In this episode of Entrepreneur’s Enigma, host Seth Goldstein sits down with Heather Lawver, founder and CEO of CEMO. Heather shares her journey from starting her 1st community organization at age 7, to creating successful international human rights campaigns at 16, before delving into entrepreneurship. CEMO, an automated branding, marketing, and pitching startup, aims to help underrepresented founders raise funding and generate sales quickly. Throughout the conversation, Heather details the inspiration behind CEMO, her experiences as an entrepreneur, and the challenges of fundraising. Tune in as she shares insights into the world of entrepreneurship and building a cutting-edge startup.

Key Moments

[03:34] Customized quiz informs branding and market strategy.

[09:03] Wealthy woman supports entrepreneurship, mentor for startups.

[10:09] Bored, turned idea into successful company.

[13:55] Got into Techstars, secured seed money, met developer.

[16:39] Investors expect series A level traction.

Find Heather Online

https://www.ceemo.ai

https://www.ceemo.ai/beta

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherlawver/

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Transcript Provided by CastMagic.IO

Seth [00:00:00]:
Entrepreneur’s Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, so the wins and the fails that we all face being entrepreneurs, how we learn from adversity. Every week, I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneur’s Enigma. Let’s get started. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast.

Seth [00:00:34]:
I’m as always your host, Seth. I have a great guest here today. I met her through the Founder Institute, and she’s from DC ish area ish area. Her name’s Heather Laver. She’s the founder and CEO of CEEMO, which is an automated branding mark branding, marketing, and pitching Startup of sorts, kind of conglomeration for early stage startups. During their during the pilot phase, CEMA approved Their undying methodology proves their undying methodologies by helping underrepresented founders raise over 20,000,000. Holy crap. $21 in funding in less than 2 years.

Seth [00:01:17]:
And then top that off, she’s had 30,000 sales since launching in a month. 30,000 sales. That’s ridiculous. So I was onto something. So anyhow, she started her 1st community organization at age 7. Oh, man, she’s not an over achieve her all. Her 1st 501c3 nonprofits at 13, and I’m a show off. Successful international human rights campaign she founded at 16.

Seth [00:01:41]:
So she’s done a lot. You know, she does a lot for b p I BIPOC and LGBTQ plus A. Keep going with those acronyms there. And this is Disabled entrepreneurs throughout the VC landscape. She lives outside Washington, DC with her niblings, which is the gender neutral term for nieces and nephews. I’ve Learned that today. It’s a cute name. And her white, fluffy dog, Tiberias, who is sheds everywhere according to Heather.

Seth [00:02:09]:
So Let’s bring Heather in. How’s it going? How you doing? I said, Joey from Friends would say, how you doing?

Heather [00:02:16]:
Hi, Seth. I’m great. How you doing?

Seth [00:02:19]:
I’m a little caffeinated if you couldn’t tell. I’m a little caffeinated, but, you know, it’s good. So what is CMO?

Heather [00:02:27]:
Yes. So CEEMO is your friendly automated CMO. We’ve taken the concept of a chief marketing officer and turned it into an adorable little friendly robot who Help early stage founders, because being a founder is kind of a lonely process. So

Seth [00:02:41]:
It is. It’s hard to give you

Heather [00:02:42]:
a friendly CMO To help you out, and the whole idea is we help you get from ideation to your 1st funding round as quickly as possible, giving you all the marketing materials you need To tell the world who you are, what you do, and why it matters.

Seth [00:02:54]:
You’ve practiced that before.

Heather [00:02:56]:
Yes. Me too. Many times.

Seth [00:02:59]:
Many times. And so CMO, which now I know is CMO, but CMO kind of it’s

Heather [00:03:06]:
Mhmm.

Seth [00:03:07]:
And it’s dot AI. So is it AI? Is it a whole a AI system? Is it kind of pseudo? Is it kinda like Canva? Like, go a little bit more until what the heck it is?

Heather [00:03:18]:
Sure. So right now, it is our foundational algorithms, which we are adding AI and ML on top of. But what it does right now is we’re in beta mode. We just launched a couple weeks ago, actually.

Seth [00:03:32]:
30,000 sales worth.

