oakland-startup
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Scott McKinley
Scott McKinley is the founder and CEO of Truthset, an Oakland-based data validation company that scores the accuracy of consumer data used across advertising and marketing. A former captain of the 1988 US Olympic Road Cycling Team who walked away from the sport as doping spread, he spent roughly two decades in ad tech and martech - including a stretch as an EVP at Nielsen and CEO of IDify - before starting Truthset in 2019 to bring transparency and accountability to an industry he felt was full of unchecked claims about data.
Renewal Mill
Renewal Mill is an Oakland-based next-generation ingredients company that upcycles the fiber- and protein-rich byproducts of food manufacturing - like okara (soymilk pulp), oat milk pulp, corn fines and off-spec green bananas - into premium gluten-free flours and baking mixes. Founded in 2016 by Claire Schlemme and Caroline Cotto, the women-owned benefit corporation sells both direct-to-consumer and as a B2B ingredient supplier, aiming to keep 100% of what we grow feeding people.
Janna Colucci
Janna Colucci is the CEO and co-founder of Bundle, an Oakland-based software platform that drags construction materials procurement out of the paper-and-phone-call era. After watching a construction crew print out her emails and write responses by hand while building Delos' wellness-focused NYC headquarters, she teamed up with Stanford Business School classmate Edison Ding to build a digital buying platform for small and mid-sized residential builders that promises purchasing at 10x speed and 10-20% cost savings. A Dartmouth grad and Stanford MBA who cut her teeth in green building and co-created the mindfulMATERIALS sustainability standard, she raised a $4M seed round in 2023 and runs the company on a Lao Tzu leadership philosophy.
Sarah Chou
Sarah Chou is the co-founder and CEO of Informed K12, an Oakland-based software company that helps school districts trade paper forms and manual approvals for digital workflow automation. A former district administrator who ran an $8M professional development program in Providence, she met co-founder Qian Wang at Stanford's Graduate School of Education in 2012. After their first idea (a teacher-collaboration tool called Chalk) failed, they noticed that the real pain in schools wasn't a lack of ideas but a mountain of paperwork. Informed K12 now serves hundreds of districts with a team of 70+ people, most of whom come from education or social-sector backgrounds.