor with extensive experience from startup to explosive growth to exit, having sold a private company to a public company while being CEO. At Operate, Carey and his team look for entrepreneurs with grit who are building innovative companies. In all of their portfolio companies, they invest capital and their team’s capabilities as senior executives to build amazing companies together. This unique approach delivers more predictable investment returns and creates more winners for their investment partners. Carey is also the host of Operate Podcast featuring SoCal innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

We thank our event partners, StudioHUB Startup Studio Community and Z LAB Global for their kind support. 

Please join our Slack space and sign up for our Newsletter to learn more about Born Global events and connect with amazing members of our community!

On September 24, 2021, General Partner of Born Global Ventures, Dr. Sunny Zhang was joined by Rebecca Springer, PhD and Hilary Wiek, members of the PitchBook institutional research team, for a virtual event. Rebecca and Hilary delivered their invaluable insights for Emerging, Diverse and Impact Managers, and the key topics discussed were:

  • Current VC fundraising trends 
  • Fundraising advice for emerging managers and how to build an effective pitch
  • Options on seeding and anchoring
  • Considerations for diverse managers
  • Sustainable Investing and tagging impact funds

Dr. Rebecca Springer is a Private Equity Analyst at PitchBook. She leads the team’s healthcare coverage and contributes to PitchBook’s quarterly PE and M&A market updates. Rebecca’s insights have been cited in publications including Institutional Investor and Buyouts, and she has published several peer-reviewed academic papers. She has earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a master’s from the University of Cambridge, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford.

Hilary Wiek, CFA, CAIA is the Lead Analyst for Fund Strategies and Performance at PitchBook. She also heads up PitchBook’s coverage of the ESG/Impact Investing space. With over 20 years of experience in asset owner, manager and advisory roles, Hilary was previously the Director of Investments at Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundations, where she handled portfolio management, impact/ESG, investment diligence and monitoring, and investment operations.

A massive thank you to our Event Partners, PitchBook Data, business angel Minority association – baMa, First Bight Ventures, Global Energy Mentors (GEM), Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, Sutton Capital, The Cannon Community, Women in AI USA and Z LAB Global for their unconditional support. 

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Being a founder comes with lots of challenges; whether you’re at the “idea on a napkin” stage or ready to exit, there are so many decisions to make! On September 17, 2021, Born Global startup evangelist Amanda Moya hosted a safe and intimate session on, “Circle Time: Share and Ask” AKA “This is NOT a Pitch Competition” for founders and funders to share what they’re focused on and ask for the support they needed to make the next big step. Our inclusive community is committed to connecting innovators from ALL backgrounds so that we can help each other solve our biggest problems.

Amanda is the Member Experience Manager at The Cannon Community, who ensures members are able to connect with the people and resources they need in order for their companies to thrive. Prior to joining the Cannon, Amanda was the Program Manager of Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship (WCE) at the University of Houston, the No. 1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program in the United States. She has helped numerous aspiring entrepreneurs pursue their dreams through this distinguished program by creating a quality experiential learning atmosphere. Amanda is also a successful entrepreneur herself, running her family tutoring business Aspire Advancement Center.


We thank our event partners, Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce, Global Energy Mentors (GEM), Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, The Cannon Community, Women in AI USA and Z LAB Global for their continued support.

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On September 10, 2021, we were joined by Joel Palathinkal, PhD, CEO of Sutton Capital for our Born Global event where he talked about how to grow a career in Venture Capital and Private Equity, regardless of one’s current profession or previous background. The event was hosted by the General Partner of Born Global Ventures, Dr. Sunny Zhang.

Joel has been doing incredible work to democratise access to VC and PE for more diverse investors. He is a seasoned investor and entrepreneur affiliated with a global network of Single-Family Offices, High Net Worth Investors, Endowments, and Venture Capitalists. Joel also serves as an LP & mentor to emerging fund managers. Early in Joel’s career, he ran technology product innovation in Fintech, Artificial Intelligence, & for the Dept. of Defense. He completed his PhD in Modeling & Simulation while he was building flight simulators for the NAVY.

A massive thank you to our event partners, business angel Minority association – baMaFirst Bight Ventures, Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce, Global Energy Mentors (GEM), Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, The Cannon Community, and Z LAB Global for their unconditional support.

Watch the replay here.

Please join our Slack space and sign up for our Newsletter to learn more about Born Global events and connect with amazing members of our community!