soapbox
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David Simnick Learned to Sell the Shampoo Before the Mission
Soapbox began with an aid worker's observation and a batch mixed in a college kitchen. Its survival depended on a harder lesson: purpose can deepen loyalty, but the product still has to win the shelf.
Maria Heyen
Maria Heyen is an early-stage investor at Lightbank in Chicago, previously the first hire at Redbud VC in Columbia, Missouri, where she helped deploy $5M+ across 35+ companies. A Pacific Northwest native who worked 80-100 hour weeks to fund her own education, she went on to co-found the Husker Venture Fund at UNL and build a reputation as one of the emerging voices in Midwest venture. She invests at the intersection of vertical SaaS, fintech, and infrastructure in overlooked industries, and writes the Soapbox newsletter on career, culture, and capital.