The ShermCast: Voices from the Sherm (S9E4)

This week, on Season 9 Episode 4 of the ShermCast, hosts Vaughn Williams and Liam MacMahon interview members of the Sherman Center and hear their perspectives on what it is like to be part of the Sherman Center. Then they interview the CEO and founder of Mount, Madison Rifkin, as they find out the recent endeavors Mount has gone through and what it takes to balance an entrepreneurial life while being a full-time student.
Mount website- https://www.rentmount.com
Follow us on Instagram and Linkedin: @nushermancenter
Head to our website for all episodes and transcripts: https://sherman.center.northeastern.edu/podcasts/
Subscribe to our newsletter: https://northeastern.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b68280c2338757ed7ae96dd7f&id=8d1b04b5ee

Transcript

0:02

We're back. Welcome to Season nine, Episode four of the ShermCast. I'm Liam MacMahon. And I'm Vaughn Williams. Today we have for you a new segment called Voices from the Sherm. We'll be going to the Sherman Center and interview some of its members. Then we got the chance to interview Madison Rifkin, a former alumni of Northeastern and the Sherman Center. Let's get started. Make sure to check out Demo Day this Monday, November the 13th, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Curry Ballroom, where the top eight ventures compete for cash prizes as part of Entrepreneur's Club. Right now we're walking into Hayden Hall and we're about to enter the Sherman Center. Let's get ready to interview some of its members. My name is Alex. I'm a software director in generate. What's that like? It's good. I really like it. It's fun. I get to work with a lot of people, oversee a lot of projects. We see people excited about something new. Hi, I'm Christina, and I'm one of the editors of the Sherman Gazette. Okay. And what goes into making the Sherman Gazette? So we really just want to highlight the amazing people around the Sherman Center. So we always we're talking to the venture co-ops. We talk to people from Generate and Forge, and we even just talk to just students that come in here. Sometimes we just want to really express how so many people are positively impacted from this space and just how many people feel the sense of community that's here. My name is Kevin McGuire. I've been in Generate for four semesters, so that's how I'm in the Sherman Center. I've done a bunch of different roles. Page Ledesma. I am currently a project lead in Generate on the hardware side of things. This is my third semester. I spent my previous two semesters as just a hardware engineer, one of them being with Kev Dog. And then last semester I was also a project lead for Forge, so I've been doing a little bit of everything since I got here. I'm Amber. I've been involved in the Sherman Center since fall of 2021. I'm the data and strategy team and operations for Generate, and then now the events team for Generate. Okay. My name is Sam. I've been involved I think this is my third semester. My first two I was on the data and strategy team also with Amber as a data analyst. And this year I joined a software team as a software engineer, which is pretty cool. Hi, my name is Rogelio and I am an electrical and computer engineer on wave wise at Generate. Wave wise is a dynamically adjusting kelp farming machine. Our client approached us with their essentially kelp farmers who are looking to optimize kelp growth. So we are growing kelp and building a machine that can help optimize that in off the shores of Maine. My name is Erin Galt. I'm a first year master's student at Northeastern and I'm the Sherm Comms team lead. What is it like being the team lead for the Sherm Comms? It's a little intimidating. So the reason I am the team lead is because I was on the Sherm Comms team for many, many years. I also did undergrad at Northeastern, so I kind of had the experience, but it's still definitely a little intimidating. But it is a really fun job and a really fun team to be on. So my name is Amanda and I am a design lead for Legacy, which is a software client in Generate, and this is my second semester being in Generate. I was a designer for Remo last semester. So Legacy currently is always in flux, but as my software clients are, I feel like it's so fun to be working with people that are in flux. It's an end of life planning app, so it's meant to be. It's meant to be like very pre, like you want to plan your, have your end of life plans before you get to the age of you're getting old and you, you know, you're dealing with things as they come to you. It's targeted towards like 30 to 30, 30 to 45 year old women and people of all genders, I guess, to kind of like start getting a hold of, you know, your own end of life planning and take matters into your own hands, which it's been super cool. Okay. So what is your most, what is your favorite experience while being in the Sherman or being a part of the Sherman center? I think definitely just like the team events we have like this semester, we have team meetings, the whole team once a week and we usually just do like team, like quick updates and then team building stuff, which is always fun. So we play like Geo Guesser. Yeah, like what else do we do? We played this like bomb defusing game. Yeah, we do a lot of like, fun team building stuff. And then outside of that, like my project lead is really good cook so he's cooking us like a full Thanksgiving dinner basically this weekend. So it'll be pretty fun, I think. I think that kind of like team stuff is my favorite. Yeah, I like the team things, but I also like really enjoyed the whole Generate wide events when I was on just