Ali Kriegsman: Co-Founder & COO of Bulletin

This week we chat with Ali Kriegsman. Ali is the Co-founder and COO of Bulletin, a B2B wholesale marketplace backed by Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins and other top venture funds. Her mission is to help founders and small business owners, and especially women, redefine the word "success." As a first-time founder, Ali felt like she couldn’t relate to the glamorous entrepreneurs on her Instagram feed who were peddling typical markers of success like glossy magazine covers, getting verified on social media, or hitting massive revenue milestones. In reality, she thought, building something from nothing is a confusing and emotional challenge you sign up for every single day, and it's a journey filled with more failures than wins. It's unglamorous, taxing, and endlessly stressful, and fuels the intense fear that if things don’t work out, you've failed miserably. Ali believes that if you're launching a business from scratch and sign up for that struggle, you're already ahead of so many others who would prefer to defer a dream, stay stuck, and wonder "what if?"

A recipient of "Forbes 30 Under 30" and named one of Fast Company’s "Most Creative People in Business," Ali has helped thousands of brands expand their distribution and sell in both offline and online stores all around the US and. Canada. She is a salesperson, self-taught publicist, marketer, and growth strategist and has experience scaling both bootstrapped and venture-backed businesses. Her first book, How to Build a Goddamn Empire, is the no bullsh*t book on entrepreneurship you've always needed, and it is now available in both hardcover and audiobook formats. Using the questions she's most frequently asked as her guideposts, Ali writes about her experience launching and growing Bulletin directly from the trenches, and features words of triumph, failure and wisdom from 30 other women-owned businesses. The book has been featured and lauded by The Today Show, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine and more, and her publisher, ABRAMS, has doubled down on the project and expanded publication *globally* to the UK, Australia, Finland, Denmark, South Africa, Germany and other European countries. The book, which just came out in April, is already in its third print run in the US.

Since the book's release and aspart of her digital book tour, Ali has partnered with Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine and The Female Quotient, Rebecca Minkoff and The Female Founder Collective, Yelp, Meetup, Shopify, TaskRabbit and more. Through her work, Ali has cultivated an extensive network of entrepreneurs including Ally Love, Sophia Amoruso, Jaime Schmidt, Jaclyn Johnson and others, and her digital book launch yielded over 15,000 attendees for her panels, workshops and fireside chats.

Follow us!

Ali Kriegsman: @alikriegs (and on Fireside here)

Bulletin: @bulletin.co (and get involved here)

How to Build a Goddamn Empire by Ali Kriegsman: buy here

Wanting by Luke Burgis (mentioned in conversation): buy here

Dear Twentysomething: @deartwentysomething (and on Fireside here)