Heather [00:03:34]:
Yes. It starts with a simple 5 step quiz. You tell us who you are, who your main competitors are. We have a partnership with Crunchbase so you can look through Their entire database of who your top competitors are and who your dream investors are. We’re still polishing off the algorithm that will Trawl their entire database and look for branding trends across your top competitors, who’s received investment most recently in your industry, and the portfolios of your dream investors, To then infuse your own brand with all of that market research to help you, look like you belong in your market. And then we also combine that with Three keywords that you choose that tell us how you wanna be perceived by your customers. So thoughts and feelings and relational Keywords that help to define who you are as a company. We combine your strategy with market research to generate a logo, Color scheme and a font suite so you have a full brand kit.

Heather [00:04:27]:
But then the true magic of CMO is that we automatically apply that brand To proven pitch deck templates, marketing materials, everything you need to tell your story.

Seth [00:04:37]:
That’s incredible.

Heather [00:04:39]:
Thank you.

Seth [00:04:39]:
And I know you kinda touched on that before, but you kinda look a little more detail with that. And it was that’s really cool. And so clearly, you’ve been an entrepreneur from a very early age, 7. Yeah. I think it’s in 7, which is, like, wow.

Heather [00:04:55]:
Thank you.

Seth [00:04:56]:
And nonprofit of 13. I mean, it’s incredible. You know? And so what made you wanna be an entrepreneur? I mean, And did you even know you wanted to be an entrepreneur at 7, or did you just kinda say, I wanna do this? It sounds like fun. I wanna do this.

Heather [00:05:11]:
Actually, at 7, I wanted to be a combination of Murphy Brown and the ladies from Designing Women.

Seth [00:05:18]:
Oh, wow. That’s what I deep cut. Yeah.

Heather [00:05:21]:
Yeah. The cut. Television definitely influenced my childhood. I wanted to be, like miss Sugarbaker on designing women who could stand up and tell a story and put anyone in their place and Oh, yeah. Brown using storytelling to change the world, just the whole thing, whole thing. And so anytime I Saw something that was interesting, anything I saw that was some kind of injustice in the world, I wanted to stand up and be that Julia Sugarbaker who could make it All alright. So at 7, I ended up starting, an educational program for kids on the army post that I lived in.

Seth [00:05:56]:
Oh, wow.

Heather [00:05:57]:
And that was the first thing I ever started. So it wasn’t so much about entrepreneurship. It was more about doing things to help people.

Seth [00:06:03]:
We’re gonna take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and get right back to the show. I love it. And I guess, obviously, you have very supportive parents because, I mean, like

Heather [00:06:12]:
Yes.

Seth [00:06:12]:
What is shifting what is shifting now? Oh, wow. That’s such a pretty good idea. Go for it. That’s awesome. I mean, it’s been a while since the port appearance. So are you an army brat?

Heather [00:06:23]:
I’m an Air Force brat.

Seth [00:06:24]:
Air Force brat. Okay.

Heather [00:06:26]:
Yes. Air Force brat. But we’ve lived on army posts, UN posts, All of that stuff. But yeah.

Seth [00:06:31]:
Oh, so you’ve traveled the world?

Heather [00:06:34]:
Yeah. From a very young age. Yes. I was very blessed in that regard. Favorite thing about the military.

Seth [00:06:39]:
Exactly. And then, is it the reason why you ended up around DC? Because I mean, it’s kind of army base central or base central around I mean, you drive around, like, You’re driving down well, you’re driving down, the Baltimore, DC, not really expressway, more like a popular road. And you’re driving by and there there’s Pentagon not the Pentagon. There’s Fort Meade. Oh, there’s NASA. Oh, there’s NASA. It’s like, hey, kids.

Heather [00:07:04]:
Every afternoon.

Seth [00:07:05]:
No. Hey, kids. There’s this is not a deep cut. And from National Lampoon’s European Adventure. But, hey, kids, look for Zen SA. Turn off your phones, kind of thing.

Heather [00:07:14]:
Yep. Definitely. But actually we ended up in the DC area because of my brother.

Seth [00:07:20]:
So

Heather [00:07:21]:
I’m the youngest of 4 kids, And my parents originally retired from the military and ended up in Arizona where they were born and raised, but my brother was part of the whole AOL craze. He started working with them very early and then moved out here when they moved their headquarters to Loudoun County. And then they announced they were pregnant with the 1st nibbling, And we followed them out here. So that was how I ended up in DC.

Seth [00:07:44]:
Oh, that’s fun. So just kind of came out to hang out with the family.

Heather [00:07:48]:
Mhmm. Yep.

