Episode 6: Amy Nelson of The Riveter

Come on into The Room. The Room is a series that lets you get a view into the room where it happened. I'm Claudia Laurie.

And I'm Madison McIlwain, your co-hosts. Our guest today never thought she'd be a founder. Growing up in Ohio, Amy Nelson was passionate about justice, equality, and politics. It's no surprise that she went on to become a lawyer, working for 10 years in corporate law from New York to Seattle. It wasn't until her second daughter was born and a certain woman didn't become president that Amy felt she needed to make a more material change in the world.

Thus, The Riveter was born.

The Riveter calls themselves a modern union of mothers, sisters, daughters, and allies Fighting together for equity of opportunity for all working women. Prior to COVID, The Riveter had over 10 female-focused coworking spaces, offering a third space for a better sense of community and Wi-Fi than a Starbucks. Today, The Riveter is connecting and fostering one of the largest female digital communities. Backed by Madrona Venture Group and Alpha Edison Ventures, Amy Nelson had to learn quickly the intricacies of an industry she only knew by name. All while raising her 4 daughters. In today's episode, we'll explore insights and themes such as how political fundraising and venture fundraising have more in common than you might think, motherhood in the workplace, and core product pivots. Let's open the door.

I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. My parents were first-generation college graduates. My mom was, my dad was a second-generation college graduate, and I'm a union daughter. My mother was a public school teacher and my dad was a small business owner, a lawyer, and then a small business owner. So I grew up with a working mom. Who was really proud of her job, who never questioned working, and none of my friends' mothers worked. And so I think that was a very defining thing for me as I set out to think about my life and my career. There was never a question of whether I would work. It's what will I do and how will I do it? And I think I also grew up watching my parents work really hard. My parents are both just really hard workers, and I took that to be the status quo, which it isn't for everyone. And that's, you know, that's totally fine, but that's how I grew up. Kind of what my ethos is and how I've really lived my life. And then I think the other thing is I grew up— this is like an interesting way to put it— but like a deep— with a deep sense of justice. My parents were not really political. In fact, I remember in 1988 it was Dukakis v. Bush, and we had an elementary school election, and I had to, you know, go into like our cardboard polling booth and vote. And I asked my parents the night before, who I should vote for. And they said, well, who do you want to vote for? And I was like, I don't know, you know. And I, I want— and I said— and then they kind of dug in, and I was like, well, I want to vote for Dukakis, but all my friends are voting for Bush. And my parents were like, why don't you think for yourself? And I'm like, well, what— who do you vote for? I want to vote for who my parents vote for. Like, all my friends' parents are telling them who they vote for. And my parents like, we're just not going to tell you. And I went in the voting booth. I remember I marked down Bush and I crossed it off. I voted for Dukakis. I'm very proud of. But the— just the point being, my parents weren't really political, but they were really involved. They were really involved in the community around them. They were members of this thing called like the Upper Arlington Civic Association. And I remember being really enthralled in what they were doing and why they were doing it and why they participated in the broader community. And it was just part of our life growing up. I think all of that kind of contributed to me and really wanting to be a part of change, be a part of community and work in ways that kind of lend themselves to organizing work. And when I was in high school, I interned at the Ohio State House of Representatives for a wonderful woman named Representative C.J. Prentiss. And it was back in the '90s and everybody still smoked in the political buildings, which is crazy. And then, you know, from there, and I worked at the Carter Center, I worked at the Clinton Foundation. I was a member of Obama's National Finance Committee. And just, I've always believed that if I have a voice, if I have the ability to do it, I should participate in the broader world around me and bring other people into that.

Beyond knowing that you were really passionate about the community and really helping other women, did you ever think you were going to be a founder?

