{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Build Your Own Boat","title":"How Do You Fund a Business After 50 Without Venture Capital? AnnMaria De Mars on Bootstrapping 7 Generation Games","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2229,"description":"Episode Summary\nMost women over 50 who want to start a business don't have angel investors lining up — and AnnMaria De Mars, founder of 7 Generation Games, didn't either. In this episode of Build Your Own Boat, De Mars explains exactly how she funded her math-and-culture-based educational game company without a single six-figure investor check: SBIR federal research grants, three Kickstarter campaigns, two seed rounds through startup accelerators, crowd equity raises, and dozens of friends who each invested $5,000 to $20,000. A world judo champion turned statistician, professor, and programmer, De Mars founded 7 Generation Games at 57 and shows why perseverance, deep community relationships, and a willingness to \"do hard things\" — lessons she learned competing internationally in judo — are the real predictors of entrepreneurial success in midlife, not access to venture capital.\nGuest Bio\nAnnMaria De Mars is a technology executive, statistician, author, and the first American to win a gold medal at the World Judo Championships (1984, -56kg). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside, and has built a career spanning industrial engineering, university statistics teaching, and software development. She has founded four companies, including Spirit Lake Consulting and The Julia Group, and is the co-founder and president of 7 Generation Games, an educational technology company she launched at age 57 that builds cross-curricular math games rooted in Latino, Indigenous, and U.S. history storylines. Her latest venture, 7 Gen Blocks, is a no-code educational game builder — \"WordPress for educational games\" — that lets anyone build a custom learning game without programming knowledge. De Mars has been named one of Forbes' 40 Women to Watch Over 40, is an AARP Purpose Prize Fellow, and was the first woman to serve as president of a national judo organization. She is also known as the mother of Olympic judo bronze medalist and former UFC champion Ronda...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/bQsbNia0IsmMmK-_EAZWTPLH0_5ooXLhZABkhXi9Cis/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8zMjY3/NTllZmQ4ZTljNzVj/NTZmNzZiZTMzMmIy/ODBlNC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}