Seth [00:07:49]:
And now you’re kind of, it’s like what the Silicon Valley East side of the world. I mean, we’re giving Silicon Valley a run for their money between the whole Megalopolis from Boston to DC is insane with innovations that are going on here. And it’s bigger than Silicon Valley, if you look if you ask I mean, literally, physically, I mean, Yep. It is. I mean, it’s Boston DC is not exactly close to each other. So

Heather [00:08:13]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:08:13]:
But that’s wild. So You went from the nonprofit helping people, you know, helping people with that are in marginalized, you know, you know, I’m trying to come up with a word here. You You know, diverse communities.

Heather [00:08:34]:
Mhmm.

Seth [00:08:35]:
So what was the impetus for CMO? Like, what what made you wanna say, like, I need this or the world needs this.

Heather [00:08:42]:
I like to say I tripped and fell into it.

Seth [00:08:44]:
Oh, that’s the best way to do it. You’re breaking an angle doing it.

Heather [00:08:47]:
Yeah. I actually did though. But yes. So the origins of SIEMO started almost exactly 10 years ago. I was a fellow in the very first cohort of an incubator here in DC called the Halcyon, Incubator

Seth [00:09:02]:
Mhmm.

Heather [00:09:03]:
Started by one of the wealthiest women in the world who wanted to support social entrepreneurship, and I was very lucky to be in the very 1st cohort. And even though I’d start all of these companies before in the past, I had never pitched to investors. Halcyon was the very first experience I’d ever had pitching to an investor. But my training in design, creative writing, Childhood development, so how we learn and process information, and public speaking and a little bit of television production all came together perfectly To address and tell the stories of early stage startups. And so they were so pleased with the progress of me developing my own pitch that they asked me to come back almost Every cohort after that for years helping different founders with their brands and pitch decks. So I volunteered my time. I didn’t get paid. I was just doing it for fun.

Heather [00:09:50]:
And every single year, they told me you should turn this into a company, and I kept going, no. I’m not qualified for that. Who’d hire me for that? No way. And so I just kept volunteering. I kept getting more people asking for help. After about 6, 7 years, this was in the middle of lockdown. Oh, the best of times. Yeah.

Heather [00:10:09]:
Best of times. Right? I was bored. Didn’t have anything else to do. And their cofounder again said you should turn this into a company because do you realize the founder you just helped just won South by Southwest with your deck. Another one is 1 CES. So I was You’re onto something. Yeah. I was onto something and they said, you need to turn this into a company and, by the way, we’ll hire you.

Heather [00:10:30]:
I thought, if I’ve got a client ready to go, okay, why not?

Seth [00:10:33]:
Why not? Where did I sign? Yeah.

Heather [00:10:35]:
Yeah. So I started working with Halcyon. I was the very first person they had ever paid to provide services to their founders in almost a decade. Oh, wow. I started developing a curriculum for their opportunity intensive program, which serves founders from the most impoverished regions of DC.

Seth [00:10:54]:
That’s right. DC is literally, what, 4 Mile Square Mhmm. But the majority of it is not what you see on TV.

Heather [00:11:02]:
No. It’s they’ve got incredible levels of poverty, but also incredible levels of creativity and people who really wanna they’ve Seem the worst of the worst, and they know how to solve it, and they wanna

Seth [00:11:12]:
make it happen. 4 mile square town. I mean, like, you look at see, like, Philadelphia or New York. Alright. There’s crime. I get it. Like, It’s a small town. I mean, DC is literally small town America, though it’s not.

Seth [00:11:23]:
It’s not even one bit. It doesn’t even look like small town America. Like, one of our monuments, very Romanesque. But it it I mean, it’s a 4 mile square it’s 4 miles. Right? Around yeah.

Heather [00:11:32]:
About that. Like that. It’s tiny. It it I think it’s the biggest, most important small town in the world.

Seth [00:11:37]:
Right now, small town America, DC.

Heather [00:11:41]:
Yeah. Exactly. So I developed a curriculum for them. I started working with the founders and Within about 6, 7 months or so, I’d already helped them raise over $8,000,000.

Seth [00:11:52]:
Oh, that’s all.

Heather [00:11:53]:
That’s alright. And I started to realize, Okay. Halcyon saw something a long time before I did. Yeah. Maybe I need to figure out what it is exactly that I’m doing that’s overcoming these Biases. Because I’m talking about founders who traditionally get less than 5% of all venture capital invested in the world.

