We've watched Bande grow from founder obsession to growing community living on a tech platform. And in creating a social network for boutique fitness, Rebecca Balyasny, CEO and Founder of Bande, has truly put herself into brand new territory.

She's not new to setting goals and achieving, which you'll hear about on the podcast episode, but she IS new to starting her own business in the fitness space. Previous to founding Bande, she had a career she loved in finance - and while at Prudential she raised her hand to fundraise a $2 billion fund - a challenge that took her more than a year and left her "boss's boss's boss" scratching their head because "no one had ever volunteered for that kind of challenge before.

And through that experience and her work with founders and startups, she caught the bug, second-hand.

"I’ve always been really interested in founders and entrepreneurs and their stories and what they went through," she explained, noting that, "No one can ever tell you what it’s like until you experience it"

Bande, though, scratches a new itch for her. Solving a problem that was nagging at her - and doing it in an elegant way.

"It was an idea born out of covid and just desperation to both connect with friends and get in the best workouts possible," She said. "It was really accelerated during COVID and I realized that there was nothing out there that allowed you to connect socially with your friends and get in a great workout and I just saw that whitespace."

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