Madison McIlwain and Claudia Laurie host The Room, a podcast featuring founders and funders, especially from underrepresented groups in tech. Since 2020, they've interviewed guests who built nearly $50 billion in enterprise value, including Cloudflare's Michelle Zatlin and Vercel's Guillermo Rauch. 89% of their guests are underrepresented in tech.
Chapters
Welcome to The Room Podcast.
I'm Claudia Laurie.
And I'm Madison McIlwain. We're on a mission to open the door to the room where it happens. Sharing the stories of some of the world's most iconic founders and funders in an effort to inspire and educate the next generation of entrepreneurs. If you recently found us through our exciting milestone of Forbes 30 Under 30 media list, or have been a listener since day one, we're glad you're here. In this clip, we're sharing a brief origin story of the pod, why you should listen, and how to connect with us via URL and IRL.
Mads, you and your acronyms. Let's dive in.
So most company creation stories historically happen behind doors closed to groups across age, gender, and race. But after 9 seasons, we are proud to have opened the door to a range of founders and investors, 89% of whom identify as underrepresented in tech. Our guests have built nearly $50 billion in enterprise value and join us to share the tactical how-tos of go-to-market, fundraising, and exit strategies.
Authentic storytelling is really core to our community as Madison and I are a founder and a funder. It all started as two best friends who met in the heart of San Francisco as product managers in 2018, then realized as we were making career transitions into myself, founder, and Madison, funder, wanted to talk to the entrepreneurs that had built great companies. Since starting the podcast, I founded Pryve, a commerce payment startup, raised venture capital, and have faced a ton of challenges. Madison became a partner at Defy VC, was the first investor in my startup, and now is at Harvard Business School and is a Pear VC fellow, coming to the table with a fresh funder perspective. Since launching our first season in 2020, We have scaled to a wide range of digital and physical community events across top technology hubs in America and have a lot of fun doing it. By listening to The Room Podcast, you are joining a community of movers and shakers who are changing the status quo through innovation and cutting-edge disruption. Scroll back to find our conversations with the former founder and CEO of Zillow, Spencer Raskoff, Michelle Zatlin of Cloudflare, Grammy Award-winning artist Sierra, and the creator of Next.js and CEO of Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, to name a few.
You may have noticed our signature hats and corduroy walking around your local Blue Bottle. The best way to get one yourself is subscribing to both the podcast and our newsletter, which you can find at theroompodcast.com and visiting our newly minted merch shop. Now, hopefully you're all set to put on your hat, Put in your AirPods and listen to some iconic founding stories. Let's open the door.