Seth [00:12:11]:
Less than 5%. But now they’re killing it. Yeah. Now they’re, like, doing it.

Heather [00:12:15]:
So what was I doing that was overcoming these biases? So I started to think about it, analyze it, and think through in my brain, okay, what decisions am I making when I brand and pitch a company? What is the overall thought process and how do I turn that into an algorithm? So I started working

Seth [00:12:30]:
at this point, every algorithms are everywhere. Let’s make this an algorithm. Like, how is it gonna multiply yourself? Exactly.

Heather [00:12:35]:
Exactly. Because I started to think, I quickly realized I was hitting capacity. There were always more founders who needed help, There was only so much of me, and I hated having to turn anyone away. So how do I replicate myself? And I had that first thought in January of last year. Wow. And I thought about it from January until I figured it out finally in July.

Seth [00:12:59]:
But, yeah, that’s not bad. That’s not bad. That’s pretty quick.

Heather [00:13:02]:
That’s pretty quick. So then I started thinking, okay, how do I fund this? How do I get it built? I was like, oh, I’m gonna I’m gonna bootstrap it. I’m an old school bootstrapper. I’ll take my time. Right? I’ll fund it with revenue. It’ll be fine. But then by the winter, I got into Techstars unexpectedly. I applied and thought, no.

Heather [00:13:17]:
I’m expectedly. I applied and thought, no

Seth [00:13:19]:
one’s gonna be there. Anything with you is unexpected. You might not you might not see it coming, but I think everyone is expecting you to be there.

Heather [00:13:28]:
That’s that’s yes.

Seth [00:13:30]:
I know. You’re being modest. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Heather [00:13:34]:
I still think I trip and fall into everything.

Seth [00:13:37]:
You might, but I think people see you tripping.

Heather [00:13:40]:
Yeah. I

Seth [00:13:40]:
think people see, like, oh, here comes Heather. Let’s, let’s, let’s catch her before she falls on our face. Got it.

Heather [00:13:47]:
I like that. Got it.

Seth [00:13:48]:
Seriously, like, oh, I unexpectedly got into Techstars. I’m like, have you looked at your background. Like, for real.

Heather [00:13:55]:
Oh, so I got into Techstars Atlanta, which was wonderful, and that Gave me the seed money necessary to then build the platform. So we’ve been building it. I also that same time frame last year, I Was a partner at DC Startup Week, and I happened to meet an absolutely phenomenal developer who typically builds enterprise level software. His client just before me was literally a Fortune 100 company building their own internal software and in their AI integration. And so when I first met, He flat out said, I’m too expensive for you, but I love what you’re doing. I’ll be an adviser. So he helped me review That’s how

Seth [00:14:32]:
it happens because then you broke them in

Heather [00:14:35]:
It’s no weird.

Seth [00:14:35]:
Like, I need help with this. Hey, Bob. I’m gonna call him Bob. Hey, Bob. I need a little help with this. Already know that he sucked in. Natalia was one of the founders institute guys that I helped out. I started out as an advisor within a week.

Seth [00:14:49]:
I was the marketing lead, because he needed help with stuff. Oh my god.

Heather [00:14:54]:
Yeah. That’s exactly what happened with me and Jake. The yes. His name is Jake. Not boss. Yeah. Not boss. Now he’s, he quickly became my CTO, and now he’s just agreed to become my cofounder.

Heather [00:15:06]:
So that’s Yay. Not doing it alone anymore.

Seth [00:15:10]:
Oh, that’s fun. Yeah.

Heather [00:15:11]:
But yeah. So we built the software over the past 9 months or so, and it just launched a couple weeks ago.

Seth [00:15:17]:
And 30,000 ping pong.

Heather [00:15:21]:
Yeah.

Seth [00:15:21]:
We just shall happen to trip and fall into them too.

Heather [00:15:24]:
That was a lot of work. I will say I have to be honest

Seth [00:15:27]:
with you. That one. Own that one.

Heather [00:15:28]:
You should know that one.

Seth [00:15:29]:
That’s a good one. So, what’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur? I mean, because you’ve first done it your whole entire life.

Heather [00:15:36]:
The best thing about being an entrepreneur Is a lot of people will say it’s the freedom. I don’t think it is freedom because it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work.

Seth [00:15:45]:
Freedom in entrepreneurship.

