Pricing for Value Unlock, Amplifying Human Connection through Video, and the Leap from Professional Ballerina to Tech CEO, with Rachel Cossar of Virtual Sapiens

The VITALIZE Podcast: Venture Capital | Startups | Angel Investing

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Rachel Cossar (@rachelonpointe), Co-Founder and CEO of Virtual Sapiens, a machine learning SaaS platform leveraging AI to help client-facing professionals measurably improve their comfort and confidence in order to master communication skills over video. Like a virtual coach, Virtual Sapiens leverages expert knowledge in body language and presence and provides convenient avenues for receiving personalized feedback and coaching. Users can benchmark their video presence and improvement in their own time with their Virtual Presence Assessment. Users can also use their in-call communication coach, the Sidekick, to receive in-call coaching nudges and encouragements to ensure every call is a success. Both solutions come with progress tracking analytics, so you can actually see your progress over time. Virtual Sapiens amplifies human connection, builds human skills, and leverages cutting edge technology to do so at scale over time. Virtual Sapiens is a VITALIZE portfolio company.

Rachel Cossar is a leader in the field of nonverbal communication and leadership presence facilitation. As a former nationally ranked athlete and professional ballet dancer, Rachel has a knack for translating unique skills into relatable business competencies. Virtual Sapiens, Rachel's most recent venture, comes as an evolution of her combined work as founder of Choreography for Business, a nonverbal communication consulting firm, as well as a faculty member with Mobius Executive Leadership and as a leadership presence facilitator with Ariel Group. Rachel has worked with leaders from GE, BCG, Pfizer, Accenture, McKinsey, HBS and more.

Rachel believes in the power of leveraging unique channels of communication in their own ways. Whether it is in person, on stage, or on video, human connection is the key to organizational impact. At Virtual Sapiens and in all endeavors, Rachel is known to lean in to the future, to uncertainty, and to strengthening human experiences in business and beyond. Rachel's thought leadership has been featured on the TEDx Northeastern stage, Harvard Business Review, The Boston Globe, Psychology Today and more.

Website: Virtual Sapiens

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rachel-cossar/

Twitter: @rachelonpointe

Show Notes:

• What Virtual Sapiens is
• Rachel’s background as a professional ballet dancer and how it led her to found Virtual Sapiens
• How Rachel leveraged the pandemic transition to a virtual world to get Virtual Sapiens off the ground
• The question of bringing on a technical cofounder vs. outsourcing
• How Rachel connected with her technical co-founder, and deciding to work together
• Product development from original vision to today
• How early feedback provided validation and informed product development
• Their ideal customer and how that profile shifted since inception
• How Rachel envisions Virtual Sapiens fitting into the Future of Work
• The decision to go through an accelerator and choosing the Roux Institute chapter of Techstars
• Virtual Sapiens’ business model and pricing strategy
• Lessons from the first 2 years of running a tech startup
• The big vision for Virtual Sapiens

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 400+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series.

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors.

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital.

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/