About this episode

I’d like you to meet Alina Vandenberghe, co-founder of Chili Piper and Gipsybot. (Yes, that’s right, she co-founded TWO startups.) Chili Piper is an incredibly powerful sales tool for enterprises. Her second startup, Gipsybot, is a productivity tool to help you prioritize what is important to you, not what others delegate to you.

The reason I wanted to unpack Alina’s story is multi-faceted. First, she is running two startups at the same time, and I find that to be incredibly impressive, as well as quite uncommon. Oh, and one of those startups just closed on a Series A round of funding. Secondly, she is an immigrant from Romania. Immigrant founder stories have a unique layer to them that help frame all of our perspectives. Lastly, she is royalty in the mobile development space. Now, she would never say that about herself, but when you develop one of the first apps for the “yet to be released” iPad and Steve Jobs chooses to use your app from the Apple stage as he is revealing the all-new, never before seen iPad… that is quite a remarkable accomplishment.

Alina’s Startup Story is fascinating and begins unlike any other founder we have had on the show, so let’s get started. This is Alina Vandenberghe’s startup story.

In this episode, you’ll hear

• Alina’s early ventures (beginning around age 9!) featuring her entrepreneurial spirit and how she didn’t even realize it was entrepreneurship
• Her frustration with the corporate world, how others recognized her skills/personality traits as perfect for a startup and encouraged her to begin that journey
• The challenges of operating a fully distributed workforce and the benefits of being able to tap into a larger talent pool
• How culture is managed with staff members in remote locations and the need for attendance on company calls and occasional meetings in person
• The importance of managing mental health during the “founder’s depression” period and having a plan to avoid burnout
• How GipsyBot was developed from a need to accurately manage priorities and goals to change the way people work so they can achieve their own goals and not just the priorities of others
• The fact that managing two startups is possible
• For businesses to succeed and meet future goals, a positive environment must be created for workers and clients so that customers can get the results they want and a big return on their investment

“I know how hard it is to get back up when you’ve been completely knocked down, but it is at that moment in time when big things happen.”
—Alina Vandenberghe, Chili Piper & GipsyBot

Resources from this episode

Our Sponsor Podcoin: https://www.podcoin.com - Listen to this episode to grab your special discount code
Chili Piper: https://www.chilipiper.com/
GipsyBot: https://gipsybot.com/
Alina Vandenberghe on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alinav/
The Startup Story on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestartupstory/

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EPISODE CREDITS

If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.

He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world.

Contact him today at https://emeraldcitypro.com/startupstory

Special Guest: Alina Vandenberghe.