Heather [00:15:46]:
No. I don’t know why anybody gets into Entrepreneurship thinking, oh, it’ll be great, I’ll be free, I’ll be my own boss. That’s bullcrap. No. Being your own boss is not fun. It does have its moments, but no, it’s a lot of pressure. My favorite thing about being an entrepreneur is it’s a different kind of freedom And that you have the ability to see a problem and get creative about it. You don’t have to follow all of the rules and the protocols of a big company or Go to a boss and hope they’ll say yes.

Heather [00:16:16]:
The best part is being able to see a problem, come up with a solution, and then Actually see that solution work, there is no better feeling. And once you’ve seen that and had that experience of knowing that your hard work helped someone else, No other job ever measures up after that.

Seth [00:16:33]:
Oh, I love it. Oh, that that is a sound bite right there, folks. So what then on the flip side, what keeps you up at

Heather [00:16:39]:
night? What keeps you up right now is fundraising. Oh my gosh. It is the, it is the worst environment I’ve seen in over 25 years for raising funds for a founder, Especially at an early stage. I hate to say it, but investors are expecting series a level, Traction, but still behaving like and expecting series a level feedback, but for seed money. Like,

Seth [00:17:05]:
to me,

Heather [00:17:05]:
it to get

Seth [00:17:06]:
to that.

Heather [00:17:07]:
Exactly. Yeah. And also just the the kicking it can down the road and, Yeah. It’s it’s it’s a frustrating process. We’re currently raising our seed round and, yeah, it’s It’s a process, but we’re making progress. We have our round half committed at this point. So

Seth [00:17:26]:
Oh, good for you. Any

Heather [00:17:28]:
thanks. If anyone’s really passionate about the future of b two b SaaS, AI, and quality in venture capital, hit me up.

Seth [00:17:36]:
That’s awesome. We’ll have everything to show notes. So and what’s the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Heather [00:17:45]:
Most important thing to a notebook. My Oh, yeah. Family and my assistant would say a notebook. I have a ridiculous collection of notebooks. I spend way too much money on them, but,

Seth [00:17:57]:
Oh, you got it. If you’re gonna carry it with me, that’ll make it look cute.

Heather [00:18:03]:
Yeah. Oh, no. It’s really adorable. But

Seth [00:18:05]:
Well, I I need a good moleskin. I like a good moleskin, but I have a remark I my favorite thing now is a remarkable. I love my

Heather [00:18:11]:
Oh, I’ve been wanting one of those. Are they? They

Seth [00:18:13]:
want it. It’s worth its weight in gold.

Heather [00:18:16]:
And then

Seth [00:18:16]:
you’ll be at you won’t buy another notebook because you won’t need 1. Because the one there, it’s great. And it’s not paid for the club.

Heather [00:18:23]:
I love the feel of paper. Does it feel like The

Seth [00:18:25]:
feel of the paper. It’s It’s it’s wild. It’s expensive. It’s like $500 that’s when you get done with all the accessories, but it’s worth it.

Heather [00:18:34]:
It’s turning into a commercial for Remarkable now. I totally wanna watch it. I wish

Seth [00:18:38]:
you got some commission on that. So, Heather, where’s your where’s your order hall online? Where do you hang out the most? Where can people connect with you?

Heather [00:18:45]:
Probably LinkedIn, would be the best spot. I used to be a total Twitter hound, but I’ve left Twitter at this point. Yeah. This is the

Seth [00:18:54]:
best thing over there. Suspect.

Heather [00:18:55]:
Yeah. Definitely find me on LinkedIn.

Seth [00:18:58]:
Yes. And it’s l a w v e r, Like, lawyer with the v the y is a v.

Heather [00:19:04]:
It’s a lawyer with the tail cut off.

Seth [00:19:07]:
Oh, I like that. That’s very clever. Ouch. And CEMO, c e e m o

Heather [00:19:15]:
m o. Yes.

Seth [00:19:16]:
C, double e, m o.

Heather [00:19:19]:
Dot AI. Yeah.

Seth [00:19:20]:
It is also the is it the AMCO? Hey. Do a m c o.

Heather [00:19:24]:
Do a m c o.

Seth [00:19:25]:
I had too much coffee today. Go figure. But yeah. This has been so much fun. And I I I gotta I’m gonna go check out your site and play around with stuff. It’s totally cool.

Heather [00:19:34]:
Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Seth [00:19:37]:
Awesome. And guess what? We’ll see everyone next time. That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneur’s Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the marketing podcast network at marketing podcasts.net. Gold’s theme gi hopes you have enjoyed this episode.