Nassim Abdi

Before founding StoryBolt, I was in academia. One day, I was teaching my transnational feminism class about the impact of war on people. For me, this is a personal topic as I am an immigrant from Iran and have experienced the trauma of war firsthand. Therefore, it was really important to me that my students were able to understand the experiences people face in war, and I thought that sharing my personal story would help create a dynamic learning environment where students could engage in the topic. However, I noticed that as I was teaching the class, the students were on their computers or phones. No one was engaging with the topic, which was difficult for me because I had such high hopes of sharing this personal experience with them. This experience, though difficult, pushed me to think about how we can make stories relatable and allow people to gain a deeper understanding of what someone else may have experienced, even if they themselves have never experienced anything like it. This made me think back to my time in film. Before becoming a professor, I worked with a brilliant director as an actress in his featured film. During this experience, I saw how the movie sparked so much conversation between viewers. I tried to replicate this in my classroom. I found a documentary about a plastic surgeon who dedicated his life to helping victims of war. When I showed the documentary, all the students’ laptops closed, and the film immediately caught their attention - something I was unable to do earlier with my story. I even invited the filmmaker to speak to the students after watching the film, and the students were engaged in the discussion and had great questions. I tried to find a platform to help me replicate this experience for all the topics I was teaching. However, I couldn’t find one, so I decided to create my own with StoryBolt. Though StoryBolt started in academia, today, we focus on helping companies and corporations by harnessing storytelling and film to cultivate empathy within employee experiences, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction.

Firstly, I am very proud of the amazing team we have. We are all very passionate about the work and the impact of what we are building. We have now reached over 15,000 people through StoryBolt. Whenever we have a session with corporations, I am always excited to read the feedback from participants and see what they have taken away from these sessions. Another milestone for us is passing $600,000 in revenue last year, and we have built partnerships with major international corporations including Deloitte, General Mills, and Discover. We are also working with film festivals to add more films to our platform.

Building investor relationships often relies on one's network, and it's said that your network is your net worth. As an immigrant and a woman of color, I found myself without such a network and unfamiliar with traditional networking spaces like clubhouses and golf clubs where investment decisions are commonly made. Thankfully, initiatives like GET Cities are stepping in to bridge this gap, offering non-traditional avenues for engaging with investors and opening doors that might otherwise remain closed. For many investors, investing under a million dollars in a company with previous VC backing is often a straightforward decision, typically not involving detailed scrutiny of the founder's personal finances. However, in my experience, the process diverged from this norm. After conducting an extensive due diligence process on our company, rather than moving directly to wiring instructions, I was unexpectedly asked to undergo a personal background check, a step that was unfamiliar to others in my startup network for such a scale of investment. This unexpected divergence in the investment process felt offensive and, unfortunately, impacted my self-confidence, intensifying feelings of imposter syndrome - a common experience among women in professional environments. This additional hurdle in the investment journey was not just a procedural anomaly but also a personal challenge, affecting my sense of belonging in the startup community. Fortunately, the support of my community of female founders and advisors helped me navigate this challenge. Their encouragement and guidance were instrumental in overcoming unexpected hurdles and reinforced my resilience in the startup journey.

StoryBolt started in Chicago, and there are some great things that I love about the city. For example, during our time in Chicago, we were able to build a strong support network and gather a great deal of community support. However, unfortunately, when it comes to money and investment, we were not able to raise in Chicago despite one single angel who wrote our first check pre-seed. Today, we have raised $2 million, and only a tiny portion of that has come from Chicago. Again, we got a lot of emotional support from Chicago, but when it comes to writing checks, we had to look outside of Chicago. I think one way to increase investment opportunities in Chicago is to have more early-stage female investors. I think this is getting better, but more can be done to close this funding gap.

I was nominated to participate in the GET Seed Founder cohort by some great folks at 1871. When I learned about the cohort model and how it focuses on founders from historically excluded backgrounds, I knew it would be a great opportunity for me. It helped me connect with executives and get my foot in the door, which is not easy, especially for a woman of color in this space. Also, I heard great feedback from members in the first cohort. Specifically, they prided GET for really listening to their needs rather than just providing trainings or sessions on things they think founders need.