How You Know You’ve Made It

Startup Grind with Smitha Gopal, Margaret Roth, Joni Daniels & Jeehye Yun

Needless to say, starting a company is an incredibly challenging task. Building a sustainable, high-performing, growing business that adds value for your customers is a whole other level of complexity. In this edition of Startup Grind, we’ll hear a conversation between four entrepreneurs as they discuss the eternal questions — How do we measure success? How do we know if we've "made it"? How do you get beyond "surviving"? Be ready for an unfiltered look inside the startup journey.

Smitha Gopal, Rendia

Smitha is the CEO of Rendia, a Baltimore company that creates visual patient education software to help doctors and patients communicate with each other. Prior to joining Rendia (formerly Eyemaginations), Smitha worked at a boutique investment bank. She earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Finance from the University of Virginia. Smitha was once misdiagnosed with juvenile glaucoma and sent home with only an outdated pamphlet. That frightening experience has made her passionate about taking a patient-centered approach to healthcare, and she believes that technology-driven communication is a key element in every medical practice.

Margaret Roth, Yet Analytics

Margaret is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at Yet Analytics, a Baltimore based company that provides tools and solutions used to improve learning and talent development. Margaret is interested in the development and design of connected learning environments that leverage data analytics and blended learning. Her background is in experiential education, curriculum design, teaching, and team development. She is an active member and former VP of Community Impact for the Junior League of Baltimore, a member of the SXSWedu Advisory Board and co-founder of EdTechWomen. Margaret received her BA in English and Environmental Earth Science and her MA in Teaching from the Johns Hopkins University. She is a die-hard Blue Jay Lacrosse fan, spends a lot of time cooking, writing, organizing, and exploring and her favorite science-fiction novel is Neuromancer by William Gibson.

Joni Daniels, Daniels & Associates

A nationally recognized management development consultant, Joni Daniels is Principal of Daniels & Associates, providing solutions and presenting programs on effective management and professional effectiveness. She has successfully worked with a variety of clients, written articles on professional issues, and serves as a resource for many online and print publications, TV, and radio. Author of “POWER TOOLS FOR WOMEN®: Plugging into the Essential Skills for Life and Work,” she has served as an instructor in management topics for a variety of colleges and universities. Joni regularly contributes to CityBizList.com, currently serves on the Board of Overseers for the Baltimore School for the Arts and is the facilitator of TEDCO’s Women’s Executive Leadership Roundtable. To learn more, visit http://www.jonidaniels.com.

Jeehye Yun, RedShred

Jeehye Yun is the founding CEO of RedShred, an AI company that uses machine learning and natural language processing to search, find and extract knowledge from unstructured documents. RedShred helps customers take unstructured data and remove the hard task of preprocessing the raw data so it can be used in machine learning models and enhanced search. RedShred has taken over 12 million RFP, grant and procurement documents and analyzed them with the RedShred engine. Prior to RedShred, Yun was CEO of SSG, an IT services firm with specialities in enterprise content management and agile development. SSG customers include National Geographic, NGC/Fox TV and the US Marine Corp. She was previously Director of Computing Facilities at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) an interdisciplinary research institute. She has also managed IT security at UMBC and has taught topics in computer security at UMBC. She is also a past recipient UMBC Outstanding Alumni of the Year award.