Maryam Sadeghi appeared on the She Built That podcast earlier this year. Maryam is the Co-Founder and CEO of MetaOptima, a prize-winning digital health technology company from our 2013 competition.
In her interview with She Built That host Tarah Ferguson, Maryam reflects on her journey from a PhD to an entrepreneur.
One of the most important things that she has learned is that “social capital is one of the most powerful things you can have to start a business.” She says she had almost no financial capital when she registered her business. Instead, her social capital helped launch MetaOptima.
In fact, Maryam heard about our New Ventures BC business competition from Terry Beech, whom she met at the 2013 Innovation Challenge in Ottawa. From there, she attended all of New Ventures’ seminars and workshops.
Maryam says that the workshops were helpful because, similar to many entrepreneurs who are engineers or scientists, she lacked a background in business. Being open to learning new things allowed her to apply newfound skills to her venture.
MetaOptima finished as a finalist in our competition that year, winning the Wavefront Wireless prize package.
Moral of the story? Social capital is an extremely valuable asset. Networking isn’t overrated!
Head over to She Built That to listen to the entire podcast.
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