No, not in a million years. This is not like— I mean, I went to law school at NYU and I graduated in 2006, aging myself. I didn't think I'd be a founder. I thought I'd be a lawyer forever or go into political work, uh, full-time. You know, I was still paying off my law school loans when I started The Riveter. I don't know how many founders are people who think, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, like, you know, from day date when they're 16 years old. Some do for sure, and some are when they're 16 years old or 18 or 19. But, um, for me, I started thinking about becoming an entrepreneur when I, when I became part of and saw a problem that seemed like no one was focusing on it, like it was unfixable, and then it was impacting tons of people, millions of people. And so, you know, I don't know why I thought I could solve it, but I thought I should take a stab at it because if not me, who? And It was something I care deeply about.

As a lawyer, you've been through a lot of really hard work. That is not an easy profession. I think you've had experience in the political sphere, so you've had a sneak peek at what fundraising might look like. But what was the most challenging thing about transitioning from being a lawyer to being a founder? What's something that you didn't think was going to be the case?

The answer is so clear to me, and it's not one that I would have expected, but I was, for most of my career as a lawyer, I worked at a law firm. So it's a service industry job at its heart, right? Like you are serving clients and at law firms you generally are an associate or a partner and you kind of know if you're on partner track, if you're not, you get a review like once a year for 10 minutes, maybe that's where I worked. You work on teams, but there's no managing of people or anything like that. And I would also, I would argue and people might disagree, there's really not much of a culture at law firms.

Like.

I was friends with my peers, but there wasn't like a culture per se of the firm itself. And so in starting a company, I had no idea, you'll probably laugh at me, I had no idea how hard it was to manage people because I'd never done it, honestly. And I also, it is the hardest thing on earth. It takes a lot of time and energy. Trying to build a corporate culture is often at odds with scaling quickly. Those two things do not go together hand in hand. I think a lot of people expect them to. And I also think that the world is harder on female-founded companies in terms of building a culture than it is on male-founded companies. I don't know that anybody has ever asked Jeff Bezos why he didn't have a woman on his leadership team for decades, right? But, you know, I think that we look at women differently and expect different things.

It's so interesting because really what The Riveter is building is culture and community, right, for hundreds of individuals mostly women, but really people of both genders. And I'd love to go back to the really early days, maybe even really at the ideation stage of The Riveter, which was in 2016. I don't think any of us thought 2016 was going to be the year it ended up being.

It was quite the precursor for 2020, so to speak.

And so setting that stage, you were— had transitioned from a law firm and were doing senior counsel work for T-Mobile based in Seattle. You were pregnant with your first child.

Second.

Second, second child.

Yeah.

While simultaneously winning pitch competitions for this idea you had in your free time. Take us back to those moments.

