Details
Venture Cafè New England at District Hall and StartHub is proud to put on this Founders Dinner with Evy Chen, Founder of Evy Tea. Join us for an evening of dinner, inspiring conversations, and learning at District Hall with 15 other startup founders.
Facilitated by Evy Chen, Founder of Evy Tea. Evy will share her start-up journey with a focus on understanding the challenges she's faced and how she has overcome them. She will touch upon bringing a product to market, expanding her retail reach, funding and how to overcome inequalities she's faced as a Chinese immigrant. The moderators for the event will be Tara Atwood, Senior Program Manager of Venture Cafè New England and Melissa Yee, Program Manager and Editor of StartHub.
Evening Outline:
You will Introduce yourself and say a few words about your start-up to the group, Evy will lead a conversation on her start-up story and we will move into open Q&A conversations. Dinner will be from Gather and we will send you a menu you can choose from 3-5 days prior to the event. The menu will include meat, fish and vegetarian options.
Our Founders Dinner Series is designed to develop meaningful relationships between founders and build up their network to support them along their entrepreneurial journey.
About the Evy Chen:
Evy Chen was born into a revolutionist family in Southeast China often called the Sonoma of tea. While raised in a culture with very traditional values, her parents encouraged her to explore her creativity. She grew to be curious, expressive, and free-spirited. They soon realized she was a wild card. At age three, Evy rallied fellow kindergarteners to escape to the playground during nap time. As she advanced in the Chinese education system, she had a hard time fitting in. Worried her creativity and inventive nature would be held back, her parents sent her abroad to Europe to study at age 15.
In 2010, Evy decided to move to Boston to attend Emerson College, where she would eventually win her school’s start-up competition with her idea for Evy Tea.
Her idea was born when she discovered that America’s obsession with sugar had turned the tea she knew and loved into something found in the junk food aisle, often containing more sugar than a can of soda. If it wasn’t too sweet, it was bitter and flavorless. She saw the opportunity to infuse American culture with a new kind of tea – one made from inspiration, ingenuity, and the beautiful, authentic flavors that are possible if one knew how to tease them out.
Evy’s experience the heart of tea culture combined with her creative and entrepreneurial spirit led her to found Evy Tea in 2014 to bring her vision to fruition. She launched the first cold-brew tea brand in America, a totally new category in the RTD industry when she was 26 years old.
Evy has been recognized nationally both for her entrepreneurship and her tea craftsmanship. Her awards have included first place at the North American Tea Championship, The Boston Globe’s 25 Under 25 Innovative Leaders, and Zagat’s 30 Under 30 Culinary Industry Game Changers. Recently, Forbes named Evy as one of the immigrant entrepreneurs poised to shake up the U.S. culinary landscape.
About Venture Cafè Foundation at District Hall
District Hall is a collaborative, innovative event venue, public workspace, and programming hub designed to bring people together at every level.
Whether you are a budding entrepreneur, a thought leader with deep roots in the innovation community, a student interested in the intersection of innovation and civic issues, or an artist finding new ways to tell stories, we welcome you to the District Hall community. Learn more.
About StartHub
Greater Boston’s guide to the startup community. StartHub.org is a comprehensive, centralized online platform designed to connect, support, and grow Greater Boston’s world-class technology and early-stage community. Developed in a public-private partnership between the City of Boston, Venture Café, Gust, and a wide number of partners from Boston's startup community, StartHub will serve as Greater Boston's homepage for the startup ecosystem. Learn more.
Sponsorship:
If you are interested in sponsoring this event, please contact:
Ruth Saunders: Head Of Corporate Partnerships and Philanthropy at Venture Cafe New England at ruth.saunders@vencaf.org.