the operations team for a good like two years. I love going to the field days and um, scavenger hunts and things like that. And then now being behind like organizing them, I really love seeing like people have a lot of fun of those and bonding and getting to know each other. I think it's a good community. I think just honestly, hanging out in the Sherm like I was here or I was a part of the team during the pandemic when it was remote. And is even though that was still you know a great experience in terms of like more of the professional side being just like in person, back with everyone, it's just so much fun just being here. I always say I come here to get like work done, but I honestly never do because everyone's just chatting. It's just like fun to be here. So just like having the physical space, especially on such a crowded campus, it's really nice to just have a place and a community, just like people to chat with and have fun with. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you what, like two weeks ago I tried writing a lab report in here and I spent like 5 hours just chatting with people and I got no work done. So it sounds bad, but it was like a really fun afternoon, you know? And you just get to know people so well and you get so it's just such a good community. Like, I make fun of Kevin all the time, even though he's a great dude. But man, you should see the way this guy writes. Yo, he holds his pencil, like, a freakin light saber upside down. It was described. Okay. Yeah. Light saber upside down. I don't know, just the banter that goes on, like this guy coming in with blue light glasses the other day. And I'm like, I've never seen you wear glasses before, you guys. Yeah, I only wear them when I really need to focus. I go, Well, that explains why I haven't seen them before, So I don't know. Just like you get so comfortable with people and it's such a good environment for just goofy things to happen. I would say playing my team went to do combat archery. As a team bonding. That was a lot of fun. Combat, were you good? We were all pretty bad as the first time, but it was a lot of fun. So I love my team. I work with Kalina and Xavi most closely. I love everyone on the Sherm Comms team, don't get me wrong, I do. But especially working closely with Kalina and Xavi especially is just really fun. They're freshmen, so I'm a second year, so feels like they're like my little kids that like I get to like, you know, provide my guidance to. They're also just really fun people. But I love the team that I'm working with overall. I honestly just love our team meetings, which I'm here for right now. It's going to start in like 30 minutes, but we know now don't worry we'll let you stay. You can you can podcast our team meeting if you want, but both from my team last year at Remo and my team at Legacy, like our team meetings on whatever day, it's just 30 minutes of like my time that I come in and like we get to kind of catch up with what the engineering side has been doing, which honestly, I don't really know anything about it, but it's so interesting to learn and then we'll like play games, like write stuff on the board and you're getting to know people, like in a funny way, but also, you know, you're talking about work and you're all learning. You're all like going through the same learning experiences and it's kind of like a trauma bond in a way and like in a great way. You know, you're you're all like, Oh, shoot, this is broken, how do we fix that? And then you're getting all these different, like design voices and engineering voices and lead voices, and you're really hearing from everybody, which is definitely been my favorite part. Okay, guys, So. What's what, what are you excited for in the future related to Generate or the Sherman Center in general? I this is my last semester at Generate at Northeastern, my last semester with Kevin. That's not true. Probably not, no I'll stay there. Maybe I'll be a client next semester, who knows? But I'm very excited for showcase at the end, which is, you know, when all the projects for Generate come together and you show off what you've done for the throughout the course of the semester, just because it's been a goal of mine to be a project lead for probably around a year now. So to just kind of finally have that experience and have that payoff where I get to like really show off not really what I've done, but more so what my team has done and show off how much my team has grown because that's what I get the most satisfaction out of, is just seeing the people around me grow and develop and gain experience and gain more confidence in their abilities. So yeah, that's definitely what I'm most excited about in the near future, but also probably what I'm most scared about because it's always a scramble to get to showcase at the end of the semester and it's never, it's never as easy or as straightforward as it seems. But yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess I'll speak a little more to longer term stuff since I'll be around a little longer. Yeah, but I think a really exciting thing is like all the new faces we have like Generate has a ton of new faces. There's a lot of new people hanging out around the Sherm. Yeah. So, like, I think that's really cool because, like, I think about, like when, you know, as my first semester in Generate and the Sherm, I just, like, I had so much room to grow and so much to learn and just like a really cool community to open up. So I think that's really cool that we have all those new people, you know, getting into that now. I think that like there's a lot of opportunity there and it'll be really great. While