Yeah, so it is pretty crazy. And honestly, there are sometimes I look back at like the last 4 years of my life and I'm like, what happened? I now have 4 daughters who are 6, 4, 3, and 1. So I was just pregnant for like this enormous part of my life or breastfeeding and in building a company. It's actually interesting, I think some people are surprised by this, but when I had my first daughter, I took 6 months of leave. I took 4 months paid and 2 months unpaid. That is really an amazing thing that law firms offer around the country. Large law firms have fantastic parental leave. I always call it parental leave and not maternity leave because you need men to take it for it to mean anything. But, you know, I took those 6 months and I really needed them as a new parent. I mean, I needed to be with my daughter. I never left her. I was that mom. But it was really kind of what I needed in transitioning into parenthood. And I went back to work and I went back to my law firm. I had an amazing boss that I worked for at my law firm, Dorsey Whitney, who was really a mentor to me and was incredibly supportive. And he was a father of young daughters. And my husband traveled all the time for work. We had no family and I felt massively overwhelmed. As a litigation associate, your schedule is entirely not your own, no matter what your boss or your team tries to do for you because you're in client services. So I thought, Maybe if I go in-house, I will have a more predictable schedule. So I made that decision like solely for the reason that I wanted a more predictable schedule. And it was really interesting 'cause going in-house presented me with a fact that I think I had been denying was that, you know, I wanted to work really hard and grow something and build something. And I felt that I was doing that at a law firm because there are big cases with big problems and I was doing the legal work. When you're in-house, you're often managing outside counsel, you're working with the business lines, which is really interesting, but it is somewhat different. And, but it just wasn't a great fit for me. And the other part of it, T-Mobile's a great company, but the other part of it is at the time that I was there, I think it's a very different world now because of COVID but at the time I was at T-Mobile, it was a 9 to 5 at your desk job. And so with a commute, I wasn't seeing my daughter and that was also not okay with me. And I started digging into like where, and so, and now I'm at this position where I'm like, okay, you know, being at a law firm full-time is really difficult because it's client services. Being in-house is Not for me. So what do I do? Like, who am I? Do I build my own legal practice? And I'm like, surely I'm not the only woman in this situation. Like, what are working moms everywhere doing? Because they're not in leadership in corporate America or at law firms, so they've all left. Where did they go? And so I really dug into that, and I did a bunch of different things, talking to people. I created a Facebook group, and I had all these ideas. And really, I was— I thought of starting my own legal practice, which is not super inspired, but I was a lawyer and that's what I thought I would do. But in doing that, I was reading Lean In as well, and there's this stunning statistic in Lean In that 43% of highly trained professional women off-ramp at some point after they have kids. Highly trained meant with a graduate degree. And I was like, if 43% of women who take on the burden of earning a graduate degree are exiting the workforce, the workforce is broken and we're not talking about it. And how do we change it? And on the flip side, who's serving all those women that are leaving? Because they're not all working in the home. Some of them are doing a bunch of different things. So I set out to understand what that community meant and both sides of it, right? Like how can companies retain women and how can women who leave succeed in their own individual careers? And I couldn't find a community that was focused on that. I started going to classes at coworking spaces on like how to write a business plan for my solo legal practice. As you can tell, I'm incredibly Type A and I try to get like all the information before I jump, which is not how I act anymore because you can't as a founder, but that's how I used to be. And I went to these coworking spaces and the classes themselves were all men. And I was like, I'm like, where the hell are the women? So, you know, I kept talking about it and I think finally I was like, well, if I can't find this thing and I really think it should exist in the world, why don't I build it? When I had the idea for the Riveter, I was going to build one in Seattle to serve the community I lived in. It was a conversation I had with a friend of mine who was a startup attorney. I told him about my idea and he said, "Can we get a beer?" And at the time I was not pregnant, remarkably, so we did. And he, you know, we're sitting down and I thought he was gonna tell me that my idea was terrible. Because I had doubt. And he said, you know, if you think Seattle needs this, why don't you think the world needs it? I was like, well, they do. He's like, well, then why don't you build it? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, I mean, literally, like, why don't you build it for everyone? And I was like, I don't know how you do that. And also, like, I don't have an MBA and I'm not like a startup person. He was like, yes, you are. He's like, I was like, well, how would you do it? He goes, you'd raise venture capital. And honestly, I was like, well, what's that? Like, I didn't know anything about this arena at all. But I set out to research it and figure it out like any puzzle and any problem and decided that if I was going to build something, I'd build something big.

Wow.

I think we all need a friend like this in our life.

I'd love to know where we can find one.

I think about it all the time because he was a man. And I think about like, you know, we know that only 2% of venture capital funding goes to women. And I do not think it's a pipeline problem. But I do wonder sometimes if more women sought venture capital, if we would get more venture capital. And if we hold ourselves back because we don't see ourselves in the image of founders who are building scalable companies.

You mentioned Lean In, which is Sheryl Sandberg's book, which was published back, I think, in 2016. And then also that year, we kind of had our hopes crushed on seeing a woman in the highest office here. And we were in another election year. A lot has changed since then, but I do think it's important to note that here you were facing these macro trends of saying, you know, women maybe shouldn't be in these positions of leadership, but you felt like it was the time for you personally, amidst, uh, two children, children and a busy career and life that's only gotten more hectic to take this leap. So we'd love to explore what that, those moments were like when you said, okay, T-Mobile, I'm gonna step back. I'm going to build this amorphous idea that I have.

