Sydney Startup Hub's Female Founder Showcase

Join us in celebrating NSW Women's Week at the Sydney Startup Hub's Female Founder Showcase, taking place Thursday 10th March at 5:30 pm on Level 1, of the Sydney Startup Hub!

Hear from 8 amazing founders from the SSH community, who are working on a variety of different startups at different stages of growth. Learn about their innovative businesses and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. Catch up with each founder for live, in-person networking, over drinks and nibbles, after the event.

Founders showcasing on the night include:

Francoise Gelbard, Co-Founder, HumanableCX - Stone & Chalk

Paula Jones, Founder, Blind Chihuahua - The Studio

Laura Hicks, Founder, Ewokii - Fishburners

Toni Mladenova, CEO & Co-Founder, Yard - Tank Stream Labs

El Salem, Founder, Eatwell App - Fishburners

Zeina Khodr, Founder & Chief Spark, Paper + Spark - The Studio

Carly Shamgar, CEO & Co-Founder, Shouta - Stone & Chalk

Founder Bios: 

Francoise Gelbard, Co-Founder, HumanableCX
Francoise has 20 years of experience in business intelligence, data analytics, and digital marketing consulting in financial services, superannuation, insurance, and wealth management. Humanable CX is an Interactive, Personalised CX SaaS Platform featuring a Video Concierge/Agent. We are transforming virtual customer communication, leveraging the power of video, cloud technology, data, and humanisation. We empower organisations to acquire, engage and retain millions of customers through personalised interactions.

Paula Jones, Founder, Blind Chihuahua 

Paula has a background as a recording engineer/producer at the top level of the music industry, working with artists like Elton John, Stevie Nicks and Rob Zombie. Blind Chihuahua is transforming the way global music fans interact with live content online, using Unreal Engine to create custom, immersive metaverse worlds that give fans unparalleled access to live shows, meet and greets, 3D NFT and web3 integration, and anything else artists/brands/labels can imagine, to engage their audience. 

Laura Hicks, Founder, Ewokii 

Wholesale buyers and wholesale suppliers around the world have an incredibly difficult journey to find each other. Sometimes this can take months or even years until they find a trusted partner that they can deal with. In ewokii.com we make the discovery process for buyers and suppliers shorter, simpler, creating meaningful connections to allow trade anywhere.

Toni Mladenova, CEO & Co-Founder, Yard

Toni is the CEO and co-founder of Yard. Yard is a fintech disrupting the digital mortgage lending space with simple, transparent, and competitively priced offers. Prior to starting Yard, Toni was a Principal at the management consulting company Kearney consulting to executives from the financial services industry across Australia, the US and the UK.

El Salem, Founder, Eatwell App 

El is a corporate lawyer turned product designer and solo founder and has been working to solve her own constant challenge of finding restaurants that cater to her complex dietary requirements. In September 2021, El launched the Eatwell app which allows anyone with a dietary requirement to find over 5500+ restaurants that cater to them and share their best dining experiences with others like them.

Zeina Khodr, Founder & Chief Spark, Paper + Spark - The Studio

As Founder and Chief Spark, Zeina leads a highly experienced team of digital communications and marketing strategists, creatives, social media gurus and technologists that help organisations navigate the always-on digital landscape. She is a passionate advocate for how brands can use technology and strategic storytelling to connect in a fragmented media world to communicate, engage and entertain audiences.

Carly Shamgar, CEO & Co-Founder, Shouta

Carly is a serial entrepreneur having worked in the tech start-up space for a decade as a co-founder, business leader, and investor. She has had extensive experience managing and growing both sales and marketing teams, been involved in several successful product launches, and was part of the founding team of a retail-tech company from pre-launch through to exit. Meet ​Shouta™: an App that brings gifting up to speed and down to scale. With digital tech and customisable nano-gifts™ like coffee, drinks, and more, you don’t have to break the bank to make someone's day, and gifts can be sent and received in seconds.