making the Sherman Gazette, what's your vision for it? How have you changed from previous iterations? So I think the most noticeable change this semester is the layout. We want to make it a little bit more visually appealing, I guess a little bit more fun, make it pop. So we've been alternating between this Sherman colors, the red and the blue, and then we try to just incorporate it and more of a sense that like there's not per se a lot going on, but a lot that you take away from it. So even like this week, we're highlighting also Global Entrepreneurship Week next week, but we're also highlighting venture co-ops and doing all this other stuff that we just want people to really kind of get as much out of it as we put into it. And you said you're the Sherman Comms Lead. What is your vision for the future of the Sherm Comms? Oh, that's a great question. I think we've really grown as a team over the years, even since I was a freshman when I started. I think it's a lot more sort of streamlined. We have a bigger team, so we get a lot more work done more efficiently. We get having, you know, having a bigger team. We have more people to do sort of little side projects. Like I now in my role as Team Lead, I help Theo out a lot with like kind of bigger picture side projects related to like the Sherman Center and the growth of the Sherman Center. So I think kind of a goal going forward is just keep that bigger team going and be able to do those sort of like big picture things. Interesting, you guys said you're both in Generate, right? How was that experience? You guys have been there for, for two, four semesters, so about like two years? How has that been going so far? How how has it changed for you from first first semester to fourth semester? Oh, yeah. I guess it's me who has been in it four semesters. Yeah you're older than me in terms of Generate. In terms of Generate. You're sure? Yeah. I mean, it's been great throughout. I guess, like specifically the first two semesters, it was all like learning for me, you know, constantly, like asking other people questions or get to know people older than me. Like Paige was just like, you know, building those good connections. And I felt like I was getting a lot out of it. And then, like, as I've been in Generate longer, like past that first year. So I spent a lot of time like working with younger engineers than me and like, trying to help them get the most out of the experience. And yeah, I guess that's been kind of the theme of it. Yeah, I joined when I was I was old by I guess like, you know, Generate standards. I guess. I joined as a fourth year and I really didn't want to join. Actually, it was my friend Matt Prescott, who is a project lead at the time, basically strong arced me into joining because he we co-op together and he kept talking about Generate and how great it was. And I was like yeah, like maybe I'll think about joining. And then I remember the date of the application came around. I was like, I hope he doesn't remember. And he called me. I was like, So I don't see your name in the applications. I was like, Oh, I guess I got to join. So I kind of joined on a fluke and I wasn't really sure what to expect. I hadn't really heard much about Generate, and I just kind of joined because my friend was doing it. And, you know, I kind of just by coincidence, stumbled into it. Um, so yeah, I started out I feel like I was learning a lot right off the bat, even as a fourth year. Um, and I think that's the case for everyone, just kind of learning the ropes at first. But then, you know, even within my first semester there realizing like, Hey, I have a lot of knowledge that some of these younger members don't have and just kind of kind of gradually starting to realize like, yeah, this is I'm learning a lot, but this is also an opportunity for me to hone my skills in terms of like, you know, teaching other people and creating a community. And that's something that I could never have anticipated before joining Generate. It was just the community aspect of things like I could never have imagined that like most of my friends now are like all from Generate, like I would never have met this lovely guy next to me without Generate, I would never have met a lot of my good friends without Generate. So yeah, as it kind of progresses and evolves and my life takes on a bigger role and then I take on a bigger role within Generate, you know, becoming a more experienced hardware engineer in my second semester, helping mentor some people that, you know, might not have as much technical experience or Generate experience. And now, I guess all the way to be in a project lead where I'm the one that's running the projects and, you know, telling people what to do. And even though a lot of the time, I don't feel like I'm qualified whatsoever to do that. Like it's still it's kind of like a it's it's a surreal experience. Like it's cool to actually be able to see people, you know, grow and change over the course of a semester. So I think, yeah, my my role has changed a lot from when I entered, and I think you're probably would say the same thing, right? Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. How has being in the Sherman Center impacted you as a student? I so my major is business and design and I was kind of always going down the route of more like design project management. That was kind of like my goal with what I was going to do. And then I had, you know, a couple of friends last semester encouraged me to apply to be a designer for Generate. And I kind of fell in love with like doing the little things over and over again, like kind of getting thrown back into the basics of Figma and like really nailing down, you know, how to build a brand, how to establish, you know, brand voice, colors, how all that stuff can, you know, determine how a customer or how user interacts with your product. And so that was something that, you know, they don't really teach you in, in any of the classes, in design classes and the business classes I was taking, I learned just from an application skill, like the knowledge that I've gained in Figma and both like, you know, even in Illustrator and like some of the more like design platforms and softwares has been so, so nice and like being able to put all of these little snippets that you're learning in classes into like a real project has been just amazing. And now as a design lead, I am like kind of coaching, not coaching some of my designers, but like being able to manage designers and see that side from like a larger sphere. And it's been so, so cool. I love that. How has being in the Sherman Center impacted you guys as students? Yeah. I think for me, like it was huge to get co-ops and stuff because in my classes I'm studying industrial engineering, but I took an interest in like data analytics and stuff and I wasn't really getting the technical skills and experience I wanted out of my classes to put myself in a good spot for co-ops. So I think getting the experience on these teams has been super beneficial and definitely opened doors for me, like opportunity wise. And yeah, like as you move forward in your classes too it all applies and circles back. So it's been great in that aspect. I agree. I'm also industrial engineering and join the data team for more pipeline experience outside of classes and to really like focus on it and have a method to an application for it. So I think it's been really helpful to try something new outside of my classes and outside of my major. So like data and then outside doing like more events, planning and like organizational stuff, which has been really cool. So as a student, it's kind of made me more well-rounded and also given me a place to study often because I come here a lot. And how has being a part of the Sherman design impacted you as a student at Northeastern? So honestly, I did this job because I was hired you know. No Vaughn it's setting up into my amazing... No, just, you know, like, Sherman is my work study. I just ever since. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Not not to Yeah. Not to coach my. Mm. Yeah. So yes, I was hired as a work study for the semester for the Sherman Gazette and I honestly just thought I would be writing a newsletter. Not much into it, but Theo really made me kind of realize that this is something that's really important that we're doing here, and I want to be able to kind of like not fail him, I guess, when doing this, because now he's genuinely made me care about this so much and producing something so meaningful. And so I'm just doing like a different job where it's just like I'm swiping someone in or something. It feels like I actually have meaning doing something as simple as a work study job. I attribute a lot of what I've learned at Northeastern to the Sherman Center and Generate as a whole. I think it's given me a lot of leadership opportunities. I got to learn a lot UIX and then how to be a design lead? How do we critique and now how to lead a bunch of teams which is super exciting? Love that. Thank you so much. No problem. I joined this semester, but I've met a lot of, you know, very intelligent people, very nice people. I met some good friends here and I've learned a lot about electrical engineering and computer engineering. So it's definitely been a positive experience. And so far, what has been your most fun experience while being here? Not to put you on the spot, but what what's something interesting that you've seen from some of your constituents? Well, I think my favorite thing so far has honestly been reviewing the podcast because you guys have been doing such cool interviews, even like this little segment is so fun. Yeah, I just think everyone's been doing a really great job at interviewing people super in-depth, which is kind of something we've wanted to work on on a team in the past, kind of just focusing more on like people focus stories and what people are working on because there's a lot of really, really cool ventures and projects that come out of the Sherman Center every single semester. And I think really just highlighting the people that are behind those projects has been something we've been working on for a while, and I think this team specifically has done a really good job, sort of like bringing that to life. So it's really cool to see. Anything you like to tell the world about the Sherman Center? Subscribe to the newsletter and follow the podcast and follow our Instagram. They're all linked in the description. Register for Sherman Center courses. Yes. Yes. Slay Global Entrepreneurship Week is among us. Make sure to check out Forge's Product Pitching Workshop from 6 to 7 p.m. on Monday in Behrakis Room 30. Hello. Right now, we have the pleasure of interviewing Madison Rifkin, a former alumni of Northeastern and the current CEO of Mount. How are you doing today, Madi? Very well. Thanks for having me on. Can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what Mount is? Yeah, absolutely. I am a recent Northeastern grad, so that's pretty fun. Graduated in 2021, and now I live in New York and I am building my company, Mount, which I actually started as a student at Northeastern. And we are a travel marketplace. So basically the goal is to get you traveling with just a backpack and then find and rent everything you