Episode 13

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Published on:

20th Apr 2020

Ep. 13 Judith Erwin, CEO, Grasshopper Bank

  • What is Grasshopper Bank, who it serves and how it is different
  • Dramatic story of fundraising and starting a bank
  • Tips for starting a bank
  • Her WHY 
  • Her unconventional upbringing
  • Challenges and mistakes, and what she learned from them 
  • Women and diversity 
  • How COVID-19 is impacting and will impact our way of work and life

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Bio:

Judith was on the founding executive team for Square 1 Bank in 2005, responsible for venture capital services globally. Square 1 successfully went public in 2014 and was later sold to Pacific Western Bank. She previously worked at Imperial and Comerica. After 35 years in banking, Judith knew it was the time to make significant changes in the commercial banking industry. Her strategy was to build a bank from scratch providing both a modern technological framework and intuitive user experience for the digital entrepreneurs Grasshopper serves.

Grasshopper is a digital bank serving founders, their companies, and the investors supporting them across the innovation economy. They make banking simple, secure, effortless and transparent.

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About the Podcast

Investors & Operators
A Podcast by 51 Labs
The M&A market can be boring, but everyone has a story. The Investors & Operators podcast is about discovering the stories people were holding back, didn’t know how to tell, or forgot about. The goal is simple: fresh, authentic storytelling to bring people together in the M&A community.

With over 1M organic views and counting on LinkedIn, 51 Labs is disrupting the M&A market through the use of videography and content creation. In a market that longs for authenticity, 51 Labs helps strengthen your brand and tell your story. From concept to distribution, we strategize and produce thoughtful content to be used across a multitude of channels, to help you stand out in an otherwise traditionally boring market.

New episodes every other Thursday at 6:00am Eastern.

About your host

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Jordan Selleck

Founder. Recovering Investment Banker. 3x Entrepreneur. Philz Coffee Enthusiast.

Jordan Selleck is a recovering investment banker turned 3x entrepreneur. While teaching English in China, Jordan met an investment banker in a bar and before he knew it he’d spent six years in cross-border investment banking advising global corporates and private equity firms on M&A deals up to $250 million.

As much as Jordan loved investment banking, he always knew he was meant to do something more. In 2016, Jordan founded Debtmaven, a deal management platform for debt financing in the lower middle market. It was while he was marketing Debtmaven on LinkedIn that Jordan found his true passion: building meaningful relationships in the lower middle market.

Seeing over 50% of Debtmaven’s $450million+ in deals come from LinkedIn, he realized he’d found an untapped market and began his journey with LinkedIn consulting. Dozens of clients and a handful of extraordinarily talented employees later, 51 Labs is a thriving marketing agency for the lower middle market that produces captivating content and generates organic traffic across LinkedIn.

Jordan was born in San Diego, grew up in North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill. He has traveled to 32 countries, lived in China for 18 months, trains Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a fourth-generation private pilot, SCUBA dives, speaks Mandarin Chinese, and is a husband and father of 2.