Brian Weisfeld
I’ve been building businesses my entire life. In elementary school, I bought 95 pounds of gummy bears and hired my friends to sell them. As a teen, I made and sold mixtapes (ask your parents what those are), sorted baseball cards (I got paid in cards), babysat four-days-a-week after school, and sold nuts and dried fruit (and more gummy bears) in a neighborhood store.
As an adult, I helped build a number of well-known billion-dollar companies including IMAX Corporation and Coupons.com. Then I watched my oldest daughter struggle to sell Girl Scout cookies and I also became frustrated with some of the less-than-empowering influences I saw for my two girls. So I bought a copy of Writing Children’s Books for Dummies and decided to write a novel series to inspire girls (and boys, too) to open their first lemonade stands or other businesses and to empower them with an entrepreneurial mindset.
I am the Founder and Chief Squad Officer of The Startup Squad, an initiative dedicated to empowering girls to realize their potential and follow their dreams, whatever their passion. The Startup Squad book series is co-authored by the fabulous Nicole C. Kear, published by Macmillan Publishers, and was recommended by the American Library Association (ALA) as a diverse and inclusive read to teach young people about money.
I live in Silicon Valley and, when I am not travelling the country inspiring kids to start their first businesses, I can be found eating gummy bears with my wife while watching my two daughters sell lemonade from the end of our driveway.