need and destination from locals. So that could be a bike, scooter, golf cart. It could also be a hot air balloon experience. The secret hike, you know, whatever you want to do. We're really in the business of helping you discover the hidden local gems. The hidden local gems. Love those. Very hard to find. So you said you started Mount when you were a student at Northeastern. How did that idea come into fruition? Yeah. You know, at Northeastern, it was a really interesting journey because I definitely came to study entrepreneurship. So that's how that started. But I actually had started the original idea for Mount when I was 12. So it was it was a journey that predated Northeastern, which was fun. And I got a patent for it too, and that age. So when I got to to Boston and then got settled in at Northeastern, I was like, cool, let's let's go become a CEO. Like that was my mission. And so it was called Mount Locks, and that's kind of how I got started. And it was in the hardware space. It was a bike lock and that's what I was building. And that's also the reason I was involved in the Sherman Center and Generate and the whole works and basically used every single resource at Northeastern at my fingertips that I could to really build this and take it to the next level. Fascinating. So speaking of the Sherman Center, we are the Sherman Center podcast. So can you go more into your time and experience here at the Sherman Center and how that helped you with the creation of your business? Yeah, absolutely. I think the first taste of the Sherman center I got was through Generate because I wanted to build the lock, this hardwareware product but I was in the business school, so I had no idea what 3D modeling was or CAD or pretty much anything I needed to build the product. And so someone told me about Generate. I met Ted, who was fantastic and basically applied and we got into the program, which was fantastic. And I worked with a team of engineers to basically build the first prototype, which we did, and then use that to get gap funding from IDEA, which is right next door. And then I think I ended up coming back to Generate it wasn't the semester right after that, but I think there was another semester in between and I became a Generate client twice. So I did it again to further iterate and prototype the lock, get it to a place where we could take it to tooling and kind of took that the whole product to almost full manufacturing. Wow. But it seems like you went from this bike lock to so much more. Can you tell us what that process was like for you? Yeah. And you are very correct. I did. It was an interesting journey of pivots because during this time of creating this bike lock, Northeastern is very good about this. But just as a founder in general, you should do this where you're talking to customers, really trying to figure out what the actual pain point you're solving is. And so I continue to do that. And as it turned out, the bike lock we created was not really solving a problem. It was just a cool thing. And so I kind of had to pivot the business to a problem that actually existed. And what that ended up looking like was in the scooter industry. So bird and line, when they popped up and were baby companies out in California, I was like, I think they might need a lock because they're putting these scooters literally anywhere and there's no lock involved. And it was a crazy process. So I actually ended up flying to California for a weekend with the lock in hands, showed up at their offices and basically was like, Hey guys, I think you're going to need this. And so that was the first pivot into that space. And I was in the scooter space for about a year and a half. I'd say, throughout college, but then COVID hit also while I was in college. And that kind of made everything very interesting, where that industry was super hard hit, travel industry was really hard hit like pretty much everything. And I had to rethink what we were doing because if no one was using scooters, they couldn't pay us for the locks and it was this whole kind of waterfall reaction. And so I pivoted again. And what we had learned from scooters was that everyone riding them was a tourist. They were not actually commuters because people wanted to have fun while they were in a new city. And I was like, Oh, that's pretty smart. Like, that makes sense. Like, let's go put some scooters at Airbnb properties and see what happens. So my last co-op, actually I co-oped it for myself through the Sherman Center. So that's how I got more involved. And I was just crazily driving around Denver during the middle of the pandemic with some scooters dropping them at Airbnb properties just to see what would happen, albeit not a lot of people are traveling. But we got some interesting data and as it turned out, the guests really loved having scooters at their properties. They were also clean and there is to use no one else's. And so that started the inroads on kind of this travel journey. And from there I got very deep rooted in the Airbnb industry. We learned the actual problem between the hosts and the travelers, and it wasn't the need for scooters. It was more along the lines of travelers always asking their hosts like, What should I do? Where should I go? I want the local recommendations and the host has the local recommendations, but it's all word of mouth. There was no software making any of that possible. And so that's when we were like, All right, let's become that marketplace. Let's take these host recommendations that are verbal, bring them online, make them bookable, and then connect the travelers into it. Wow. It seems like you've done a lot