Founder Chat with Sharon Gillenwater

Sharon K. Gillenwater is a serial entrepreneur and tech startup founder who successfully built, scaled and sold Boardroom Insiders, a marketing technology company. She chronicles this journey in her first book, Scaling With Soul: How I Built & Sold a $25 Million Tech Company Without Being an A**hole. Today, her mission is to demystify entrepreneurship and make it more accessible to all. The first person in her family to attend college, Sharon discovered her love of business at age 30, and integrated herself into the tech marketing world in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where she developed a successful consulting business working for Fortune 500 tech companies. At age 43, she founded Boardroom Insiders by identifying a universal need among her clients, and evolving her consulting services into a digital, self-service SaaS product. She spent the next decade plus building and scaling Boardroom Insiders until selling it in early 2022 for $25 million in cash. Under Sharon’s leadership, Boardroom Insiders was named to the Inc. 5000, the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. based on revenue growth. Sharon is now a SaaS startup advisor, mentor and coach for aspiring tech entrepreneurs, a professional speaker, and a successful content creator. Sharon lives in San Francisco with her husband and pets and is the mother of two adult children. She enjoys traveling, strategy games (especially mahjongg), and discussing politics.