Founder Outcome Series: Are You Building the Right Thing?
📍 Location: Venture Dock — Palo Alto
🗓 Date & Time: March 18th 5pm-7:30pm
We’re excited to launch a new Venture Dock program: The Founder Outcome Series: conversations focused on the real decisions founders face while building companies.
The most expensive mistake a founder can make is building the wrong thing extremely well.
At some point in the journey, every founder asks themselves:
Are we solving a problem that actually matters?
For our first session, we’re joined by Sara Leoni, Founder & CEO of Ziplines Education, who built and scaled a company around a real market need.
This will be an honest conversation about validation, traction, and product–market fit-the signals founders should look for and the moments when conviction matters most.
Questions We’ll Explore
Every founder eventually faces moments of uncertainty while building. In this conversation we’ll explore questions founders constantly wrestle with:
• How do you know the problem you are solving is real and urgent?
• What signals actually indicate product–market fit?
• When should you pivot versus double down?
• How do you distinguish real traction from noise?
Sara will share candid insights from her journey, including what worked, what didn’t, and the lessons she learned along the way.
If you're building something and wondering:
“Are we actually on the right path?”
This conversation will resonate.
Speaker
Sara Leoni
Founder & CEO, Ziplines Education
Sara Leoni is the founder and CEO of Ziplines Education, a company that partners with public and regional universities to deliver employer-aligned certificate programs designed for today’s rapidly changing workforce.
Under her leadership, Ziplines has helped 30+ universities launch practitioner-led programs that equip working adults with real-world skills, confidence, and career mobility.
To date, Ziplines programs have served 20,000+ learners with completion rates above 80%, demonstrating that the most meaningful outcomes in education are not just credentials, but confidence, community, and career transformation.
Event Format
• Conversation with Sara Leoni
• Moderated discussion
• Founder Q&A
An intimate and interactive session where founders can ask real questions and learn directly from experienced operators.
Who Should Attend
• Startup founders
• Early-stage builders
• Teams validating a product or searching for product–market fit
• Members of the Venture Dock ecosystem