Kathleen Celmins is a marketer, technologist, Venture Cafe Phoenix’s marketing director, and the founder of boomp, a platform designed to help local businesses maintain a meaningful digital presence without becoming full-time content creators. Her story also captures something happening across Arizona’s innovation ecosystem: AI is lowering technical barriers and giving people new ways to build ideas they once would have needed significant capital or specialized teams to pursue.

Kathleen arrived at Venture Cafe knowing almost nothing about AI automation. One demonstration was enough to send her down a rabbit hole that lasted nearly two years. She taught herself to build software, discovered that a traditional engineering path could cost her $60,000, used AI to keep iterating instead, and eventually learned an important lesson about entrepreneurship: sometimes you have to be “a little bit brave, a little bit stupid” to attempt something you don’t yet know how to do. Venture Cafe later created another unexpected turning point when an IP session caused her to rethink the brand she had already built and ultimately rebrand it as boomp.

But this conversation goes beyond software. Kathleen talks about why the best networking isn’t transactional, why founders need other people to help them see the value of what they’re building, and why becoming known inside a community takes more than showing up once. She also shares refreshingly practical advice about self-promotion: stop apologizing for taking up space, follow the threads of what genuinely interests you, and keep showing up even before everything feels finished.

Kathleen’s larger mission is distinctly local: helping Arizona businesses compete for attention against franchises and corporations with far greater resources.

• How Kathleen went from seeing a simple AI automation demo to building her own software platform
• Why AI is allowing nontraditional technologists to tackle projects that once required significant capital and engineering resources
• What an IP conversation at Venture Cafe taught Kathleen about protecting what you build
• Why customer feedback became part of the development process for boomp
• How automation can eliminate repetitive work and create more room for creativity
• Why effective networking is about becoming known, not immediately making a sale
• How community can help entrepreneurs recognize strengths and opportunities they struggle to see themselves

Kathleen Celmins is the founder of boomp, an AI-powered social media platform built to help local businesses create a consistent digital presence without having to become content creators themselves. She also serves as Marketing Director for Venture Cafe Phoenix, where she applies her experience in marketing, AI, and automation to help more people discover and participate in Arizona’s innovation community. boomp.net

Venture Cafe Phoenix: An Extraordinary Podcast explores the people, stories, and relationships shaping Arizona's innovation ecosystem.

Hosted by Alex Koupal, the podcast features conversations with founders, innovators, investors, educators, executives, policymakers, researchers, and community leaders working to make Arizona a place where ideas grow, businesses thrive, and meaningful connections happen.

Powered by CEI (Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation), Legacy Sponsor the City of Phoenix, and produced by Extraordinary.