Clare Harrison, Cofounder of AlchemyK12

Speaker: Clare Harrison, Founder, AlchemyK12

Clare Harrison: Hi, I'm Claire Harrison, my uh colleague and co-founder Claire Hollenbach and I attended the star boot camp over the past month in support of the formation of our company Alchemy K 12. It was a great opportunity for us to really dig deep and develop skills in the area of fundraising and understanding how investor relationships work. We have a lot of experience in the K 12 space having worked um both of us having worked in this side in marketing and sales and product development for the past 20 years, but we're really novices in the area of fundraising. And what are the foundational pieces that need to be in place in order to present a good business case to investors and what investors are looking for? So, the expert guidance and the master classes and the um activities that we did were really rewarding and really beneficial to us in terms of helping us develop those um foundational skills in the area. Fundraising. It was a great opportunity to come together with a cohort of 25 other founders share great information build connections, have a network of people at all different stages of founding the businesses of founding businesses that really are a great resource and then also having the expertise of the start ed team to lean on for guidance as we went through and completed different assignments related to the program, materials that we were learning in each of the weeks. So incredible experience really rewarding was incredibly helpful for us in solving the needs. We had around learning the foundational um skills that were to be successful in fundraising. And also I think the biggest takeaway was really the exposure and access to incredible materials, other founders and the start mentors who were um a really resourceful team, helping us navigate our way through learning these new um foundational skills and fundraising, great experience. Thanks so much.

Clare Harrison: Hi, I'm Claire Harrison with Alchemy K 12. I would describe my start experience with three words, inspiring, intense and intentional. Um It was inspiring because we had access to a cohort of founders who were really at all different phases and really incredible and inspiring in the work that they've been doing and also in sharing that, which was a really um wonderful benefit. I would say it was intense because, you know, any founder has a really full plate, likely on top of full time jobs that they're trying to maintain while starting their business. And so for us, it was intense in terms of trying to give our full commitment to it and, and really be able to share expertise that we had and gain all of the benefits of the program makes available to us. And I would say it was intentional because it is a very specific planned program with a very specific focus in terms of the foundational, the key foundational things to really kind of take you through this boot camp and get you ready. So I think the master classes were well selected, the access to the mentors was really intentional and well planned and well selected and then the opportunity to go through the program and tap into and use different templates and resources that are available to you.

Clare Harrison: So this was the first entrepreneurial program I participated in, I do a lot of work with Babson College um and in, in their entrepreneurship work and programming. But this is the first time I myself went through any kind of accelerator. So I really didn't know what to expect. Um Star out came highly recommended to me and it didn't disappoint. The experience was incredibly rewarding. I learned so much and feel like I will consistently be going back to the materials that we used and created as well as tapping into the network extensively as I continue to navigate my journey as a founder.

Clare Harrison: So when we did the voting at the end of the program, I voted for Curtis Carmichael. I feel like throughout the program, he was incredibly helpful in answering questions and navigating first time founder questions because he's a little bit further along the journey than I am. So I just wanted to say thank you and a shout out to star for connecting me with um Curtis and with all of the founders, it was really such a rewarding experience.