This week we chat with Karen Cahn. Karen is the Founder & CEO of IFundWomen, the world’s largest funding marketplace for women-owned businesses and the people who want to support them with access to capital, coaching, and connections all designed to launch and grow profitable, sustainable businesses. Since founding IFundWomen, thousands of women-owned companies, who started their businesses on the IFundWomen platform, have raised over $135M in early-stage capital and have created over 30,000 jobs helping to fuel the startup and small business economy.
Named to Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Female Founders of 2020, and The City and State of New York’s Most Responsible CEOs of 2020, Karen is a true pioneer in tech and media. Karen was an early Google Intrapreneur, spending 10 years leading sales teams in search, display, and video. Most notably, in 2006, Karen started the Branded Entertainment business at YouTube by making powerful and substantive connections between big, global brands and creators, resulting in the creation of the first native video ad experiences that helped creators make exponentially more money from their YouTube videos. Karen then went on to spend three years at Aol where she started Aol’s female creative economy in video by funding and monetizing dozens of women-produced, premium-quality video series, resulting in Aol nabbing its first-ever Emmy nod.