Shelley Prevost has many titles, from the descriptive (coach) to the official (CEO). She’s a founding partner of Chattanooga-based Lamp Post Group and its director of happiness, which is to say, she makes sure that entrepreneurs at the venture incubator feel a sense of balance as human beings, not just as professionals. She’s also a partner at the female-focused angel fund JumpFund, which reports it has invested more than half of the $2.5 million it raised in 2013, spread across 10 companies.
Last year, Prevost founded her own company, Torch, which has built a router that allows parents to monitor and manage their children’s Internet access. In mid-January, Torch reported that it had logged 1,000 pre-orders, with the count growing and shipments slated to go out in March. Prevost also writes regularly about business as an online contributor for Inc.com.
The mother of three, school-aged children, Prevost, 41, graduated from Georgetown College, a small Christian college in Kentucky. She earned a masters degree in clinical psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois and a doctoral degree in counseling psychology from Argosy University in California. Her career path started in counselor mode; the startup world was not an obvious next step.
Edge talked to Prevost about letting intuition lead the way, how she landed at Lamp Post Group and the critical component behind her startup pursuits. Below are edited excerpts.
So, you have a psychology degree and were a therapist …