of just been like throughout the process, like seeing what has worked and hasn't worked. So we were doing some research and we noticed that Mount recently has had some brand changes into the product itself. Can you go more into these recent changes and how that process was like? Yes, some good research. We launched our new brand October 22nd, so not too long ago. And basically the purpose behind that was we'd made so many pivots have worked with a ton of different people that depending on who I was talking to, they knew Mount as something different. I had people who still thought we were a lock company and people who thought we were doing scooters at Airbnb properties, and then the new people who are like, Yeah, you guys do kind of this marketplace of experiences. And so the rebrand was to really get everyone on the same page. Notice there is a brand video now too. And that was so impactful, like it helped so much with people just being able to watch visually how we had changed here for me. And it really aligned everyone in a matter of like 24 hours on like what we do, where we're going. And now it seems like the entire industry has really bought into kind of our journey and where we're going. Interesting. I would love to learn more about your process, especially for student entrepreneurs. Pivoting can be very hard and you had to pivot during a global pandemic. How did how did that affect you and how did you take that and create Mount now? Yeah, it's funny, I get that question a lot and I think for pivoting. For me, it was always I'd hit a roadblock or hear from customers where it's like, This isn't exactly what I want, but here is what I want. And so I always just looked at that as like, okay, let's validate it, get a little more information. Make sure it's not just one person saying it, but when the majority is saying it, then I'm like, alright, let's go in that direction, because clearly they know a lot better than I do. And so I would just come up against that probably eight or nine times at this point and just kept listening to the customer. And I think that drives pivots and I know people are kind of scared to do it, but it was never scary to me. It was more just like, this is getting Mount one step closer to actual products market fit and actually finding what people want. And so why wouldn't you do it? I think it's funny because people are like weren't you really married to the lock idea, like you had a patent for it. And I was like, well, it was great when I was 12, but clearly I didn't invent something that people really wanted. So it didn't bother me that we pivoted away from it. So again, this customer feedback seems to be really important for Mount, and that's just led to a lot of success for your brand. So we've also found that Mount has received many awards and honors throughout this process. Can you just go into some of these honors and maybe which of these honors were most standing out to you? Yeah, absolutely. Northeastern was very helpful with this because the first few things I won were through Northeastern. So like the Gap funding, I think I won like $25,000 in total from that, which was super helpful, especially as a college student. That's a lot of money to spend on your venture, which is fantastic. And then I just got really creative with the way I put together the team. So I knew BU had a very strong innovation program. So my co-founder back in the day actually went to BU, and we entered in that pitch competition and won it. So we won $18,000 from them. And I just continued on that path. Like as a student, not a lot of people know this, but you can compete in other colleges and other universities pitch competitions like they welcome you as long as you're a student. And so I competed in Arizona State's competition. I want to say Columbia had one, Princeton had one, so there's just so much resources out there for college students. And I definitely took advantage of that and then most recently started winning awards in our industry. So like we're in the short term rental Airbnb industry subset being hosts or the larger industry being hospitality. But because I'm young and there's not a lot of young entrepreneurs, I was able to scoop up a few like Rising Star Awards, which basically just means if you're under a certain age and you are doing great things in the industry, you win that award for the entire industry. So I won that two years in a row from different organizations, which was pretty cool, and most recently have won Northeastern's Women who Empower Award for Young alumni. So that was actually some personal funding they gave me to help with my founder journey and push that forward. So there's just been a lot of people out there willing to help and it's been fantastic. Oh, gosh, everything you said, I absolutely love that. Honestly, so far it's been very empowering to us students. But just to go back to your time as a student, you mentioned how you pretty much used all of Northeastern's resources. How how would you recommend us students going about doing that? I think for one, it might be hard to find or it might be, I guess, scary or challenging to go out and get those resources. Yeah, it absolutely is. And it's funny, too, because when I started as a freshman, I didn't know a lot of the resources. Like, I didn't know there was the Husky Startup Challenge which funnels you actually into IDEA. So I actually just went straight to IDEA. Little did I know I should have done Husky Startup Challenge first to win some cash and then go to idea. But yeah, I think the more students you talk to, especially at Northeastern, older students who are entrepreneurs, like they'll