I think when you're faced with like a cultural moment or like some meta failure that you didn't anticipate coming, which was Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote and not winning the Electoral College, you kind of look at it as a reckoning of does this mean that women can never never get to that highest, hardest place, or does it mean that we all have to keep moving like Hillary did and keep trying, right? And for me, in Washington State, we vote by mail, and I held my two daughters when I voted for Hillary, and I took a picture, and I was like, this is the most amazing thing in the world because I grew up kind of obsessed with presidents, and I had all these books about presidents. I knew all their kids' names. I'm such a nerd. But I always asked my mom when I was really little, like, where are the girl presidents? Can a girl be president? My mother was like, of course a girl can be president. And then here I was, 36 years old, and a girl hadn't been president. And I was like, I get to hold my two daughters, and they're never gonna ask me this question because the first president they remember will be Hillary Clinton. And then that didn't happen, and my entire soul was crushed, more for them than for me. I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, I need to do something that's purposeful and meaningful. I can't, I can't do anything else anymore. And I quit the next week.

That type of conviction that you hear being a really common theme amongst founders who do build things that change the world?

You have to believe you can, and you also have to be so tied to it that when you're failing 90% of the time, you're willing to get back up and keep trying. And when you're running out of money and when you don't have a team and, you know, like all the shit that happens every day, you have to be willing to get up and keep going. And it's exhausting. And so I think you really do have to believe believe that you wanna solve the problem and believe in yourself in a really irrational way.

Well, all early indicators point to you are helping to solve these problems you, you're seeing. And so I'd love to talk about the fact that you've raised $22 million from lead investors such as Alpha Edison, Unidrone Venture Group in Seattle. A lot of founders dream of really getting to the Series A. It's kind of a north star. What was the transition like going from not even knowing what venture capital is to raising from some incredible investors?

Well, I would say first, I'm really lucky. And I think, you know, luck has a lot to do with it. And I think if you say it doesn't, you're lying to yourself. I'm really lucky that I got to meet a lot of amazing people who would listen to me and hear about my idea and my business. And I think not everybody has that access, particularly women of color. And so I think it's definitely worth noting that I have a lot of luck and I have a lot of privilege that I was able to even get into the rooms that I was in. I think it's the lawyer brain, but I try to tackle everything like a process. And when I decided I was going to raise money first from angel investors, I treated it like I would if I was going to raise half a million dollars for Barack Obama. I made a— and I'll just be really tactical because I think people don't talk about it in this tactical way, and it's really important because nobody told me how to do this. And so like, I made a spreadsheet of all the people I knew who could potentially angel invest like $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, and that is not a ton of people. I think it's so privileged that we call these rounds friends and family rounds because not everybody has friends and families who are multimillionaires who can just fill this out. And then I also went on to GeekWire, which is a local tech publication in Seattle, and I like Googled in their search bar angel investors. I came up with all of the names of like Seattle's prolific angel investors, and I put their names into my spreadsheet. And then I went on LinkedIn and found out if I had a first or second connection to those angel investors. And then I would reach out to the mutual connection and say, will you have coffee with me? I'd like to tell you about this company I'm starting. And then after I had the coffee, I said, will you introduce me to X, Y, or Z? It's a very tedious very methodical process. And so I think it's really important to approach it that way. There has a lot to do with momentum. When I first reached and connected with some, some of the more well-known Seattle angel investors, that gave me a lot of momentum to reach other angel investors. Chris Dvorak, who until recently led Techstars here in Seattle, he's a prolific founder. He was the first really well-known angel investor in Seattle that invested in my company. And he's amazing. And it was funny, the first time I sat down with him, he said, just so you know, I think real estate is creepy. And I'm like, well, I'm not a real estate company. And by the end of the meeting, I, I had him looped in and he's been an amazing supporter ever since then. But so you get through that part and then it's interesting 'cause when you raise money with an idea, it's very different than raising money on your traction. They're just completely separate things. And raising venture capital is really different than raising angel investment. Angel investment, you're raising on a story and their belief in you. And when you raise VC, they're very much still investing in the founder and the team. They're also investing in the belief that you can give them a 10x return. I think a really important thing when you talk about raising venture capital is understanding what they want, and what they want is to provide a return for their investors. That's their job, right? Like, that's what they're paid to do. And you have to think about it that way. It's not this, like, esoteric thing. It's like, these are investors, just like, you know, if you were working with someone who invested for you in the stock market, right? Like, it's, it's very similar to that. And so I think it's really important to think about, you know, their goal and to tell them the story of how you will get there. Right, with the numbers that you have and the facts that you have. And I think the other thing that's really important about venture capital is to target and raise from people who would want to invest in you, whether they invest in your segment, whether they invest in female founders, whether they, you know, just all the different things. And I say that, it's interesting, because Madrona Venture Group, who led my Series C, I feel like in many ways I was an outlier for them because they do a lot of SaaS, just software as a service for those listening who don't know, and not a lot of what the Riveter is, which is like kind of outside of any category. But at the same time, you know, they really saw the opportunity for the business. And so they were enormous champions.

