Tanya Prive, who is the co-founder of one of fastest growing crowdfunding platforms for startups, very kindly agreed to meet to chat about her path to starting Onevest.
The vivacious entrepreneur, who launched Onevest in New York with her husband and co-founder Alejandro Cremades, four years ago, believes that every early stage startup should be given an opportunity to get funding from accredited investors. With their help, startups listed on Onevest have raised over $92 million on the platform.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Prive moved over the U.S. as a child and lived in San Francisco, where she first got introduced to the growing tech scene. She originally thought she wanted to study product design and management, so she studied at the Parsons The New School for Design in Manhattan, and eventually fell into financial media, working at reputable companies such as Forbes and Fox News. But she wasn’t satisfied. “Alejandro and I had a number of friends who were looking for funding. And I always felt that there was a better way of doing things for startups that needed additional financing,” says Prive.
“If you really look at the way startups have been getting funding the past 50 years, not much has changed,” she said. “It’s very much a boys club. You have investors who went to Ivy League schools who are funding people they can relate to.
Onevest, connects startups with investors, and recently, the company went through a merger with Cofounders Lab, a matchmaking platform that helps entrepreneurs build their founding team. Prive and her growing team has gone through struggles and missteps, but she says that the advice she received from board member and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran has proved crucial to her success.
Photographs by Lauren Kallen and video by Rafie Karen