Alexandra Jones (“Alex”) is a three-time founder.
Alex co-founded BitWall, one of the first venture-backed Bitcoin startups, where she led design and was a front-end developer. After growing the company for five years, BitWall was acquired. Since then, Alex has joined the founding team of San Francisco-based Navi. Working out of her native Durham, she focuses on growth, the portfolio of startup events, and UI/UX design to deliver a fantastic digital product.
Alex graduated from Pepperdine University with degrees in Integrated Marketing and Communications.
1. What is in your pockets?
I pretty much always have my big water bottle, it’s my emotional support water bottle. I have two toddlers, so I have tissues and hand sanitizer. And then keys, obviously, and my headphones. I walk around downtown Durham a lot, so it’s nice to have headphones handy.
2. What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
I just moved back to Durham. I’m from Durham, so I’m excited to get to raise my kids here where I grew up. I actually got my son enrolled in Durham public schools, which is really exciting for me since I went to Durham public schools. It has been exciting to get to know the city again. I haven’t been here in over seven years and it has changed so much. I love walking around and trying all the new restaurants.
Navi is the gateway to the innovation economy. We believe the most important problem to solve is to empower people to succeed in the world of tomorrow. Navi helps people learn innovation skills, solve problems, and bring new ideas to life. Our product is a digital coach that delivers a curriculum that guides people on their innovation quest. We run bootcamps, startup weekends, accelerators, and other innovation experiences.
I do portfolio management and I work with our business customers to make sure they are having a good experience on the Navi platform. We’re a four-person founding team, so I also do a lot of our design sprint. I’m always focusing on making sure our product is filling the needs of our customers and future-thinking what their next needs are going to be in trying to fill that gap before we get to a point where we are really experiencing that gap up.
We have worked with a lot of big companies and we are working with smaller entrepreneurial support organizations. We are in the middle of a product design sprint now, and we’re hoping that will open more doors once that’s finished, but we’re definitely in the boots-on-the-ground, running-as-fast-as-we-can stage.
3. What is your favorite coffee spot?
EverLou, hands down. I just got my latte there this morning. We love the owners and it is a great place to bring my kids.
4. What keeps you up at night?
Everything? I have young kids so I always want to make sure that what I’m doing is creating a safe space for them and creating a safe space for others. I want to open the funnel of innovation so that my kids feel welcome in this space, and so my friends’ kids feel welcome in this space.
I’ve been lucky enough to participate in a lot of different mentor programs and a lot of different accelerators. They can only work with a small number of companies. They do an amazing job for 10 to 20 companies, but I’d love to see that scale, because I feel like the economy of tomorrow definitely has an entrepreneurial mindset. So even if you’re not a founder, I feel like you’re going to be working at these companies.
Having access to these tools is so important. I get all wrapped around the wheel in my head at night trying to figure out how I can help more people do more.
5. What is your favorite restaurant or happy hour?
I’m on a really big Monsoon kick. It is the Indian restaurant right down the street and it’s really good. The dosa you get there is massive, and I love the chicken tikka masala. Definitely one of my favorites.
6. What is next for you or your organization?
We’re working on our product sprint right now. We work with a couple of local Durham entrepreneurial programs and so we are hoping to get them back in with our new software we’re working on, so we’ve been talking with them about how we can support them next. We’re really excited about trying to widen the funnel, like where can we help and how can we help? We have some bigger customers, which has been really fun, but I’m really excited to be back in Durham and partner with local companies. I’m really excited about those new opportunities.
