Entrepreneur

Katie Palencsar launched and led the Female Innovators Lab Fund, a venture fund for female founders in fintech, after exiting a company where she earned an AI patent in 2012. Before a panel at a banking conference in Chicago, she and fellow VC Ruth Foxe Blader talked about having a full closet with nothing to wear. They saw that women put enormous time and money into clothing without a consistent way to organize it, value it or sell it.

Starmoire picks up members’ wardrobes, photographs and catalogs every piece, stores it securely offsite and keeps it visible in a digital closet, with items returned on demand. When members want to sell, Starmoire’s AI tool estimates the resale value and lists the piece on The Shed, its marketplace. The founders, including creative director Rebecca Goldfarb, built the system with about $1 million from their VC partner, and Stacy London of What Not to Wear joined as chief stylist and investor. After a summer pilot, Starmoire launched on September 14, 2026.

The biggest hurdle was the work of sorting a closet before the first pickup, so Starmoire added in-home closet edits, which led to styling services overseen by Stacy. It quickly reached 1,250 items in its care. Katie’s advice: test the hardest part of your business first, and prove it with a small group before taking on more customers.

Cover photo credit: Kelly Taub

In what direction are you moving?

PowerPoint may soon be facing match point.

People have been predicting the death of presentation software for decades, but AI strategist Peter Gostev reignited the debate last week with a LinkedIn post declaring “Google Slides & PowerPoint are dead,” according to LinkedIn News.

Read more: entrepreneur.com/business-news/…

Caitlin Crosby was an actress and singer-songwriter on tour when she started wearing an old New York hotel key as a necklace. That led to The Giving Keys, founded in 2008: used keys engraved with words like STRENGTH, HOPE, LOVE and BELIEVE. She encouraged people to wear the word they needed, then give the key to someone who needed it more, and customers soon began writing to her about who they’d passed their keys to.

Caitlin started by selling necklaces at her merch table, buying just enough inventory for a few shows at a time, and went without a salary for about seven years. The business changed direction when she met Rob and Cera, a couple experiencing homelessness in Hollywood, and asked them to help make the keys. Since then, The Giving Keys has employed more than 150 people transitioning out of homelessness.

The company has faced serious setbacks. Caitlin says its CFO embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, none of which was recovered, and she has had to make hard cuts while rebuilding. Her lesson: understand your finances and trust your gut, even when someone else is handling the numbers.

Where will you be this time next year?