Lessons in Leadership: Peter Dolch on Empowering Women and Growing Impactful Startups

This week, Ivy Slater, host of Her Success Story, chats with her guest, Peter Dolch. The two talk about Peter's journey from founding and running a boutique software development firm in New York, his creation of the MIT Female Founders Pitch Competition to support women entrepreneurs, and the importance of diversity and strong advisory networks in building successful startups, all with clear insight into his company's evolution and the impactful work he continues in the startup ecosystem. In this episode, we discuss: How Peter Dolch transitioned from consulting for large Fortune 500 companies to helping launch over 50 startups, discovering his passion for working with entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures. What gender diversity means for founding teams, with Peter highlighting evidence that mixed-gender teams tend to outperform all-male or all-female teams. When solo female founders in tech face challenges, including the expectation to add a male technical co-founder, an expectation that persists despite advances in no-code and low-code platforms. Why Peter Dolch chose to focus on supporting female founders, motivated by witnessing disparities in how women entrepreneurs were treated by investors compared to their male counterparts. How virtual work is transforming team dynamics and talent acquisition, making it easier for startups to build teams across geographies, but that in-person collaboration still provides unique value. Peter Dolch is a technology entrepreneur and venture investor based in New York. His career started at MIT, where he studied Management Science, and has wound through two decades of building — first at Thaumaturgix (Tgix), the technology consulting firm Peter co-founded in the mid-90s, and later as co-founder and CTO of companies like Biospectal (non-invasive blood pressure monitoring) and Psyber (AI-driven cyber risk assessment). Until recently Peter ran AEON Foundry, a venture studio and fund focused on early-stage technology companies, where he wore the hats of investor, advisor, and occasional builder depending on what a portfolio company needed most. He is currently working on his second fund. Outside of the firm, Peter serves as Chairman of the MIT Sloan Club of New York and runs the MIT Women's Venture Challenge — an annual competition that brings together women-founded startups, investors, and the MIT community. Getting more capital and visibility to underrepresented founders is something Peter feels strongly about, and the WVC has become a meaningful vehicle for that. On the personal side, he lives in New York with his wife and two kids (one in college). Peter is a curious generalist —he gets genuinely excited by the intersection of technology and human behavior, which probably explains why he keeps ending up as CxO in healthcare and risk-related startups. Peter is also a tinkerer by nature:and currently has an AI chief-of-staff system he has been building and iterating on, which has become something of a passion project in its own right. Website: https://aeonfoundry.com/ Social Media Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterdolch/

See All Episodes