lead you to the right resources. And I would just take advantage of it. The one that absolutely escaped me that I did not get to work with was Scout, because they, you know, I get so many applications that you really have to have a good company for them to accept you. They're very elusive, but in a good way. So that was one that got away from me. But everyone else I was able to work with and just kept using the resources. I feel like the Entrepreneurs Club is super helpful in just pointing in the right direction. The Sherman Center is really helpful. And then honestly, I always tell people, just leverage the fact that you're a student, Like you're able to grow your network so much more when you're a student because you can ask people in positions of power for help because no one's going to turn away a college student. You know, if you're a weird person or you're 20's and you're 25 or 26, you're asking for help. You know, that looks a little bizarre. But when you're a college student, it looks more weird if they turn you down. So I think during the middle of the pandemic, I was having Zoom calls with people from various industries like 8 hours a day and probably spent the next four weeks in the middle of the pandemic doing that. And that's how I grew my network within the scooter industry that I'm not even in anymore. But people still talk to me from that industry because I networked so hard. So I would say definitely lean into that and just ask some people for some help. So again, it seems like you're very knowledgeable about entrepreneurship and all of the processes that go into it. So let's go pivot back to the Sherman Center, because it turns out that you've also mentored people in the venture co op as well. So how is it like being an entrepreneur yourself and then helping people with their own entrepreneurial ventures within the Sherman Center? Oh, that's a really good one. I mean, I had a lot of help when I was at Northeastern, and so I like to give that back. So I actually mentor female founders from Northeastern. I think my latest mentor mentee, she just graduated Hannah, who was doing Boxy. But I like taking that on because I got all the help I needed and want to give that back. So definitely, I absolutely do that. And I used a lot of my professors as mentors that were in the Entrepreneurship College and program, and they're all pretty willing to help too, which I thought was phenomenal. Love that. I think right now with you are a full time businesswoman right now. What was that transition like from college to now doing it full time. I know like when people are getting ready to graduate, they're a little fearful. Absolutely. I mean, I was completely fearful, but I did it in a way where I was able to test the waters. So I did three co-ops and my last co-op, I was on the fall cycle, so my last co-op I did through the Sherman Center. So I was co-oping for myself, albeit it was a bit weird because I was completely remote at home because it was the middle of the pandemic. But I did get to kind of see what it was like working for myself, figuring out day to day what I was going to work on, keeping myself accountable and being my own boss. And I did have Ted kind of being my manager, which was super helpful because we checked in, I think every week, maybe more than that. He kept me on track. We set goals, but it didn't really set me up for like, okay, this is what this could look like after graduation. Albeit I did probably need to go out and get some funding to be able to pay myself. But it gave me kind of a taste of full on entrepreneurship and I absolutely loved it. And also it's hilarious because I had to go back in the spring for my last semester and I did have to take a full course load and I had to finese basically doing independent studies and stuff for Mount so that I could continue working essentially full time on the company and funny stories in there that I probably shouldn't tell the Northeastern community, but one being I almost didn't graduate, but we're here and I graduated, so it was all good. I mean that's all that matters that you graduated in the end. So you mentioned earlier that how you are mentoring women entrepreneurs that want to get into this field. So how important is it for you to see women in entrepreneurship and how do you think that having a successful business like Mount has helped show women that they could get in entrepreneurship as well? Yeah, I think it's a well, I don't think I know. It's a big initiative for myself and for Mount. Like when I built Mount, I set out to say that our board of directors is going to be at least 50% female or more. Whatever is in my control, at some point you have to let your investors on the board and you don't have control over their gender identity. But I do want to make that in my control as much as possible, because I think right now, I don't know the exact stat off the top of my head, but I want to say it's around 3% of women that make up board positions just in a normal company in the United States, which is so bad. So if I can help move that forward and show like, hey, this is possible, and also we're a thriving company that's about to go public, why isn't this at every company? That would be phenomenal. And so I like to show other female founders like, hey, this is possible. And also we can raise as much funding as men. It's a lot harder for us because people just look at us and don't give us a lot of funding. But I think when you kind of frame your mindset, it was like, we can get this done. It is possible. So I like to be able to show people that and help push it forward. You have such a positive mindset when it comes