LeadTribe 2022 – Meet The Cohort!

The first few months of the year are always an exciting time at Blume. Why? Because it’s the time to meet a new set of inspiring women building companies and reshaping sectors, aka our Lead Tribe cohort!

While the first cohort of Lead Tribe ended in April 2021, the community never really did. Through the worst of the pandemic, through the new year, through countless ups and downs and exits and pivots – the first cohort went from ecosystem acquaintances to friends. And so, we were excited to meet an all new cohort when the new year rolled around! 

We launched the applications for Lead Tribe 2 in January ’22 and received an overwhelming response from an incredibly strong set of founders. Not just in terms of quality, but also variety – the pool ranged from a new grad starting up right after college to a 50-year-old launching a new digital start-up; from a founder with years of experience in manufacturing now digitizing that space to a former veteran banker building an edtech platform. Our interviewers (Lead Tribe 1 alum and senior Blume team members) struggled to bring the applicant pool down to 29 after rounds of virtual chats and Q&A. Here are a few of the many messages we got from our interviewers:

“Lovely quality of founders. Enjoyed my 4 conversations. Each person [is] a gem.”

“Met 7 founders over the last 2 days. What an incredible privilege to meet these amazing women. I wanted to select all but kept it very selective. Can’t wait to know the rest of the cohort!” 

And while it was harder than ever to pick only 29 founders, we were thrilled to finally have our 2nd cohort ready to onboard and kickstart Lead Tribe!

Over the next 10 weeks, the cohort will learn from seasoned founders and VCs in curated learning sessions and from each other in founder roundtables and workshops. Our learning sessions cover scaling playbooks, people planning, fundraising, GTM, pitch deck workshops, balancing growth vs economics, building a network, brand positioning, and more.

Vipanchi Handa, founder of edtech platform Oneistox and Lead Tribe 1 alum, said that she and her co-founders would often hide their identities in the initial days because they were worried that students coming to the platform wouldn’t take it seriously if they got to know it is run by a bunch of 25 year olds. We see the same imposter syndrome with many of our younger operators and Lead Tribe founders. Through the Lead Tribe community, we want to create a shared safe space for these entrepreneurs to voice their hiccups, share their learnings, and find like minded allies and cheerleaders. 

As we formally start the program this week, we’re proud to share with you our tribe.