You're touching on how important it is to find the right people to be with you throughout this founding journey. From investors who believe in you and are actually going to support you through the process, to, I'm sure, a lot of other people who have been with you throughout this journey. Can you tell us a little bit more about the support system that you had, the communities that you were a part of, who was in the room with you as you were building The Riveter?

At the beginning, the two most important people as I was building The Riveter were my husband and my mom. My mother retired as a teacher after 36 years, and then she helped both me and my sister with our kids when they were little. My sister lives in San Francisco and she's a lawyer. My mother is remarkable and not good at being retired at all. My mother is in Ohio. My dad had a kidney transplant. This April, which is remarkable. He's doing wonderful, but she can't be here with us. And with COVID like, my entire community has kind of, you know, it's dissipated for all of us. I truly believe that I could not have started the company if my mother hadn't been here helping us, like, just because she was a complete stand-in for me. And I mean, I couldn't have afforded the amount of childcare I needed to start the company. And but it's something worth talking about. I mean, and I think the other thing, my husband's massively supportive and equal co-parent, and he also, he's a realist. Like, we sat down in 2016 and we said, if I quit my job, how long can we go without me taking a salary, paying for the childcare that we need, until we think we'd have to make any life change? And it was, I think it was 24 months we landed at, and I started getting paid after 13 months. But like, those very tactical things really matter. And those might not be who you think of when you think about the people in the room at the beginning, but when you're deciding whether you can do it, because if you can't do it financially, you can't do it. Because like, if you're worrying about how you're going to pay your mortgage or pay for childcare, you can't do it, right? Like, it's just, it doesn't work. And so I think that's really important. But then other, you know, aside from that, my early angel investors were just so supportive of what I was building and helped me and provided so much advice as to how to build it. I have a lot of serial entrepreneurs on my investment team, like Jonathan Spessato and Chris D'Vore, Gary Rubin, Sarah Imbach, Serena Glover, who were spectacular and just completely there for me. Not long after I started The Riveter, I had an amazing woman come into my orbit because she was a Riveter as a member, and she was retired because she had built and sold a company. She was retired, like, in her 40s. It's not real. You know, I really started— she, her background was in marketing and experiential marketing, and I didn't have any marketing at The Riveter. I was really just doing it based on my political organizing principles. You know, I started talking to her And she really, she essentially, I think she would maybe tell this story differently, but she was like, "You need help." And I was like, "I do, and you should help me." So she signed on with this like very specific terms to like be a part-time consultant or advisor. And within 3 months, she was really a partner to me in building The Riveter. Her name's Carrie Murphy and she's amazing. And I still talk with her every day, so.