to entrepreneurship because usually, like what we've heard a lot is like pivoting is scary, just going into these big boardrooms with all these big, big names is scary. And so mental health is a very important part of our podcast. I just like to ask, how do you keep your glass full? How do you stay so motivated? Oh, my gosh. Such a good question, because mental health is actually one of the big initiatives at Mount as well, because I think it's really easy to get burned out at a startup, especially you as a founder, but also your team. Like you. Well, I was guilty of this over the last few months, but we worked really hard to basically stand up a new version of our product in the last month for that October 22nd launch. And I know for a fact probably a lot of Mount's team members were working like 80, 90 hour weeks. And that is not something that we should be doing because that's just not a sustainable path forward. So I think that Mount especially, you know, we try and I mean, I personally take mental health days at Mount to show the rest of the team like, Hey, you should also be doing this because burnout is real. So I lead by example there. But also I think just recognizing that entrepreneurship is an emotional roller coaster to the point where I've had days by the hour that were really great, the highest of highs, and then the next our lowest of lows. And so when stuff like that happens, I just try and remember what is in my power and do something positive to kind of offset that negativity that wasn't in my power. Because otherwise, if you can't deal with the rollercoaster emotion train wreck that entrepreneurship is, I think it will wreck you. So you do have to kind of get some positive things going in your life. So fascinating. So you've mentioned some of the highs and some of the lows. So was this process like for you just more immediately successful as becoming an entrepreneur? Because it seems like you've seen and gotten a lot of awards and honors within college, or is this more of a gradual process where you had to build up to the success over time? Oh, yeah, definitely. You have to build to it. And I worked pretty I mean, it sounds like it came pretty naturally, but it didn't by any means. I mean, through I had the luxury of working on Mount throughout college since my freshman year, so like I got a four or five year head start by the time I was like 22 and became full time and graduated. So that was helpful. And I learned and failed so much during my time at college. But it was in kind of a lower risk environment because if I failed, I was the only one working for Mount. We didn't take any funding. And so I had the luxury of like being able to play around with things, learn how to run a team and all that stuff. And I think if it had been the opposite, where I had taken VC funding without knowing anything of how to do entrepreneurship, it would have been a train wreck because they would have been putting the pressure on to make it work and I would have had no idea how to make it work. So I think that's pretty important too for listeners. It's just like if you do take funding, make sure you're doing it in a way where you already have a lot figured out and you're not taking funding to figure things out, there's a difference there. And so right now we are nearing the end of this interview. But for all the young entrepreneurs out there, what would be your one tidbit of advice for them, for them to be successful? I like to give the advice of just get out there and do it. Like when you're a college student, risk is so low that you might as well try it, because if you don't do it now, when you get out in the real world, that's probably going to stop you from doing it. So don't let the voice in your head tell, you know, just push through and do it and say yes, because even if it doesn't work, you're going to learn so much more than you would by staying in the classroom and just sitting in a lecture. But I'd say risk vs reward is definitely worth it. Absolutely agree with that, because again, these failures are only a failure if you'll let them happen to be a failure. Most of the time it's just a learning opportunity so you can learn and then improve on that so to make it better. So you recently had the rebranding, but can you tell the audience what is next for Mount as well? Absolutely. Yeah. So we rebranded, relaunch the products, and then in the coming months, we're basically building our network of travelers. So anyone out there that wants to join you can go on our website. And when we launch in early next year, pretty much every hidden gem we've been curating for the last few months, we're up to 40,000 at this point will be available to you as a traveler, plus the community that we're fostering amongst these Gen Z nomadic backpack travelers. So when you want to go on that trip and you don't have anyone to go with, you can dig into our community and find that that crew to travel with and have those memorable experiences with. And with that, I'd like to say thank you so much, Madi, for taking the time to be interviewed today. And we hope you have a very successful rest of the year. Thank you so much, guys. It was awesome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The ShermCast. We had a bunch of fun interviewing members from the Sherman Center and all of their testimonies were absolutely riveting. And we also had the pleasure of interviewing Madison Rifkin in all the endeavors that she has recently been on, including the changes that Mount has gone through and the changes that will continue to come. Make sure to like and follow this podcast. Until then, see you guys next time.