Roshni Shokar

I've spent most of my career inside early-stage companies, and I keep coming back to them for the same reason: there's nothing like the moment when a founder's idea stops being an idea and starts becoming a real business. That's the work I find most interesting, and it's where I do my best work.

What I've noticed over time is that the companies I'm most drawn to aren't just building products. They're trying to change how something works at a systems level -- how cities inspect infrastructure, how farmers access fertilizer, how children get care, how people move around a city. That kind of change doesn't happen through a single sale or a single relationship. It requires navigating complex ecosystems: government buyers, healthcare systems, public-private partnerships, community stakeholders, and the end users who are often the last people in the room. I've built my practice around that complexity because I think it's where the most important work happens, and because I've learned it requires a specific kind of commercial thinking that most early-stage teams don't have yet.

I thrive in environments where the job description doesn't exist yet. At GoRide, I was building a sales motion in a market nobody had figured out. At Wonderschool, I was managing the ground-level relationships that kept a network of childcare providers running. At Michigan Central, I was figuring out what early-stage founders actually needed to put down roots in Detroit. In each case, the work was at the intersection of a technical capability and a human system that needed to change.

That's still the work I do now, just from the outside. I come in as an embedded operator -- not a consultant with a framework to sell -- and help founders build the commercial infrastructure to take something real and make it move.

I'm based in Detroit because it's a city full of creative builders. The energy here -- people giving back, doing exciting and unexpected things, building something real -- has kept me here. Being embedded in this ecosystem, through Invest Detroit, Newlab, and Michigan Central, means the context and connections I bring to an engagement are grounded in relationships that already exist.

Outside of work, I'm chasing around two young girls and finding time for pottery, biking, and yoga when I can.

I take on two to three engagements at a time. If the fit is there, I'll tell you.