I love that you just asked for it. You just said, "I want you on my team." You have to.

I mean, that's the other thing about founding a company is you have to be willing to ask everybody for everything. All the time. I mean, I ask for help endlessly. I still do it. Like, I will send emails tonight. The Riveter is holding this really great series of events next week called the Working Parent Project around how parents are surviving the pandemic, which is not well. You know, I have to send emails tonight to a lot of different influencers and friends asking them to post about it. And you know, it's like, you really— you never get above this stuff, right? Like, you never— it never stops. You're always asking for help.

Yeah, it's actually really interesting. I had two friends who were starting me about this time last year. One was a woman and one was a man. And it was just really interesting seeing how my conversations with those two different people differed. With the woman that I was friends with, she was asking me advice on, oh, like, is this cold email too pushy? Well, should I ask? Should I be so direct? Should I ask for help instead of investment, et cetera, et cetera. And then the man that I was friends with, he came to me, he was like, I want to talk to X, Y, and Z. I know you know this person. Can you put me in touch? And it was just such an eye-opening moment for me that there really is a difference in women and men and asking for what they need.

Well, we're taught from a very young age, we're taught different things, right? This is very cultural. Like, women aren't taught to talk about money, right? Like, talking about money and wanting money is unattractive. Like, we're taught to be Carrie Bradshaw. No offense, Carrie Bradshaw, but like, She sucked with money, right? She spent it all on shoes. And we're not like— we're not taught to say like— it's— I don't know if it's okay for a woman to say, I want to be a billionaire, like to have that be the goal of this, right? And we have to change that. And I think, you know, there are a lot of really amazing women who serve as examples of this. But I think societally we have to start teaching girls the same thing we teach boys. And, you know, like, to not— like, I get called pushy, I get called a bitch, I'm an asshole. I get caught, you know, like And I'm not, like, I'm a really nice mom of 4 little kids, but I am very direct. I also practiced law on Wall Street, which forces you to be direct because I was in rooms of all men. I was in rooms of all men. And like, if you were gonna be heard, you just said the thing and you said it quickly and you, you were assertive. And I chose to take that forward with me in my life.

So you were definitely in many rooms with all men in Wall Street. You were in coworking spaces taking classes with all men. You had an investor tell you real estate was creepy. There's a lot around like physical spaces. As a part of your story. And so a lot of people don't really equate starting a company with physical spaces. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it's like finding product-market fit when your product is a space and your product is a community?

It's complicated and it's cash intensive is the way to start, which is why you don't hear a lot about it in the venture capital world. You know, for us, we looked at it as our product was community, in that the community we wanted to build wanted to gather in real life and digitally. But we thought in real life was a really important component. I think in this world, people are craving third space. I think, you know, I don't know if you've read Alone at the Bowling Alley. It's a really great book. So in the 1950s, people went to the bowling alleys and they went to church and they gathered in all these places that weren't work or home. We don't have that as much now, and we really need it. Like, we have Starbucks, but No, I love Starbucks. Totally. But, you know, it's not the same. It's a coffee shop. And so, you know, where are those places where you can gather and learn and maybe meet new people who are outside your normal work or home orbit? And so I think that these third spaces are incredibly important. And so we decided to tackle third space in a really different way than like WeWork did, for example. The Riveter spaces were very open. We only had a few offices, but it was about 70% open where people could congregate and gather and work more flexibly so that they could be together and that we could have programming and events that would help teach them about whether getting a raise or starting their own company and raising venture capital. And so we looked at the physical model as real estate light. And so we didn't do really extensive buildouts. We tried to look at spaces we could take as is and go from there to try to be less cash intensive. But it is a really real thing when you think about starting a business, how much money you need to spend to make money, right? Like we celebrate and glorify when people raise $100 million or $200 million, but the goal isn't to raise as much money as you can. The goal is to make as much money as you can. And so I think you have to, to look at it from that perspective. Yeah.

