Tough Feedback that Bounces Off, Always Thinking Bigger & Why Your Smallest Unit of Time Should Be a Minute

Sage Franch and her co-founders at Crescendo have all faced their own set of barriers in their work lives, whether that discrimination was based on gender, race, or any number of other cultural biases that can be endemic to many workplaces. They founded their startup to help companies learn about—and improve—their cultural competency, with software designed to promote diversity and inclusion. Along the way to engineering software that can teach people the subtleties of bias and culture, Franch and her co-founders learned a lot about the subtle and not-so subtle ways to best build a startup. One key lesson according to Franch, who began as Crescendo’s CTO and is now its CEO, “It’s not about the title, it’s about building a strong company that can have an impact on the world.”