Startup Grind interviews Laurie Millotte - the woman vineyards worldwide rely on

Founder Spotlight: Uncorking the niche

Join the kickoff event of Startup Grind Valencia for an honest, energizing fireside chat with crew Member Matthias Flinterhoff and Laurie Millotte, design-driven, non-technical founder of Outshinery – the company thousands of beverage brands worldwide rely on for photorealistic product imagery.

How do you take a service-based business, scale it globally, and then turn it into a self-serve SaaS platform — all while modernizing an industry as traditional as wine?

Laurie will share how she went from “no one asked for this” to becoming the quiet standard behind the scenes of the wine & spirits industry — and what it really takes to lead a remote team, keep innovating, and still protect your personal life.
After the talk, we’ll move into networking with pizza, drinks, and music — because good conversations deserve a good atmosphere.

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### ✨ What you’ll learn

In this fireside chat, we’ll dive into three big areas:

• From “no one asked for this” to industry standard
  How a design-led, non-technical founder bootstrapped Outshinery into a global creative-tech company — and why outsider thinking sometimes beats engineering-first.
• Remote teams: the good, the painful, and the surprisingly funny
  Building a fast, multicultural remote team by hiring people who are smarter than you at what they do, then giving them the trust and tools to run with it.
• Lessons from marketing to one of the world’s oldest, most change-resistant industries
  Why disrupting wine & spirits imagery taught her how buyers think, what they trust, and how visuals can do the selling long before the copy does.

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### 📅 When & Where

📍 Vortex Ciencias | Coworking Valencia
7T Carrer de Peris Brell, 46022 València
📅 December 11th, 2025
⏱️ 18:30 – 21:00 (doors open at 18:30)

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### 🗓 Agenda

• 18:30 – 19:00 – Welcome & networking
• 19:00 – 19:10 – Introduction to Startup Grind Valencia
• 19:10 – 19:40 – Fireside Chat with Laurie Millotte
• 19:40 – 19:50 – Q&A
• 19:50 – 20:00 – Closing & announcements
• 20:00 – 21:00 – Networking with 🍻 beer and 🍕 pizza
• After 21:00 – Optional drinks at a bar nearby

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### 🎟 Tickets (food & drinks included)

• Pre-sale: 25 €
• At the door: 30 €

Startup Grind promo:
Use the discount code SGVLS25MTS for a reduced ticket on the official event page.
Book your spot here: https://www.startupgrind.com/events/details/startup-grind-valencia-presents-uncorking-the-niche-learn-from-the-woman-vineyards-rely-on/?code=SGVLS25MTS

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### 👥 Who is this for?

If you’re building something of your own — or planning to — this evening will give you concrete insights, perspective, and new connections.

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### 🧑‍💻 About Laurie Millotte

Laurie is the founder and CEO of Outshinery, a creative-tech company that provides on-demand, photorealistic product imagery for beverage brands around the world.
A non-technical, design-led founder, she built and bootstrapped Outshinery from a service-based business into a scalable, self-serve SaaS platform — most recently launching Outshinery Lite, engineered entirely in Valencia. Her story shows that you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley, or come from a coding background, to build world-class tech.

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### 🌍 About Startup Grind

Startup Grind is a global community founded in San Francisco that connects self-starters, early-stage founders, investors, and organizations. Through monthly events, fireside chats, and local gatherings, Startup Grind helps build strong startup ecosystems that positively impact economies and communities.
https://www.startupgrind.com/valencia/