Touching on the third space, I was also one of those people who would spend hours in Starbucks hanging out with friends and working on side projects. And that's been taken away. Not only has that been taken away given COVID, work from home has made it so difficult to cultivate community and interpersonal connections in the professional world. I'm trying to book Airbnb experiences for team offsites, but it really is not the same. So how do you think about scaling the Riveter digitally, and what's next for the Riveter given the current context?

Yeah, so we have moved away from our physical spaces because I don't know how long COVID will last. I think it's like the opening salvo here. That was really hard, and I think the lesson for me is that you have to be adaptable and be able to pivot. We had launched a digital community in March, auspicious timing, and so we were able to really kind of grow that, but I think I still believe the prime mix is in real life and digital together to provide people with both options. And I do hope that The Riveter is able to convene people in real life again, even without physical spaces. You don't have to have your own spaces to do that. We could borrow WeWork spaces, for example. But, you know, I think when you think about scaling the digital community that is The Riveter, what we've always done is set out to ask, what do you need? What do you want? How can we serve you? And it's interesting because the answer over the past 6 months has been different than it was to 2 years before that. And the answer the past 6 months is this is a time of great uncertainty. Many of us have lost our jobs. Many of us have lost our consulting work. Our small businesses are floundering. How can we save to get through this? How can we find new consulting gigs? How can we find new work? Where can we find those connections? Where can we update our resumes? And so we've done a lot of programming around that. And then with working parents, which is something I'm passionate about because I and very much in that phase of my life, we've tried to come up with solutions that employers can implement to help working parents survive this. I don't know if you saw, there were a few articles that came out at the end of September or the beginning of October, like something like 800,000 women left the workforce in September compared to 300,000 men. We are losing generations of game and it's stunning. And most of them are mothers. And so I think, you know, we're trying to serve that community in a really effective way.

I think that that's been heard a lot. And clear that mothers have bore the brunt of COVID-19 and having to work from home with both parents. You already spoke to the commute and how that really hindered your ability to get to know your daughters, but work from home has given you daughter time all the time, which is both a blessing and a curse. Would love to explore how The Riveter is thinking about serving their moms, helping to work with the people who are asking for help.

Yeah, I think it's twofold. So we are first providing community for working moms and others. But I mean, it is like working from home is a blessing that you get to see your kids more. It's also a hellscape because it's really hard to work when your kids want to be with you all the time. And it's really lonely, right? And a hellscape might be a dramatic word, but this is a dramatic time. And so, you know, it's like, it's thinking about it's a conflicting thing. And so since moms can't really meet in real life, providing digital space for those get-togethers, which could be casual, which can be content, with certain expertise, but, but giving that space to people to gather digitally. And then second, we are trying to come up with solutions and ideas for companies to serve their working parents so they can retain them. So we don't see these numbers of women exiting the workforce, and that's low-touch, um, scalable solutions. We're not saying pay for all of your employees' daycare, things that don't work, but things like, okay, you say people can work flexibly, like how are you allowing people to calendar that? At your company, right? Like something that might, you know, that might seem like a simple thing, but it's very complicated, right? Because if you have a lot of, you know, 30-year-old men and women who don't have kids and you're a working mom and you can only, you don't, you can't do it between 8 and 10 because you've got your kindergartner Zoom school, like how can you show that and how can you know your company is being accepting of that?

It sounds like you're really helping to lead the next generation of working women and allies into both a support system and practical solutions to parenting and working well. Just taking this up a level from just you and the Riveter, what do you think is next for our broader communities as they change and grow through this year?

