Tell us about Advize

Advize is the most engaging career learning and career recommendation platform powered by AI, bringing 1000s of curated informational interviews directly to students in the #1 way they consume content today – short-form video.

Our Advizers, qualified professionals interviewed by Advize, all answer the Advize 13 - proven questions tested by 100’s of students and covering everything from, “Walk me through your career path” to “How has your identity impacted your career?”. Each question is cut individually so students can find exactly the information they’re looking for, enabling Advize to pull priceless data and career insights in a way that doesn’t exist today.

Our Advizers provide interviews to support students and in exchange receive marketing content, discounted services, and (most importantly) pay it forward to those who need it!

Imagine, Masterclass meets LinkedIn with Netflix’s recommendation system.

What inspired you to create your company?

I started Advize because I see a huge gap in career exploration and learning for students, as a frustrated student myself. In over 7 years working in talent and recruitment industries, I realized the value of information directly from the source, a professional, is incredibly valuable and imperative to learn. At Michael Page, one of the largest recruitment agencies in the world, I would successfully coach brand new Recruiters on how to learn an entire new industry they had no knowledge in by coaching them to ask simple open questions with professionals within that industry or career. It works.

Almost every career center at a university recommends for students to execute informational interviews with professionals to learn about careers and what's right for them, but they do not have the time, the network, or the modern resources to explore career path options adequately and learn the way they need today.

What drives you to be an entrepreneur?

I've always been drawn toward entrepreneurship, even as a young kid who had her own popsicle and plastic lanyard business selling to kids at school. As an adult while working at public and private companies, I've ended up being an Intrapreneur, someone who works on projects and ideas outside of the core responsibilities of my role. I enjoy doing many things at once and am inspired by spending my time creating and innovating something new versus working within strict limits of a role with no way to advance as quickly as I would like. Entrepreneurship to me, is freedom.

One major lesson I've learned is to trust my gut. Many things have eventually occurred that I knew could have been addressed much earlier, but I listened to others' advice instead of my own. I've also learned you must love your idea and believe the world needs it, because being a Founder is very difficult and you need the stamina to make it through the early phases of the company as unfazed as possible (aka, to handle rejection and doubt from others).

Where can people find your product?

Advize is currently publicly available for free on advizehub.com! If you're interested in becoming and Advizer, you can sign up via the interest form on the "For Advizers" page.

Where can people connect with you online?

Linkedin

Are you currently fundraising?

We are not currently fundraising, but will be looking for seed funding later this year. Please email [email protected] to express interest and to explore the opportunity for investment.

Lena Zhang is raising a pre-seed round for Cohere Commerce.

Notable investors:

Major milestones:

Cohere Commerce is a retail intelligence platform. Think of us as Glassdoor for B2B retail. We help professional retail buyers source vendors with verified market insights; our data engine helps cpg brands refine marketing and sales strategy. We launched April 2023, and just finished Techstars last December; in 8 months we organically acquired 800 business customers on our platform.

Where can people find you online?