Betting on Yourself, Breaking Into Tech, & Refusing to Take No for an Answer w/ Melodie van der Baan, Co-Founder & CEO, Max Retail
Release Date: 08/20/2025
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Betting on Yourself, Breaking Into Tech, & Refusing to Take No for an Answer w/ Melodie van der Baan, Co-Founder & CEO, Max Retail
Outsider Inc.
In this episode of Outsider Inc., host Ian Hathaway chats with Melodie van der Baan, co-founder and CEO of Max Retail. Melodie shares her unconventional journey from skipping college to diving into real estate, losing everything in the housing crash, and then transforming into a mobile designer clothes distributor. Her challenges and experiences eventually led her to start Max Retail, a platform for converting unsold inventory into revenue, which now serves over 2,000 retailers across the U.S. The discussion highlights her perseverance, customer focus, and innovative approach to the retail...
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From Visual Search Founder to Visionary VC w/ Jewel Burks Solomon, Co-Founder of Partpic & Managing Partner, Collab Capital
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In this episode of Outsider Inc., host Ian Hathaway interviews Jewel Burke Solomon, a founder, investor, and community leader based in Atlanta. Jewel shares her experiences of co-founding PartPic, a startup designed to identify and replace industrial parts through visual search technology, which was later acquired by Amazon. She discusses her challenges in raising capital as a black female founder and how those experiences inspired her to become an investor. Jewel highlights her work at Google for Startups, where she helped launch the Black Founders Fund and Latino Founders Fund. She also...
info_outlineIn this episode of Outsider Inc., host Ian Hathaway chats with Melodie van der Baan, co-founder and CEO of Max Retail. Melodie shares her unconventional journey from skipping college to diving into real estate, losing everything in the housing crash, and then transforming into a mobile designer clothes distributor. Her challenges and experiences eventually led her to start Max Retail, a platform for converting unsold inventory into revenue, which now serves over 2,000 retailers across the U.S. The discussion highlights her perseverance, customer focus, and innovative approach to the retail industry.
Show Notes:
(02:41) Skipping college and diving into real estate as a teen
(05:22) Losing everything in the housing crash
(08:14) Life on the road: selling designer clothes from a Sprinter van
(12:49) Launching a retail shop and confronting the inventory problem
(18:56) Starting Max Retail during the pandemic
(25:03) Breaking into Techstars after multiple attempts
(32:17) Scaling to 2,000+ retailers and raising $20M+
(41:09) Lessons on persistence, resilience, and customer focus
(47:56) Beyond the Bio with Melodie van der Baan
✅ Host: Ian Hathway - Co-Founder & Managing Partner, FOVC
✅ Guest: Melodie van der Baan, Co-Founder & CEO of Max Retail
Produced by Spellbinder Media. Executive Produced by Bridge Five Ventures. Copyright ©️2025, Bridge Five Ventures, LLC, All rights reserved.
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