I think what's next for our broader communities is that community will be more important than ever, and that when people can gather in real life, they will be desperate to do so. I also think that physical space changes for all of us. I think that companies will move away from headquarters, but will keep space so that their employees can gather for cultural purposes or meetings. So I think like office space in America will move more toward open and flexible space where you're not expected to be in the office all day, every day at your desk. And I think that's a great thing. I think that's going to accelerate women in the workplace once we live in a world where children can go to school and there are daycares again and things like that. And so I think, and when I say that, not in a gendered way, but women remain the primary caretakers of kids in America. It's a fact. I think when we come out of this, there's so much opportunity. And so it's just the kind of, how do we get through this collectively together?

You've already mentioned how your mother has been such an impact on your life, both inspirationally as well as tactically helping you raise your children. Who else has been a woman that has had a profound impact on you?

So I think there's two women that I would point to that have had a profound impact on me. The first one would be a woman named Laura Newman, who was my first boss at the Carter Center. And she was an excellent boss. In that she advocated for me. I was, you know, 23 years old, and she gave me really hard, really good work. And I think a lot of 23-year-olds don't get the opportunity to even try that, right? You're stuck in a more administrative role. And she also, she was tough, right? And I think that, like, having a tough boss in a really important job was just pivotal in growing who I am and what I can do in the work world. She taught me what to do when you mess up at work, which is you say, "I'm sorry." You explain how it happened and you don't do it again, right? But like, she taught me to own it, and I think that's a big lesson. So anyway, she's a fan, she was a fantastic boss. I loved working for her. She taught me a ton. She's still at the Carter Center. I'm very lucky to have her, and I'm still in touch with her. And I will say, actually, what, a couple of my angel investors are people I met at the Carter Center. So you should always keep every relationship that you ever have because you never know. And then, you know, another woman that I look up to immensely is Sally Krawcheck. She's a hero of mine. She is quite literally the most successful woman on Wall Street, and she just gets it done, right? And she has kids and she never stops. And, you know, she could be doing anything in the world right now and she started a company. And, you know, it's just, I find her tenacity to be really remarkable, so I really admire her.

You are wearing so many hats. Not only are you a mom of 4 daughters and obviously a very successful full-time CEO, you're also a new podcast host yourself. Your podcast is called What's Your Story?, which interviews a variety of women at the top of their field. We'd love to get a sense of what's next for you.

I love this podcast, What's Her Story with Sam and Amy. It's really fun. And my co-host Sam Etis, she's also a founder. She has a great company called Park Place Payments, which is working on financial services for women, and she's amazing. And I have to say, like, I just feel blown away at how lucky we are to get to talk to all of these women we've interviewed, you know, Abby Wambach and Sally Krausek and Tina Chen, and I'm floored. I'm often like, how do I get to do this? I think what's next for me is continuing to figure out how we iterate and build the Riveter community so that we're serving working women. I mean, it really is in the service of working women and also how we rebuild a new business plan that kills it on revenue. I care about that deeply, right? Like, I'm in this because I care about working women and I'm in this because I care about working women making money, including myself. And so really it's adapting, pivoting, and moving forward. And that's exhausting. Like, I won't lie, like, this has been the hardest 6 months of my entire life. And both going from a place where The Riveter was like flying, growing 20% month over month to, you know, my business being hit catastrophically. I had an all-in real life business and then we had a black swan once in a century global pandemic. And that's life, right? Like that's life. Like that's how it happens. And so you have to say, okay, this is a disaster. And I can say this was a disaster, things are over and walk away. Or you can say this is a disaster and there's opportunity here. And so how do we— I wanted to build The Riveter into a digital platform. How do we accelerate that? And how do we move forward?

Your tenacity is truly inspiring. It's been such a pleasure talking to you today.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Room. If you enjoyed our conversation, please like and subscribe. Stay tuned for next week's inspiring guest airing Tuesdays at 7 AM Pacific. See you soon.

All opinions expressed by Claudia and Madison and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Five AC. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.