Featured Founder: Dena Lewis of Running Mate

Welcome to our Featured Founder series, where you’ll meet startup founders from Tampa-St. Petersburg who are building and scaling their ventures to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. We interviewed Dena Lewis of Running Mate, a real-time, on-demand app designed to make running safer for all. 

What inspired you to launch your company?

As a runner for 20 years, I have been harassed countless times and assaulted twice. This inspired me to create Running Mate to provide a safe alternative to running alone. I’m a three-time founder with experience in brick-and-mortar retail, online retail and services, and CPG. Before moving into entrepreneurship, I spent 15 years in Medical Device sales and management.

What pain point is your company solving? What gets you excited to go to work every day?

92% of women don’t feel safe when walking or running alone, and 60% of women report being harassed while exercising outdoors alone. Runners are a vulnerable target for criminals because they tend to run early or late in the evening, and over 59% prefer to run alone.  I love waking up daily knowing that we are keeping women safe and providing fun income for the mate who runs along with them.  We are building a community and bringing awareness to a significant issue.  Knowing we are making a difference helps me keep going during the tough times.

Name the biggest challenge you faced in the process of launching the company. How did you overcome it?

Building a two-channel market is not for the faint at heart.  We struggled with how to go to market with this concept, but once we figured out the algorithm for how many mates we needed in a market to launch, we put our strategy together.  The other major challenge I face is when I hear of another assault or attack on a runner and how I want us to be in every market available to all now.  We have to launch strategically to continue bringing value to our users, which requires slow launches in cities to ensure our strategy is working. This is hard when I want to fix the problem immediately.

Where do you see your company headed next?

We plan to launch globally in 2026 and add Running Mate Pro to our app, bringing celebrities, athletes, and influencers onto the platform to run with users and get a charitable feature to the platform. Stay tuned.

Give us a tactical piece of advice that you’d share with another founder just starting out.

I think the best advice I could give (which I have to remind myself of daily) is when the “fun parts” of being a Founder and starting a company are over, the day-to-day can be hard, and you will want to give up over and over again. This is when you must dig deep and ensure you are living your purpose. Being told “No” or that your idea isn’t great will begin to cause doubt, but you have to keep going if you are truly solving a problem and have validated your market. Validating your market is essential before you spend a lot of money building the company. I wish someone would have given me that advice early on.

Why Tampa Bay?

I live in Florida and love the running community in Tampa. It was a natural first launch city for us to pick since all our requirements we look for in a city were easily met in Tampa. Also, being an Embarc member, the support and encouragement from the community have made this a special launch city for us. The growth and focus Tampa is making on Tech and startups has also reinforced our decision to pick Tampa as one of our first 3 launch cities.